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Scientists at Hebrew University may have found a way to predict earthquakes

Researchers discover the slow, silent process that ignites earthquakes

Scientists are getting a better understanding on how and when earthquakes occur.

One of the biggest challenges regarding earthquakes is preparation. Aside from recognizing where faultlines lay and determining which areas are the most prone to earthquakes and earthquake damage, there is very little we can do to prepare for the next “big one.” Earthquakes can occur at any time and happen with little to no warning, at least not enough warning for people to seek safety before they hit. Scientists at Hebrew University in Israel may have found a way for us to predict earthquakes in the future.

Through a study done in Israel, Prof. Jay Fineberg and his team of researchers at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem possibly found the causes that lead up to shaking tremors. Through experiments and theoretical models, they theorize that a fault’s geometry along with slow and steady displacement at certain stress points in the Earth’s crust typically precede a seismic rupture that leads to earthquakes.

Richter scaleThis new study could lead into better preparation for earthquakes.Photo credit: Canva

Tremors occur when cracks in the Earth’s crust suddenly give way, and previous studies have shown that slow movements do precede the formation of these cracks. Yet until now, the data of these processes has been relying on two-dimensional generalizations rather than practical or theoretical three-dimensional studies. Fineberg’s team looked into how slow, aseismic stress came into play within earthquake activity, how that stress evolves and nucleates into a budding and sudden tremor.

“Our findings challenge and refine conventional models of rupture dynamics," said Fineberg in a press release. "We show that slow, aseismic processes are a prerequisite for seismic rupture, driven by localized stress and geometric constraints. This has profound implications for understanding when and how earthquakes begin.”

A torn down house and rubble from an earthquakeBeing able to predict an earthquake could help prevent further injuries.Photo credit: Canva

Further testing needs to be made in order to further confirm Fineberg and his team’s conclusions, however this leads to a greater understanding into how earthquakes happen and identify new focal points. Should these solid theories become reality, it could lead to better warnings of earthquakes before they start, leading to better systems to inform the public so they can better prepare before the tremor fully hits.

Meanwhile, if you live near or in an area prone to earthquakes, it’s best to be prepared for the worst. According to experts at the U.S. Geological Survey, if you are caught in the middle of an earthquake, take cover under a heavy desk or table, away from any windows or top-heavy furniture. Stay in place, as most people injured inside a building during an earthquake are those trying to move to a different building or leave their current position. Ready.gov recommends packing an earthquake kit with clothes, water, medication, a first aid kit, a hand-crank flashlight, batteries, cell phone charger, and other such items at the ready in your home or car case you need to leave. There are also apps like MyShake that could give you alerts and other information about earthquakes around your area through your mobile phone, too.

A man and a woman taking shelter under a wooden tableIf you're experiencing an earthquake, hide under a table away from any windows.Photo credit: Canva

It takes time and study to learn how the world around us works, which can take years if not lifetimes before we fully understand it. Even when we get better understanding, it might only provide more prep time for emergencies. Regardless of how much more understanding we obtain about earthquakes, there will always be the need to prepare and to be ready, for ourselves and for our neighbors.

U.S. doctors first noticed the disease that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s.

The story starts with a group of doctors, who noticed an outbreak of a rare skin cancer called Kaposi sarcoma in young gay men in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. We now know that Kaposi sarcoma is linked to HIV/AIDS, but at the time, those doctors didn't know what was causing the rare form cancer.

CDC researchers, suspecting that whatever was causing this disease was sexually transmitted, started asking patients to name their partners. And, through this work, the researchers started to build out a map of cases.


That's where a man named Gaetan Dugas comes in.

Photo from Anonymous/Assoicated Press.

Dugas was a Canadian flight attendant, and he was named by several of the patients as one of their sexual partners. Soon enough, the scientists started talking to him. It turned out he was sick too.

Dugas' case started the phrase "patient zero," which you may have heard of. But the term — and its tie to Dugas — was more or less an accident.

Dugas did end up near the center of their map, which some people took to mean that he was the original source of this new and rare infection in the United States. But the scientists didn't mean to imply that.

A re-creation of the 1984 "map" of infections. Dugas' spot is highlighted in red. Image from Niamh O'C/Wikimedia Commons.

Even the term, "patient zero" was an accident. Dugas was originally anonymized as Patient O, for "out(side)-of-California." It was only later, in a misunderstanding, that Dugas became "patient zero."

Dugas was originally anonymous, but once the media learned who he was, they turned him into the great HIV/AIDs villain.

Dugas' name first appeared in the book "And the Band Played On," by Randy Shilts. And the media, once they got wind of who he was, painted Dugas as some sort of purposefully malicious villain — the man who "brought" HIV/AIDS to the U.S.

"Gaetan Dugas is one of the most demonised patients in history, and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fueled epidemics with malicious intent," said Cambridge's Richard McKay in a statement.

But not everyone believed this was true, so scientists investigated. And they may have just cleared his name.

There have been previous suggestions that Dugas did not deserve the dubious moniker of "patient zero," but now a team, including McKay and led by Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, may have definitive evidence that Dugas was not the original carrier of HIV.

To do this, the scientists got a hold of old blood samples containing the virus from Dugas and eight other patients. They then used sophisticated genetic techniques to sequence each HIV infection's genome, effectively building a kind of family tree of the virus.

If Dugas was really the first infectee (or what scientists more properly call the "index case"), his sample should have been at the root of the tree. But that wasn't the case. Instead, their research suggests that the disease actually entered the United States from the Caribbean sometime in the 1970s. It turned out he was simply another patient with a really tough disease.

This study will help us better understand how HIV/AIDS entered the United States. But it also shows why the idea of a patient zero can be so problematic.

We often want someone to blame when big things go wrong — a scapegoat makes things a lot easier. The idea of a patient zero provides an all-too-easy target.

"Blaming 'others' — whether the foreign, the poor, or the wicked — has often served to establish a notional safe distance between the majority and groups or individuals identified as threats," said McKay. And Dugas, an unashamed gay foreigner in the 1980s, was, to many in America, one of the "others."

Though we have a much better grasp on HIV/AIDS today than we did in the 1980s, we continue to see this vilification with other diseases.

Take the stigma the family of Emile Ouamouno, the 2-year-old patient zero of the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, has had to live through.

An aid workers sets up beds in Liberia in 2014. Photo by Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

Scientifically, this vilification can be problematic as well. Identifying the origin of a disease is an important step in understanding how it spreads, but solely focusing on that can obscure other, larger contributing factors that contribute to how a disease spreads, such as unequal access to health care, said McKay in The Guardian.

In the end, the idea of a patient zero can also eclipse the human cost.

Rather, we can get so wrapped up in our obsession with blaming a patient zero, that we can lose sight of the very human cost of the disease itself, which often plays out right in front of us.

"It is important to remember that, in the 1970s, as now, the epidemic was driven by individuals going about their lives unaware they were contracting, and sometimes transmitting, a deadly infection," said McKay.

The early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic were a terrible, dark time for everyone who lived through them, and reducing that story to blaming just one man is a grave mistake. McKay said they hope this research will give people pause before using the phrase again.

Dugas died in 1984 of AIDS-related complications.

They say each lie is easier than the last.

Let's try it out.

I had a bagel for breakfast this morning. I am completely happy with my diet. My loan and rent payments are — deep breath — entirely reasonable. I am totally fine with ... how this political season ... has ... gajsdfasdjfklsadf.


Photo from iStock.

Damn it. I can't do it.

But there is a well-known idea that little white lies can eventually snowball into giant ones. (For reference, consider any romantic comedy movie, ever.)

So scientists from University College London decided to see if lies really spin out of control like we think they do.

To test this, they made people play a lying game, and scientists watched their brains.

The game was pretty simple: The player's task was to look at a jar of pennies and try to tell a friend how many pennies there were. They'd each get a prize based on their guesses. Sometimes the prizes would be better if they cooperated, but sometimes the player would get better prizes if they lied to their friend.

While this was all happening, the scientists used a type of brain scan called an fMRI to watch the activity in the person's brain.

If the player lied, a region of their brain called the amygdala would light up on the scans.

The amygdala is kind of like an emotional control booth in our brains. It lights up whenever something makes us feel an intense emotion, such as learning your child bought an alligator.

Photo by iStock.

The scientists saw that same emotional center light up when a person told a lie.

But the amygdala didn't always stay lit up and that's the interesting part of this story.

Each time a person told a self-serving lie, their amygdala reacted a little less. And larger drops in activity predicted an increase in the size of the person's lies.

So if the amygdala controls emotion, and we see less activity after repeated lying, that means...

Repeated lies might blunt the brain's emotional response.

At least, that's what the scientists are speculating. (They're a little cautious about making a big statement just yet.) They think that the first time we lie, our amygdala produces a strong emotional response, such as shame or guilt. The more you lie, however, the less the amygdala protests. Basically, the more you lie, the easier it is for you to keep lying.

However, the scientists didn't see the same pattern when the lie actually benefited the player's friend — just when it screwed them over.

So those little white lies we tell to protect our friends? Those stay with us. But the lies we tell to serve ourselves? Those can get so easy, we don't even feel them.

Scientists think this could also teach us new things about decision-making in general too, but they need to do a bit more research on that line of thinking.

"We only tested dishonesty in this experiment, but the same principle may also apply to escalations in other actions such as risk taking or violent behavior," study author Neil Garrett said in a statement.

Let's try this lying thing again...

I did not eat pizza last night. I am definitely not currently bingeing my way through Luke Cage. The traffic in my city is — eye twitch — fine. Just fine. And I am definitely not freaking out about climate change. Nope. Not at all.

I did it! Take that, amygdala.