Arsenic sulphide dissolved in a solution displays colorful random patterns after being spin-coated and baked on a chrome-evaporated glass slide.

Binary Code

The purpose of this work was to connect an object from an organic life cycle to technology. It is a photograph of a tree trunk, modified in Photoshop to reveal the patterns extruding from the bark. It resembles a form of binary code. What makes this picture interesting is the fact that it is such a simple object. Usually trees are often overlooked but by modifying this picture with a few different filters, I was able to make the photograph much more interesting, without distorting the true beauty of the bark. If people just take a second to appreciate everyday objects and connect them to other aspects of their lives, they may begin to see how beautiful life really is.

wasbella102:

Ryuji Taira, “Vicissitudes” Tanpopo (Dandelion) #1, platinum palladium print

mondonoir:

Arbuscle of a mycorrhizal fungus within a root cell at 250 times magnification.  By Mark Brundrett, University of Western Australia. 

This image won 5th place in the 1989 Nikon Small World Competition.  See more winners here. 

Gabriel Dawe: Challenging machismo through hypnotically vibrant thread installations

Growing up as a boy in Mexico, Gabriel Dawe was forbidden to explore the artistic elements of textiles and embroidery, an area thought to be reserved for women. Nevertheless, the color and intensity of Mexican culture began to appear in his artwork after moving to Montreal in 2000. Now based out of Texas, the mixed media artist has made a career out of the mind-bending thread installations that compose the “Plexus” series.

See more photos here.

Departure, by Bernd Wachtmeister.

As spring arrives, flowers seem to bloom everywhere – even under the microscopes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. But the ‘flowers’ in this picture actually help an animal, not a plant, to pass on its genes. The image, which has been false-coloured for artistic effect, shows a slice through the tails of mouse sperm. Each ‘flower’ is the tail that a sperm cell wags to swim. Inside it, you can glimpse the secret behind sperm’s typical swimming technique: two tubes called microtubules, surrounded by a ring of nine other microtubule pairs. With the help of specialist ‘motor’ proteins, these microtubules make the sperm tail beat, enabling the sperm to swim.

The image was taken using an electron microscope, and shows sperm tails from a healthy mouse, magnified 46 000 times. While comparing sperm formation in healthy and genetically altered mice, Charlotta Funaya, a research technician at EMBL, was struck by the image’s beauty. “This particular image didn’t really serve a scientific purpose,” she says: “I took it because it looked pretty.”

Image credit: EMBL/C.Funaya & P. Riedinger