Ancient synsedimentary structural control on thrust ramp development: an example from the Northern Apennines, Italy

The Umbria-Marche-Sabina foreland fold and thrust belt (Northern Apennines, Italy) provides excellent test-cases for the hypothesis of ancient syndepositional structural features controlling thrust ramp development. The sedimentary cover, Late Triassic to Miocene in age, is made of platform and pelagic carbonates, whose deposition was controlled by significant synsedimentary extension. Normal faulting, mainly during the Jurassic and the Late Cretaceous-Palaeogene, determined sensible lateral thickness variations within the relative sequences. By late Miocene the sedimentary cover was detached from its basement along a mainly evaporitic horizon, and was deformed by means of eastward-verging folds and thrusts.
In order to locate the points where thrust ramps branch-off the basal detachment, both line-length and equal-area techniques were used in the construction of a balanced cross-section through three major fault-related folds in southeastern Umbria. The nucleation of thrust ramps was controlled by the occurrence of Jurassic and Cretaceous-Palaeogene synsedimentary normal faults. These interrupted the lateral continuity of the evaporitic unit (the Late Triassic Anidriti di Burano Fm.) at the base of the sedimentary cover, and acted as obstacles to the eastward propagation of the thrust system, giving rise to major folds which originated from tip-line folding processes.
Therefore, the inferred relationships between ancient normal faults and late thrusts indicate that synsedimentary tectonic structures and the related lateral stratigraphic variations can be envisaged as mechanically important perturbations, which effectively control the nucleation and development of thrust ramps.     

Seismic risk assessment and hazard mapping in Nepal

Natural Hazards - Seismic risk in the form of impending disaster has been seen from past records that moderate-to-large earthquakes have caused the loss of life and property in all parts of Nepal....     

旋转扰动流体中壁面湍流不稳定及其拟序结构研究Ⅱ：数值模式

对第一部分的实验结果进行了讨论,指出局地最大、最小涡度的存在与所谓的正压不稳定和大气中经常观测到的滚动涡有关。速度廓线中的拐点和涡度极大值点对应不稳定发展的位置。另外,为了改进湍流的模拟,根据“准正则”近似,发展了一个三阶闭合模式。这个模型已被证明可以描述与湍流过程有关的流体动力学变量的趋势。     

Can GJ 876 host four planets in resonance?

Prior to the detection of its outermost Uranus-mass object, it had been suggested that GJ 876 could host an Earth-sized planet in a 15-day orbit. Observation, however, did not support this idea, but instead revealed evidence for the existence of a larger body in a ~125-day orbit, near a three-body resonance with the two giant planets of this system. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the four-planet system of GJ 876, and examine the possibility of the existence of other planetary objects interior to its outermost body. We have developed a numerical scheme that enables us to search the orbital parameter-space very effectively and, in a short time, identify regions where an object may be stable. We present details of this integration method and discuss its application to the GJ 876 four-planet system. The results of our initial analysis suggested possible stable orbits at regions exterior to the orbit of the outermost planet and also indicated that an island of stability may exist in and around the 15-day orbit. However, examining the long-term stability of an object in that region by direct integration revealed that the 15-day orbit becomes unstable and that the system of GJ 876 is most likely dynamically full. We present the results of our study and discuss their implications for the formation and final orbital architecture of this system.     

A Minimal Spanning Tree algorithm for source detection in γ-ray images

We developed a source detection algorithm based on the Minimal Spanning Tree (MST), that is a graph-theoretical method useful for finding clusters in a given set of points. This algorithm is applied to γ-ray bi-dimensional images where the points correspond to the arrival direction of photons, and the possible sources are associated with the regions where they clusterize. Some filters to select these clusters and to reduce the spurious detections are introduced. An empirical study of the statistical properties of MST on random fields is carried out in order to derive some criteria to estimate the best filter values. We also introduce two parameters useful to verify the goodness of candidate sources. To show how the MST algorithm works in practice, we present an application to an EGRET observation of the Virgo field, at high Galactic latitude and with a low and rather uniform background, in which several sources are detected.     

SESTET: A spatially explicit stream temperature model based on equilibrium temperature

Stream-water temperature is a key variable controlling chemical, biological, and ecological processes in freshwater environments. Most models focus on a single river cross-section; however, temperature gradients along stretches and tributaries of a river network are crucial to assess ecohydrological features such as aquatic species suitability, growth and feeding rates, or disease transmission. We propose SESTET, a deterministic, spatially explicit stream temperature model for a whole river network, based on water and energy budgets at a reach scale and requiring only commonly available spatially distributed datasets, such as morphology and air temperature, as input. Heat exchange processes at the air–water interface are modelled via the widely used equilibrium temperature concept, whereas the effects of network structure are accounted for through advective heat fluxes. A case study was conducted on the prealpine Wigger river (Switzerland), where water temperatures have been measured in the period 2014–2018 at 11 spatially distributed locations. The results show the advantages of accounting for water and energy budgets at the reach scale for the entire river network, compared with simpler, lumped formulations. Because our approach fundamentally relies on spatially distributed air temperature fields, adequate spatial interpolation techniques that account for the effects of both elevation and thermal inversion in air temperature are key to a successful application of the model. SESTET allows the assessment of the magnitude of the various components of the heat budget at the reach scale and the derivation of reliable estimates of spatial gradients of mean daily stream temperatures for the whole catchment based on a limited number of conveniently located (viz., spanning the largest possible elevation range) measuring stations. Moreover, accounting for mixing processes and advective fluxes through the river network allows one to trust regionalized values of the parameters controlling the relationship between equilibrium and air temperature, a key feature to generalize the model to data-scarce catchments.     

Geochemical evidence of aeolian deposits in European soils

Hafnium (Hf) and zirconium (Zr) concentrations measured in over 4100 agricultural soil samples from Europe were assessed with the focus on their relationship to the distribution of aeolian deposits, such as loess and coversands. Comparison of extractable (aqua regia; ICP‐MS) and total (XRFS) concentrations shows that only 1.0 to 1.7% of the total Hf and Zr is chemically extractable because of the resistant nature of their host minerals. Resistate minerals, such as zircon, are commonly found in the predominantly silty fraction of loess deposits. In this study a statistical analysis of total Hf and Zr soil data from areas with and without loess was carried out to derive threshold values of 10 mg kg^?1 (Hf) and 318 mg kg^?1 (Zr). These values were subsequently applied across the project area in an attempt to indicate the presence of aeolian deposits. The spatial distribution of above‐threshold concentrations suggests a more extensive and coherent loess belt across central and eastern Europe, providing additional evidence of loess across Brittany, Aquitaine and near the Vosges mountains in France as well as in the basins of central and northern Spain. Above‐threshold concentrations were also detected in loess regardless of its thickness, emphasising the importance of the abundance of zircon in the upper part of the soil profile rather than the actual thickness of the deposit. Soil data however, failed to indicate various loess facies within most of the Pannonian Basin, suggesting that this approach only works where deposits contain a sufficient amount of zircon. This may also explain why the extensive coversands across northern Germany and Poland were largely undetected. This study demonstrates that continental‐scale soil geochemical data can help identify and map the distribution of zircon‐rich loess and coversand, and subsequently enhance and improve current knowledge of the extent of these deposits.     

Nonstationary stochastic response of structural systems equipped with nonlinear viscous dampers under seismic excitation

Nonlinear viscous dampers are supplemental devices widely used for enhancing the performance of structural systems exposed to seismic hazard. A rigorous evaluation of the effect of these damping devices on the seismic performance of a structural system should be based on a probabilistic approach and take into account the evolutionary characteristics of the earthquake input and of the corresponding system response. In this paper, an approximate analytical technique is proposed for studying the nonstationary stochastic response characteristics of hysteretic single degree of freedom systems equipped with viscous dampers subjected to a fully nonstationary random process representing the seismic input. In this regard, a stochastic averaging/linearization technique is utilized to cast the original nonlinear stochastic differential equation of motion into a simple first‐order nonlinear ordinary differential equation for the nonstationary system response variance. In comparison with standard linearization schemes, the herein proposed technique has the significant advantage that it allows to handle realistic seismic excitations with time‐varying frequency content. Further, it allows deriving a formula for determining the nonlinear system response evolutionary power spectrum. By this way, ‘moving resonance’ effects, related to both the evolutionary seismic excitation and the nonlinear system behavior, can be observed and quantified. Several applications involving various system and input properties are included. Furthermore, various response parameters of interest for the seismic performance assessment are considered as well. Comparisons with pertinent Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the reliability of the proposed technique. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Response reduction factor of irregular RC buildings in Kathmandu valley

Most current seismic design includes the nonlinear response of a structure through a response reduction factor(R). This allows the designer to use a linear elastic force-based approach while accounting for nonlinear behavior and deformation limits. In fact, the response reduction factor is used in modern seismic codes to scale down the elastic response of a structure. This study focuses on estimating the actual ‘R' value for engineered design/construction of reinforced concrete(RC) buildings in Kathmandu valley. The ductility and overstrength of representative RC buildings in Kathmandu are investigated. Nonlinear pushover analysis was performed on structural models in order to evaluate the seismic performance of buildings. Twelve representative engineered irregular buildings with a variety of characteristics located in the Kathmandu valley were selected and studied. Furthermore, the effects of overstrength on the ductility factor, beam column capacity ratio on the building ductility, and load path on the response reduction factor, are examined. Finally, the results are further analyzed and compared with different structural parameters of the buildings.