PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

3-D satellite, GPS earthquake maps isolate impacts in real time

Method produced by UI researcher could improve reaction time to deadly, expensive quakes

3-D satellite, GPS earthquake maps isolate impacts in real time
2015-03-23
(Press-News.org) When an earthquake hits, the faster first responders can get to an impacted area, the more likely infrastructure--and lives--can be saved.

New research from the University of Iowa, along with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), shows that GPS and satellite data can be used in a real-time, coordinated effort to fully characterize a fault line within 24 hours of an earthquake, ensuring that aid is delivered faster and more accurately than ever before.

Earth and Environmental Sciences assistant professor William Barnhart used GPS and satellite measurements from the magnitude 6.0 South Napa, California earthquake on August 24, 2014, to create a three-dimensional map of how the ground surface moved in response to the earthquake. The map was made without using traditional rapid response instruments, such as seismometers, which may not afford the same level of detail for similar events around the globe.

"By having the 3D knowledge of the earthquake itself, we can make predictions of the ground shaking, without instruments to record that ground shaking, and then can make estimates of what the human and infrastructure impacts will be-- in terms of both fatalities and dollars," Barnhart says.

The study, "Geodetic Constraints on the 2014 M 6.0 South Napa Earthquake" published in the March/April edition of Seismological Research Letters, is the first USGS example showing that GPS and satellite readings can be used as a tool to shorten earthquake response times.

And while information about an earthquake's impact might be immediately known in an area such as southern California, Barnhart says the technique will be most useful in the developing world. The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 is the perfect example for the usefulness of this kind of tool, Barnhart says. The earthquake struck right under the capital city of Port Au Prince, killing up to 316,000 people, depending on estimates, and costing billions of dollars in aid.

"On an international scale, it dramatically reduces the time between when an earthquake happens, when buildings start to fall down, and when aid starts to show up," Barnhart says.

To accurately map the South Napa earthquake for this study, Barnhart and a team of researchers created a complex comparison scenario.

They first used GPS and satellite readings to measure the very small- millimeter-to-centimeter-sized-displacements of the ground's surface that were caused by the earthquake. They fed those measurements into a mathematical equation that inverts the data and relates how much the ground moved to the degree of slip on the fault plane. Slip describes the amount, timing, and distribution of fault plane movement during an earthquake.

This allowed the group to determine the location, orientation, and dimensions of the entire fault without setting foot on the ground near the earthquake. The mathematical inversion gave the researchers predictions of how much the ground might be displaced, and they compared those results to their initial estimations, bit by bit, until their predictions and observations match. The resulting model is a 3D map of fault slip beneath the Earth's surface. The entire procedure takes only a few minutes to complete.

Nationally, there is a push to create an earthquake early-warning system, which is already being tested internally by the USGS in coordination with the University of California, Berkeley; the California Institute of Technology; and the University of Washington. While only researchers, first responders, and other officials received the early warning message, it did work in testing for the Bay Area during the Napa earthquake. Individuals in Berkeley received nearly 10 seconds of advanced warning before the ground began shaking. The information contained in Barnhart's study could be used to create further tools for predicting the economic and human tolls of earthquakes.

"That's why this is so important. It really was the chance to test all these tools that have been put into place," Barnhart says. "It happened in a perfect place, because now we're much more equipped for a bigger earthquake."

INFORMATION:


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
3-D satellite, GPS earthquake maps isolate impacts in real time

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Along with antiretroviral medications, doctors may prescribe exercise for people with HIV

2015-03-23
In addition to antiretroviral medications, people with HIV may soon begin receiving a home exercise plan from their doctors, according to a researcher at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. "People with HIV are developing secondary chronic illnesses earlier and more frequently than their non-HIV counterparts," said Allison Webel, PhD, RN, assistant professor of nursing. "And heart disease is one for which they are especially at risk." An estimated 1.2 million people nationally live with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease ...

Highlights from the inaugural issue of ACS Central Science

2015-03-23
Today, ACS is launching its first open access multidisciplinary research journal. Aspiring to communicate the most novel and impactful science developments, ACS Central Science will feature peer-reviewed articles reporting on timely original research across chemistry and its allied sciences. Free to readers and authors alike, original research content will be accompanied by additional editorial features. These additional editorial features include news stories contributed by the Society's award-winning science journalists, invited topical reviews (called Outlooks) from ...

Varied immunity by age 5 in children vaccinated with serogroup B meningococcus as babies

2015-03-23
Young children who received the 4CMenB vaccine as infants to protect against serogroup B meningococcal disease had waning immunity by age 5, even after receiving a booster at age 3 ½, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) Serogroup B meningococcal disease is the leading cause of meningitis and blood infections in developed countries. Infants and young children under the age of 5 years are especially at risk, and there is a second peak of cases in the late teenage years. The multicomponent serogroup B meningococcal (4CMenB) ...

Landmark study proves that magnets can control heat and sound

2015-03-23
COLUMBUS, Ohio--Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered how to control heat with a magnetic field. In the March 23 issue of the journal Nature Materials, they describe how a magnetic field roughly the size of a medical MRI reduced the amount of heat flowing through a semiconductor by 12 percent. The study is the first ever to prove that acoustic phonons--the elemental particles that transmit both heat and sound--have magnetic properties. "This adds a new dimension to our understanding of acoustic waves," said Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar ...

Colliding stars explain enigmatic 17th century explosion

Colliding stars explain enigmatic 17th century explosion
2015-03-23
New observations made with APEX and other telescopes reveal that the star that European astronomers saw appear in the sky in 1670 was not a nova, but a much rarer, violent breed of stellar collision. It was spectacular enough to be easily seen with the naked eye during its first outburst, but the traces it left were so faint that very careful analysis using submillimetre telescopes was needed before the mystery could finally be unravelled more than 340 years later. The results appear online in the journal Nature on 23 March 2015. Some of seventeenth century's greatest ...

Combination therapy boosts antiviral response to chronic infection

2015-03-23
New Haven, Conn. -- A Yale-led team has identified a promising new combination immunotherapy to enhance the body's ability to fight chronic viral infections and possibly cancer. Their study was published March 23 in Nature Medicine. Viruses that cause chronic infection, such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C, are able to persist in the body despite attack from T cells, the body's main line of defense against pathogens. They persist because, over time, our T cells weaken to the point of "T-cell exhaustion." To circumvent this process, the research team -- led by Susan Kaech, ...

Policy makers should not discount the damages from future climate tipping points

2015-03-23
Society should set a high carbon tax now to try and prevent climate change reaching a point of no return according to a new study. The research, carried out by the Universities of Exeter, Zurich, Stanford and Chicago and published today in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that the prospect of an uncertain future tipping point should greatly increase the amount we are willing to pay now to limit climate change. Depending on the economic impacts of an abrupt change in climate and how quickly this is felt, the cost of carbon emitted now increases by 50 - 200%. Setting ...

Atlantic Ocean overturning found to slow down already today

Atlantic Ocean overturning found to slow down already today
2015-03-23
The gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by man-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown. Further weakening could impact marine ecosystems and sea level as well as weather systems in the US and Europe. "It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Climate Change. Previous research had already ...

Scientists use DNA sequencing to trace the spread of drug-resistant TB

2015-03-23
Scientists have for the first time used DNA sequencing to trace the fatal spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis between patients in the UK. Genetic analysis of the TB bacteria revealed how a 44-year-old man who died of the disease in 2012 caught the drug-resistant infection from a healthcare worker who had worked in South Africa, when both were admitted on the same medical ward four years earlier. TB is spread by inhaling tiny airborne droplets from an infected person. The bacteria can survive in the lungs for long periods without causing symptoms - known as latent ...

Shape-shifting frog discovered in Ecuadorian Andes

Shape-shifting frog discovered in Ecuadorian Andes
2015-03-23
A frog in Ecuador's western Andean cloud forest changes skin texture in minutes, appearing to mimic the texture it sits on. Originally discovered by a Case Western Reserve University PhD student and her husband, a projects manager at Cleveland Metroparks' Natural Resources Division, the amphibian is believed to be the first known to have this shape-shifting capability. But the new species, called Pristimantis mutabilis, or mutable rainfrog, has company. Colleagues working with the couple recently found that a known relative of the frog shares the same texture-changing ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

A third of licensed GPs in England not working in NHS general practice

ChatGPT “thought on the fly” when put through Ancient Greek maths puzzle

Engineers uncover why tiny particles form clusters in turbulent air

GLP-1RA drugs dramatically reduce death and cardiovascular risk in psoriasis patients

Psoriasis linked to increased risk of vision-threatening eye disease, study finds

Reprogramming obesity: New drug from Italian biotech aims to treat the underlying causes of obesity

Type 2 diabetes may accelerate development of multiple chronic diseases, particularly in the early stages, UK Biobank study suggests

Resistance training may improve nerve health, slow aging process, study shows

Common and inexpensive medicine halves the risk of recurrence in patients with colorectal cancer

SwRI-built instruments to monitor, provide advanced warning of space weather events

Breakthrough advances sodium-based battery design

New targeted radiation therapy shows near-complete response in rare sarcoma patients

Does physical frailty contribute to dementia?

Soccer headers and brain health: Study finds changes within folds of the brain

Decoding plants’ language of light

UNC Greensboro study finds ticks carrying Lyme disease moving into western NC

New implant restores blood pressure balance after spinal cord injury

New York City's medical specialist advantage may be an illusion, new NYU Tandon research shows

Could a local anesthetic that doesn’t impair motor function be within reach?

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5

In the wild, chimpanzees likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day

Warming of 2°C intensifies Arctic carbon sink but weakens Alpine sink, study finds

Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Middle East were committed to wine production

Indian adolescents are mostly starting their periods at an earlier age than 25 years ago

Temporary medical centers in Gaza known as "Medical Points" (MPs) treat an average of 117 people daily with only about 7 staff per MP

Rates of alcohol-induced deaths among the general population nearly doubled from 1999 to 2024

PLOS One study: In adolescent lab animals exposed to cocaine, High-Intensity Interval Training boosts aversion to the drug

Scientists identify four ways our bodies respond to COVID-19 vaccines

Stronger together: A new fusion protein boosts cancer immunotherapy

Hidden brain waves as triggers for post-seizure wandering

[Press-News.org] 3-D satellite, GPS earthquake maps isolate impacts in real time
Method produced by UI researcher could improve reaction time to deadly, expensive quakes