La reazione nera (The black reaction)

In 1873, Camillo Golgi published his discovery of the “black reaction” (reazione nera), a stain that would allow him and other early neuroscientists to understand the structural organization of the nervous system. Nearly 150 years later, it remains unclear why some neurons are beautifully stained by the black reaction while others are left without a trace. Yet, it is because of this selective staining that neuroscientists can visualize and trace, in precise detail, the structure of individual neurons. This image is of a post-mortem human brain section stained by the black reaction. Our research uses this method to study the structure of prefrontal pyramidal neurons in the brains of individuals who died by suicide.

Jury Prize

People’s Choice Award

Laminar healthy vortices and leaking heart valves

The blood flow in the left ventricle—the heart’s powerhouse—is depicted in a healthy heart (left) and in a leaking heart valve (right). The right side of the image represents a disease known as aortic regurgitation. When a healthy left ventricle fills, a single laminar vortex swirls elegantly and directs blood for ejection. However, with aortic regurgitation, the leak disrupts the flow by impeding the formation of this vortex as well as generating turbulent activity within the ventricle. These effects reduce the overall pumping efficiency of the left ventricle, placing an additional burden on the heart to pump blood. This research aims to use the flow in the left ventricle to better understand aortic regurgitation and to better evaluate its progression in practice.

Jury Prize

The hitchhiker’s guide to infection

This image shows a predatory mite bearing spores of entomopathogenic fungi on its body. It had been half an hour since the mite was released from its rearing substrate that was artificially contaminated with spores (bottom of the image), and the side of her body was already clean. She spent half of this time grooming; however, grooming was insufficient for her to dislodge the spores on her back. Surprisingly, walking was enough—a rolling stone gathers no moss. In my PhD project, we were looking for dispersal agents to spread disease rapidly in a population of western flower thrips (a farmer’s biggest nightmare). We found that certain species of predatory mites—depending on their foraging activities—can increase the rate of infection of thrips by delivering spores to their colonies. This combination of predation and infection offers an efficient alternative to pesticides for reducing pest populations rapidly.

Jury Prize

Glory and demise of a supergiant

A Wolf-Rayet star lies hidden at the heart of this gigantic ball of gas. On the verge of a supernova explosion, it is ejecting phenomenal quantities of matter in the form of stellar winds, creating the surrounding molecular cloud. This Doppler image shows the inexorable expansion of nebula NGC 2359. For this image, only wavelengths emitted by ionized hydrogen have been selected, and the colours correspond to the velocity of the gas: from blue, moving towards us, to red, receding. Image taken from a hyperspectral cube obtained with the SITELLE imaging spectrometer developed in Québec and installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope. Only wavelengths associated with the H-alpha line (656 nm) have been selected.

Jury Prize

Microfluidic star trails

A fluid is being injected through an opening at the centre of the image. There, it is imprisoned in a thin interstice, also bathed in fluid, and re-aspirated through a second opening to the right of the image. On the micrometre scale, fluid movement is not subject to turbulence. Its flow is laminar, as can be seen by the fluorescent microbeads shimmering in the dark. The precise control of fluids on a surface opens the way to improved biomedical tests based on human tissue staining.

Jury Prize

Tiny threat to great crops

These strange flying saucers are actually dozens of eggs laid on leaves at the top of a corn plant. Soon, they will release larvae of the western bean cutworm, which have an insatiable appetite for tender young cobs. The eggs are laid by moths native to the American heartland that are now well established in Ontario. They are carried on the wind to Québec, where it is feared that climate change could enable them to make a new home for themselves.

Jury Prize

Life lessons by the water

Every morning, this young lad perches on his makeshift raft kept afloat by plastic jugs. Propelling himself with a pole, he travels five kilometres to attend school in Ganvie, a lake village with a population of 40,000. He provides a striking example of the resourcefulness of the people living above the waters of Lake Nokoué in Benin. The research urbanist is documenting their lifestyle and ability to adapt in the context of climate change.

Human-Nature Prize – Espace pour la vie

All in good time

You are looking at Homarus americanus collected at the prelarval stage off the Îles de la Madeleine. The diameter of this lobster embryo’s eye, together with the temperature of the water, indicate that the egg will hatch in about five weeks. Data collected in collaboration with fishermen is used to estimate future cohort numbers. It will take this little fellow eight years to reach adult size and be marketable.

People’s Choice Award

A colourful lightning

The nerves and vasculature run alongside each other in this image showing the neurovascular network in a mouse’s skin. Neurons (red) guide not only their axon formation, but also blood vessels (green) into an organized network as new vasculature forms from the existing vessels in both development and adults. The signals shared by neurons and vessels can help us design targeted therapies against illnesses such as cancer, and engineer new organs that are structurally and functionally relevant.

A winter night in Quebec

Ice build-up on the aerodynamic surfaces of aircraft is a major threat to safe flight that aerospace companies face every winter. A potential solution is a slippery surface that can delay ice build-up and help remove it. Using suspension plasma spraying of titanium dioxide feedstock particles smaller than a micron, we have developed a porous microstructure that consists of pillars 200 microns in height. These surfaces can be impregnated with various lubricating oils, and the micro-pores can act as reservoirs. The resulting solid/oil interface is exceptionally slippery, which allows water droplets to slide on the surface with minimal loss of energy. This image shows the hierarchical structure of this surface: a base coating layer and the micro pillars after impregnation with oil. The oil is visible on the surface as large rivulets and smaller half-rings (c-shapes).

Enjoying the calm before the storm

A pair of small yellow-banded acraea (Acraea acerata) enjoy a moment of solitude in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. These butterflies are thought to be sensitive to both excessive and limited rainfall, so the increased variability in precipitation resulting from recent climate change could have dramatic impacts on this species. This picture was uploaded to iNaturalist.org, where it joins a global database of over 15 million observations of almost 200,000 different species. These observations were submitted by over 400,000 naturalists, mainly amateurs. Submitting an observation is as simple as taking a picture on your smartphone. Citizen science like this has generated incredible amounts of data and changed the way ecology and global change research is done. Researchers at the University of Ottawa use these observations to predict how species and individuals like these A. acerata will respond to global climate changes.

Every parasite needs a host

As our understanding of dinoflagellates—common kinds of phytoplankton—broadens, they continue to defy many of the rules we typically associate with protists, simple organisms that are neither plants, animals nor fungi. For this reason, they are consistently interesting and help us learn more about the evolution, in all its forms, of eukaryotes (life forms with complex cells). Pictured here is haplozoon axiothellae, a dinoflagellate that is a parasite of certain marine worms. This organism is an example of how odd dinoflagellates can be, with a compartmentalized body that is unique even among the protists we know of. We continue to study this protist and others like it with high-resolution microscopes to learn more about their cellular organization and put them in the greater context of eukaryota.

Everything is deeply intertwingled

A scanning electron microscope was used to pinpoint the phenotype of one of the most primordial and conserved proteins in the extracellular matrix, called SPARC, in larval tissue of fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster, magnified to 40 microns. The colouring highlights the fibrous laminin network that is characteristic of SPARC overexpression and collagen-IV deficiency in the basement membrane. The notion of intertwingularity—the idea that all knowledge, regardless of the field or subject matter, is deeply and intrinsically interconnected—is exemplified by this evolutionarily treasured protein, and the role it plays in almost all life forms on Earth.

Family outing

During my first Arctic field season, I encountered bears in every corner of Canada's Arctic. From the bear that used my mooring buoys as chew toys on Baffin Island, to the mother and cub swimming 100 miles offshore in the ice-free Labrador Sea, to this family of three in the Hudson Strait—these bears have my attention. With the rapid loss of habitat, I wonder how many cubs will survive to the next season. Let's do what we can to maintain the longevity of such beautiful creatures.

Feather star metropolis

Feather stars (relatives of sea stars and urchins) are home to a multitude of tiny marine invertebrates and fish (dubbed “infestors”) like this clingfish, shyly smiling back at us through the arms of Anneissia bennetti (a common feather star in the Philippines). This vibrant metropolis poses no direct threat to its feather star host, but hungry predators who feast on infestors can cause collateral damage to their star home, leaving a temporary footprint (an injury) on the feather star: like the two amputated arms pictured in the foreground (immediately below the clingfish). Changes in these intimate relationships as we go deeper below the ocean surface, from shallow (surface to 30 metres) to mesophotic (30 to 120 metres) depths, paint an interesting portrait of how marine communities can support each other in times of stress.

In the eye of the beholder

These two male savannah sparrows are the same age and were captured in the same location—from a long-term study population on a small island in the Bay of Fundy. Nevertheless, one sparrow has a striking yellow eyebrow, and the other is much duller. Such visual traits in birds are important in females’ choice of mate and males’ territorial interactions, and may be influenced by a variety of factors including health, genetic quality, diet, climate and pollution. Researchers at the Universities of Windsor and Guelph are using field studies of wild birds, combined with spectrometry to measure colour, genetic analyses to quantify reproductive success, and isotope analyses and GPS tracking to monitor seasonal movements. These data will reveal how health, climate and overwintering location influence trait variation in males and females, and the consequences of this variation on breeding success and survival.

Neural constellations—connecting the dots

This image shows mouse neurons from two brain regions, the cortex and the striatum, grown together in a dish (cell co-culture) and dyed fluorescent colours. I study Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder resulting from changes in the basal ganglia circuitry, in which the striatum is a key player, receiving motor input from the cortex. This co-culture allows us to study the connections (synapses) between cortical and striatal neurons. I compare co-cultures from healthy (control) mice with those carrying a mutation in the LRRK2 gene, a common risk factor for Parkinson’s disease. The mutation alters the LRRK2 protein, which plays a crucial—but poorly understood—role in synapses. By studying how the altered protein affects synapse formation, strength and plasticity, we can elucidate the early changes in basal ganglia circuitry that lead to Parkinson’s disease, and figure out how to target LRRK2 to treat the disease.

Patient brain cells made from urine

This image depicts a cluster of the neurons (brain cells) that make up a large part of the human brain. Following the discovery that stem cells can be made from various other cell types in the body, researchers were able to reprogram these stem cells into other cell types of interest. My research aims to understand a rare neurodevelopmental disorder called FOXG1 syndrome. After extracting renal epithelial cells from urine, collected from a young child afflicted with the disorder, I was able to reprogram these cells into stem cells and then into mature neurons. I grew these neurons in a dish for 30 days, then preserved and stained them with forebrain fluorescent markers, MAP2 and TUJ1. By growing these neurons from a human patient, we are able to get firsthand insight into the pathology of these brain cells.

Phases of the heart

Time series measuring biological and natural processes often exhibit a multi-scale periodic structure that is invisible to the human eye. The Fourier transform is a mathematical device that decomposes a time series into a sum of elementary oscillations. The short-time Fourier transform describes how these decompositions change in a matrix, with time and frequency as axes, called a time-frequency representation. By transforming the complex entries of the time-frequency representation, one can obtain numbers serving as intensity or colour values for an image. Such images are widely used for visual signal analysis. This image was derived from an electrocardiogram of atrial fibrillation. The horizontal axis is time, and the vertical axis is frequency. The intensity values are a blend of the modulus and phase values.

Piezoelectric octopus

This image shows an area 64 microns × 42 microns. It represents a fibre network made of a “smart polymer” called PVDF, which is commonly used for food packaging as well as for brain activity sensors. Each fibre is connected to a bead within the whole structure. If this material is electrically stressed, a mechanical strain can be observed and vice versa.