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Winners of the 5th annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge — where’s the aesthetic power?

Apropos biomedicine and aesthetics — this week’s (28 September) issue of Science presents the winners of the 5th annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge which the magazine organises in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Here’s one of the two winners in the photography category: — which is a rendering of a CT-scan from a 33-year-old Chinese woman being examined […]

Apropos biomedicine and aesthetics — this week’s (28 September) issue of Science presents the winners of the 5th annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge which the magazine organises in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
Here’s one of the two winners in the photography category:

— which is a rendering of a CT-scan from a 33-year-old Chinese woman being examined for thyroid disease. 182 thin CT ‘slices’ were stacked together to create a 3D image looking upward at the sinuses from underneath the head (more here).
And here’s a screen shot of the winner in the category non-interactive media:

— an advertising video called “Nicotine: The Physiologic Mechanism of Tobacco Dependence”, created by the scientific visualization company Hurd Studios and used by Pfizer to market their anti-smoking drug Chantix.
More winning photos in Science vol. 317 (no. 5846) pp. 1858-1863 (28 September 2007).
Nice pics, okay, and probably good advertising iconography — but where’s the aesthetic power?