A hidden Markov model for earthquake prediction

Earthquake occurrence is well-known to be associated with structural changes in underground dynamics, such as stress level and strength of electromagnetic signals. While the causation between earthquake occurrence and underground dynamics remains elusive, the modeling of changes in underground dynamics can provide insights on earthquake occurrence. However, underground dynamics are usually difficult to measure accurately or even unobservable. In order to model and examine the effect of the changes in unobservable underground dynamics on earthquake occurrence, we propose a novel model for earthquake prediction by introducing a latent Markov process to describe the underground dynamics. In particular, the model is capable of predicting the change-in-state of the hidden Markov chain, and thus can predict the time and magnitude of future earthquake occurrences simultaneously. Simulation studies and applications on a real earthquake dataset indicate that the proposed model successfully predicts future earthquake occurrences. Theoretical results, including the stationarity and ergodicity of the proposed model, as well as consistency and asymptotic normality of model parameter estimation, are provided.     

Estimating icing amounts caused by freezing precipitation in Canada

The Chaine and Skeates icing model is a semi-empirical model. It is based on the formulations proposed by McKay and Thompson (1969). Horizontal ice accretion thickness is assumed to be the observed precipitation amount adjusted by the appropriate ice density. Clear ice density is assumed to be 900 kg/m³. Vertical ice accretion thickness is proportional to precipitation rate and wind speed. Ice accretion occurs only at temperatures near or below freezing. All impinging water is assumed to turn into ice. The freezing fraction is assumed to be one. Horizontal and vertical ice thicknesses are changed into equivalent radial thickness (Chaine and Castonguay, 1974). All parameters used in this model can be derived from routinely observed meteorological data. Icing amounts estimated by this model are very sensitive to wind speed and precipitation rate. Model simulated 30-year return period equivalent radial ice amounts for 20 Quebec locations are compared with collocated Passive Ice Meter data and the results are found to be reasonable. The variation of ice amount with height can be estimated by a log function proportional to 10 m icing amounts, except in British Columbia. Also the 30-year return period equivalent radial ice estimates due to freezing precipitations for 303 locations in Canada are calculated and an Ice Map is plotted. In the future, more work needs to be done to estimate ice amounts due to other forms of icing such as in-cloud rime icing and wet snow. These quantities should be added to the current amounts to make the ice map complete. Anecdotal ice information should be collected to validate the map.     

Reliable eigenspectra for new generation surveys

We present a novel technique to overcome the limitations of the applicability of principal component analysis to typical real-life data sets, especially astronomical spectra. Our new approach addresses the issues of outliers, missing information, large number of dimensions and the vast amount of data by combining elements of robust statistics and recursive algorithms that provide improved eigensystem estimates step by step. We develop a generic mechanism for deriving reliable eigenspectra without manual data censoring, while utilizing all the information contained in the observations. We demonstrate the power of the methodology on the attractive collection of the Visible Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) Very Large Telescope (VLT) Deep Survey spectra that manifest most of the challenges today, and highlight the improvements over previous workarounds, as well as the scalability of our approach to collections with sizes of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and beyond.     

Post‐tropical/post‐tsunami: Climate and architectural discourse in South and Southeast Asia

Following the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004, scenes of destruction overwrote representations of a benign tropical landscape on the eastern periphery of the Indian Ocean. The incongruous coupling of luxury resort hotels with devastated indigent fisher settlements in international media coverage had exposed the global inequities embedded in a tropical tourism industry subscribed to and abetted by states, institutions, developers and architects. As post‐tsunami reconstruction commenced, it became evident that the climatic trope through which regionalist aesthetics had been filtered thus far was incapable of providing expedient solutions to real social problems. In academia and in the profession, the complex discourse of so‐called tropical architecture shaping the debates has yet to be untangled and problematized. Implicating and haunted by colonial, nationalist, developmental and political renderings, and more recently by issues of globalization, such representations continue to undergird architectural debates and production. In the wake of recent reconstruction projects and provoked by related architectural student designs in Sri Lanka, this paper reviews the politics of the tropical agenda in architecture and some considerations for its demise.     

Sea-clutter modeling using a radial-basis-function neural network

Recently, neural networks have been proposed for radar clutter modeling because of the inherent nonlinearity of clutter signals. This paper performs an analysis of the practicality of using a radial basis function (RBF) neural network to model sea clutter and to detect small target embedded in sea clutter. An experiment using an instrumental quality radar was carried out on the eastcoast of Canada to create a rich sea clutter and small surface target database. This database contains both staring and scanning data under various environmental conditions. Using data-sets with different characteristics, we investigate the effects of quantization error, measurement noise, generalization of the neural net over ranges and sampling rate on the RBF clutter model. Despite these physical limitations, the RBF model was shown to approach an optimal predictive performance. The RBF predictor was also applied to detect various small targets in this database based on the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) principle. This RBF-CFAR detector was demonstrated to be able to detect small floating targets even in rough sea conditions     

A theory of the origin of the split pair burst emission from the solar corona

The radio emissions caused by electron streams in a non-isothermal plasma are studied quantitatively. It is proposed that conversion of the stream-excited plasma waves into electromagnetic waves by scattering on the thermal fluctuations at nonisothermal sonic oscillation frequency is the origin of the emission of the split-pair burst near the plasma frequency. The occurrence of the split-pair bursts near the second harmonic of the plasma frequency can be due to combination scattering of the stream-excited plasma waves by electron density fluctuations which are produced by the scattered plasma waves. With a streamer model in which the electron densities are two times those in Newkirk's model, both the observed frequency splitting and the rate of drift of the split pair can be explained as the result of plasma radiation caused by a stream of 10 keV electrons. A tentative model for the split-pair emission is suggested.     

Effect of altered Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheet cover on the climate of the GENESIS general circulation model

Previous studies have examined the effect of reduced Arctic sea ice cover on the circulation of climate models. Generally, the response is restricted to high northern latitudes. Here we examine a variant on those simulations, specifying both reduced Arctic sea ice cover and no Greenland ice sheet. The GENESIS general circulation model is used in these experiments. As in earlier studies, we find the effect limited primarily to the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, being greater in winter than in summer. New results reported herein involve: (1) in winter reduced Arctic ice cover has a significantly greater effect than reduced Greenland ice cover; (2) reduced ice cover had little effect on location of the winter freezing line over North America and Eurasia; (3) removal of ice caused a 30–50% increase in precipitation in high northern latitudes; however there were no significant effects elsewhere. This result does not support the hypothesis that past changes in Arctic ice cover were responsible for significant changes in area of tropical rainforests; (4) there is a peculiar surface pressure anomaly that extends into the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere. This anomaly may be a spurious artifact of the effect of the removed Greenland ice sheet on the spherical harmonic expansion terms in the model. These sensitivity experiments should serve as a useful frame of reference for future Pliocene simulations with a more complete set of altered boundary conditions.     

BIOMONITORING OF AMBIENT CONCENTRATIONS OF CADMIUM, COPPER, I,EAD AND ZINC IN THE COASTAL WETLAND WATER BY USING GILLS OF THE GREEN- LIPPED MUSSEL PERNA VIRIDIS

The distribution and concentrations of Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn were determined in the gills and remaining soft tissues of Perna viridis collected from 12 geographical sites （ 10 from the west and 2 from the east coastal waters） of Peninsular Malaysia. All samples showed that the levels of Cd, Pb and Zn were generally higher in the gill than those in the remaining soft tissues. These results could be due to the fact that gills are the first organ of metal accumulation and larger surface area with mucus sheets in the organ. Since the mussel gill is a better accumulator of Cd, Pb and Zn of ambient seawater than remaining soft tissue, it is a potential indicator of ambient levels of dissolved metals in the ambient seawater. However, further validations based on laboratory conditions are needed.