Breaking News

These are the 20 best travel destinations for summer 2024, according to Google Flight Searches 3 Google Maps updates to make summer travel easier SPACECENT is up the new war zone > United States Space Force > Article Display Tuberculosis — United States, 2023 | MMWR Thousands of US bridges are vulnerable to collapse from a single hit: NTSB Why don’t the Blazers or ROOT Sports offer standalone streaming? Up to 200,000 people estimated to travel to Vermont for total solar eclipse How fast will April’s total solar eclipse travel? The UN Security Council demands a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan Mexico in the emerging world order

The winners of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s annual Cool Science Image contest—including a quilt organized around a mathematical theorem, an image of tiny swimming plankton for their daily constitution, and lung X-rays rendered by artificial intelligence as classic works of art—are some of the most diverse representations of science in the 12- annual history of the competition.

A panel of eight experienced artists, scientists and science communicators selected nine more images and videos based on aesthetic, creative and scientific qualities that distinguished them from numerous submissions. The winning entries show animal cells, crystal structure, quantum computing equipment and a broad view of our galaxy.

An exhibit featuring the winners is open to the public in the McPherson Eye Research Institute’s Mandelbaum and Albert Family Vision Gallery on the ninth floor of the Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research, 111 Highland Ave., through December. The reception of the competition participants will be held in the gallery on Thursday, September 29, from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm. and is also open to the public.

The winning creators used a wide array of tools, including incredibly sophisticated microscopes and point-and-shoot digital cameras, innovative machine learning computers, and needle and fabric. A common thread runs through the creators’ desire to explore the world around us more than the mind’s eye.

“The pursuit of science is about more than abstract ideas,” says Kelly Tyrrell, contest judge, molecular biologist and director of media relations and strategic communications at UW-Madison. “Science can enable us to see the invisible and discover the unknown. Scientific images, videos and art can offer tangible insights into and through the universe, and help us get to know ourselves better.”

1

These stylistically different representations of chest X-rays are created by generative adversarial networks, computer networks designed to “learn” like the human brain learns. Although these particular works of art are more beautiful than useful in radiology, GANs are used in medical imaging to improve, classify and reconstruct information and understand the differences between X-rays of a case of COVID (above), pneumonia (below) and a healthy lung. (center).

Dalton Griner,

graduate student, medical physics;

Xin Tie,

graduate student, medical physics

chest x-rays and the PyTorch deep learning framework

2

This image of brain cells from the mouse cerebellum was made possible by the addition of a gene that combines a fluorescent red molecule with a protein called vimentin, which forms filaments in cell walls and is especially present during cell development, wound healing and cancer spread. The red “tag” allows researchers to distinguish blue nuclei from red vimentin filaments in mouse studies.

Karolina Lungova,

Research Intern, Neuroscience;

Darcie Moore,

professor of neuroscience

confocal microscope

3

Seen through the eyepiece of a microscope, aluminum wires about one-third the diameter of a human hair connect the superconducting devices to the microchip. During experiments, the microchip is cooled to -460 degrees Fahrenheit (just a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero) to explore the laws of quantum physics and test nanotechnology for quantum computing.

Benjamin Harpt,

graduate student, physics

digital camera

4

Stem cells derived from the skin cells of rhesus macaque monkeys look like multi-colored pearls on mouse spindle cells that provide the stem cells with crucial support as they grow. These stem cells — which have the potential to become any type of cell in the body but carry a genetic mutation linked to frontotemporal dementia — will be coaxed into forming brain cells and used to study the development of the disease.

Julia Gambardella,

graduate student, Cellular & Molecular Pathology and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center;

John Maufort,

scientist, Morgridge Institute for Research and Wisconsin National Primate Research Center;

Marina Emborg,

professor of medical physics and the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center

Digital inverted microscope

5

Follow this math thread: The perfect regularity and symmetry of the traditional “Storms at Sea” patchwork is broken in this quilt by moving, in tandem, the adjacent corners of the four-sided shapes in white and navy blue, placing pairs of offset corners at random positions along the edge of the square or rectangle into which are inscribed quadrilaterals. 41 light blue quadrilaterals connect the midpoints of the edges of the white asymmetric quadrilaterals, and each is a visual illustration of Varignon’s theorem, which proves that its shape must be a parallelogram.

Amy Wendt,

professor of electrical engineering and computer science

machine cut and stitched cotton fabric

6

The strong, vertical line of the vagus nerve—which appears red with other nerves—transmits motor and sensory information through the green muscle in the rat’s neck. Using a polarizing filter, researchers analyze the way peripheral nerves and their fatty layer of insulation reflect light. The technique could one day be used to help surgeons work around sensitive nerves by distinguishing them from other tissues.

Rex Chin-Hao Chen,

graduate student, Biomedical Engineering;

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *