The 5 September 2012 M(w) 7.6 earthquake on the Costa Rica subduction plate boundary followed a 62-y interseismic period. High-precision GPS recorded numerous slow slip events (SSEs) in the decade leading up to the earthquake, both up-dip and down-dip of seismic rupture. Deeper SSEs were larger than shallower ones and, if characteristic of the interseismic period, release most locking down-dip ...

The main components which affect the earthquake damage grades classification of multistory masonry buildings and the damage characters are summarized and analyzed through the statistics and analysis of a large number of previous earthquake damage data. According to the standard of earthquake damage grades classification, the damage numbers of each component of multistory masonry buildings under...

A variety of user-friendly spreadsheet templates have been developed for geoscience studies. However, the use of the built-in matrix functions within spreadsheet programs, such as Excel, is not particularly straightforward, lowering the value of spreadsheet programs for matrix-based computations, such as multiple regression analyses. Therefore, this study first developed two applications for Ex...

Because of the availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, remote sensing data has become an attractive source of data for identifying post-earthquake damage. Recently, several semiautomated methods for earthquake damage detection have been developed. These methodologies fall into two general categories: change detection and thematic classification. In change detection, both preand post-...

Meiotic recombination is required for the orderly segregation of chromosomes during meiosis and for providing genetic diversity among offspring. Among mammals, as well as yeast and higher plants, recombination preferentially occurs at highly delimited chromosomal sites 1-2 kb long known as hotspots. Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the roles various proteins play in...

Quantitative trait loci (QTL) hotspots (genomic locations affecting many traits) are a common feature in genetical genomics studies and are biologically interesting since they may harbor critical regulators. Therefore, statistical procedures to assess the significance of hotspots are of key importance. One approach, randomly allocating observed QTL across the genomic locations separately by tra...

The available data, mainly topography, geoid, and heat flow, describing hotspots worldwide are examined to constrain the mechanisms for swell uplift and to obtain fluxes and excess temperatures of mantle plumes. Swell uplift is caused mainly by excess temperatures that move with the lithosphere plate and to a lesser extent hot asthenosphere near the hotspot. The volume, heat, and buoyancy fluxe...

The use of endemism and vascular plants only for biodiversity hotspot delineation has long been contested. Few studies have focused on the efficacy of global biodiversity hotspots for the conservation of insects, an important, abundant, and often ignored component of biodiversity. We aimed to test five alternative diversity measures for hotspot delineation and examine the efficacy of biodiversi...

BACKGROUND The spread of infectious diseases in wildlife populations is influenced by patterns of between-host contacts. Habitat "hotspots"--places attracting a large numbers of individuals or social groups--can significantly alter contact patterns and, hence, disease propagation. Research on the importance of habitat hotspots in wildlife epidemiology has primarily focused on how inter-individu...

Meiotic recombination events typically cluster within narrow regions of the genome termed hotspots. A series of recent papers reveals that PRDM9, a C2H2-type zinc-finger protein with histone H3 lysine 4 methyltransferase activity, plays a major role in the specification of hotspots. The zinc fingers that contact DNA in a sequence-dependent manner evolve rapidly and are under positive selection,...