The 2020 Mw 5.5 Mizoram earthquake and associated swarm activity in the junction of the Surma Basin and Indo-Myanmar Subduction Region

Natural Hazards - Two Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), are applied to Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (LSM), to compare...     

Effect of soil aging on arsenic fractionation and bioaccessibility in inorganic arsenical pesticide contaminated soils

Ingestion of As – contaminated soil by children is a growing concern in former agricultural lands converted to residential or recreational land use areas. The mobility and bioavailability of As is controlled by its reactions with soil particles. The degree and strength of As retention by soil constituents may vary greatly with time. The present authors hypothesize that aging results in reduced mobility of As thereby decreasing As release and its bioavailability. The present study is aimed at evaluating the effect of aging on soil As fractionation and bioaccessibility in a temperature and humidity-controlled greenhouse setting. The design allowed the evaluation of dynamic interactions between soils, pesticides, water, and plants. Therefore, 4 soil types (Immokalee, Millhopper, Pahokee Muck, and Orelia) were selected based on their potential differences in As reactivity. The soils were amended with the pesticide Na arsenate at two rates. Rice was used as the test crop. Soil samples collected after different time periods (0, 6 months, 1 a and 3 a) were extracted for soil-As forms via a sequential extraction technique. Bioaccessible As was extracted via an in vitro gastrointestinal method. At time 0, most of the extractable As in soil was in the soluble form, resulting in high bioaccessibility. As expected, soluble and exchangeable fractions decreased with time for up to 6 months, but remained constant thereafter. After 3 a of soil–pesticide equilibration, As bioaccessibility was still high in all the soils except for the Pahokee Muck. No significant difference in As bioaccessibility was observed between the soils. Arsenic was present predominantly as As(V) with 5–10% of the total dissolved As being present as As(III). Data obtained suggest that although aging had an impact on the geochemical forms, gastric pH was the sole important factor effecting As bioaccessibility.     

Concrete evidence & geographically weighted regression: A regional analysis of wealth and the land cover in Massachusetts

Several studies indicate that there is a positive relationship between green vegetation land cover and wealthy socio-economic conditions in urban areas. The purpose of this research is to test for and explore spatial variation in the relationship between socio-economic and green vegetation land cover across urban, suburban, and rural areas, using geographically weighted regression (GWR). The analysis was conducted at the census block group level for Massachusetts, using Census 2000 data and impervious surface data at 1-m resolution. To explore regional variations in the relationship, four scenarios were generated by regressing each of the following socio-economic variables – median household income, percentage of poverty, percentage of minority population, and median home value – against two environmental variables – percent of impervious surface and population density. GWR results show that there is a considerable spatial variation in the character and the strength of the relationship for each model. There are two main conclusions in this study. First, the impervious surface is generally a strong predictor of the level of wealth as measured by four variables included in the analysis, at the scale of census block group; however, the strength of the relationship varies geographically. Second, GWR, not ordinary least squares technique, should be used for regional scale spatial analysis because it is able to account for local effects and shows geographical variation in the strength of the relationship.     

Long-term ultraviolet variability of Seyfert galaxies

Flux variability is one of the defining characteristics of Seyfert galaxies, a class of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Although these variations are observed over a wide range of wavelengths, results on their flux variability characteristics in the ultraviolet (UV) band are very limited. We present here the long-term UV flux variability characteristics of a sample of fourteen Seyfert galaxies using data from the International Ultraviolet Explorer acquired between 1978 and 1995. We found that all the sources showed flux variations with no statistically significant differences in the amplitude of UV flux variation between shorter and longer wavelengths. Also, the flux variations between different near-UV (NUV, \(1850{-}3300\) Å) and far-UV (FUV, \(1150{-}2000\) Å) passbands in the rest frames of the objects are correlated with no time lag. The data show indications of (i) a mild negative correlation of UV variability with bolometric luminosity and (ii) weak positive correlation between UV variability and black hole mass. At FUV, about 50% of the sources show a strong correlation between spectral indices and flux variations with a hardening when brightening behaviour, while for the remaining sources the correlation is moderate. In NUV, the sources do show a harder spectrum when brighter, but the correlation is either weak or moderate.     

Kinetics of oxytetracycline sorption on magnetite nanoparticles

Iron oxide nanoparticles (nano-Fe) have been widely used in environmental remediation, including that of emerging contaminants, such as antibiotics. Magnetite nanoparticles (nano-Fe₃O₄) have been reported to form on the outer surface of nano-Fe and have the potential to be a good sorbent for certain antibiotics. This study reports, for the first time, the kinetics and thermodynamics of adsorption of a common tetracycline group antibiotic, oxytetracycline (OTC), on nano-Fe₃O₄. Batch sorption kinetics were evaluated by varying initial OTC concentration (0.25–2 mM), nano-Fe₃O₄ concentration (2.5–20 g L^?1), pH (3.8–7.6), temperature (5, 15, 35 °C), and ionic strength (0.01–0.5 M KCl) to derive thermodynamic and kinetic constants. Results show that OTC sorption kinetics is rapid and increases with increasing temperature. The derived thermodynamic constants suggest a surface chemical-controlled reaction that proceeds via an associative mechanism. Results indicate the potential of developing a nano-magnetite-based remediation system for tetracycline group of antibiotics.