Figures contained in scientific reports are a neglected area of the design world. Typically intended for display to academic audiences in the cramped confines of a journal, they tend to be utilitarian and esoteric -- yet while looking through hundreds of articles in the course of 2012, certain figures transcended the technical and rose to the level of communication art. They combined visual clarity, information density and insight into some fact of fundamental interest.
From tomato taste to accelerating human evolution to a goose that flies over the Himalayas, here are our favorite scientific figures of the year.
Above:
Sperm Trajectories
A new method for observing the three-dimensional trajectories of sperm shows their paths in unprecedented detail (above). Hidden in that maelstrom, however, is the tendency of individual sperm to follow one of several basic paths (below).
Image may be NSFW.
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Citation: "High-throughput lens-free 3D tracking of human sperms reveals rare statistics of helical trajectories." By Ting-Wei Su, Liang Xue and Aydogan Ozcan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 September 2012.
