“A ball girl is an individual who retrieves balls for players or officials in a variety of sports including association football, American football, tennis, baseball and basketball”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A ball girl runs with 2 balls for Ivo Karlovic of Croatia against Fernando Verdasco of Spain in their second round match during the Mutua Madrilena Madrid Open tennis tournament at the Caja Magica on on May 11, 2010 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

Irene Aguirre, 23, attends a boxing class at the National Institute of Sport in Managua March 4, 2015. A study done by the Psychology alumni of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) revealed that about 1 million women in Nicaragua suffer from domestic violence. (Photo by Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

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)

Eight-year-old handicapped Chinese girl Qian Hongyan crawls with two home-made props and part of a basketball at Zhuangxia Village on January 5, 2005 in Luliang County of Qujing City, Yunnan Province, China. The girl who lost both of her legs in a traffic accident in 2000 at the age of three, struggles to live her life with a basketball as an underprop, “walking” between school and home by herself. The girl's story is widely reported in the country, and experts from China Rehabilitation Research Center has come to Qian's home to help her for rehabilitative treatment early 2005. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

In this Wednesday, November 15, 2012 file photo, a young girl in her colorful dress reaches out to greet a Pakistani policeman securing the road outside Kainat Riaz's home in Mingora, Swat Valley, Pakistan. (Photo by Anja Niedringhaus/AP Photo)

Tessa Evans was born without nose, a very rare facial anomaly called 'arhinia'. The little girl, who is now 18-months-old, has helped in spreading awareness about her condition across the globe.

Some are in it just for the money, others to help buy a meal. Then there are those who trade for fun or to spend time among friends. Millions of investors – pensioners, security guards, high-school students – dominate China's stock markets, conducting about 80 percent of all trades. Retirees gather in brokerage houses dotted around China also to enjoy some company and savour the air conditioning on hot days. Some start as young as 13, trading from home with an eye on future careers in finance. Winning isn't guaranteed. This year, among the most turbulent in China's financial history, its stock markets more than doubled in the six months to May, only to crash amid concerns that growth in the country, which makes everything from cars to steel, is slowing faster than previously thought. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)