Ground motions recorded within sedimentary basins are variable over short distances. One important cause of the variability is that local soil properties are variable at all scales. Regional hazard maps developed for predicting site effects are generally derived from maps of surficial geology; however, recent studies have shown that mapped geologic units do not correlate well with the average s...

Fluctuations of the refractive index associated with atmospheric turbulence affect the propagation of electromagnetic and acoustic waves in the atmosphere. In the reported study, the effects of turbulence on wave propagation in the atmospheric convective boundary layer (CBL) are considered in terms of the second-order refractive index structure function and related to its structure-function par...

The structure of an H(2)O monolayer bound to atomically smooth hydroxylated amorphous silica is probed under ambient conditions by near-infrared evanescent-wave cavity ring-down absorption spectroscopy. Employing a miniature monolithic optical resonator, we find sharp (approximately 10 cm(-1)) and polarized (>10:1) vibration-combination bands for surface OH and adsorbed H(2)O, which reveal orde...