• Creepy critters and cool close-ups: Nikon's micro-photo contest has it all

    Slideshow: Nikon Small World 2012

    Geir Drange

    Get an up-close view of an ant carrying its baby, plus other top-20 winners in the 2012 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.

    Launch slideshow

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Small wonders can be icky as well as clicky, as this year's top images in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition demonstrate. First-ever picture of the blood-brain barrier forming in a live animal? Got it. Ultra-close-ups of a desert rose and a baby garlic flower? Got 'em. Creepy pictures of bat embryos and eight-eyed spiders? Got those, too.

    Ninety-nine winners were chosen out of hundreds of photographers from around the world who participated in the Small World contest, which has been presented by Nikon since 1975 to recognize excellence in photomicrography. We're featuring the top 20 images in our slideshow.

    Top honors go to Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., who captured what's thought to be an unprecedented picture of the blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo.

    The barrier is a structure of cells that let nutrients and other necessities move between blood vessels and the central nervous system, while keeping bacteria and other baddies out of the brain's territory.

    "We used fluorescent proteins to look at brain endothelial cells and watched the blood-brain barrier develop in real time," Peters and Taylor said, in a statement explaining the genesis of their winning image. "We took a three-dimensional snapshot under a confocal microscope. Then we stacked the images and compressed them into one — pseudo-coloring them in rainbow to illustrate depth."

    The result is a matrix that appears to shine in the darkness like the craziest neon sculpture you've ever seen. Other winning pictures present views of a ladybug's leg, a fruit fly's gut or a bone cancer cell in similarly glowing colors.

    And then there are the curiously creepy pictures: a series of three bat embryos, showing how the critters' flesh-colored wings grow longer during gestation ... an ant gripping one of its larvae in its jaws ... newborn lynx spiderlings that turn their eight eyes toward the microscope's lens.

    In some cases, the photomicrographs were created in the course of a research project — but in other cases, the pictures are primarily meant to convey the wonder of small worlds. For example, photographer Charles Krebs was led to create his 17th-place image when he was stung by nettles. "After the numbness in my fingertips subsided, I carefully collected some, and took a look at the underside of a leaf," he wrote on Photomacrography.net. His 100x image shows a nettle's stinging hair, or trichome, filled with venom.

    Eric Flem, communications manager for Nikon Instruments, said it was a privilege to showcase some of the world's best photomicrography. "We are proud that this competition is able to demonstrate the true power of scientific imaging and its relevance to the scientific communities as well as the general public," he said in today's news release. A total of $6,000 worth of Nikon products and equipment will go to the three top prize winnres.

    Click through the top-20 slideshow, then check out the Nikon Small World website for scores of additional images of distinction. You can see the contest's top images offline as well, in the form of Nikon's full-color calendar and a touring museum exhibition. And you'll find a huge stockpile of small wonders in the slideshows listed below:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor, and was on the judging panel for the 2011 Nikon Small World Competition. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Microscopic marvels star in movies

    Photographers entering Nikon's Photomicrography Competition captured stunning time-lapse images of organisms at work. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    What could be more marvelous than seeing microscopic wonders at super-close range? How about watching those wonders at work, through the magic of time-lapse photography? That's the kind of wow factor that Nikon Instruments was going for with their first-ever Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition — and it looks as if the winning entries have hit the mark.

    Top honors go to Anna Franz, a researcher at the University of Oxford's Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, for her video showing how ink makes its way through the blood vessels of a chick embryo.

    Anna Franz / Oriel College / Oxford

    Dark ink outlines the blood system of a chick embryo in this frame from a video created by Anna Franz of Oriel College and the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Franz carefully injected the ink into an artery within the egg and used a stereo microscope to track its flow through the vessels. The resulting video won top honors in Nikon's first Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. Click on the image to play the movie.

    To create the time-lapse video, Franz cut a window into a chicken egg to expose the 72-hour-old embryo, and then carefully injected ink into its artery under a stereo microscope to visualize the blood system. Believe it or not, this was the first time Franz used this technique. She not only got it right; she also captured the blood's blossoming on video.

    "This movie not only demonstrates the power of the heart and the complexity of vasculature of the chick embryo, but also reflects the beauty of nature's design," Franz said in today's announcement about the award-winners.

    Second place goes to Dominik Paquet's glittering time-lapse view of mitochondria moving through sensory neurons in the tail of a zebrafish larva. Mitochondria are the energy-producing powerhouses of the cell, and play a vital role in sparking neural activity. This movie was created in the course of Paquet's research into the molecular and cellular pathologies associated with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

    Paquet and his team at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease in Munich were studying how problems with the transport of cellular components can affect nerve cells. Paquet says this video may represent the first-ever example of live imaging of mitochondrial transport in the nerve cells of an intact, unmodified vertebrate.

    Dominik Paquet / German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases / Rockefeller U.

    Medical researcher Dominik Paquet captured a time-lapse movie showing the movement of mitochondria through sensory neurons in the tail of a zebrafish larva. The movie won second place in Nikon's Small World in Motion contest. Click on the image to play the movie.

    A microscopic crustacean known as a Daphnia or water flea plays with a Volvox, a spherical type of green algae, in a frame from a video that won third place in Nikon's Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. Click on the image to play the video.

    The third-place winner is totally for fun. German vaccine researcher Ralf Wagner nabbed a Daphnia water flea from his garden pond and put it on his microscope slide for study. In Wagner's charming video, the water flea can be seen batting around a spherical Volvox green-algae colony as if it were a beach ball. Wagner acknowledges that the video doesn't document a scientific breakthrough; it just shows a microscopic creature interacting with its environment. It also shows off Wagner's flair for microscopy. A still image showing a similar scene was recognized as an image of distinction in the 2011 Nikon Small World contest. Wagner hopes that such pictures will remind viewers how much fun science can be, and perhaps inspire some of them to take up its study.

    Nikon Instruments has been sponsoring the annual Small World contest for still photomicrography for 37 years — and Eric Flem, the company's communications manager, said the video contest was a natural outgrowth of the tradition. "We receive spectacular images for the Nikon Small World Competition, and it is with great excitement that we expand the competition to accommodate moving images and time-lapse photography," he said.

    More than 200 contest entries were received for judging by Kurt Thorn, director of the Nikon Imaging Center at the University of California at San Francisco; and Michael Davidson, director of the Optical and Magneto-Optical Imaging Center at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. In addition to the top three videos, the judges recognized 11 other entries with honorable mentions.

    For the full playlist, click on over to the Nikon Small World website. You can also check in with Nikon Small World's Facebook page and its Twitter account, @NikonSmallWorld.

    More small wonders:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor, and was on the judging panel for the 2011 Nikon Small World Competition. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.