“The earthquake was actually an aftershock associated with the 7.1 magnitude Darfield earthquake that occurred about 15 km west of Christchurch on Sept. 4, 2010. Since then, aftershocks have been occurring on the Greendale Fault, the causative fault, and progressing toward the Christchurch central business district. The relatively shallow depth of the earthquake below the city shows that even 5 to 10 seconds of strong shaking can have devastating effects.
“Some reasons for the serious damage are the many unreinforced masonry buildings in Christchurch and the occurrence of soil liquefaction throughout the city. Soil liquefaction is the transformation of saturated granular soil into a liquid-like substance from high groundwater pressures triggered by strong shaking. The soil liquefaction in Christchurch has damaged many miles of underground water mains, sewers, and electric power cables, and damaged several bridges.
“Many U.S. cities in areas vulnerable to earthquakes have many unreinforced masonry buildings, like those in Christchurch, and are founded on liquefiable soils.”
--Thomas D. O’Rourke, an expert on the impact of earthquakes on infrastructure and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University
Joe Schwartz | Newswise Science News
Supercomputing helps researchers understand Earth's interior
23.05.2017 | University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
How is climate change affecting fauna in the Arctic?
22.05.2017 | Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
An international team of physicists has monitored the scattering behaviour of electrons in a non-conducting material in real-time. Their insights could be beneficial for radiotherapy.
We can refer to electrons in non-conducting materials as ‘sluggish’. Typically, they remain fixed in a location, deep inside an atomic composite. It is hence...
Two-dimensional magnetic structures are regarded as a promising material for new types of data storage, since the magnetic properties of individual molecular building blocks can be investigated and modified. For the first time, researchers have now produced a wafer-thin ferrimagnet, in which molecules with different magnetic centers arrange themselves on a gold surface to form a checkerboard pattern. Scientists at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel and the Paul Scherrer Institute published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
Ferrimagnets are composed of two centers which are magnetized at different strengths and point in opposing directions. Two-dimensional, quasi-flat ferrimagnets...
An Australian-Chinese research team has created the world's thinnest hologram, paving the way towards the integration of 3D holography into everyday...
In the race to produce a quantum computer, a number of projects are seeking a way to create quantum bits -- or qubits -- that are stable, meaning they are not much affected by changes in their environment. This normally needs highly nonlinear non-dissipative elements capable of functioning at very low temperatures.
In pursuit of this goal, researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements LPQM (STI/SB), have investigated a nonlinear graphene-based...
Dental plaque and the viscous brown slime in drainpipes are two familiar examples of bacterial biofilms. Removing such bacterial depositions from surfaces is...
23.05.2017 | Event News
22.05.2017 | Event News
17.05.2017 | Event News
23.05.2017 | Physics and Astronomy
23.05.2017 | Life Sciences
23.05.2017 | Medical Engineering