A picture is worth a thousand words. Check out the winners and runners-up of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. According to Breanna Draxler of Discover magazine, “the visualization challenge is designed to encourage a better public understanding of scientific research and is sponsored by the journal Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Criteria for entries include visual impact, effective communication, freshness and originality.”
My favorite image is the “Polar Mapping of Structures in the Universe.” What’s yours?
Nice! My fave is “Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain”. But then again I am quite partial to charts, graphs and infographics. This reminded me of Wired’s year-end list of the best scientific figures of 2012 from back in December. Brandon Keim selected the best of the best, saying “while looking through hundreds of articles in the course of 2012, certain figures transcended the technical and rose to the level of communication art.”