Multimedia Gallery
"Human hand controlling bacterial biofilms"
"Human Hand Controlling Bacterial Biofilms," by Lydia-Marie Joubert, Stanford University.
In the war against bacteria, the microbes are winning. That somber message is writ large in this image of a human hand covered with Pseudomonas bacteria. Those colored green are resistant to antimicrobial treatment--only a rare few are red, indicating that they have been vanquished.
This image won people's choice in the illustration category of the 2013 Visualization Challenge, now called the Vizzies, a long-running, annual competition co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Popular Science magazine. [The competition was formerly named the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (SciVis) and was previously co-sponsored with AAAS' journal Science.] The competition aims to recognize some of the most beautiful visualizations from the worlds of science and engineering and awards prizes in five categories: photography, video, illustration, posters & graphics and interactives.
To learn more about the competition and view all the winning entries, past and present, see the NSF Special Report The VIZZIES: Visualization Challenge. (Date of Image: June 2008)
Credit: Lydia-Marie Joubert, Stanford University
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