See the winners of Nikon's Small World in Motion contest [videos]

Japanese camera and imaging software maker Nikon holds several contests each year for capturing beautiful images, whether they are still or moving.

One of the most curious, but not the least beautiful, competitions the company promotes annually is Nikon's Small World in Motion Competition. Here scientists from all over the world send recorded videos in the course of their research, with strangely beautiful and surreal results.

The material you see at the beginning of this text was the recently announced winner of last year's edition, produced by Dr. Mariana Muzzopappa of the Barcelona Institute for Biomedicine Research and Jim Swoger of the Barcelona Center for Genomic Regulation. It shows the development of the lateral line - an organ equivalent to the inner ear in humans - in a Paulistinha fish. It's 36 hours of video compressed in 18 seconds. Understanding the process can help scientists develop a cure for deafness.

The video above, which took second place in the contest, was made by Dr. Douglas Clark of Paedia Corporation, California, and uses the time-lapse technique to sum up 20 minutes of recording in just 40 seconds. Here you can see crystals uniquely forming in a single drop of saturated caffeine solution in the water.

And the third place, which can be seen below, was registered by Dr. John Hart of the University of Colorado at Boulder. It shows a volatile film of oil slipping on the water surface, which is part of his research on fuel spills.

You can watch videos of other contest participants by clicking here.

Via TecMundo