Showing posts with label civil engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil engineering. Show all posts

Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Predicting earthquakes through remotely-sensed information: Possible?

Precicción de sismos a través de información remótamente percibida: Posible?

There is research which suggest that earthquakes could be predicted by non-traditional methods. For such purposes, the alternatives being explored range from, the monitoring of the behavior of some sensitive terrestrial and aquatic animal species, to the monitoring of regional changes in the electromagnetic spectrum through advanced remote sensing techniques. In the case of animal species, the approaches vary from the relatively simple, yet interesting, investigation of the higher sensitivity of domestic species to minor ground vibrations (e.g., browse for Prof. Mitsuaki Ota, Azabu University), to more advanced approaches that suggest that stressed rocks release electrical charges that alter the chemistry of water (e.g., Grant et al., 2011). The use of remote sensing techniques is related to the latter suggestion, based on the idea that the amount of energy released during tectonic displacements should alter the electromagnetic spectrum for some days before the occurrence of a major event (see the review by Alvan et al., 2011).

Friday, 2 December 2011

Engineering: Do you know what soil liquefaction is?



Ingeniería: ¿Qué es la licuefacción de los suelos?

Japanese education (higher education) is worldwide famous because of the emphasis given and resources spent in physical models. Today, after watching a program on the March 11th quake on NatGEO, and the effects of liquefaction on reclaimed land, I remembered I had recorded an interesting video back in 2006 at the Tohoku EE Fair. The experimentrecreates the impacts of liquefaction on civil structures, particularly on manholes, which explains what was observed during the great event of March. I invite you to enjoy it and learn.
For those who are not familiar with this term, let me remind you that liquefaction is a process by which the soil
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