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Categories: Geoscience: Landslides, Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound

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New research has revealed how an underwater avalanche grew more than 100 times in size causing a massive trail of destruction as it traveled 2000km across the Atlantic Ocean seafloor off the North West coast of Africa. Researchers provide an unprecedented insight into the scale, force and impact of one of nature's mysterious phenomena, underwater avalanches.

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The design of streets and layout of buildings have an impact on a city's resilience in the face of increasingly severe floods brought on by climate change. Researchers look at buildings and other urban structures as physicists consider elements in complex material systems. With this insight, the researchers have developed a new approach to urban flood modelling and found their results helpful in analyzing city-to-city variations in flood risk globally.

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Using data collected from a 2022 magnitude 6.8 earthquake in Luding County in China's Sichuan Province, researchers tested whether Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations could be used for rapid prediction of earthquake-triggered landslides.

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Heat and pressure can deteriorate the properties of piezoelectric materials that make state-of-the-art ultrasound and sonar technologies possible -- and fixing that damage has historically required disassembling devices and exposing the materials to even higher temperatures. Now researchers have developed a technique to restore those properties at room temperature, making it easier to repair these devices -- and paving the way for new ultrasound technologies.

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Landslides triggered by intense rainfall can sometimes be predicted along with incoming storms, but dry-season landslides often take people by surprise. The July 2023 Rolling Hills Estates landslide that destroyed 12 homes seemed to come out of nowhere, but new research shows it began as early as December 2022. Researchers are developing a database that will enable scientists to plug in new data to monitor potential landslides in real time and possibly predict them.

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In a new study, researchers used low-intensity ultrasound technology to noninvasively alter a brain region associated with activities such as daydreaming, recalling memories and envisioning the future.

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Opera singers have to use the extreme limits of their voice range. Many pedagogical and scientific sources suggest that the highest pitches reached in classical singing can only be produced with a so-called 'whistle' voice register, in analogy to ultrasonic vocalizations of mice and rats. An international research team has now rejected this assumption. In their study, the scientists showed that the high-frequency sounds of operatic sopranos are produced with the same principle than speech and most other forms of singing.

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Brain-computer interfaces or BCIs hold immense potential for individuals with a wide range of neurological conditions, but the road to implementation is long and nuanced for both the invasive and noninvasive versions of the technology. Scientists have now successfully integrated a novel focused ultrasound stimulation to realize bidirectional BCI that both encodes and decodes brain waves using machine learning in a study with 25 human subjects. This work opens up a new avenue to significantly enhance not only the signal quality, but also, overall nonivasive BCI performance by stimulating targeted neural circuits.

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Scientists have employed artificial intelligence techniques to improve the design and production of nanofibers used in wearable nanofiber acoustic energy harvesters (NAEH). These acoustic devices capture sound energy from the environment and convert it into electrical energy, which can then be applied in useful devices, such as hearing aids.

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Engineers have developed a wearable ultrasound patch that can offer continuous, non-invasive monitoring of blood flow in the brain. The soft and stretchy patch can be comfortably worn on the temple to provide three-dimensional data on cerebral blood flow--a first in wearable technology.

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Groundbreaking research has provided new insight into the tectonic plate shifts that create some of the Earth's largest earthquakes and tsunamis.

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Researchers have investigated how spiders listen to their environments through webs and found that the webs match the acoustic particle velocity for a wide range of sound frequencies. Playing sound ranging from 1 Hz to 50 kHz for the spiders and measuring the spider silk motion with a laser vibrometer, they found the sound-induced velocity of the silk was the same as the particles in the air surrounding it. This confirmed the mechanism that these spiders use to detect their prey.

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Engineers achieve a wide field-of-hearing acoustic metalens free from aberrations.

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As often as four days a week, Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island fly loops overhead as pilots practice touch-and-go landings. The noise is immense. New research shows that the noise isn't just disruptive -- it presents a substantial risk to public health.

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Researchers developed a silk fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, that can suppress unwanted noise and reduce noise transmission in a large room.

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Researchers have debunked a 75-year-old theory about how humans determine where sounds are coming from, and it could unlock the secret to creating a next generation of more adaptable and efficient hearing devices ranging from hearing aids to smartphones.

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The names might not be familiar -- Cowee Creek, Brabazon Range, Upper Pederson Lagoon -- but they mark the sites of recent lake tsunamis, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in Alaska, British Columbia and other regions with mountain glaciers. Triggered by landslides into small bodies of water, most of these tsunamis have occurred in remote locations so far, but geologists say it may just be a matter of time before a tsunami swamps a more populated place.

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Landslides are one of the most destructive natural disasters on the planet, causing billions of dollars of damage and devastating loss of life every year. A global team of researchers has provided help for those who work to predict landslides and risk evaluations.

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A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition -- entitled 'String Quartet No. 1 'Polar Energy Budget'-- is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.

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If rivers overflow their banks, the consequences can be devastating -- just like the catastrophic floods in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate of 2021 showed. In order to limit flood damage and optimize flood risk assessment, we need to better understand what factors can lead to extreme forms of flooding and to what extent. Using methods of explainable machine learning, researchers have shown that floods are more extreme when several factors are involved in their development.