A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft in a training exercise in the Gulf of Alaska on June 22, 2009. (Ronald Dejarnett/U.S. Navy photo)

The U.S. Air Force released a photo on Tuesday of a jet exhibiting a little seen phenomenon involving water which scientists say sometimes occurs with the breaking of the sound barrier.

The military says the plane in the photo is flying at supersonic speeds in the Gulf of Alaska. The F-22 Raptor jet is participating in a military training exercise known as Northern Edge 2009 on November 22, 2009, according to Air Force.

The plane was said to by flying over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

According to LiveScience, the visual phenomenon is referred to by scientists as a "vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg."

"A layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air," Editorial Director of Live Science Robert Roy Britt notes. "In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can."

The photo was taken by Ronald Dejarnett of the U.S. Navy, whose rank is Petty Officer 1st Class.

Billy Mays likely died of heart problems, according to preliminary autopsy results. In a press conference Monday, medical examiner Vernard Adams said Mays “had an enlarged heart, a thickening of the wall of the ventricle which takes blood to the heart.”

The TV pitchman died from pulmonary embolism, the autopsy showed. Final results from the autopsy are due in several weeks.

Mays, 50, was found dead in his Tampa home by his wife on Sunday morning. On Saturday, Mays was on board a U.S. Airways flight that had a rough landing at Tampa International Airport after the plane’s front tires blew out upon landing. After getting off the plane, Mays told reporters he hit his head in the rocky landing, sparking speculation Monday that he could have died of a head injury.

The coroner says there were no signs of internal or external head injuries.

Mays was made famous by his infomercials for Oxiclean and Orange Glo. He and fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan are featured on the new Discovery Channel reality show ‘Pitchmen.’ The show, which debuted in April 2009, followed Mays and Sullivan as they sold new products through direct response marketing.

“The news of Billy's death came as a total shock to me. I'm devastated,” Sullivan told People magazine Sunday night.

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Kodak on Monday highlighted the iconic image of a refugee Afghan girl, captured for a cover photo of National Geographic in 1985, as it announced it was retiring the Kodachrome film it was shot on.

Kodak mentioned the photo and published comments from the photo journalist, Steve McCurry, who said that while the film was extensively used early in his career, he had moved on to other films.

"In fact, when I returned to shoot the ‘Afghan Girl’ 17 years later, I used Kodak Professional Ektachrome Film E100VS to create that image, rather than Kodachrome Film as with the original,” McCurry said in a released statement from Kodak.

In 2002, a National Geographic reporter, videographers and McCurry himself returned to a refugee camp in Pakistan to search for the subject of the portrait. According to a report, they eventually learned she was named Sharbat Gula, and was living part time in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan with her husband and children.

The new Calvin Klein ad in Soho of New York City, shows a billboard which features a topless female model kissing one male model and lying on another shirtless man. Some people think the ad is depicting a “threesome.”

The New York Daily News has been reporting that passersby of the Soho neighborhood have had negative reactions. Marketing specialist Lisa Marchese says that the ad is “borderline pornographic.” Reverend Don Wildmon, leader of the American Family Association, has stated that the billboard “shows a lack of respect for society, especially young people.” Only time will tell if Klein’s creation will remain plastered for long.

What do you think is this ad too racy?

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The ‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ promo for next week revealed that secrets to Danielle Staub’s past could be found in an out-of-print book called “Cop Without a Gun” by New Brunswick native Charles Kipps. NJ.com tracked down a copy, and sure enough, it includes a mug shot of a woman named Beverly Merrill who looks a lot like Danielle Staub.

The book is about a former con named Kevin Maher who becomes an informant for the New York Police Department and the FBI, among other agencies, and who, along the way, leaves his wife and stepson for the morally ambiguous charms of stripper Beverly Merrill.

Let’s meet Bev: “She was brunette. Long, perfectly shaped legs poked out of her leather hot pants just as provocatively as her braless breasts strained against her low-cut blouse.” And no, she wasn’t wearing any underwear. After she and Maher have “explosive sex,” he thinks to himself, “This is a good person. She has no morals, but she’s a good person.” (More on that later: Yes, she apparently also has a record.)

Unfortunately, Beverly turns out to be a “coke whore.” That’s okay at first, because Maher likes coke too. But he really doesn’t like her sleeping with other guys. So Maher confronts another one of her boyfriends at the Bennigan’s in Saddle Brook, sticks a gun in his crotch, and makes him confess. By this time, Beverly Merrill is now dancing at various North Jersey establishments under the name Danielle. Maher, deciding he wants to have a kid but that Beverly isn’t “mother material,” eventually splits up with her. According to the epilogue, Maher last saw her in 1992 dancing at a club called Shakers in Carlstadt.

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Know the saying any press is good press? Well Kate Gosselin lives by that because she is set to release her third book.

Her third book, Love Is in the Mix: Making Meals into Memories, is due to hit stores Oct. 13, 2009, according to Amazon.com.

Despite the success of her previous books about raising a brood of ninety-six kids, some people have already read pieces from her new book and are slamming it.

Although excerpts from the book have not yet been released, commenters have already begun slamming the star’s previously released recipes and claim she stole them “from product boxes and magazine articles.”

One person wrote that her recipe for the cereal treat Monkey Munch — which was mentioned on the TLC show — is the same as one on the Chex brand website and calls it “plagiarism.”

Doesn’t surprise me. I mean, if you are raising eight kids how the hell do you have time to “become a chef” or even write a book for that matter. But, on the bright side, it’s awesome to know that in America now, you can hit copy/paste in word a bunch of times and wham! - you have a selling book on your hands! Pretty cool. Who needs all those pesky re-writes anyways?

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Does Redbull give you wings? There may be a reason. Red Bull has been banned in six states in Germany after a test revealed that the energy drink contained trace amounts of cocaine. The bans of selling Red Bull Cola by retailers in six German states started Friday after in a sample test 0,4 micrograms of cocaine per liter was found.

The cocaine levels are not high enough to constitute a health threat, said officials with Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment on Monday. They plan to issue a complete report Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Red Bull, of Santa Monica, Calif., maintains that the product in question, Red Bull Cola, is “harmless and marketable in both the U.S. and Europe.” Red Bull’s notes that their products contain analogous coca leaf extracts as a flavoring agent in the making of its cola, but insists that the illegal cocaine alkaloid is removed by law before being shipped outside the Andean region of South America. They claim that their own tests show no traces of actual cocaine.

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So if your name is Casey Ray and you are hanging out behind the Chase Park Plaza hotel in St. Louis waiting for your fiance to get off work, the logical thing to do is look in a dumpster and discover the script for the Twilight sequel.

When I opened it up and saw the character names: Charlie, Bella, Edward, I was just like, this can’t possibly be what I know it to be.”

Casey, a hairstylist in St. Louis, contacted her lawyer about the script. She ultimately called Summit Entertainment and told them she found it. They rewarded her by giving her tickets to the premiere as well as an autographed script, signed by the entire cast. Sometimes honesty pays off!

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A toddler boy aged 23-months has died of the swine flu in Texas. This child’s death is the first confirmed death of swine flu in the United States.

The boy was from Mexico City, he was airlifted two weeks ago to a Houston hospital from the border town of Brownsville, where he had been visiting relatives, officials said. The CDC made this announcement:

“We have confirmed the first death in this country in a 23-month-old child in Texas,” said Richard Besser, the acting director the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said on CNN.

“As a parent and a pediatrician my heart goes out to the family. As I’ve been saying for the past few days flu is a very serious infection, and each virus is unique so it is hard to know what we’re going to be seeing,” Besser added.

“But given what we’ve seen in Mexico we have expected that we would see more severe infections and that we would see deaths.”

US health authorities have said there were 65 confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu that killed 159 people in Mexico.

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