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3-d-heart
Beautiful, ominous, and surprising, these are the winners of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. For 10 years, the competition -- sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science -- has celebrated the creators of visually striking, informative, and original art. The 2012 winners were announced today. From glowing corals to spiky seeds to neural networks on a chip, these images speak more clearly -- and louder -- than any report ever could.
Above:
Supercomputing Center
Alya Red: A Computational Heart
First Place and People's Choice (Video) This visceral, 3-d simulation of a beating heart grabbed first place in its category. A team at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center produced the contracting digital organ using a combination of data from magnetic resonance images, observations of cardiac muscle contractions and electrical signals, and input from physicians and bioengineers. Reproducing a single heartbeat takes 100 minutes of computing time, so the team distributed calculations among the facility's 10,000 processors. The result is a beautifully simulated, seemingly tangible, spasming organ. Credit: Guillermo Marin, Fernando Cucchietti, Mariano Vazquez, Carlos Tripiana; BarcelonaSupercomputing Center
