scholarly journals Looking for Earthquake Precursors From Space: A Critical Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piergiorgio Picozza ◽  
Livio Conti ◽  
Alessandro Sotgiu

Starting from late seventies, many observations have been reported about observations in space of signals reconciled with earthquakes and claimed as possible preseismic measurements. The detected parameters range from electromagnetic field components (in a large band of frequencies) to plasmas parameters; from particles detection to thermal anomalies; etc. Up to the DEMETER mission, the analyses have been carried out on datasets gathered by not devoted satellites. Even beyond the results obtained, the DEMETER mission has constituted a milestone for space-based investigations of seismo-associated phenomena drawing a baseline for next missions with respect instruments, observational strategy and measurements uncertainty. Nowadays, the CSES-01 satellite – developed within a sino-italian collaboration with the participation also of Austrian Institutes – represents the most advanced mission for investigating near-Earth electromagnetic environment aimed at extending the observation of earthquake precursors to a long time series. The benefit of the mission is even higher by considering that CSES-01 is the first of a program of several LEO small satellites, the second of which will be launched on 2023 with the same instruments and orbit of CSES-01, but with a shift of half of an orbit in order to monitor each trace twice per orbit. The article gives a short survey of space-based observations of preseismic phenomena from the early studies up to the more recent ones, critically reviewing results, hypotheses and trends in this research field. The supposed physical processes proposed to explain the observations are still unable to explain the large variety of the phenomenology, the statistical significance of the results are highly debated, and more in general a common consensus is still missing. Anyway, the investigation of the seismo-associated phenomena from space is a challenge for near future Earth observation.

2003 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Sparovek ◽  
Isabella Clerici De Maria

Erosion tolerance is the most multidisciplinary field of soil erosion research. Scientists have shown lack in ability to adequately analyze the huge list of variables that influence soil loss tolerance definitions. For these the perspectives of erosion made by farmers, environmentalists, society and politicians have to be considered simultaneously. Partial and biased definitions of erosion tolerance may explain not only the polemic nature of the currently suggested values but also, in part, the nonadoption of the desired levels of erosion control. To move towards a solution, considerable changes would have to occur on how this topic is investigated, especially among scientists, who would have to change methods and strategies and extend the perspective of research out of the boundaries of the physical processes and the frontiers of the academy. A more effective integration and communication with the society and farmers, to learn about their perspective of erosion and a multidisciplinary approach, integrating soil, social, economic and environmental sciences are essential for improved erosion tolerance definitions. In the opinion of the authors, soil erosion research is not moving in this direction and a better understanding of erosion tolerance is not to be expected in the near future.


Sociologija ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-332
Author(s):  
Jelena Pesic

Research field of migration has been developing for a long time parallel to and outside mainstream institutional academic sociology and its theoretical foundation. In the last two decades, within the field of migration studies, one specific aspect of the phenomena came to the research focus: gender, as significant factor that influences on motivation for migration, shaping, at the same time, its characteristics and specific experiences. With decisive breakthrough of qualitative methods in social sciences and humanities, as well as with gradual development of postmodern philosophy and feminist theory, gender migration studies have been established as research sub-discipline, with its own theoretical and categorical scientific apparatus (as well as institutional-academic grounding), managing more or less successfully to explain and understand multidimensional character of migration processes. This text represents an attempt to make relatively concise overview of disciplines? historical, theoretical and research field development, as a first step in its broader affirmation within Serbian institutional sociology.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayman Mohamed Alashkar ◽  
Abdullah Abdelazim Hashish ◽  
Adel Aborgela ◽  
Ashraf Salah Metwally ◽  
Hany Sonpol ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose: Students’ approaches to learning are central to the process of learning. There is strong debate about the efficiency of traditional learning program (TLP) and the integrated learning program (ILP) in medical schools. TLP is easy for the students being passive learners and for the tutors playing the role of sage on the stage. ILP is mainly student centered in which the students are active learners with mentoring of their tutors. It is important to know the perspectives of medical school students about both programs as they used to apply TLP in the 1st year and starting ILP from the 2nd year. Methodology: This study adopted quantitative research methodology. We addressed the 2nd and 3rd year medical students. Online survey using the Google forms was applied for data collection. Results: agreement of the integrated program (80.8%) exceeded the traditional (48.5%) especially in improving the communication skills, dealing with new technologies, reinforcement of competencies in the research field, and to less extent for its suitability to be applied in medical schools nowadays, development of desired doctor skills to deal with patients and for provision of good approach for medical practice, and lastly for its suitability to identify and deal with the community needs. There was no statistical significance between both programs regarding support of professionalism values. The disagreement of ILP (19.2%) was much lower than TLP (51.5%). Conclusion: Integrated learning program becomes an innovative tool for learning in medical schools with very good compliance among the medical students.


2013 ◽  
Vol 838-841 ◽  
pp. 2905-2909
Author(s):  
Xue Yu Xiong ◽  
Zhao Yang Su

As the key element of Huizhou culture, Hui-style architecture is one of the masterpieces of Chinese ancient architectures. The Hui-style architecture was highly praised by architecture masters both at home and abroad because of its phenotypic features, such as black tiles, white wall, and horse-like wall; its decoration features, such as tile carving, wood carving, stone carving; and its living features, such as high house, deep well, large lobby. Since most of the Hui-style architectures were built long time ago, had not been repaired for many years, as well as influenced by different kinds of natural hazards, the Hui-style architectures were decayed, eaten by worms, or damaged by fire to different degree. Most of these architectures could not meet the living requirements nowadays with faint light, high humidity, poor sound insulation, badly cracks and corrosion of all kinds of wood components; and needed to be repaired and reinforced badly. Based on this situation, the author believes that the Hui-style architecture would be in its original appearance in front of the word in the near future if the scientific research and proper reinforcement measures were adopted for the reinforcement of the Hui-style architectures.


Author(s):  
Sanϳay Roy

One of the oldest habits of human beings is to chew gum that was continuing from ancient civilizations to the modern world. Chew the gum could be a quiet pleasure that charming people for a long time. The non-food item chewing gum has a long history. The stepwise progress of its development has given us better flavour and additional medicative values. The stress-releasing properties and different medical outcomes have to make chewing gum popular for everyone. Chew the gum isn’t bring solely stripling pleasure, in near future ‘chewing gum’ perhaps use as a part of the drug delivery system. Unfortunately, it has also produced some negative effects. Modern chewing gum is made by non-biodegradable hydrophobic polymer together with artificial sweetener and flavour. So chew this sort of synthetic materials over a long time could produce some adverse effects. Again, because of our irresponsible attitude to toss the waste part of chewing gum anywhere creates some kind of serious environmental litter known as ‘gum pollution’. Therefore this widespread habit causes some sort of nuisance. Thus it’s the time to think how chewing gum offers us additional pleasure and benefits while not hampering human health and surroundings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 498 (1) ◽  
pp. 430-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kartheik G Iyer ◽  
Sandro Tacchella ◽  
Shy Genel ◽  
Christopher C Hayward ◽  
Lars Hernquist ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Understanding the variability of galaxy star formation histories (SFHs) across a range of time-scales provides insight into the underlying physical processes that regulate star formation within galaxies. We compile the SFHs of galaxies at z = 0 from an extensive set of models, ranging from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (Illustris, IllustrisTNG, Mufasa, Simba, EAGLE), zoom simulations (FIRE-2, g14, and Marvel/Justice League), semi-analytic models (Santa Cruz SAM) and empirical models (UniverseMachine), and quantify the variability of these SFHs on different time-scales using the power spectral density (PSD) formalism. We find that the PSDs are well described by broken power laws, and variability on long time-scales (≳1 Gyr) accounts for most of the power in galaxy SFHs. Most hydrodynamical models show increased variability on shorter time-scales (≲300 Myr) with decreasing stellar mass. Quenching can induce ∼0.4−1 dex of additional power on time-scales >1 Gyr. The dark matter accretion histories of galaxies have remarkably self-similar PSDs and are coherent with the in situ star formation on time-scales >3 Gyr. There is considerable diversity among the different models in their (i) power due to star formation rate variability at a given time-scale, (ii) amount of correlation with adjacent time-scales (PSD slope), (iii) evolution of median PSDs with stellar mass, and (iv) presence and locations of breaks in the PSDs. The PSD framework is a useful space to study the SFHs of galaxies since model predictions vary widely. Observational constraints in this space will help constrain the relative strengths of the physical processes responsible for this variability.


2011 ◽  
Vol 403-408 ◽  
pp. 2923-2926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi Jun Zhang ◽  
Wang Sheng Liu

Virtual Reality technology is a hot research field in simulation of complex electromagnetic and its practical environment in the condition of information and high technology war. The paper discussed the main framework of spatial electromagnetic environment computing and simulating, presented realizing method and key arithmetic designing based on Virtual Reality Modeling Language. The work is evidently valuable for quantitative examinations, evaluation, and analysis of complex electromagnetic environment function, diversification, and effect on human beings, electronic units.


1992 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Nicole Borderies

This paper reviews a number of time-dependent phenomena that are relevant to our understanding of the dynamics of planetary rings and that will be investigated using Voyager and Cassini data. A long time baseline may help us decipher the physics of the spokes, understand better the morphology of the F ring and the rigid precession of non-circular ringlets, measure more precisely than has been done so far the satellites' torques and the viscosity of the A ring, and discover small satellites in the Saturnian ring system. Two exciting possibilities are those of determining the recession rates of the small satellites that border the rings, and of observing changes due to viscous diffusion in the irregular structures of the B ring.


2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lineu Cesar Werneck ◽  
Paulo José Lorenzoni ◽  
Vitor A Radünz ◽  
Marco A.T Utiumi ◽  
Cláudia Suemi Kamoi Kay ◽  
...  

The efficacies of immunosuppressive (IMS) and immunomodulatory (IMM) drugs for multiple sclerosis (MS) have been reported in several studies. These agents can reduce relapse rates and lesions observed by magnetic resonance imaging studies. However, the effect of these medications in disability progression over 4 years is rarely examined. OBJECTIVE: To study the disabilities associated with MS patients after a long time period and to analyze the therapeutic influence of different types of treatments in patient disease progression. METHOD: This is an open, uncontrolled, non-randomized, retrospective study of the disease progression using the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and the Multiple Sclerosis Severity Score (MSSS) in 155 cases of MS, which were 76% female with a mean age of onset of 30.21±9.70. The follow-up period was 115.39±88.08 months (median 92, 3 to 447 months). These cases were submitted to the following 277 different therapeutic procedures: 62 without IMS or IMM therapy (SYT) (just corticosteroids), 53 with azathioprine (AZA), 53 interferon-β (IFNβ)-1b 250 µg (BET), 55 IFNβ-1a 22 µg (R22), 19 IFNβ-1a 30 µg (AVO), 15 IFNβ-1a 44 µg (R44), 15 glatiramer acetate (COP) 20 mg, and 5 cases with mitoxantrone (MIT). RESULTS: The median EDSS group was 2.00 (0 to 5.5, mean 1.89±1.52) at the onset of each treatment and 2.50 (0 to 9, mean 3.06±2.18) at the end. The median initial MSSS was 3.34 (0.25 to 9.50, mean 3.94±2.91) and the final medial was 3.90 (0.05 to 9.88, mean 4.02±2.78). The EDSS between initial and final score for the whole group had statistically significant progression, as well as for the sub-groups SYT, AZA, BET and R22. No statistically significance difference was found in the MSSS between initial and final scores in the whole group or treatment sub-groups. The variation between the initial and final EDSS and MSSS among the types of treatments found no statistical significance for any group. CONCLUSION: In this study series, no statistical difference was found in the long-term progression of disability among the IMS and IMM treated cases, nor in the cases treated only with corticosteroids.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 3787-3809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ehud Strobach ◽  
Golan Bel

Abstract Ensembles of climate models are commonly used to improve decadal climate predictions and assess the uncertainties associated with them. Weighting the models according to their performances holds the promise of further improving their predictions. Here, an ensemble of decadal climate predictions is used to demonstrate the ability of sequential learning algorithms (SLAs) to reduce the forecast errors and reduce the uncertainties. Three different SLAs are considered, and their performances are compared with those of an equally weighted ensemble, a linear regression, and the climatology. Predictions of four different variables—the surface temperature, the zonal and meridional wind, and pressure—are considered. The spatial distributions of the performances are presented, and the statistical significance of the improvements achieved by the SLAs is tested. The reliability of the SLAs is also tested, and the advantages and limitations of the different measures of the performance are discussed. It was found that the best performances of the SLAs are achieved when the learning period is comparable to the prediction period. The spatial distribution of the SLAs performance showed that they are skillful and better than the other forecasting methods over large continuous regions. This finding suggests that, despite the fact that each of the ensemble models is not skillful, they were able to capture some physical processes that resulted in deviations from the climatology and that the SLAs enabled the extraction of this additional information.


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