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This image of Mongolian frost
rings was taken by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's
Dee Breger and won First Prize in the first annual
NSF/Science Magazine Award For Visualization. (Breger
also took second prize with her breathtaking magnification
of Black Sea pyrite.) These Mongolian frost
rings are from a sample of Siberian pine tree collected
by Lamont-Doherty's dendrochronologist Gordon Jacoby,
and records the years 534-539 C.E. (left to right).
The narrow, distorted rings for 536 and 537 indicate
a drastic cooling in the northern hemisphere that
froze sap in the cells during the growing season.
Evidence for this abrupt climate change points
to a massive eruption of the volcanic precursor
of Krakatoa. Another theory invokes a cosmic impact
that possibly triggered the eruption. Magnification
~ 19.32 X.
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more images by Dee Breger |
Dee Breger, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
has won both first and second prize in the photography
category of the first annual 2003 Science and Engineering
Visualization Challenge -- a joint project of the National
Science Foundation and Science Magazine, designed to "encourage
recognition of the visual and conceptual beauty of science
and engineering," according to the
award's website.
Using a scanning electron microscope (SEM),
Breger produces breathtaking images of objects in the physical
world that are normally invisible to the naked eye. The images
recorded through her work have helped advance scientific understanding
though countless studies and cutting-edge research projects. They
have been published individually in dozens of scientific journals
and books, and have been used to illustrate many scientific presentations
in classrooms and the public media.
Dee Breger has devoted her career to the art
and science of electron microscopy. She graduated with
a bachelor's degree in art from the University of Wisconsin,
and immediately found an opportunity to combine her
training in art with her love for science as a scientific
illustrator at lamont, where she soon began operating
a transmission electron microscope.
Today Breger works as manager of Lamont's Scanning
Electron Microscope and X-ray Microanalysis Facility, using top-of-the-line
equipment capable of producing views of ultramicroscopic objects
with a crisp, clear, three-dimensional quality and analyzing their
elemental compositions. Breger has worked with over 225 scientists
and graduate students from around the world, representing disciplines
ranging from the earth sciences to archaeology to medical research.
A member of the Earth Institute at Columbia
University, The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is one of the
world's leading research centers examining the planet from its
core to its atmosphere, across every continent and every ocean.
From global climate change to earthquakes, volcanoes, environmental
hazards and beyond, Observatory scientists provide the basic knowledge
of Earth systems needed to inform the future health and habitability
of our planet
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