A news article from University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign can be seen at the link below - a study on noise and avalanches - in realtion to earthquakes. It was taken from a news release at University of Illinois at Urbana.

I can't find the original articel on this but here is the home page of one of the authors: http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/People/Faculty/profiles/Dahmen/
There are a few articles written at her site about the subject - none seem recent as this news article.

Here's a site linked from her advisor at Cornell: http://SimScience.org/crackling/ - kinda fun

Here is the advisor, James P. Sethna's site: http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/sethna.html

• Crackling Noise In Cereal And Magnets Aids Study Of Earthquakes