A visitor looks at portraits of Mao Zedong amid his statues on display at a wholesale souvenir store in Shaoshan, Hunan Province in central China, 28 April 2016. Shaoshan is the hometown of former Communist leader Mao Zedong, popularly known as Chairman Mao. Thousands of visitors descend on this small Chinese town burrowed in the hills of Central China's Hunan province to pay homage to the “Great Helmsman” everyday. It is one of the core sites of the “Red Tourism” industry, where communist party cadres and ordinary Chinese tourists alike seek to relive the experiences and rekindle the spirit of the revolutionaries. (Photo by How Hwee Young/EPA)

Moonlight illuminates sandstone buttes in the Valley of the Gods in the proposed Bear Ears National Monument near Mexican Hat, Utah, USA, 12 November 2016. In October 2015, a coalition of five Indian nations, including the Hopi, Ute, and Navajo, formally proposed the monument, attempting to preserve the parcel's 100,000 archeological sites from ongoing looting and grave robbing. Less than two months before handing over the White House to President Elect Trump, President Obama must decide if it's worth the political capital to designate Bear Ears a national monument. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/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)

Jenny Odell repurposes online imagery mostly from Google Maps, but also from YouTube, Craigslist, and other sites. In her “Satellite Collections”, for example, she incorporated aerial views of swimming pools, basketball courts, parking lots, and other recognizable structures, seen from space. Her more recent series, “Satellite Landscapes”, includes painstakingly isolated Google Maps imagery of oil refineries, wastewater treatment plants, solar farms, etc. This work is meant as a reminder of our physically determined and vulnerable existence, since we depend on many of these things for survival and maintenance of our way of life. Photo: Natural gas plant in Pittsburg, CA (detail of Power Landscape), 2013. (Photo by Jenny Odell)

In this photo taken Tuesday, October 14, 2014, skulls and bones are stacked at the Catacombs in Paris, France. The subterranean tunnels, stretching 2 kilometers (1.24 miles), cradle the bones of some 6 million Parisians from centuries past and once gave refuge to smugglers. The site used to close at 5 p.m., but is now staying open until 8 p.m. The change is mainly aimed at allowing more people to visit and reducing long lines, since it can only hold a limited number of people at a time and visits can't be reserved in advance. (Photo by Francois Mori/AP Photo)

A woman poses on the flooded St. Mark's square during an acqua-alta (high-water) alert in Venice, on November 19, 2013. (Photo by Andrea Pattaro/AFP Photo)

P.S. All pictures, as usual, are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews).

These chilling images prove there is no sign of life at this abandoned tuberculosis treatment hospital. Johnny Joo, 24, captured the eerie shots of the desolate TB ward, in Perrysburg, New York. Where equipment lies gathering rust and walls are left crumbling. The photojournalist, from Cleveland, Ohio, stumbled upon the facility, which shut its doors in 1995, before shooting what remains of the historic site. Johnny said the facility, named after Buffalo Mayor James Nobel Adam, remains something of an unknown quantity as it is surrounded by more than 500 acres of forest land. (Photo by Johnny Joo/Caters News)

In this June 29, 2015 photo, forlorn buildings are seen at Hashima Island, commonly known as Gunkanjima, which means “Battleship Island”, off Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture, southern Japan. The island is one of 23 old industrial facilities seeking UNESCO's recognition as world heritage “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution” meant to illustrate Japan's rapid transformation from a feudal farming society into an industrial power at the end of the 19th century. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is expected to approve the proposal during a meeting being held in Bonn, Germany, through July 9. (Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo)