Word: seismically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...older buildings suffered serious damage. The government has promised tougher standards for new buildings, but the immediate challenge is how to improve existing structures. Says Charles Scawthorn, vice president of EQE International, a San Francisco firm that specializes in quake-resistant engineering: ``This is the real heart of the seismic-hazard problem...
Politicians, pundits and activists say the demise of rent control--for a quarter century the single issue able to make or break a politician in this city of Democrats--initiated a seismic shift that could alter the face of city politics for decades to come...
...what physicists refer to as nonlinear dynamics, which means precise forecasting of when and where they will occur is impossible. In theory, major earthquakes should be preceded by smaller shocks. They are, but the earliest foreshocks may be so weak as to be hard to distinguish from background seismic ``noise.'' And for every small tremor that is followed by a big quake, others may not be followed by anything much...
...between eruptions along the big faults are measured in centuries, whereas the secondary cracks ``may only slip in a big earthquake every 1,000 to 5,000 years,'' notes seismologist Wayne Thatcher of the U.S. Geological Survey. ``Yet there are so damn many of them that they pose a seismic hazard equivalent to the Big One we've all been so focused on.'' Seismologists also point out that quakes could endanger places where citizens have rarely thought about them: Seattle, for instance, which sits close to a fault under the Pacific that seismologists now conclude has triggered major quakes...
...John Osborne wrote, "is the one unforgettable feast in my calendar." It was the birthday of the playwright's beloved father Thomas, whose early, lonely death would scar young John for life. On May 8, 1956, in London, Osborne's play Look Back in Anger had its premiere -- a seismic shock that seemed to signal the birth of a new urgency and the death of the reigning theatrical gentility. "When I saw Look Back in Anger," said John Gielgud, a star of the old school, "I thought my number...