Frictional melting mechanisms of rocks during earthquake fault slip.

Rapid slip, at rates in the order of 1 m/s or more, may induce frictional melting in rocks during earthquakes. The short-lived melting has been thought to be a disequilibrium process, for decades. We conducted frictional melting experiments on acidic, basic, and ultrabasic silicate rocks at a slip rate of 1.

sp. nov., Isolated from Chicken Meat.

A bacterial strain, designated B301 and isolated from raw chicken meat obtained from a local market in Korea, was characterized and identified using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Cells were gram-negative, non-motile, obligate-aerobic coccobacilli that were catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. The optimum growth conditions were 30°C, pH 7.

Acinetobacter pullicarnis sp. nov. isolated from chicken meat.

A novel bacterial strain, named S23, was isolated from chicken meat of local market in Korea. Cells were Gram-negative, milky-yellow colored, non-motile and coccobacillus. The strain was obligate aerobic and catalase-positive, oxidase-negative, optimum growth temperature and pH were 25 °C and pH 7.

sp. nov., isolated from raw cow's milk.

A Gram-stain-negative bacterial strain, designated CA10, was isolated from bovine raw milk sampled in Anseong, Republic of Korea. Cells were yellow-pigmented, aerobic, non-motile bacilli and grew optimally at 30 °C and pH 7.0 on tryptic soy agar without supplementation of NaCl.

Ultralow friction of carbonate faults caused by thermal decomposition.

High-velocity weakening of faults may drive fault motion during large earthquakes. Experiments on simulated faults in Carrara marble at slip rates up to 1.3 meters per second demonstrate that thermal decomposition of calcite due to frictional heating induces pronounced fault weakening with steady-state friction coefficients as low as 0.