A Comparision of Observed Permanent Titles and Strains Due to Earthquakes with Those Calculated from Displaced Dislocations in Elastic Earth Models

Theoretical solutions are derived for a model of faulting in elastic media and for the effect of lateral inhomogeneities on the earth's free oscillations. The solutions are used in a study of permanent tilts and strains observed a few hundred kilometers from earthquakes. It is shown that the static deformational field due to a suitably chosen dislocation fault model is the same as that due to introduction of a stress free surface into a prestressed medium. Formal mathematical solutions are derived for the static deformational fields due to dislocation fault models in a homogeneous elastic sphere and a layered elastic half-space. For the layered half-space explicit solutions are given in terms of integral transforms for the surface displacements, tilts, and strains due to a slip fault and a dilatational source. A perturbation procedure is developed for calculating the effects of lateral changes in elastic constants on the earth's free oscillations. The procedure is applied to obtain expressions for the effect of some simple inhomogeneity geometries on the torsional free oscillations. Numerical evaluation of the static, elastic, dislocation solutions shows that the observed tilts and strains are large compared with theoretical predictions and sometimes show the opposite sign. The hypothesis that a weak layer in the lower crust or upper mantle can explain the observations is investigated. It is found that a very weak layer, approaching a liquid-like behavior, does help to explain the observations. The compatibility of a very weak layer with observed surface wave dispersion is tested using the results of the perturbation calculations for the torsional free oscillations. A very weak layer is determined as compatible with observed surface wave dispersion only if very thin and with some frequency dependence in its elastic properties. It is concluded that although a regional weak layer in the lower crust or upper mantle can help to explain the observed tilts and strains, other regional or local structural effects or source complications must also be important.</p

Storage and Analysis of Big Data Tools for Sessionized Data

The Oracle database currently used to mine data at PEGGY is approaching end-of-life and a new infrastructure overhaul is required. It has also been identified that a critical business requirement is the need to load and store very large historical data sets. These data sets contain raw electronic consumer events and interactions from a website such as page views, clicks, downloads, return visits, length of time spent on pages, and how they got to the site / originated. This project will be focused on finding a tool to analyze and measure sessionized data, which is a unit of measurement in web analytics that captures either a user\u27s actions within a particular time period, or the process of segmenting user activity of each user into sessions, each representing a single visit to the site. This sessionized data can be used as the input for a variety of data mining tasks such as clustering, association rule mining, sequence mining etc (Ansari. 2011) This sessionized data must be delivered in a reorganized and readable format timely enough to make informed go-to-market decisions as it relates to the current and existing industry trends. It is also pertinent to understand any development work required and the burden on the resources. Legacy on-premise data warehouse solutions are becoming more expensive, less efficient, less dynamic, and unscalable when compared to current Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that offer real time, on-demand, pay-as-you-go solutions . Therefore, this study will examine the total cost of ownership (TCO) by considering, researching, and analyzing the following factors against a system wide upgrade of the current on-premise Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) System: High performance: real-time (or as close to as possible) query speed against sessionized data SQL compliance Cloud based or, at least a hybrid (read: on-premise paired with cloud) Security: encryption preferred Cost structure: cost-effective pay-as-you-go pricing model and resources required for the migration and operations. These technologies analyzed against the current Oracle database are: Amazon Redshift Google Bigquery Hadoop Hadoop + Hive The cost of building an on-premise data warehouse is substantial. The project will determine the performance capabilities and affordability of Amazon Redshift, when compared to other emerging highly ranked solutions, for running e-commerce standard analytics queries on terabytes of sessionized data. Rather than redesigning, upgrading, or over purchasing infrastructure at a high cost for an on-premise data warehouse, this project considers data warehousing solutions through cloud based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions. The proposed objective of this project is to determine the most cost-effective high performer between Amazon Redshift, Apache Hadoop, and Google BigQuery when running e-commerce standard analytics queries on terabytes of sessionized data

A Comparison of Observed Permanent Tilts and Strains Due to Earthquakes with those Calculated from Displaced Dislocations in Elastic Earth Models

Theoretical solutions are derived for a model of faulting in elastic media and for the effect of lateral inhomogeneities on the earth's free oscillations. The solutions are used in a study of permanent tilts and strains observed a few hundred kilometers from earthquakes. It is shown that the static deformational field due to a suitably chosen dislocation fault model is the same as that due to introduction of a stress free surface into a prestressed medium. Formal mathematical solutions are derived for the static deformational fields due to dislocation fault models in a homogeneous elastic sphere and a layered elastic half-space. For the layered half-space explicit solutions are given in terms of integral transforms for the surface displacements, tilts, and strains due to a slip fault and a dilatational source. A perturbation procedure is developed for calculating the effects of lateral changes in elastic constants on the earth's free oscillations. The procedure is applied to obtain expressions for the effect of some simple inhomogeneity geometries on the torsional free oscillations. Numerical evaluation of the static, elastic, dislocation solutions shows that the observed tilts and strains are large compared with theoretical predictions and sometimes show the opposite sign. The hypothesis that a weak layer in the lower crust or upper mantle can explain the observations is investigated. It is found that a very weak layer, approaching a liquid-like behavior, does help to explain the observations. The compatibility of a very weak layer with observed surface wave dispersion is tested using the results of the perturbation calculations for the torsional free oscillations. A very weak layer is determined as compatible with observed surface wave dispersion only if very thin and with some frequency dependence in its elastic properties. It is concluded that although a regional weak layer in the lower crust or upper mantle can help to explain the observed tilts and strains, other regional or local structural effects or source complications must also be important.</p

Melanocytes are selectively vulnerable to UVA-mediated bystander oxidative signaling.

Long-wave UVA is the major component of terrestrial UV radiation and is also the predominant constituent of indoor sunlamps, both of which have been shown to increase cutaneous melanoma risk. Using a two-chamber model, we show that UVA-exposed target cells induce intercellular oxidative signaling to non-irradiated bystander cells. This UVA-mediated bystander stress is observed between all three cutaneous cell types (i.e., keratinocytes, melanocytes, and fibroblasts). Significantly, melanocytes appear to be more resistant to direct UVA effects compared with keratinocytes and fibroblasts, although melanocytes are also more susceptible to bystander oxidative signaling. The extensive intercellular flux of oxidative species has not been previously appreciated and could possibly contribute to the observed cancer risk associated with prolonged UVA exposure

Feasibility, Safety, and Compliance in a Randomized Controlled Trial of Physical Therapy for Parkinson's Disease

Both efficacy and clinical feasibility deserve consideration in translation of research outcomes. This study evaluated the feasibility of rehabilitation programs within the context of a large randomized controlled trial of physical therapy. Ambulant participants with Parkinson's disease (PD) (n = 210) were randomized into three groups: (1) progressive strength training (PST); (2) movement strategy training (MST); or (3) control (“life skills”). PST and MST included fall prevention education. Feasibility was evaluated in terms of safety, retention, adherence, and compliance measures. Time to first fall during the intervention phase did not differ across groups, and adverse effects were minimal. Retention was high; only eight participants withdrew during or after the intervention phase. Strong adherence (attendance >80%) did not differ between groups (P = .435). Compliance in the therapy groups was high. All three programs proved feasible, suggesting they may be safely implemented for people with PD in community-based clinical practice

Research Reports From Status Report: Identification of Appropriate Standards for Corrective Action for a Release from Petroleum Underground Storage Tanks

This document is a collection of research reports: Cost of Closure and Remediation for Petroleum Underground Storage Tanks Assessment of Number and Distribution of USTs Analysis of Potable Water Sources in Kentucky Analysis of Well Data and Soil Parameters as Related to the STATSGO Kentucky General Soil Map Petroleum Products: Chemical Composition, Tocxicological and Environmental Data Health Risk Analysis for Selected Petroleum Compounds Summary of Analytical Methods Soil Volume Calculations for UST Installations Generic Organic Containment Pathway Analysis for Components of Petroleum in Soil and Groundwate

Results of search for magnetized quark-nugget dark matter from radial impacts on Earth

Magnetized Quark Nuggets (MQNs) are a recently proposed dark-matter candidate consistent with the Standard Model and with Tatsumi's theory of quark-nugget cores in magnetars. Previous publications have covered their formation in the early universe, aggregation into a broad mass distribution before they can decay by the weak force, interaction with normal matter through their magnetopause, and first observation consistent MQNs, i.e. a nearly tangential impact limiting their surface-magnetic-field parameter B_o from Tatsumi's values of 0.1 to 10.0 TT to new value of 1.65 TT +/- 21%. The MQN mass distribution and interaction cross section depend strongly on B_o. Their magnetopause is much larger than their geometric dimensions and can cause sufficient energy deposition to form non-meteorite craters, which are reported approximately annually. We report computer simulations of the MQN energy deposition in water-saturated peat, soft sediments, and granite and report results from excavating such a crater. Five points of agreement between observations and hydrodynamic simulations of an MQN impact support this second observation consistent with MQN dark matter and suggest a method for qualifying additional MQN events. The results also redundantly constrain B_o to greater than 0.4 TT.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Univers