DALLAS (SMU) – Want to be more outgoing? Or less uptight?
In an interview with Fox4ward’s Dan Godwin, SMU psychology professor Nathan Hudson said that it is possible for people to change aspects of their personality. But it will require some work on your part.
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, community and the world.
A new analysis of historical seismic data conducted by The University of Texas at Austin, SMU and other academies has found that earthquake activity in West Texas around Pecos has increased dramatically since 2009.
The study, published Nov. 4, 2019, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, is important because it leverages old, unmined data to track seismic activity over nearly the past two decades – much further back than other studies— to show that activity has increased during the past decade in an area of the Permian Basin that is being heavily developed for oil and gas. Although researchers have generally thought that to be true, the statewide TexNet earthquake monitoring system has been gathering data since only 2017, making it impossible to definitely determine when the cluster of seismic activity around Pecos really began.
The researchers were able to extend the seismic record of the area by turning to the older TXAR system near Lajitas about 150 miles to the south. TXAR is an array of 10 seismographs installed in the 1990s by scientists at SMU (Southern Methodist University) to help track nuclear testing across the world, said lead author Cliff Frohlich, a senior research scientist emeritus at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).
“Especially for these West Texas earthquakes, we would like to get some information about when they started,” Frohlich said. “I really saw this as a way to bridge the gap before TexNet.”
The TXAR system is some distance from Pecos, but Frohlich said the equipment is highly sensitive and that the area is remote and seismically very quiet, making the system perfect for picking up vibrations from explosions across the world or from earthquakes 150 miles away. Frohlich worked with Chris Hayward, director of SMU’s Geophysics Research Program, to create a method to derive the earthquake data from the international data TXAR collects and build an earthquake catalog for the Delaware Basin near Pecos from 2000 to 2017.
By analyzing data from 2000 to 2017, scientists were able to document more than 7,000 seismic events near Pecos that were determined by the team to be earthquakes. Data on these seismic events had to be manually reviewed to ensure they were in fact earthquakes and not a false detection. This was done by Frohlich and Julia Rosenblit, who was an SMU intern at the time.
Multiple events first started occurring in 2009, when 19 earthquakes of at least magnitude 1 were documented. The rate increased over time, with more than 1,600 earthquakes of magnitude 1 or greater in 2017. Most were so small that no one felt them.
The study shows a correlation between earthquake activity in the area and an increase in oil and gas activity but doesn’t make an effort to directly tie the two together as other studies have done.
“West Texas now has the highest seismicity rates in the state,” said Heather DeShon, study co-author and associate professor at SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “What remained uncertain is when the earthquakes actually started. This study addresses that.”
This study is the latest in a comprehensive effort to determine what is causing an increase in seismic activity in Texas and how oil and gas operations can be managed to minimize that human-induced element. The state approved the TexNet system in 2015, which is operated in tandem with research efforts by the Center for Integrated Seismicity Research (CISR).
Co-author Peter Hennings, who leads CISR and is a Senior Research Scientist at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology said that fundamental research like this latest study is vital when trying to unravel such a complicated problem.
“The obvious next step is exactly what the University of Texas is doing – conducting these careful studies on the relationship between earthquakes and their human and natural causes to build an integrated understanding,” Hennings said.
SMU seismologists have also been the lead or co-authors of a series of studies on Texas earthquakes. For instance, UT Austin and SMU found that earthquakes triggered by human activity have been happening in Texas since 1925, and they have been widespread throughout the state ever since. In addition, SMU research showed that many of the Dallas-Fort Worth earthquakes were triggered by increases in pore pressure–the pressure of groundwater trapped within tiny spaces inside rocks in the subsurface.
The Bureau of Economic Geology and UTIG are units of the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. Scientists from SMU, Portland State University, the University of Oklahoma and the French institute IFREMER also worked on the study.
DALLAS (SMU) – Seems like smartphones can do everything these days. Add to that list gathering information on bridge’s structural health.
Brett Story, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering, and students at Garland High School are using smartphones in passing cars to check if there are any cracks or uneven settling in the foundation of the Briarwood bridge, which crosses over Duck Creek in Garland.
The Dallas Morning News has more on this innovative research.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
Volcanic eruptions and their ash clouds pose a significant hazard to population centers and air travel, especially those that show few to no signs of unrest beforehand. Geologists are now using a technique traditionally used in weather and climate forecasting to develop new eruption forecasting models. By testing if the models are able to capture the likelihood of past eruptions, the researchers are making strides in the science of volcanic forecasting.
The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined the eruption history of the Okmok volcano in Alaska. In 2008, a large eruption produced an ash plume that extended approximately 1 mile into the sky over the Aleutian Islands – posing a significant hazard to aircraft engines along a route that transports roughly 50,000 people between Asia and North America each day, the researchers said.
“The 2008 eruption of Okmok came as a bit of surprise,” said University of Illinois graduate student and lead author Jack Albright. “After an eruption that occurred in 1997, there were periods of slight unrest, but very little seismicity or other eruption precursors. In order to develop better forecasting, it is crucial to understand volcanic eruptions that deviate from the norm.”
Geologists typically forecast eruptions by looking for established patterns of preeruption unrest such as earthquake activity, groundswell and gas release, the researchers said. Volcanoes like Okmok, however, don’t seem to follow these established patterns.
To build and test new models, the team utilized a statistical data analysis technique developed after World War II called Kalman filtering.
“The version of Kalman filtering that we used for our study was updated in 1996 and has continued to be used in weather and climate forecasting, as well as physical oceanography,” said U. of I. geology professor Patricia Gregg, a co-author of the study that included collaborators from SMU (Southern Methodist University) and Michigan State University. “We are the first group to use the updated method in volcanology, however, and it turns out that this technique works well for the unique unrest that led up to Okmok’s 2008 eruption.”
One of those unique attributes is the lack of increased seismicity before the eruption, the researchers said. In a typical preeruption sequence, it is hypothesized that the reservoir under the volcano stays the same size as it fills with magma and hot gases. That filling causes pressure in the chamber to increase and the surrounding rocks fracture and move, causing earthquakes.
“In the 2008 eruption, it appears that the magma chamber grew larger to accommodate the increasing pressure, so we did not see the precursor seismic activity we would expect,” Albright said. “By looking back in time with our models, or hindcasting, we can now observe that stress had been building up in the rocks around the chamber for weeks, and the growth of the magma system ultimately led to its failure and eruption.”
This type of backward and forward modeling allows researchers to watch a volcanic system evolve over time. “While we stopped our analysis after the 2008 eruption, we are now able to propagate this new model forward in time, bring it to present day, and forecast where Okmok volcano is heading next,” Gregg said.
The researchers posit that these models will continue to find other less-recognized eruption precursors, but acknowledge that every volcano is different and that the models must be tailored to fit each unique system.
The volcano forecasting technique used in this study was based on volcano deformation data from GPS and satellite radars. Geophysicist Zhong Lu, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU and a global expert in satellite radar imagery analysis, processed the satellite radar images and provided the volcano deformation maps for this research.
The U. of I. team is working in collaboration with researchers from Alaska Volcano Observatory and SMU to help build a stronger forecasting system for the Aleutian Islands area. The researchers received $541,921 in grant money from NASA for the work in early 2019.
UT Southwestern Medical Center and SMU found migratory birds maximize how much light they get from their environment, so they can migrate even at night
DALLAS (SMU) – It was a puzzle about birds.
Migratory birds are known to rely on Earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate the globe. And it was suspected that a protein called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to blue light, was making it possible for birds to do this.
Yet many of these animals are also known to migrate at night when there isn’t much light available. So it wasn’t clear how cryptochrome would function under these conditions in birds.
A new study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center in collaboration with SMU (Southern Methodist University), though, may have figured out the answer to that puzzle.
Researchers found that cryptochromes from migratory birds have evolved a mechanism that enhances their ability to respond to light, which can enable them to sense and respond to magnetic fields.
“We were able to show that the protein cryptochrome is extremely efficient at collecting and responding to low levels of light,” said SMU chemist Brian D. Zoltowski, who was one of the lead authors of a new study on the findings. “The result of this research is that we now understand how vertebrate cryptochromes can respond to very low light intensities and function under night time conditions.”
The study was published in the journal PNAS in September.
(From left) UT Southwestern Medical Center research specialist Yogarany Chelliah, Dr. Joseph Takahashi, and SMU’s Dr. Brian Zoltowski. Photo courtesy of Southern Methodist University, Kim Leeson.
Cryptochromes are found in both plants and animals and are responsible for circadian rhythms in various species. In birds, scientists were specifically focused on learning more about an unusual eye protein called CRY4, which is part of a class of cryptochromes.
The lab of Joseph Takahashi, a circadian rhythms expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center, worked with other UT Southwestern scientists to purify and solve the crystal structure of the protein – the first atomic structure of a photoactive cryptochrome molecule from a vertebrate. The lab of Brian Zoltowski, an expert in blue-light photoreceptors, studied the efficiency of the light-driven reactions – identifying a pathway unique to CRY4 proteins that facilitates function under low light conditions.
“Although in plants and insects, cryptochromes are known to be photoactive, which means they react to sunlight. Among vertebrates much less is known, and the majority of vertebrate cryptochromes do not appear to be photoactive,” said Takahashi, chairman of neuroscience at UT Southwestern and an investigator with Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “This photosensitivity and the possibility that CRY4 is affected by the magnetic field make this specific cryptochrome a very interesting molecule.”
Researchers took a sample of the CRY4 from a pigeon and grew crystals of the protein. They then exposed the crystals to x-rays, making it possible for them to map out the location of all the atoms in the protein.
And while pigeons are not night-migratory songbirds, the sequences of their CRY4 proteins are very similar, the study noted.
“These structures allow us to visualize at the atomic scale how these proteins function and understand how they may use blue-light to sense magnetic fields,” said Zoltowski, associate professor of chemistry at SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities & Sciences. “The new structures also provide the first atomic level detail of how these proteins work, opening the door for more detailed studies on cryptochromes in migratory organisms.”
In the study, researchers discovered unusual changes to key regions of the protein structure that can enhance their ability to collect light from their environment.
“Cryptochromes work by absorbing a photon of light, which causes an electron to move through a sequence of amino acids. These amino acids typically consist of a chain of 3 or 4 sites that act as a wire that electrons can flow through,” explained Zoltowski. “But in pigeons, it was identified that this chain may be extended to contain 5 sites.”
This mutation of the electron chain in pigeons makes cryptochrome less dependent on a bird’s environment having a lot of light for the protein to be activated.
“Birds have evolved a mechanism to enhance the efficiency. So even when there is very little light around, they have enough signal generated to migrate,” Zoltowski said.
Other co-authors of the study include UT Southwestern’s Yogarany Chelliah, Anushka Wickramaratne, Wei Xu, Ryan E. Hibbs and Carla B. Green; SMU’s Nischal Karki; Henrik Mouritsen from the University of Oldenburg; and Peter J. Hore and Lauren Jarocha from the University of Oxford.
About SMU
SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.
