Scaling characteristics of ULF geomagnetic fields at the Guam seismoactive area and their dynamics in relation to the earthquake

International audienceThe long-term evolution of scaling (fractal) characteristics of the ULF geomagnetic fields in the seismoactive region of the Guam Island is studied in relation to the strong (Ms = 8.0) nearby earthquake of 8 August 1993. The selected period covers 10 months before and 10 months after the earthquake. The FFT procedure, Burlaga-Klein approach and Higuchi method, have been applied to calculate the scaling exponents and fractal dimensions of the ULF time series. It is found that the spectrum of ULF emissions exhibits, on average, a power law behaviour S(f ) ? f -b , which is a fingerprint of the typical fractal (self-affine) time series. The spectrum slope b fluctuates quasi-periodically during the course of time in a range of b = 2.5?0.7, which corresponds to the fractional Brownian motion with both persistent and antipersistent behaviour. An tendency is also found for the spectrum slope to decrease gradually when approaching the earthquake date. Such a tendency manifests itself at all local times, showing a gradual evolution of the structure of the ULF noise to a typical flicker noise structure in proximity to the large earthquake event. We suggest considering such a peculiarity as an earthquake precursory signature. One more effect related to the earthquake is revealed: the longest quasi-period, which is 27 days, disappeared from the variations of the ULF emission spectrum slope during the earthquake, and it reappeared three months after the event. Physical interpretation of the peculiarities revealed has been done on the basis of the SOC (self-organized criticality) concept

Improvement in accuracy of multiple sequence alignment using novel group-to-group sequence alignment algorithm with piecewise linear gap cost

BACKGROUND: Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a useful tool in bioinformatics. Although many MSA algorithms have been developed, there is still room for improvement in accuracy and speed. In the alignment of a family of protein sequences, global MSA algorithms perform better than local ones in many cases, while local ones perform better than global ones when some sequences have long insertions or deletions (indels) relative to others. Many recent leading MSA algorithms have incorporated pairwise alignment information obtained from a mixture of sources into their scoring system to improve accuracy of alignment containing long indels. RESULTS: We propose a novel group-to-group sequence alignment algorithm that uses a piecewise linear gap cost. We developed a program called PRIME, which employs our proposed algorithm to optimize the well-defined sum-of-pairs score. PRIME stands for Profile-based Randomized Iteration MEthod. We evaluated PRIME and some recent MSA programs using BAliBASE version 3.0 and PREFAB version 4.0 benchmarks. The results of benchmark tests showed that PRIME can construct accurate alignments comparable to the most accurate programs currently available, including L-INS-i of MAFFT, ProbCons, and T-Coffee. CONCLUSION: PRIME enables users to construct accurate alignments without having to employ pairwise alignment information. PRIME is available at

Multifractal analysis for the ULF geomagnetic data during the 1993 Guam earthquake

International audienceIn our previous papers we have shown that the fractal (monofractal) dimension (Do) showed a significant increase before the Guam earthquake occurred on 8 August, 1993. In order to have a further support to this precursory effect to the general rupture (earthquake) we have carried out the corresponding multifractal analysis (by means of detrended fluctuation analysis) for the same data to study the statistical self-similar properties in a wide range of scales. We have analyzed the ULF geomagnetic data (the most intense H component) observed at Guam observatory. As the result, we have found that we could observe significant changes in the multifractal parameters at Guam such that ?min showed a meaningful decrease about 25 days before the earthquake and correspondingly ?? increased because ?max exhibited no significant change at all. The most sensitive parameter seems to be non-uniformity factor ?. Correspondingly, the generalized multifractal dimension Dq (q>1) showed a significant decrease (whereas Dq (qD0 (=Dq (q=0) (as already found in our previous papers) is reconfirmed to increase before the earthquake. These multifractal characteristics seem to be a further support that these changes are closely associated with the earthquake as a precursor to the Guam earthquake, providing us with appreciable information on the pre-rupture evolution of the earthquake

An Estimate of Vacancy Migration Energy from Aging Experiments in an Iron 3.8 at% Molybdenum Alloy(Physics)

Resistivity change during isochronal aging of a high purity Fe-3.8 at.% Mo alloy is investigated. The resistivity first decreases between 300℃ and 400℃, passing through a minimum it increases to a maximum at 650℃ and decreases again. Molybdenum atoms are considered to form clusters in the first stage of resistivity decrease. The clustering at temperatures below 400℃ is possible only when quenched-in excess vacancies are present and enhance the solute atom diffusion. This observation implies that vacancies in pure iron also migrate at an appreciable rate at around 350℃ with an activation energy of about 1.2 eV

Logarithmic scaling in the near-dissipation range of turbulence

A logarithmic scaling for structure functions, in the form $S_p \sim [\ln (r/\eta)]^{\zeta_p}$, where $\eta$ is the Kolmogorov dissipation scale and $\zeta_p$ are the scaling exponents, is suggested for the statistical description of the near-dissipation range for which classical power-law scaling does not apply. From experimental data at moderate Reynolds numbers, it is shown that the logarithmic scaling, deduced from general considerations for the near-dissipation range, covers almost the entire range of scales (about two decades) of structure functions, for both velocity and passive scalar fields. This new scaling requires two empirical constants, just as the classical scaling does, and can be considered the basis for extended self-similarity

Electrospinning of poly (ether sulfone) and evaluation of the filtration efficiency

To produce high heat-resistant air filter, filtration properties of poly (ether sulfone) (PES) made by various electrospinning conditions were evaluated. The PES webs of 0.4-1.1 mu m average diameter fiber were obtained from 35-40 wt% PES / N,N- Dimethylacetamide (DMAc) solution. The diameter profile of electrospun PES web was clearly affected by PES concentration of the spinning dope and feeding rate of the dope, while the take-up speed effects little. The needle-collector distance affects the diameter profile for higher feeding rate conditions. The pore size of these webs was 1.3-5.6 mu m, which was decided not only average fiber diameter but also fiber diameter variation. Both filtration efficiency and pressure loss were dropped steeply at about 3.0 mu m of pore size. For the web having a pore size of 3.2 mu m, the pressure loss decrease to 215 Pa, while the filtration efficiency for 0.3 mu m particle kept 99.9998 %, which satisfied the HEPA requirement.ArticleSen'i Gakakishi. 63(12): 307-312 (2007)journal articl