Microtremor survey in Talchir, India to ascertain its basin characteristics in terms of predominant frequency by Nakamura's ratio technique

The Talchir Basin, one of India's oldest basins, has been a subject of interest because of its rich coal deposits. The maximum thickness of the basin is about 1500 m. Beyond the basin is the hard metamorphic rocks of Precambrian age. The ambient noise survey data have been analyzed for the Talchir Basin using Nakamura's technique of horizontal–vertical-spectral-ratio (HVSR) to ascertain the basin structure in terms of the predominant frequency. The predominant frequency varies from 0.25 Hz to 7.8 Hz but a major portion of the basin comes under the range of 0.3 Hz–2.4 Hz while on the metamorphic rocks it is as high as 7.8 Hz. The variation in predominant frequency shows a good correlation with the sediment thickness of the basin. The results have been compared with the previous studies by other researchers and it shows consistency with the northerly dip of the basin. The present study has also been compared with the results of the synthetic seismogram that was performed for the Talchir Basin. The predominant frequency obtained from HVSR technique complements well with the frequency at which the peak response spectra ratio is observed. The present study of the predominant frequency identifies quite well the characteristics of Talchir Basin and is in good agreement with the synthetic ground motion modeling of the region.     

Tropical systematic and random error energetics based on NCEP (MRF) analysis-forecast system — A barotropic approach

Systematic and random error and their growth rate and different components of growth rate budget in energy/variance form are investigated at wavenumber domain for medium range tropical (30‡S-30‡N) weather forecast using daily horizontal wind field of 850 hPa up to 5-day forecast for the month of June, 2000 of NCEP (MRF) model. Part I of this paper deals with the study at physical domain. The following are the major findings in this paper:

Seismic response analysis of a hydraulic fill dam

Acta Geotechnica - The seismic response of a highly heterogeneous hydraulic fill dam was evaluated by studying the natural frequencies of the first and second modes of vibration and analyzing the...     

Metal distributions in seawater,sediment and marine benthic macroalgae from the South Australian coastline

Algal species which are ubiquitous along the coastlines of many countries reflect the environmental conditions of the coastal seawater and may serve as useful biomonitors of anthropogenic pollution. Heavy metal concentrations of ten elements (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn) of potential environmental concern were determined in seawater, sediments and twelve species of benthic marine macroalgae from four locations (Glenelg, Port Adelaide, Port Broughton and Port Pirie) along the South Australian coastline. The four sites chosen represented varying degrees of metal contamination, where the capacity for benthic macroalgae to accumulate heavy metals from the environment was evaluated. Spatial differences in heavy metal concentration in both seawaters and sediments were observed at all sites with the highest concentrations of heavy metals including Cd (125 μg g^?1), Pb (2,425 μg g^?1) and Zn (7,974 μg g^?1) found in the finer sediment fractions (<250 μm) of Port Pirie. While all algal species studied (Acrosorium polyneurum, Anotrichium tenue, Cystophora Cephalornithos Cystophora monillifera, Cystophora monilliformis, Dictyopteris australis, Gelidium micropterum, Gracilaria, Hormophysa Cuneiformis, Sargassum cinctum, Scaberia agardhii and Ulva lactuca) accumulated metals to varying degrees, Blindigia marginata was a good biomonitor species for a number of metals including Cd, Co, Cr, Fe, Pb and Zn, exhibiting both relatively high total metal concentrations and significant concentration factors.     

Probabilistic analyses of three-dimensional circular footing resting on two-layer c–ϕ soil system considering soil spatial variability

Acta Geotechnica - The prime objective of this paper is to study the effect of soil spatial variability on the three-dimensional probabilistic bearing capacity of a circular footing resting on the...     

Preference of echo features for classification of seafloor sediments using neural networks

Selection of a set of dominant echo features to classify seafloor sediments using a multilayer perceptron neural network is investigated at two acoustic frequencies (33 and 210 kHz). Several sets of inputs with different combinations of two, three, four, five, and six echo features are exploited with three-layer neural networks. The performances of the networks are analyzed to assess the most discriminating set of echo features for classification of seafloor sediments. The results of the overall average performances reveal that backscatter strength and time spread are the two most important echo features at 33 kHz, whereas backscatter strength has higher discriminating characteristics at 210 kHz for seafloor sediment classification. In addition, a set of four echo features consisting of backscatter strength, time-spread, statistical skewness, and Hausdroff dimension gives the highest success at both the acoustic frequencies.     

Nonlinear shift of wave parameters of whistlers in the ionosphere

The expression for nonlinear shift of a wave number of a whistler wave propagating through the ionosphere has been derived and the results have been discussed. It is seen that nonlinear shift of a wave number of a whistler is significant in some physical situations. From numerical estimations it is observed that wave number shifts of a whistler for both the LCP and RCP waves become significant when the frequency of the waves are nearly equal to the ion-cyclotron frequency.     

Inflationary Solutions for Higher Dimensional Anisotropic Cosmological Model in Scalar-Tensor Theory II

This is the second paper of the series where we have considered Brans-Dicke (B-D) theory as well as general scalar tensor theory of gravitation in higher dimensional space-time model in the false vacuum state. We have examined whether inflationary solutions are possible both for constant or variable coupling parameter ω. Also the nature of the scalar field and the coupling parameter are discussed in the asymptotic limit. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.