A moderate earthquake shook a mountainous area near Bakersfield, Calif., early Thursday, just hours after a quake some 230 miles to the southeast.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 4.4-magnitude quake struck at 1:11 a.m. and was centered 12 miles south-southeast of the resort town of Lake Isabella and 35 miles east-northeast of Bakersfield.
Young songbirds babble before they can mimic an adult's song, much like their human counterparts. Now, in work that offers insights into how birds - and perhaps people - learn new behaviors, MIT scientists have found that immature and adult birdsongs are driven by two separate brain pathways, rather than one pathway that slowly matures.
The work is reported in the May 2 issue of Science.
"The babbling during song learning exemplifies the ubiquitous exploratory behavior that we often call play but that is essential for trial-and-error learning," comments Michale Fee, the senior author of the study and a neuroscientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and an associate professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
An earthquake hit western Iran Thursday, causing minor injuries to more than 100 people, state TV reported.
The report said the magnitude 4.7 quake jolted three towns in Lorestan province at 4:45 a.m., but no one was seriously hurt or required hospitalization.
The head of Lorestan's emergency department, Reza Ariai, was quoted as saying that at least 70 of the wounded lived in Boroujerd, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran.
A magnitude-5.2 earthquake, centered 11 miles east southeast of Willow Creek, jolted the North Coast at 8:03 p.m. on Tuesday.
The Unites States Geological Survey termed it a level VI temblor with a strong shake and light damage.
A magnitude-2.0 aftershock hit five minutes later, 16 miles to the east of Willow Creek.
"It was sort of like a sonic boom," said Brenda Simmons of SkyCrest Lake resort in Burnt Ranch. "It was a very loud noise before the house started shaking. It was pretty scary, the biggest thing I've ever felt here. (It) lasted 10 seconds max. I didn't feel the aftershock."
A fairly strong earthquake jolted Chiba Prefecture on Thursday morning, the Meteorological Agency said.
Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.
NASAThu, 01 May 2008 10:00 UTC
A cool-water anomaly known as La Niña occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern - had shifted to its cool phase.
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| La Nina and Pacific Decadal Oscillation Cool the Pacific
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FORT KENT, Maine - The raging St. John River spilled its banks, flooding more than 100 homes as emergency management officials feared the region could face its worst flooding in modern history Thursday.
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| ©Shawn Patrick Ouellette / AP
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| A man walks his dog past flooded Main St. in Fort Kent, Maine, on Wednesday.
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PHOENIX - Firefighters are battling a forest fire burning out of control toward the Grand Canyon, fanned by strong winds and dry conditions, authorities said on Wednesday.
The so-called X Fire has burned 2,000 acres of the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona, and was burning toward the Grand Canyon National Park early on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the forest service said.
"The fire is not contained at this time. It's still windy and moisture levels are low so we are concerned," said Margaret Hangan, a spokeswoman for the Kaibab National Forest.
It has been debated for nearly four decades but no one has yet been able to prove it is chemically possible. Now good evidence suggests that birds can actually "see" the lines of the Earth's magnetic field.
Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, proposed forty years ago that some animals - including migratory birds - must have molecules in their eyes or brains which respond to magnetism. The problem has been that no one has been able to find a chemical sensitive enough to be influenced by Earth's weak geomagnetic field.
Now Peter Hore and colleagues at the University of Oxford have found one.
