China has experienced major earthquakes recently. The 2014 Ludian earthquake struck Ludian County, Yunnan, (Mw =6.1) on 3 August, 2014. On April 20th 2013, Ya’an earthquake (Mw =6.9), on April 14th 2010, Qinghai earthquake (Mw =7.1), on July 9th 2009, Yunnan earthquake (Mw =6.0), and on May 12th 2008, Sichuan earthquake (Mw =7.9) struck China. Among these disasters, the most devastating, the Si...

We evaluate paleo-, historical, and future sea-level rise along the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast. The rate of relative sea-level rise in New Jersey decreased from 3.5± 1.0mm/yr at 7.5–6.5 ka, to 2.2± 0.8mm/yr at 5.5–4.5 ka to a minimum of 0.9± 0.4mm/yr at 3.3–2.3 ka. Relative sea level rose at a rate of 1.6± 0.1mm/yr from 2.2 to 1.2 ka (750 Common Era [CE]) and 1.4± 0.1mm/yr from 800 to 1800 CE. Geo...

Warm fluids emanating from hydrothermal vents can be used as windows into the rocky subseafloor habitat and its resident microbial community. Two new vent systems on the Mid-Cayman Rise each exhibits novel geologic settings and distinctively hydrogen-rich vent fluid compositions. We have determined and compared the chemistry, potential energy yielding reactions, abundance, community composition...

1. While Stearns, Adas, Schwartz, and Gilbert in World Civilizations: The Global Experience (a.k.a. the textbook) argue that the decline of the Roman empire can be attributed to “a set of general problems, triggered by a cycle of plagues that could not be prevented, resulting in a rather mechanistic spiral that steadily worsened” (2nd ed., p. 239; 3rd ed., p. 258; 4th ed., p. 233; 5th ed., p. 2...

We document the acoustics of the four Mangetti Dune !Xung coronal clicks. We report the temporal measures of burst duration, relative burst amplitude and rise time, as well as the spectral value of center of gravity in the click bursts. COG correlates with lingual cavity volume. We show that there is inter-speaker variation in the acoustics of the palatal click, which we expect to correlate wit...

The existence of a step-like contrast structure for a class of high-dimensional singularly perturbed system is shown by a smooth connection method based on the existence of a first integral for an associated system. In the framework of this paper, we not only give the conditions under which there exists an internal transition layer but also determine where an internal transition time is. Meanwh...

Knowledge on habitat characteristics and nature of regional vegetation inrangelands is a prerequisite for any planning and proper range management along withsustainable development of renewable natural resources. Rangelands in southern andwestern highlands of Kashan, Iran are of good vegetation diversity but unfortunately,palatable and desirable species are endangered in recent years. This rese...

fragility curves represent the probabilities that structural damages, under various levels of seismic excitation, will exceed the specified damage states by means of earthquake intensity damage relations. conceptual aspects related to seismic vulnerability, damage and risk evaluation are discussed first, together with a short review of the most widely used possibilities for the seismic evaluati...

Background: To evaluate the role of 3D, 4D and color Doppler ultrasound (US) in the assessment of early human development. Materials and Methods: 380 women with uncomplicated early pregnancy between 5 and 14 weeks were evaluated by 3D, 4D and color Doppler US. Results: Regression analysis revealed exponential rise of the gestational sac volume with gestational age throughout the first trimester...