A pro-democracy demonstrator fights with a Soviet soldier on top of a tank parked in front of the Russian Federation building on August 19, 1991, after a coup toppled Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The same day, thousands in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities answered Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin's call to raise barricades against tanks and troops. (Dima Tanin/AFP/Getty Images)

“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)

A white whale wears a wreath at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, Japan, on October 3, 2012. (Photo by Associated Press)

“Rescuers were digging through mud and debris Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon. The death toll from the storm has surpassed 500, with more than 400 people missing”. – Bullit Marquez via Associated Press

Photo: Children look at the a damaged road destroyed by flash floods at the height of Typhoon Bopha in the village of Andap, New Bataan town, Compostela Valley province, December 5, 2012. (Photo by Ted Aljibe)

Labourers carry a basket packed with vegetables through a wholesale market in Kolkata, India, February 26, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

People wash in water from a broken water pipeline on the outskirts of Kolkata, India, March 30, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

A woman leaves with her television set, as she and others are evicted from their apartment blocks close to the site of last week's building collapse, after their homes were deemed unfit for habitation and marked for demolition, in the Huruma neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya Friday, May 6, 2016. Following a building collapse which claimed at least 40 lives with more 80 people still unaccounted for, after severe flooding, the government has ordered the demolition of similar unsafe buildings in the area. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

In this Friday, February 6, 2015 photo, sandhill cranes begin to stir after resting for the night at a roosting location along their winter migration route in Cecilia, Ky. According to counts made by biologists with the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Resources, about 12,000 of the birds have stopped in Cecilia this week during their winter northward migration on their way to their nesting grounds in the Great Lakes region. (Photo by David Stephenson/AP Photo)