This article reconstructed the track, intensity, and societal impacts of the Great Havana Hurricane of October 1846, using all available historical data, which include ship logs, newspapers, diaries, ...and early instrumental records. Most of the data were extracted from original manuscripts at historical libraries and repositories. Meteorological aspects of the hurricane were analyzed by mapping twice-daily surface synoptic weather maps from geographic information systems methods, estimating central pressures from known wind-pressure relationships derived from modern hurricane studies, and assessing intensity based on damage descriptions from the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and an inland decay model. The storm was found to be much stronger than previously known. In this study, we clearly define the first known record of a landfalling Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Basin, which likely ranks among the top of all those known in the modern (1851-present) Atlantic Basin official hurricane database. Although this storm has been previously referred to as one of the most destructive hurricanes in the history of Cuba, the impacts of the Great Havana Hurricane actually spanned well beyond the Caribbean, tracking from Florida through many major populated cities along the East Coast and into Atlantic Canada. Clearly, such a storm today, with much larger metropolitan areas, would have caused enormous economic damage and should be anticipated in long-term hurricane mitigation, zoning, and worst-case scenarios. This study highlights the importance of examining historical documentary sources for extreme events, providing a framework on how to research case studies of premodern Atlantic hurricanes back in time.
This study examines whether enhanced disclosure of non-financial performance indicators influences financial analysts’ decision processes and the information they pay attention to when performing ...stock-price valuations. These questions are addressed through a verbal protocol study that examines the information-processing behaviours and types of information used by analysts in valuing companies. The protocol analysis provides a detailed, descriptive analysis of the use of non-financial performance indicators in this task.
The results demonstrate considerable attention to non-financial performance indicators. However, that attention was asymmetric depending on the trend-direction of the financial information. Financial information received greater attention when the trend was negative whereas non-financial performance indicators received greater attention when the financial information showed positive trends. Overall, these results elucidate the processes by which analysts utilise non-financial performance information in making valuation and subsequent investment decisions.
LUX is a two-phase (liquid/gas) xenon time projection chamber designed to detect nuclear recoils from interactions with dark matter particles. Signals from the LUX detector are processed by ...custom-built analog electronics which provide properly shaped signals for the trigger and data acquisition (DAQ) systems. The DAQ is composed of commercial digitizers with firmware customized for the LUX experiment. Data acquisition systems in rare-event searches must accommodate high rate and large dynamic range during precision calibrations involving radioactive sources, while also delivering low threshold for maximum sensitivity. The LUX DAQ meets these challenges using real-time baseline suppression that allows for a maximum event acquisition rate in excess of 1.5kHz with virtually no deadtime. This paper describes the LUX DAQ and the novel acquisition techniques employed in the LUX experiment.
THE GREAT LOUISIANA HURRICANE OF AUGUST 1812 Mock, Cary J.; Chenoweth, Michael; Altamirano, Isabel ...
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
12/2010, Letnik:
91, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Major hurricanes are prominent meteorological hazards of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. However, the official modern record of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones starts at 1851, and it does not ...provide a comprehensive measure of the frequency and magnitude of major hurricanes. Vast amounts of documentary weather data extend back several centuries, but many of these have not yet been fully utilized for hurricane reconstruction. These sources include weather diaries, ship logbooks, ship protests, and newspapers from American, British, and Spanish archives. A coordinated effort, utilizing these historical sources, has reconstructed a major hurricane in August 1812, which is the closest to ever pass by New Orleans, Louisiana, including Hurricane Katrina. The storm became a tropical depression in the Caribbean Sea, passed south of Jamaica as a tropical storm, and then strengthened to hurricane strength in the Gulf of Mexico. It made landfall about 65 km southeast of New Orleans and passed just to the west of the city. Historical storm surge and damage reports indicate it as a major hurricane at landfall. Given that conditions during 1812 include having lower sea level, higher land elevation prior to human-induced subsidence, and more extensive wetlands, a recurrence of such a major hurricane would likely have a greater detrimental societal impact than that of Hurricane Katrina. The 1812 hurricane study provides an example of how historical data can be utilized to reconstruct past hurricanes in a manner that renders them directly comparable with those within our modern record.
Echo-Planar functional magnetic resonance imaging (EP-fMRI) was used to study the activity of the amygdala while three normal female subjects viewed alternating blocks of affectively neutral and ...affectively negative still pictures. Bilateral activation in the amygdala that was significantly correlated with the changing valence of the visual stimuli was found in all three subjects. These findings are consistent with the large corpus of data from non-human studies suggesting that the amygdala is a key structure for extracting the affective significance from external stimuli. This is the first known report of phasic amygdala activation detected with EP-fMRI in normal human subjects responding to affective stimuli.
We show by numerical simulation as well as by measurements on negative-index metamaterial wedge samples, that the unavoidable stepping of the refraction interface-due to the finite unit-cell size ...inherent to metamaterials-can give rise to a well-defined diffracted beam in addition to the negatively refracted beam. The direction of the diffracted beam is consistent with elementary diffraction theory; however, the coupling to this higher order beam is much larger than would be the case for a positive index material. The results confirm recent theoretical predictions of enhanced diffraction for negative-index grating surfaces.
Plentiful documentary and pre‐twentieth century instrumental data from Louisiana, U.S.A., provide a record of continuous tropical cyclones, with daily resolution dating back to the late eighteenth ...century. The reconstruction provided new specific information for 83 storms prior to 1872. Parts of the early and mid‐nineteenth century exhibit greater tropical cyclone and hurricane activity than at any time within the last few hundred years. A major hurricane that impacted southeast Louisiana in August 1812 is very likely the closest landfalling hurricane known to impact New Orleans. The longer temporal perspective provides insight on historical hurricane impacts and information on assessing future hurricane mitigation strategies concerning potential worst‐case scenarios.
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