What's the link between epileptic seizures and earthquakes, basic and applied research?
Fri, 11/01/2008 - 11:15am | by daniel
A recent preprint describes two kinds of phenomena in terms of coupled threshold oscillators - earthquakes and epileptic seizures. It turns out that methods developed for earthquake prediction may become useful in predicting seizures:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.3929 .
Besides, it may be a good starting point to discuss the interdisciplinary aspects of basic and applied research, e.g. how to write or to review grant proposals on cross-disciplinary topics.
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Earthquakes may hold clues
Earthquakes may hold clues for treatment of epilepsy:
TECHNIQUES for forecasting earthquakes could also be used to predict when epilepsy sufferers will have fits, researchers have found.
for further informantion see the given website http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/10/neuroscience.medicalresear...
The guardian article is
The guardian article is about the above-mentioned preprint (by Ivan Osorio) posted on arxiv.org .
Plate Tectonics, the Cause
Plate Tectonics, the Cause of Earthquakes
The plates consist of an outer layer of the Earth, the lithosphere, which is cool enough to behave as a more or less rigid shell. Occasionally the hot asthenosphere of the Earth finds a weak place in the lithosphere to rise buoyantly as a plume, or hotspot. The satellite image below shows the volcanic islands of the Galapagos hotspot.
http://www.seismo.unr.edu