Gallery: The Best Science Visualizations of the Year
<a href="http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/101/20140873 ">Petri et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society Interface</a>01Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms
Each circle depicts communication between brain networks in people given a dose of psilocybin (right) or a non-psychoactive placebo dose (left). While scientists still don't know exactly how psychedelics produce their effects, it may be related to this dramatically heightened inter-network activity.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center02The Corn's Early Light
The United States grows more corn than any other nation: 84 million acres, an area nearly the size of California, is harvested each year, with planting concentrated in the so-called midwestern corn belt. In July, seen through satellite filters that detect traces of fluorescent light emitted by photosynthesis, the corn belt is the brightest place on Earth.
<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0104213">Mallefet et al./PLoS One</a>03In the Eye of the Lantern Shark
Lantern sharks spend their lives in oceanic twilight zones, at depths of several hundred feet. Over evolutionary time, their eyes have adjusted accordingly. The top row maps the density of light-sensitive rod cells in three lantern shark species; on bottom are densities of ganglion nerve cells, which carry information from the rods. Each species has a distinctive pattern likely optimized for their feeding habits and lifestyles.
<a href="http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/98/20140541 ">Song et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society Interface</a>04Hummingbird Aerodynamics
Hummingbirds flap their wings up to 80 times per second---too fast for the naked human eye to see, but captured on high-speed video by researchers who then modeled the fabulously complex vortices of air that form with each wingstroke.
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13290.html">Engels et al./Nature</a>05Mixed Signals
Many birds use Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Might electromagnetic emissions generated by electronic devices disorient them? The top row is key to this figure: each dot is the flight orientation of a caged robin during the spring migration season. Their natural tendency (blue circle) is to fly north; exposed to an electromagnetic field (red circle), many more fly west or south.
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7523/full/nature13815.html">Amari et al./Nature</a>06A Solar Storm's Elegant Enormity
This beautiful computer simulation of a coronal mass ejection---an eruption of charged particles from the sun's surface---conveys the sheer enormity of these solar events. (Yes, that's Earth in the background.) It also helped explain what causes them: twisted filaments of charged plasma that become unstable and snap.
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24909321">Foster et al./Current Biology</a>07Through the Eyes of a Bee
Humans barely perceive polarized light, but bees see it clearly. They use polarized skylight's subtle slant to navigate, and spot flowers by their polarized reflections. Above are three flowers; in the third column, petals are color-coded according to the amount of polarized light they reflect. It's not precisely what a bumblebee sees, but hints at a world of floral beauty visible to their eyes.
<a href="www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347214003030#">Starnberger et al./Animal Communication</a>08So Many Ways to Say Ribbit
Among the characteristic features of frogs and toads are their vocal sacs: membranes of skin used to amplify vocalizations. Each species has its own distinctive sac, and the sheer diversity of shapes and colors suggests as-yet-unappreciated functions in communication.
<a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/sci/emb_scipak/pdf/ottesen140711.pdf">Ottesen et al./Science</a>09Ocean Metabolism
Researchers tracked genetic activity in ocean bacteria across several days. Genes are listed from top to bottom; days proceed from left to right; the day-night cycle is denoted by yellow or black boxes above. Blue is low activity, red is high. Step back, take in the pattern, and you get the feeling that the ocean is breathing.
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio10The Melting Northern Ice Cap
Each white shape depicts polar sea ice cover from (left to right) 1979 through 2014 and (top to bottom) January through December. In their entirety, they starkly convey the rapid loss of summertime sea ice, which regularly reaches lows inconceivable just a few decades ago.
<a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003887">Chennu et al./PLoS Computational Biology</a>11A Signature of Consciousness
A new method of analyzing our brain's electrical activity finds neural signatures of consciousness. At right is a healthy person's activity; at left and center are two people with brain injuries. Both are in vegetative states, but one displays patterns suggestive of healthy function.
<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/56">Faria et al./Science</a>12The Origin of HIV
In a feat of extraordinary genetic sleuthing, researchers traced the geographic origin of the HIV virus to Kinshasa in the early 1920s. From there it spread along fast-growing colonial transportation networks. Whether AIDS would have emerged regardless is unknowable, but it seems that economic development pressed the accelerator.
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7490/full/nature12993.html">Wasio et al./Nature</a>13An Improbable Pattern
Seen under an electron microscope, a newly-discovered group of so-called quasicrystals form Penrose tiles, a pattern named after mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose. It was once considered mathematically impossible for crystals to take this form; the discovery otherwise [won a Nobel prize](http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2011/10/discoverer-impossible-crystals-gets-chemistry-nobel%E2%80%94and-last-laugh) in 2012. The impossible, it seems, is merely improbable.
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geb.12199/pdf">La Sorte et al./Global Ecology and Biogeography</a>14Birds in Country, Town and Farm
At left is a map of the United States as classified by ecological regions. In each region, researchers tabulated bird sightings during spring and fall migration. Those are depicted at right, and color-coded according to local land cover: dotted green for intact vegetation, blue for agriculture, dotted red for urban. Where the landscape has been left intact, species richness is dramatically higher.
<a href="http://press.nature.com/pdf/press_files/nature/27-11-2014/nature13855.pdf">Bardgett & van der Putten/Nature</a>15Another World Beneath Our Feet
For obvious reasons, we tend to overlook what lives underground. Same goes for scientists---but that's changing. The above image, from a review of research on the links between below- and above-ground ecologies, conveys with visual shorthand the fabulous variety of subterranean life, from convoluted geometries of plant roots to a fairy-tale assortment of creatures.
<a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1778/20133006.figures-only">Pauli et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B</a>16The Unexpectedly Complicated Lives of Three-Toed Sloths
Why do three-toed sloths poop on the ground rather than their treetop homes? Because of their own personal ecosystems. Each sloth's coat teems with hair-adapted algae and a moth species found nowhere else. The moths lay eggs in the sloths' poop-pits; newly-hatched moths fly back up and find a sloth; after they mate and die, the moths' decomposing bodies feed the algae, which the sloths in turn consume.
