Assessing the vulnerability of buildings to tsunami in Sydney

Australia is vulnerable to the impacts of tsunamis and exposure along the SE coast of New South Wales is especially high. Significantly, this is the same area reported to have been affected by repeated large magnitude tsunamis during the Holocene. Efforts are under way to complete probabilistic risk assessments for the region but local government planners and emergency risk managers need information now about building vulnerability in order to develop appropriate risk management strategies. We use the newly revised PTVA-3 Model (Dall'Osso et al., 2009) to assess the relative vulnerability of buildings to damage from a "worst case tsunami" defined by our latest understanding of regional risk – something never before undertaken in Australia. We present selected results from an investigation of building vulnerability within the local government area of Manly – an iconic coastal area of Sydney. We show that a significant proportion of buildings (in particular, residential structures) are classified as having "High" and "Very High" Relative Vulnerability Index scores. Furthermore, other important buildings (e.g., schools, nursing homes and transport structures) are also vulnerable to damage. Our results have serious implications for immediate emergency risk management, longer-term land-use zoning and development, and building design and construction standards. Based on the work undertaken here, we recommend further detailed assessment of the vulnerability of coastal buildings in at risk areas, development of appropriate risk management strategies and a detailed program of community engagement to increase overall resilience

String tension in gonihedric 3D Ising models

For the 3D gonihedric Ising models defined by Savvidy and Wegner the bare string tension is zero and the energy of a spin interface depends only on the number of bends and self-intersections, in antithesis to the standard nearest-neighbour 3D Ising action. When the parameter kappa weighting the self-intersections is small the model has a first order transition and when it is larger the transition is continuous. In this paper we investigate the scaling of the renormalized string tension, which is entirely generated by fluctuations, using Monte Carlo simulations This allows us to obtain an estimate for the critical exponents alpha and nu using both finite-size-scaling and data collapse for the scaling function.Comment: Latex + postscript figures. 8 pages text plus 7 figures, spurious extra figure now removed

Study of the bacterial community affiliated to Hyalesthes obsoletus, the insect vector of “bois noir” phytoplasma of grape

Grape yellows caused by phytoplasmas afflict several important wine-producing areas of Europe. A grape yellows with increasingincidence in European vineyards is “bois noir” (BN), caused by ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma solani’. Its vector is the planthopperHyalesthes obsoletus Signoret (Hemiptera Cixiidae), occasionally feeding on grapevine. An innovative strategy for reducing thediffusion of the disease could be symbiotic control, exploiting the action of symbiotic microorganisms of the insect host. To investigatethe occurrence of possible microbial candidates for symbiotic control we performed a molecular characterization of thebacteria associated to H. obsoletus. Length heterogeneity PCR was applied for a preliminary population screening. Taxonomicaffiliations of the bacterial species were analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, showing, within the microbial diversity,the intracellular reproductive parasite Wolbachia pipientis and a Bacteroidetes symbiont with 92% nt identity with ‘CandidatusSulcia muelleri’. PCR essays specific for these bacteria showed they co-localize in several organs of H. obsoletus. Fluorescentin situ hybridization was performed to assess the distribution of these microorganisms within the insect body, showing interestinglocalization patterns, particularly in insect gonads and salivary glands. These results could be a starting point for a deeper investigationof functions and relationships between microbial species

Surfactant-like Effect and Dissolution of Ultrathin Fe Films on Ag(001)

The phase immiscibility and the excellent matching between Ag(001) and Fe(001) unit cells (mismatch 0.8 %) make Fe/Ag growth attractive in the field of low dimensionality magnetic systems. Intermixing could be drastically limited at deposition temperatures as low as 140-150 K. The film structural evolution induced by post-growth annealing presents many interesting aspects involving activated atomic exchange processes and affecting magnetic properties. Previous experiments, of He and low energy ion scattering on films deposited at 150 K, indicated the formation of a segregated Ag layer upon annealing at 550 K. Higher temperatures led to the embedding of Fe into the Ag matrix. In those experiments, information on sub-surface layers was attained by techniques mainly sensitive to the topmost layer. Here, systematic PED measurements, providing chemical selectivity and structural information for a depth of several layers, have been accompanied with a few XRD rod scans, yielding a better sensitivity to the buried interface and to the film long range order. The results of this paper allow a comparison with recent models enlightening the dissolution paths of an ultra thin metal film into a different metal, when both subsurface migration of the deposit and phase separation between substrate and deposit are favoured. The occurrence of a surfactant-like stage, in which a single layer of Ag covers the Fe film is demonstrated for films of 4-6 ML heated at 500-550 K. Evidence of a stage characterized by the formation of two Ag capping layers is also reported. As the annealing temperature was increased beyond 700 K, the surface layers closely resembled the structure of bare Ag(001) with the residual presence of subsurface Fe aggregates.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

HV/HR-CMOS sensors for the ATLAS upgrade—concepts and test chip results

In order to extend its discovery potential, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will have a major upgrade (Phase II Upgrade) scheduled for 2022. The LHC after the upgrade, called High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), will operate at a nominal leveled instantaneous luminosity of 5× 1034 cm−2 s−1, more than twice the expected Phase I . The new Inner Tracker needs to cope with this extremely high luminosity. Therefore it requires higher granularity, reduced material budget and increased radiation hardness of all components. A new pixel detector based on High Voltage CMOS (HVCMOS) technology targeting the upgraded ATLAS pixel detector is under study. The main advantages of the HVCMOS technology are its potential for low material budget, use of possible cheaper interconnection technologies, reduced pixel size and lower cost with respect to traditional hybrid pixel detector. Several first prototypes were produced and characterized within ATLAS upgrade R&D effort, to explore the performance and radiation hardness of this technology. In this paper, an overview of the HVCMOS sensor concepts is given. Laboratory tests and irradiation tests of two technologies, HVCMOS AMS and HVCMOS GF, are also given

Comunità microbica associata a Hyalesthes obsoletus Signoret, vettore del Legno nero della vite

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Optical absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy of the growth of silver nanoparticles

Results obtained from the optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy experiments have shown the formation of excitons in the silver-exchanged glass samples. These findings are reported here for the first time. Further, we investigate the dramatic changes in the photoemission properties of the silver-exchanged glass samples as a function of postannealing temperature. Observed changes are thought to be due to the structural rearrangements of silver and oxygen bonding during the heat treatments of the glass matrix. In fact, photoelectron spectroscopy does reveal these chemical transformations of silver-exchanged soda glass samples caused by the thermal effects of annealing in a high vacuum atmosphere. An important correlation between temperature-induced changes of the PL intensity and thermal growth of the silver nanoparticles has been established in this Letter through precise spectroscopic studies.Comment: 15 pages,4 figures,PDF fil

Asaia, a versatile acetic acid bacterial symbiont, capable of cross-colonizing insects of phylogenetically-distant genera and orders

Bacterial symbionts of insects have been proposed for blocking transmission of vector-borne pathogens. However, in many vector models the ecology of symbionts and their capability of cross-colonizing different hosts, an important feature in the symbiotic control approach, is poorly known. Here we show that the acetic acid bacterium Asaia, previously found in the malaria mosquito vector Anopheles stephensi, is also present in and capable of cross-colonizing other sugar-feeding insects of phylogenetically distant genera and orders. PCR, real-time PCR and in situ-hybridization experiments showed Asaia in the body of the mosquito Aedes aegypti and the leafhopper Scaphoideus titanus, vectors of human viruses and a grapevine phytoplasma, respectively. Cross colonization patterns of the body of Ae. aegypti, An. stephensi and S. titanus have been documented with Asaia strains isolated from An. stephensi or Ae. aegypti, and labelled with plasmid- or chromosome-encoded fluorescent proteins (Gfp and DsRed, respectively). Fluorescence and confocal microscopy showed that Asaia, administered with the sugar meal, efficiently colonized guts, male and female reproductive systems and the salivary glands. The ability in cross-colonizing insects of phylogenetically distant orders indicates that Asaia adopts body invasion mechanisms independent from the host biological characteristics. This versatility is an important property for the development of symbiont-based therapies of different vector-borne diseases