All hazards are multihazards, few of them are natural
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Earthquakes yes, disasters no
To answer the question of why seismic hazards turn into disasters, I provide here an overview of studies on the lithosphere dynamics, seismic hazard assessments, earthquake-triggered hazards, forecasting of large earthquakes, vulnerability and resilience assessments, and risk communication. Knowledge gaps in these fields are discussed. Integrated research on risks of earthquake-triggered disasters is essential in producing useful and usable knowledge for informed decision-making to reduce disaster risks.
The physics-based deterministic scenarios for earthquake hazards and losses of the Zhujiangkou fault in southern China
Dynamic rupture directivity significantly impacts earthquake hazard and loss assessments; yet, it is often overlooked, leading to uncertainties. We developed high-resolution, broadband, deterministic scenarios for earthquake hazards and losses of the Zhujiangkou Fault (ZF) in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area of southern China. The calculations cover the entire physical process from fault dynamic rupture through strong ground motion propagation to quantitative loss estimations. We fully incorporate the real 3D physical fields, including fault structure, regional stress, friction conditions, inhomogeneous velocity, and topography. Results revealed higher earthquake hazards and losses triggered by the northwestern ZF segment, affecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Macao, and Guangzhou. The rupture directivity effect, driven by seismic wave interferences in forward propagation, leads to stark differences in hazards and losses across urban agglomerations, even under similar fault conditions. These findings help enhance the precision of earthquake risk assessments and provide practical approaches for disaster prevention.
Prognostic and molecular multi-platform analysis of CALGB 40603 (Alliance) and public triple-negative breast cancer datasets
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive and heterogeneous disease that remains challenging to target with traditional therapies and to predict risk. We provide a comprehensive characterization of 238 stage II-III TNBC tumors with paired RNA and DNA sequencing data from the CALGB 40603 (Alliance) clinical trial, along with 448 stage II-III TNBC tumors with paired RNA and DNA data from three additional datasets. We identify DNA mutations associated with RNA-based subtypes, specific TP53 missense mutations compatible with potential neoantigen activity, and a consistently highly altered copy number landscape. We train exploratory multi-modal elastic net models of TNBC patient overall survival to determine the added impact of DNA-based features to RNA and clinical features. We find that mutations and copy number show little to no prognostic value, while RNA expression features, including signatures of T cell and B cell activity, along with stage, improve stratification of TNBC survival risk.
The 2023 Türkiye-Syria earthquake disaster was exacerbated by an atmospheric river
Strong earthquakes in mountain landscapes can trigger widespread slope failures, initiating chains of multiple hydro-geomorphic hazards. These impacts disrupting ongoing response operations may be amplified by extreme post-seismic precipitation delivered by atmospheric rivers (ARs). However, to our knowledge, cases of ARs following major earthquakes have not been previously documented. Here, we document the combined effects of seismic and precipitation extremes that perturbed the area struck by the February 6, 2023, Türkiye-Syrian earthquakes. Strong ground shaking triggered thousands of landslides, and 36 days later, an exceptionally strong AR delivered up to 183 mm of precipitation in just 20 hours. This extreme precipitation induced additional landslides, debris flows, and flooding, disrupting recovery efforts, affecting temporary settlement areas, and claiming more lives. This cascade of hazards highlights the need to integrate seismic and weather extremes into rapid hazard assessment protocols to enhance disaster preparedness and response.
A spatiotemporal style transfer algorithm for dynamic visual stimulus generation
Understanding how visual information is encoded in biological and artificial systems often requires the generation of appropriate stimuli to test specific hypotheses, but available methods for video generation are scarce. Here we introduce the spatiotemporal style transfer (STST) algorithm, a dynamic visual stimulus generation framework that allows the manipulation and synthesis of video stimuli for vision research. We show how stimuli can be generated that match the low-level spatiotemporal features of their natural counterparts, but lack their high-level semantic features, providing a useful tool to study object recognition. We used these stimuli to probe PredNet, a predictive coding deep network, and found that its next-frame predictions were not disrupted by the omission of high-level information, with human observers also confirming the preservation of low-level features and lack of high-level information in the generated stimuli. We also introduce a procedure for the independent spatiotemporal factorization of dynamic stimuli. Testing such factorized stimuli on humans and deep vision models suggests a spatial bias in how humans and deep vision models encode dynamic visual information. These results showcase potential applications of the STST algorithm as a versatile tool for dynamic stimulus generation in vision science.
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