630 research outputs found
Governing the recovery from the Canterbury earthquakes 2010 -11: the debate over institutional design
No full textThe quake caused significant damage to the Canterbury region with power outages, ruptured pipes, falling masonry, collapsed buildings, and liquefaction 1 across the region. The majority of the damage was sustained in particular areas of Christchurch city and in parts of Kaiapoi in the Waimakariri district. Nevertheless, the earthquake was economically significant, with damage of approximately $5 billion (Treasury, 2011).
While Canterbury faced a massive clean-up and long recovery, fortunately no lives were lost, largely because the majority of residents were in bed, the location of the sparsely populated epicentre, and the quality of New Zealand’s strict building codes. The region faced over 1,400 aftershocks in the month following the September quake (Parliamentary Library, 2010). Aftershocks continued in the coming months, the most significant and damaging of which was a 4.9 magnitude quake on Boxing Day 2010.
This quake produced more intense shaking than the September 4 th quake at its epicentre, with peak ground movements of 48% of the acceleration of gravity compared to 15% to 20% on September 4 th (Gorman, 2010). However, the Boxing Day quake was shorter, so less damaging
Sviluppo di una piattaforma microfluidica automatizzata per la misura ad alta risoluzione del consumo di glucosio in tessuto adiposo e muscolare
No full textQuake: Quality-aware detection and correction of sequencing errors
No full textWe introduce Quake, a program to detect and correct errors in DNA sequencing reads. Using a maximum likelihood approach incorporating quality values and nucleotide specific miscall rates, Quake achieves the highest accuracy on realistically simulated reads. We further demonstrate substantial improvements in de novo assembly and SNP detection after using Quake. Quake can be used for any size project, including more than one billion human reads, and is freely available as open source software from http://www.cbcb.umd.edu/software/quake. © 2010 Kelley et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd
Scaling Properties of a Low-Actuation Pressure Microfluidic Valve
No full textUsing basic physical arguments, we present a design and method for the fabrication of microfluidic valves using multilayer soft lithography. These on-off valves have extremely low actuation pressures and can be used to fabricate active functions, such as pumps and mixers in integrated microfluidic chips. We characterized the performance of the valves by measuring both the actuation pressure and flow resistance over a wide range of design parameters, and compared them to both finite element simulations and alternative valve geometries
Post-disaster mobilities: exploring household relocation after the Canterbury earthquakes
No full textThis thesis examines the relocation process and experience of disaster of those within the Southshore red-zone, after the Canterbury earthquake sequence.
Abstract: During 2010 and 2011, a series of major earthquakes caused widespread damage in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. The magnitude 6.3 quake in February 2011 caused 185 fatalities. In the ensuing months, the government progressively zoned residential land in Christchurch on the basis of its suitability for future occupation (considering damage from these quakes and future earthquake risk). Over 6,000 homes were placed in the ‘red-zone’, meaning that property owners were forced to sell their land to the Crown. This study analysed patterns of residential mobility amongst thirty-one red-zone households from the suburb of Southshore, Christchurch. Drawing on interviews and surveys, the research traced their experience from the zoning announcement until they had moved to a new residence.
The research distinguished between short (before the zoning announcement) and long term (post the red zone ‘deadline’) forms of household relocation. The majority of households in the study were highly resistant to short term movement. Amongst those which did relocate before the zoning decision, the desire to maintain a valued social connection with a person outside of the earthquake environment was often an important factor. Some households also moved out of perceived necessity (e.g. due to lack of power or water).
In terms of long-term relocation, concepts of affordability and safety were much more highly valued by the sample when purchasing post-quake property. This resulted in a distinct patterning of post-quake housing location choices. Perceived control over the moving process, relationship with government organisations and insurance companies, and time spent in the red-zone before moving all heavily influenced participants’ disaster experience. Contrary to previous studies, households in this study recorded higher levels of subjective well-being after relocating.
The study proposed a typology of movers in the Christchurch post-disaster environment. Four mobility behaviours, or types, are identified: the Committed Stayers (CSs), the Environment Re-Creators (ERCs), the Resigned Acceptors (RAs), and the Opportunistic Movers (OMs). The CSs were defined by their immobility rather than their relocation aspirations, whilst the ERCs attempted to recreate or retain aspects of Southshore through their mobility. The RAs expressed a form of apathy towards the post-quake environment, whereas, on the other hand, the OMs moved relative to pre-
earthquake plans, or opportunities that arose from the earthquake itself.
Possibilities for further research include examining household adaptability to new residential environments and tracking further mobility patterns in the years following relocation from the red-zone
Visualizing a protein quake with time-resolved X-ray scattering at a free-electron laser
No full textWe describe a method to measure ultrafast protein structural changes using time-resolved wide-angle X-ray scattering at an X-ray free-electron laser. We demonstrated this approach using multiphoton excitation of the Blastochloris viridis photosynthetic reaction center, observing an ultrafast global conformational change that arises within picoseconds and precedes the propagation of heat through the protein. This provides direct structural evidence for a 'protein quake': the hypothesis that proteins rapidly dissipate energy through quake-like structural motions
Automatic Discrimination among Landslide, Explosion-Quake, and Microtremor Seismic Signals at Stromboli Volcano Using Neural Networks.
No full textIn this article we report on the implementation of an automatic system
for discriminating landslide seismic signals on Stromboli island (southern Italy). This
is a critical point for monitoring the evolution of this volcanic island, where at the
end of 2002 a violent tsunami occurred, triggered by a big landslide. We have devised
a supervised neural system to discriminate among landslide, explosion-quake, and
volcanic microtremor signals. We first preprocess the data using a compact representation
of the seismic records. Both spectral features and amplitude-versus-time
information have been extracted from the data to characterize the different types of
events. As a second step, we have set up a supervised classification system, trained
using a subset of data (the training set) and tested on another data set (the test set)
not used during the training stage. The automatic system that we have realized is
able to correctly classify 99% of the events in the test set for both explosion-quake/
landslide and explosion-quake/microtremor couples of classes, 96% for landslide/
microtremor discrimination, and 97% for three-class discrimination (landslides/
explosion-quakes/microtremor). Finally, to determine the intrinsic structure of the
data and to test the efficiency of our parameterization strategy, we have analyzed the
preprocessed data using an unsupervised neural method. We apply this method to
the entire dataset composed of landslide, microtremor, and explosion-quake signals.
The unsupervised method is able to distinguish three clusters corresponding to the
three classes of signals classified by the analysts, demonstrating that the parameterization
technique characterizes the different classes of data appropriately.Published1230-1240reserve
Additional file 5: Figure S4. of Long-term microfluidic tracking of coccoid cyanobacterial cells reveals robust control of division timing
No full textMethod of cell volume extraction from bright-field images. Since the image of each cell represents its two-dimensional projection, we assume that each cell is rotationally symmetric with respect to its major axis. Based on this assumption, to compute the volume of each cell (or doublet), we first extract the orientation of its major axis. Then, we add up the volumes of circular disks perpendicular to the major axis with thicknesses of one pixel. (PDF 354Â kb
Reducing People?s Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Communities and Resilience
No full textThe concepts vulnerability, resilience and community are widely used and abused in the literature on natural hazards and disaster risk reduction. This paper seeks to bring greater rigour in their use. In particular, vulnerability must be understood as a set of socioeconomic conditions that are identifiable in relation to particular hazard risks, and therefore perform a predictive role that can assist in risk reduction. Resilience is often confused as a concept, sometimes seen as the inverse of vulnerability, and by others as an independent quality. These confusions may be especially relevant in the context of §policy for disaster risk reduction at the scale of community. Here there is often an idealized notion of community as undifferentiated and unproblematic. Vulnerability (to natural hazards) should be understood in the context of the individual and household as being composed of five (interacting) components: livelihood, base-line status, self-protection, social protection, and governance. The paper highlights the key problems associated with disconnections between these that result in rising vulnerability. In particular, it examines vulnerability in the context of the current expansion of interest in community based disaster preparedness (or management). For this to be effective, a clear analysis is essential of the relations between disaster preparedness and governance, especially the way that power operates at the community level. The ways in which community can operate to support, undermine or be irrelevant to disaster preparedness are analysed. It concludes by suggesting the conditions that are required for community to have any real significance as a component of risk reduction.household analysis, political economy, economic development, vulnerability, resilience, community, natural hazards, disaster
Alfvén seismic vibrations of crustal solid-state plasma in quaking paramagnetic neutron star
No full textMagneto-solid-mechanical model of two-component, core-crust, paramagnetic neutron star responding to quake-induced perturbation by differentially rotational, torsional, oscillations of crustal electron-nuclear solid-state plasma about axis of magnetic field frozen in the immobile paramagnetic core is developed. Particular attention is given to the node-free torsional crust-against-core vibrations under combined action of Lorentz magnetic and Hooke's elastic forces; the damping is attributed to Newtonian force of shear viscose stresses in crustal solid-state plasma. The spectral formulas for the frequency and lifetime of this toroidal mode are derived in analytic form and discussed in the context of quasiperiodic oscillations of the x-ray outburst flux from quaking magnetars. The application of obtained theoretical spectra to modal analysis of available data on frequencies of oscillating outburst emission suggests that detected variability is the manifestation of crustal Alfvén's seismic vibrations restored by Lorentz force of magnetic field stresses. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio
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