Saeed S. Alshahrani

This article, “Introduction to the special issue on rotational seismology and engineering application,” discussed the explanation term of rotational seismology. The authors, William H Lee, Mehmet Celebi, Prof. Maria Todorovska, and Prof. Heiner Igel published this paper in 2009 in the journal of BSSA, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. According to the Seismological Society of America, this bulletin is the premier journal of advanced research in earthquake seismology and related disciplines. Each issue is composed of scientific articles on the different aspects of seismology, for both studies and observations, (BSSA. 2012). The audience is all people who are interested in the science of earthquakes, physics, geology, engineering, and even those involved in marine science. This paper gave basic information to study the areas that are around earthquakes and how the scientists use the engineering applications for more understanding. The authors explained in brief summary 1) studying the field near earthquakes, rocks and soils, to understand the ground motions, 2) background information, 3) the feedback studies which came after the theory which are an overview of its 51 papers, 27 articles, 11 short notes, 4 reviews, 6 tutorials, and 3 supplementary articles, and 4) discussing the role of rotational seismology with a strong motion, wave propagation, and classical elasticity. In 2007, there was an active volunteer group focusing on the organization of workshops and scientific projects like testing, rotational sensors with some observation in laser systems. This workshop hosted by USGS, which recognized this topic as a new research to illustrate earthquake processes and seismic hazards, (Lee, 2007).
The organization of this paper is totally clear. The authors started by the abstract to summarize the paper in few lines, and then, they explained some background information as an introduction. Then they started to summarize the previous overview with their notes. In the second part, they reviewed the engineering applications with the discussion; furthermore, they explained the programs and the theories that the seismologists use in their studies before the conclusion. The first part is the longer one because they tried to explain how the previous studies match their study. In contrast, the other parts have few pages. The thesis, which is located in the introduction for two sentences, is exceedingly clear to follow and understand. As I read it, I totally understood the main idea of this paper, but I read the whole article to catch more information. The main purpose of the abstract is to give a summary of the article, whereas the background’s purpose is to give definitions for the term “rotational seismology,” that is, how the scientists have been using this term for a long time, and how it related to previous studies and recent events, which led to the special issue. The aim of this feedback, which came after the authors’ theory, was to give the relationship with their study. The target for the discussion was to match their study with the first workshop and to illustrate some recommendations which were obtained from the workshop.
This paper is the second research as the authors supported their study by obtaining the feedback, analyze them, and then, related them to their theory. The authors did not use any direct quotes to support the topic. Instead, they used a large number the paraphrases especially when they stressed the data of any research and the names of authors. As this paper is geological research, it was documented by BSSA and USGS United States Geological Survey, and the documentation style is the “American Psychological Association,” APA.
The authors used various tenses like the past, present, and future. They tend to use past and present in many cases as they demonstrated the previous research and compared the modern observations with their theory. In the abstract and the conclusion, the authors preferred to use the present tense. As it is a science article, the passive voice was mostly used. In addition, the paper was written in first person (I and we) and third person (he, she, and it). The authors did not use any contractions in this paper since this is not formal. The authors also used many transition words in this paper when their purposes are to add more ideas like also and moreover, to show result like then and next, to show unexpected result like however, and they also used contrasting situations words like by or in contrast. They only placed those words between sentences in the middle of each paragraph, whereas there were no more transition words between paragraphs, which is unusual. They used many words just to make their writing smoother to read and understand. By the way, the topic sentences were extremely clear in many cases when there were few hidden sentences. For those, which are extremely clear, in the vast majority, I found them within the first two sentences, while in the second type, I have to read the whole paragraph to understand what is the idea.
Because it has many references, this article is extremely influential especially for those who are interested in earthquakes or geological research. I may use this article in my thesis since I am going to study the Ohio Black Shale by seismic methods. I should know the rotational seismological effects for the near areas before I do this method to understand how it can effect on the nearest area. The strategy in this paper is new for me; I had not seen any article that can compare previous studies while I also need it for my thesis, as there were many studies for the same area. There are also many benefits which I can obtain from this paper to improve both writing and reading. The tenses types and the voice type are more valuable for me to know where and when I should use them.

References
W. H. Lee, M. Celebi, M. Todorovska, and H. Igel (2009). Introduction to the issue
on rotational seismology and engineering application. From The Seismology society of America, Bulletin, v. 99, pp. 945-957. Albany, CA

W. H. Lee, M. Celebi, M. Todorovska, and M. Diggles (2007). Rotational seismology
and engineering application-online proceedings for the first international
workshop. From the United States Geological Survey. USA

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.