The airways that riddle the space behind our noses take on an alien aspect in this unearthly rendering created by radiologist Kai-hung Fung. A computed tomograhpy (CT) scan from a woman being examined for thyroid disease provided the raw data. Fung stacked together 182 thin CI "slices" to create 3D image looking upward at the sinuses from underneath the head.

The winning photo, taken with a digital point-and-shoot camera, shows a piece of Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) collected by botainst and molecular ecologist Andrea Ottesen off the coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The 15-centimeter-wide red alga seems exotic in this abstract portrait, but it is one of the most common seaweed species on the Atlantic coast.

This state-of-th-art wire, tangled up to show its flexibility, is only 200 micrometers wide. Rather than extruding the wire, Siegel and colleagues poured motten indium/tin solder into a microfluidic channel in clear silicon and allowed it to cool. Depending on the solder composition, the wire can be solid or flexible, and any breaks can be healed by simply reheating it.

Engineer Kenneth Breuer used lasers and a sophisticated multicamera motion-tracking system to record how the wings of shor-nosed fruit bats, and the air around them, distort as the animals fly. Based on the results, aeronautic engineer David Wills, computer scientist Mykhaylo Kostandov, and colleagues created a computer model of bat flight - visually conveyed in this poster.

In this poster, graphic designer Mark McGowan, illustrator David Goodsell, and colleagues used the example of gripping a baseball to show how muscles work. Zooming in on a chunk of hand muscle with a magnigication power of 200,000, the images show how club-headed myosin molecules use energy from ATP to repeatedly grab long filaments of actin and drag them toward each other.

The Physics Educaiton Technology Project (PhET), initiated by nobel laureate Carl Wieman, is a suite of online tools for teaching and learning introductory physics and chemistry. Today, the porject Web site lists 65 interactive, research-based simulations available for free download, illustrating everything from quantum tunneling to projectile motion.

Breast Cancer Virtual Anatomy is an interactive tool desinged to help doctors explain to their patients the anatomy and progression of their cancers in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. The interface allows doctors to select tumor size and level of metastasis and displays the part of the patient's anatomy that cancer is attacking while suggesting treatment options.

From the rush of nicotine molecules from the lungs to the bloodstream and into the brain, this video delves into the physiology of tobacco dependence. Created by art director Donna DeSmet, animator jason Guerrero, and colleagues, the video explains that addiction claims 4 million lives a year from emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease, and other smoking-related diseases.

Mobius transformations - mathematical funtions that send each point on a plane to a corresponding point somewhere else on the plane - are among the most fundamental mappings in geometry, with applications from brain mapping to relativity theory.

In "Towers in the Tempest," Gregory W. Shirah, Lorik. Perkins, and their colleagues use satellite imagery and supercomupter simulations to reveal vast clouds dubbed hot towers as they stretched up nearly 18 kilometers into the sky, in the eye wall of hurricane Bonnie as the sotrm moved northwest along the northern edge of the Bahamas in 1998.