Photo by Felipe Almeida

Perito Moreno Glacier is one of those places where you can fully contemplate nature. While walking on the ice, one of the guides asked Felipe Almeida, "You do get that we are walking on time, right?". That struck him right away because, until that moment, he hadn’t stopped to think that some of deeper layers of the glacier are from many different ice ages long ago. What was life like back then? What animals were there? So many questions. Nature is indeed amazing.

Jury Prize

Photo by Alicia McTaggart

The flowers in this bouquet bear a remarkable resemblance to calla lilies. However, they are sub-millimeter-sized barium carbonate crystals. These microstructures require barium chloride “seeds” and sodium silicate to form. The addition of carbon dioxide into the solution causes the precipitation and spontaneous assembly of barium carbonate and silica (a major component of sand), resulting in the flower-like structures. This class of self-assembled microstructures represents the promise of one day being able to recreate bioinspired materials with the same control and perfection as is done by nature.

Jury Prize

Photo by Euripidis Papanicolaou

An octopus (of the species Graneledone boreopacifica) is captured hovering over a lightly sedimented and fractured basalt lava flow 2,100 metres below sea level. This image was taken by members of a scientific research cruise aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) John P. Tully in 2016. The purpose of the cruise was to study the Endeavour hydrothermal vent fields and associated biological communities along the Juan de Fuca mid-ocean ridge, 300 kilometres off the west coast of British Columbia, within Canada’s first Marine Protected Area.

Jury Prize

Photo by Arthi Ramachandran

The Arctic atmosphere is warming more than twice as fast as the global rate. As a result, surface waters are also warming, and sea ice is retreating and freshening. This is due to increased water from melting sea ice and runoff from rivers. These changes are having profound effects on Arctic marine ecosystems, including shifts in nutrient availability, primary productivity, and microbial community composition. Knowledge of the structure and function of marine microbial communities is critical to assess and predict the consequences of a warmer, fresher Arctic ocean. Climate change monitoring programs, such as the Joint Ocean Ice Studies led by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, have documented large-scale changes in the Arctic Ocean through research missions conducted on Canada’s largest ice-breaker, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Louis S. St-Laurent.

People’s Choice Award

Photo by Jean-Baptiste Burnet

Daphnia pulex is a tiny freshwater crustacean found in most of our lakes and rivers. This one has just ingested a population of Escherichia coli bacteria previously dyed with a blue fluorochrome. Researchers are looking at whether this water flea might be a dependable ally in the large-scale decontamination of waterways.

Jury Prize

Photo by Evelyne Doré

The inside of copper water pipes is coated with corrosion plaque. The iridescent copper oxide forms deposits on the walls of pipes when it comes into contact with water. The pupil of the “snake eye” shown here is actually the epicentre of a surface flaw. In spite of its frightening look, it poses no danger to health…

Jury Prize

Photo by Nelly Manéglia

How do you locate a mineral deposit buried under thick layers of sediment using just one grain of sand? By observing its colour and analyzing its chemical composition. Each deposit is associated with “indicator” minerals, such as this grain of epidote found in glacial sediment. Follow the trail to large veins.

Jury Prize

Photo by Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais, Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo and Maxime Pivin Lapointe

At the centre of the Perseus Cluster reigns the spectacular NGC 1275 galaxy, home to a supermassive black hole that is responsible for emitting powerful jets of particulates (shown in pink). Ejected far beyond the galaxy, it is thought that these particulates maintain the incredibly high temperature (60 million degrees Celsius) of the gases spread across the galaxies (in blue).

People’s Choice Award

Photo by Christopher Somers

An American White Pelican captures a large fish while foraging in a southern Saskatchewan creek in the early spring. In many places throughout the world, birds and humans are in conflict over habitat and fisheries resources. The American White Pelican is a conservation success story, having recovered from a Canadian status of Threatened in the late 1980s. Pelicans and their distant cousins, cormorants, are often hated and persecuted because they eat fish. Christopher Somers’ research program uses a number of approaches to determine what resources these birds need, in terms of space and food, and how these relate to human needs.

Photo by Rafael Schulman and Kari Dalnoki-Veress

Water striders standing on the surface of water, hairs clumping together when wet, dew droplets clinging to a spider’s web — these are just a few examples of thin fibres interacting with the surface tension of a liquid. To better understand these interactions, an experiment was performed in which fibres thinner than a human hair were placed in contact with liquid droplets. After a tug-of-war between the fibre and the liquid, researchers observed the droplet spontaneously winding the fibre, generating tight coils that wrapped around the droplet. This unexpected result reminds us that, from seemingly simple ingredients, nature generates complex phenomena and beautiful structures.

Photo by Mike Chang

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have many remarkable properties, including strength 100 times that of stainless steel, the ability to carry a sustained current over 1 million times that of copper wires, and an aspect ratio as high as 100 million. This photograph shows the top of a vertically aligned array of CNTs made with a process called chemical vapour deposition. Using this technique, the researchers can study ways of achieving higher yield and greater consistency in terms of alignment, purity and atomic arrangement of CNTs. Slight variations in the chemical vapour deposition process can lead to interesting features, such as this effect resembling a poppy, shown in the photo.

Photo by Katrina Switzer and Lincoln Savi

The male neotropical yellow toad isn’t normally this colourful. Once a year, as the first rains fall in Costa Rica and transform dry streambeds into temporary pools, these toads make a stunning colour change from drab brown to lemon yellow as they gather en masse at the water’s edge to mate. The male toads fight among each other to latch themselves onto the backs of females so that they’re prepared to fertilize her eggs as she lays them. In only a few hours, after he’s finished fertilizing her eggs, he will transform back to his normal dull colour until the rains return next year. Currently, it is unknown how or why this species has adapted this trait. At the University of Windsor, through hormone analysis and reflectance spectrometry, researchers are working to determine the cause of this drastic colour change.

Photo by Wendy Wang

Peering into the brain, and seeing the tiny wires that form within, one is struck by its beauty and organization. The golden sun-like network in this image represent bundles of axons of cerebellar Purkinje neurons, which propagate motor information to the rest of the body. The axons converge together here, in preparation for the divergent paths they will eventually undertake. Like the sun, the central branches are surrounded by radiating neurons of various types, guided and supported by the ‘gravity’ of the Purkinje cells. Together, the balanced organization of the cerebellar circuit fine-tunes our every movement, from speech to coordination. In an age of space exploration and of thinking BIG, small things are easily forgotten. That is, until you start zooming in, and see the beauty that is already within.

Photo by Daryan Chitsaz

Many neurons face the challenge of having to reach across distances thousands of times their own size during development, such as when motor neurons in the spinal cord extend nerves to specific muscles. They accomplish this by producing special hand-like structures, called growth cones, at the tips of their axons (the purple “cables” that carry information). These growth cones extend little appendages (in green) to sniff and poke around their environment and find chemical trails laid down by the body to guide them to their distant targets. This image displays a bundle of axons from rat embryo motor neurons spreading out their growth cones to search for guidance. Through this research, we can better understand how the hundreds of billions of neurons in our nervous system connect and form the complex networks we need to function.

Photo by Eleanor Gerson

Endothelial cells line the inside of blood vessels in the human body. These cells are in direct contact with blood and alter their behaviour and shape based on interactions with other cells and changes in blood flow. In this image, endothelial cells coat a fabricated channel with a cross-section the approximate width of a human hair. Eleanor Gerson’s research involves developing fabricated channels of different sizes and shapes to develop more accurate microfluidic systems for modelling blood vessels. This provides useful ways to study drug interactions and characterize various vascular diseases.

Photo by David Ester

Liquid crystalline (LC) phases combine crystal-like order and liquid-like fluidity, creating materials with unique properties that have been exploited in devices such as your phone, TV, or laptop computer. LCs have also been explored as semiconductors for use in organic solar cells or thin-film transistors. The picture above is a polarized optical microscopy image of an LC material prepared as part of David Ester’s PhD research at Simon Fraser University. The observed “textures” give insight into the arrangement of molecules within the material. This particular focal-conic fan-shaped texture consists of layers of hexagonally packed molecules, the kind of highly ordered LC phases that are being targeted for high-performance organic semiconductors.

Photo by Awang Junaidi Awang Hazmi, Ali Honaramooz and Eiko Kawamura

Gonocytes are cells that are progenitors of stem cells found in the testicles of newborns. This image shows different gonocytes (coloured cells) after two weeks in culture, interacting with testis cells (grey cells in the background). Gonocytes possess various types of leaf-like, finger-like and membrane bleb extensions to help them migrate and communicate. In the developing testis, migrating gonocytes move from the centre to the periphery of the seminiferous tubules, where they become spermatogonial stem cells and produce countless numbers of sperm throughout adulthood. Research on gonocytes will provide valuable insight into their role in preserving male fertility.

Photo by Iakov Afanassiev

Researchers in geophysical fluid dynamics at Memorial University of Newfoundland are modelling convective storms observed by spacecraft near Jupiter and Saturn. A cylindrical tank containing water is placed on a rotating table to simulate a planet’s rotation while the curved surface of the rotating water models the spherical form of a planet near its north pole. Storms are generated by heating the bottom of the tank and observed from above with a system that uses the water surface as a mirror of a Newtonian telescope to amplify small perturbations caused by the flow. Different colours show the “topographic map” of the surface, where elevations are just a fraction of millimetre. These experiments allow researchers to understand the dynamics of the storms on large planets.

Photo by Louis Sasseville, Myriam Baril, Jean-Yves Lecompte, Michaela Skulinova and Bernard Racette

Powerful flashes of white light can be used to eliminate microorganisms that cause berries to rot. Since light absorbed by berries leads to a small increase in temperature, an easy way to monitor the dose of light is by using an infrared camera. This method allows a quick visual check for even exposure by detecting slight temperature variations among the berries. In this picture, berries were treated with different doses of light on purpose, to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept.

Photo by Barbara de Moura Neves

This photograph shows a cross-section of the internal skeleton of the deep-water sea pen Umbellula encrinus, a type of cold-water coral. Growth rings can be seen in its skeleton, like those seen in clams, other corals, and trees. Ring formation in these animals is not yet well understood, but it seems likely that the rings are formed annually.

Photo by Prasamsa Thapa

Renowned for their scenic magnificence, the Canadian Rocky Mountains are also a classic example of glacial geological processes. Resulting erosional forces continue to change mountain landscapes over thousands of years, mainly through rockfall. Fallen rock debris, pictured here, accumulates at the mountain base in the form of talus slope. These slopes enable researchers to study rockfall and the role of frost in rock cracking. This image was used in part to calculate the talus volumes and rockfall erosion rates for the last 12,500 years. This research revealed that cracks in the Earth’s crust and glacial erosion are the major determinants of rockfall activity and talus formation in the Canadian Rockies.

Photo by Dylan Baloun, Christopher G. Guglielmo, Brock Fenton, Sherri Fenton, Liam P. McGuire and Stuart McKenzie

Motus, a new wildlife tracking network, uses flashes to observe previously invisible migrations of bats. Researchers study bats by combining nano-tags with more than 40,000 square kilometres of antennae coverage, to reveal the migratory behaviour of eastern red bats. The network records signals from tagged bats as they move past antennae in their migration. This research team has documented specific details of over 100 bats from three species, including flight speeds, route maps and responses to geographical barriers. Motus has also revealed new details of bird migration, and may reveal details of other migrants such as monarch butterflies.

Photo by Melanie St-Arnault

This rainbow of minerals was observed on the surface of waste rock from a mine. When metals are mined, leftover rocks remain in piles that are exposed to erosion by water. Erosion leads to elements leaching out of the rocks, resulting in changes in water composition that could be harmful to the environment. Behind this picture’s colourful beauty resides useful information about the composition of water after it has circulated in the waste rock pile. We know that elements such as copper or iron have been removed from the water and are now trapped in minerals because newly formed orange oxide, green carbonate and white sulfate minerals are visible. Through these observations, we can better understand the mechanisms responsible for the release and entrapment of metals from waste rocks to water, thereby improving the long-term prediction and management of mine water quality.

Photo by Adam Fortais, Rafael Schulman, Kathleen Charlesworth and Kari Dalnoki-Veress

Micron-scale manufacturing is difficult, but sometimes Nature will do it for us. This image shows the end product of a spontaneous process driven by the same principles that let plants pull water from root to leaf. A straight polymer fibre 20x thinner than a human hair is laid across a bubble at the surface of a liquid bath, causing the fiber to be pulled onto the bubble. The only way to accommodate more fiber on the surface of the bubble is for the fiber to bend, and the most effective way to cover the bubble surface is with coils. Bending the fiber requires energy, so only sufficiently thin and flexible fibers will wind around a given bubble. The researchers behind this photo study the balance of bending energy and interfacial energy that allows for certain fibers to wind.

Photo by Tina Gruosso, Dongmei Zuo et Morag Park

The immune system’s killer lymphocytes (shown in red and green) circle around masses of cancer cells (in pink) but don’t attack them. Why? Because the breast cancer cells have “disguised themselves” as normal cells, so the lymphocytes don’t recognize them and therefore don’t destroy them. We don’t yet know what mechanism the cancer uses to camouflage itself.

Photo by Aude Zimmermann

These macrophages are “big eaters”! That’s a good thing because they protect us by gorging on germs and dead cells. But if they “eat” too much, they have problems eliminating some of the ingested molecules, such as cholesterol. Droplets of fat (shown in yellow) then form all around the nucleus.

Photo by Sacha Cavelier

Laboratory-produced calcium sulphate is made of tiny crystals that form a very compact mass. This material, which is biocompatible, biodegradable and osteoactive, has properties that are so close to those of natural bone that it could replace it in bone grafts with little risk of rejection.

Photo by David Gaspard

A seabird, the long-tailed jaeger, swoops down on an Arctic fox to protect its nest. Fearsome scavengers, these foxes are the subject of scientific study. Researchers are trapping them, collecting samples and fitting them with Argos GPS collars to track their movements by satellite. This will help them evaluate the impact of climate change on the fox population, among other things.

Photo by Émile Brisson-Curadeau

Nesting on the Digges Islands, in Nunavut, this Thick-billed Murre proudly returns home with a large shrimp. Another day it could be codfish or squid, depending on what’s available. The Murre’s diet is a good indicator of the composition of marine populations in the Arctic.

Photo by Sylvain Chateau, Sébastien Poncet, Julien Favier and Umberto D’Ortona

Minute hair-like structures line the walls of our internal organs. These cilia beat in a wave motion, called ciliary propulsion, to circulate fluids. The cilia in the respiratory tract help push out inhaled dirt that has been trapped by mucus. Here, researchers simulate this action: microfilaments are immersed in a “lubricant” (shown in blue), which helps the mucus (in red) to slide easily.

Photo by Bertrand de Dorlodot

During the observation of neurons in a salt-rich culture medium, this delicate and intricate structure formed on the slide of a digital holographic microscope. This instrument lets researchers see “the invisible,” such as a salt crystal or neuron, making it possible to study neurons, without damaging them, to better understand various mental disorders.

Photo by Alix Denoncourt, Steve Charette and Richard Janvier

The diet of the protozoan Tetrahymena includes potentially deadly bacterial parasites, such as Mycobacterium. Before eliminating them, it wraps the bacteria in tiny fecal balls (shown in yellow). Now well camouflaged, the bacteria await the next feeder. By studying this strategy, researchers will better understand the transmission of diseases, such as tuberculosis.

Photo by Guillaume Grosbois

Copepods survive under the ice of frozen lakes by accumulating large reserves of lipids. The droplets of accumulated fat (shown in orange) are rich in well-known Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. The availability of these fatty acids in the food chain is dependent on the constant winter activity of the tiny crustaceans that feed on them. Shorter winters could mark the end of this source of nutrients.

Photo by Mathieu Lapointe

Small amounts of crushed recycled glass, to which a polymer “glue” has been added, can be used instead of sand to draw wastewater contaminants to the bottom of tailings ponds. This process has found an unexpected ally in toilet paper fibres, whose cellulose filaments help form even more efficient aggregates.

Photo by Loïs Miraucourt

This image shows a slice of a tadpole’s retina, the nerve structure hidden at the back of the eye. A retinal ganglion cell appears in green: its tiny branches enable it to take part in a cell mechanism that amplifies night vision. The discovery of this function marks a scientific first.

Photo by Yevgen Nazarenko

If you look at one facet of a snowflake on the scale of a nanometre, you’ll discover that, far from being uniform, its surface is home to mysterious structures. Some of these probably indicate the presence of airborne contaminants that were absorbed by the snowflake. This unique nanoscopic view of a snow crystal reveals an unexpected facet of its anatomy…

Photo by Fanny Noisette

In its search to conquer the water column, this American lobster larva faces a new danger: ocean acidification. While laboratory tests have shown that the larva is not highly susceptible to the danger at this stage of life, there has been a noted reduction in the survival rate of young lobsters. The challenge is to shed light on the mechanisms responsible for these deaths.

Photo by Ehsan Rezabeigi

This spherical structure is three times smaller than a human hair. The image was captured by electrospraying a polymer containing two solvents, one of which evaporates quickly to create multiple cavities. The high porosity of these biodegradable microbeads makes them the vehicle of choice to transport medicines in the human body.

Photo by Anne Weber-Ouellette and Isabelle Plante

This image shows an acinus, the functional unit of the mammary gland. The acinus is formed of two cell lines: milk-producing cells (shown in green) and cells required for milk expression (in red). Cell nuclei appear in blue. This particular three-dimensional acinus is not naturally occurring. It is 100% lab manufactured!

Photo by Francisco Miguel Montoro Girona

These five cores taken from the trunks of black spruce show the trees’ growth rings. The first years of life can be seen at the top of the photo. In the last decade, however, the spruce experienced enormous growth after tree clearing operations, which provided more light and less competition.