New research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) finds that 'energy efficiency' appears to influence how mountain birds adapt to changes in climate. Researchers looked at seasonal changes in the elevational distributions of birds - how high in the mountain birds go at different times of year - for nearly 11,000 avian populations across 34 mountain regions worldwide, including in Asia, Europe and the Americas, as well as Southern African and Australia.

When and how quickly can ecosystems ‘tip’ and how will they develop in the future? Researchers from the University of Potsdam, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Technical University of Munich have developed a new method for measuring how close an ecosystem is to a catastrophic tipping point. They are applying their findings to predict glacier surges, as well as rapid changes in other ecosystems. They have now published their study in "Nature Communications".

A UT San Antonio-led international research team has identified chitin, the primary organic component of modern crab shells and insect exoskeletons, in trilobite fossils more than 500 million years old, marking the first confirmed detection of the molecule in this extinct group. The findings, led by Elizabeth Bailey, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at UT San Antonio, offer new insight into fossil preservation and Earth’s long-term carbon cycle.

Kyoto, Japan -- Researchers at Kyoto University have proposed a new physical model that explores how disturbances in the ionosphere may exert electrostatic forces within the Earth’s crust and potentially contribute to the initiation of large earthquakes under specific conditions.

The study does not aim to predict earthquakes but rather presents a theoretical mechanism describing how ionospheric charge variations -- caused by intense solar activity such as solar flares -- could interact with pre-existing fragile structures in the Earth’s crust and influence fracture processes.

In the proposed model, fractured zones within the Earth’s crust are assumed to contain high-temperature, high-pressure water, potentially in a supercritical state. These zones behave electrically like capacitors and are capacitively coupled with both the ground surface and the lower ionosphere, forming a large-scale electrostatic system.