Forecast: Big quake likely in Calif.

LOS ANGELES - California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide temblor forecast.

New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent.

"It basically guarantees it's going to happen," said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake under Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley was magnitude 6.7. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.

The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake — much stronger than Northridge — hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.

California is one of the world's most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.

The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS, Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data. Previous quake probabilities focused on specific regions and used various methodologies that made it difficult to compare.

For example, a 2003 report found the San Francisco Bay Area faced a 62 percent chance of being struck by a magnitude 6.7 quake by 2032. The new study increased the likelihood slightly to 63 percent by 2037. For the Los Angeles Basin, the probability is higher at 67 percent. There is no past comparison for the Los Angeles area.

Scientists still cannot predict exactly where in the state such a quake will occur or when. But they say the analysis should be a wake-up call for residents to prepare for a natural disaster in earthquake country.

Knowing the likelihood of a strong earthquake is the first step in allowing scientists to draw up hazard maps that show the potential severity of ground shaking in an area. The information can also help with updating building codes and emergency plans and setting earthquake insurance rates.

"A big earthquake can happen tomorrow or it can happen 10 years from now," said Tom Jordan, director of the earthquake center, which is headquartered at the University of Southern California.

Researchers also calculated the statewide probabilities for larger temblors over the same time period. Among their findings: There is a 94 percent chance of a magnitude 7 shock or larger; a 46 percent chance of a magnitude 7.5 and a 4.5 percent chance of a magnitude 8.

The odds are higher that a magnitude 7.5 quake will hit Southern California than Northern California — 37 percent versus 15 percent.

Of all the faults in the state, the southern San Andreas, which runs from Parkfield in central California southeast to the Salton Sea, appears most primed to break, scientists found. There is a 59 percent chance in the next three decades that a Northridge-size quake will occur on the fault compared to 21 percent for the northern section.

The northern San Andreas produced the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the southernmost segment has not popped in more than three centuries.

Scientists are also concerned about the Hayward and San Jacinto faults, which have a 31 percent chance of producing a Northridge-size temblor in the next 30 years. The Hayward fault runs through densely populated cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Jacinto fault bisects the fast-growing city of San Bernardino east of Los Angeles.

Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men?

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups.

The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.

Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, "baby face" features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.

Past research has shown that individuals with comparable stunning looks are attracted to each other and once they hook up they report greater relationship satisfaction. These studies, however, are mainly based on new couples, showing that absolute beauty is important in the earliest stages of couple-hood, said lead researcher James McNulty of the University of Tennessee. But the role of physical attractiveness in well-established partnerships, such as marriage, is somewhat of a mystery.

The new study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, reveals looks continue to matter beyond that initial attraction, though in a different way.

Supportive spouses

McNulty's team assessed 82 couples who had married within the previous six months and had been together for nearly three years prior to tying the knot. Participants were on average in their early to mid-20s.

Researchers videotaped as each spouse discussed with their partner a personal problem for 10 minutes. The tapes were analyzed for whether partners were supportive of spouses' issues, which included goals to eat healthier, to land a new job and to exercise more often.

"A negative husband would've said, 'This is your problem, you deal with it,'" McNulty said, "versus 'Hey, I'm here for you; what do you want me to do?; how can I help you?'"

A group of trained "coders" rated the facial attractiveness of each spouse on a scale from 1 to 10, with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe. About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks.

Trophy wives

Overall, wives and husbands behaved more positively when the woman was better looking.

The finding "seems very reasonable," said Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management. "Men are very sensitive to women's attractiveness. Women seem to be sensitive to men's height and salary," said Ariely, who was not involved in the recent study.

In couples with more attractive husbands, both partners were less supportive of one another. McNulty suggests wives mirror, in some ways, the level of support they get from husbands.

"The husband who's less physically attractive than his wife is getting something more than maybe he can expect to get," McNulty told LiveScience. "He's getting something better than he's providing at that level. So he's going to work hard to maintain that relationship."

Men who are more attractive than their partners would theoretically have access to partners who are more attractive than their current spouses, McNulty said. The "grass could be greener" mentality could make these men less satisfied and less committed to maintain the marriage.

Physical attractiveness of husbands is not as important to women, the researchers suggest. Rather, wives are looking for supportive husbands, they say.

So it seems the mismatch in looks is actually a perfect match. "Equitable is unlikely to mean the same on every dimension," Ariely said during a telephone interview. "It just means that overall two people make sense together."

C.V. Starr East Asian Library to open March 17

C.V. Starr East Asian Library to open March 17

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 14 March 2008

BERKELEY – The University of California, Berkeley's new C.V. Starr East Asian Library - the first freestanding structure at a United States university erected solely for East Asian collections - will open its stately bronze doors to the public on Monday, March 17.

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C.V. Starr Library: Treasures of the collection slide show

The Starr Library's Florence Lee Fang Reading Room, overlooking sun-drenched Observatory Hill to the north.

The UC Berkeley collections contain more than 900,000 volumes, primarily in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The library also houses thousands of manuscripts, rubbings of stone and bronze objects and of inscriptions, and the largest, most comprehensive and most valuable collection of historic Japanese maps outside of Japan. It also incorporates UC Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies Library, previously located in the Center for Chinese Studies on Fulton Street and the world's largest academic repository in the United States of materials on the People's Republic of China.

The new library is named for the late Cornelius Vander Starr, an American International Group Inc. (AIG) insurance pioneer with a deep interest in Asia who studied at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. An $8 million gift from the C. V. Starr Foundation was pivotal in the library's fundraising success. More than 1,200 individuals also contributed to the $46.4 million library, which was funded entirely by private donations. Many donors gave in the honor of the late Chang-Lin Tien, UC Berkeley's seventh chancellor, the first Asian American to head a major U.S. research university and an internationally renowned engineering scholar.

"The opening of this spectacular, state-of-the-art facility with our extensive collections dramatically enhances UC Berkeley's position as an international leader in East Asian studies," said Peter Zhou, director of the Starr Library.

"We're looking forward to assisting an ever-increasing number of students and scholars exploring the rich histories and cultures of East Asia," said Zhou. He noted that approximately 700 visiting faculty members and other scholars studying Asia are hosted by UC Berkeley throughout the year and that UC Berkeley's programs in East Asian studies have been ranked first in the nation by the U.S. Department of Education.

Light filtering through the bronze screens forms a shadow pattern on the floor, while providing a pixellated view of Haviland Hall to the west.

The central staircase seems to both float in air and slice through the core of the building, while an angled skylight brings natural light deep into the heart of the four-story structure.

Badges imprinted with the library's chop, or seal, fill a bowl on the main circulation desk.

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