this paper is a concise report of ghaenat (iran) earthquake of november 14, 1979 in which 280 people died and several villages were destroyed. observations from earthquake effects on the ground as well as buildings are briefly discussed.

In the rain forests of Costa Rica, there is an unusual type of tree known as a “walking tree.” It is a strange looking tree. At the base of the tree is a tangle of roots, rising about a meter above the ground. It looks as if someone yanked the tree straight up out of the ground, leaving about a meter of its roots exposed above ground level. According to rain-forest guides, the walking tree actu...

Blown sand is a serious problem in the district facing the Japan Sea where seasonal wind is very strong in winter. In order to prevent the blown sand, the construction technique using natural vegetations had been developed. The growth of the natural vegetations is encouraged by the improvement of sand ingredients in this method. The effects of the method were investigated by the field survey an...

the produced electric and magnetic fields due to lightning strikes to mountainous ground are determined in this paper. for the sake of simplicity a cone-shaped ground with finite conductivity is assumed to represent a natural nonflat ground. by this assumption, we deal with an axillary symmetrical structure so we use the cylindrical 2d-fdtd to save the simulation memory and time, dramatically. ...

This paper outlines a simple algorithm for automated landing of miniature aerial vehicles (MAVs). Utilizing estimates of height above ground from barometric pressure and optic flow measurements, repeated landings were performed with a 1.5 m wingspan MAV. With height above ground estimated from barometric pressure measurements alone, landing errors averaged 7.6 m. When optic flow and barometric ...

The produced electric and magnetic fields due to lightning strikes to mountainous ground are determined in this paper. For the sake of simplicity a cone-shaped ground with finite conductivity is assumed to represent a natural nonflat ground. By this assumption, we deal with an axillary symmetrical structure so we use the cylindrical 2D-FDTD to save the simulation memory and time, dramatically. ...

In this paper, we present a photometric stereo algorithm for estimating surface height. We follow recent work that uses photometric ratios to obtain a linear formulation relating surface gradients and image intensity. Using smoothed finite difference approximations for the surface gradient, we are able to express surface height recovery as a linear least squares problem that is large but sparse...

It is known from theory that, by means of a plasma physics approach, it is possible to obtain a simple formula to calculate the approximate height of a meteor (Foschini, 1999). This formula can be used in case of forward scatter of radio waves and has the advantage that it does not depend on the diffusion coefficient. On the other hand, it is possible to apply the formula to a particular type o...