GPlates – Building a Virtual Earth Through Deep Time

GPlates is an open‐source, cross‐platform plate tectonic geographic information system, enabling the interactive manipulation of plate‐tectonic reconstructions and the visualization of geodata through geological time. GPlates allows the building of topological plate models representing the mosaic of evolving plate boundary networks through time, useful for computing plate velocity fields as surface boundary conditions for mantle convection models and for investigating physical and chemical exchanges of material between the surface and the deep Earth along tectonic plate boundaries. The ability of GPlates to visualize subsurface 3‐D scalar fields together with traditional geological surface data enables researchers to analyze their relationships through geological time in a common plate tectonic reference frame. To achieve this, a hierarchical cube map framework is used for rendering reconstructed surface raster data to support the rendering of subsurface 3‐D scalar fields using graphics‐hardware‐accelerated ray‐tracing techniques. GPlates enables the construction of plate deformation zones—regions combining extension, compression, and shearing that accommodate the relative motion between rigid blocks. Users can explore how strain rates, stretching/shortening factors, and crustal thickness evolve through space and time and interactively update the kinematics associated with deformation. Where data sets described by geometries (points, lines, or polygons) fall within deformation regions, the deformation can be applied to these geometries. Together, these tools allow users to build virtual Earth models that quantitatively describe continental assembly, fragmentation and dispersal and are interoperable with many other mapping and modeling tools, enabling applications in tectonics, geodynamics, basin evolution, orogenesis, deep Earth resource exploration, paleobiology, paleoceanography, and paleoclimate

ROBERT WILLIAM SETON-WATSON AND THE YUGOSLAV QUESTION

Robert William Seton-Watson (1879—1951), the son of a Scottish business-man and landowner, studied History in the university of Oxford, and after some years of further study in Berlin, Paris and Florence, came to Vienna in the autumn of 1905. Not being obliged to earn his living, he proposed to devote himself to historical writing, and the subject which most attracted his interest was Austria-Hungary. He began his studies with great admiration for the Habsburg dynasty and for the Monarchy as a factor of European peace, as well as with a strong belief in Austro-British friendship. His respect for Emperor Franz Joseph was however limited by his sympathy, as a Scottish liberal, for the aspirations of the Hungarian liberals, whose struggle against Vienna was at its height at the time of his arrival. In the summer of 1906 he made a journey through Hungary, and became more keenly aware of the problems of the non-Magyar nations. He had revealing conversations not only with Magyar politicians but also with leaders of the Roumanians and of the Vojvodina Serbs. In 1907 he made a second visit to Hungary, and met the leaders of the Slovaks, with whom he was first brought into contact by the help of the Austrian -socialist leader Karl Renner. His Book Racial Problems in Hungary, published in 1908, was violently attacked by Magyar polemists, but won him a good reputation in Austria as -well as in the English-speaking countries. In 1908 he visited Zagreb and Belgrade, in 1909 Dalmatia and Montenegro and in 1910 Bosnia and Hercegovina. The result of these journeys, and also of much study of books and the press, was his book The South Slav Question, published in 1911. His attitude to the Monarchy was profoundly affected by his personal observation of the Zagreb Treason Trial and the Friedjung Trial, which convinced him that sinister forces were influencing Austrian foreign policy. He was aware of the growing desire of many of his South Slav friends to break away from the Monarchy. Nevertheless he continued to hope that the Monarchy would survive, partly because he believed that the best hope for the Slovaks and Roumanians vas to obtain Austrian support against Magyar oppression, and partly because he placed hopes in the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a reformer. However, the Archduke\u27s assassination and the outbreak of the First World War put an end to these hopes, and from this time onwards Seton-Watson worked for the establishment of a Yugoslav state. During the war he and his friends Wickham Steed, Sir Arthur Evans and Ronald Burrows worked closely with the Yugoslav Committee, especially with Supilo and Trumbić. He had close and cordial relations also with many leading figures of the Kingdom of Serbia, especially with Cvijić, Jovan Jovanović and Bogdan and Pavle Popović. However, his relations with Pašić deteriorated. During the summer and autumn of 1918 the influential review New Europe, edited by Seton-Watson, strongly supported the Yugoslav Committee against Pašić. Seton-Watson also, together with Steed, worked tirelessly, though unfortunately without success, for a just settlement between Yugoslavs and Italians. He opposed the Treaty of London, helped to organise the Rome Congress of April 1918, and vas one of the originators of the "Wilson Line" proposal at the Paris Peace Conference. After 1918 Seton-Watson, now an university professor without any official position, nevertheless exercised some influence by his writings and by his personal friendships and contacts. He consistently worked for equality and friendship between the peoples of Yugoslavia. This brought him into frequent conflict with both Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian nationalists. During the last thirty years of his life he had many political disappointments as well as some successes, but he never lost his affection for the Yugoslavs or his confidence in their future

Causes and Consequences of Diachronous V-Shaped Ridges in the North Atlantic Ocean

In the North Atlantic Ocean, the geometry of diachronous V-shaped features that straddle the Reykjanes Ridge is often attributed to thermal pulses which advect away from the center of the Iceland plume. Recently, two alternative hypotheses have been proposed: rift propagation and buoyant mantle upwelling. Here, we evaluate these different proposals using basin-wide geophysical and geochemical observations. The centerpiece of our analysis is a pair of seismic reflection profiles oriented parallel to flowlines that span the North Atlantic Ocean. V-shaped ridges and troughs are mapped on both Neogene and Paleogene oceanic crust, enabling a detailed chronology of activity to be established for the last 50 million years. Estimates of the cumulative horizontal displacement across normal faults help to discriminate between brittle and magmatic modes of plate separation, suggesting that crustal architecture is sensitive to the changing planform of the plume. Water-loaded residual depth measurements are used to estimate crustal thickness and to infer mantle potential temperature which varies by 25◦C on timescales of 3–8 Ma. This variation is consistent with the range of temperatures inferred from geochemical modeling of dredged basaltic rocks along the ridge axis itself, from changes in Neogene deep-water circulation, and from the regional record of episodic Cenozoic magmatism. We conclude that radial propagation of transient thermal anomalies within an asthenospheric channel that is 150 50 km thick best accounts for the available geophysical and geochemical observations

The patriotism of gentlemen with red hair: European Jews and the liberal state, 1789–1939

European Jewish history from 1789–1939 supports the view that construction of national identities even in secular liberal states was determined not only by modern considerations alone but also by ancient patterns of thought, behaviour and prejudice. Emancipation stimulated unprecedented patriotism, especially in wartime, as Jews strove to prove loyalty to their countries of citizenship. During World War I, even Zionists split along national lines, as did families and friends. Jewish patriotism was interchangeable with nationalism inasmuch as Jews identified themselves with national cultures. Although emancipation implied acceptance and an end to anti-Jewish prejudice in the modern liberal state, the kaleidoscopic variety of Jewish patriotism throughout Europe inadvertently undermined the idea of national identity and often provoked anti-Semitism. Even as loyal citizens of separate states, the Jews, however scattered, disunited and diverse, were made to feel, often unwillingly, that they were one people in exile

GPlates – Building a Virtual Earth Through Deep Time

GPlates is an open‐source, cross‐platform plate tectonic geographic information system, enabling the interactive manipulation of plate‐tectonic reconstructions and the visualization of geodata through geological time. GPlates allows the building of topological plate models representing the mosaic of evolving plate boundary networks through time, useful for computing plate velocity fields as surface boundary conditions for mantle convection models and for investigating physical and chemical exchanges of material between the surface and the deep Earth along tectonic plate boundaries. The ability of GPlates to visualize subsurface 3‐D scalar fields together with traditional geological surface data enables researchers to analyze their relationships through geological time in a common plate tectonic reference frame. To achieve this, a hierarchical cube map framework is used for rendering reconstructed surface raster data to support the rendering of subsurface 3‐D scalar fields using graphics‐hardware‐accelerated ray‐tracing techniques. GPlates enables the construction of plate deformation zones—regions combining extension, compression, and shearing that accommodate the relative motion between rigid blocks. Users can explore how strain rates, stretching/shortening factors, and crustal thickness evolve through space and time and interactively update the kinematics associated with deformation. Where data sets described by geometries (points, lines, or polygons) fall within deformation regions, the deformation can be applied to these geometries. Together, these tools allow users to build virtual Earth models that quantitatively describe continental assembly, fragmentation and dispersal and are interoperable with many other mapping and modeling tools, enabling applications in tectonics, geodynamics, basin evolution, orogenesis, deep Earth resource exploration, paleobiology, paleoceanography, and paleoclimate