Crustal seismic structure of the eastern Mediterranean: evidence from broadband seismology

Understanding the crustal structure of the Anatolian Plate has important implications for its formation and evolution, including the extent to which its high elevation is maintained isostatically. However, previous receiver function studies of Anatolian Moho depths return results differing by <21km. H-K stacking is used routinely to infer crustal thickness and Vp/Vs ratio from teleseismic receiver functions, assuming the largest amplitude P-to-S conversions beneath the seismograph station are generated by a sharp velocity contrast at the Moho. However, synthetic seismogram analysis demonstrates that H-K results are strongly dependent on the choice of stacking input parameters. To address this issue of parameter sensitivity, an H-K approach is developed in which cluster analysis selects a final solution from 1000 results, each calculated using randomly selected input parameters via bootstrapping. When the Moho is sharp, H-K results cluster tightly and the method is reliable; in areas of more complex crustal structure, H-K analysis is often unreliable. The new crustal model for the Eastern Mediterranean (ANATOLIA-HK21) provides fresh insight into Anatolian crustal structure and topography. While the crust thins from ~45km below the uplifted Eastern Anatolian Plateau to ~25km below lower-lying western Anatolia, Moho depth is generally correlated poorly with elevation. Residual topography calculations confirm the requirement for a mantle contribution to Anatolian Plateau uplift, with localised asthenospheric upwellings in response to slab break-off and/or lithospheric dripping/delamination example candidate driving mechanisms. In the absence of good-quality H-K results on Cyprus, Rayleigh wave group velocity inversions place new constraints on the island's crustal structure. Resulting tomographic images reveal high velocities at short periods directly beneath the surface expression of the Troodos Ophiolite; anomaly amplitudes decrease at longer periods (from +30% at 8s to +5% at 14s) and shift northeastward, corroborating studies that consider the ophiolite a mid-to-upper crustal feature.Open Acces

CYBERSECURITY: CREATING A CYBERSECURITY CULTURE

Human error has been identified as one of the highest contributing factors to successful cyber-attacks and security incidents that result in data leaks and theft of sensitive information. Human error has been caused by employees not behaving securely when interacting with information systems. This culminating experience project investigated how a cybersecurity culture can be developed to address the human error problem. The research was based on several key questions that focus on influencing factors of human behavior and best practices that have been used to develop a cybersecurity culture so that employees engage in secure behaviors. Social Cognitive Theory was used to guide research focusing on environmental and cognitive factors that influence human behavior and best practices for developing a cybersecurity culture were identified through recent case studies. Key findings include: 1) environmental factors such as social proximity, subjective norms, and descriptive norms, 2) cognitive factors such as self-efficacy, knowledge, and experience, and 3) several different best practices. Based on the results, this study provides recommendations to the US government for building a cybersecurity culture

A Simple Model for Solar Isorotational Contours

The solar convective zone, or SCZ, is nearly adiabatic and marginally convectively unstable. But the SCZ is also in a state of differential rotation, and its dynamical stability properties are those of a weakly magnetized gas. This renders it far more prone to rapidly growing rotational baroclinic instabilities than a hydrodynamical system would be. These instabilities should be treated on the same footing as convective instabilites. If isentropic and isorotational surfaces coincide in the SCZ, the gas is marginally (un)stable to {\em both} convective and rotational disturbances. This is a plausible resolution for the instabilities associated with these more general rotating convective systems. This motivates an analysis of the thermal wind equation in which isentropes and isorotational surfaces are identical. The characteristics of this partial differential equation correspond to isorotation contours, and their form may be deduced even without precise knowledge of how the entropy and rotation are functionally related. Although the exact solution of the global SCZ problem in principle requires this knowledge, even the simplest models produce striking results in broad agreement with helioseismology data. This includes horizontal (i.e. quasi-spherical) isorotational contours at the poles, axial contours at the equator, and approximately radial contours at midlatitudes. The theory does not apply directly to the tachocline, where a simple thermal wind balance is not expected to be valid. The work presented here is subject to tests of self-consistency, among them the prediction that there should be good agreement between isentropes and isorotational contours in sufficiently well-resolved large scale numerical MHD simulations.Comment: Final version: 21 pages, 4 figures, to appear in MNRAS; thorough revision, typos and minor errors corrected, expanded development and reordering of the material. Conclusions unchanged from origina

A multicomponent diffusion model for prediction of microstructural evolution in coated Ni based superalloy systems

A multicomponent model which can simulate the microstructural evolution of a coated Ni based superalloy system has been developed. The model consists of a one-dimensional finite difference diffusion solver to calculate the component distribution, a power law based model for predicting surface oxidation and a thermodynamic calculation routine for determining the phase evolution. Apart from forecasting concentration and phase profiles after a given thermal history, the model can estimate the losses due to oxidation and the remaining life of a coating based on a concentration and/or phase fraction dependent failure criteria. The phase constitution and concentration profiles predicted by the model have been compared with an experimental NiCoCrAlY coated CMSX-4 system, aged for times up to 10 000 h between 850 and 1050°C, and many experimental features can be predicted successfully by the model. The model is expected to be useful for assessing microstructural evolution of coated turbine blade systems

Magnetostrophic MRI in the Earth's Outer Core

We show that a simple, modified version of the Magnetorotational Instability (MRI) can develop in the outer liquid core of the Earth, in the presence of a background shear. It requires either thermal wind, or a primary instability, such as convection, to drive a weak differential rotation within the core. The force balance in the Earth's core is very unlike classical astrophysical applications of the MRI (such as gaseous disks around stars). Here, the weak differential rotation in the Earth core yields an instability by its constructive interaction with the planet's much larger rotation rate. The resulting destabilising mechanism is just strong enough to counteract stabilizing resistive effects, and produce growth on geophysically interesting timescales. We give a simple physical explanation of the instability, and show that it relies on a force balance appropriate to the Earth's core, known as magnetostrophic balance

Round Table Discussion with Lynne Huffer, Steven Ogden, Paul Patton, and Jana Sawicki

Joanna Crosby and Dianna Taylor: The theme of this special section of Foucault Studies, “Foucauldian Spaces,” emerged out of the 2016 meeting of the Foucault Circle, where the four of you were participants. Each of the three individual papers contained in the special section critically deploys and/or reconceptualizes an aspect of Foucault’s work that engages and offers particular insight into the construction, experience, and utilization of space. We’d like to ask the four of you to reflect on what makes a space Foucauldian, and whether or not (and why or why not) you’d consider the space created by the convergence of and intellectual exchanges among an international group of Foucault scholars at the University of New South Wales in the summer of 2016 to be Foucauldian

Clinical evaluation of the Life Support for Trauma and Transport (LSTAT) platform

INTRODUCTION: The Life Support for Trauma and Transport (LSTAT™) is a self-contained, stretcher-based miniature intensive care unit designed by the United States Army to provide care for critically injured patients during transport and in remote settings where resources are limited. The LSTAT contains conventional medical equipment that has been integrated into one platform and reduced in size to fit within the dimensional envelope of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) stretcher. This study evaluated the clinical utility of the LSTAT in simulated and real clinical environments. Our hypothesis was that the LSTAT would be equivalent to conventional equipment in detecting and treating life-threatening problems. METHODS: Thirty-one anesthesiologists and recovery room nurses compared the LSTAT with conventional monitors while managing four simulated critical events. The time required to reach a diagnosis and treatment was recorded for each simulation. Subsequently, 10 consenting adult patients were placed on the LSTAT after surgery for postoperative care in the recovery room. Questionnaires about aspects of LSTAT functionality were completed by nine nurses who cared for the patients placed on the LSTAT. RESULTS: In all of the simulations, there was no clinically significant difference in the time to diagnosis or treatment between the LSTAT and conventional equipment. All clinicians reported that they were able to manage the simulated patients properly with the LSTAT. Nursing staff reported that the LSTAT provided adequate equipment to care for the patients monitored during recovery from surgery and were able to detect critical changes in vital signs in a timely manner. DISCUSSION: Preliminary evaluation of the LSTAT in simulated and postoperative environments demonstrated that the LSTAT provided appropriate equipment to detect and manage critical events in patient care. Further work in assessing LSTAT functionality in a higher-acuity environment is warranted

Objectively measured physical activity and fat mass in a large cohort of children

Background Previous studies have been unable to characterise the association between physical activity and obesity, possibly because most relied on inaccurate measures of physical activity and obesity. Methods and Findings We carried out a cross sectional analysis on 5,500 12-year-old children enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Total physical activity and minutes of moderate and vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were measured using the Actigraph accelerometer. Fat mass and obesity (defined as the top decile of fat mass) were measured using the Lunar Prodigy dual x-ray emission absorptiometry scanner. We found strong negative associations between MVPA and fat mass that were unaltered after adjustment for total physical activity. We found a strong negative dose-response association between MVPA and obesity. The odds ratio for obesity in adjusted models between top and the bottom quintiles of minutes of MVPA was 0.03 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01-0.13, p-value for trend &lt; 0.0001) in boys and 0.36 (95% CI 0.17-0.74, p-value for trend = 0.006) in girls. Conclusions We demonstrated a strong graded inverse association between physical activity and obesity that was stronger in boys. Our data suggest that higher intensity physical activity may be more important than total activity

Higher Prevalence of Obesity Among Children With Asthma

The aim of this study is to investigate the association between childhood obesity and asthma, and whether this relationship varies by race/ethnicity. For this population-based, cross-sectional study, measured weight and height, and asthma diagnoses were extracted from electronic medical records of 681,122 patients aged 6–19 years who were enrolled in an integrated health plan 2007–2009. Weight class was assigned based on BMI-for-age. Overall, 18.4% of youth had a history of asthma and 10.9% had current asthma. Adjusted odds of current asthma for overweight, moderately obese, and extremely obese youth relative to those of normal weight were 1.22 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.20, 1.24), 1.37 (95% CI: 1.34, 1.40), and 1.68 (95% CI: 1.64, 1.73), respectively (P trend < 0.001). Black youth are nearly twice as likely (adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 1.93, 95% CI: 1.89, 1.99), and Hispanic youth are 25% less likely (adjusted OR = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.74, 0.77), to have current asthma than to non-Hispanic white youth. However, the relationship between BMI and asthma was strongest in Hispanic and weakest in black youth. Among youth with asthma, increasing body mass was associated with more frequent ambulatory and emergency department visits, as well as increased inhaled and oral corticosteroid use. In conclusion, overweight, moderate, and extreme obesity are associated with higher odds of asthma in children and adolescents, although the association varies widely with race/ethnicity. Increasing BMI among youth with asthma is associated with higher consumption of corticosteroids and emergency department visits

Trends over 5 Decades in U.S. Occupation-Related Physical Activity and Their Associations with Obesity

BACKGROUND: The true causes of the obesity epidemic are not well understood and there are few longitudinal population-based data published examining this issue. The objective of this analysis was to examine trends in occupational physical activity during the past 5 decades and explore how these trends relate to concurrent changes in body weight in the U.S. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Analysis of energy expenditure for occupations in U.S. private industry since 1960 using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mean body weight was derived from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). In the early 1960's almost half the jobs in private industry in the U.S. required at least moderate intensity physical activity whereas now less than 20% demand this level of energy expenditure. Since 1960 the estimated mean daily energy expenditure due to work related physical activity has dropped by more than 100 calories in both women and men. Energy balance model predicted weights based on change in occupation-related daily energy expenditure since 1960 for each NHANES examination period closely matched the actual change in weight for 40-50 year old men and women. For example from 1960-62 to 2003-06 we estimated that the occupation-related daily energy expenditure decreased by 142 calories in men. Given a baseline weight of 76.9 kg in 1960-02, we estimated that a 142 calories reduction would result in an increase in mean weight to 89.7 kg, which closely matched the mean NHANES weight of 91.8 kg in 2003-06. The results were similar for women. CONCLUSION: Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men