From Scientific American, amazing pictures at Top 10 Microphotographs of Living Things: Prize-winning microviews of everything from mouse retinas to slime mold. The catchy "Mouse retina" photo above won the first prize.

If you ever played with a starter microscope set as a kid, you may have felt the amazement of creating a miniature world simply by placing a drab little speck of matter under its objective lens. That same sense of wonder surely drove the winners of the 2006 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition, an annual contest for the best microphotographs of living (or once living) things.