An earthquake has struck the far west of China but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday that the 5.8 quake struck about 7 a.m. (2300 GMT) in the southern part of Xinjiang region.

An official from the Communist Party Propaganda Department in Luopu county, where the earthquake hit about 175 miles (280 kilometers) northeast of Hotan, said the epicenter was in the desert and no reports of injuries had been made. The official refused to give his name.

Iliamna volcano experienced several episodes of increased earthquake activity over the last three months, according to a news release issued Wednesday by Alaska Volcano Observatory officials. One of the episodes is currently ongoing and is characterized by numerous small earthquakes.
The increase in activity may be related to movement of magma at depth and additional observations, including an airborne gas sampling and observation flight, are being planned to help constrain this interpretation, according to the release. A similar but longer episode of increased earthquake activity occurred from September 1996 to February 1997 and likely was related to the intrusion of new magma at depth. That incident did not result in an eruption.

A restless Aleutian volcano exploded Wednesday night and may have blown off a slow-growing lava dome that was building for months in its summit crater, volcanologists say. Cleveland Volcano, 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, probably burped up a small amount of ash - a potential hazard to trans-oceanic air travel - but the ash did not appear to reach above 20,000 feet, said Steve McNutt, a researcher with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Because of its remoteness, harsh weather in the area and budget constraints, Cleveland Volcano does not have instruments on its flanks. As a result, scientists cannot listen to its inner rumblings. But distant seismometers and specialized microphones detected the explosion about 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to the observatory. The explosion caused a displacement of air and an airwave traveled out from the volcano at the speed of sound, McNutt said. Instruments at volcanoes 60 and 90 miles away detected the explosion several minutes after it occurred, he said.

Rio De Janeiro - A dramatic video showing 30 beached dolphins being rescued by beachgoers in Brazil has become an internet sensation. The video shows dolphins appearing out of nowhere and suddenly beaching en masse on the Rio de Janeiro state coastline. They were apparently caught in a strong ocean current.

Stunned beachgoers in swimming trunks at first look on as the dolphins high-pitched squeals are heard. But within seconds, people quickly race into the surf to help the dolphins.

Dozens of people are seen swimming into the ocean and dragging the mammals by their tails in an effort to them back into deeper waters. And the effort this past Monday was successful. After all the dolphins were rescued, the crowd of dolphin-savers and onlookers broke into cheers.

A photo taken near Brazil captures a rare and beautiful "roll cloud," a tubular cloud that seems to tumble across the sky.

The spectacular photo, captured last month, was just released by NASA's Earth Science Picture of the Day blog.

Roll clouds are a type of arcus cloud, which is a category of low cloud formations. Their more common cousin is the shelf cloud, often seen on the leading edges of thunderstorms. Roll clouds sometimes form along with storms, too, born out of the storm's downdraft. Sinking cold air causes warm, moist air on the planet's surface to climb to higher altitudes, where the moisture condenses into cloud form. Winds from the storm "roll" the cloud parallel to the horizon, creating an effect that looks much like a horizontal tornado. Unlike shelf clouds, rolls clouds are completely detached from the bulk of the storm. [Gallery of Curious Clouds]

Roll clouds aren't dangerous in themselves, though, and many roll clouds form in relatively calm weather as a result of sea breezes. One of the most famous spots for these coastal roll clouds is off the coast of Queensland, Australia, where the so-called Morning Glory roll cloud forms regularly in fall months.

Last year's 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan was the fourth largest since 1900. The Tohoku-Oki struck on March 11, triggering a tsunami which killed around 19,000 people along the country's north eastern coast. Now Zhigang Peng, associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has converted the earthquake's seismic waves into audio files. The results allow experts and general audiences to "hear" what the quake sounded like as it moved through the earth and around the globe.

"We're able to bring earthquake data to life by combining seismic auditory and visual information," said Peng, whose research appears in the March/April edition of Seismological Research Letters.

"People are able to hear pitch and amplitude changes while watching seismic frequency changes. Audiences can relate the earthquake signals to familiar sounds such as thunder, popcorn popping and fireworks." The different sounds can help explain various aspects of the earthquake sequence, including the mainshock and nearby aftershocks.

High in the sky, 60 to 65 miles above Earth's surface, winds rush through a little understood region of Earth's atmosphere at speeds of 200 to 300 miles per hour. Lower than a typical satellite's orbit, higher than where most planes fly, this upper atmosphere jet stream makes a perfect target for a particular kind of scientific experiment: the sounding rocket. Some 35 to 40 feet long, sounding rockets shoot up into the sky for short journeys of eight to ten minutes, allowing scientists to probe difficult-to-reach layers of the atmosphere.

In March, NASA will launch five such rockets in approximately five minutes to study these high-altitude winds and their intimate connection to the complicated electrical current patterns that surround Earth. First noticed in the 1960s, the winds in this jet stream shouldn't be confused with the lower jet stream located around 30,000 feet, through which passenger jets fly and which is reported in weather forecasts. This rocket experiment is designed to gain a better understanding of the high-altitude winds and help scientists better model the electromagnetic regions of space that can damage man-made satellites and disrupt communications systems. The experiment will also help explain how the effects of atmospheric disturbances in one part of the globe can be transported to other parts of the globe in a mere day or two.

"This area shows winds much larger than expected," says Miguel Larsen, a space scientist at Clemson University who is the principal investigator for these five rockets, known as the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX). "We don't yet know what we're going to see, but there is definitely something unusual going on. ATREX will help us understand the big question about what is driving these fast winds."

Determining what drives these winds requires precise understanding of the way the winds move and what kind of turbulence they show. To get an idea of the task at hand, imagine mapping not just the ups and downs of ocean waves but the attendant surf, undertow, and tides, all from 60 miles away and in only 20 minutes. To accomplish this, the five sounding rockets will launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia releasing a chemical tracer into the air. The chemical - a substance called trimethyl aluminum (TMA) -- forms milky, white clouds that allow those on the ground to "see" the winds in space and track them with cameras. In addition, two of the rockets will have instrumented payloads to measure pressure and temperature in the atmosphere.

A lucky photographer captured an amazing photo of an intense lightning storm over Ikaria Island, Greece.

Photographer Chris Kotsiopoulos had set out to document the total lunar eclipse on June 15, 2011, but he got more than he bargained for.

"This was an extraordinary storm that took place the night of the total lunar eclipse," Kotsiopoulos told OurAmazingPlanet. "The night started ideally as I managed to capture the lunar eclipse and some lightning at the same shot. After the end of the eclipse I noticed that the storm was insisting."

So Kotsiopoulos took a 70-shot sequence, with each shot a 20-second exposure. He stitched these shots together into the photo. The photo shows some 100 lightning strikes over Ikaria, which is near the southwestern coast of Turkey. The majority of the lightning was cloud-to-ground strikes.

Nova Scotia - The seal carcasses, some without eyes from scavenging seagulls and other wildlife, are on the beaches of Hay Island, a short distance from Scatarie Island.

Federal fisheries department seal biologist Mike Hammill said the mammals showed no sign of physical trauma other than the wounds inflicted by predators after death.

"They weren't killed by people, so it's something else that's come along," he said from Charlottetown following a tour of the island Sunday.

"The majority of them are weaned pups and they look in fairly good shape. They're fat, didn't seem to have any external markings on them."

Parts of the seals were taken for testing to the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown. Hammill said it could be weeks before a possible cause of death is identified.

Kunduz - At least 37 people died and hundreds were still trapped in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday when a snow avalanche covered an entire village near the northern border with Tajikistan, local officials said.

Afghan army helicopters descended on the remote village in the north of Badakhshan province to try rescue families, the latest victims to Afghanistan's worse winter in 30 years.

"The way to the village is closed, it is covered in snow," provincial governor spokesman Abdul Marof Rasikh said of the village of around 300 people, located in the Shikai district.

Though avalanches are fairly common in the mountainous north, Tuesday's deaths were seen as particularly painful for a country that has experienced its worse winter in decades, killing dozens in the capital Kabul and creating further food shortages in one of the world's poorest countries.