Slab behaviour and its surface expression: new insights from gravity modelling in the SE-Carpathians

We use lithosphere-scale gravity models to calculate gravity anomalies resulting from oceanic subduction, continental collision, slab steepening, delamination, and break-off. Local isostasy was assumed for determining vertical movements caused by mass changes related to these tectonic processes. Our results show that subduction is accompanied by basin subsidence on the upper plate caused by the heavy lithospheric root of the subducting slab. The basin evolution goes parallel with the slab evolution and shows considerable modifications when the processes at depth change (slab steepening, delamination, break-off). Characteristic gravity anomaly curves were acquired for the different tectonic scenarios. These curves together with other data (e.g. basin evolution on the upper and the lower plate) were used for the reconstruction of the tectonic evolution of the SE-Carpathians which includes Tertiary subduction and collision followed by slab steepening and delamination.     

Mining spatial associations between daily activities and health using EMA–GPS data

The geographical explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA) data collection platform provides extremely rich geospatial datasets and is very promising to gain behavior insights linking mobility, activities, and health. However, the task of analyzing these large datasets effectively is not straightforward, because they often involve a large multivariable dimension and rich qualitative data formats. Responding to the call for innovative analytic approaches in GIScience, this article advocates the use of spatial association rule mining (SARM) to extract frequent associations among daily activities, daily mobility, and health, including both physical health (e.g. pain) and mental health (e.g. happiness). This inductive mining approach works robustly with large datasets and is suitable for both qualitative and quantitative studies. A novel visualization technique to analyze the mined rules is also developed and presented.     

Homogenization of granular material modeled by a three-dimensional discrete element method

A homogenization strategy for granular materials is presented and applied to a three-dimensional discrete element method (DEM), that uses superellipsoids as particles. Macroscopic quantities are derived from the microscopic quantities resulting from a DEM simulation by averaging over representative volume elements (RVEs). The implementation of an RVE is described in detail regarding the definition and discretization of the RVE boundary. The homogenization strategy is validated by DEM simulations of compression and shear tests of cohesionless granular assemblies. Finally, an elasto-plastic material model is fitted to the resulting stress–strain curves.