This picture taken on January 26, 2016 shows a monkey sitting on a bench during rehearsal at a monkey training school in a zoo in Dongying, eastern China's Shandong province. Shows featuring performing simians, popular in China and throughout Asia, are expecting a boost in the Lunar New Year of the monkey, which begins on February 8. But they are facing a growing backlash from Chinese people concerned about animal welfare. (Photo by Wang Zhao/AFP Photo)

Promotional staff dressed in outfits of animation characters use a mobile phone at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) 2015 in Beijing, China, April 28, 2015. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

“A small British company with a dream of building a re-usable space plane has won an important endorsement from the European Space Agency (ESA) after completing key tests on its novel engine technology. Reaction Engines Ltd believes its Sabre engine, which would operate like a jet engine in the atmosphere and a rocket in space, could displace rockets for space access and transform air travel by bringing any destination on Earth to no more than four hours away”. – Chris Wickham via Reuters. Photo: Artist's impression of Skylon. (Photo by Reaction Engines Ltd)

A little red flying fox dips a toe in a lake at the mouth of Katherine gorge in the Northern Territory, Nitmiluk national park, Australia on September 20, 2017. (Photo by Glenn Campbell/AAP)

Commuters wear protective face masks as they walk through a subway station, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, December 1, 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil joined the widening circle of countries to report cases of the omicron variant. (Photo by Andre Penner/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)

Snow blows off the Svalbard Global Seed Vault before being inaugurated at sunrise, Tuesday, February 26, 2008. (Photo by John McConnico/AP Photo)

A model poses at Checkpoint Charlie, a historic place in the German capital to promote the fashion magazine “Sous” on June 12, 2012. (Photo by Maurizio Gambarini)