Breaking News: Earthquakes

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Residents of Southern Turkey were again jolted by a new earthquake Monday, this trembler reported by the U.S. Geology Survey (USGS) as 6.3 in magnitude. News reports state that scores of buildings that were damaged in powerful quakes on February 6 have been further damaged or outright collapsed. Virginia Tech’s Robert Weiss, who studies natural hazards, calls the devastating trio of earthquake “unusual,” but not “impossible.

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The earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed over 45,000 people and decimated large areas. The shockingly high number of fatalities raises the question of whether infrastructure issues are to blame. Roberto Leon, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, said there are several reasons for the large number of collapses, leading to mass casualties: Poor enforcement of existing codes (modern codes instituted after the 1999 Izmit earthquake) Grandfathering of older, deficient structures and not requiring their retrofit (structures built before 1999) Poor construction practices (i.

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An everyday quirk of physics could be an important missing piece in scientists' efforts to predict the world’s most powerful earthquakes.

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Renaissance polymath Leonard da Vinci demonstrated frictional forces slow down the motion of surfaces in contact. Friction, he determined, is proportional to normal force. When two objects are pressed together twice as hard, friction doubles.

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A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck south central Turkey near the Turkey/Syria border on February 6. Within 11 minutes, a magnitude 6.7 aftershock convulsed a region 60 miles north. So far, more than 35,000 people have died, surpassing Japan’s Fukushima earthquake disaster in March 2011. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said an earthquake of this magnitude is rare anywhere in the world Husam Najm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Rutgers School of Engineering who specializes in the study of various advanced concrete materials and the design of novel forms of concrete bridges, discusses the unfolding tragedy, its causes and efforts to design earthquake-resistant structures to stave off such catastrophic losses in the future.

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The Japanese archipelago is actively undergoing seismic shifts due to interactions between the oceanic plate and the continental plate.

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Modeling the effects of earthquakes on homes, businesses, and infrastructure is about to get a lot easier, thanks to advanced simulations performed on the world's fastest supercomputers.

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University of Miami College of Engineering faculty members Nurcin Celik and Derin Ural lived through the 1999 temblor that struck near the Turkish city of Izmit. They stand ready to offer their expertise in the aftermath of Monday’s disaster.

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