A car made from parts taken from used vehicles is shown in street Hefei, Anhui Province in China, on Oktober 21, 2013. The machine, which reaches 60 km/h, is the brainchild of self-taught inventor Zhu Runqiang. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews)

From Manhattan and Brooklyn's trendiest neighborhoods to the far-flung edges of theouter boroughs, Will Ellis has spent the last three years photographing and researching the lost and lonely corners of the United States' most populous city. His photo book Abandoned NYC is packed with 150 color images of sixteen of New York's most beautiful and mysterious abandoned spaces, paired with detailed essays on the fascinating history of these forgotten sites. Here: Letchworth Village is located just an hour's drive from NYC in Thiells, NY. It was founded in 1912 to house the city's developmentally disabled as a ”state institution for the epileptic and feeble-minded”. (Photo by Will Ellis)

Online hostess Xianggong (L) and other hostesses check their pictures as they gather around the photographer while taking part in a football-themed photoshoot at a photography studio in Beijing March 4, 2015. In China's online hostessing world, men find virtual company and the women can find riches. Xianggong is one of more than 10,000 hostesses on the internet site bobo.com, a live broadcasting web platform where anyone can record themselves singing, playing piano, dancing or just chatting. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

A woman poses on the flooded St. Mark's square during an acqua-alta (high-water) alert in Venice, on November 19, 2013. (Photo by Andrea Pattaro/AFP Photo)

P.S. All pictures, as usual, are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews).

In this photo taken Tuesday, October 14, 2014, skulls and bones are stacked at the Catacombs in Paris, France. The subterranean tunnels, stretching 2 kilometers (1.24 miles), cradle the bones of some 6 million Parisians from centuries past and once gave refuge to smugglers. The site used to close at 5 p.m., but is now staying open until 8 p.m. The change is mainly aimed at allowing more people to visit and reducing long lines, since it can only hold a limited number of people at a time and visits can't be reserved in advance. (Photo by Francois Mori/AP Photo)

NASA says it could be another 20 years before humans touch down on Mars, but in a sense, the Mars Society has been exploring the red planet for more than a decade – in Utah. Photo: Csilla Orgel, a geologist of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, makes her way back to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah desert March 3, 2013. The MDRS aims to investigate the feasibility of a human exploration of Mars and uses the Utah desert's Mars-like terrain to simulate working conditions on the red planet. Scientists, students and enthusiasts work together developing field tactics and studying the terrain. All outdoor exploration is done wearing simulated spacesuits and carrying air supply packs and crews live together in a small communication base with limited amounts of electricity, food, oxygen and water. Everything needed to survive must be produced, fixed and replaced on site. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/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)

Jenny Odell repurposes online imagery mostly from Google Maps, but also from YouTube, Craigslist, and other sites. In her “Satellite Collections”, for example, she incorporated aerial views of swimming pools, basketball courts, parking lots, and other recognizable structures, seen from space. Her more recent series, “Satellite Landscapes”, includes painstakingly isolated Google Maps imagery of oil refineries, wastewater treatment plants, solar farms, etc. This work is meant as a reminder of our physically determined and vulnerable existence, since we depend on many of these things for survival and maintenance of our way of life. Photo: Natural gas plant in Pittsburg, CA (detail of Power Landscape), 2013. (Photo by Jenny Odell)