Who knew cucumbers had weapons? Magnified 800 times, pointed ‘trichomes’ coat the skin of an immature cucumber. With sharp tips and toxin-filled bases, the trichomes – which look to the naked eye like a thin film of hair – help guard against hungry herbivores. The photograph received an honourable mention in the 2011 Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge.

What looks like a rocky overhang is in fact stacked layers of the compound Ti₃C₂. Seen under an electron microscope, each layer is just five atoms thick – so thin that scientists regard them as ‘two dimensional’. Named MXene, the new titanium-based material could prove to be useful in energy storage technology, the researchers say. The image won the people’s choice award in the photography category.

The onion-like structure of a mouse eye is revealed in this technicolour image that won first place in the photography category. Researchers shaved a super-thin slice of the eye, then used a specialised staining technique to colour-code different types of cells. Rings of pink, for instance, are light-sensitive photoreceptor cells, whereas the gold shapes on the left are muscle cells.

Tentacled breast cancer cells wreak havoc on healthy tissue in this graphic artist’s illustration. But they may have an Achilles’ heel. A newly developed drug called TRA-8 (green) locks into “death receptors” on the surface of the cancer cell, triggering a chain of events that eventually leads to the cell’s death. The illustration won an honourable mention.

Carbon nanotubes are invisible to the naked eye. The ultrathin structures are crafted using lasers that carefully control their thickness and other properties, so the resulting tubes narrow and bulge where the researchers choose. The nanotubes are highly conductive, and may one day help speed up computers while cutting down on energy consumption, the scientists say. This graphic artist’s depiction received an honourable mention in the illustration category.

Mathematicians used a technique called ‘domain colouring’ to transform a complex math function into this funky illustration. Abandoning long strings of digits, the researchers visualised the function by assigning every complex number in the equation to a specific colour. The brighter the shade, the higher the number (white regions, for example, represent numbers that approach infinity). The visualisation won an honourable mention in the illustration category.

A cell divides in two as its chromosomes (yellow) peel apart from each other. Stepping away from traditional textbook drawings, this 3D illustration gives a deeper look at the process of mitosis. Researchers created it using a specialised fluorescent protein (upper left) that attaches to DNA, lighting up the chromosomes under an electron microscope. The image won the people’s choice award in the competition’s illustration category.