(Press-News.org) A team of international scientists, including two researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), will soon sail to the Japan Trench to discover more about what causes tsunamis.
The researchers will be on board the world’s most advanced drilling-equipped science vessel, Chikyu. It will drill directly into the Tōhoku-oki earthquake fault zone, where one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Japan occurred in 2011.
The stress accumulated at this junction over hundreds of years was suddenly released, causing the tectonic plate on which Japan sits to skip upwards and eastwards by up to 50 metres. This shallow slip displaced a vast area of the seafloor (around 200 by 500 kilometres), forcing the ocean into a devastating tsunami.
ANU geophysicist and Australian and New Zealand International Scientific Drilling Consortium (ANZIC) Director, Associate Professor Ron Hackney, who will be part of the onboard science party for seven weeks, said the project is bold, ambitious, collaborative and multinational.
Drilling up to a kilometre below the seafloor in water about seven kilometres deep, the researchers will extract core samples from both sides of the fault line.
“There’s so much work, such complex engineering and impressive technology that must come together to extract those little cylinders of Earth. But the cores can tell us so much,” said Professor Hackney.
“This site was previously drilled – a year after the quake. It will be fascinating to see how the rocks have changed since then.
“We’ll work with the core samples as they are brought up from the fault zone. We’ll measure the density, porosity, strength and more of the materials recovered, plus examine the fluids within the rocks.”
Associate Professor Will Grant, from ANU, will sail out as an outreach officer for a two-week stint. He’ll be studying the scientists themselves.
“I’ll be talking to the scientists on board to understand how they conceptualise their work and how they think about communicating that work,” he said.
The expedition forms part of a decade-long collaboration called the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), with this one being the last of 58 expeditions to extract core samples from different parts of the Earth’s crust.
“Over the last decade, we’ve sent a total of 81 Australian and New Zealand researchers on scientific drilling expeditions that have extracted nearly 100 kilometres worth of core,” Professor Hackney said.
“The resulting samples and data will take years to examine fully but will deepen our understanding of subduction zones.”
“I’m excited to be part of an amazing team of international experts from over a dozen countries all putting their heads together to unpick the details of how earthquakes and tsunamis occur, so we can be better prepared for them and reduce their impact,” he said.
“On this expedition, we will be drilling directly into the fault zone responsible for Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami.”
END
Epic voyage to uncover what causes tsunamis
2024-10-24
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
USC Stem Cell mouse study sheds light on the secret to maintaining a youthful immune system
2024-10-24
What keeps some immune systems youthful and effective in warding off age-related diseases? In a new paper published in Cellular & Molecular Immunology, USC Stem Cell scientist Rong Lu and her collaborators point the finger at a small subset of blood stem cells, which make an outsized contribution to maintaining either a youthful balance or an age-related imbalance of the two main types of immune cells: innate and adaptive.
Innate immune cells serve as the body’s first line of defense, mobilizing a quick and general attack against invading germs. For germs that evade the body’s innate immune defenses, the second line of attack consists of adaptive immune ...
Suicide risk highest on Mondays and New Year’s Day
2024-10-23
Suicide risk is highest on Mondays and increased on New Year’s Day, whereas suicide risk on weekends and Christmas varies by country and region, finds an analysis of data from 26 countries published by The BMJ today.
The researchers say their results can help to better understand the short term variations in suicide risks and define suicide prevention action plans and awareness campaigns.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 700,000 people died due to suicide in 2019, accounting for approximately 1.3% of deaths, which was higher than the number of deaths by malaria, HIV/AIDS, and breast cancer.
Previous studies have shown that suicide ...
Gene signature shows promise to improve survival for breast cancer patients
2024-10-23
Using a gene signature technique to tailor chemotherapy for patients with early triple negative breast cancer shows promise as a way to improve disease-free survival, finds a clinical trial published by The BMJ today.
Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive type of breast cancer that carries a higher risk of recurrence and death after standard treatment. As such, there is an urgent need for more effective chemotherapy strategies.
Multigene signatures are tests that analyse genes in a tumour sample to predict how well ...
Investigation finds “unexplained” millions in drug industry payments to the NHS
2024-10-23
Pharmaceutical companies have paid an estimated £156 million to NHS trusts in England between 2015 and 2022 without the public being told what the payments are for, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today.
The findings raise important questions about unrecognised conflicts of interest and have led to calls for a shake-up of current transparency rules.
The BMJ tracked all disclosed non-research payments to NHS trusts in England from 2015 to 2022 reported in Disclosure UK, a database run by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which requires participating companies to disclose cash payments and other benefits in ...
Maternal antibodies interfere with malaria vaccine responses
2024-10-23
Maternal antibodies passed across the placenta can interfere with the response to the malaria vaccine, which would explain its lower efficacy in infants under five months of age, according to research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), in collaboration with seven African centers (CISM-Mozambique, IHI-Tanzania, CRUN-Burkina Faso, KHRC-Ghana, NNIMR-Ghana, CERMEL-Gabon, KEMRI-Kenya). The findings, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggest that children younger than currently recommended by the WHO may benefit from the RTS,S and R21 malaria vaccines if they live in areas with low malaria transmission, ...
Teaching must be made more attractive as a profession to tackle shortages
2024-10-23
Teaching needs to be made more attractive to a wider pool of graduates to tackle shortages in the profession, according to new international research comparing 18 countries.
The worldwide comparison led by Durham University, UK, shows that the level of pay relative to other graduate professions, lack of resources and poor student behaviour all play a part in recruitment and retention issues.
Popular quick-fix strategies used across the world to attract and retain teachers, such as bursaries, scholarships and ...
Airbnb rentals linked to increased crime rates in London neighborhoods – study
2024-10-23
Latest research has revealed a “positive association” between the number of properties listed as Airbnb rentals and police-reported robberies and violent crimes in thousands of London neighbourhoods between 2015 and 2018.
In fact, the study from University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania suggests that a 10% increase in active Airbnb rentals in the city would correspond to an additional 1,000 robberies per year across London.*
Urban sociologists say the rapid pace at which crime rises in conjunction with new rentals suggests that the link is related more to opportunities for crime, rather than loss ...
UK budget 'blindness' risks handing green economy future to China, report argues
2024-10-23
A new report by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) argues the UK government should invest in green infrastructure now or watch productivity lag behind China, the United States and other countries already running away with the benefits.
Is reaching net zero a growth and prosperity plan? by former Head of Economic Forecasting at the UK Treasury, Dimitri Zenghelis, says the government’s self-imposed rules on infrastructure investment must be modernised to spur the innovation needed for UK prosperity.
The ...
Marri trees a lifeline for many native bee species in biodiversity hotspot
2024-10-23
New Curtin-led research has revealed Marri trees are critical to the survival of more than 80 species of native bee in Western Australia’s South West region, which is one of the world’s most biologically rich but threatened biodiversity hotspots.
Lead author Dr Kit Prendergast, Adjunct Research Fellow from the Curtin School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the study identified the Marri (Corymbia calophylla), which is native to the South West and was named a ‘near threatened’ species in 2019, as a crucial supplier of food for native bees and supporter of the region’s ecosystem.
“The findings that these trees support at ...
Treatments used for HER2-positive breast cancers could help patients with rare gastrointestinal cancer
2024-10-23
Barcelona, Spain: Drugs designed to target HER2-postive breast cancer could also benefit some patients with bile duct cancer, according to results of a patient trial to be presented on Thursday at the 36th EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Barcelona, Spain. Bile duct cancer is rare, treatment options are limited, and the survival rates are low.
The trial also suggests that a wider group of breast cancer patients – those with HER2-mutated breast cancer – could be treated with these ...