Imaging along-strike variations in mechanical properties of the Gofar transform fault, East Pacific Rise

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 119 (2014): 7175–7194, doi:10.1002/2014JB011270.A large part of global plate motion on mid-ocean ridge transform faults (RTFs) is not accommodated as major earthquakes. When large earthquakes do occur, they often repeat quasiperiodically. We focus here on the high slip rate (∼14 cm/yr) Gofar transform fault on the equatorial East Pacific Rise. This fault is subdivided into patches that slip during Mw 5.5–6 earthquakes every 5 to 6 years. These patches are separated by rupture barriers that accommodate slip through swarms of smaller events and/or aseismic creep. We performed an imaging study to investigate which spatiotemporal variations of the fault zone properties control this segmentation in mechanical behavior and could explain the specific behavior of RTFs at the global scale. We adopt a double-difference approach in a joint inversion of active air gun shots and microseismicity recorded for 1 year. This data set includes the 2008 Mw 6 Gofar earthquake. The along-strike P wave velocity structure reveals an abrupt transition between the barrier area, characterized by a damaged fault zone of 10–20% reduced Vp and a nearly intact fault zone in the asperity area. The importance of the strength of the damage zone on the mechanical behavior is supported by the temporal S wave velocity changes which suggest increased damage within the barrier area, during the week preceding the Mw 6 earthquake. Our results support the conclusion that extended highly damaged zones are the key factor in limiting the role of major earthquakes to accommodate plate motion along RTFs.The material presented here is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation grants 1232725 and 0242117.2015-03-2

The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans.

Africa is the source of all modern humans, but characterization of genetic variation and of relationships among populations across the continent has been enigmatic. We studied 121 African populations, four African American populations, and 60 non-African populations for patterns of variation at 1327 nuclear microsatellite and insertion/deletion markers. We identified 14 ancestral population clusters in Africa that correlate with self-described ethnicity and shared cultural and/or linguistic properties. We observed high levels of mixed ancestry in most populations, reflecting historical migration events across the continent. Our data also provide evidence for shared ancestry among geographically diverse hunter-gatherer populations (Khoesan speakers and Pygmies). The ancestry of African Americans is predominantly from Niger-Kordofanian (approximately 71%), European (approximately 13%), and other African (approximately 8%) populations, although admixture levels varied considerably among individuals. This study helps tease apart the complex evolutionary history of Africans and African Americans, aiding both anthropological and genetic epidemiologic studies

The epigenomic landscape of African rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers

International audienceThe genetic history of African populations is increasingly well documented, yet their patterns of epigenomic variation remain uncharacterized. Moreover, the relative impacts of DNA sequence variation and temporal changes in lifestyle and habitat on the human epigenome remain unknown. Here we generate genome-wide genotype and DNA methylation profiles for 362 rainforest hunter-gatherers and sedentary farmers. We find that the current habitat and historical lifestyle of a population have similarly critical impacts on the methylome, but the biological functions affected strongly differ. Specifically, methylation variation associated with recent changes in habitat mostly concerns immune and cellular functions, whereas that associated with historical lifestyle affects developmental processes. Furthermore, methylation variation—particularly that correlated with historical lifestyle—shows strong associations with nearby genetic variants that, moreover, are enriched in signals of natural selection. Our work provides new insight into the genetic and environmental factors affecting the epigenomic landscape of human populations over time

Variational Fusion of Hyperspectral Data by Non-Local Filtering

The fusion of multisensor data has attracted a lot of attention in computer vision, particularly among the remote sensing community. Hyperspectral image fusion consists in merging the spectral information of a hyperspectral image with the geometry of a multispectral one in order to infer an image with high spatial and spectral resolutions. In this paper, we propose a variational fusion model with a nonlocal regularization term that encodes patch-based filtering conditioned to the geometry of the multispectral data. We further incorporate a radiometric constraint that injects the high frequencies of the scene into the fused product with a band per band modulation according to the energy levels of the multispectral and hyperspectral images. The proposed approach proved robust to noise and aliasing. The experimental results demonstrate the performance of our method with respect to the state-of-the-art techniques on data acquired by commercial hyperspectral cameras and Earth observation satellites

Optimal Design of a Trickle Bed Reactor for Light Fuel Oxidative Desulfurization based on Experiments and Modelling

YesIn this work, the performance of oxidative desulfurization (ODS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT) in light gas oil (LGO) is evaluated with a homemade manganese oxide (MnO2/γ-Al2O3) catalyst. The catalyst is prepared by Incipient Wetness Impregnation (IWI) method with air under moderate operating conditions. The effect of different reaction parameters such as reaction temperature, liquid hour space velocity and initial concentration of DBT are also investigated experimentally. Developing a detailed and a validated trickle bed reactor (TBR) process model that can be employed for design and optimization of the ODS process, it is important to develop kinetic models for the relevant reactions with high accuracy. Best kinetic model for the ODS process taking into account hydrodynamic factors (mainly, catalyst effectiveness factor, catalyst wetting efficiency and internal diffusion) and the physical properties affecting the oxidation process is developed utilizing data from pilot plant experiments. An optimization technique based upon the minimization of the sum of the squared error between the experimental and predicted composition of oxidation process is used to determine the best parameters of the kinetic models. The predicted product conversion showed very good agreement with the experimental data for a wide range of the operating condition with absolute average errors less than 5%

KINETICS OF SLURRY PHASE FISCHER-TROPSCH SYNTHESIS

This report covers the fourth year of a research project conducted under the University Coal Research Program. The overall objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive kinetic model for slurry-phase Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) employing iron-based catalysts. This model will be validated with experimental data obtained in a stirred-tank slurry reactor (STSR) over a wide range of process conditions. The model will be able to predict molar flow rates and concentrations of all reactants and major product species (water, carbon dioxide, linear 1- and 2-olefins, and linear paraffins) as a function of reaction conditions in the STSR. During the fourth year of the project, an analysis of experimental data collected during the second year of this project was performed. Kinetic parameters were estimated utilizing product distributions from 27 mass balances. During the reporting period two kinetic models were employed: a comprehensive kinetic model of Dr. Li and co-workers (Yang et al., 2003) and a hydrocarbon selectivity model of Van der Laan and Beenackers (1998, 1999) The kinetic model of Yang et al. (2003) has 24 parameters (20 parameters for hydrocarbon formation, and 4 parameters for the water-gas-shift (WGS) reaction). Kinetic parameters for the WGS reaction and FTS synthesis were estimated first separately, and then simultaneously. The estimation of these kinetic parameters employed the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method and the trust-region reflective Newton large-scale (LS) method. A genetic algorithm (GA) was incorporated into estimation of parameters for FTS reaction to provide initial estimates of model parameters. All reaction rate constants and activation energies were found to be positive, but at the 95% confidence level the intervals were large. Agreement between predicted and experimental reaction rates has been fair to good. Light hydrocarbons are predicted fairly accurately, whereas the model underpredicts values of higher molecular weight hydrocarbons. Van der Laan and Beenackers hydrocarbon selectivity model provides a very good fit of the experimental data for hydrocarbons up to about C{sub 20}. However, the experimental data shows higher paraffin formation rates in C{sub 12}-C{sub 25} region which is likely due to hydrocracking or other secondary reactions. The model accurately captures the observed experimental trends of decreasing olefin to paraffin ratio and increasing {alpha} (chain growth length) with increase in chain length