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.

Slideshow: Stunning scientific sights

Click through prize-winning photos and illustrations from the 2011 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Launch slideshow

Visualizing science has come a long way from the days of overhead projectors and boxes of microscope slides — and to see just how far we've come, all you need to do is take a look at this year's top entries in the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

This is the ninth year for the competition, which is sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation. The 212 entries, received from 33 countries, focused on subjects ranging from transmission electron microscopy to the cosmic web that stretches across the universe.

Expert judges selected their top entries in five categories: photography, illustrations, informational posters and graphics, interactive games, and videos. But the general public got in on the judging as well, casting 3,200 online votes to select "People's Choice" award winners.

"The talent of these award winners is remarkable," Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said in a news release. "These winners communicate science in a manner that not only captures your attention but in many instances strives to look at different ways to solve scientific problems through their varied art forms."

Check out our slideshow, featuring the winners in the photography, illustration, poster/graphic and interactive game categories.

A mere slideshow doesn't give you the full flavor of the interactive games, however, so you'll really have to give them a try separately. The top-rated game is Foldit, a protein-folding puzzle game that has led to published research. We've written quite a bit about Foldit already: Check out our reports about the AIDS-like virus puzzle that was solved by Foldit players, and the molecular "recipes" that gamers came up with.

Three more games merited honorable mention: Meta!Blast 3D, an educational game about cellular biology; Build-a-Body, which lets players put together virtual organ system; and Powers of Minus Ten, which lets players zoom into the structure of virtual cells. Velu the Welder, a game from India that actually trains players to do welding, won the People's Choice award.

Before you get too involved in the game-playing, take a look at these winning videos:

Here's the list of winning entries in the other four categories of the 2011 challenge:

Photography: First place goes to Bryan William Jones, University of Utah, Moran Eye Center, for "Metabolomic Eye."

Honorable mention: Robert Rock Belliveau for "Microscopic Image of Trichomes on the Skin of an Immature Cucumber."

People's Choice: Babak Anasori, Michael Naguib, Yury Gogotsi, and Michel W. Barsoum of Drexel University for "The Cliff of the Two-Dimensional World."

Illustration: Three honorable mentions were cited. Emiko Paul and Quade Paul (Echo Medical Media) as well as Ron Gamble (UAB Insight) for "Tumor Death-Cell Receptors on Breast Cancer Cell." Joel Brehm of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Office of Research & Economic Development for "Variable-Diameter Carbon Nanotubes." Konstantin Poelke and Konrad Polthier of Free University Berlin for "Exploring Complex Functions using Domain Coloring." People's Choice: Andrew Noske and Thomas Deerinck (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego) as well as Horng Ou and Clodagh O'Shea (Salk Institute) for "Separation of a Cell."

Informational posters and graphics: First place goes to Miguel Angel Aragon-Calvo (Johns Hopkins University), Julieta Aguilera and Mark SubbaRao (Adler Planetarium) for "The Cosmic Web."

Honorable mention: Ivan Konstantinov, Yury Stefanov, Alexander Kovalevsky and Anastasya Bakulina of Visual Science for "The Ebola Virus."

People's Choice: Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Victoria Wahl-Jensen and Laura Bollinger of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases IRF for "Transmission Electron Microscopy: Structure, Function & 3D Reconstruction."

Interactive games: First place: Seth Cooper, David Baker, Zoran Popović, Firas Khatib, Jeff Flatten, Kefan Xu, Dun-Yu Hsiao, and Riley Adams of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington for "Foldit."

Three honorable mentions were cited: W. Schneller, P.J. Campbell, M. Stenerson, D. Bassham, and E.S. Wurtele of Iowa State University for "Meta!Blast 3D Interactive Application for Cell and Metabolic Biology. Level 1: The Cell." Jeremy Friedberg, Nicole Husain, Ian Wood, Genevieve Brydson, Wensi Sheng, Lorraine Trecroce, Kariane St-Denis, David Rowe, Ruby Pajares, Arij Al Chawaf, Shaun Rana and Nancy Reilly of Spongelab Interactive for "Build-a-Body." Laura Lynn Gonzalez of Green-Eye Visualization for "Powers of Minus Ten."

People's Choice: Muralitharan Vengadasalam, Ganesh Venkat, Vignesh Palanimuthu, Fabian Herrera, and Ashok Maharaja of Tata Consultancy Services for "Velu the Welder."

More scientific visions to enjoy:

• Visions of science go viral: 2010's winners
• The top sights of science: 2009's winners
• Science that you can see: 2008's winners 
• Science's best sights: 2007's winners
• More visions of science: 2006's winners
• Visualization challenge: 2005's winners
• A scientific visual feast: 2004's winners
• Visualization challenge: 2003's winners
  

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.