Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A woman takes a selfie with “RoboThespian” at Robots, a major new exhibition at Science Museum in London, England on February 7, 2017. Exhibition showcases 500-year history of robots, with over 100 robots and the largest collection of humanoid robots ever displayed. (Photo by Tolga Akmen/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Kamal Khatib, a volunteer with the Animals Lebanon rescue group, kisses kittens after rescuing them from debris of destroyed buildings at the site of Thursday's Israeli airstrike, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, October 11, 2024. (Photo by Bilal Hussein/AP Photo)

Miniature spring-wound 35-mm film camera in a modified cigarette pack. The Tessina’s small size and quiet operation provided more options for concealment than most commercially available models. (Photo by Central Intelligence Agency)

Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland competes in the Vault apparatus final during day nine of the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships Tokyo 2011 at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium on October 15, 2011 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images)

Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi, known as Rokudenashiko, holds her artwork after a news conference following a court appearance in Tokyo April 15, 2015. A Japanese artist on trial for obscenity after making figurines and a kayak modeled on her v*gina said on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with her artwork and her arrest merely showed how far Japan remains behind the west. Words in the artwork read “Centre. 3D scan”. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

Law enforcement officers clash with protesters, Wednesday, July 20, 2016, in Cleveland, during the third day of the Republican convention. (Photo by John Minchillo/AP Photo)

An Afghan man is carried out of a hospital after receiving treatment following a suicide truck bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan August 7, 2015. The bombings were the first in Kabul since Mullah Akhtar Mansour took charge of the Taliban last week, and followed a rare truck bomb attack in an eastern province on Thursday. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)