The entries to a UCD photography competition open a tantalising window into a world usually only seen by scientists, writes Claire O'Connell.
Every day scientists peer down microscopes and pore over data, analysing patterns of nature. And the results often boast an innate beauty that is seldom witnessed outside the lab.
So to celebrate the start of Science Week, we sampled some entries from a recent competition at University College Dublin, which asked researchers to submit interesting pictures taken in the course of their work.
With offerings such as a cheeky tropical shrimp that valets fish, bridges bending under the weight of cars, and eerily glowing structures within cells, these images give a glimpse into the privileged views that scientists are sometimes granted for their efforts.
FERN SPORES
They may look like sliotars hurtling through space, but this is actually a close-up shot of fern spores showing their hallmark patterns. Fern spores give rise to new plants - trimmings include ridges, hooks and sometimes even wings to help the spores disperse, explains Dr Alfonso Blanco, who collected and characterised ferns in Galicia in Spain as part of his PhD project.
To look closely at the spores, he covered them in a thin film of gold, and used the scanning electron microscope to zoom in on their features. "When you work with the electron microscope you get really nice images. I stop and look around at the shapes, and these ones are particularly nice," he says.
Blanco, a senior technical officer in UCD's Conway Institute, identified fern types and coverage in different regions of Galicia, and he found that "bioindicator" ferns such as Cystopteris, whose spores are pictured here, could provide valuable information on the extent to which their environment had been disturbed.
DO I KNOW YOU?
If these people look vaguely familiar then it's hardly surprising: they consist of blended images of 70 male and 70 female psychology students in UCD to create composites that represent "average" young Irish faces. They form part of a project on caricature effects in face recognition. Pictures by Prof Colin Tredoux, Dr Nuala Brady and Hannah Allen.
EYES ON THE ZEBRAFISH
These two 28-hour-old zebrafish embryos won the competition for final year PhD candidate Maria Cederlund. The dark stripes down their backs show where a gene involved in eye development has been switched on.
Looking at certain genes in zebrafish could help shed light on eye diseases in humans too, and the fish provide an easy model to work with, says Cederlund. "They grow very fast and you can have a lot of fish, so you can do a big screen, and it's easy to knock down genes."
The gene Cederlund stained here is being turned on along the neural tube, which will develop into the brain and spinal cord, she says. "This is a standard technique to look at genes, it's used a lot. But I chose this picture because of its artistic qualities."
BENDING BRIDGES
Ever wondered how they work out weight restrictions for traffic on bridges? It's partly down to the "bending moment" - the road's reaction to a vehicle on it. "The bending moment is like the force that is trying to bend the bridge," explains Daniel Cantero Lauer, who is developing mathematical models of bending moments for concrete bridges as part of his PhD in civil engineering.
"We are trying to study what happens when the car drives over the bridge, and get a better understanding so we can assess it. The aim is to publish recommendations to assess if an already-built bridge could bear the loads that are coming," he explains.
This image uses colour codes to compare two computer-based methods of measuring bending moments under vehicles, and the resulting pattern inspired him to enter the image in the competition.
GLOW-IN-THE-DARK LUNG CELL
This gleaming cell has been stained with fluorescent tags to highlight specific features within it. It's part of a project by molecular biology PhD candidate Mickael Dubourd, who looks at how low oxygen levels can affect lung cells and contribute to disease. "I used different molecules to stain different parts of the cell," explains Dubourd, who took this picture using a specialised microscope, which passes particular light wavelengths through the treated cell and causes the stains to fluoresce. The central nucleus, which houses the genetic material, is blue, while components of the cytoskeleton - an important mesh within the cell - glow in green and red.
DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES
When mass disaster strikes, one of the immediate tasks is to identify the dead. It's a grisly thought, but how do you tell who's who if not much of them is left? That's why trained medical dissector Rene Gapert is working out whether the shape of the skull base can tell you the gender of the deceased.
In the final year of his PhD, Gapert has been developing approaches to measuring the skull base and testing out techniques on anatomy samples from UCD and on centuries-old crypt remains from London. A back-to-basics technique such as measuring bones could narrow down the search before applying expensive tests such as DNA analysis.
"I chose this picture because I wanted to show that even with our modern technology, such as DNA analysis, a lot of our research comes down to a very hands-on approach, looking at the outer appearance of bones rather than only microscopy and chemical analysis," he says.
SLEEPING WITH THE ANEMONE
Some scientists get to work in a lab every day. Others, such as zoologist Cormac Nolan, get to dive in the tropical waters of Belize for months every year. "I was very lucky with that project," says the final-year PhD candidate, who is studying the ecology of damselfish on coral reefs. Damselfish have a perilous early life cycle, in that about 99 per cent of their eggs and larvae are lost in the open ocean. While collecting damsel samples off Turneffe Atoll, Nolan spied this Caribbean spotted cleaner shrimp nestling in an anemone. "He serves as a cleaner for various fish. He sets up a little station in the anemone, and when he waves his white antennae and the fish see his bright dots they come over he cleans them. He will even go into their mouths," he says. So the fish gets a valet in the anemone parking bay, and the shrimp has a tasty meal of parasites.
Science Week Ireland runs until November 18th and will be marked by events around the country. See www.scienceweek.ie for details.