university of new mexico

Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2012Environmentactive, anne sheehan, anthony lowry, colorado plateau, earth, earthquake hazards, earthquakes, fault bounded basins, fort collins, frederick blume, garden city, geologically alive, geologists, global positioning system, gps, magnitude, mark murray, Mexico, molten rock, nanostrain, new mexico tech, rates of deformation, rio grande rift, rise of magma, spreading motion, steven nerem, surface coloradom rocky mountains, unavco, university of colorado boulder, university of new mexico, western great plains

The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)

Preserving the Navajo Language, One Interpreter at a Time

By Guest PostJune 2, 2011Cultureagnese nelms haury, arizona, arizona supreme court, armando valles, casey watchman, christian missionaries, english to navajo, karen frances begay, navajo interpreter training institute, navajo nation, new mexico, perphelia fowler, philanthropist, rick nez, roseann gonzalez, university of arizona, university of new mexico, vocabulary

*A group of 33 students were competively selected to earn free certification from the UA’s Navajo Interpreter Training Institute to gain eligibility to serve as interpreters in New Mexico and Arizona state courts.*

Many of the 33 students enrolled in the University of Arizona’s Navajo Interpreter Training Institute have similar backgrounds – they began their unofficial role as English-to-Navajo language interpreters as children translating for their parents and grandparents.

Now, as adults who live and work across Arizona and New Mexico, they still find themselves providing the same service. (more…)

Men With Macho Faces Attractive to Fertile Women, Researchers Find

By Guest PostJanuary 8, 2011Cultureestrus, fertile women, george Clooney, heterosexual couples, human sexual selection, macho visage, masculine-looking, mid-cycle, randy thornhill, steven gangestad, testosterone, university of colorado at boulder, university of new mexico

When their romantic partners are not quintessentially masculine, women in their fertile phase are more likely to fantasize about masculine-looking men than are women paired with George Clooney types.

But women with masculine-looking partners do not necessarily become more attracted to their partners, a recent study co-authored by a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher concludes. (more…)

Mammals Grew 1,000 Times Larger After the Demise of the Dinosaurs

By Guest PostNovember 27, 2010Scienceafrican elephant, body size patterns, deinotherium, dinosaurs, early pleistocene, eocene, Epoch, evolution of body size, extinction of dinosaurs, felisa smith, indricotherium, late-miocene, mammals, oligocene, saran twombly, united states, university of new mexico

*NSF enabled the assembly of an international, interdisciplinary team that was the first to quantitatively document body size patterns over the past 100 million years*

Researchers have demonstrated that the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago paved the way for mammals to get bigger, about a thousand times larger than they had been when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The study, released in the journal Science, is the first to quantitatively document the patterns of body size of mammals after the existence of dinosaurs.

About the Image: The largest land mammals that ever lived, Indricotherium and Deinotherium, would have towered over the living African Elephant. Indricotherium lived during the Eocene to the Oligocene Epoch (37 to 23 million years ago) and reached a mass of 15,000 kg, while Deinotherium was around from the late-Miocene until the early Pleistocene (8.5 to 2.7 million years ago) and weighed as much as 17,000 kg. Image credit: NSF RCN IMPPS (more…)

Tag Archives: university of new mexico

Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

Preserving the Navajo Language, One Interpreter at a Time

Men With Macho Faces Attractive to Fertile Women, Researchers Find

Mammals Grew 1,000 Times Larger After the Demise of the Dinosaurs