Photo by Dana Harris

Pictured are developing phloem, cambial, and xylem cells (blue), and mature xylem cells (red), in the outermost portion of a jack pine tree. This research aims to identify the influences of climate on the cellular development of the species at its northern limit in Yellowknife, NT. The differences in these cell formations is what creates the annual tree ring boundary.

Jury Prize

People’s Choice Award

Photo by Carole Balthazar

Among fungi that attack plants, some are causing important damages to cannabis plants. Fourteen of those pathogenic fungi are grown here on artificial media. Each develops a different color as the fluffy mycelium grows radially, until it reaches the edges of the Petri dish.

Jury Prize

Photo by Naresh Gaj

The image shows the simulation of groundwater flowing towards circular openings in a plastic drainage pipe buried in the soil used as part of the underground drainage system on farmlands. Its function is two-fold: reducing environmental pollutants to waterways by reducing surface runoff, and increasing crop and water productivity by controlling the groundwater level for optimum growth.

Jury Prize

Photo by Anders Thorin

When two small water jets meet, they intertwine in a curious pattern to minimize surface energy. This “dance” appears simple but is actually complex to describe. The study of this phenomenon allows for a better understanding of the fundamentals of the mechanical behaviour of water.

Jury Prize

Photo by Fatma Dhifallah

One of the many microorganisms inhabiting ports in the Canadian arctic is Dinophysis acuminata, an especially toxic member of the dinoflagellate group. The toxin it produces accumulates in molluscs and fish, contaminating the entire food chain, right up to humans. In collaboration with local populations, scientists take samples regularly to monitor for the presence of these micro-invaders with macro-impacts.

Jury Prize

Photo by Tanja Pelzmann

Light and sturdy, composite materials are widely used in the aerospace industry. While the carbon fibres are fire-resistant, the synthetic resins are flammable, as the image suggests. A small-scale test bed can be used to understand the complex process of combustion and its impact on the mechanical properties of materials.

Jury Prize

Photo by Ahmed Chakroun

These unlikely structures, about 350 microns tall and only a few microns wide, were created when plasma etching of a silicon wafer—a standard procedure in the manufacture of microprocessors—went awry. This microscopic accident did not lead to a scientific discovery but rather to an artistic revelation reminiscent of Purple Foxglove.

People’s Choice Award

Photo by Sarah Fraser and Rodrigo Valencia Rendon

Ready to join the hunt, 15-year-old Billy hugs his Ajaq (aunt), Caroline Weetaltuk, who taught him everything he knows about this tradition. They were both involved in setting up a model “family” home where intergenerational relationships and knowledge-sharing are front and centre. In this applied research project, photography served to document the population’s activities and knowledge.

Special Jury Prize – Espace pour la vie

Photo by Pooya Soltanian Sedeh

This image represents a series of synchronized rotating waves inside a fluid which is rotating inside a cylindrical container. This phenomenon is relatively similar to movement of Tsunamis through the oceans. Using image processing techniques, the speed of the waves can be calculated generating data about the behavior of Tsunami waves.

Photo by Timonthy Gibson

Geologists at McGill University are investigating Elwin Inlet in northern Baffin Island, Nunavut for similarities with rocks in Siberia to determine if these landmasses were connected over a billion years ago and when they eventually split apart. Camped high above the sea in order to stay clear of polar bears, the researchers scrambled their way up a steep gulley to study and sample these cliffs.

Photo by Andreas Nikolis

This anatomical dissection of a cadaver demonstrates the depth of the facial artery and surrounding vessels. Direct injection of any substrate into the facial artery can lead to ischemia, necrosis and even blindness. Therefore, novice aesthetic physicians should be familiar with arterial blood supply patterns in order to create safe injection zones for aesthetic filler treatments.

Photo by Anna Cook and Eileen McNicholas

When thinking of calcium you may think of strong bones, but calcium plays an even more important role in your brain. Every time you run, jump or dance, neurons in the cerebellum region of the brain use calcium to co-ordinate your movements. Purkinje cells (seen in pink) use calcium as a messenger molecule to coordinate your actions, and when this process is disrupted it can cause problems with movement.

Photo by Tao Jiang

The image shows the salts on the surface of a bioprinting material comprised of alginate and gelatin. This composite material is a good candidate for bioprinting and tissue fabrication. The salts reside on the surface of the composite, showing cubic shapes. The porous structure seen as the background in the image allows the exchange of gas and nutrients through the material, which is imperative for cell survival.

Photo by Tiffany Yau

While the 1mm minute wings of the lesser dung fly Bromoloecia abundantia may appear translucent, viewing them against a black background reveals a kaleidoscope of colours that make up the Wing Interference Patterns. These hidden colour patterns proved valuable for the description and identification of new and previously unseen species in the genus Bromeloecia.

Photo by Tammy Do

The Guelph Dairy Bush is a 7-hectare wood lot on the University of Guelph campus. For 8 years, biodiversity students have captured a weekly high-resolution 360° panorama within the Dairy Bush. This digitally documented scene helps us to follow transitions in the Dairy Bush and use the knowledge to predict future changes.

Photo by Lincoln Savi

During the change from dry to wet season in Central America these Yellow Toads (Incilius luetkenii) emerge and congregate by the hundreds to breed in ephemeral ponds created by the heavy seasonal rains. Researchers at the University of Windsor are studying why only the males turn bright yellow for mating and which hormones cause the colour change.

Photo by Arash Panahifar

Bone is a living tissue that needs to rejuvenate itself constantly through a process called ‘remodeling’. Younger bones (left) are growing, showing newly formed bone (green/yellow color), whereas bones in middle-aged adults (right) are mature and only regular maintenance takes place.

Photo by Jing Zhang

This perfectly formed cluster of pyrite minerals resembles a tiny raspberry, hence the name ‘framboidal pyrite’. These minerals are preserved in ancient marine sedimentary rocks in the Michigan Basin, from 450 million years ago. By studying framboidal pyrite, we can piece together what the marine life was like in the Paleozoic era, and how it has evolved over time.

Photo by Jackson Chu

Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are regions of the deep ocean where oxygen naturally occur at low levels. The hairy pteropod, Clio recurva, is one of many species that occur in the offshore OMZ of Pacific Canada. Researchers are cataloguing the diversity of life in this region to aid in marine protection by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Photo by Kashif Khan

Researchers at McGill University are developing a novel treatment that utilizes the body’s own heart cells to regenerate tissue damaged during heart attacks. This image shows genetically engineered human heart muscle cells that are able to protect themselves from the maladaptive cellular remodelling that occurs after a heart attack.

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

These structures are single cells cultured in a Petri dish. This image highlights gonocytes (coloured here), which transmit genetic information from one generation to the next. Research on gonocytes will provide valuable insights into their role in male fertility.

Photo by Christina Mastromonaco

Millions of people suffer from cataracts that impede vision. Surgical advances allows for replacement of the natural lens with an artificiallens. However, roughly 20% of the patients post-surgery will develop a secondary cataract, obstructing vision once again. This image shows an artificial lens (centered) on the surface of a human eye. A secondary cataract (in grey) is observable around the lens.

Photo by Justine Hudson

This photo captures a beluga calf, exhaling thousands of tiny droplets of respiratory vapour, which are being collected to measure stress in whale and dolphin populations all over the world. Respiratory vapour allows researchers to study marine mammals in a non-invasive way, so that we can accurately measure stress and determine the cause.

Photo by Ryan McKellar

Western Canada is home to numerous amber deposits in the Late Cretaceous. These deposits provide a unique glimpse of the insects that coexisted with dinosaurs. The insect in the photograph is a serphitid wasp from 78 million-year-old amber in Alberta. This family of parasitic wasps appears to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous.

Photo by Mojtaba Kahrizi

Porous silicon is produced by anodic etching in acidic solutions. The golden flame-like network in this image represents silicon nanowires all around the pores. These structures can be employed in gas storage applications.

Photo by Anthony Moulins

It all begins with pressure applied to the surface of a silicon wafer. A fracture line begins at a surface defect, seen at the top of the image, and propagates through the entire thickness of the wafer. In an instant, spectacular geometrical surfaces are created. The goal here is to understand normally unpredictable rupture phenomena in an element that abounds in the earth’s crust and is found in many devices we use every day.

Photo by Cassy Berguet

This imposing tree trunk is only an illusion. Tilt your head to the left and you’ll discover a forest landscape reflected on the surface of a lake. In the foreground, a black spruce seedling has come unrooted and will soon be immersed. When it sinks to the bottom of the lake, the seedling will become buried in sediment, and one day its growth rings will tell a story.

Photo by Cornelia Krause

Slide a thin layer of wood under the microscope and examine its cells to determine whether it is a birch or pine. The image here is composed of six thin slices taken from the three growth planes of a deciduous (top) and a coniferous (bottom) species. Cell identification of tiny samples of wood buried in bogs can be used to recreate the ancient history of a region’s vegetation.

Photo by Cynthia Gagné-Thivierge and Steve Charette

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a specialist in the construction of biofilms, structures used cooperatively by bacteria when colonizing aqueous media. Some strains, such as the one shown in the top image, build a strong biofilm that is resistant to erosion, unlike the ones built by the other strains. Understanding the differences will help combat these undesirable bacteria.

Photo by Gwyneth Anne MacMillan

After spending most of its life as a larva on the bottom of an Arctic lake, this adult chironomid has just emerged. Hanging onto an icicle, it prepares for its maiden voyage in search of a mate. The larvae of this insect form part of the diet of fish, while scientists study it as a valuable indicator of pollution and climate change.

Photo by Julien Saguez

Here is a chrysalis of Vanessa cardui, also known as the painted lady or cosmopolitan. This migrating butterfly has the largest global distribution of any butterfly species and is the bane of farmers worldwide. During the adult stage it is an important pollinator, but as a caterpillar it devours the leaves of soybean plants.

Photo by Laurent Drissen, Université Laval

Nebula IC 443 is the stellar debris left over by the violent explosion of a giant star. This very small section of the nebula points to the presence of hydrogen (orange), oxygen (blue) and sulphur (green). With a definition of 4 million pixels, this image can be used, among other things, to estimate the propagation speed of stardust.

Photo by Manel Ghribi

These strands could easily be mistaken for curls on the head of a Greek statue such as the Apollo Belvedere. They are actually a mass of bacterial cells (bacilli) forming a biofilm. This community of unicellular microorganisms is working together to create a bioplastic structure—a biodegradable one, naturally!

Photo by Sabrina Sénéchal

When she was six, Chichi nearly died from an autoimmune disease that was destroying her red blood cells. Fortunately, research showed that a blood transfusion from another canid could save the life of this arctic fox, who calls the Aquarium du Québec home. The team at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Saint-Hyacinthe performed an hour-long operation on June 27, 2017. During the surgery, Chichi received not one but two transfusions and has been doing well ever since.

Photo by Marie Franquin

Does Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) originate in the spinal cord, as many believe, or in the brain? This image shows a brain slice from a specially bred mouse in the early stages of the disease. The green filaments at the top connect with motor neurons in the cortex that control muscle movement. They display abnormalities, indicating that these neurons may play a role in instigating ALS.

Photo by Mario Antoine Aoun

This stylized drawing, based on a simple mathematical formula, was generated in the form of a fractal, with just a few lines of code. This fractal happens to consist of a pattern resembling a water droplet, repeated from one scale to another. As a result, a basic equation generates a shape in the form of a face. A fine example of image compression!

Photo by Mathieu Dupont

Welcome to the world of bio-computing. The researcher uses computational statistical methods to understand the fundamental dynamics of life. The subject here is the ribosome, a molecular machine that synthesizes proteins using DNA code, and the research has confirmed the presence of the sarcin-ricin loop. The red line points to the loop, which has been targeted by a family of toxins rendering the ribosome dysfunctional.

Photo by Mathias Legrand

The status of any dynamic system at a given point in time can be represented by a point in an abstract mathematical space. The surfaces in this image represent the collection of all undesirable situations to consider in designing a simplified model of a jet engine. Some 100 total dimensions are compressed into this three-dimensional representation!

Photo by Sarah Keil and Gregory Emery

In this image of a Drosophila egg chamber, the blue areas are cell nuclei. Situated to the right, the egg is hidden under a myriad of follicular cells. The blue nuclei to the left are feeder cells, while the green area towards the middle is a small group of cells that has migrated from the left edge of the chamber all the way to the egg. This mechanism is of interest because it is analogous to the propagation of metastases.

Photo by Yosri Ayadi

When it comes to the nanofabrication of integrated circuits, the slightest error can be costly—or create a beautiful mess! Here, a tiny splash of acid solution caused localized lifting of a layer of polymer coated with a thin titanium film. The sample is worthless to anyone but an art dealer!