The tearing and healing of a one-dimensional crack in a solid, in the presence of external tectonic forces, pre-stress, static friction, cohesion and dynamic friction is investigated. It is found that cohesive forces have a strong influence on the velocity of rupture; the velocity of rupture is always less than or equal to the velocity of sound. The extension of the crack ceases either when the...

The lifetime in a wireless network, in particular a wireless sensor network, depends strongly on the connectivity factor between nodes. Several factors can be at the origin of a connectivity rupture such as: lack of energy on a significant node level, infection of a vital node by a malevolent code, a logical or physical failure of a primary node, etc. This rupture can lead in some cases to a re...

We determined the energy release in earthquakes using the data obtained from TriNet in southern California. We investigated the effects of the depth, the mechanism and the propagation path by examining the results for events with different mechanisms and depths. We found that the path and site effects dominate so much that these effects are not obvious. By far the most dominant is the path-site...

A hanging glacier at the east face of Weisshorn broke off in 2005. We were able to monitor and measure surface motion and icequake activity for 21 days up to three days prior to the break-off. Results are presented from the analysis of seismic waves generated by the glacier during the rupture maturation process. Three types of precursory signals of the imminent catastrophic rupture were identif...

The use of arthroscopic techniques for excision of the pre-patellar bursa has become more common in recent years for the treatment of prepatellar bursitis. The current literature includes several case series that report few complications with this technique. We report the case of a 73-year-old male who sustained a low-energy patella tendon rupture 2 months after arthroscopic resection of the pr...

Stress relaxation experiments are reported that culminate in energetic failure in rocks analogous to the loading cycle and subsequent localization or reactivation on brittle faults embedded in an elastic medium. Universally, rapid primary deformation arrests and transitions into a long secondary deformation phase that ultimately accelerates to catastrophic rupture. Primary deformation (u) confo...

Background Uterine rupture in a term pregnancy is an adverse and rare event with serious maternal and fetal consequences. The history of uterine septum resection is considered as a risk factor for uterine rupture. Women with such circumstances are thus recommended to be considered as having a high-risk pregnancy. Accordingly, their prenatal care should be implemented in shorter intervals during...

*Correspondence: Agust Gudmundsson, Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London, Queen’s Building, Egham TW20 0EX, UK e-mail: rock.fractures@ googlemail.com The sizes of earthquakes are measured using well-defined, measurable quantities such as seismic moment and released or transformed elastic energy. No similar measures exist for the sizes of volcanic eruptions, making i...

Theoretical studies have shown that the issue of rupture modes has important implications for fault constitutive laws, stress conditions on faults, energy partition and heat generation during earthquakes, scaling laws, and spatiotemporal complexity of fault slip. Early theoretical models treated earthquakes as crack-like ruptures, but seismic inversions indicate that earthquake ruptures may pro...

The nanomechanics of lipid membranes regulates a large number of cellular functions. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the plastic rupture of individual bilayers remain elusive. This study uses force clamp spectroscopy to capture the force-dependent dynamics of membrane failure on a model diphytanoylphosphatidylcholine multilayer stack, which is devoid of surface effects. The obtaine...