Under the microscopic lense–.
The 2019 Olympus Global Image of the Year honorees discover charm under the microscope.
Jennifer Ouellette
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Enlarge / Information from the winning entry in the first Olympus Global Picture of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award. It reveals immunostaining of a mouse-brain slice with 2 fluorophores.
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For several years now, we’ve routinely included the winners of Nikon’s annual Small World microscopy contest. Now, Olympus has actually entered the artistic imaging arena with its first Global Image of the Year Award.
As Ars’ John Timmer kept in mind in his 2018 Little World coverage: ” Microscopy is a sibling of photography in numerous methods beyond the involvement of high-end lenses. While it may not matter for clinical purposes, a compelling microscopic lense image depends on things like composition, lighting, direct exposure, and more. And these days, both fields rely greatly on post-processing.” All those components are plentiful in the new crop of Olympus winners.
Spain’s Ainara Pintor snagged the top honor from over 400 submissions with her gorgeous picture of an immunostained mouse-brain slice, entitled Neurogarden The image concentrates on the hippocampus area of a single piece, but there are more than 70 million neurons in the mouse brain as an entire, according to Pintor. Howard Vindin of Australia won the local prize for Asia-Pacific by capturing an autofluorescence picture of a mouse embryo. US entrant Tagide de Carvalho won the regional award for the Americas with his vibrant image of a tardigrade. The local winner for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa was the UK’s Alan Prescott, for his image recording the frozen area of a mouse’s head.
Honorable points out consisted of striking microscopic images of photonic crystals in insect scales, taken shape amino acids, desert locust wings, and opal ingrained in iron sandstone, among others. Clearly, the field of photomicroscopy is still drawing in first-class talent.
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Global Winner: immunostaining of a mouse brain piece with two fluorophores
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Regional Winner for the Americas: it’s a vibrant tardigrade!
Tagide de Carvalho/Olympus -
Asia-Pacific Regional Winner: Autofluorescence picture of a mouse embryo.
Howard Vindin/Olympus -
EMEA Regional Winner: frozen section of a mouse’s head.
Alan Prescott/Olympus -
Honorable Mention: mouse spinal cord.
Tong Zhang/Olympus -
Honorable Mention: image of 3D depth color-coded restoration of confocal images of microtubules in monkey fibroblast cells.
Daniela Malide/Olympus -
Photonic crystals in pests (beetles and weevils) FTW!
Rudolf Buechi/Olympus -
Preparation of amino acids taken shape out of an ethanol service.
Justin Zoll/Olympus -
The desert locust is one example of an insect species that has actually progressed collapsible wings, the much better to keep them tidy and undamaged. This image is called A Roadway in the Sky due to the fact that “veins look like roadways and spinal columns on [the] wing membrane resemble stars.”
Hamed Rajabi/Olympus -
Green gem product, prase opal, magnified through a microscope, appears like an aerial shoreline view. The brown locations are iron sandstone host rock.
Nathan Renfro/Olympus -
Tiny picture of fruit fly brain.
Martin Hailstone/Olympus -
Inflorescence of developing flower buds revealing fluorescent reporters (cyan), with cell walls stained red.
Nat Prunet/Olympus -
The ovary of a gall-inducing wasp revealing the eggs.
Ming-Der Lin/Olympus
