Tuned in to the Earth … from the school EduSismo: the French educational seismological network

2013 ◽  
Vol 184 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 183-187
Author(s):  
Jean-Luc Berenguer ◽  
Françoise Courboulex ◽  
Audrey Tocheport ◽  
Marie-Paule Bouin

Abstract Earthquakes are both troubling and fascinating because of their suddenness, the terrible destruction they can wreak and because they still remain unpredictable. This is why emphasis must be placed on preparation, especially in the school system where causes and effects of these hazards are studied. But trying to explain earthquakes, scrutinizing the earth’s depths, taking on the planet internal dynamics… entail moving into the inaccessible. In this respect seismology is a source of complexity and fascination. Scientific culture is thus at the heart of seismic risk instruction. All of this is in what the “SISMOS à l’École” curriculum is involved, by implementing an educational program that allows a natural risk culture to be engaged through a scientific and technological approach. The original and innovative aspect of this programme stems from giving students the opportunity to install a seismometer in their school. The recorded signals, reflecting regional or global seismic activity, feed into an on-line database, a genuine seismic resource centre and a springboard for educational and scientific activities. The network ‘EduSismo’ (numbering some sixty stations installed in metropolitan France, the overseas departments and territories and a few French high schools abroad) is the outgrowth of an experiment conducted in the Alpes-Maritimes area some twelve years back. Since then, the programme implemented has gone beyond simply acquiring seismic signals, which has been procured by research and monitoring centres. By appropriating a scientific measurement, the student becomes personally involved and masters complex concepts about geophysics and geosciences. The development of simple devices and the design of concrete experiments associated with an investigative approach make it possible to instill the students, these future citizens, a high-quality scientific culture and an education about risks. Today, this programme is expanding. New initiatives with Italian, British and Swiss partners are being put in place to share experiences and data in Europe.

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 321-335
Author(s):  
Marco Vona

Background: Seismic risk mitigation is an important issue in earthquake-prone countries, and needs to be solved in those complex communities governed by complex processes, where urban planning, socioeconomic dynamics, and, often, the need to preserve cultural assets are present simultaneously. In recent years, due to limited financial resources, mitigation activities have often been limited to post-earthquake events, and only a few in periods of inactivity, particularly in urban planning. At this point, a significant change in point of view is necessary. Methods: The seismic risk mitigation (and more generally, natural risk mitigation) must be considered as the main topic in urban planning and in the governance of communities. In fact, in several recent earthquakes, significant socioeconomic losses have been caused by the low or lack of resilience of the communities. This is mainly due to the high vulnerability of private buildings, in particular, housing units. Results: Therefore, in recent years, several studies have been conducted on the seismic resilience of communities. However, significant improvements are still needed for the resilience assessment of the housing stock, both qualitatively and quantitatively. In this study, which is applied to the housing system, a proposal regarding a change in urban planning and emergency management tools based on the concept of resilience is reported. As a first application, a case study in Italy is considered. Conclusion: The proposal is focused on defining and quantifying the improvement of the resilience of the communities and this must be obtained by modifying the current Civil Protection plan. New tools are based on a new resilience community plan by encompassing urban planning tools, resilient mitigation strategies, and consequently, emergency management planning.


1990 ◽  
Vol 80 (6B) ◽  
pp. 1934-1950 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. F. Kushnir ◽  
V. M. Lapshin ◽  
V. I. Pinsky ◽  
J. Fyen

Abstract A generalization of Capon's maximum-likelihood technique for detection and estimation of seismic signals is introduced. By using a multi-dimensional autoregressive approximation of seismic array noise, we have developed a technique to use Capon's multi-channel filter for on-line processing. Such autoregressive adaptation to the curent noise matrix power spectrum is shown to yield good suppression of mutually correlated array noise processes. As an example, this technique is applied to detection of a small Semipalatinsk underground explosion recorded at the ARCESS array.


2011 ◽  
Vol 186 ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Li Cao ◽  
Wen Chen ◽  
Jun Xiao

Video processing technology is regarded as a low-cost detection technology in complex environment. Because the placement layer is thin and the surface is complex that causes high detection error and high cost in laser measurement. Two problems must be solved before using it in large-scale composite structures automatic placement. One is to obtain the high-quality and stable image, and the other is to improve efficiency of image processing. In this paper, a method obtaining the high quality placement gap images was studied. It made use of the optical characteristics of composite material’s surface texture. And some parameters were determined by experiments. To reduce the calculation cost of image processing, a placement gap measurement method based on line scanning was also proposed here. The method was effective in our detection experiments on an actual workpiece.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 511-512
Author(s):  
Paul Salkovskis

Take a look at our circulation and impact! As a journal we are high on circulation (about 10000 print copies including those to members, and an additional very substantial on-line readership). Our impact factor, which reflects the extent of attention our articles get in terms of citations by researchers worldwide, has been modest but steadily increasing. We are pleased to announce a further improvement in our Impact factor, from a healthy 1.491 in the previous year to its current 1.692. The Journal has also climbed 10 places in its subject category (Psychology, Clinical) and is now ranked higher than Cognitive Therapy and Research. This places us in an excellent position in the field. This is extremely good news, as it means that we are even more likely to be a target for high quality articles with the combination of good academic quality and clinical relevance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1075-1097
Author(s):  
A. Sarkissian ◽  
J. Slusser

Abstract. Water vapor total column measurements at Observatoire de Haute Provence (5°42' E, +43°55' N), south of France, were obtained using observations of astronomical objects made between July 1994 and December 2004 on the 193-cm telescope with the high-resolution spectrometer Elodie. Spectra of stars, nebulae, and other astronomical objects were taken regularly during 10 years. More than 18 000 spectra from 400 nm to 680 nm are available on-line in the Elodie Archive. This archive, usually explored by astronomers, contains information to study the atmosphere of the Earth. Water vapor absorption lines appear in the visible in delimited bands that astronomers often avoid for their spectral analysis. We used the Elodie Archive with two objectives: firstly, to retrieve seasonal variability and long-term trend of atmospheric water vapor, and secondly, to remove signatures in spectra for further astronomical or geophysical use. The tools presented here are developed following, when possible, formats and standards recommended by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Pascoe ◽  
David Hassell ◽  
Martina Stockhause ◽  
Mark Greenslade

<div>The Earth System Documentation (ES-DOC) project aims to nurture an ecosystem of tools & services in support of Earth System documentation creation, analysis and dissemination. Such an ecosystem enables the scientific community to better understand and utilise Earth system model data.</div><div>The ES-DOC infrastructure for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) modelling groups to describe their climate models and make the documentation available on-line has been available for 18 months, and more recently the automatic generation of documentation of every published simulation has meant that every CMIP6 dataset within the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) is now immediately connected to the ES-DOC description of the entire workflow that created it, via a “further info URL”.</div><div>The further info URL is a landing page from which all of the relevant CMIP6 documentation relevant to the data may be accessed, including experimental design, model formulation and ensemble description, as well as providing links to the data citation information.</div><div>These DOI landing pages are part of the Citation Service, provided by DKRZ. Data citation information is also available independently through the ESGF Search portal or in the DataCite search or Google’s dataset search. It provides users of CMIP6 data with the formal citation that should accompany any use of the datasets that comprise their analysis.</div><div>ES-DOC services and the Citation Service form a CMIP6 project  collaboration, and depend upon structured documentation provided by the scientific community. Structured scientific metadata has an important role in science communication, however it’s creation and collation exacts a cost in time, energy and attention.  We discuss progress towards a balance between the ease of information collection and the complexity of our information handling structures.</div><div> </div><div>CMIP6: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/CMIP6/</div><div>ES-DOC: https://es-doc.org/</div><div>Further Info URL: https://es-doc.org/cmip6-ensembles-further-info-url</div><div> <p>Citation Service: http://cmip6cite.wdc-climate.de</p> </div>


Africa ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc de Heusch

Opening ParagraphWestern scientific culture finds itself in a singular position with respect to the magico-religious system embodied in medieval culture from which, after strenuous resistence from the contemporary ecclesiastical authorities, it originally broke free. That is to say, it has still not succeeded in forming a theory concerning that very class of phenomena with which it was sometimes obliged violently to struggle in order to constitute itself as an autonomous discipline. And we, despite the proliferation of ethnographic and historical studies of extremely high quality, are hardly more advanced than in 1902, when Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert (1950: 138) wrote: ‘Until now the history of religions has relied on a rag-bag of vague ideas … the science of religions does not yet possess a scientific nomenclature’.


Author(s):  
V. L. Semenov-Tyan-Shanskiy ◽  
◽  
A.S. Bal’tserovich ◽  
A.N. Sazonova ◽  
O.A. Loginovskaya ◽  
...  

This article presents the history and structure of the school of clinical trials monitors in Russia, the reasons for its opening in 2011, as well as the results of a survey of graduates. The authors discuss in detail what tasks they faced in creating a high-quality, modern, interactive educational program that is sustainable in the long term. Shows the important role of collaboration between academic institutions and business companies directly involved in clinical research on a daily basis. The structure of the course is presented, as well as teaching materials and electronic systems and technologies are used. Separately, the experience of operating a school during the COVID-19 pandemic is given, an analysis of the course functioning in fully online format, the positive and negative aspects of this approach. The second part of the article presents the results of a survey of graduates of the course for 9 years: from their satisfaction with training, to their further professional career (a total of 8 questions). In conclusion, the authors present their personal attitude to this educational project.


Author(s):  
Alfredo Benso ◽  
Stefano Di Carlo ◽  
Alessandro Savino

The very strict safety standards, which must be guaranteed in a railway system, make the testing of all electronic components a unique and challenging case study. Software-based self-test represents a very attractive test solution to cope with the problem of on-line and off-line testing of microprocessor-based systems. It makes it possible to deeply test hardware components without introducing extra hardware and stressing the system in its operational condition. This chapter overviews the basic principles of software-based self-test techniques, focusing on a set of best practices to be applied in writing, verifying and computing the final test coverage of high-quality test programs for railway systems.


2000 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 190-195
Author(s):  
J. Souchay

AbstractDespite the fact that the main causes of the differences between the observed Earth nutation and that derived from analytical calculations come from geophysical effects associated with nonrigidity (core flattening, core-mantle interactions, oceans, etc…), efforts have been made recently to compute the nutation of the Earth when it is considered to be a rigid body, giving birth to several “rigid Earth nutation models.” The reason for these efforts is that any coefficient of nutation for a realistic Earth (including effects due to nonrigidity) is calculated starting from a coefficient for a rigid-Earth model, using a frequency-dependent transfer function. Therefore it is important to achieve high quality in the determination of rigid-Earth nutation coefficients, in order to isolate the nonrigid effects still not well-modeled.After reviewing various rigid-Earth nutation models which have been established recently and their relative improvement with respect to older ones, we discuss their specifics and their degree of agreement.


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