Scientific research often produces stunning images. Each year scientists across Northwestern submit images from their work which are then judged by a panel of artists, scientists and community leaders. This collection of the 2015 winning images represents the breadth of Northwestern research across disciplines including neurobiology, chemistry, engineering and nanotechnology.
Now in its 5th year, the Scientific Images Contest and its attendant exhibitions and events are organized by Northwestern's research center for science education and community engagement, Science in Society.
We invite you to enjoy both the beauty and innovation of Northwestern science.
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Collaboration is often the key to scientific innovation. Here, a reproductive biologist and a materials scientist and engineer teamed up to help cancer survivors who struggle to conceive children.
The image centers on a mouse ovarian follicle (in purple). An ovarian follicle is made up of a developing egg and its surrounding support cells. Normally follicles develop within healthy ovaries, but they can be damaged by harsh cancer therapies. Healthy follicles can be removed before patients undergo treatment, but afterward these saved follicles often struggle to grow into healthy eggs.
Laronda and Jakus have created a new paper-like biomaterial made of ovarian proteins (in green). It is designed to support removed follicles as they develop into mature eggs. This image shows a healthy follicle flourishing in the new environment. Someday supportive biomaterials like these could help cancer survivors grow families of their own.
Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology + Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Scanning Electron Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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This image shows two materials sandwiched together. The bottom layer is a rubbery gel; it expands when heated and shrinks when cooled. The top layer is incredibly thin glass.
Materials scientists heat the gel to extremely hot temperatures (392 degrees Fahrenheit) and then create a thin layer of glass on the surface. As the gel shrinks it pulls the glass sheet into a wrinkly pattern. The glass ridges ripple in yellow; the darker spots are the valleys in-between.
This sandwiching process was invented at Northwestern University to develop new, microscopic instruments and tools. When perfected, this method results in tiny rubber pyramids tipped with fine glass points. The pyramids act like quill pens with built-in shock absorbers -- pens which write with single molecules or nano-particles for ink. Tools like these help nanoparticle researchers with more precise, more delicate maneuvers as they begin to study ever smaller aspects of material design.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Optical Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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Scientists can press ‘pause’ on cells in action by rapidly freezing them. The cells must be frozen incredibly quickly --within the blink of an eye. If the freezing process is too slow, the water inside (which makes up most of the cell) forms ice crystals.
This microscopic image shows the very early stages of one such ‘snowflake’ growing. If left to grow each of the six, symmetrical points would continue to branch out, developing into an intricate snowflake visible to the naked eye.
In experiments like this one Whittaker and his lab freeze sea urchin cells by plunging them into liquid ethane. When frozen fast enough (and scientists avoid creating ‘snowflakes’), researchers can observe cells orchestrating the growth of skeletons. This helps us to understand biomineralization: the process of how bodies grow bones, teeth and other hard biological tissues.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Scanning Electron Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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This wavy image is a field of long, thin nanofibers. These spaghetti-like fibers are thinner than 1/10,000th of a human hair, and just like hair, they can lay in straight lines or get tangled up in nests.
Each individual fiber is too small to see, even with a microscope, so the researchers have applied a special computer program to observe how and where the fibers align. Wherever a large clump of fibers lies in the same direction, that area is brightly colored. Wherever it is black, the fibers are all facing different directions.
The individual colors assigned depend on the angle of the fibers. Red patches show places where the strands lay horizontally while green and blue areas are vertically aligned. This is easiest to see around the edges of the black circle (a tiny air bubble). The fibers bend around the bubble, lying at each angle along its edge, creating a rainbow.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Fluorescence Microscope + colored in ImageJ
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This chamber resides in a water tank buried 400 feet underground at Fermilab. It is surrounded by high-speed cameras, pressure and acoustic sensors, and temperature controls.
The liquid chemical is superheated: any tiny disturbance will cause it to bubble. In this image a single neutron collided with the target fluid creating a bubble which then rose the surface, causing this small, atom-bomb-like eruption. The high-speed cameras were triggered immediately resulting in this photo, and the pressure was increased to quench the bubble explosion.
This particular test helped scientists calibrate and test the sensitivity of the chamber. This 8-inch jar is one of several, some are as small as test tubes, others span a meter in diameter. Based on their observations, the research team plan to build a larger chamber which is even more sensitive and stable. This will hopefully help scientists directly detect dark matter.
PICO Dark Matter Research Collaboration
Tools & Techniques: High-speed Camera
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We have discovered thousands of planets outside our own Solar System. Some of these “exoplanet” systems are much more tightly packed than ours. In such a system, what would happen if two planets the size of Jupiter collided?
This team designed highly-specialized computer programs to model what might happen. This image shows the simulated planetary system shortly after collision. The two circles represent the planets’ original orbits. (They crashed where the orbits were very close together on the right-hand side.) The spiraling cloud is plan-etary matter sprayed out across the system. The bright object near the bottom of the image could be a new planet forming from the remains--notice how it no longer follows either of the original orbits.
Some currently observed exoplanets may have undergone such a collision (or collisions) many years ago. Cutting-edge simulations like these help us understand how planets form and how they can change over time.
Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration & Research in Astrophysics (CIERA)
Tools & Techniques: Computer simulation laid over a NASA Kepler telescope image
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This image shows a mouse retina. A retina contains millions of neurons which detect light and transmit signals to our brain. The small white dots shown here are one type of neuron which receive light information from the outside world.
The lines heading toward the center are called axons. Axons act like telephone wires, sending light information from these neurons out of the eye, along the optic nerve, and on to the brain. This process of transmitting information from the sensitive neurons in our eyes to our brain is the basis of how we see.
Researcher Jasmine Lucas and other scientists study neurons in the retina to understand how different cells within the eye develop and mature.
Department of Neurobiology
Tools & Techniques: Epifluorescent Microscope
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Scientific discovery is usually a long process of trial and error. Researcher Christine Laramy has been testing her new method for measuring nanoparticles for several months.
Laramy drops a soapy solution containing microscopic amounts of gold into a small tube and then spins it very fast. As the solution spins, the suspended gold clumps together and these heavier clusters fall to the bottom. The soapy liquid is then skimmed off and the gold nanoparticles are left to dry.
In this image the gold nanoparticles formed into spheres and cubes, but the soapy solution wasn’t completely removed. (You can see it here in purple.) This soapy residue hinders Laramy’s measurements: the computer program she invented requires a plain background to accurately calculate the amount of gold.
After this image was taken Laramy experimented for several more weeks to perfect the separation process, and today her innovative measurement software is being trialed in labs and universities across the country.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Transmission Electron Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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The microscopic particles shown here are made of iron oxide, or rust, just like on a car. But these nanoparticles are tiny, 100,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper.
In this image all the nanoparticles are the same size and shape and distance apart, and each magnetic particle is subjected to the attraction and repulsion forces of its neighbors. As a result, the magnetic nano-particles self-assemble (or come together) in a closely-packed honeycomb pattern.
Iron oxide nanoparticles like these are already used to help people suffering from anemia, or iron deficiency. Researchers study how these magnetic nanoparticles interact with each other and with tissues in the body, which can open new avenues for nontoxic, targeted tests and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease.
Northwestern University Atomic & Nanoscale Characterization Experimental Center (NUANCE)
Tools & Techniques: Transmission Electron Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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Salt crystals like these grow from colorless, empty-looking solutions. Inside each solution chemicals are dissolved in water. When the water evaporates these striking chemical patterns are left behind.
Depending on the type of salt and the way the liquid evaporates, beautiful crystals like these flowery patterns can form. The shape of each flower gives valuable information about the internal structure of the crystals and how they formed.
In this experiment researchers wanted to observe how nanoparticles assemble into microscopic crystals. These crystals are built from molecules which researchers use to make and assemble nanoparticles. The better we understand nano-scale building blocks and how they work, the more effectively we can use them to design new materials, make smaller devices, and more specifically target diseases.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Scanning Electron Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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In this image a thin layer of carbon atoms forms a lattice. (You can see the blue-green bumps interlocked in a tidy hexagonal pattern.) The center of this lattice is disrupted by the presence of a crystal defect; this influences the electrons of the central carbon atoms and alters the hexagonal configuration. Like a pebble dropped in a still pond, a small change in the middle ripples out, distorting the pattern all around it.
This image is more like a contour or elevation map than a photograph. It was made with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). Instead of using lenses like a camera, an STM uses a very fine needle to trace just above the surface of microscopic structures. Here, the surface height is color-coded: the white bumps are the tallest areas and the black depressions are lowest.
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Scanning Tunneling Microscope + colored in Photoshop
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Results are far from guaranteed in nanotechnology research. Trying to create and manipulate materials on such a tiny scale – these puffs are less than 1/40th the width of a single human hair -- is cutting-edge science, and unexpected things happen all the time.
In this experiment Chen and Crosby were attempting to create nanoparticle cubes. Manipulating this material, strontium titanate, could help pave the way for faster smart phones and other electronic devices.
Instead of cubes, however, Chen and Crosby’s recipe yielded these flower-like clusters. “Nanoparticle synthesis can sometimes seem like black magic” explains Chen, but the team isn’t deterred. “We learn from these accidents” she adds, “eight out of ten times it doesn’t work, but we have to persevere to learn.”
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Tools & Techniques: Transmission Electron Microscope + colored in WSxM