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Seismic St. Louis

Emily Sekine

I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.

On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.

On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.

For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius. 

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maryclare.crochiere

Women in some countries are much more familiar and used to rape, in fact, they will openly answer questions about it in front of others. There is debate as to whether rape should be treated the same as other humanitarian efforts, or differently, as each way has benefits and drawbacks for the feminist movements and for humanitarian workers. This pushes humanitarianism to a stage with politics, world progress, and other changes. They only meant to help those in need, but by using their work to see where changes can be made, the world will hopefully be a better place.

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maryclare.crochiere

The references list for this article shows a wide variety of resources that were used to write the paper. They vary in topics, some directly looking at nuclear energy, others at the risks society takes, regulations, and organizational structures.

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maryclare.crochiere
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The organization has workers that live in the various communities to increase trust with the native people, and show them that the nurses and midwives are there to help and save lives, not take over. They do home visits since travel is hard in many of the areas, and they do routine check ups to make sure that clean water and living conditions are aiding recovery processes apporopriately.

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maryclare.crochiere

There are four regions of microbial threats that the paper focuses on: emerging infectious disease; bioterrorism; life sciences; and food safety.

Huge increases on spending in the US on biodefense from millions to billions of dollars

Very general emergency response plans have weaknesses in that they are so quickly applied to any situation without considering what a specific region needs, has, or lacks.

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maryclare.crochiere

The real threats of air quality were covered up due to politics and other reasons, wanting to get america back to work. Instead, the reports were edited and people were sent back into the dirty air to clean up the scene or back to office jobs in the area, with contaminated air surrounding everything. Decontanimation efforts did not start until very late in the process. Bush did not wear a mask and the workers were told they didn't need to, so they didn't. As a result, there were severe health problems afterwards.