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(Phys.org) —A pair of researchers, Pascal Audet and Roland Burgmann of the Universities of Ottawa and California, respectively, has found a connection between the amount of silica rich quartz above subduction zones and the frequency rate of “slow” earthquakes. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the two describe how they measured quartz amounts in the Cascadia subduction zone using seismic waves, and how it relates to slow earthquakes.

Light-fingered chimpanzees are changing the way subsistence farmers make a living in Africa by causing them to grow different crops and spend more time guarding their goods. This is according to work performed by researchers from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Geography, who say that communities near the edge of tropical forests are experiencing a lack of ‘dietary diversity’ and an increased exposure to disease-carrying insects as a result.

(Phys.org) —Genetic engineering is one of the great achievements of modern science, allowing for the insertion or deletion of genes in order to control an organism’s characteristics and behaviors. However, genetic engineering has its drawbacks, including the difficulties involved in engineering living systems and the potential long-term consequences of altering ecosystems with engineered organisms.

Beneath the barren whiteness of Greenland, a mysterious world has popped into view. Using ice-penetrating radar, researchers have discovered ragged blocks of ice as tall as city skyscrapers and as wide as the island of Manhattan at the very bottom of the ice sheet, apparently formed as water beneath the ice refreezes and warps the surrounding ice upwards.

May 2014 was the third warmest May in the 35-year satellite-measured global temperature record, and the warmest May that wasn’t during an El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

An international team of astronomers including Dutch astronomers Peter Barthel and Léon Koopmans (University of Groningen) reports the discovery of a unique case of a cosmic gravitational lens. Using several telescopes on the ground and in space, the scientists show that a distant radio galaxy, acting as a cosmic lens, distorts and magnifies the radiation of an even more distant mysterious dark object, thereby making that object visible.

Quebecers are particularly hostile toward the development of shale gas, but this aversion is driven less by ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) attitudes than ‘not in anyone’s backyard (NIABY), according to a comparative study of 2,500 Quebecers and Americans conducted by Éric Montpetit and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal’s Department of Political Science. Professors Barry G.

Increasingly, scientific findings indicate that an organism’s diet affects more than just general health and body condition. In an article published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, researchers from Nicolaus Copernicus University have found evidence that the diet of some animals must include cholesterol in order for them to enter necessary periods of energy conservation known as torpor.

Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.