Gravitational anomalies and seismicity of western Europe and the Mediterranean

1964 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 846
Author(s):  
Konstantina Zanou

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800–1850: Stammering the Nation investigates the long process of transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states by narrating the biographies of a group of people who were born within empires but came of age surrounded by the emerging vocabulary of nationalism, much of which they themselves created. It is the story of a generation of intellectuals and political thinkers from the Ionian Islands who experienced the collapse of the Republic of Venice and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of the Adriatic, and who contributed to the creation of Italian and Greek nationalisms. By uncovering this forgotten intellectual universe, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean retrieves a world characterized by multiple cultural, intellectual, and political affiliations that have since been buried by the conventional narrative of the formation of nation-states. The book rethinks the origins of Italian and Greek nationalisms and states, highlighting the intellectual connection between the Italian peninsula, Greece, and Russia, and re-establishing the lost link between the changing geopolitical contexts of western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans in the Age of Revolutions. It re-inscribes important intellectuals and political figures, considered ‘national fathers’ of Italy and Greece (such as Ugo Foscolo, Dionysios Solomos, Ioannis Kapodistrias, and Niccolò Tommaseo), into their regional and multicultural context, and shows how nations emerged from an intermingling, rather than a clash, of ideas concerning empire and liberalism, Enlightenment and religion, revolution and conservatism, and East and West.


2002 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Turner

AbstractSuggestions that the duration of the Eemian interglacial was about 11,000 yr, based on annually laminated sediment sequences in Germany, have been challenged in favor of a much longer interval. However, biostratigraphic evidence demonstrates why the Eemian sequences at Grande Pile and Ribains cannot be reliably used for alignment with the marine sequence, as applied by Kukla et al. (2002, this issue) to estimate the duration of this interglacial. The long chronology they propose would imply not just coniferous but, for up to 5000 yr, fully temperate forest in central France coexisting with treeless heath and steppe tundra conditions in northwestern Europe, an unlikely climatic and ecological scenario. The proposal that the Eemian Interglacial in western Europe lasted for 17,000 or even 23,000 yr is rejected. A duration of no more than 13,000 yr is preferred, at least for sites north of the Alps and Pyrenees. The duration of temperate conditions in the Mediterranean region is less certain.


2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rose

This book provides an accessible study of how peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects. This book surveys how the peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects between approximately 1000-1500 A.D.How was the sea represented in poems and other writings? What kinds of boats were used and how were they built? How easy was it to navigate on short or long passages? Was seaborne trade crucial to the economy of this area? Did naval warfare loom large in the minds of medieval rulers? What can be said more generally about the lives of those who went to sea or who lived by its shores? These are the major questions which are addressed in this book, which is based on extensive research in both maritime archives and also in secondary literature. It concludes by pointing out how the relatively enclosed maritime world of Western Europe was radically changed by the voyages of the late fifteenth century across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and round Africa to India.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1521-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Beekmann ◽  
R. Vautard

Abstract. The variability of the relative sensitivity to volatile organic compounds (VOC) or NOx emissions, the chemical regime, over Europe during summers 2001 to 2003 is simulated with a regional scale transport-chemistry model. The robustness of chemical regimes is shown. A VOC sensitive regime over North-Western Europe and a mainly NOx sensitive regime over the Mediterranean basin and Eastern Europe are found, confirming earlier published results. The chemical regime time variability, its robustness to several environmental factors (seasonality, interannual variability) and to model uncertainty are thoroughly analysed. The chemical regime spatial structure only slightly depends on the ozone target considered (daily ozone maximum or AOT40, SOMO35, ...). Differences between particular years and summer months are weak. Day to day variability is significant but does not change the occurrence of one or another chemical regime over North-Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Expected decreases in anthropogenic NOx emissions over Europe since the last and for the next few decades have shifted and will shift chemical regimes to more NOx sensitive. The predictive and explanatory use of chemical regime indicator species is also investigated. For all cases but near ship tracks over the Mediterranean basin, the spatial pattern of chemical regimes appears to be robust with respect to model uncertainty.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Jost ◽  
S. Fauquette ◽  
M. Kageyama ◽  
G. Krinner ◽  
G. Ramstein ◽  
...  

Abstract. Here we perform a detailed comparison between climate model results and climate reconstructions in western Europe and the Mediterranean area for the mid-Piacenzian warm interval (ca 3 Myr ago) of the Late Pliocene epoch. This region is particularly well suited for such a comparison as several quantitative climate estimates from local pollen records are available. They show evidence for temperatures significantly warmer than today over the whole area, mean annual precipitation higher in northwestern Europe and equivalent to modern values in its southwestern part. To improve our comparison, we have performed high resolution simulations of the mid-Piacenzian climate using the LMDz atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) with a stretched grid which allows a finer resolution over Europe. In a first step, we applied the PRISM2 (Pliocene Research, Interpretation, and Synoptic Mapping) boundary conditions except that we used modern terrestrial vegetation. Second, we simulated the vegetation for this period by forcing the ORCHIDEE (Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems) dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) with the climatic outputs from the AGCM. We then supplied this simulated terrestrial vegetation cover as an additional boundary condition in a second AGCM run. This gives us the opportunity to investigate the model's sensitivity to the simulated vegetation changes in a global warming context. Model results and data show a great consistency for mean annual temperatures, indicating increases by up to 4°C in the study area, and some disparities, in particular in the northern Mediterranean sector, as regards winter and summer temperatures. Similar continental mean annual precipitation and moisture patterns are predicted by the model, which broadly underestimates the wetter conditions indicated by the data in northwestern Europe. The biogeophysical effects due to the changes in vegetation simulated by ORCHIDEE are weak, both in terms of the hydrological cycle and of the temperatures, at the regional scale of the European and Mediterranean mid-latitudes. In particular, they do not contribute to improve the model-data comparison. Their main influence concerns seasonal temperatures, with a decrease of the temperatures of the warmest month, and an overall reduction of the intensity of the continental hydrological cycle.


In a paper read before the Geological Society early this year, I gave the evidence—the result of personal observation—which led me to conclude that the South of England had been submerged to the depth of not less than about 1000 feet between the Glacial (or Post-glacial) and the recent or Neolithic periods. That evidence was based upon the characters, physical and palæontological, of a peculiar superficial drift, for which I proposed the term of "Rubble-drift,” to distinguish it from the valley, marine, and glacial drifts of the same districts. Under this term I include various detrital deposits to which different designations have been attached. Amongst the more important of these are the drift called “head” over the Raised Beaches of the Channel and the Ossiferous Fissures of South Devon. Various explanations have been suggested to account for the “head,” such as, 1st, an excessive rainfall, accompanied by great cold; 2nd, the sliding of masses of snow and ice over slopes; 3rd, waves of translation; 4th, torrential fluviatile action during a period of great cold. I have stated in the paper referred to the objections to these several explanations. Some of them, no doubt, would suffice to produce a portion of the observed effects, but they fail to embrace the whole, and they all involve consequences which are incompatible with the general facts. They all, also, with one exception, depend on subaërial agencies, to which there is the general objection that these agencies involve a certain amount of friction and weathering which are conspicuously wanting—or, if present, it is in a very slight degree—in the deposits under review. There is the further objection that some of the phenomena indicate the exercise of a propelling force for which the suggested causes are manifestly inadequate. There are other points, apparently inconsistent with such agencies, connected more especially with the Ossiferous fissures and the Loess of the continental area, which will be considered more fully in the following pages.


1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-96
Author(s):  
D. W. Haslam

With the rapid changes taking place in so many countries – new ports, new terminals and anchorages and new buildings of significance to mariners – it is essential that users report back to us whenever they feel that our charting service could be improved. Whilst it is flattering that we seldom do have criticism, this is not always very helpful. At the recent International Hydrographic Conference in Monaco preliminary results of a recent questionnaire issued by the International Chamber of Shipping on the use and availability of navigational charts and Notices to Mariners were made known; it was flattering to hear that over 2000 of the replies stated that they used British Admiralty products as their primary series, but disconcerting that about a quarter of the replies said that arrangements for the supply of both charts and Notices to Mariners were less than adequate. Even for the various national or world-wide series of charts, it has given me food for thought to hear that our own arrangements were considered to be ‘adequate’ in Western Europe (including the Mediterranean) by only 504 out of 1150 ships, by 753 out of 2547 ships in North American waters, and by 457 out of 1507 ships in the Middle and Near East. Many other areas seem to reveal reports just as conflicting as those which we have heard at earlier Chart Users' Panel meetings, when we have repeatedly asked for reports of areas where our service could be improved, but seldom if ever have had any reports of difficult areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-191
Author(s):  
Mark Anderson

Early Christians adopted a numeric week from Judaism, but wherever their communities spread they encountered the planetary week invented by Hellenistic astrologers. Greek Christians replaced that week with their own in the fourth century C.E., but Latin Christians were only partly successful in doing the same. A timeline for the Christianization of the planetary week between the third and seventh centuries is provided by a database of Greek and Latin documents dated by both an annual calendar and one of the two weeks. The documentary evidence is supplemented by analyses of literary and legal references to the two weeks from the same period. These show that Greek authors were accommodating toward the planetary week while Latin authors were often hostile. Latin hostility was engendered by the presence of non-Christian social practices tied to the planetary week that threatened Christian religious identity. These practices included worship of the planetary deities, rest on the Day of Jupiter rather than on the Lord's Day, and the reservation of activities like marriage, travel, and personal grooming to certain planetary weekdays. A brief survey of the spread of the two weeks throughout much of Afro-Eurasia contextualizes the changes occurring in the Mediterranean and shows that the Latin conflict was unique. That conflict was likely a product of the relatively slow pace of Christianization in some parts of Western Europe and the integration of the planetary week into the Roman calendar to produce a coherent cycle of pagan time which was difficult to replace.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Pubblici

This book is a synthesis of the great migrations of the 6th-13th centuries, focused on the median space between the two extremes of the Eurasian continent: Western Europe and Eastern Asia. In the light of the sources, it aims to reassess the complexity of the relationships between the nomads of the steppes and the sedentarized societies that came into contact with them. The choice to focus on the Qïpčaq-Cumans is due to their history, unique because they never constituted an organized and centralized center of collective power (stateless nomads); and paradigmatic, because it encompasses all the constitutive elements of steppe nomadism: social heterogeneity, mobility, military preparation, attraction for trade and willingness to negotiate. The migrations of the nomads of the steppes and their arrival close to the great organized communities of the Islamic and Christian world, from Asia to Europe, contributed to triggering a process of integration between Asia and the Mediterranean basin, a process that the Mongol invasion and conquest completed, giving birth to a new shared global space.


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