Benchun Duan et al. "A suite of exercises for verifying dynamic earthquake rupture codes. " Seismological Research Letters 89, no. 3 (2018) We describe a set of benchmark exercises that are designed to test if computer codes that simulate dynamic earthquake rupture are working as intended. These types of computer codes are often used to understand how earthquakes operate, and they produce simulation results that include earthquake size, amounts of fault slip, and the patterns of ground shaking and crustal deformation. The benchmark exercises examine a range of features that scientists incorporate in their dynamic earthquake rupture simulations. These include implementations of simple or complex fault geometry, off-fault rock response to an earthquake, stress conditions, and a variety of formulations for fault friction. Many of the benchmarks were designed to investigate scientific problems at the forefronts of earthquake physics and strong ground motions research. The exercises are freely available on our website for use by the scientific community.

Objective. To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for cancer-related pain. Methods. A systematic review of literatures published from database inception to February 2015 was conducted in eight databases. RCTs involving acupuncture for treatment of cancer-related pain were identified. Two researchers independently performed article selection, data extraction, and quality assessment of data. Results. 1,639 participants in twenty RCTs were analyzed. All selected RCTs were associated with high risk of bias. Meta-analysis indicated that acupuncture alone did not have superior pain-relieving effects as compared with conventional drug therapy. However, as compared with the drug therapy alone, acupuncture plus drug therapy resulted in increased pain remission rate, shorter onset time of pain relief, longer pain-free duration, and better quality of life without serious adverse effects. However, GRADE analysis revealed that the quality of all outcomes about acupuncture plus drug therapy was very low. Conclusions. Acupuncture plus drug therapy is more effective than conventional drug therapy alone for cancer-related pain. However, multicenter high-quality RCTs with larger sample sizes are needed to provide stronger evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture in cancer-related pain due to the low data quality of the studies included in the current meta-analysis.

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In order to better understand the impact of fractal features of pore-throat structures on effective physical properties of tight gas sandstones, this paper carried out constant-rate mercury ‡ ‡ Corresponding authors. This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) License. Further distribution of this work is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited. 1840005-1Fractals 2018.26. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by 13.66.222.141 on 04/01/19. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles. H. Huang et al.injection tests, gas-water permeability analyses, helium-based porosity and nitrogen pulse decay permeability measurements, and SEM and casting thin-section analyses on 20 sandstone samples of the Shihezi Formation from 16 wells of the Sulige Gas Field in the Ordos Basin, China. The fractal dimensions of pores corresponding to two pore radius ranges, namely fractal dimensions D p2 and D p3 , and those of throats also corresponding to two throat radius ranges, namely fractal dimensions D t1 and D t2 , were then calculated using the constant-rate mercury injection data. Fractal dimensions D p2 and D p3 are negatively correlated with the average pore radius and pore volume as well as quartz content, and they are positively related to contents of clay minerals and lithic fragments. Compared with pore fractal dimensions, throat fractal dimensions have lower correlations with throat structural parameters, and show vague relations with mineral compositions. Although the effects imposed by mineral compositions upon throat structures are similar to those upon pore structures, the flake-like and curved shapes of throats result in irregularity of fractal dimensions. Tight gas sandstones, with smaller fractal dimensions D p2 and D p3 , have larger effective porosity, indicating that more gas volumes can be replaced by liquids. As for tight gas sandstones with lower fractal dimensions D p3 and D t2 , the effective gas permeability is relatively high. In such cases, gas can flow more easily through the reservoir.

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