'O' My: Ring-Shaped Cloud Spotted Over the Pacific (Photo)

Clouds come in all shapes and sizes — they can look like tubes, waves, faces, top hats and even spaceships. But a NASA satellite recently captured an image of a cloud that is almost a perfect circle.

The agency's Terra satellite spotted the O-shaped cloud formation on Sept. 3, as it floated over the Pacific Ocean to the southwest from the Hawaiian Islands. NASA's Earth Observatory released the image on Sept. 27.
This high-flying "O" is made of convective clouds that form when temperature changes make air patches rise and fall. Meteorologists classify convective clouds as open-cell or closed-cell formations. Both types form when clumps of warm air rise. However, closed-cell formations resemble honeycombs, whereas open-cell formations look like O's. [In Photos: Crazy Cloud Patterns]

A NASA satellite spotted this O-shaped cloud over the Pacific in early September.

Closed-cell clouds form when warm air rises and then sinks around the edges. Open-cell clouds, like the one in this image, form the opposite way. The ring shape forms because cold air sinks in the middle and warm air rises around it.
A few different atmospheric conditions can make ring-shaped clouds form, but meteorologists think this particular cloud formed when the sun heated air as it drifted over a small patch of warm ocean water. As the air warmed, clumps of light rain clouds formed. The rain would have cooled down the air under the clouds. The cold air likely created a downdraft, and as the cold air sank, it pushed warm air up around it, creating the ring-shaped cloud formation.
O-shaped clouds are common, but meteorologists didn't know they existed until weather satellites began snapping pictures of them, according to a blog post written by retired meteorologist Lee Grenci. Ground instruments and airplanes couldn't parse out enough detail among dense cloud networks to spot the rings. The first published documentation of an O-shaped convective cloud came from NASA's TIROS-1 weather satellite that launched in 1961.
The newly released cloud photo is part of the Earth Observatory's catalog of satellite images of the ABCs. The projectis collecting pictures of clouds, smoke, ice, islands and even phytoplankton blooms that resemble letters. For example, the project has collected a V-shaped smoke plume that rose from a wildfire in Canada in 2012. The Earth Observatory is still looking for high-quality photos of natural formations that resemble the letters B, G, F and K.

Anyone can browse the NASA satellite collection of images, called Worldview, to hunt for letter-shaped images. Participants can link to potential candidate images in the comments section of this post from the Earth Observatory.

via: YahooPh

US Marines testing Ultra Heavy Lift Amphibious Connector UHAC at RIMPAC 2014

It's a new U.S. Marine Corps vehicle for getting stuff like troops, tanks and trucks from ships to shore and back.
 
The Corps showed off a prototype of its Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC) last

week during Rim of the Pacific exercises in Hawaii, running it from the Navy's amphibious dock landing ship USS Rushmore to the beaches of Marine Corps Training Area Bellows on Oahu.

"Showcasing the UHAC during RIMPAC is a big deal," Dave George of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which developed the UHAC with funding from the Office of Naval Research, said in a press release. "This is a great way to let people know that this new technology is being developed."

Here's how the UHAC works: The tracks, which are made of what the Marines call "captured-air foam blocks," extend like flippers to propel the craft through the water. When it hits the beach, the foam flattens to become like the tracks on a tank or a bulldozer, only much softer, according to a report from Stars and Stripes.
Last week, the UHAC prototype, which is about half the size of envisioned production models, carried an assault vehicle from the Rushmore to the beach. The Marine Corps says a full-size UHAC would be able to carry much more.
 

"The full-scale model should be able to carry at least three tanks and a HMMVW (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle)," 

Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Perera, the Warfighting Lab's Infantry Weapons Project officer, said in a statement. That's about three times the load that the Corps' current craft assigned to the task, called a Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), can handle.

It also will be able to surmount bigger obstacles. While an LCAC can only get over a 4-foot-high sea wall, a full-size UHAC will be able to get over sea walls as high as 10, 12 or even 16 feet, according to the Corps.
 
The UHAC prototype type is not armored or armed, but Perera said production models would have armor plating and a .50-caliber machine guns for protection.
They also would be much faster. The prototype could only go 5 mph on the water, but a full-size UHAC should do 25 mph, Gen. Kevin Killea, commander of the Corps' Warfighting Lab, told Stars and Stripes.
 
The UHAC prototype used last week is the third in the program, built upon a concept originally proposed by the Hawaii-based shipbuilding and research firm Navatek, Ltd.

"There has been a one-fifth scale model, then a one-quarter scale model and this is a half-scale model, so we have been progressing,"

Frank Leban, program officer at the Office of Naval Research, said in a statement. "Every vehicle has incorporated more features and technology to help get us to the full scale."

There's no word yet on when the full-scale model may actually come, but officials were happy with last week's demonstration.

"This is a great way to show what it can do," said George. "Today went quite well."

Cebu Pacific Air joins shark fin ban

The Philippines' largest airline Cebu Pacific said Wednesday it has ceased carrying shark fins,

Image by: WorldAirlinenews

becoming the latest carrier to impose a ban as part of global conservation efforts.

"We are banning shark fin carriage effective immediately as we learned that unsustainable shark fishing and our carriage of shark fin is not aligned with (our) position on sustainable development," the airline said in a statement.

The carrier, controlled by the Gokongwei family, an ethnic Chinese clan with interests in food processing, real estate and banking, also it would no longer serve shark fin soup in its corporate events.

Cebu Pacific, the country's largest airline in terms of number of passengers carried, becomes the second Filipino carrier to ban shark fin shipments following a similar decision by rival Philippine Airlines in April.

Several airlines have announced they would no longer transport shark fins in recent years, following a global campaign to stop the consumption of the controversial foodstuff.

The fins are traditionally used in expensive Chinese soups and served at important events.

Conservationists warn that the demand for shark fins has led to overfishing, with many shark species now considered endangered.