Photo by Gina Lonati

As part of my PhD research at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, I am flying a quadcopter drone to study the health of large whales in Atlantic Canada. Our drone has a visible-spectrum camera that provides a unique, up-close, and non-invasive opportunity to assess a whale’s body condition and look for injuries or entanglements. We also have a thermal camera on the drone to collect thermal images to estimate the whale’s body temperature (like a contactless thermometer!) I photographed this mature male humpback whale in the Bay of Fundy in September 2020. The drone was ~12 m high, so we could obtain close-up imagery of the whale’s blowholes when it came to the surface for a breath. Whales often exhale a plume of vapor and mucus (called a “blow”), making them easy to spot from land or boat. This blow happened to reflect the sunlight in such a manner that it produced a rainbow!

Photo by Nirosha Murugan

Pictured here in this yellow spiral is a slimy, single cell called Physarum polycephalum or “slime mold.” This cell has no brain or neural architecture but is incredibly intelligent, capable of solving mazes, recreating human-designed railway networks, learn, and store memories. We seek to explain how this simple slime mold uses its body as both a distributed sensor and biological computer to make long-range decisions. The view that even the simplest of life forms can perform biological computations that are deliberate or even goal-directed and display a minimal form of cognition not unlike our own is an emerging curiosity of science that is challenging assumptions that only brains can think and feel. Understanding the computational language of the Physarum and other simple organisms will inform the design of bioinspired artificial intelligences and uncover the origins of thought itself.

Photo by Azin Sadat

Celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity combined are estimated to affect about 6% of the Canadian population. As the demand for gluten-free food products increases, the need for a gluten alternative in the bakery sector is becoming more and more pressing. This image shows zein protein fibrils (red) covering starch granules (blue) in a dough-like structure on a microscopic scale. The formation of a zein fibrillar network is instrumental for its potential as a high-quality gluten alternative for the bakery sector. This picture gives a clear visualization of the fibrillar structure of zein swirling around the starch granules providing dough consistency and extensibility. Are these unique proteins the long-awaited solution to the development of high-quality gluten-free bakery products?

Photo by Paola Marino

What appear to be smooth hexagonal rods in this image are metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)—a captivating class of highly structured porous materials, comprised of inorganic and organic building blocks. Captured in three-dimension is NU-1000, a type of MOF that is comprised of zirconium, carbon, and oxygen. The material was successfully synthesized using a green solvent derived from biorenewable sources, and thus implementing principles from the field of green chemistry. This paves the way for the sustainable synthesis and use of MOFs in potential applications including, but not limited to, wastewater remediation, chemical separations, and gas capture and storage. When synthesized, NU-1000 appears as a bright yellow microcrystalline powder, which is brought out in this image with the yellow highlights surrounding the MOF material.

Photo by Bastien Lecigne

As a result of climate change, freezing rain events could well become more frequent and more extreme in Québec. Being able to predict which trees, in urban areas, would be most likely to suffer broken branches from the weight of the ice could be helpful. This can be done using a laser scanner to generate 3-D images of trees that reveal their detailed structure. On this Montréal silver maple, seen face on and from above, the potential for ice build-up is represented by a colour gradient from white (low) to blue (high).

Photo by Léa Museau

This fake sun is a biofilm—a bacterial community “welded together” by a matrix of sugars and proteins. The combination of two species—Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus—produces this extremely water-resistant structure. S. aureus is responsible for the yellow colour, as well as for various chronic infections in humans. These infections are sometimes hard to treat because S. aureus is resistant to many antibiotics. So, how can this resistance be overcome? Researchers are focusing on making genetic modifications to B. subtilis in the hopes of rendering it capable of neutralizing its partner.

Photo by Fatma Dhifallah

The plankton found along our coasts include some toxic species of the genus Alexandrium. The specimen shown here has been “colourized” in scarlet as a reminder of the dangerous red tides it can cause (in green, a bacterium). In 2008, these microscopic killers invaded the St. Lawrence estuary, spreading over an area of 600 km². Their paralyzing toxin decimated huge numbers of fish, seabirds, seals and belugas, and forced the closing of shellfish beds. To prevent such a toxic bloom from affecting Canada’s Arctic, where the local population is dependent on fishing, harmful plankton is monitored.

Photo by Guillaume Légaré-Couture

LiDAR technology is a remote sensing method that involves measuring distances with a high degree of precision by illuminating a target using a laser beam and capturing its reflection. Mounted on an aircraft, this technology can be used to digitally reconstruct the Earth’s relief and thereby discover elements hidden under the forest canopy. Applications of the technology range from mapping flood-prone areas to detecting archaeological remains. The picture shown here reveals the meanderings of the Ouelle River, near Saint-Pacôme, as well as various geomorphological features such as rock outcrops (dark masses) and sandy beaches formed by ancient seas.

Photo by Thierry Boislard

Very few people have seen a katydid of this colour! In fact, very few people can recognize a katydid, even a green one. Katydids, like Amblycorypha oblongifolia, which is found in Québec, are more active at night, unlike grasshoppers. This oblong-winged katydid owes its unusual colouring to a rare genetic mutation called “erythrism.” Since the mutant gene should be dominant, pink specimens should outnumber others in the wild. In an effort to understand why most are still green, the Insectarium is attempting to start up the world’s first pink katydid farm!

Photo by Javiera Parada

Globular clusters are immense spherical agglomerations of stars. The image shows NGC 362, one of the about 170 globular clusters that exist in our Galaxy. Each bright dot in the image is a star. From its color and brightness we can derive stellar properties such as temperature, mass and age, which tells us about the structure, chemical composition and dynamical history of the Milky Way. The position of the star in the cluster is also relevant: Everyday experiences tell us that more massive objects tend to sink while lighter objects tend to float; the same behavior is expected from the stars in a globular cluster. This image helps us to better understand the evolution of the stars in NGC 362 and how massive stars end up near the center of some globular clusters.

Photo by Seth Holland

This is an image of peripherally injured neurons in the spinal cord. We engineered a model organism that allows us to specifically edit the genome of injured neurons to help us understand what genes could be detrimental to successful regeneration and which ones could be harnessed to promote a more complete regeneration. This knowledge would be useful to those trying to enhance recovery following peripheral nerve damage, and to those studying spinal cord or brain injury. In this particular image we turned on a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein to show that our model works the way we would expect it to. The negative space represents where the injury took place which was outside of spinal cord, demonstrating the connectivity of the nervous system.

Photo by Joanna Yeung

Unlike pictures in textbooks, proteins are not colored in real life. To identify the location of important proteins involved in the development, scientists employed a coloring method named “X-gal staining.” We genetically modify the mouse genome such that the protein of interest will carry a “tag” (officially called “reporter protein,” and more scientifically “β-GAL”). When this tag comes into contact with a special chemical (X-gal), the tag turns blue. In this image, we depict the location of an important protein (WNTLESS) in mouse embryos. This protein manages the availability of a group of essential molecules (Wnt molecules) during development. We labelled WNTLESS with this method and found blue staining concentrated in the mouse developing brain. This leads us to recognize the crucial role of this protein and the molecules it manages in brain development.

Photo by Mohamed Elmankabady

Carnivorous plants are found in bogs and low nutrient areas across Canada where they supplement meager soil nutrients by capturing and digesting animal prey. In our work, we use tools like stable isotopes, DNA barcodes and scanning electron microscopy to help understand who is eating whom within Algonquin Park’s carnivorous plants and insects. One such microscopic drama is captured in our close-up of a fly caught in the sticky tentacle-like leaves of a sundew (Drosera rotundifolia). The insect likely died quite quickly and would have been digested over a period of days. The bogs of Algonquin Park are filled with carnivorous plants and biting flies; so, our image captures the final moments of a common ecological drama in uncommonly intimate detail.

Photo by Briana Renda

My research focuses on the immediate and long-lasting effects of adolescent stress, pain, and drug exposure. A lot of preclinical research using rodent models has neglected females and sex differences. The estrous cycle, similar to the menstrual cycle in humans, is about 4 days long and can be tracked by obtaining a sample of vaginal cells and identifying the cell type under a microscope. Different cell types are present during different stages of the estrous cycle, and thus cell identification can provide estrous stage. Physiological and behavioural outcomes assessed in our research are known to vary across the estrous cycle, thus it is important to assess estrous phase at critical points to account for any impact particular stages may have on our dependent measures.

Photo by Logan Francis
Nienke van der Marel

On a clear dark night, the plane of our Galaxy can be seen arching overhead, filled with bright stars and dark clouds of dust. These dark clouds are nebulae, which provide the material for new stars to form by gravitational collapse. Such a collapse produces a young star surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and dust in which new planets are forming. This gallery shows 37 images of dust disks around nearby young stars observed by the ALMA radio telescope. ALMA can observe wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye where the star and planets are undetectable, but small dust grains the size of coffee grounds glow brightly. The unseen young planets can sculpt the disk into a beautiful structure of rings and arcs as they carve gaps along their orbits. By studying these structures, astronomers learn how and when planets form and gain insight into the origins of our own solar system.

Photo by Boris Bernhardt

The human brain is one of the most complex biological networks we know. Our brain contains trillions of connections between different neurons. With powerful brain imaging techniques, notably diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, neuroscientists are now beginning to chart these connections in the living human brain. This technique traces water diffusion in the brain, which preferentially runs along the course of myelinated, fatty fiber tracts. By obtaining an increasingly detailed map of brain wiring, researchers are increasingly unlocking how thoughts and feelings are generated, how the brain grows and ages, and how common brain disorders can be identified and potentially prevented.

Photo by Maheshi Dharmasiri
Colleen Barber

European Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, sing long, complex songs and unlike most passerines, learn songs throughout their life. This photograph shows a male starling's iridescent hackle (throat) feather under a dissecting microscope. Hackles get longer and gain more iridescence over time, and so are used to assign adult Starlings into age groups (second year vs. after second year or first-time vs. experienced breeders). The focus of our research is to investigate whether song complexity and bout duration correlate with male age, and reproductive success in a population of European Starlings in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Research has shown that song complexity plays a role in female attraction. We predict that females listen closely to select a mate having greater song complexity which coincides with longer and more iridescent hackles, resulting in high reproductive success.

Photo by Mahsa Taherzadeh
Alexey V. Pshezhetsky

The image shows hippocampal neurons, which are essential for learning and memory. These neurons are isolated from a transgenic mouse model of a pediatric neurodegenerative disease which causes cell death, leading to memory loss and dementia. Neurons were grown 21 days on cover slip in vitro and stained with two neuronal markers. The red one, Synapsin1, is a neuron-specific structural protein which is used as a marker for analyzing neuronal phenotype. The green marker, MAP2, is used for visualizing synaptic vesicles whose number decreases in the disorder. Moreover, the nuclei of the neurons, where DNA is stored, are stained with DAPI and they appear in blue. We are developing a series of treatments whose efficacy is evaluated by the variations of these markers. To capture this image confocal laser scanning microscopy with a magnification factor of 20X is used.

Photo by Vasilis Kokkoris
Nicolas Corradi
Franck Stefani

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) belong to an ancient group of soil fungi that form symbiotic associations with the roots of most terrestrial vascular plants. AMF are commonly used as soil additives, aiming to enhance plant growth. Their genetics have long been mysterious. While typical cells carry one nucleus, the cells of AMF carry thousands of nuclei that can be genetically diverse. The co-existence of thousands of nuclei of diverse genotypes in single cells is unique to these fungi, and the mechanisms driving the nucleus populations and genetic diversity are still unknown. By visualizing the nuclei in the AMF cells (spores and hyphae as seen in our image), we aim to understand how these nuclei cooperate with one another as a means to improve the application of these fungi in agriculture.

Photo by Paula Piilonen
Glenn Poirier

Mother Nature is an artist and minerals are among the most beautiful natural art that we find on Earth. From large gemstones to small intricate nanominerals, minerals fascinate us at all levels. Understanding the textural relationships and the chemistry of minerals at the micron scale allows us to understand large-scale geological processes and how the Earth was formed. This quadriptych depicts an amygdule (mineralized vesicle) filled with zeolite minerals growing in an alkaline basalt from the far northeastern province of Ratanakiri in Cambodia (FOV 1.95 mm). Our mineralogical research in Ratanakiri and Takeo provinces is helping to increase knowledge of a country which has largely been ignored by the geological and mineralogical community. To date, it has added to the general understanding of the geology of the Ratanakiri province and uncovered new mineral localities.

Photo by Martin Badley

This image shows the natural grain structure of uranium dioxide, the primary fuel source for Canadian nuclear reactors. As Canada strives to achieve a clean energy future, nuclear power presents a safe and reliable method of low carbon power generation. The spent fuel, irradiated uranium dioxide, must be contained and isolated from the surrounding environment. Using materials degradation research, we can further our understanding of how the spent fuel material behaves under Canada’s proposed geological disposal conditions. With data from electrochemical experiments, we can help develop computer models of the reactions that occur if uranium dioxide is exposed to saline deep groundwaters. By understanding the degradation process of the uranium dioxide waste form, we can help ensure the safety of people and the environment for generations to come.

Photo by Adham Elshaer

Gallium nitride is a semiconductor material used to make high electron mobility transistors, which are instrumental for the development of next generation electric vehicles. Behind this impressive transistor technology lays the quasi-perfect GaN crystal that allows it to deliver such high performance. The nanometric hole that mysteriously formed on the surface shows a special perspective of the crystal, with its precisely oriented shape that resembles a hexagonal labyrinth.

Photo by Sheri McDowell

The tumor microenvironment consists of many different non-cancerous cell types, such as immune cells (shown in magenta) and connective cell types (shown in yellow). This image was made using Imaging Mass Cytometry and it provides researchers with a visual representation of how cancer cells (shown in green) interact with their microenvironment. Characterizing the microenvironment of a tumour helps us to find possible targets to treat cancer.

Photo by Keerthana Harwalkar
YuQi Li
Matthew Lok-Man Chang

The tree of life (blood vessels in magenta and lymphatic vessels in green) branches out and reaches into the dark underground (uncleared intestinal surface in red) to “heal” it, as macrophages (in green) rain down to give a helping hand. This image shows us the distribution of tissue resident cells that populate the mouse peritoneum. Ovarian cancer cells are known to land and grow on the peritoneum; in our research, we developed this technique to visualize the interaction of tissue resident cells with cancer cells in the hopes that we can understand the process of metastasis of ovarian cancer cells.

Photo by Daryan Chitsaz

Modern microscopes let us take high resolution videos of living cells to study how they grow, but many hours of imaging takes its toll. Shown here is a cultured oligodendrocyte, a specialized brain cell that can extend hundreds of branches to support nearby neurons, which has undergone a long day of experiments. The bubbles erupting out of its body are signs of a process called apoptosis, in which a dying cell dissolves into “blebs.” We stain these cells’ membranes with fluorescent dyes to light up all their fine branches (shown in green and red). By collecting light that bounces off these tiny membranes (in blue), we can get additional information about their size and how far apart they are. This phenomena is known as thin-film interference, and is also what causes wave-like striations in soap bubbles—similar patterns can be seen in the apoptosis blebs!

Photo by Margot Angibaud

Sharks, rays and chimera are fish whose skeletons are made not of bone, but of cartilage. Now, 3-D CT scan images can be taken of these cartilaginous structures, despite their low contrast with soft tissue. That can be seen in this picture of an Australian blackspotted catshark (Aulohalaelurus labiosus), a small shark that prowls the waters off the west coast of Australia. The skull, pectoral fins and start of the backbone stand out clearly. Through colour assignment, the different structures of this shark’s skeleton are revealed and literally laid bare.

Photo by Éric Tamigneaux
Isabelle Gendron-Lemieux
Lisandre Gilmore-Solomon

This image shows a close-up of a blade or frond of red algae belonging to the genus Porphyra. When this edible seaweed is examined under the microscope, reproductive cells (green and brown) can be seen. Some Québec aquaculture farms are exploring the idea of cultivating local species of Porphyra with a view to producing Atlantic “nori” that could be used for sushi. Tests conducted in Les îles-de-la-Madelaine have also demonstrated its capacity to purify the water of lobster pounds. This algae uses the nitrogen excreted by marine animals to boost its own growth!

Photo by Stéphane Le Tirant
René Limoges

The order Coleoptera consists of some 500,000 species in 500 families. Beetles are one of them (with 25,000 species), which is further divided into 20 subfamilies, including the rhinoceros beetle subfamily (with 1,600 species). There is only one genus whose two known species, thought to originate in Queensland, Australia, have intriguing spines on their elytons, or wing cases. The first, Nephrodopus enigma (in the photo), was described in 1873, and the other, Nephrodopus goldingi, in 2019. Nothing is yet known about the egg, larva or life of the species in the picture. One of the few rhinoceros beetle specialists in the world works at the Insectarium de Montréal, the source of this precious specimen.

Photo by Manon Favre
Julie Genoyer

This mosaic of crystalline petals doesn’t have to fear the return of spring: even the hottest deserts won’t affect it. Set between two microscope slides, it was obtained by heating polypropylene powder to a temperature of around 170°C. The polymer, once liquefied, was then cooled. It was during the solidification phase that the polymer crystallized into almost circular fan-like structures called spherulites. Given that the mechanical properties of polypropylene depend on its microscopic characteristics, detailed observation of them provides clues that help describe its behaviour.

Photo by Élie Dumas-Lefebvre

September 11, 2020, just off Rimouski: Hundreds of litres of rhodamine escape from the Coriolis II. But in this case it wasn’t an environmental disaster. It was an experiment to improve ocean drift models. A drone and boats equipped with fluorescence sensors were used to monitor the dispersal of the harmless dye. At the same time, dozens of drifting buoys were released into the water to see whether they would drift along the same trajectory as the dye. The findings of this research project could facilitate search and rescue operations, as well as the containment and recovery of oil and other contaminant spills.

Photo by Priya Gatti

This cancer cell shed by a tumour has just settled in a new location. It is now ready to form a metastasis. The cancer is going to progress. For that to occur, the cell must develop protrusions, which are kinds of tentacles on its outer surface that it needs in order to move. But there’s no need to panic, as this is taking place in the lab, not in real life! The purpose of this type of experiment is to gain a better understanding of the role of mitochondria (in green in the image) in this process. These tiny power plants within each cell restructure themselves when cancer cells migrate and form metastases.

Photo by Léa Fieschi-Méric

After a few twists and summersaults, this alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris) managed to extricate itself from its moult. Its new skin will allow it to hydrate and breathe—unless it has been contaminated by a pathogenic fungus! A fungal infection is currently decimating amphibian populations in Europe. The cause is a fungus of the chytrid group, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans. It is anticipated that it will soon make its way to North America. Fortunately, protective bacteria that guard against the fungus have been discovered on the skin of some newts. The survival of Canada’s amphibians could depend on our learning more about their skin microbiome.

Photo by Baptiste Charrier

During embryonic development, cells from the neural crest (in green) migrate along nerves (in red) coming from the neural tube (future spinal cord). All these paths allow transitory stem cells to spread into the various regions of the embryo and to differentiate into a wide variety of cell types. Some are involved in the development of the peripheral nervous system, which transmits information between the sensory organs and the brain. Others are involved in the formation of the heart, kidneys, intestines or other organs. The miracle of gestation involves a vast array of cell functions and destinations.

Photo by Paul Fourmont

Although this image looks like a salt desert seen from overhead, it is actually a picture of a microscope slide! The tiny islands are created when a nitrate salt solution is “crystallized.” That produces bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃). This compound could be used to manufacture transistors for computers in order to increase their processing power and reduce their energy consumption. This is a revolutionary material—one of the rare ones to offer both polarization and magnetic properties at ambient temperature. The formidable challenge of harnessing the chemistry has yet to be overcome.

Photo by Jérémy Baudry

Did a careless glazier veer off the road and dump his load of glass in the baie des Chaleurs? The transparent plates in this photo, which are tens, if not hundreds of metres long, aren’t actually glass, but sheets of sea ice. Called “nilas,” and a few centimetres thick, the sheets form when the sea is calm and remain amazingly flexible. Nilas of this kind result from the continuous agglomeration of frazil, which are small needle-like ice crystals and ice sheets suspended in water. Monitoring the development of sea ice helps predict ice conditions in the short term and will be useful in assessing the fate of the Arctic Ocean.

Photo by Mathieu Lapointe

In wastewater, contaminants (in brown) form tiny aggregates (on the left) that treatment plants have trouble intercepting. To capture them and facilitate settling, cellulose fibres (centre) from recycled paper are added to the sedimentation basins. Now researchers have developed a new process that spurs the cellulose fibres to form ultraporous, superadsorbent microspheres (on the right). These contaminant sponges, which can be reused a dozen times or so, are so effective that they are helping to reduce the environmental footprint and operating costs of treatment plants.

Photo by Julien Saguez

This fly appears to be sitting calmly on a twig or branch, but the white spores on its abdomen are a sign that it is infected with a fungus. After entering an insect’s body, Entomophthora muscae develops in the bodily fluids of its host. It then takes control of the zombified fly’s brain and forces it to spread its wings. This posture boosts dissemination of the spores in the wind. In agriculture, these fungi can serve as biological control agents against insect pests like soybean aphids.

Photo by Dany Dumont
Peter Sutherland

Experts are using every type of technology imaginable to study the interactions between waves and sea ice. Their arsenal includes drones, GPS-equipped electronic buoys (in yellow) and a camera on a mountain top providing continuous recordings of sea ice movements. Then there’s also the good old ice canoe, which is perfectly suited to measuring ice thickness and wave amplitude. The collected data improve ice cover forecasting models and facilitate navigation in polar regions.

Photo by Céline Larivière-Loiselle

This image created by combining holography with microscopy shows the neurons of a rat in 3-D. Holograms are usually produced by laser beams emitting a single wavelength, that is, a single colour. However, this process generates speckles (right side of image). To clean up the picture, a whole new approach involving lasers of different colours is used. Then the network of ramifications between neurons (on the left) can be seen with far greater clarity. With this imaging technology, the neural networks of people struggling with serious mental health issues can be examined for warning signs of disease.

Photo by Facundo Sosa-Rey

The picture shows a cubic millimetre section of a composite material. The diameter of the carbon fibres piled up in three separate layers measures about 10 microns: just one fifth the thickness of a human hair. The image, first obtained by X-ray, was then processed digitally to isolate each of the fibres normally imprisoned in the resin. The image processing reveals the spatial distribution with high precision. The purpose was to develop a model for predicting the mechanical behaviour of the material at the macroscopic level even before it is manufactured. It’s all quite elementary!