Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Chinese women run with a ball on a snow covered field in Shenyang in China's northeastern Liaoning province during International Women's Day on March 8, 2018. International Women's Day is celebrated on March 8 every year and commemorates the movement for women's rights. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Russian artist Maria Gazanova (L) works on her "The Alive Painting" art work during the Art Krasnoyarsk annual festival in Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia November 4, 2015. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Fan Bing Bing, Concha de Plata (Silver Shell) award winnerfor best actress for the feature film “I Am Not Madame Bovary” speaks on her telephone during the awards ceremony at the San Sebastian Film Festival, September 24, 2016, in San Sebastian, northern Spain. (Photo by Vincent West/Reuters)

England fan celebrates on top of an ambulance after England' s win over Sweden in the Russia 2018 World Cup quarter- final football match, in London on July 7, 2018. (Photo by Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

A performer presents a creation from the Haute Coiffure Fall-Winter 2014/15 collection by French designer Charlie Le Mindu during the Paris Fashion Week, in Paris, France, July 7, 2014. The presentation of the Haute Couture collections runs from 06 to 10 July. (Photo by Etienne Laurent/EPA)

Boys walk home for lunch from school in the village of Kogelo, west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, July 16, 2015. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Kenya and Ethiopia later this month. His ancestral home of Kogelo is home to Sarah Hussein Obama, his step-grandmother. The Kenyan village, burial place of Obama's father, features an open-pit goldmine, a pork butcher's, a school named after their most famous son and outdoor market stalls. Villagers get around by motorbike taxi or on foot while a donkey-cart transports water. Children, some of them named Obama in honour of the President, walk to and from school together. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

A boy uses remnants of ordnance as he prepares dough inside Abu Khaled's shop in the Douma neighborhood of Damascus April 28, 2015. Abu Khaled opened a shop for making “barley bread” using remnants of weapons including rockets, tank shells and other ordnance fired by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. (Photo by Amer Almohibany/Reuters)