“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)

Leanna Arcila, 7, is licked by Watson, a therapy dog with the Pawtucket police department, as she receives her COVID-19 vaccination from Dr. Eugenio Fernandez at Nathanael Greene Elementary School in Pawtucket, R.I., Tuesday, December 7, 2021. Even as the U.S. reaches a COVID-19 milestone of roughly 200 million fully-vaccinated people, infections and hospitalizations are spiking, including in highly-vaccinated pockets of the country like New England. (Photo by David Goldman/AP Photo)

Pedestrians look at the wreckage of a vehicle lodged in a storm drain on a street in Abidjan on June 19, 2018, in which a man was reportedly found dead after floodwaters receded following an overnight downpour in the city. Fifteen people have died in Abidjan, Ivory Coast' s economic capital, during flooding caused by torrential rain overnight, Interior Minister Sidiki Diakite said. Rain poured down overnight on June 19, causing flash floods up to 2.5 metres (more than eight feet) deep, he said. (Photo by Sia Kambou/AFP Photo)

Male orangutan Percy is reflected in the Sekonyer River as he reaches over to try and touch a wooden klotok boat carrying crew and tourists, in Tanjung Puting National Park, in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Indonesia, September 4, 2013. Percy is a son, born and living in the wild, of a female orangutan named Princess, a freed former captive orangutan that anthropologist Dr Birute Galdikas rescued, rehabilitated and returned to the wild. (Photo by Barbara Walton/EPA)

Aline, along with other rangers and park staff visit the gorilla's in the parks Mikeno sector, where the majority of the gorilla families live in Virunga National Park. Therefore there has been a surge of poaching and violence in the area. For the first time, women have taken up the most dangerous job in wildlife, becoming para-military rangers at the Virunga National Park in DR Congo. (Photo by Monique Jaques)

A picture made with a tilt-shift lens shows “Dwarf Empire” cast member 19-year-old Han Zhen Yan posing in her fairy costume backstage outside one of the fairy tale-like houses at the Dwarf Empire theme park outside Kunming, China's Yunnan province, 04 April 2013. The Dwarf Empire theme park opened in mid-2009, employing a number of dwarves to create the show. Depending on what type of job they do at the park, employees earn between 800-2,000 CNY (100-250 Euros) per month, most of which goes towards their savings as lodging is provided, and their living quarters are equipped with kitchens where they prepare their own meals. (Photo by Diego Azubel/EPA)

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)

In this Wednesday, December 2, 2015 photo, Dr. Gal Kelmer, head of the department of large animals, unties a horse after its operation at the University's Koret School of Veterinary Medicine in Rishon Lezion, Israel. “Horses have an instinctive response of flight from danger”, Kelmer said. “The minute they wake up they start trying to stand and run, even if they don't have control of their limbs. So then they fall”. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)