'A State of Things Which Ought Not to be Permitted': Excavation of 19th-century slums (Bull Yard, Horn Yard, Swan Yard and Market Alley) surrounding Bank Street at 'The Charter', Gravesend

This article considers how, and why, "Topic Modelling" tools can be used to analyse historical newspaper archives. While a growing number of media and communication studies projects have applied these techniques to corpuses of born-digital journalism, using the same tools to analyse large-scale collections of historical newspapers requires us to overcome additional technological and methodological challenges. Our discussion is framed around a historical case study examining references to the United States in the 19th Century British Library Newspaper Archive. The article begins by highlighting the problems that researchers of both digital and historical journalism face when attempting to deal with an enormous body of evidence. Next, it argues that Topic Modelling offers one potential solution to these problems by providing a way to “distant read" the archive. The remainder of the article is divided into five experiments that demonstrate how Topic Modelling can be applied to a series of research questions, each of which is applicable to other projects that might make use of newspaper archives. As well as demonstrating the investigative potential of topic modelling, the article also highlights the practical and technological barriers that currently undermine its effectiveness, particularly when it is applied to archives of historical material.

This article considers how, and why, “Topic Modelling” tools can be used to analyse historical newspaper archives. While a growing number of media and communication studies projects have applied these techniques to corpuses of born-digital journalism, using the same tools to analyse large-scale collections of historical newspapers requires us to overcome additional technological and methodological challenges. Our discussion is framed around a historical case study examining references to the United States in the 19th Century British Library Newspaper Archive. The article begins by highlighting the problems that researchers of both digital and historical journalism face when attempting to deal with an enormous body of evidence. Next, it argues that Topic Modelling offers one potential solution to these problems by providing a way to “distant read” the archive. The remainder of the article is divided into five experiments that demonstrate how Topic Modelling can be applied to a series of research questions, each of which is applicable to other projects that might make use of newspaper archives. As well as demonstrating the investigative potential of topic modelling, the article also highlights the practical and technological barriers that currently undermine its effectiveness, particularly when it is applied to archives of historical material.

The conflict between the Bugis and Makassar ethnic groups in South Sulawesi can be described as a silent conflict that could become the catalyst for the birth of a bigger war. To this day, this silent war continues through hate speech created from collective memory and even summarized in national historical writings. This cannot be separated from the local history of the 17th century, which did not yet have the idea of Indonesia as a united nation at its root. This idea only appeared as a manufactured development in the 20th century and was inscribed into the previous time period retroactively, creating a false national historical continuity. This was the state of things when in 1973 Sultan Hassanuddin (1631-1670), a representative of the Makassar ethnic group and someone who did not contemplate the idea of a unified Indonesia, was named a national hero with support from historians. He was viewed as a national hero because of his struggle against the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), and then automatically labeled his opponent, Arung Palakka, a member of the Bugis ethnic group, as a “traitor” for joining the VOC. To this day, this interpretation is Indonesia’s dominant historical narrative and is often portrayed as a singular and absolute fact. This article attempts to answer how this metanarrative was formed by reviewing and questioning the narrative of the birth of ethnicity in South Sulawesi and by revisiting the two narratives of the great war between what ethnographers call the Bugis and the Makassar. In searching for the roots of this conflict, the researcher used a historical research methodology by interacting with various historical archives and research results heuristically, which were then deconstructed according to a metanarrative of source criticism in order to analyze the chronology of the birth of the ethnic identity of the people of South Sulawesi. Additionally, the 1609-1669 conflict is addressed, using Michel Foucault’s theory of power relations and knowledge. This research discovered how ethnic polarization occurred and offers possible corrections and additions to previous historians’ historical interpretations based more on national interests than historic facts. It is hoped that through this article, cultural historians can better review and separate historical facts from national interests that emerged in dominant historical writings, and might even help to reduce possible ethnic unease which might have occurred as a result.

The historical topographic map preserves rich geographic information and can provide direct assistance for the reconstruction of various geographic elements. Based on the historical data of cities throughout the Qing Dynasty, the land use scale data of cities across the country was obtained using GIS and urban perimeter conversion models. This study combines city information and city circumference records from the historical maps and archives of the late Qing Dynasty to quantitatively reconstruct the use patterns of ancient China’s urban land at a spatial resolution of 1° × 1°. Uncertainty analysis of the reconstruction results was conducted using modern remote sensing image data as the validation data set. The results showed the following. (1) During the late Qing Dynasty, the total area of urban land in the various provinces and regions was 1456.015 km2. The maximum value was 208.691 km2 in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the minimum value was 1.713 km2 in Qinghai, and the average value was 56.001 km2. (2) The results of grid reconstruction show that among the 398 grids with urban land distribution, the maximum value is 64.099 km2/grid, the minimum value is 0.013 km2/grid, and the average value is 3.658 km2/grid. (3) Of all the grids with urban land, the urban land grid to the west of the Hu Line accounts for 12.5% and the east to 87.5%. (4) During the late Qing Dynasty, urban land use in China was primarily concentrated in agriculturally developed areas such as the North China Plain, the Central Plains, Jiangnan, and the Sichuan-Chongqing region. (6) The results of a kernel density estimation showed that there were obviously three core areas of urban land agglomeration in China during the late Qing Dynasty: the North China Plain-Central Plains, the Jiangsu-Shanghai-Zhejiang-Anhui area, and the Sichuan-Chongqing urban core area. This study provides basic data for urban land use during historical periods and provides a basis for the quantitative reconstruction of relevant urban land data for historical archives.

– The purpose of this study is to discuss the concepts of digital rights management (DRM) of archives of historical newspapers and the design of a DRM framework to render the content of historical news under the rights of authority., – The paper takes the form of a literature review and system analysis., – The rights management of digital objects involves various levels of application techniques and standards which are more complex than physical ones. This study combines the advantages of both tethered and untethered models to manage the digital rights of historical newspapers. It not only simplifies the management system, but also guarantees the rights when users use different platforms to present these digital objects., – This study designs a simplified DRM framework to protect the rights of digitized contents and to practise the rights scope of online grant for a historical newspaper.

Key messageMetabarcoding analysis of soil fungal communities in French mountain forests revealed that harvesting intensity, time since last harvest and former land use had no effect on fungal community composition compared to key abiotic factors. Low-intensity management in these uneven-aged mountain forests therefore has limited effects on soil fungal community composition which is mainly driven by elevation and edaphic properties.ContextPast and current human activities are known to affect forest biodiversity. However, the effects of former land use and forest management have been studied much more extensively on higher plants than on fungi.AimsOur objectives were to assess the effects of harvesting intensity, duration since last harvest and former land use on soil fungal communities in uneven-aged mountain high forests.MethodsOn the basis of historical land-use maps drawn between 1862 and 1864 and on historical forest management archives, we selected 62 sites in the French Alps with contrasting land-use histories (ancient forests, which were already forested on historical maps vs recent forests, which have recovered following abandonment of pastures) and different durations since last harvest (from 1 to over 50 years). We carried out soil sampling and assessed fungal diversity by metabarcoding analysis. We analysed soil fungal molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTU) diversity as a whole and for the main lifestyle groups (such as wood saprotrophic or ectomycorrhizal fungi) using multiple linear regressions on Shannon’s diversity index and fungal taxonomic composition using canonical correlation analysis.ResultsWe found no significant effect of harvesting intensity, time since last harvest or land-use history on total fungal MOTU diversity, fungal lifestyle diversity or taxonomic composition. In contrast, we observed significant effects of elevation, pH, organic carbon and available phosphorus content on the taxonomic and functional composition of soil fungal communities.ConclusionsThe structure of soil fungal communities (i.e. diversity and species composition) was mainly determined by elevation and edaphic factors, indicating a high-context dependency, as previously found in similar studies. Our study in mountain forests shows that recent forests established on former pastures had no legacy effect on soil conditions and fungal communities, in contrast to previous results in lowland areas, where recent forests were mainly established on former cropland. Uneven-aged forest management had no effect on fungal diversity, in contrast to previous results observed in even-aged high forests.

In the early 1970s, the North Carolina textile industry (i.e., textile mills/textile mill products/apparel) was thriving and vibrant, one of the state's top manufacturing industries. Following peak employment and establishments in the early 1990s, plants began to close, and employment layoffs became common. A second wave of layoffs occurred in the early 2000s. In contrast, new textile and apparel companies opened in the subsequent decade and into the 2020s. This in-depth historical study examines primary and secondary sources, including government and company documents, archival newspapers and historic maps. The findings held evidence that the early publicly-traded mega-corporations were susceptible to competition from low-wage countries and hostile takeovers. A few long-term companies are survivors and have invested in their plants with capital improvements for high-tech processes. New textile and apparel companies continue to be located in North Carolina because of the state's skilled workforce and proximity to applicable suppliers.

Using the hedonic pricing approach, this paper investigates how the information released on public registries of contaminated and potentially contaminated sites affects nearby commercial and industrial properties in Baltimore, Maryland. The study found that industrial properties are virtually unaffected by proximity to a site with a history of contamination, while commercial properties do suffer an external cost due to the proximity to a contaminated site. This external cost is not cleared once the site has been cleaned up or has been pronounced to be harmless. It also found that the impacts of urban economic development policies, such as Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Zones, have had positive effects on industrial property values, but less so on commercial properties. In sum, brownfield properties in Baltimore are not particularly attractive investments for developers, and there is little potential for self-sustaining clean-up based on appropriate fiscal incentives, such as Tax Increment Financing. It is doubtful that ‘one size fits all’ measures to encourage the clean-up of contaminated sites can be successful in this context.

Relative to other historic documents, newspapers have received little attention from researchers as a source of archaeological data. Now that many historic newspapers have been digitized and placed online, this traditionally underutilized resource has the potential to yield new information about archaeological sites, especially those in heavily developed urban areas where sites are inaccessible or have been destroyed. In this article, a methodology is proposed by which archived newspapers might be searched for data about archaeological sites. A case study using newspapers from Allen County, Indiana and its principal city, Fort Wayne, demonstrates the utility of the methodology by producing evidence about many previously unrecorded archaeological sites.

Historical newspapers are a novel source of information for historical ecologists to study the interactions between humans and animals through time and space. Newspaper archives are particularly interesting to analyse because of their breadth and depth. However, the size and the occasional noisiness of such archives also brings difficulties, as manual analysis is impossible. In this paper, we present experiments and results on automatic query expansion and categorisation for the perception of animal species between 1800 and 1940. For query expansion and to the manual annotation process, we used lexicons. For the categorisation we trained a Support Vector Machine model. Our results indicate that we can distinguish newspaper articles that are about animal species from those that are not with an F\(_{1}\) of 0.92 and the subcategorisation of the different types of newspapers on animals up to 0.84 F\(_{1}\).

This paper presents a platform dedicated to the analysis and the online consultation of historical newspaper archives. This platform has been designed to provide a user experience as intuitive as possible by using mature open source tools. All the features are implemented thanks to the Spring framework. To meet this goal, we created a system to display tiled high-resolution images operating without a plug-in but based on an open source solution called IIPImage. The platform also allows for full-text searches thanks to the Java search library Apache Lucene and displays the results in the form of newspaper articles. In addition, we established collaborative features to provide the users with the ability to correct the content automatically generated by our document processing workflow and accessed through the browsing platform. The system is able to store all the corrections of the users, by using the couple Hibernate/MySQL. The aim is to enable continuous improvement of both the content quality and the search accuracy, by exploiting the ability of the users to recognize significant errors, in order to enhance the digital objects representing the newspaper issues.The proposed system is designed to generate metadata describing the physical layout, but also the logical structure of newspaper documents. Our article segmentation analyses a newspaper issue and recognizes articles, even if they straddle more than one page or if they spread in a complex structure. The workflow can also consider as input data, the results of optical character recognition (OCR) engines in order to provide a textual indexation of the segmented articles.By using this system, we want to create a true and representative digital object using standard formats (i.e. METS / ALTO) and containing the logical description of the content, making easier reading and understanding by the users.

A tornado climatology for Finland is constructed from 1796 to 2007. The climatology consists of two datasets. A historical dataset (1796–1996) is largely constructed from newspaper archives and other historical archives and datasets, and a recent dataset (1997–2007) is largely constructed from eyewitness accounts sent to the Finnish Meteorological Institute and news reports. This article describes the process of collecting and evaluating possible tornado reports. Altogether, 298 Finnish tornado cases compose the climatology: 129 from the historical dataset and 169 from the recent dataset. An annual average of 14 tornado cases occur in Finland (1997–2007). A case with a significant tornado (F2 or stronger) occurs in our database on average every other year, composing 14% of all tornado cases. All documented tornadoes in Finland have occurred between April and November. As in the neighboring countries in northern Europe, July and August are the months with the maximum frequency of tornado cases, coincident with the highest lightning occurrence both over land and sea. Waterspouts tend to be favored later in the summer, peaking in August. The peak month for significant tornadoes is August. The diurnal peak for tornado cases is 1700–1859 local time.

In this study, the climatology of tornadoes, waterspouts and funnel clouds over Greece is presented for the period 1709–2012. The climatology consists of two datasets. An historical dataset (1709–1999) is based on newspaper archives, historical archives, published tornado literature, administrative records and reports of Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS). A recent dataset (2000–2012) is based on newspaper articles, eyewitness reports to the media, HNMS's reports and an open-ended online tornado report database which has been developed and maintained by the Laboratory of Climatology & Atmospheric Environment of the University of Athens. Altogether, 612 Greek tornadic events compose the climatology: 171 tornadoes, 374 waterspouts and 67 funnel clouds. Tornadic events during the past 13 years (2000–2012) have occurred all over the Greek territory and there is frequent tornadic occurrence over north Crete and Corfu Island. Tornadoes are more frequent to occur over NW Peloponnesus followed by south parts of Corfu Island. However, waterspouts are more frequent over north Crete followed by Corfu Island. Tornadic monthly variability depicts a maximum during October, followed by September and November. October is the month with the highest tornado frequency, followed by November and July. The highest waterspout frequency month is September followed by October and December. Tornadoes most commonly develop during the warm time of the day, as more than 75% of all cases occur during 08:00–15:00 hours UTC with a maximum at 12:00 hours UTC. Waterspout frequency of occurrence has two maxima during the day, the first early in the morning (07:00–09:00 hours UTC) and the second after the noon time period (14:00–15:00 hours UTC). The dominant (27.7% of total cases) intensity of tornadoes in Greece is T4 based on the T-scale during the 300-year period (1709–2012); there have been at least 114 injured and 29 deaths.

Since the accomplishments of the social ecology school, it is common knowledge thatthere is a thesis about the existence of a strong relationship between crime and space. Since the 1990s, the police has been equipped with various GIS techniques which allowthe discovery of spatial patterns in the distribution of crime. The techniques turned outto be very helpful for effectively combating crime and misdemeanours, since the policewere in a position to identify small individual spaces in towns that were characterisedwith high crime indicators. These places are usually referred to as crime hotspots. Thefactors leading to a concentration of crime in specified places includes: the presencewithin them of attractive crime targets or locations easing the carrying out of criminalacts. From this point of view, one can differentiate three types of hotspot: they aregenerators of criminal opportunities, generators of crime, and places facilitating crime.The basic question of the research is: in what manner, or using what tools, can oneeffectively and objectively identify hotspots in city spaces?The modern city is very socio-spatially diverse. The most important accomplishments in the theoretical problems on the functioning of areas of concentratedsocio-pathological phenomena include the theory of social disorganisation, the conceptof social areas in cities (E. Shewky, W. Bell, S. Williams), and the model of post-moderncity structure (M. Dear). Also repeatedly described in criminological literature are thetheory of “broken windows” (G. Kelling and J. Wilson), the pattern of crime (P. and P.Brantingham), and the perspective of routine activities (M. Felson, L. Cohen). Based on the research findings of Polish researchers, one can formulate severalregularities associated with the occurrence of social pathologies in Polish cities. Firstly,the deprivation areas of cities primarily include town centres and housing blocks, olderblock estates, suburban areas (placed along little-active streets of peripheral placementand along exit roads), and old factory estates. In addition, persistent problem areasin Polish city centres have been in place since the interwar period. So-called povertyenclaves are characterised by amortised living spaces, unemployment, reliance ofinhabitants on social benefits, and are escalated by pathological behaviours: crime, alcoholism, broken/incomplete families, domestic violence. Unusually interesting is thecycle of degradation in downtown areas, presenting the shared arrangement of a variety of unfavourable phenomena leading to spatial and social degradation in the centralspaces of Polish cities. The problems found during the spatial analysis of crime in various cities in Polandare quite broad. Other than the presented disproportion and spatial diversity of socialpathology, the areas most at risk have also been identified. The analysis of criminalhotspots using GIS techniques and tools was undertaken by S. Mordwa and N. Sypion Dutkowska. The region studied in search of hotspots in Łódź was the metropolitan area (Fig.1).The area makes up the city centre, which includes within its reach historical buildingsthat represent the city’s identity. The metropolitan area covers 14 km2 (4.8% of the city), which in 2010 had over 140,000 inhabitants (19.7%) and 2,291 incidents recorded bypolice. The quoted numbers indicate that there were 5.58 times more police incidentsin relation to the size of the area, and 1.36 extra events in relation to the number ofinhabitants.In the article, a review of GIS techniques is made, thanks to which one candifferentiate hotspots. An analysis is made of the garnered results of these spaces,and the advantages and disadvantages are emphasised of the following techniques:cartograms (Fig.3), thematic maps (Fig.3b), point maps (Fig.2), local and global Moran’sI (Fig.4), Getis-Ord Gi* (Fig.5), hierarchical grouping based on the nearest neighbourtechnique (Fig.7), nuclear density estimators (Fig.6), and the K-means method (Fig.8). After reviewing these techniques, a question is raised: which technique is the mosteffective in the study of determining crime hotspots? The PAI indicator is used to solvethis problem, as described by S. Chainey et al. The PAI indicator is constructed in sucha way that the counter finds a proportion of crimes which are localised to the areaof every hotspot. The denominator meanwhile is the proportion of area taken up byhotspots generally. Generally the most effective technique used will be determined bythe highest value of the counter against the lowest possible value of the denominator (remembering that the definition of a hotspot is a small segment of an area in whichmany crimes are registered). It turned out that the most accurate hotspots were obtainedby employing the hierarchical grouping method with the nearest neighbour techniqueand the nuclear density estimators (tab.1). Of all the places of concentrated crime identified in the metropolitan area (determined by the hierarchical nearest neighbour method), the hotspot with the mostincidents identified by police was in a central area called Plac Wolnosci (Liberty Square) (Fig.9). This area is dominated by buildings in the downtown style from the turn of the20th century. Three-storey rented townhouses dominate, which were very high qualitydwellings when they were built. But now they are characterised by a high degree oftechnical wear. The area is intensely built up, and the municipal council is the mainlandlord here. At the same time, it is evident there is a shortage of dwellings with centralheating, with most apartments having a low number of rooms but high population ofinhabitants. It is a substandard area with very low social status. The buildings here(mainly communal townhouses of low standard, known as so-called poor houses) form the worst living conditions in Łódź, while inhabitants mainly belong to the lowestsocial categories (poorly educated, unemployed, low paid). In accordance with otherstudies, the area is characterised by the weakness of the community, which indicatesa reduction or even complete loss of economic strength and social value in the residentsto participate in social life and the city’s economy. The community here is characterized by high rates of unemployment, clearly outlined poverty, and low education.The hotspot of Plac Wolnosci is approximately 14 hectares in size. In 2010,police in this area registered more than 100 incidents. Most often they were cases of pickpocketing (around 25% of all acts) which likely results from the significant volumeof traffic, the many transportation routes which pass through (tram and bus), as wellas the presence of many stops. Victims of theft and robbery (around 20% of the area’spolice incidents) were often regulars of Piotrkowski Street and the nearby Manufakturaarea, who had inadvertently entered the area (to make use of public transportation) from the well-monitored ones. Also common in the hotspot are property damage, burglary of commercial buildings, and car accessory theft. To summarise, the analysis in the article consists of: 1) the presented GIS techniqueswhich turned out to be useful and effective in various social studies of crime. Theirapplication enables the possibility of objectively identifying hotspots. The most effectivetechnique turned out to be hierarchical grouping based on the nearest neighbourtechnique; 2) in accordance with expectations, the most affected by crime turned outto be the very centre of Łódź. Based on the above study, one can conclude that analysis of areas has significancein social studies, since each location is characterised by differing urban environmentqualities, such as its socio-economic status, area history and collective memory,local identity, perception and symbols of the spaces, informal social controls, livingstandards, regulations linked with management, and more. Simply learning the spatialdistribution of hotspots cannot constitute the research aim. Utilising other methodsconcentrated on people and communities requires further investigation of the causesof the appearance of social problems and their relationship with spaces. Further studies could be concentrated on the main problem areas.

Exploring the Social Determinants of Sexually Transmitted Disease and High-Risk Sexual Behaviors