Kenneth C. Kuo | Search USGS

USGS2001

CWB free-field strong-motion data from the 21 September Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake

The Chi-Chi earthquake occurred at 17:47 on 20 September 1999 and is the largest earthquake ( M W 7.6) to have occurred on land in Taiwan in the twentieth century. This earthquake caused considerable damage and was named the “921 Chi-Chi Great Earthquake” by the Taiwan government, as the local date was 21 September. Because an extensive strong-motion instrumentation program in Taiwan was completed by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) in 1996, over 30,000 digital strong-motion records have been obtained from the Chi-Chi earthquake and thousands of its aftershocks. These records form the largest set of strong-motion data recorded from a major earthquake since strong-motion seismology studies began in the 1930s. This data set is important to seismology and earthquake engineering because it includes over 60 recording sites within 20 km of the fault ruptures, which provides a five-fold increase of such near-field records available for the entire world.

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America↗

USGS1989

Classification of lung cancer patients and controls by chromatography of modified nucleosides in serum

A wide spectrum of modified nucleosides has been quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography in serum of 49 male lung cancer patients, 35 patients with other cancers, and 48 patients hospitalized for nonneoplastic diseases. Data for 29 modified nucleoside peaks were normalized to an internal standard and analyzed by discriminant analysis and stepwise discriminant analysis. A model based on peaks selected by a stepwise discriminant procedure correctly classified 79% of the cancer and 75% of the noncancer subjects. It also demonstrated 84% sensitivity and 79% specificity when comparing lung cancer to noncancer subjects, and 80% sensitivity and 55% specificity in comparing lung cancer to other cancers. The nucleoside peaks having the greatest influence on the models varied dependent on the subgroups compared, confirming the importance of quantifying a wide array of nucleosides. These data support and expand previous studies which reported the utility of measuring modified nucleoside levels in serum and show that precise measurement of an array of 29 modified nucleosides in serum by high-performance liquid chromatography with UV scanning with subsequent data modeling may provide a clinically useful approach to patient classification in diagnosis and subsequent therapeutic monitoring.

Cancer Research↗