A boat, center, is surrounded by Japan Cost Guard's patrol boats after some activists descended from the boat on Uotsuri Island, one of the islands of Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, in East China Sea Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012. Regional tensions flared on the emotional anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender as activists from China and South Korea used Wednesday's occasion to press rival territorial claims, prompting 14 arrests by Japanese authorities. The 14 people had traveled by boat from Hong Kong to the disputed islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan. (Photo by Yomiuri Shimbun/Masataka Morita/AP Photo)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

Homeless people queue to get free hot food organized by social services during frost winter day in-Kiev on December 18, 2012. Nineteen people died of exposure in Ukraine in the last 24 hours amid temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), bringing the toll this month to 37, the health ministry said Tuesday. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP Photo)

Members of the 2013 “Jarl Squad” take part in the annual Up Helly Aa festival which culminates in the burning of a Viking Galley in Lerwick, Shetland Islands on January 29, 2013. Up Helly Aa celebrates the influence of the Scandinavian Vikings in the Shetland Islands and has employed this theme in the festival since 1870. The event culminates with up to 1,000 “guizers” (men in costume) throwing flaming torches into their Viking longboat. (Photo by Andy Buchanan/AFP Photo)

A lightning strikes St Peter's dome at the Vatican on February 11, 2013. Pope Benedict XVI announced today he will resign as leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics on February 28 because his age prevented him from carrying out his duties – an unprecedented move in the modern history of the Catholic Church. (Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP Photo)

An actress dressed as Black Cat poses for a photo at the London Super Comic Convention at the ExCeL Centre on February 23, 2013 in London, England. Enthusiasts at the Comic Convention are encouraged to wear a costume of their favourite comic character and flock to the ExCeL to gather all the latest news in the world of comics, manga, anime, film, cosplay, games and cult fiction. (Photo by Jordan Mansfield)

An Indian bride, sits during a mass marriage of 162 Muslim couples in Ahmadabad, India, Sunday, March 3, 2013. Mass marriages in India are organized by social organizations primarily to help the economically backward families who cannot afford the high ceremony costs as well as the customary dowry and expensive gifts that are still prevalent in many communities. (Photo by Ajit Solanki/AP Photo/LaPresse)

In this Sunday, April 28, 2013 photograph, people watch as Indian Sailendra Nath Roy attempts to cross Teesta river suspended from a zip wire attached to his ponytail moments before his death in Siliguri, West Bengal state, India. Roy who was named a Guinness World Record holder in 2011 for travelling the farthest distance on a zip wire using hair died during the stunt Sunday when he suffered a heart attack. (Photo by AP Photo)