Judge’s Choices
Junjie Yao
It is traditionally challenging to study the placenta in vivo, because it is deep inside the uterus. Enabled by a new intravital photoacoustic microscopy technology, for the first time, we can observe the ‘invisible’ development of a healthy placenta over the entire mouse pregnancy. The image, titled ‘The daily life of a placenta’, presents the same placenta imaged daily inside the uterus from E7 (right after the placentation) to E19 (right before the delivery). As the placenta quickly grows, the microvasculature of the placenta has experienced drastic changes from day to day and much new knowledge has been learned by using this new imaging tool. Particularly, we have mapped the blood oxygenation change of the placenta from the early pregnancy to the late stage. Clear hypoxia condition (blue-green colors in the images) is observed in early pregnancy, which is believed to be critical for the pregnancy to support the quick growth of the placenta and fetus.
Genesis Higueros
Inspired by nature, 3D printed “trees” were imploded to reach micrometer dimensions for battery technology applications. The vascular structures were inversely designed using AI computing for charging optimization. After undergoing a special heat treatment, the shrunk sacrificial “trees” on copper substrate are shown through an optical microscope image. A crystal-like texture appears because of the post-processing treatments at high temperatures generating a beautiful fictional winter micro-scene. The components are sacrificial structures used as temporary molds. Once they disappear, their shape will be retained by the surrounding active material. Hence, a forest of “invisible trees” is created within our battery.
G Allan Johnson
The image is a coronal slice of a perfusion fixed mouse brain imaged with diffusion tensor imaging @ 9.4 Tesla. Over 100 3D volumes were acquired with magnetic field gradients applied at different angles allowing the detection of axonal tracts. The isotropic spatial resolution @ 5 microns is more than 60 million times that of a clinical MRI. Color is derived from the diffusion encoding with blue highlighting projections oriented from top to bottom, red -left to right and green in/out of the plane. Courtesy Duke Center for In VIvo Microscopy
People’s Choice
Marcos Negrete
Mitosis: Cell Birth
Mitosis is an essential cell process in life. Mitosis allows cell division where one cell gives rise to two identical daughter cells proving new cells for growth. In this image a endothelial cell was capture under mitosis. DAPI stains the nucleus(blue), gammaH2AX marker stains DNA (green), Ki67 marker stains cell proliferation (purple).
