Permeability measurements and precipitation sealing of basalt in an ancient exhumed subduction-zone fault

We conducted permeability measurements of basalt sampled from an exhumed ancient fault zone in the Cretaceous Shimanto accretionary complex in Japan, in order to investigate permeability structure and evolution following shear failure. Permeability showed a strong reduction with increase in the effective confining pressure and temperature. Rapid sealing at elevated temperatures was observed during hold experiments following shear failure. The results indicate that the permeability of a subduction megathrust fault would rapidly decrease due to the precipitation of clay-like minerals and other minerals, and indicates the potential for high fluid pressure in fault zones

SmellControl: the study of sense of agency in smell

The Sense of Agency (SoA) is crucial in interaction with technology, it refers to the feeling of 'I did that' as opposed to 'the system did that' supporting a feeling of being in control. Research in human-computer interaction has recently studied agency in visual, auditory and haptic interfaces, however the role of smell on agency remains unknown. Our sense of smell is quite powerful to elicit emotions, memories and awareness of the environment, which has been exploited to enhance user experiences (e.g., in VR and driving scenarios). In light of increased interest in designing multimodal interfaces including smell and its close link with emotions, we investigated, for the first time, the effect of smell-induced emotions on the SoA. We conducted a study using the Intentional Binding (IB) paradigm used to measure SoA while participants were exposed to three scents with different valence (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral). Our results show that participants? SoA increased with a pleasant scent compared to neutral and unpleasant scents. We discuss how our results can inform the design of multimodal and future olfactory interfaces