The crack density within a fault's damage zone is thought to vary as seismic rupture is approached, as well as in the postseismic period. Moreover, external stress loads, seasonal or tidal, may also change the crack density in rocks, and all such processes can leave detectable signatures on seismic attenuation. Here we show that attenuation time histories from the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield are affected by seasonal loading cycles, as well as by 1.5-3-year periodic variations of creep rates, consistent with Turner et al.

Background: Probiotics may prevent the allergic response development due to their antiinflammatory and immunomodulatory effects. The aim of this study is to determine if the prophylactic treatment with a mixture of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. Lactis BB12 and Enterococcus faecium L3 would reduce symptoms and need for drug use in children with allergic rhinitis (AR). Methods: The study included 250 children aged from 6 to 17 years, affected by AR. Patients were randomly assigned to the intervention group (150) or to the placebo group (100).

We study nonnegative solutions of the Cauchy problem

Despite numerous important contributions, the investigation of brain connectivity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) still faces multiple challenges. One critical aspect of source-level connectivity, largely overlooked in the literature, is the putative effect of the choice of the inverse method on the subsequent cortico-cortical coupling analysis. We set out to investigate the impact of three inverse methods on source coherence detection using simulated MEG data. To this end, thousands of randomly located pairs of sources were created.

Here some issues are studied, related to the numerical solution of Richards' equation in a one dimensional spatial domain by a technique based on the Transversal Method of Lines (TMoL). The core idea of TMoL approach is to semi-discretize the time derivative of Richards' equation: afterward a system of second order differential equations in the space variable is derived as an initial value problem. The computational framework of this method requires both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions at the top of the column. The practical motivation for choosing such a condition is argued.

The paper deals with de la Vallee Poussin type interpolation on the square at tensor product Chebyshev zeros of the first kind. The approximation is studied in the space of locally continuous functions with possible algebraic singularities on the boundary, equipped with weighted uniform norms. In particular, simple necessary and sufficient conditions are proved for the uniform boundedness of the related Lebesgue constants. Error estimates in some Sobolev-type spaces are also given.

A new technique for nonparametric regression of multichannel signals is presented. The technique is based on the use of the Rational-Dilation Wavelet Transform (RADWT), equipped with a tunable Q-factor able to provide sparse representations of functions with different oscillations persistence. In particular, two different frames are obtained by two RADWT with different Q-factors that give sparse representations of functions with low and high resonance.

For a four-stream approximation of the kinetic model of radiative transfer with isotropic scattering, a numerical scheme endowed with both truly 2D well-balanced and diffusive asymptotic-preserving properties is derived, in the same spirit as what was done in [L. Gosse and G. Toscani, C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris, 334 (2002), pp. 337-342] in the 1D case. Building on former results of Birkhoff and Abu-Shumays [J. Math. Anal. Appl., 28 (1969), pp.