Every year around March 15th, the winners of The Wellcome Image Awards are announced. What are the Wellcome Image Awards, you ask? They are the “most eye-catching celebration of science, medicine and life.” In other words, these awards select the most beautiful images that are created from aspects of healthcare and biomedical science.

Huh?

Yes, my dear reader, I am very bad at explaining the Awards so I am going to show you some of the finalists in the hopes that not only are you smitten with the beautiful images, but you can also see the technological advances of our time.

This colorful image is a “polarized light micrograph of a section of cat skin, showing hairs, whiskers, and their blood supply. Blood vessels were injected with a red dye called carmine dye (here appearing black) in order to visualize the capillaries in the tissue, a newly developed technique at the time.” I love the colors and I’m mesmerized by the shapes. It could easily be the next album cover for Tame Impala.

The awards promote different types of creative techniques, including photography, micrographs, 3D printing, computer analysis, confocal microscopy, clinical photography, and digital illustration, among others. The idea is not to limit the awards to one technical outlet but to provide a creative way of showing healthcare and biomedical advances in any way possible and the results are amazing and, dare I say, freaky.

This image is a 3D print of a healthy pig eye. They used the same material as that of a Lego (!!!) block. The dent on the right is where the iris would be and all the white vessels that we see would be the blood vessels of the eye that bring “energy and food to the muscles surrounding the iris, which controls the amount of light entering the eye.”

This image is a photomacography, a “close-up photography of small objects using a camera with specialist lenses, together with a method for stitching together multiple images,” of a Hawaiian bobtail squid. This squid hides under the sand during the day and comes out at night, glowing thanks to the bacteria that habit under the light organ of the squid. And it’s frickin adorable.

And last but not least, my favorite finalist image, which freaks me out and astonishes me at the same time:

At first glance, this looks like any old image of a iris but look closely and you realize that there is a weaving between the iris and the contact lens. WHAT! This is actually not a contact lens but an ‘iris clip’ which is fixed in the iris through a medical incision so that it won’t move and is “used to treat conditions such as myopia and cataracts.” This particular eye is from a 70-year-old patient that regained full vision after the surgery. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it many times again: science is fascinating.

These were my favorite images but I suggest you check out all of them here. They really are fascinating to look at and read about. I love these images because not only are they artistic in their own right, they also show so much technology, whether in the way they were created (like the 3D print) or what they are showing (like the iris clip). I cannot wait to see what images come up next year.

-Alana

All sources taken from http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/2017/

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Compensations for Paragraph 175

In Post World War II West Germany, thousands of gay men were convicted under Paragraph 175, a law which outlawed men having sexual relations with other men.  This legislation was introduced in the 19th century, but was radically strengthened during the Nazi rule in Germany.  Even after World War II was over, the law was still prominent in West Germany, where fifty thousand men were convicted under this legislation between 1949 and 1969.  In 1969, Paragraph 175 was “decriminalized”, but still remained on the books.  East Germany had a “less severe” version of Paragraph 175, which they abolished in 1968.  It is believed that around 68,300 people were convicted under various forms of this law in both West and East Germany before it was officially taken off of the books in 1994.

In 2000, Germany’s parliament approved a resolution stating that the country regrets that Paragraph 175 was retained after the war.  In 2002, Germany’s parliament annulled the convictions of gay men under Nazi rule, but not the convictions that occurred after the War.

On March 22nd, 2017, Germany’s Cabinet approved a bill that would annul the convictions of the thousands of gay and bisexual men under Paragraph 175.  Although the bill still requires parliamentary approval, it details a compensation of about 3000 euros for each conviction, along with 1500 euros for every year the convicted men served jail time.  This will also apply to those convicted under Paragraph 175 in East Germany.

On top of individual compensation, the government also plans to donate 500,000 euros every year to the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, which is currently working on documenting stories of the men who were convicted under Paragraph 175.  The foundation is named after a pioneering German sex researcher and gay-rights activist of the post-World War I period.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas comments, “The rehabilitation of men who ended up in court purely because of their homosexuality is long overdue.  They were persecuted, punished and ostracized by the German state just because of their love for men, because of their sexual identity.  The strength of a state of law is reflected in having the strength to correct its own mistakes.  We have no just the right but the obligation to act.”

Germany’s legislation is coming soon after the British government announced that thousands of men convicted under previously abolished laws criminalizing homosexuality will receive either posthumous pardons, or have their criminal records wiped cleaned.

And although the sentiment is heading the right direction, I can’t help, but feel like a sum of money could never take away the suffering that these men endured for being convicted under Paragraph 175.  It doesn’t give back the time spent in jail or the ridicule or the social and political injustice these men faced for simply falling in love.  It doesn’t take away the inability for these men to get jobs because they developed criminal records solely based on their sexuality.  But maybe this is the straight person’s privilege speaking that allows the German government to think that this legislation will make everything better.  Or maybe it is my own privilege that makes me fail to see the how this money is more than just a band-aid on a deep, deep wound.

To read more about Germany’s legislation, click here.

To find out more about Britain’s posthumously pardons, click here.

-Michelle Cherian

Solar Energy On The Rise in Staten Island

In a satisfying and unexpected turn of events, the forgotten borough is making a name for itself by leading New York City in record breaking numbers that have nothing to do with rape reports or citrus-tinged Republican votes.

Since 2014, local Staten Islanders have been opting for solar energy as a means of power in record-breaking numbers. Across the five boroughs, there are a total of 9,417 projects producing 101.2 megawatts, which, as SI Advance writer Annalise Knudson notes, “is enough to power more than 15,000 homes, according to the utility.”

According to Con Edison, Staten Island has a total of 4,459 projects, which produces 39.011 megawatts, making the borough the forerunner of solar energy developments in New York.

Staten Islanders who have installed solar panel in the energy generation shift noted much more affordable electricity bills, as well as an increase in tax credits post-switch, according to TaxAct.

Con Edison is encouraging locals and business-runners alike to make the shift to clean-energy sources, whether they be solar panels, hybrid vehicles, or other renewables. In a recent press release statement, Vice President Matthew Ketschke of the Distributed Resource Integration expressed that Con Edison wants the shift for all class backgrounds:

“We want clean energy, including solar, to be available for customers of all income levels and regardless of whether they live in a house or an apartment. We also advocate policies that ensure funding for the kind of robust grid that makes solar energy possible.”

To his credit, Con Edison has done the work to back up this statement: in 2015, Rossville’s PS 62 was named New York’s first “green school,” relying exclusively on clean-energy sources with 2,000 solar panels, a wind turbine and geothermal systems for heat and A.C. Continuing the trend, in April of last year solar energy panels were installed in 101 public city schools.

These developments are very encouraging and necessary. As we face widespread animal species extinctions along with the ozone layer’s gradual decay, we as a human race must ask ourselves what it will take to save our planet, and act fast.

-Isaiah Frost