Fracture patterns and petrophysical properties of carbonates undergoing regional folding : A case study from Kurdistan, N Iraq

Acknowledgements The authors thank the Ministry of Natural Resources in Iraqi Kurdistan Region for permission to publish this paper. Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. and HKN Energy Ltd. are acknowledged for providing the subsurface datasets. Great thanks to Colin Taylor at the University of Aberdeen for his assistance in the laboratory work. Thoughtful reviews by two anonymous referees improved the clarity of the paper. Graham Banks is thanked for his helpful and constructive review on a late version of the manuscript, which has significantly improved this paper.Peer reviewedPostprin

Workplace sitting and height-adjustable workstations: a randomized controlled trial

Background Desk-based office employees sit for most of their working day. To address excessive sitting as a newly identified health risk, best practice frameworks suggest a multi-component approach. However, these approaches are resource intensive and knowledge about their impact is limited. Purpose To compare the efficacy of a multi-component intervention to reduce workplace sitting time, to a height-adjustable workstations-only intervention, and to a comparison group (usual practice). Design Three-arm quasi-randomized controlled trial in three separate administrative units of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Data were collected between January and June 2012 and analyzed the same year. Setting/participants Desk-based office workers aged 20-65 (multi-component intervention, n=16; workstations-only, n=14; comparison, n=14). Intervention The multi-component intervention comprised installation of height-adjustable workstations and organizational-level (management consultation, staff education, manager e-mails to staff) and individual-level (face-to-face coaching, telephone support) elements. Main outcome measures Workplace sitting time (minutes/8-hour workday) assessed objectively via activPAL3 devices worn for 7 days at baseline and 3 months (end-of-intervention) . Results At baseline, the mean proportion of workplace sitting time was approximately 77% across all groups (multi-component group 366 minutes/8 hours [SD=49]; workstations-only group 373 minutes/8 hours [SD=36], comparison 365 minutes/8 hours [SD=54]). Following intervention and relative to the comparison group, workplace sitting time in the multi-component group was reduced by 89 minutes/8-hour workday (95% CI=-130, -47 minutes;

Cardio-metabolic impact of changing sitting, standing, and stepping in the workplace

According to cross-sectional and acute experimental evidence, reducing sitting time should improve cardio-metabolic health risk biomarkers. Furthermore, the improvements obtained may depend on whether sitting is replaced with standing or ambulatory activities. Based on data from the Stand Up Victoria multi-component workplace intervention, we examined this issue using compositional data analysis - a method that can examine and compare all activity changes simultaneously.Participants receiving the intervention (n=136 ≥0.6 full-time equivalent desk-based workers, 65% women, mean±SD age=44.6 ±9.1 years from seven worksites) were asked to improve whole-of-day activity by standing up, sitting less and moving more. Their changes in the composition of daily waking hours (activPAL-assessed sitting, standing, stepping) were quantified, then tested for associations with concurrent changes in cardio-metabolic risk (CMR) scores and 14 biomarkers concerning body composition, glucose, insulin and lipid metabolism. Analyses were by mixed models, accounting for clustering (3 months, n=105-120; 12 months, n=80-97).Sitting reduction was significantly (

Uniaxial compression of 3D printed samples with voids: laboratory measurements compared with predictions from Effective Medium Theory

3D printing technology offers the possibility of producing synthetic samples with accurately defined microstructures. As indicated by effective medium theory (EMT), the shapes, orientations, and sizes of voids significantly affect the overall elastic response of a solid body. By performing uniaxial compression tests on twenty types of 3D-printed samples containing voids of different geometries, we examine whether the measured effective elasticities are accurately predicted by EMT. To manufacture the sample, we selected printers that use different technologies; fused deposition modelling (FDM), and stereolithography (SLA). We show how printer settings (FDM case) or sample cure time (SLA case) affect the measured properties. We also examine the reproducibility of elasticity tests on identically designed samples. To obtain the range of theoretical predictions, we assume either uniform strain or uniform stress. Our study of over two hundred samples shows that measured effective elastic moduli can fit EMT predictions with an error of less than 5% using both FDM and SLA methods if certain printing specifications and sample design considerations are taken into account. Notably, we find that the pore volume fraction of the designed samples should be above 1% to induce a measurable softening effect, but below 5% to produce accurate EMT estimations that fit the measured elastic properties of the samples. Our results highlight both the strengths of EMT for predicting the effective properties of solids with low pore fraction volume microstructural configurations, and the limitations for high porosity microstructures.Comment: 43 pages, 19 figs, 9 table

Stress-Induced Anisotropic Poroelasticity in Westerly Granite

Funding Information: We thank T‐f. Wong and the associate editor for helpful reviews of this paper. We acknowledge financial support from the UK Natural Environment Research Council through Grants NE/L002485/1 to B.E., NE/S000852/1 to N.B. and NE/T007826/1 to D.H., T.M., and P.M., and the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project RockDEaF, Grant agreement 804685 to N.B.). Erratum In the originally published version of this article, the author contributions omitted coauthor Nicolas Brantut. Dr. Brantut has been added to Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing, and Supervision. This version may be considered the authoritative version of record.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A new anisotropic poroelasticity model to describe damage accumulation during cyclic triaxial loading of rock

Acknowledgments The paper benefited from useful comments by two referees, Manolis Veveakis and Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, and the editor, Alexis Maineult. The contributions by Lyakhovsky and Shalev was supported by grant from the Israel Science Foundation, ISF 363/20. The contributions by Browning, Meredith, Healy and Mitchell were supported by UKRI NERC awards NE/N003063/1, NE/N002938/1, NE/T007826/1, NE/T00780X/1. The contributions by Browning was also supported by FONDECYT grant number 11190143. The contribution by Panteleev was supported by Russian Science Foundation (project N 19-77-30008).Peer reviewedPostprin

Adjusting foraging strategies : a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

The research was funded by a FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES research staff exchange grant to TB, SH, OG and ASG. OG was additionally supported by Gu227/16-1 and IF by an FWF grant (Y366-B17) to TB.Establishment in urbanized environments is associated with changes in physiology, behaviour, and problem-solving. We compared the speed of learning in urban and rural female common mynas, Acridotheres tristis, using a standard visual discrimination task followed by a reversal learning phase. We also examined how quickly each bird progressed through different stages of learning, including sampling and acquisition within both initial and reversal learning, and persistence following reversal. Based on their reliance on very different food resources, we expected urban mynas to learn and reversal learn more quickly but to sample new contingencies for proportionately longer before learning them. When quantified from first presentation to criterion achievement, urban mynas took more 20-trial blocks to learn the initial discrimination, as well as the reversed contingency, than rural mynas. More detailed analyses at the level of stage revealed that this was because urban mynas explored the novel cue-outcome contingencies for longer, and despite transitioning faster through subsequent acquisition, remained overall slower than rural females. Our findings draw attention to fine adjustments in learning strategies in response to urbanization and caution against interpreting the speed to learn a task as a reflection of cognitive ability.PostprintPeer reviewe

Multiple episodes of sand injection leading to accumulation and leakage of hydrocarbons along the San Andreas/San Gregorio fault system, California

Acknowledgements We acknowledge the reviews of three anonymous referees and are also very grateful to Andrew Hurst and David Iacopini for their critical comments of an earlier version of the paper. We also wish to thank Denis Bureau and Antonella Gatto for their support in the field.Peer reviewedPostprin

Associations of sitting accumulation patterns with cardio-metabolic risk biomarkers in Australian adults

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