Nanometer ultrastructural brain damage following low intensity primary blast wave exposure

Blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury（m TBI） is of particular concern among military personnel due to exposure to blast energy during military training and combat.The impact of primary low-intensity blast mediated pathophysiology upon later neurobehavioral disorders has been controversial.Developing a military preclinical blast model to simulate the pathophysiology of human blast injury is an important first step.This article provides an overview of primary blast effects and perspectives of our recent studies demonstrating ultrastructural changes in the brain and behavioral disorders resulting from open-field blast exposures up to 46.6 k Pa using a murine model.The model is scalable and permits exposure to varying magnitudes of primary blast injuries by placing animals at different distances from the blast center or by changing the amount of C4 charge.We here review the implications and future applications and directions of using this animal model to uncover the underlying mechanisms related to primary blast injury.Overall,these studies offer the prospect of enhanced understanding of the pathogenesis of primary low-intensity blast-induced TBI and insights for prevention,diagnosis and treatment of blast induced TBI,particularly m TBI/concussion related to current combat exposures.

Experimental study on the e ect of fracture scale on seismic wave characteristics

In fractured reservoir beds, fracture characteristics affect seismic wave response. Fractured models based on the Hudson＇s fractured medium theory were constructed in our laboratory by a backfilling technique. For the same fracture density, the variations of the velocity and amplitude of the primary wave and shear wave parallel and perpendicular to the fracture were observed by altering the diameter （scale） of the penny-shaped fracture disk. The model test indicated that an increase of fracture scale increased the velocity and amplitude of the primary wave by about 2%. When the shear wave propagated parallel to the fracture, the velocity of the fast shear wave hardly changed, while the velocity of slow shear wave increased by 2.6% with increasing fracture scale. The results indicated that an increase of fracture scale would reduce the degree of anisotropy of the shear wave. The amplitudes of slow shear waves propagating parallel and perpendicular to fractures decreased with increasing fracture scale.

Application of Amplitude Ratio Profiles Extracted with Prestack Kirchhoff Integral Migration

The Z component and X component profiles of seismic waves extracted with the prestack Kirchhoff integral migration could approximate to the primary wave （P wave） and converted shear wave （PS wave） profiles under certain conditions. The relative change of their reflection amplitude reflects the formation stress anomaly and subsurface media anisotropy. The principle and method for extracting amplitude ratios were studied and the application of amplitude ratio profiles was also examined when processing and interpreting actual seismic data. The amplitude ratio profile is an effective supplementary means of identifying the stratigraphic boundary and lithology.

Data-Domain Wave Equation Reflection Traveltime Tomography

Estimation of an accurate macro velocity model plays an important role in seismic imag- ing and model parameter inversion. Full waveform inversion （FWI） is the classical data-domain inver- sion method. However, the misfit function of FWI is highly nonlinear, and the local optimization cannot prevent convergence of the misfit function toward local minima. To converge to the global minimum, FWI needs a good initial model or reliable low frequency component and long offset data. In this article, we present a wave-equation-based reflection traveltime tomography （WERTT） method, which can pro- vide a good background model （initial model） for FWI and （least-square） pre-stack depth migration （LS-PSDM）. First, the velocity model is decomposed into a low-wavenumber component （background velocity） and a high-wavenumber component （reflectivity）. Second, the primary reflection wave is pre- dicted by wave-equation demigration, and the reflection traveltime is calculated by an automatic picking method. Finally, the misfit function of the 12-norm of the reflection traveltime residuals is mini- mized by a gradient-based method. Numerical tests show that the proposed method can invert a good background model, which can be used as an initial model for LS-PSDM or FWI.