ImageBank

Isn’t it frustrating to be putting together a document or presentation, only to realize that it could really use some good images and alas, you can’t find any? Thankfully, there’s ImageBank, hosted by The Higher Education Academy at the UK Centre for Bioscience. This collection of images offers the perfect remedy to that graphically challenged scientific talk or bland lecture. One can browse the collection or search by organism, but in either case, you can add images of interest to a folder that can be accessed at any time during your stay on the site. In addition to being a great image resource itself, the ImageBank site provides a number of links to other image-hosting pages, organized by subject. These include agriculture and forestry, cell biology, and moving images, to name a few.
www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/imagebank

Communicating at an Unknown Rate

ou want quirky? OK. Start with the title of this educational site. I’m not quite sure what it means. It certainly doesn’t describe (at least as I see it) the contents of the site, which are animations relevant to cell biology. Topic areas include amino acids/proteins, cell function overview, cell anatomy, cell membranes, chromosome structure, glycolysis, evolution, and more. Each of these uses animations to illustrate the various principles. The site scores points for its clever uses of an expanding calendar for showing the universe, beginning at 14 billion years ago to the present, but loses points for inaccuracies (the section entitled DNA makes RNA is misleading in places and wrong in other places—there are more than 64 tRNAs, for example, as well as more than two rRNAs). In places the videos are very informative, for example, translation, and in other places, like evolution, the motion just seems to get in the way.


www.johnkyrk.com

Micrographia - Wonder the image

It doesn't take an electron microscope to produce beautiful and educational images of tiny life forms. That message is clearly in focus at Micrographia.com, where an eclectic collection of (mostly) microorganisms is on display 24/7. From the movie of a tiny juggling act on the opening page to an expansive set of images sorted biologically, Micrographia wows with its pictures, and there's no shortage of them to be seen. But, there's more at the site than the photos that meet the eye. With interesting articles (“The Microscopy of Inkjet Printing”), editorials, tutorials, microscopy projects, and archives of previous content, Micrographia is a full-service station for light-based microbial delights.

www.micrographia.

Microscope Imaging Station

One can’t help but be lured into this entertaining, informative website. Using microscope images and videos as teaching tools, the Microscope Imaging Station provides a nice introduction to a variety of topics in biology. Although aimed at a younger audience, scientists of all ages can appreciate the wonderful images and informative blurbs with whimsical, news-like headlines. (For instance, some of the top stories are entitled, “Cancer: cells behaving badly” and “Frogs: princely models for science.”) Each feature is accompanied by “A Scientist’s View,” an audio file in which a researcher in the field discusses various aspects of the topic. Even researchers who find the background material to be too introductory should take a look at the movies and microscope images in the gallery. Categories within the gallery include, to name a few, stem cells, plankton, immune response, and cell motility.

Microscope Imaging Station
www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/index.php

The Winning Anther

Speaking of microscopic domains, Nikon sponsors an annual photography contest for images taken through the ‘scope that are as stunning as they are other-worldly. The winner for 2009's Small World Competition has just been announced (an anther from Arabidopsis thaliana, pictured here) and it—along with the many outstanding runners-up—are available for view at Nikon's easily navigable web site. Viewing the stunning images, one can debate whether art imitates life or vice versa, but it probably doesn't matter. Life is beautiful in all its forms and Nikon Small World provides many reminders.

[www.nikonsmallworld.com]