Models dressed as showgirls participates in a fashion show in front of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign on the Las Vegas Strip to kick off the pro-mask wearing campaign “Mask Up for Nevada” put on by Experience Strategy Associates amid the spread of the coronavirus on June 25, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. On Wednesday, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a directive requiring people to wear face coverings in public places throughout the state beginning on June 26 in response to a four-week upward trend of new daily COVID-19 cases. (Photo by David Becker/Zuma Press)

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)

Reuters photographer Bobby Yip took a series of portraits of people taking part in the “Occupy Central” protests in Hong Kong, and asked them why they had joined the demonstrations. China rules Hong Kong under a “one country, two systems” formula that accords the territory limited democracy. Tens of thousands of mostly student protesters are demanding Beijing give them full democracy, with the freedom to nominate election candidates. The unrest is the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule over the former British colony in 1997. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

A student falls asleep as she holds a book containing a portrait of China's late chairman Mao Zedong during a lesson at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School in Sitong town, Henan province December 3, 2013. In a remote part of central China, the day starts at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School with a pre-dawn jog, some revolutionary songs and then an activity long since forgotten at other schools: reciting quotations from Mao Zedong's famed “Little Red Book”. While the ruling Communist Party that Mao led continues to hold him in esteem as the leader of the Communist Revolution, his radical policies and teachings have been largely shelved since his death in 1976 in favour of a pro-market approach that has turned China from a backwater into the world's second biggest economy. The 120th anniversary of Mao's birth is on December 26, 2013. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

An armed man gestures in front of the police headquarters in Slaviansk, April 12, 2014. At least 20 armed militants wearing mismatched camouflage outfits took over the police and security services headquarters in the eastern city of Slaviansk seizing hundreds of handguns. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

Secondary school students perform a barefoot “pilgrimage of suffering” to support the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement at the Admiralty protest site in Hong Kong November 30, 2014. It has been two months since police first fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators from the main protest site in the Admiralty district next to government offices in the heart of the Asian financial centre. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

Giant 65-foot-long Hot dog artwork by Brooklyn-based artist duo Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw stands on the middle of Times Square in New York City, NY, USA on April 30, 2024. (Photo by Guerin Charles/ABACA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A protestor offers prayers on the second day of a demonstration demanding Prime Minister Najib Razak's resignation and electoral reforms in Kuala Lumpur on August 30, 2015. Tens of thousands of Malaysians swarmed central Kuala Lumpur on August 29, to call for the prime minister's ouster over corruption allegations and demand broader reforms, defying warnings by police who had declared the rally illegal. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)