Breaking News: Earthquakes

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Released: 7-Jun-2019 9:00 AM EDT
Solved: How tides can trigger earthquakes
Earth Institute at Columbia University

The tides are turning in a quest to solve an earthquake mystery.

Released: 23-May-2019 2:05 PM EDT
Aftershocks of 1959 earthquake rocked Yellowstone in 2017-18
University of Utah

A swarm of more than 3,000 small earthquakes in the Maple Creek area (in Yellowstone National Park but outside of the Yellowstone volcano caldera) between June 2017 and March 2018 are, at least in part, aftershocks of the 1959 quake.

Released: 13-May-2019 8:05 AM EDT
Protecting Buildings From Earthquakes
University of Delaware

Externally bonded fiber-reinforced polymer composite retrofits are a promising, relatively inexpensive technology that can strengthen buildings, bridges and other existing structures made of reinforced concrete. Seeing how these retrofits responded to a 7.1 magnitude earthquake can determine their durability and whether they can help in designing more resilient structures.

1-May-2019 4:05 PM EDT
Study suggests earthquakes are triggered well beyond fluid injection zones
Tufts University

Researchers discovered that the practice of subsurface fluid injection often used in oil and gas exploration could cause significant, rapidly spreading earthquake activity beyond the fluid diffusion zone. The results account for the observation that human-induced earthquake activity often surpasses natural earthquake hotspots.

Released: 26-Apr-2019 12:05 PM EDT
Studies link earthquakes to fracking in the central and eastern US
Seismological Society of America (SSA)

Small earthquakes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas can be linked to hydraulic fracturing wells

Released: 24-Apr-2019 2:05 PM EDT
Researchers Use Shake-Table Testing To Improve Disaster Recovery
Texas A&M University

Texas A&M researchers use shake-table testing to understand how urban wood-based structures sustain damage from earthquakes, and how to repair them more efficiently.

Released: 18-Apr-2019 2:05 PM EDT
Data mining digs up hidden clues to major California earthquake triggers
Los Alamos National Laboratory

A powerful computational study of southern California seismic records has revealed detailed information about a plethora of previously undetected small earthquakes, giving a more precise picture about stress in the earth’s crust.

Released: 9-Apr-2019 8:00 AM EDT
New open-source software predicts impacts of extreme events on grids
Los Alamos National Laboratory

A new, free, open-source software reliably predicts how damage from hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes, and other extreme events will restrict power delivery from utility grids. The Severe Contingency Solver for Electric Power Transmission is the only software available—commercially or open-source—that reliably supports analysis of extreme events that cause widespread damage.

Released: 5-Apr-2019 1:05 PM EDT
For UTEP Doctoral Student, Bumpy Paths Offer Trajectory to Success
University of Texas at El Paso

Masum Bhuiyan, a doctoral candidate in The University of Texas at El Paso's computational science program, said he first became interested in using data culled from seismic activity after observing earthquakes in 2014 in Arizona and several stock markets since 2008 during the time of the global financial crisis. Since then, he has honed his ability to use stochastic models such as stochastic volatility and stochastic differential equations to create forecasts.

Released: 27-Mar-2019 10:05 AM EDT
Massive Earthquakes Provide New Insight into Deep Earth
Florida State University

In a first-ever study of two of the largest deep earthquakes ever recorded in human history, FSU researchers reveal new and surprising information about our planet’s mysterious, ever-changing interior.

Released: 4-Mar-2019 8:00 AM EST
Dealing with the fallout in Fukushima–Part 1
Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Mar. 11 marks the 8th anniversary of Japan’s Tohuku earthquake. The tsunami that followed led to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which spread radioactive materials throughout the area. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Mar. 1 blog explores the impact this has had on the farming village of Iitate, Japan.

Released: 22-Feb-2019 2:05 PM EST
S&T Robot Test Standards Adopted in Japan’s Fukushima Decades-long Cleanup Efforts
Homeland Security's Science And Technology Directorate

DHS S&T and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed standard test methods for robots, which the Japanese government is now beginning to apply directly to their Fukushima cleanup efforts.

Released: 5-Feb-2019 4:50 PM EST
Dark Fiber Lays Groundwork for Long-Distance Earthquake Detection and Groundwater Mapping
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have turned dark fiber owned by the DOE Energy Sciences Network into a highly sensitive seismic activity sensor that could potentially augment the performance of earthquake early warning systems currently being developed in the western United States.

Released: 4-Feb-2019 2:05 PM EST
MERMAIDs reveal secrets from below the ocean floor
Princeton University

Seismologists use waves generated by earthquakes to scan the interior of our planet, much like doctors image their patients using medical tomography. Earth imaging has helped us track down the deep origins of volcanic islands such as Hawaii, and identify the source zones of deep earthquakes.

Released: 31-Jan-2019 12:05 AM EST
Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath included spike in heart disease hospitalizations
Tufts University

Hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease rose precipitously in Orleans and Jefferson parishes after Hurricane Katrina. The increase in rates lasted for more than one month after landfall and rates were higher among the older black population, compared to the older white population.

22-Jan-2019 3:20 PM EST
JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association

An earthquake and subsequent tsunami led to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Japan in 2011. This observational study examined associations between the earthquake and power plant disaster with birth rates in Fukushima City, the capital of the prefecture.

Released: 16-Jan-2019 2:05 PM EST
Waiting for the complete rupture
ETH Zürich

In April 2015, Nepal - and especially the region around the capital city, Kathmandu - was struck by a powerful tremor. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 destroyed entire villages, traffic routes and cultural monuments, with a death toll of some 9,000.

Released: 7-Jan-2019 9:00 AM EST
Keeping the lights on in a disaster
Oregon State University, College of Engineering

Founded by the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, the Cascadia Lifelines Program seeks solutions to improve the performance of critical infrastructure during earthquakes. Through the program, Oregon State graduate student Vishvas Chalishazar is working with PGE to preemptively make local power grids more resilient.

Released: 28-Dec-2018 10:05 AM EST
Best of 2018: Experts respond to wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters
Newswise

See expert analysis and research from our members related to natural disasters

Released: 17-Dec-2018 5:05 PM EST
Machine learning-detected signal predicts time to earthquake
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Machine-learning research published in two related papers today in Nature Geosciences reports the detection of seismic signals accurately predicting the Cascadia fault’s slow slippage, a type of failure observed to precede large earthquakes in other subduction zones.

13-Nov-2018 1:00 PM EST
Seismic Study Reveals Huge Amount of Water Dragged Into Earth’s Interior
Washington University in St. Louis

Slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates under the ocean drag about three times more water down into the deep Earth than previously estimated, according to a first-of-its-kind seismic study that spans the Mariana Trench.The observations from the deepest ocean trench in the world have important implications for the global water cycle, according to researchers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St.

Released: 31-Oct-2018 8:05 PM EDT
New Model Improves Thermal Models Tying Metamorphic Rocks to Subduction Zones
Boise State University

The temperatures associated with the earth’s subduction zones have been historically miscalculated, which has major implications for our understanding of how the planet’s deadliest earthquakes and volcanic arcs are generated.

Released: 29-Oct-2018 11:05 AM EDT
‘Majority Rules’ When Looking for Earthquakes, Explosions
Sandia National Laboratories

A dormant volcano in Antarctica helped researchers at Sandia National Laboratories improve sensor data readings to better detect earthquakes and explosions and tune out everyday sounds such as traffic and footsteps. Finding the ideal settings for each sensor in a network to detect vibrations in the ground, or seismic activity, can be a painstaking and manual process. Researchers at Sandia are working to change that by using software that automatically adjusts the seismic activity detection levels for each sensor. Sandia tested the new software with seismic data from the Mt. Erebus volcano in Antarctica and achieved 18 percent fewer false detections and 11 percent fewer missed detections than the original performance of the sensors on Mt. Erebus.

Released: 17-Oct-2018 9:00 AM EDT
World’s Largest Outdoor Shake Table Receives $16.3M From NSF for Upgrades
University of California San Diego

The world’s largest outdoor earthquake simulator, operated by structural engineers at the University of California San Diego, has received a $16.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to upgrade the facility to expand its testing capabilities. The funds will enable the simulator, also commonly known as a shake table, to more realistically recreate the motion of the ground during strong earthquakes.

Released: 10-Sep-2018 4:15 PM EDT
Earthquake in China Linked to Reservoir Water
Saint Louis University Medical Center

SLU scientists report that reservoir water played a role in causing earthquakes in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region of China.

Released: 20-Aug-2018 2:15 PM EDT
January 2018 Michigan meteor provides trove of scientific insights
University of Michigan

On the night of Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor burst in the skies over Michigan, producing a fireball that was seen by people across seven U.S. states and in Ontario province.

Released: 9-Aug-2018 10:05 AM EDT
Seismologist works to determine the limit of ground accelerations during earthquakes
Iowa State University

Iowa State's Igor Beresnev has worked summers and weekends to find the answer to a very old question in seismology. Yes, he says, there is a limit to ground accelerations during an earthquake.

Released: 28-Jun-2018 10:00 AM EDT
New Simulations Break Down Potential Impact of a Major Quake by Building Location and Size
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national labs, is leveraging powerful supercomputers to portray the impact of high-frequency ground motion on thousands of representative different-sized buildings spread out across the California region.

Released: 27-Jun-2018 10:05 AM EDT
Rough Terrain? No Problem for Beaver-Inspired Autonomous Robot
University at Buffalo

University at Buffalo researchers are using stigmergy, a biological phenomenon that has been used to explain everything from the behavior of termites and beavers to the popularity of Wikipedia, to build new problem-solving autonomous robots.

13-Jun-2018 3:00 PM EDT
Rensselaer Researchers Awarded Top Geotechnical Journal Paper Award
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

For the second year in a row, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute earthquake engineering experts Ricardo Dobry and Tarek Abdoun have been selected by the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to receive the Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award.

Released: 7-May-2018 1:05 PM EDT
Geoscientists Suggest ‘Snowball Earth’ Resulted from Plate Tectonics
University of Texas at Dallas

In a new study published in the April issue of the journal Terra Nova, geologists at The University of Texas at Dallas and UT Austin suggest that episodes of global cooling that geologists refer to as “Snowball Earth” can be linked to the advent of plate tectonics.

3-May-2018 12:00 PM EDT
Building With Bottles
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

Powerful hurricanes and earthquakes have wreaked havoc in the United States and around the world in recent years, often leaving people stranded for months and even years without access to water, food, and shelter. A unique collaborative project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seeks to provide a sustainable solution, while also considering the environment.

Released: 19-Apr-2018 4:05 PM EDT
California's Next Major Earthquake Could Cause $100 Billion in Losses, Strand 20,000 in Elevators
University of Colorado Boulder

Northern California's next big earthquake could kill 800 people and cause more than $100 billion in economic losses. One in four buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area could be unsafe to re-enter after a major earthquake or would be otherwise limited in their usability.

   
Released: 15-Mar-2018 6:05 PM EDT
Professor Discovers Answers About Seismic Shifts Deep in the Earth
New Mexico State University (NMSU)

The largest and most-devastating earthquakes and volcano eruptions occur where one tectonic plate is shifted underneath another one. A New Mexico State University researcher authored a paper published recently in “Nature Communications” that looks at the so-called subduction zones where the plates become “slabs” and sink into the Earth's mantle.

Released: 15-Mar-2018 4:05 PM EDT
Garnet Reveals Source of Water to Fuel Powerful Volcanoes and Earthquakes
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

By applying a new spectroscopy technique to garnet containing fragments of quartz, metamorphic petrologist Frank Spear of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute thinks he’s found the source of water that fuels earthquakes in volcanoes in subduction zones.

Released: 8-Feb-2018 5:05 AM EST
Hayward Fault Earthquake Simulations Increase Fidelity of Ground Motions
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

In the next 30 years, there is a one-in-three chance that the Hayward fault will rupture with a 6.7 magnitude or higher earthquake, according to the United States Geologic Survey (USGS). Such an earthquake will cause widespread damage to structures, transportation and utilities, as well as economic and social disruption in the East Bay.

31-Jan-2018 10:05 AM EST
Oklahoma’s Earthquakes Strongly Linked to Wastewater Injection Depth, Finds Study
University of Southampton

A huge increase in the number of man-made earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA, is strongly linked to the depth at which wastewater from the oil and gas industry is injected into the ground, according to a new study involving the University of Southampton.

Released: 10-Jan-2018 7:05 AM EST
Further Reducing Injections of Oilfield Wastewater Underground Can Prevent Larger Earthquakes
Virginia Tech

The new study shows that locations that experienced earthquakes are tied in proximity and timeliness to mass waste water injection sites. Further, the study indicates that tracking annual data on the injection well locations can help predict how corresponding earthquake activity will change. This new finding builds on previous studies showing that earthquake activity increases when wastewater injections increase.

Released: 5-Dec-2017 4:00 PM EST
Earthquake Codes Developed by SDSC, SDSU, SCEC Used in 2017 Gordon Bell Prize Research
University of California San Diego

A Chinese team of researchers awarded this year’s prestigious Gordon Bell prize for simulating the devastating 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, China, used an open-source code developed by researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and San Diego State University with support from the Southern California Earthquake Center.



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