The dynamic responses of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica can have substantial impacts on sea level rise. Understanding the mass balance requires accurate assessments of the bedrock and surface layers, but identifying each layer is performed subjectively by time-consuming, dense hand selection. We have developed an approach for semi-automatically estimating bedrock and surface l...

[1] The linear correlation between modern sediment yields and mean drainage-basin elevation suggests that mountainbelt topography is denuded exponentially with a time scale of approximately 50 Myr following the cessation of active uplift. Some Paleozoic orogens, however, still exist as highelevation terrain. Here I explore this paradox within the broader question of what variables control the d...

1 What Are Foundations? Surely we want solid foundations. What kind of castle can we build on sand? What is the point of devoting effort to balconies and minarets, if the foundation may be so weak as to allow the structure to collapse of its own weight? We want our foundations set on bedrock, designed to last for generations. Who would want an architect who cannot certify the soundness of the f...

On 26 September 2014, Johan van Benthem, Professor of Pure and Applied Logic, delivered his valedictory lecture in the auditoriumof theUniversity of Amsterdam. Modern logic is the broad, exact science of information directed behaviour that plays an important role in connecting the humanities, exact sciences and social sciences at the university, and which forms the bedrock of our information so...

Background: One of the candidate landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory is in the Mawrth region of Mars. The candidate landing ellipse is located on highly cratered terrain with extensive bedrock outcrop. Diverse hydrous minerals have been detected from orbit, providing strong motivation for sending a landed mission to this area. However, models for the accumulation of bedrock in the are...

Low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons in natural hydrothermal fluids have been attributed to abiogenic production by Fischer-Tropsch type (FTT) reactions, although clear evidence for such a process has been elusive. Here, we present concentration, and stable and radiocarbon isotope, data from hydrocarbons dissolved in hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the ultramafic-hosted Lost City Hydrothermal Fiel...