A first-time entrant took first prize in this year's Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. Thomas Deerinck's vivid image of the saggital section of a rat cerebellum illuminated by bright fluorescent dyes was created using a combination of fluorescence and confocal microscopy. Deernick, who works at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), described his winning image as a pleasant happenstance in his greater "quest to disclose the genome using microscopy."
President and CEO of Nikon Instruments, Hiro Kusaka, announced the winners of the 28th annual contest Wednesday evening in New York City. This year's other winning entries came from visual explorations in the biological, chemical and physical sciences. Among the top ten winning images were diatoms that appeared as ornamental fans on display, a photochemical under polarized light evocative of an Asian landscape, and a topaz surface that could...