and the award goes to...

Ever browse through celebrity magazines or watch entertainment award shows and secretly wish the camera would get closer, closer… closer to your favorite celebrities until you could see the ganglia and amoebas on their skin, and judge them for what occurs in that microscopic world on their epidermis? Personally, it’s all I can think about. Imagine the hype and drama on that landscape! Wellcome Trust, a UK independent charity that “funds research to improve human and animal health,” just unveiled their nominees in their annual 2006 Biomedical Image Awards, a competition of microscopic images culled by scientists while researching things like biology, medicine and disease. Many of these subjects are so small that normal lightwaves are too large to capture the images, so they’ve been immortalized using “microscopy” lighting techniques (Transmission electron, Scanning electron, Fluorescence, etc.) Take a look at the gallery of contending microbes and vote for who you think scores highest overall in each category, and click on each one’s image and learn about what they’re really like in real life.

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