These award-winning games and images will take you from the depths of the ocean to the vast expanse of the universe, via your brain, your gut and some "Fuzzy Deutzia".
The Science journal's 2013 visualisation challenge drew more than 200 entries from 12 countries, and judged them on visual impact, effective communication, freshness and originality.
1. View a fluid flow produced by corals
The first-place photograph, Invisible Coral Flows, reveals the hidden natural beauty of the reef-building coral habitat. The image of a Pocillopora damicornis (cauliflower coral), taken by Vicente Fernandez from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, draws the viewer to a fluid vortex generated by cilia covering the coral's surface, creating a whirlpool structure in the surrounding seawater.
2. Explore the depths of the world's oceans
This educational game in 3D, Deep-sea Extreme Environment Pilot (DEEP), was created by scientists at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. It allows players to pilot a remotely operated vehicle to explore the depths of the world's oceans to see hydrothermal vents, maintain an observatory, and examine deep-sea organisms in their habitats. (YouTube trailer)
3. See the beauty of nanoparticles
The People's Choice video, Spherical Nucleic Acids, is an animation produced by the Seagull Company and Northwestern University that gives the viewer a first-hand look at the properties that mark SNAs as a potential treatment for diseases with a genetic basis. Derived from research conducted by Dr Chad Mirkin, a leader in the field who was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and his group at Northwestern University, the content is an overview of how the properties make them favourable for therapeutic treatments in the field of biomedicine.
4. Zoom into the brain
EyeWire: A Game to Map the Brain is a citizen neuroscience game that allows players to pan, zoom, explore brain cells and map the 3D structure of neurons in the brain. Based in the Seung Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the EyeWire team reconstructs neurons, revealing how they connect and network to process information, and develops advances in artificial intelligence.
5. Move within the brain's cells
Cortex in Metallic Pastels is a first-place illustration by Greg Dunn that communicates the layered structure of the cerebral cortex, resembling a forest. The stylized painting, derived from Asian principles, uses gold leaf, aluminium, acrylic dye and other materials to uncover the beauty of microscopic cells in the brain. The artist explains that "the neurons are painted by a technique wherein pigments are blown across the canvas using jets of air, a technique that closely emulates the spontaneous, random branching patterns of actual neurons".
6. Journey through the human gut
The 3D animation by Arkitek Studios, Immunology of the Gut Mucosa, explores how the human body's immune system responds to bacteria in the gastrointestinal system - how it protects against food-borne pathogens and how it responds to bacterial invasion - from the macro scale down to the sub-cellular level and looks at how the inner workings of the body achieves its balance.
7. Watch stem cells at work
A series of animated videos, titled StemCellShorts, use simple, colourful, and playful shapes to represent the complexity of stem cell research and to make the information more accessible. Each of the three videos, developed by Ben Paylor at the University of British Columbia and Mike Long at the University of Toronto and their team, answers a simple question about stem cells. Award-winning animator David Murawsky from the Stem Cell Network participated in the project.
8. See microbes in the hand
One of the People's Choice awards was given to a researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine, Lydia-Marie Joubert, for an illustration Human Hand controlling Bacterial Biofilms, which uses a novel biofilm imaging technique to show the growth of bacteria, at 400 times normal resolution, in the dark-grey fingers and palm of a hand sculpture. The visual conveys how microbes persevere, even after repeated antimicrobial treatment.
9. Wear energy-storing clothes
This poster Wearable Power shows a model wearing a cutting-edge 3D-rendered garment that conveys a new science and design concept. Scientists at Drexel University formed a collaborative research project to seek ways to develop clothes, or yarns, with devices that can store power. In this graphic, they describe a product that has power sources built into fabric for clothing, which could be developed and used in the medical, military and sportswear industries.
10. Look at micro material
The image Polymer Micro-Structure Self-Assembly won the People's Choice award for photography. Anna Pyayt and Howard Kaplan, researchers from the University of South Florida, used a camera mounted on top of a microscope to demonstrate the formation of micro-structures in polymers that self-assemble into different shapes.
11. See leaf scales through a different lens
By using an old technique called polarised light microscopy, the photo Stellate leaf hairs on Deutzia scabra, also known as Fuzzy Deutzia, reveals the fine structure of a plant and its functions, and highlights the value of microstructure in the taxonomy of plants. The photographer, Stephen Francis Lowry, explains that in Japan woodworkers utilise the abrasive qualities of the leaves for fine polishing.
12. Visualise our universe
An animated video shows our sun's powerful magnetic energy and Earth's strong magnetic fields that drive the winds and ocean currents that form our planet's climate. The narrated movie, Dynamic Earth, took complex, state-of-the-art computational models from research institutions across the United States to create a high-resolution visualisation of our universe for the big screen, which is now playing at planetariums around the world.