Earthshaking Science

Author : Susan Elizabeth Hough
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 357 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2023-09-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780691262604

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Earthshaking Science by Susan Elizabeth Hough Pdf

This is the first book to really make sense of the dizzying array of information that has emerged in recent decades about earthquakes. Susan Hough, a research seismologist in one of North America's most active earthquake zones and an expert at communicating this complex science to the public, separates fact from fiction. She fills in many of the blanks that remained after plate tectonics theory, in the 1960s, first gave us a rough idea of just what earthquakes are about. How do earthquakes start? How do they stop? Do earthquakes occur at regular intervals on faults? If not, why not? Are earthquakes predictable? How hard will the ground shake following an earthquake of a given magnitude? How does one quantify future seismic hazard? As Hough recounts in brisk, jargon-free prose, improvements in earthquake recording capability in the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for a period of rapid development in earthquake science. Although some formidable enigmas have remained, much has been learned on critical issues such as earthquake prediction, seismic hazard assessment, and ground motion prediction. This book addresses those issues. Because earthquake science is so new, it has rarely been presented outside of technical journals that are all but opaque to nonspecialists. Earthshaking Science changes all this. It tackles the issues at the forefront of modern seismology in a way most readers can understand. In it, an expert conveys not only the facts, but the passion and excitement associated with research at the frontiers of this fascinating field. Hough proves, beyond a doubt, that this passion and excitement is more accessible than one might think.

Author : Susan Elizabeth Hough
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-05
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780691186870

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Earthshaking Science by Susan Elizabeth Hough Pdf

This is the first book to really make sense of the dizzying array of information that has emerged in recent decades about earthquakes. Susan Hough, a research seismologist in one of North America's most active earthquake zones and an expert at communicating this complex science to the public, separates fact from fiction. She fills in many of the blanks that remained after plate tectonics theory, in the 1960s, first gave us a rough idea of just what earthquakes are about. How do earthquakes start? How do they stop? Do earthquakes occur at regular intervals on faults? If not, why not? Are earthquakes predictable? How hard will the ground shake following an earthquake of a given magnitude? How does one quantify future seismic hazard? As Hough recounts in brisk, jargon-free prose, improvements in earthquake recording capability in the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for a period of rapid development in earthquake science. Although some formidable enigmas have remained, much has been learned on critical issues such as earthquake prediction, seismic hazard assessment, and ground motion prediction. This book addresses those issues. Because earthquake science is so new, it has rarely been presented outside of technical journals that are all but opaque to nonspecialists. Earthshaking Science changes all this. It tackles the issues at the forefront of modern seismology in a way most readers can understand. In it, an expert conveys not only the facts, but the passion and excitement associated with research at the frontiers of this fascinating field. Hough proves, beyond a doubt, that this passion and excitement is more accessible than one might think.

Author : Robert Gardner
Publisher : Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2007-06-01
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 0766027333

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Earth-Shaking Science Projects About Planet Earth by Robert Gardner Pdf

Presents a number of simple science experiments that illustrate basic facts about the Earth.

Author : Eric G. Swedin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2005-03-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781851095292

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Science in the Contemporary World by Eric G. Swedin Pdf

This work is a unique introductory A–Z resource detailing the scientific achievements of the contemporary world and analyzing the key scientific trends, discoveries, and personalities of the modern age. An authoritative reference survey of the modern age of scientific discovery, Science in the Contemporary World is a scholarly yet accessible chronicle of scientific achievement from the discovery of penicillin to the latest developments in space exploration and cloning. Over 200 A–Z entries cover the full spectrum of contemporary science, with emphasis on its diverse nature. Within the last 50 years, medicine has eradicated the killer disease smallpox, but primarily because the virus can live only in humans. Space probes have revealed that on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, an ice-capped ocean with the potential to support life probably exists. Marvels from animal psychology and deep-sea exploration are also explored extensively.

Author : Susan Elizabeth
Publisher : Universities Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 8173715254

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Earth Shaking Science-What We Know (and Don't Know) About Earthquakes by Susan Elizabeth Pdf

Earthshaking Science Is The First Book To Really Make Sense Of The Dizzying Array Of Information That Has Emerged In Recent Decades About Earthquakes. Susan Hough Separates Fact From Fiction. She Fills In Many Of The Blanks That Remained After Plate Tectonics Theory, In The 1960S, First Gave Us A Rough Idea Of Just What Earthquakes Are About. Because Earthquake Science Is So New, It Has Rarely Been Presented Outside Of Technical Journals That Are All But Opaque To Non-Specialists. Earthshaking Science Changes All This. It Tackles The Issues At The Forefront Of Modern Seismology In A Way Most Readers Can Understand.

Author : Roy H. Williams
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2011-12-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781926692579

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Earth Science by Roy H. Williams Pdf

Earth science is a broad field of study that encompasses many different disciplines, including meteorology, climatology, and geology. The importance of the earth sciences—in predicting weather and climate, tracking pollution, drilling for petroleum, evaluating soil, and monitoring ground water—is paramount in modern society. This new work covers a broad selection of topics, including use of satellite remote sensing to track pollution and weather patterns, monitoring for pre-earthquake signals, using earthquakes to uncover new information about the earth, desalination of ground water, predicting deforestation, and much more.

Author : Richard E. Jackson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 479 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780521847254

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Earth Science for Civil and Environmental Engineers by Richard E. Jackson Pdf

Introduces the fundamental principles of applied Earth science needed for engineering practice, with case studies, exercises, and online solutions.

Author : Andrew Robinson
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2013-02-15
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781780230610

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Earthquake by Andrew Robinson Pdf

The 2011 devastating, tsunami-triggering quake off the coast of Japan and 2010’s horrifying destruction in Haiti reinforce the fact that large cities in every continent are at risk from earthquakes. Quakes threaten Los Angeles, Beijing, Cairo, Delhi, Singapore, and many more cities, and despite advances in earthquake science and engineering and improved disaster preparedness by governments and international aid agencies, they continue to cause immense loss of life and property damage. Earthquake explores the occurrence of major earthquakes around the world, their effects on the societies where they strike, and the other catastrophes they cause, from landslides and fires to floods and tsunamis. Examining the science involved in measuring and explaining earthquakes, Andrew Robinson looks at our attempts to design against their consequences and the possibility of having the ability to predict them one day. Robinson also delves into the ways nations have mythologized earthquakes through religion and the arts—Norse mythology explained earthquakes as the violent struggling of the god Loki as he was punished for murdering another god, the ancient Greeks believed Poseidon caused earthquakes whenever he was in a bad mood or wanted to punish people, and Japanese mythology states that Namazu, a giant catfish, triggers quakes when he thrashes around. He discusses the portrayal of earthquakes in popular culture, where authors and filmmakers often use the memory of cities laid to waste—such as Kobe, Japan, in 1995 or San Francisco in 1906—or imagine the hypothetical “Big One,” the earthquake expected someday out of California’s San Andreas Fault. With tremors happening in seemingly implausible places like Chicago and Washington DC, Earthquake is a timely book that will enrich earthquake scholarship and enlighten anyone interested in these ruinous natural disasters.

Author : Conevery Bolton Valencius
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 471 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2013-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226053929

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The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes by Conevery Bolton Valencius Pdf

From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.

Author : Ellen Prager
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2020-03-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226541693

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Dangerous Earth by Ellen Prager Pdf

The Earth is a beautiful and wondrous planet, but also frustratingly complex and, at times, violent: much of what has made it livable can also cause catastrophe. Volcanic eruptions create land and produce fertile, nutrient-rich soil, but they can also bury forests, fields, and entire towns under ash, mud, lava, and debris. The very forces that create and recycle Earth’s crust also spawn destructive earthquakes and tsunamis. Water and wind bring and spread life, but in hurricanes they can leave devastation in their wake. And while it is the planet’s warmth that enables life to thrive, rapidly increasing temperatures are causing sea levels to rise and weather events to become more extreme. Today, we know more than ever before about the powerful forces that can cause catastrophe, but significant questions remain. Why can’t we better predict some natural disasters? What do scientists know about them already? What do they wish they knew? In Dangerous Earth, marine scientist and science communicator Ellen Prager explores the science of investigating volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, rip currents, and—maybe the most perilous hazard of all—climate change. Each chapter considers a specific hazard, begins with a game-changing historical event (like the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens or the landfall and impacts of Hurricane Harvey), and highlights what remains unknown about these dynamic phenomena. Along the way, we hear from scientists trying to read Earth’s warning signs, pass its messages along to the rest of us, and prevent catastrophic loss. A sweeping tour of some of the most awesome forces on our planet—many tragic, yet nonetheless awe-inspiring—Dangerous Earth is an illuminating journey through the undiscovered, unresolved, and in some cases unimagined mysteries that continue to frustrate and fascinate the world’s leading scientists: the “wish-we-knews” that ignite both our curiosity and global change.

Author : Seth Stein,Jerome Stein
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2014-04-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781118620809

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Playing against Nature by Seth Stein,Jerome Stein Pdf

Defending society against natural hazards is a high-stakes gameof chance against nature, involving tough decisions. How should adeveloping nation allocate its budget between building schools fortowns without ones or making existing schools earthquake-resistant?Does it make more sense to build levees to protect against floods,or to prevent development in the areas at risk? Would more lives besaved by making hospitals earthquake-resistant, or using the fundsfor patient care? What should scientists tell the public when– as occurred in L’Aquila, Italy and Mammoth Lakes,California – there is a real but small risk of an upcomingearthquake or volcanic eruption? Recent hurricanes,earthquakes, and tsunamis show that society often handles suchchoices poorly. Sometimes nature surprises us, when an earthquake,hurricane, or flood is bigger or has greater effects than expectedfrom detailed hazard assessments. In other cases, nature outsmartsus, doing great damage despite expensive mitigation measures orcausing us to divert limited resources to mitigate hazards that areoverestimated. Much of the problem comes from the fact thatformulating effective natural hazard policy involves combiningscience, economics, and risk analysis to analyze a problem andexplore the costs and benefits of different options, in situationswhere the future is very uncertain. Because mitigation policies aretypically chosen without such analysis, the results are oftendisappointing. This book uses general principles and case studiesto explore how we can do better by taking an integrated view ofnatural hazards issues, rather than treating the relevantgeoscience, engineering, economics, and policy formulationseparately. Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapterinvite readers to confront the complex issues involved. Readership: Instructors, researchers, practitioners, andstudents interested in geoscience, engineering, economics, orpolicy issues relevant to natural hazards. Suitable for upper-levelundergraduate or graduate courses. Additional resources can be found at: ahref="http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature"http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature/a

Author : Stellan Ohlsson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 541 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2011-01-31
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781139496759

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Deep Learning by Stellan Ohlsson Pdf

Although the ability to retain, process, and project prior experience onto future situations is indispensable, the human mind also possesses the ability to override experience and adapt to changing circumstances. Cognitive scientist Stellan Ohlsson analyzes three types of deep, non-monotonic cognitive change: creative insight, adaptation of cognitive skills by learning from errors, and conversion from one belief to another, incompatible belief. For each topic, Ohlsson summarizes past research, re-formulates the relevant research questions, and proposes information-processing mechanisms that answer those questions. The three theories are based on the principles of redistribution of activation, specialization of practical knowledge, and re-subsumption of declarative information. Ohlsson develops the implications of those mechanisms by scaling their effects with respect to time, complexity, and social interaction. The book ends with a unified theory of non-monotonic cognitive change that captures the abstract properties that the three types of change share.

Author : Florin Diacu
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780691133508

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Megadisasters by Florin Diacu Pdf

The history and science behind efforts to predict major disasters, from tsunamis to stock market crashes Can we predict cataclysmic disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or stock market crashes? The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 claimed more than 200,000 lives. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,800 people and devastated the city of New Orleans. The recent global financial crisis has cost corporations and ordinary people around the world billions of dollars. Megadisasters is a book that asks why catastrophes such as these catch us by surprise, and reveals the history and groundbreaking science behind efforts to forecast major disasters and minimize their destruction. Each chapter of this exciting and eye-opening book explores a particular type of cataclysmic event and the research surrounding it, including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, rapid climate change, collisions with asteroids or comets, pandemics, and financial crashes. Florin Diacu tells the harrowing true stories of people impacted by these terrible events, and of the scientists racing against time to predict when the next big disaster will strike. He describes the mathematical models that are so critical to understanding the laws of nature and foretelling potentially lethal phenomena, the history of modeling and its prospects for success in the future, and the enormous challenges to scientific prediction posed by the chaos phenomenon, which is the high instability that underlies many processes around us. Yielding new insights into the perils that can touch every one of us, Megadisasters shows how the science of predicting disasters holds the promise of a safer and brighter tomorrow.

Author : Edward Keller,Duane DeVecchio
Publisher : Pearson Higher Education AU
Page : 575 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2015-05-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780321958051

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Natural Hazards: Earth's Processes as Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes (4th Edition) by Edward Keller,Duane DeVecchio Pdf

Author : Edward A. Keller,Duane E. DeVecchio
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 575 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2016-07-07
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781315508689

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Natural Hazards by Edward A. Keller,Duane E. DeVecchio Pdf

Natural Hazards: Earth Processes as Hazards, Disasters and Catastrophes, Fourth Edition, is an introductory-level survey intended for university and college courses that are concerned with earth processes that have direct, and often sudden and violent, impacts on human society. The text integrates principles of geology, hydrology, meteorology, climatology, oceanography, soil science, ecology and solar system astronomy. The book is designed for a course in natural hazards for non-science majors, and a primary goal of the text is to assist instructors in guiding students who may have little background in science to understand physical earth processes as natural hazards and their consequences to society. Natural Hazards uses historical to recent examples of hazards and disasters to explore how and why they happen and what we can do to limit their effects. The text's up-to-date coverage of recent disasters brings a fresh perspective to the material. The Fourth Edition continues our new active learning approach that includes reinforcement of learning objective with a fully updated visual program and pedagogical tools that highlight fundamental concepts of the text. This program will provide an interactive and engaging learning experience for your students. Here's how: Provide a balanced approach to the study of natural hazards: Focus on the basic earth science of hazards as well as roles of human processes and effects on our planet in a broader, more balanced approach to the study of natural hazards. Enhance understanding and comprehension of natural hazards: Newly revised stories and case studies give students a behind the scenes glimpse into how hazards are evaluated from a scientific and human perspective; the stories of real people who survive natural hazards, and the lives and research of professionals who have contributed significantly to the research of hazardous events. Strong pedagogical tools reinforce the text's core features: Chapter structure and design organizes the material into three major sections to help students learn, digest, and review learning objectives.