MSNBC
09-25-06
Science's greatest sights
Categories: Images, Science
How would you like to get an inside look at a child mummy? Watch the continentwide "fireworks" of airplane flights at night? Visualize an elk's bugle? Get up
close and personal with a Cuban banana cockroach? You can do all this and
more online, thanks to the award winners in the Science and Engineering
Visualization Challenge.
This year marks the fourth annual contest for graphical goodies, sponsored by
the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. The competition recognizes superb scientific
applications in photography, illustration and informational graphics as well as
multimedia.
To get the full flavor, you'll just have to click your way through this slideshow. You
can see the imagery in all its glory, and download the winning videos and
software to boot.
To whet your appetite, here are some short and sweet descriptions of the
winners:
* Photography: First place went to "An Egyptian Child Mummy," by W. Paul
Brown, Robert Cheng, Rebecca Fahrig, Stanford University; Christof Reinhart,
Volume Graphics. After sitting for 75 years in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum
in San Jose, Calif., a 2,000-year-old child mummy was analyzed by researchers
using state-of-the-art 3-D imaging technology. The team concluded that the child
was a 4- to 5-year-old girl who likely died unexpectedly from an infectious
disease.
Second place: "Cockroach Portrait," by David Yager, University of Maryland
at College Park.
* Illustration: First place went to "No. 64 - Still Life: Five Glass Surfaces on a
Tabletop," by Richard Palais, University of California at Irvine; and Luc Benard.
Mathematicians can conceive of innumerable surfaces that we cannot touch or
see. They have long relied on their powers of imagination to picture abstract
surfaces. Richard Palais and graphic artist Luc Benard used the magic of
computer graphics to re-create these abstract surfaces in familiar yet intriguing
settings.
Second place: "A Da Vinci Blackboard Lesson in Multiconceptual Anatomy,"
by Caryn Babaian, Bucks County Community College, Newton, Pa.
Honorable mention: "The Handwritten Letter 'e,' Visualized as a Canyon with
Frost in the Lowlands," by Curtis T. DuBois.
* Informational graphics: First place went to "Hawaii, the Highest Mountain on
Earth," by Nils Sparwasser, Thorsten Andresen, Stephan Reiniger; Robert
Meisner, German Aerospace Center. Mount Everest may be the highest
mountain on Earth above sea level, but it’s not the world’s tallest mountain. That
honor goes to the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea. When measured from its base
on the Pacific Ocean floor, it rises about 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) taller then
Mount Everest. Geographer Nils Sparwarrer and his colleagues at the German
Aerospace Center provide a panoramic (and informative) view of the Hawaiian
volcanoes.
Second place: "The Mona Lisa: A Montage of Scientific Images," by Louis
Borgeat, François Blais, John Taylor, Luc Cournoyer, Michel Picard, Angelo
Beraldin, Guy Godin, Marc Rioux, Guillaume Poirier, National Research Council
of Canada; Christian Lahanier, Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des
musées de France.
Honorable Mention: "Materials Informatics: Visualization of High Dimensional
Combinatorial Data," by Matt Heying, Changwon Suh, Krishna Rajan, James
Oliver, Iowa State University; Simone Seig, Wilhelm Maier, Universität des
Saarlandes.
* Non-interactive multimedia: Two entries tied for first place. "Flight Patterns,"
by media artist Aaron Koblin of the University of California at Los Angeles,
graphically depicts air traffic criss-crossing the mainland United States and
Hawaii as a new-age fireworks display. "Body Code" is by Drew Berry of the
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia; Jeremy Pickett-Heaps of
the University of Melbourne; and François Tétaz. The animation, originally
created for an art gallery, takes you on a wordless journey through the alien
structures and molecular factories that keep us alive.
Honorable mention: "A Short Tour of the Cryosphere," by Jennifer Brennan,
ADNET Systems Inc./NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Waleed Abdalati,
Horace Mitchell, Ryan Boller, Lori Perkins, Greg Shirah, Carol Boquist, NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center; Walter Meier, Ronald Weaver, Mary Jo Brodzik,
Richard Armstrong, National Snow and Ice Data Center; Alex Kekesi, Cindy
Starr, Tom Bridgman, Randall Jones, Marte Newcombe, Stuart Snodgrass, Eric
Sokolowsky, Jarret Cohen, Brian Krupp, Global Science and Technology Inc.;
Kevin Mahoney, Computer Science Corp.; Michael Starobin, Mike Velle,
Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc.
* Interactive multimedia: First place went to "Cerebral Vasculature of
Craniopagus Conjoined Twins," by Travis Vermilye, Stephen Humphries, Andrew
M. Christensen, Medical Modeling LLC, Golden, Colo.; Kenneth E. Salyer, David
G. Genecov, Carlos R. Barcelo, International Craniofacial Institute in Dallas; Crys
Sory, Children's Medical Center in Dallas. To evaluate the chances of
successfully separating one set of so-called craniopagus-conjoined twins, a
group of surgeons at the International Craniofacial Institute used an interactive
tool developed by medical illustrator Travis Vermilye. The tool helped the
surgeons postpone the separation of the twins.
Second place: "AVES: A Real-Time Audio and Visual Sound Visualization
Tool," by Jack Bradbury, Guillaume Iacino, Erica Olsen; Robert Grotke, Cornell
Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, N.Y.
Honorable mention: "Cardiac Bioelectricity and Arrhythmias," by Flavio H.
Fenton, Elizabeth M. Cherry, Cornell University.