Multi-Sensors Observations of Pre-Earthquake Signals. What We Learned from the Great Tohoku Earthquake?

The lessons learned from the Great Tohoku EQ (Japan, 2011) will affect our future observations and an analysis is the main focus of this presentation. Multi-sensors observations and multidisciplinary research is presented in our study of the phenomena preceding major earthquakes Our approach is based on a systematic analysis of several physical and environmental parameters, which been reported by others in connections with earthquake processes: thermal infrared radiation; temperature; concentration of electrons in the ionosphere; radon/ion activities; and atmospheric temperature/humidity [Ouzounov et al, 2011]. We used the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) model, one of several possible paradigms [Pulinets and Ouzounov, 2011] to interpret our observations. We retrospectively analyzed the temporal and spatial variations of three different physical parameters characterizing the state of the atmosphere, ionosphere the ground surface several days before the March 11, 2011 M9 Tohoku earthquake Namely: (i) Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) measured at the top of the atmosphere; (ii) Anomalous variations of ionospheric parameters revealed by multi-sensors observations; and (iii) The change in the foreshock sequence (rate, space and time); Our results show that on March 8th, 2011 a rapid increase of emitted infrared radiation was observed and an anomaly developed near the epicenter with largest value occurring on March 11 at 07.30 LT. The GPS/TEC data indicate an increase and variation in electron density reaching a maximum value on March 8. Starting from this day in the lower ionosphere there was also observed an abnormal TEC variation over the epicenter. From March 3 to 11 a large increase in electron concentration was recorded at all four Japanese ground-based ionosondes, which returned to normal after the main earthquake. We use the Japanese GPS network stations and method of Radio Tomography to study the spatiotemporal structure of ionospheric perturbations, and to distinguish ionospheric responses to processes of EQ preparation against the effects of other factors. The 2-D snapshots of the electron density over Japan showed abnormal increase over the maximum stress during the night, a few hours before the main shock. Our results from recording atmospheric and ionospheric conditions during the earthquake indicate the presence of anomalies in the atmosphere and ionospheres occurring consistently over regions of maximum stress near the epicenter. Due to their long duration (hours and days) and spatial appearance (only over the Sendai region) these results do not appear to be caused by meteorological or magnetic activity. They reveal the existence of atmospheric and ionospheric phenomena occurring prior to the earthquake, which indicates new evidence of a distinct coupling between the lithosphere and atmosphere/ionosphere. Similar results have been reported before the catastrophic events in Chile (M8.8, 2010), Italy (M6.3, 2009) and Sumatra (M9.3, 2004)

Implementation of an Optimal First-Order Method for Strongly Convex Total Variation Regularization

We present a practical implementation of an optimal first-order method, due to Nesterov, for large-scale total variation regularization in tomographic reconstruction, image deblurring, etc. The algorithm applies to $\mu$-strongly convex objective functions with $L$-Lipschitz continuous gradient. In the framework of Nesterov both $\mu$ and $L$ are assumed known -- an assumption that is seldom satisfied in practice. We propose to incorporate mechanisms to estimate locally sufficient $\mu$ and $L$ during the iterations. The mechanisms also allow for the application to non-strongly convex functions. We discuss the iteration complexity of several first-order methods, including the proposed algorithm, and we use a 3D tomography problem to compare the performance of these methods. The results show that for ill-conditioned problems solved to high accuracy, the proposed method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art first-order methods, as also suggested by theoretical results.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Development of the procedure of testing with the application of the expert evaluation method in psychophysiology

This article provides a detailed description of the stages of development of an information system of personalized psychophysiological testing using expert evaluation. The process of the information system design is presented, the developed functional models, database and algorithm of testing by students-experts are demonstrate

From Multi-Sensors Observations Towards Cross-Disciplinary Study of Pre-Earthquake Signals. What have We Learned from the Tohoku Earthquake?

The lessons we have learned from the Great Tohoku EQ (Japan, 2011) how this knowledge will affect our future observation and analysis is the main focus of this presentation.We present multi-sensors observations and multidisciplinary research in our investigation of phenomena preceding major earthquakes. These observations revealed the existence of atmospheric and ionospheric phenomena occurring prior to theM9.0 Tohoku earthquake of March 11, 2011, which indicates s new evidence of a distinct coupling between the lithosphere and atmosphere/ionosphere, as related to underlying tectonic activity. Similar results have been reported before the catastrophic events in Chile (M8.8, 2010), Italy (M6.3, 2009) and Sumatra (M9.3, 2004). For the Tohoku earthquake, our analysis shows a synergy between several independent observations characterizing the state of the lithosphere /atmosphere coupling several days before the onset of the earthquakes, namely: (i) Foreshock sequence change (rate, space and time); (ii) Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) measured at the top of the atmosphere; and (iii) Anomalous variations of ionospheric parameters revealed by multi-sensors observations. We are presenting a cross-disciplinary analysis of the observed pre-earthquake anomalies and will discuss current research in the detection of these signals in Japan. We expect that our analysis will shed light on the underlying physics of pre-earthquake signals associated with some of the largest earthquake event

PAH emission from Herbig AeBe stars

We present spectra of a sample of Herbig Ae and Be (HAeBe) stars obtained with the Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope. All but one of the Herbig stars show emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and seven of the spectra show PAH emission, but no silicate emission at 10 microns. The central wavelengths of the 6.2, 7.7--8.2, and 11.3 micron emission features decrease with stellar temperature, indicating that the PAHs are less photo-processed in cooler radiation fields. The apparent low level of photo processing in HAeBe stars, relative to other PAH emission sources, implies that the PAHs are newly exposed to the UV-optical radiation fields from their host stars. HAeBe stars show a variety of PAH emission intensities and ionization fractions, but a narrow range of PAH spectral classifications based on positions of major PAH feature centers. This may indicate that, regardless of their locations relative to the stars, the PAH molecules are altered by the same physical processes in the proto-planetary disks of intermediate-mass stars. Analysis of the mid-IR spectral energy distributions indicates that our sample likely includes both radially flared and more flattened/settled disk systems, but we do not see the expected correlation of overall PAH emission with disk geometry. We suggest that the strength of PAH emission from HAeBe stars may depend not only on the degree of radial flaring, but also on the abundance of PAHs in illuminated regions of the disks and possibly on the vertical structure of the inner disk as well.Comment: 52 pages, 12 figure

Achieving Generalizable Robustness of Deep Neural Networks by Stability Training

We study the recently introduced stability training as a general-purpose method to increase the robustness of deep neural networks against input perturbations. In particular, we explore its use as an alternative to data augmentation and validate its performance against a number of distortion types and transformations including adversarial examples. In our image classification experiments using ImageNet data stability training performs on a par or even outperforms data augmentation for specific transformations, while consistently offering improved robustness against a broader range of distortion strengths and types unseen during training, a considerably smaller hyperparameter dependence and less potentially negative side effects compared to data augmentation.Comment: 18 pages, 25 figures; Camera-ready versio

Search for the Cryptoexotic Member of the Baryon Antidecuplet 1/2+ in the Reactions pi- p --> pi- p and pi- p --> K L

The main goal of this proposal is the search for a narrow cryptoexotic nucleon resonance by scanning of the pi- p system invariant mass in the region (1610-1770) MeV with the detection of pi- p and K Lambda decays. The scan is supposed to be done by the variation of the incident pi- momentum and its measurement with the accuracy of up to +-0.1% (better than 1 MeV in terms of the invariant mass in the whole energy range) with a set of proportional chambers located in the first focus of the magnetooptical channel. High sensitivity of the method to the resonance under search is shown. The secondary particles scattered from a liquid hydrogen target are detected by sets of the wire drift chambers equipped with modern electronics. The time scale of the project is about 3 years. The budget estimate including manpower, the apparatus and operation cost, is about 40 million rubles. The beam time required is (4-6) two week runs on "high" (10 GeV/c) flattop of the ITEP proton synchrotron.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures. v2: an acknowledge adde