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2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge winners announced

Winning entries will appear in Sep. 26 issue of Science

		IMAGE: "Mad Hatter's Tea " won first place in Informational Graphics. The team used an excerpt from an informative book, Alice's Adventures in Microscopic Wonderland, to demonstrate the fantastic nature of reality... Click here for more information.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) along with the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), today announced the winners of their sixth annual International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

		IMAGE: The winning photography entry, "Glass Forest, " depicts at the microscale level a community of diatoms, unicellular algae characterized by a peculiar glass-like cell wall, attached to the basal segment of... Click here for more information.

The winning entries included breathtaking photographs and graphics that reveal intricate details of our world--the three-dimensional path made by a rapidly spinning string cutting through space and the unique anatomy of the half-meter-long Loligo pealei squid whose tiny suckers are 400 micrometers in diameter.

"I wanted to reveal the tiny world we trample through, creating scenes that at first glance are parallel to our macroscopic world, until you look a little closer," said Colleen Champ, a first-place winner with Dennis Kunkel in the Informational Graphics category. "The 'Mad Hatter's Tea' is one scene from many, depicting a quote from the fanciful mind of Lewis Carroll," she added. This scene will be featured on the cover of the Sept. 26, 2008, issue of Science.

Illustrators, photographers, computer programmers and graphics specialists from around the world were invited to submit visualizations that would intrigue, explain and educate. More than 180 entries were received from 21 countries.

		IMAGE: "Zoom into the Human Bloodstream " won first place in Illustration. The team manipulated perspective to show the relationship between the tiniest oxygen atom and the comparatively giant organ, the heart. Click here for more information.

The winning entries communicate information about the creation of spontaneous buckling of a poly(ethylene glycol) layer resembling wrinkles that appear on flowers' petals and leaves' edges; the 3D rendering, at nanometer resolution, of a melanoma cell through ion abrasion electron microscopy; the display of microbial biofilm from a stream, explaining its role within the stream's micro-ecosystem; and, more. The Sept. 26, 2008, issue of Science will feature the winning entries, which will also be freely available at http://www.sciencemag.org/vis2008/ and the NSF's website at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=112304&preview=false

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