Impact of New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquakes on the Central USA, Vol. 1 and 2

The information presented in this report has been developed to support the Catastrophic Earthquake Planning Scenario workshops held by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Four FEMA Regions (Regions IV, V, VI and VII) were involved in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) scenario workshops. The four FEMA Regions include eight states, namely Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. The earthquake impact assessment presented hereafter employs an analysis methodology comprising three major components: hazard, inventory and fragility (or vulnerability). The hazard characterizes not only the shaking of the ground but also the consequential transient and permanent deformation of the ground due to strong ground shaking as well as fire and flooding. The inventory comprises all assets in a specific region, including the built environment and population data. Fragility or vulnerability functions relate the severity of shaking to the likelihood of reaching or exceeding damage states (light, moderate, extensive and near-collapse, for example). Social impact models are also included and employ physical infrastructure damage results to estimate the effects on exposed communities. Whereas the modeling software packages used (HAZUS MR3; FEMA, 2008; and MAEviz, Mid-America Earthquake Center, 2008) provide default values for all of the above, most of these default values were replaced by components of traceable provenance and higher reliability than the default data, as described below. The hazard employed in this investigation includes ground shaking for a single scenario event representing the rupture of all three New Madrid fault segments. The NMSZ consists of three fault segments: the northeast segment, the reelfoot thrust or central segment, and the southwest segment. Each segment is assumed to generate a deterministic magnitude 7.7 (Mw7.7) earthquake caused by a rupture over the entire length of the segment. US Geological Survey (USGS) approved the employed magnitude and hazard approach. The combined rupture of all three segments simultaneously is designed to approximate the sequential rupture of all three segments over time. The magnitude of Mw7.7 is retained for the combined rupture. Full liquefaction susceptibility maps for the entire region have been developed and are used in this study. Inventory is enhanced through the use of the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) 2007 and 2008 Gold Datasets (NGA Office of America, 2007). These datasets contain various types of critical infrastructure that are key inventory components for earthquake impact assessment. Transportation and utility facility inventories are improved while regional natural gas and oil pipelines are added to the inventory, alongside high potential loss facility inventories. The National Bridge Inventory (NBI, 2008) and other state and independent data sources are utilized to improve the inventory. New fragility functions derived by the MAE Center are employed in this study for both buildings and bridges providing more regionally-applicable estimations of damage for these infrastructure components. Default fragility values are used to determine damage likelihoods for all other infrastructure components. The study reports new analysis using MAE Center-developed transportation network flow models that estimate changes in traffic flow and travel time due to earthquake damage. Utility network modeling was also undertaken to provide damage estimates for facilities and pipelines. An approximate flood risk model was assembled to identify areas that are likely to be flooded as a result of dam or levee failure. Social vulnerability identifies portions of the eight-state study region that are especially vulnerable due to various factors such as age, income, disability, and language proficiency. Social impact models include estimates of displaced and shelter-seeking populations as well as commodities and medical requirements. Lastly, search and rescue requirements quantify the number of teams and personnel required to clear debris and search for trapped victims. The results indicate that Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri are most severely impacted. Illinois and Kentucky are also impacted, though not as severely as the previous three states. Nearly 715,000 buildings are damaged in the eight-state study region. About 42,000 search and rescue personnel working in 1,500 teams are required to respond to the earthquakes. Damage to critical infrastructure (essential facilities, transportation and utility lifelines) is substantial in the 140 impacted counties near the rupture zone, including 3,500 damaged bridges and nearly 425,000 breaks and leaks to both local and interstate pipelines. Approximately 2.6 million households are without power after the earthquake. Nearly 86,000 injuries and fatalities result from damage to infrastructure. Nearly 130 hospitals are damaged and most are located in the impacted counties near the rupture zone. There is extensive damage and substantial travel delays in both Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, thus hampering search and rescue as well as evacuation. Moreover roughly 15 major bridges are unusable. Three days after the earthquake, 7.2 million people are still displaced and 2 million people seek temporary shelter. Direct economic losses for the eight states total nearly $300 billion, while indirect losses may be at least twice this amount. The contents of this report provide the various assumptions used to arrive at the impact estimates, detailed background on the above quantitative consequences, and a breakdown of the figures per sector at the FEMA region and state levels. The information is presented in a manner suitable for personnel and agencies responsible for establishing response plans based on likely impacts of plausible earthquakes in the central USA.Armu W0132T-06-02unpublishednot peer reviewe

Observational Evidence of For-Profit Delivery and Inferior Nursing Home Care: When Is There Enough Evidence for Policy Change?

This research was financially supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Restricting Glycolysis Preserves T Cell Effector Functions and Augments Checkpoint Therapy

Tumor-derived lactic acid inhibits T and natural killer (NK) cell function and, thereby, tumor immunosurveillance. Here, we report that melanoma patients with high expression of glycolysis-related genes show a worse progression free survival upon anti-PD1 treatment. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) diclofenac lowers lactate secretion of tumor cells and improves anti-PD1-induced T cell killing in vitro. Surprisingly, diclofenac, but not other NSAIDs, turns out to be a potent inhibitor of the lactate transporters monocarboxylate transporter 1 and 4 and diminishes lactate efflux. Notably, T cell activation, viability, and effector functions are preserved under diclofenac treatment and in a low glucose environment in vitro. Diclofenac, but not aspirin, delays tumor growth and improves the efficacy of checkpoint therapy in vivo. Moreover, genetic suppression of glycolysis in tumor cells strongly improves checkpoint therapy. These findings support the rationale for targeting glycolysis in patients with high glycolytic tumors together with checkpoint inhibitors in clinical trials

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

KLK3 SNP-SNP interactions for prediction of prostate cancer aggressiveness

Risk classification for prostate cancer (PCa) aggressiveness and underlying mechanisms remain inadequate. Interactions between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) may provide a solution to fill these gaps. To identify SNP-SNP interactions in the four pathways (the angiogenesis-, mitochondria-, miRNA-, and androgen metabolism-related pathways) associated with PCa aggressiveness, we tested 8587 SNPs for 20,729 cases from the PCa consortium. We identified 3 KLK3 SNPs, and 1083 (P-9) and 3145 (P-5) SNP-SNP interaction pairs significantly associated with PCa aggressiveness. These SNP pairs associated with PCa aggressiveness were more significant than each of their constituent SNP individual effects. The majority (98.6%) of the 3145 pairs involved KLK3. The 3 most common gene-gene interactions were KLK3-COL4A1:COL4A2, KLK3-CDH13, and KLK3-TGFBR3. Predictions from the SNP interaction-based polygenic risk score based on 24 SNP pairs are promising. The prevalence of PCa aggressiveness was 49.8%, 21.9%, and 7.0% for the PCa cases from our cohort with the top 1%, middle 50%, and bottom 1% risk profiles. Potential biological functions of the identified KLK3 SNP-SNP interactions were supported by gene expression and protein-protein interaction results. Our findings suggest KLK3 SNP interactions may play an important role in PCa aggressiveness.</p

Impact of Earthquakes on the Central USA

The region of potential impact due to earthquake activity in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) is comprised of eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. Moreover, the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone (WVSZ) in southern Illinois and southeast Indiana and the East Tennessee Seismic Zone in eastern Tennessee and northeastern Alabama constitute significant risk of moderate-to-severe earthquakes throughout the central region of the USA. The investigation summarized in this report includes earthquake impact assessment scenarios completed using HAZUS-MH MR2 for several potential earthquake scenarios affecting the aforementioned eight-state region. The NMSZ includes eight scenarios - one for each state - whilst the WVSZ scenario in Indiana and the ETSZ scenario in Alabama complete the suite of ten total scenarios. These ten scenarios are designed to provide scientificallycredible, worst case damage and loss estimates for the purposes of emergency planning, response and recovery. The earthquake impact assessments presented in this report employ an analysis methodology comprising three major components; namely hazard, inventory and fragility (or vulnerability). The hazard characterizes not only the shaking of the ground but also the consequential transient and permanent deformation of the ground due to strong ground shaking. The inventory comprises all assets in a specified region, including the built environment and population data. Fragility or vulnerability functions relate the severity of shaking to the likelihood of reaching or exceeding damage states (light, moderate, extensive and near-collapse, for example). Social impact models are also included in the current assessment methodology and employ infrastructure damage results to estimate the effects on populations subjected to the earthquake. Whereas the modeling software used (HAZUS-MH MR2, FEMA-NIBS, 2006) provides default values for all of the above, most of these default values were replaced by components of traceable provenance and higher reliability than the default data, as described below. The hazard employed in this investigation includes ground shaking for three seismic zones and various events within those zones. The NMSZ consists of three fault segments: the northeast segment, the reelfoot thrust or central segment, and the southwest segment. Each segment comprises a deterministic, magnitude 7.7 (Mw7.7) earthquake caused by a rupture over the entire length of the segment. The employed magnitude was provided by US Geological Survey (USGS). The NMSZ represents the first of three hazard events utilized in this report. Two deterministic events are also included, namely a magnitude Mw7.1 in the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone (WVSZ) and a magnitude Mw5.9 in the East Tennessee Seismic Zone (ETSZ) earthquakes. Permanent ground deformation is characterized by a liquefaction susceptibility map that provides data for part of the eight states. Full liquefaction susceptibility maps for the entire region are still under development and will be utilized in subsequent phases of the current project. Inventory is enhanced through the use of the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) 2007 Gold Dataset (NGA Office of America, 2007). This dataset contains various types of critical infrastructure that are key inventory components for earthquake impact assessment. Transportation and utility facility inventories are improved while regional natural gas and oil pipelines are added to the inventory, alongside some high potential loss facility inventories. Additional essential facilities data were used for the State of Illinois via another impact assessment project at the Mid-America Earthquake Center, funded by FEMA and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Existing HAZUSMH MR2 fragility functions are utilized in this study and default values are used to determine damage likelihoods for all infrastructure components. The results indicate that the State of Tennessee incurs the highest level of damage and social impacts. Over 250,000 buildings are moderately or more severely damaged, over 260,000 people are displaced and well over 60,000 casualties (injuries and fatalities) are expected. Total direct economic losses surpass $56 billion. The State of Missouri also incurs substantial damage and loss, though estimates are less than those in Tennessee. Well over 80,000 buildings are damaged leaving more than 120,000 people displaced and causing over 15,000 casualties. Total direct economic losses in Missouri reach nearly$40 billion. Kentucky and Illinois also incur significant losses with total direct economic losses reaching approximately $45 and$35 billion, respectively. The State of Arkansas incurs nearly $19 billion in direct economic loss while the State of Mississippi incurs$9.5 billion in direct economic losses. States such as Indiana and Alabama experience limited damage and loss from NMSZ events with approximately $1.5 and$1.0 billion, respectively. Noting that experience confirms that the indirect economic loss due to business interpretation and loss of market share, amongst other features, is at least as high if not much higher than the direct economic losses, the total economic impact of a series of NMSZ earthquakes is likely to constitute by far the highest economic loss due to a natural disaster in the USA. The contents of this report provide the various assumptions used to arrive at the impact estimates, detailed background to the above figures, and a breakdown of the figures per sector at the county and state levels. The main body of the report gives state-level impact assessments, whilst the Appendices give earthquake impact modeling results at the county level. The results are designed to provide emergency managers and agencies with information required to establish response plans based on likely impacts of plausible earthquakes in the central USA.Army W9132T-06-02unpublishednot peer reviewe

New Madrid Seismic Zone Catastrophic Earthquake Response Planning

The New Madrid seismic zone in the Central USA has experienced some of the strongest earthquake ground motions observed nationwide. The historic series of three earthquakes during 1811 and 1812 shook this Midwest region with magnitudes around 8. The earthquakes were extensively reported. However, limited damage occurred because of the area was sparsely populated. A recurrence of the 1811 and 1812 earthquakes would cause widespread and severely impacts affecting over 45 million residents of the states surrounding the New Madrid seismic zone. A repeat of these historical events would subject the major urban center of Memphis, Tennessee to intense ground shaking while other urban centers such as St. Louis, Missouri, would experience less intense shaking. This does not indicate that St. Louis is less vulnerable, however. Though not undertaken in this report, subsequent work will include the examination of other hazard scenario within the region of interest. These scenarios will represent seismic activity in the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone of M7.1 as well as near St. Louis, Missouri, of M6.0.published or submitted for publicatio