BACKGROUND A magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Canterbury in September 2010. This earthquake and associated aftershocks took the lives of 185 people and drastically changed residents' living, working, and social conditions. AIM To explore the impact of the earthquakes on smoking status and levels of tobacco consumption in the residents of Christchurch. METHODS Semistructured interviews were carr...

The study of faulting and earthquake processes requires direct and near-fi eld observations at the focal depth. Deep mines provide a unique opportunity to make such observations. The linked DAFSAM (Drilling Active Faults Laboratory in South African Mines)-NELSAM (Natural Earthquake Laboratory in South African Mines) projects focus on building an earthquake laboratory in deep gold mines in South...

this is a concise state-of-the-art-article on earthquake prediction • the story of the hai - cheng ( china ) earthquake of 4 february 1975 ,the first successfully major earthquake is reported . existing methods of predicting earthquakes are investigated. earthquake prediction activties in china, russia, japan and u.s.a. are discussed.

Among various indices of earthquake ground motions, the maximum amplitude value and frequency content have been regarded as the most important indices for earthquake engineering. These indices are strongly affected by local site conditions. Also the fact that the duration of earthquake ground motion differs from site to site even during the same earthquake has been noticed by many researchers. ...

BACKGROUND Research on long-term health effects of earthquakes is scarce, especially in low- and middle-income countries, which are disproportionately affected by disasters. To date, progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of tools to accurately measure these effects. Here, we explored whether long-term public health effects of earthquakes can be assessed using a combination of read...

A semi-Markov model estimating the waiting times and magnitudes of large earthquakes is proposed. The model defines a discrete-time, discrete-state process in which successive state occupancies are governed by the transition probabilities of the Markov process. The stay in any state is described by an integer-valued random variable that depends on the presently occupied state and the state to w...

One of the most widespread spring-block earthquake models, the Olami-Feder-Christensen model, is investigated without making the assumption that the duration of individual earthquakes is negligible. While the GutenbergRichter law for the size distribution of earthquakes is preserved qualitatively for earthquakes of finite duration, the bvalue decreases with increasing earthquake duration. The e...

Foundations may undergo severe distress during an earthquake. One such example of foundation failure involving toppling of apartment blocks due to liquefaction during the 1964 Niigata Earthquake is presented in Figure 1. Earthquake effects on shallow and deep foundations are accounted for by designing them structurally to provide necessary strength and ensure serviceability. Strength considerat...

[1] The clustering of earthquakes in time on the same fault affects the rate and pattern of interseismic deformation. We develop a simple analytic viscoelastic model of the surface velocity field through a clustered earthquake cycle by superposing the velocities of individual earthquake cycles of constant period but varying phase. Velocity profiles prior to and after an earthquake show a wider ...

In a spirit akin to the sandpile model of selforganized criticality, we present a simple statistical model of the cellular-automaton type which simulates the role of an asperity in the dynamics of a one-dimensional fault. This model produces an earthquake spectrum similar to the characteristic-earthquake behaviour of some seismic faults. This model, that has no parameter, is amenable to an alge...