Pupa U.P.A. Gilbert / Christopher E. Killian / UW-Madison

"Biomineral Single Crystals" is the first-place winner as well as the People's Choice in the photography category of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. These biomineral crystals are found in a sea urchin's tooth, and captured here using environmental scanning electron microscopy. Each color highlights a single crystal of calcite, making the tooth tough enough to grind rock.

The minerals of a sea urchin's tooth, a heart that beats in virtual reality and a wiring diagram based on a macaque monkey's brain are among the top honorees in the 2013 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.

The annual contest, now in its 10th year, highlights works in visual media that promote understanding of scientific research. This year, 215 entries were received from 18 countries. The winners were selected by a panel of judges, and in addition, People's Choice awards were given out based on 3,155 public votes recorded via the Internet.

"These winners continue to amaze me every year with their remarkable talent and drive to engage the public," Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said Thursday in a news release announcing the top picks. "The visuals are not only novel and captivating, but they also draw you into the complex field of science in a simple and understandable way."

For example, take a look at "Alya Red: A Computational Heart," which won top honors in the video category as well as a People's Choice award. The film combines illustration, three-dimensional renderings and live-action video to describe the basic science of the heart in easy-to-understand language. "Understanding our organs — and the heart in particular — in deep detail is one of the challenges of modern medicine," Fernando Cucchietti of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center said in the news release. "The video presents the approach of our particular project ... which aims at developing large-scale numerical simulators of the heart."

The first-place illustration is "Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain," which diagrams the connections between the major regions of a macaque monkey's brain. Such diagrams are helping researchers at IBM develop a new generation of "neuro-synaptic" computer chips that can be connected to form a brainlike network.

"Biomineral Single Crystals" looks like an abstract painting, but it's actually a photograph showing the structure of a sea urchin's tooth. The picture won first place in the photo category as well as a People's Choice award. "The shapes in this image are naturally formed in the sea urchin tooth," explained Pupa Gilbert of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Color is added in Photoshop to heighten the visual impact of the structure, and to emphasize how interconnected and intertwined the crystal forms are."

In all, the judges highlighted 15 top entries among photos, videos and illustrations, as well as posters and graphics, plus games and apps. Here's the full rundown:

OTHER TOP PHOTOS

Kai-Hung Fung

"Self Defense" won honorable mention in the photography category. The image is a 3-D CT scan of a clam and a whelk, both alive. The clam, at left, is nestled comfortably in the bottom half of its shell. The whelk, meanwhile, is protected by a shell with a sophisticated spiral construction. Both creatures solve the vital problem of self-defense, in different ways. But the whelk has the upper hand: It can drill a hole directly through the clam's shell by softening it with secretions, and then make a meal of the clam. The photography is by Kai-hung Fung of Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Hong Kong.

Charles U. / CTU

"X-Ray Micro-Radiography and Microscopy of Seeds" won honorable mention in the photography category. The array of pictures shows high-resolution, high-contrast X-ray radiography of plant seeds alongside images captured through microscopy. The technique can be used as a powerful tool allowing non-destructive investigation of millimeter-sized objects of any kind. The seeds shown here are roughly 3 millimeters in width, or a little more than a tenth of an inch. The photographic team from Charles University and Czech Technical University includes Viktor Sykora, Jan Zemlicka, Frantisek Krejci and Jan Jakubek.

ILLUSTRATIONS

IBM Research - Almaden

"Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain" is the first-place winner in the illustration category of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Challenge. This visualization shows more than 320,000 connections between 4,173 neuro-synaptic "cores" representing the 77 largest regions in the macaque brain. This sort of "wiring diagram" serves as a guide for the design of neuro-synaptic computer chips being developed by Cognitive Computing researchers at IBM. The illustration is by Emmett McQuinn, Theodore M. Wong, Pallab Datta, Myron D. Flickner, Raghavendra Singh, Steven K. Esser, Rathinakumar Appuswamy, William P. Risk and Dharmendra S. Modha.

Sherbrook Connectivity Imaging Lab

"Cerebral Infiltration" won honorable mention and People's Choice in the illustration category. The image is the result of fiber tractography from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. It illustrates the structural connections contained in the white matter of the brain. The red, smooth surface represents a glioblastoma tumor. Blue fibers indicate that the fibers are located a safe distance away from the tumor, while the red fibers are in a close perimeter to the tumor and can cause severe post-operation deficits if they are cut. The illustration is by Maxime Chamberland, David Fortin and Maxime Descoteaux.

VIDEOS

POSTERS AND GRAPHICS

• First place: "Adaptations of the Owl's Cervical and Cephalic Arteries in Relation to Extreme Neck Rotation" is a large-format poster that was created as part of a master's thesis study on the ability of owls to rotate their necks around 270 degrees. The arterial structure of 12 deceased owl specimens were examined through dissection as well as digital subtraction angiography. The full study team included Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Michael Habib, Tim Phelps, Lydia Gregg and Phillippe Gailloud of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The research resulted in a paper that was published in this week's issue of Science.
• Honorable mention: "Earth Evolution: The Intersection of Geology and Biology" is an educational poster showing how geological and biological processes have shaped Earth's environment during its 4.6 billion-year history. The poster was created by Eriko Clements, Mark Nielsen, Satoshi Amagai, Bill Pietsch, Davey Thomas and Andy Knoll, from The Educational Resources Group, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Astronaut 3 Media Group.
• People's Choice: "The Pharma Transport Town: Understanding the Routes to Sustainable Pharmaceutical Use" is an informational graphic that shows the complex transport routes of pharmaceuticals in the environment, and considers psychological influences upon drug use and disposal. It was created by Will Stahl-Timmins, Clare Redshaw and Matthew White of the European Center for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School.

GAMES AND APPS

• Honorable mention: "Velocity Raptor," created by Andy Hall of TestTubeGames, is a Flash game about special relativity. Set in a world where you move at nearly the speed of light, the game starts off easy, and slowly adds in relativistic effects.
• Honorable mention: "CyGaMEs Selene II: A Lunar Construction GaME" lets players construct Earth's moon to discover and apply concepts in Earth and space science. The game's creators include Debbie Denise Reese, Robert E. Kosko, Charles A. Wood and Cassie Lightfritz of the CyGaMEs Project, Center for Educational Technologies, Wheeling Jesuit University; and Barbara G. Tabachnick of the University of California at Northridge.
• People's Choice: "Untangled," created by Gayatri Mehta of the University of North Texas, has users compete to create the most compact layouts of circuit elements on a grid. The game uses realistic algorithms that players are mapping onto different chip architectures that could be manufactured in silicon. 

More adventures in visualization:

• Visualizing science in 2012
• Visualizing science in 2011
• Visualizing science in 2010
• Visualizing science in 2009
• Nikon 2012 Small World in Motion
• Nikon 2011 Small World in Motion
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2012
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2011
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2010
• The world within a drop of water
• Greatest hits from Nikon Small World
• Olympus Bioscapes' top 10 for 2012
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2011
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2010
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2009

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

None of us living today will ever get beyond our celestial backyard in real life, but there's a fleet of apps out there that can blast you through hyperspace to explore — and understand — the far frontiers of the cosmos on your tablet computer. The latest app is "The Wonders of the Universe," a multimedia spin-off of physicist Brian Cox's coffee-table book and TV documentary series of the same name.

The app, sold by Harper Collins for the iPad 2 and the new iPad, organizes more than 200 interactive articles, two and a half hours of video and hundreds of graphics to do a show-and-tell that ranges from subatomic quarks to the largest scales of the cosmic web.

To navigate through this virtual universe, you use your fingers to swipe, spread and pinch the pictures and icons on the screen.  First you select one of the cosmic scales, then you tap on a topic, and then you can watch a video or read all about what you're interested in. Extrasolar planets? Colliding galaxies? Black holes? The big bang and the big chill? It's all at your fingertips. And thankfully, there's also a tutorial that shows you how to do all that swiping, spreading and pinching.

The video clips from the show are streamed on the fly, so you'll want to make sure you have a fast wireless connection. But at an introductory price of $6.99, all that content is hard to beat, even if it a lot of it lives in the cloud rather than in your tablet.

There's lots more to the iPad universe than "Wonders." Here are four other iPad / iPhone apps I touch upon (literally!) in the video above:

Star Walk: This $4.99 app takes advantage of your tablet's GPS and compass capabilities to provide an augmented-reality view of the night sky. Want to know where to look for Venus and the Pleiades star cluster? You can either hold up your iPad and scan around for the right sight, or do a search for "Venus" and follow the pointers on your screen. If you focus in on a star or planet and tap on the "information" button, you can get quick facts about the object in question. You can also look around for the International Space Station or other satellites passing overhead.

The Night Sky: This 99-cent app doesn't have as many bells and whistles as Star Walk, but it works on the same principle: Hold up your iPad, and the app will tell you what you're looking at — whether it's a constellation or star, planet or satellite. It's also available for Android devices.

Solar System for iPad: Astronomer/writer Marcus Chown has created a beautiful $13.99 app for the iPad that presents the solar system in full, with loads of text, video, pictures and graphics. You can pick and choose your planets, and give them a spin while you're at it, or make your way progressively from the sun all the way out to the icy frontier of our solar system. As the author of "The Case for Pluto," I particularly appreciate the fact that Chown gives dwarf planets, asteroids and comets their due.

Solar Walk: The folks who brought you Star Walk have also come out with Solar Walk, a $2.99 app that gives you a 3-D virtual model of the solar system. You can zoom all the way out to the Milky Way, but it's more fun to zoom in on one of the planets and find out what's going on in real time. When you focus in on Earth, you can find out the position of major satellites in their orbits. Tap on the International Space Station and you can watch it passing over our planet's landscape. You can even click a 3-D button, put on your red-blue glasses and geek out to the third dimension.

There are lots more space-themed apps for tablets and mobile phones, including the free GoSkyWatch planetarium app, Exoplanet and GalaxyCollider. I've mentioned some of these apps previously, but what are your favorites? Feel free to share your recommendations in the comment space below.

More about science apps:

• Find new worlds on your iPad
• Scientific 'Magic' on a tablet
• App tracks the space station
• Explore outer space on your phone
• Earth Now lets you take the planet's pulse
• 'Angry Birds Space' launches gamers into orbit
• iPads would be great in space, astronaut says

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.