Re-evaluation of the surface ruptures of the November 1951 earthquake series in eastern Taiwan, and its neotectonic implications

The earthquakes of November 1951 constitute the most destructive seismic episode in the recorded history of the Longitudinal Valley, eastern Taiwan. However, information about their source parameters is sparse. To understand the relationship between the 1951 ruptures and new interpretations of the regional neotectonic architecture of the Longitudinal Valley, we re-evaluated the November 1951 ruptures by analyzing old documents, reports and photographs, and by interviewing local residents who experienced the earthquake. As a result, we have revised significantly the rupture map previously published. We divide the surface ruptures from south to north into the Chihshang, Yuli, and Rueisuei sections. The first shock of the 1951 series probably resulted from the Chihshang rupture, and the second shock probably resulted from the Yuli and Rueisuei ruptures. The lengths of these ruptures indicate that the two shocks had similar magnitudes. The Chihshang and Rueisuei ruptures are along segments of the Longitudinal Valley fault, a left-lateral oblique fault along which the Coastal Range thrusts westward over the Longitudinal Valley. The Yuli rupture, on the other hand, appears to be part of a separate, left-lateral strike-slip Yuli fault, which traverses the middle of the Longitudinal Valley. The complex behavior of these structures and interaction between them are important in understanding the future seismic hazard of the area

Frontal belt curvature and oblique ramp development at an obliquely collided irregular margin : geometry and kinematics of the NW Taiwan fold-thrust belt

Combined structural and tectonic analyses demonstrate that the NW Foothills of the Taiwan collision belt constitute mainly an asymmetric “primary arc” type fold-thrust belt. The arcuate belt developed as a basin-controlled salient in the portion of the foreland basin that was initially thicker, due to the presence of a precollisional depocenter (the Taihsi basin). Additional but limited buttress effects at end points related to interaction with foreland basement highs (Kuanyin and Peikang highs) may have also slightly enhanced curvature. The complex structural pattern results from the interaction between low-angle thrusting related to shallow decollement tectonics and oblique inversion of extensional structures of the margin on the southern edge of the Kuanyin basement high. The tectonic regimes and mechanisms revealed by the pattern of paleostress indicators such as striated outcrop-scale faults are combined with the orientation and geometry of offshore and onshore regional faults in order to accurately define the Quaternary kinematics of the propagating units. The kinematics of this curved range is mainly controlled by distributed transpressional wrenching along the southern edge of the Kuanyin high, leading to the development of a regional-scale oblique ramp, the Kuanyin transfer fault zone, which is conjugate of the NW trending Pakua transfer fault zone north of the Peikang basement high. The divergence between the N120° regional transport direction and the maximum compressive trend that evolved from N120° to N150° (and even to N–S) in the northern part of the arc effectively supports distributed wrench deformation along its northern limb during the Pleistocene. The geometry and kinematics of the western Taiwan Foothills therefore appear to be highly influenced by both the preorogenic structural pattern of the irregularly shaped Chinese passive margin and the obliquity of its Plio-Quaternary collision with the Philippine Sea plate

Frontal belt curvature and oblique ramp development at an obliquely collided irregular margin : geometry and kinematics of the NW Taiwan fold-thrust belt

Combined structural and tectonic analyses demonstrate that the NW Foothills of the Taiwan collision belt constitute mainly an asymmetric “primary arc” type fold-thrust belt. The arcuate belt developed as a basin-controlled salient in the portion of the foreland basin that was initially thicker, due to the presence of a precollisional depocenter (the Taihsi basin). Additional but limited buttress effects at end points related to interaction with foreland basement highs (Kuanyin and Peikang highs) may have also slightly enhanced curvature. The complex structural pattern results from the interaction between low-angle thrusting related to shallow decollement tectonics and oblique inversion of extensional structures of the margin on the southern edge of the Kuanyin basement high. The tectonic regimes and mechanisms revealed by the pattern of paleostress indicators such as striated outcrop-scale faults are combined with the orientation and geometry of offshore and onshore regional faults in order to accurately define the Quaternary kinematics of the propagating units. The kinematics of this curved range is mainly controlled by distributed transpressional wrenching along the southern edge of the Kuanyin high, leading to the development of a regional-scale oblique ramp, the Kuanyin transfer fault zone, which is conjugate of the NW trending Pakua transfer fault zone north of the Peikang basement high. The divergence between the N120° regional transport direction and the maximum compressive trend that evolved from N120° to N150° (and even to N–S) in the northern part of the arc effectively supports distributed wrench deformation along its northern limb during the Pleistocene. The geometry and kinematics of the western Taiwan Foothills therefore appear to be highly influenced by both the preorogenic structural pattern of the irregularly shaped Chinese passive margin and the obliquity of its Plio-Quaternary collision with the Philippine Sea plate

Formation of amyloid fibrils from β-amylase

AbstractFibril formation has been considered a significant feature of amyloid proteins. However, it has been proposed that fibril formation is a common property of many proteins under appropriate conditions. We studied the fibril formation of β-amylase, a non-amyloid protein rich in α-helical structure, because the secondary structure of β-amylase is similar to that of prions. With the conditions for the fibril formation of prions, β-amylase proteins were converted into amyloid fibrils. The features of β-amylase proteins and fibrils are compared to prion proteins and fibrils. Furthermore, the cause of neurotoxicity in amyloid diseases is discussed.Structured summary of protein interactionsBeta-Amylase and Beta-Amylase bind by fluorescence technology (View Interaction: 1, 2) MoPrP and MoPrP bind by circular dichroism (View interaction) MoPrP and MoPrP bind by transmission electron microscopy (View interaction) Beta-Amylase and Beta-Amylase bind by circular dichroism (View interaction) MoPrP and MoPrP bind by fluorescence technology (View Interaction: 1, 2) Beta-Amylase and Beta-Amylase bind by transmission electron microscopy (View interaction

Lepton Flavor Violating Muon Decays in a Model of Electroweak-Scale Right-Handed Neutrinos

The small neutrino mass observed in neutrino oscillations is nicely explained by the seesaw mechanism. Rich phenomenology is generally expected if the heavy neutrinos are not much heavier than the electroweak scale. A model with this feature built in has been suggested recently by Hung. The model keeps the standard gauge group but introduces chirality-flipped partners for the fermions. In particular, a right-handed neutrino forms a weak doublet with a charged heavy lepton, and is thus active. We analyze the lepton flavor structure in gauge interactions. The mixing matrices in charged currents (CC) are generally non-unitary, and their deviation from unitarity induces flavor changing neutral currents (FCNC). We calculate the branching ratios for the rare decays \mu\to e\gamma and \mu\to ee\bar e due to the gauge interactions. Although the former is generally smaller than the latter by three orders of magnitude, parameter regions exist in which \mu\to e\gamma is reachable in the next generation of experiments even if the current stringent bound on \mu\to ee\bar e is taken into account. If light neutrinos dominate for \mu\to e\gamma, the latter cannot set a meaningful bound on unitarity violation in the mixing matrix of light leptons due to significant cancelation between CC and FCNC contributions. Instead, the role is taken over by the decay \mu\to ee\bar e.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. v2: added 2 refs and improved a comment on previous work; no other changes. v3: proofread version for PLB; added a few clarifying sentences in paragraph before eq (17) plus minor editting change

Search for new physics from B→πϕB\to\pi \phi

We investigate the pure penguin process $B^-\to \pi^-\phi$ using QCD factorization approach to calculate hadronic matrix elements to the $\alpha_s$ order in some well-known NP models. It is shown that the NP contributions in R-parity conserved SUSY models and 2HDMs are not enough to saturate the experimental upper bounds for $B\to \phi \pi$. We have shown that the flavor changing $Z^\prime$ models can make the branching ratios of $B\to \phi \pi$ to saturate the bound under all relevant experimental constraints.Comment: No figure

An RBF-based reparameterization method for constrained texture mapping

Texture mapping has long been used in computer graphics to enhance the realism of virtual scenes. However, to match the 3D model feature points with the corresponding pixels in a texture image, surface parameterization must satisfy specific positional constraints. However, despite numerous research efforts, the construction of a mathematically robust, foldover‐free parameterization that is subject to positional constraints continues to be a challenge. In the present paper, this foldover problem is addressed by developing radial basis function (RBF) based reparameterization. Given initial 2D embedding of a 3D surface, the proposed method can reparameterize 2D embedding into a foldover ‐free 2D mesh, satisfying a set of user‐specified constraint points. In addition, this approach is mesh‐free. Therefore, generating smooth texture mapping results is possible without extra smoothing optimization

Enhanced Thermoelectric Power in Dual-Gated Bilayer Graphene

Thermoelectric power of a material, typically governed by its band structure and carrier density, can be varied by chemical doping that is often restricted by solubility of the dopant. Materials showing large thermoelectric power are useful for many industrial applications, such as the heat-to-electricity conversion and the thermoelectric cooling device. Here we show a full electric field tuning of thermoelectric power in a dual-gated bilayer graphene device resulting from the opening of a band-gap by applying a perpendicular electric field on bilayer graphene. We uncover a large enhancement in thermoelectric power at low temperature, which may open up a new possibility in low temperature thermoelectric application using graphene-based device.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure