Earthquakes not only shake up the local area but they also increase the rate of earthquake events locally and at a distance. The answer to how this happens may be in the laboratory, according to a Penn State researcher.

“We have learned a lot since the Landers earthquake in the Mojave Desert in 1992,” says Dr. Chris Marone, professor of geosciences. “We learned that earthquake triggering happens a lot more than we thought. The mechanism is not well understood.”

Marone is working wi

Since its launch in October 2001, ESA’s Proba micro-satellite has been returning remarkable imagery of some of our planet’s major landmarks with a compact instrument called the High Resolution Camera.

On display here are some notable examples, ranging from the monolithic Uluru or Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback to the tidal island of Mont St. Michel on the northern coast of France, and the Pyramids on Egypt’s Giza Plain.

Measuring just 80 x 60 x 60 cm, Proba is the size an

By summer 2005, researchers in the Fluids Research Laboratory at Virginia Tech will be able to look for evidence of water on Mars by examining submicroscopic bubbles in martian meteorites, determine whether fluids and silicate melts trapped in volcanic rock can help predict future eruptions, and locate buried mineral deposits using data from surface rocks. Robert Bodnar, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science, has received equipment grants from t

The Day After Tomorrow – the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie released yesterday – depicts an extreme rapid climate change event following the sudden shutdown of the North Atlantic overturning circulation due to global warming. The film by Roland Emmerich, maker of ‘Independence Day’, is a dramatic portrayal of possible consequences of climate change.

Could this really happen?

The UK is taking the lead in rapid climate change research to try to answer that question. A

The Moscow radiochemists have developed and applied in practice new methods for analysis of transuranium elements in the environment objects. With the help of the most up-to-date techniques, they have investigated in detail the americium and plutonium migration paths in water and soils of some regions in Siberia and Southern Ural which are in particular need for such type of monitoring – in the vicinity of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Mayak” Manufacturing Company and Federal State Unitary En

With the cooler weather and frosts arriving, European wasp activity may decrease but the life of a queen is just beginning.

Frosts, along with continuous cold weather, trigger the release of up to 100 fertilised queens from European wasp nests. These queens could each establish new nests in the spring. By alerting the appropriate authorities and pest controllers to the presence of a nest, members of the publics can assist in reducing the numbers of this introduced pest.

In addition

A new research project at the University of Kent is looking for genetic evidence of a historical population bottleneck in the Seychelles kestrel by analysing DNA extracted from museum specimens estimated to be 100-150 years old.

Dr Jim Groombridge, Lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation at the University’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, has been awarded £14,600 funding from The Royal Society to conduct population genetic research on oceanic island birds.

Museum colle

Instantaneous ice ages, grapefruit-size hail and tidal waves – all courtesy of global warming – are being served up as Memorial Day weekend entertainment in movie theaters.

The side order: A little scientific food for thought.

“The Day After Tomorrow,” a star-studded movie that paints a vivid picture of global climatic catastrophe, is a simplistic look at the complex and real issue of a potential outcome of global warming, said David Skole, professor and director of MSU’s Center for

Some erupted more often, others less often after big jolt 2,000 miles distant

A powerful earthquake that rocked Alaska in 2002 not only triggered small earthquakes almost 2,000 miles away at Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park – as was reported at the time – but also changed the timing and behavior of some of Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs, a new study says.

“We did not expect to see these prolonged changes in the hydrothermal system,” says University of Uta

According to a new NASA-funded study, insights into Earth’s climate may come from an unlikely place: the moon.

Scientists looked at the ghostly glow of light reflected from Earth onto the moon’s dark side. During the 1980s and 1990s, Earth bounced less sunlight out to space. The trend reversed during the past three years, as the Earth appears to reflect more light toward space.

Though not fully understood, the shifts may indicate a natural variability of clouds, w

If Brazil gets a climate protocol, like the Kyoto Protocol for the rich countries, it will be possible to create an incentive for the country to reduce the deforestation of the Amazon region. The Kyoto Protocol targets a reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.

In a new study, Martin Persson, in collaboration with Christian Azar, at the Section for Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, has examined how to deal with emissions of carbon di

Looking closely at unhealthy, discolored plants in Texas Panhandle wheat fields is part of Dr. Charles Rush’s job. He is a plant pathologist with Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. But the scientist knows the damage isn’t drought-induced at all.

The damage is caused by two different viruses, the wheat streak mosaic and the High Plains, he said. Both are transmitted by the wheat curl mite (Aceria tosichella), common to the central plains of the United States.

“In the p

Carbon dioxide and oxygen, not methane, were prevalent in the Earth’s atmosphere more than 1.8 billion years ago as shown by the absence of siderite in ancient soils but the abundance of the mineral in ocean sediments from that time, according to a Penn State geochemist.

“The absence of siderite in some ancient soils has been linked to low carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, levels that would be too low to compensate for the cooler sun 2.2 billion years ago,” says Dr. Hiroshi Ohmot

The response of glaciers to global warming is an important element in understanding climate change, involving sea-level change and changes to the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. To predict changes in the future it is vital to understand the behaviour of the sub-glacial bed. But reliable data is a prerequisite.

In the first investigation of its kind in the world the University of Southampton’s interdisciplinary GLACSWEB team is recording glacier behaviour through a network of

Researchers from Ohio Wesleyan University suggest that some birds may select nesting material with antimicrobial agents to protect their young from harmful bacteria. They present their findings at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“If the fresh herbs and plant materials that parent birds bring into the nest have a sufficient concentration of antimicrobial compounds, they could protect the nestlings from harmful bacteria,” says researcher Jann Ichida.

With support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Protection Service, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are using sophisticated computer modeling to track the spread of the fungal disease known as Asian soybean rust.

In recent years, the aggressive form of the disease has moved from Asia to Africa and into parts of South America. It first showed up in Paraguay in 2001 and now is a problem for many of the major soybean-growing are