In the common jargon used by non-specialist commentators in newspapers or TV programs, business cycle downturns are sometimes described in terms of economic collapses, crashes or even earthquakes. Does these comparisons make any sense but for literary license? In particular, are economic recessions and recoveries governed at large by the same statistical law underlying earthquakes' occurrence? ...

Following the 2010 Maule and 2011 Tohoku earthquakes, many studies have examined the relation between megathrust earthquakes and subsequent deformation. Here, we apply simple models based on mode II shear cracks, including approximated effects of the free surface to study induced deformation during coseismic and early postseismic stages. We distinguish between buried and surface ruptures repres...

Seismic behaviour of steel-concrete composite high-rise buildings, composed of external steel frames (SF) and internal concrete tube (CT), with rectangular plan is investigated in this paper. A macro-element based model is established for seismic analysis of composite high-rise buildings aiming at predicting their global responses under earthquakes. By employing this macro-element based model, ...

Earthquakes in Sannio Matese, a quite large Italian area, are divided into three geographical areas and interoccurrence times of major earthquakes, their magnitudes and number of minor earthquakes are analysed from a Bayesian point of view and then compared, discovering that diierent behaviours characterise the areas. Similar results are obtained by considering either a reasonable proper prior ...

Glacio-isostatically induced seismic activity is recognized to play a major role in triggering submarine mass-movements along formerly glaciated continental margins. Ice load removal is known to cause fault instability and generate many earthquakes in these regions immediately after deglaciation. With rates of forced regression of ~7 m/100 yr at time of deglaciation (8-7 ka BP), southeastern Hu...

Stress drop is a fundamental parameter of earthquakes, but it is difficult to obtain reliable stress drop estimates for most earthquakes. Static stress drop estimates require knowledge of the seismic moment and fault area. Dynamic stress drop estimates are based entirely upon the observed source time functions. Based on analytical formulas that I derive for the crack and slip-pulse rupture mode...

The high level of seismic activity and the potential for large earthquakes in the San Jacinto fault zone, southern California, make it desirable to have accurate locations and source parameters for as many previous events as possible. Prior to the installation of a dense seismic network in this region, earthquakes were located using only a few stations with generally poor azimuthal coverage res...

Frictional melting and fluid pressurization can play a key role in rupture dynamics of large earthquakes. For faulting under frictional stress ar, the temperature increases with cr.r and the earthquake magnitude, Mw. If the thickness of the heated zone, w, is of the order of a few mm, then, even for a modest a1, the temperature rise, ll.T, would exceed 1000° for earthquakes with Mw=5 to 6, and ...

We report on the experimental observation of the phenomenon of, spontaneously nucleated, supershear rupture and on the visualization of the mechanism of subRayleigh to supershear rupture transition in frictionally-held interfaces. The laboratory experiments mimic natural earthquakes. The results suggest that under certain conditions supershear rupture propagation can be facilitated during large...

an important aim of seismology is to determine focuses of earthquakes. the more precisely the process is carried out, the better results will be achieved in various studies, for example, in vestigation of the crustal structure and seismogenic zone or the determination of the plane of faults causing earthquakes. the classic methods of locating are based on geiger's equations (1910). the rel...