Fragmentary Evidence Research Articles

From Zero to Infinity

Abstract Both China and India have an ancient mathematical tradition. From the extant records, the encounter of the two traditions took place in Inner Asia, Southeast Asia and in various cosmopolitan centres along the Silk Roads during the first millennium CE. The encounter was documented almost exclusively from the Chinese side, along with fragmentary evidence from Central Asia and the Sino-Indian peripheries, and almost none from India. In this paper, my focus will be the Chinese reception of Indian zero and large numbers, and to evaluate critically the impact they had, or did not have, on the Chinese mathematical tradition, and what the factors for exchange are.

European Smalt in 17th-Century Japan: Porcelain Decoration and Sacred Art

Japanese art tradition, contrary to the case of China, is characterized by an efficient and continued, although mostly undocumented, use of smalt from the late 16th century onward. Recent studies have successfully identified this pigment, the cobalt-colored glass that spread throughout the Old Continent during the Renaissance period, as the coloring agent employed for overglaze-blue enameling on Japanese porcelains produced at the kilns of Arita (the porcelain production center of Japan) from the early 1640s until the 20th century. Fragmentary evidence of the use of smalt in Japanese sacred art has also been reported, yet its earliest incorporation into such a type of traditional art form could not be identified. In order to resolve this crucial issue, portable EDXRF was employed for the non-destructive analyses of Japanese porcelains and sacred images bearing blue decoration. Scientific analysis allowed, for the first time ever, to establish a clear timeline of smalt use. Furthermore, this evidence and the literature data both agree, leading to the identification of the origin of the blue material used on both art productions.

Implementation and Execution of Big Data-based Studies in Ophthalmology within the Framework of the GDPR.

The processing of the retrospective data pool for ophthalmology holds huge potential, especially for the research sector. "Big Data" enables medical science to draw conclusions for the future from historical data. Based on the evaluation of such data, algorithms could be trained, for instance, that are capable of making decisions with the help of artificial intelligence. As a result, the medical decision-making process on certain issues could be accelerated, enriched in qualitative and quantitative terms, or even completely be taken over. Ophthalmology is a rapidly evolving field. Due to the multitude of partly automated medical imaging technologies and the predestined accessibility of the eye for such technologies, ophthalmology, similarly to radiology or dermatology, is well suited for artificial intelligence-assisted image data analysis and the frequently associated initiation of diagnosis and therapy. Meanwhile, numerous studies exist based on AI-assisted image data analysis of ophthalmological image data. To the extent that the algorithms filter out results from the data pools by means of calculation rules and are even capable of making independent decisions on the basis of decision trees, the enormous benefit and, simultaneously, the profit for scientific research is quite obvious. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have unrestricted and comprehensive possibility of corresponding data processing of these health data for ophthalmological research. In spite of the potential for ophthalmology, for which there is only fragmentary evidence, the question of practical feasibility arises. In particular, the legal requirements and limits of European and national data protection law must be taken into account, prior to any unreflected processing of personal (health) data. Only by doing so can we circumvent existing obstacles and pitfalls, which can lead to severe fines. Most important are to date the requirements of two legal texts: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). This article provides an overview of the relevant legal requirements applicable in the field of ophthalmology and highlights the major pitfalls and implementation requirements.

Off-Season Swarming in the Japanese Honey Bee (Apis Cerana Japonica)

Abstract Several studies have reported fragmentary evidence that climate change is altering the phenology and behavior of honey bees. We compiled records of off-season swarming of the Japanese honey bee (Apis cerana japonica) between autumn and winter to improve our understanding of the impact of climate change on the subspecies’ swarming phenology. Based on a survey of 311 beekeepers, eleven off-season swarming records were collected, with ten of them are from 2020 onward. The beekeepers who reported off-season swarming records had eight to twenty years of beekeeping experience, and they declared that they were witnessing off-season swarming for the first time, suggesting a recent increase. One possible factor contributing to the increase in off-season swarming is the temperature rise, as average autumn and winter temperatures in Japan have been increasing.

Agnes the Bathkeeper and Anna of Mindelheim: Rehumanizing Women from The Hammer of Witches

Abstract: This article reconstructs the lives of Agnes the Bathkeeper and Anna of Mindelheim, who exemplified how women become witches and how witches do magic in the demonological treatise, The Hammer of Witches (1486). It does so based both on this demonological treatise and archival documents, reading them "against the bias grain" in an effort to bring Agnes and Anna some epistemic justice. In addition to urging us to view Agnes and Anna in their full humanity rather than exclusively as heretical criminals or victims as this treatise's authors and modern scholars have done, this article provides a case study of the relationship between gender, magic, and witchcraft in a time period when magic had recently been associated with women. It also offers an example of how historians can use fragmentary evidence to reconstruct aspects of the past, keeping women such as Agnes and Anna from historical erasure.

Records of Relinquishment

This article focuses on the archive of the Washington Female Orphan Asylum, founded in 1815, and places the study of philanthropy in conversation with scholarship on the archive in histories of slavery, colonization, and trauma. It argues, first, that philanthropic and reform institutions such as the asylum were domestic sites of empire and that their archives reveal the reach of statecraft into the intimate lives of women and families. The article explores, second, the role of emotion in archival research, which can highlight an archive’s construction and its silences. The relinquishments within the asylum’s records provoke emotion; as fragmentary evidence, they testify to trauma and demand the historian’s care.

Mechanical and morphometric approaches to body mass estimation in rhesus macaques: A test of skeletal variables.

Estimation of body mass from skeletal metrics can reveal important insights into the paleobiology of archeological or fossil remains. The standard approach constructs predictive equations from postcrania, but studies have questioned the reliability of traditional measures. Here, we examine several skeletal features to assess their accuracy in predicting body mass. Antemortem mass measurements were compared with common skeletal dimensions from the same animals postmortem, using 115 rhesus macaques (male: n = 43; female: n = 72). Individuals were divided into training (n = 58) and test samples (n = 57) to build and assess Ordinary Least Squares or multivariate regressions by residual sum of squares (RSS) and AIC weights. A leave-one-out approach was implemented to formulate the best fit multivariate models, which were compared against a univariate and a previously published catarrhine body-mass estimation model. Femur circumference represented the best univariate model. The best model overall was composed of four variables (femur, tibia and fibula circumference and humerus length). By RSS and AICw, models built from rhesus macaque data (RSS = 26.91, AIC = -20.66) better predicted body mass than did the catarrhine model (RSS = 65.47, AIC = 20.24). Body mass in rhesus macaques is best predicted by a 4-variable equation composed of humerus length and hind limb midshaft circumferences. Comparison of models built from the macaque versus the catarrhine data highlight the importance of taxonomic specificity in predicting body mass. This paper provides a valuable dataset of combined somatic and skeletal data in a primate, which can be used to build body mass equations for fragmentary fossil evidence.

‘In constant fear of some dire epidemic breaking out’: Rural responses to infectious and epidemic disease, 1870–1920

Abstract Based on extensive archival research encompassing over eighty rural authorities in Wales, this essay pieces together fragmentary evidence to reveal the main contours of rural responses to infectious outbreaks from the 1870s to the 1918/10 influenza pandemic. At the centre of the essay are those practical, short-term measures that have hitherto been overlooked in the historiography. While infectious outbreaks did have the capacity to extend sanitary initiatives over the medium and long term, looking at how rural authorities reacted to infectious disease helps us better understand how public health practices translated into action at a local level. In doing so, the essay untangles both the nature of rural responses and the challenges confronted by rural sanitary officials when confronted with infectious outbreaks and how they had to adapt public health orthodoxy to different rural environments.

Unravelling the clonal trait space: Beyond above‐ground and fine‐root traits

Abstract Plant trait variation is constrained by mechanical and energetic trade‐offs as attested by the global spectrum of plant form and function and the fine‐root economics space for above‐ and below‐ground traits. However, traits that are key for fitness maintenance in some plant groups, such as clonal and bud bank traits, have not yet been integrated within the frameworks provided by the above‐ground and the fine‐root economics space. By using an extensive dataset encompassing above‐ground, fine‐root, clonal and bud bank traits of 2000 species of Central European herbs, we asked whether clonal and bud bank traits correspond to the placement of species in the above‐ground or fine‐root trait space. Perennial clonal and non‐clonal herbs show indistinct positioning within the above‐ground and fine‐root trait spaces. This extends and reinforces previous fragmentary evidence of weak correlations between clonal and bud bank traits and above‐ground trait dimensions. Additionally, we identify for the first time a limited correlation between clonal and fine‐root traits as well. This disconnection suggests that clonal traits operate independently from other trait spectra. For this reason, we introduce the concept of a ‘clonal trait space’ for clonal herbs. The first dimension of this space is defined by bud bank size and the persistence of clonal connection, reflecting a gradient of species specialisation for on‐spot persistence and tolerance to disturbance (persistence dimension). The second dimension, defined by multiplication rate and lateral spread, reflects a specialisation axis for clonal multiplication and horizontal size dimension (clonal multiplication dimension). Clonal trait dimensions add non‐redundant information to the above‐ground or fine‐roots trait space. Synthesis: We champion the integration of the persistence and clonal multiplication dimensions from the ‘clonal trait space’ into the frameworks provided by the above‐ground trait and the fine‐root economics spaces, thereby enhancing our comprehension of the multifaceted trait strategies exhibited by plants.

Attuning to Emotions in the History of Border-Making: The Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission in 1920

Borders are key sites for the amplification of emotions, yet historians have rarely made emotions into a focal point for studies of boundary-making processes. This article sets out fragmentary evidence for how to read across a fuller array of sources that move us beyond technocratic understandings of boundary commissions to highlight the range of emotional interactions which occurred between boundary commissioners and local populations. It draws on evidence from the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, established in the summer of 1919 to demarcate the international border between the newly independent states of Estonia and Latvia. Petitions sent to the Boundary Commission by the border region inhabitants expressed fear, trepidation or anger about the border proposal and professed feelings of patriotic loyalty to the Estonian or Latvian state. The press derided the Boundary Commission, using humour to convey frustration and shock at the absurdity of the border proposal and tarnish the reputation of the commissioners by portraying them as hot-headed. The accumulating emotional toll of these public sentiments left the boundary commissioners feeling weary and disheartened. By attuning to moods and sentiments surrounding the work of the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, this exploratory article calls for historians to consider emotions methodologically as part of a broader toolkit of approaches for studying histories of boundary-making and to reflect on the insights such perspectives can bring to the field.

Unnamed, not unskilled: Toward a new labor history of pharmacy.

By recovering the dependent, often enslaved, laborers who helped to make European medicines commercially available in the New England colonies, this article offers a new history of early American pharmaceutical knowledge and production. It does so by considering the life and labor of an unnamed, enslaved assistant who was said to make tinctures, elixirs, and other common remedies in a 1758 letter between two business partners, Silvester Gardiner, a successful surgeon and apothecary in Boston, Massachusetts, and William Jepson, his former apprentice, in Hartford, Connecticut. Using strategies from slavery and critical archive studies, as well as from social history and the history of medicine, this article emphasizes the materiality and embodiment of pharmaceutical production and follows fragmentary evidence beyond the business archive to reverse the systemic erasure of enslaved and indentured laborers from the records of eighteenth-century manufacturers of medicines. The medicine trades of men like Gardiner and Jepson appear more reliant upon dependent laborers - named and unnamed - who not only performed rote tasks but brought their experience and judgment to their labors as well. Their contributions could be obviously medical (preparing remedies) or more ambiguous (stoking fires, shipping goods), but these actions together constituted early modern pharmacy, enabled the expansion of the transatlantic medicine trade, and laid the foundations for the more self-sufficient and industrialized pharmacy that developed in the nineteenth century. Centering the skill and knowledge among subordinated laborers in one facet of an emergent transatlantic care economy affirms the entanglement of slavery and science and underscores the necessity of asking new questions of old sources.

Pyrrho's Path and the Equanimous Life

The shadowy figure of Pyrrho has been intriguing modern scholars ever since the outlines of his thought were rediscovered in the sixteenth century, most notably by Michel de Montaigne. The academic approach to the Pyrrhonian legacy has been complicated, however, not only by the difficulties of reconstructing Pyrrho’s philosophy from particularly fragmentary evidence, but also by the fact that it was not conceived as an academic exercise, but rather as a practical guide to life—or as a Taoist or Buddhist might put it, a Way or Path. The analogies with Eastern teachings should not be taken too far, of course, as if Pyrrho had been literally a Buddhist, let alone a practitioner of Zen; but the parallels are still helpful for “untangling the tangle” and making more vivid and credible a philosophical way of life that was by no means dull and disengaged, as it has sometimes been understood, but on the contrary, loving and joyfully equanimous.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Child-authored Material in Australian Museums and Archives

Abstract: Since the history of children and youth gained momentum in the 1970s, historians have expressed frustration over the difficulties of locating children's voices in archives. While the availability of child-authored material presents a major challenge for many children's historians, not all are destined to work with lost or fragmentary evidence. By examining holdings of child art and writing in Australian collections, this article resists the assumption—common in the historiography of children and youth—that only fragments of child-authored material have survived in archives. In Australia, children's documentary records are far more voluminous than many scholars have previously acknowledged, comprising a surprisingly large array of children's art, writing, audiovisual and material culture.

Informational value of visual nudges during crises: Improving public health outcomes through social media engagement amid COVID‐19

In this study, we conceptualize and empirically evaluate how large‐scale organizations can utilize the informational value of visual nudges on social media to promote safety among users and thus improve public health outcomes in the context of the coronovirus desease caused by the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus (COVID‐19) pandemic. We construct a unique panel dataset combining data collected from multiple public and proprietary sources. To operationalize visual nudges from user‐generated content, we engage in extensive manual classification of images collected from Instagram (IG), Twitter (TW), and Facebook (FB). To examine the relationship between visual nudging and COVID‐19 positivity, we rely on a combination of econometric and epidemiological models. We find that when institutional actors share more images containing mask‐related information on IG, their COVID‐19 positivity rates decrease by up to 25%, on average. Also, given the fragmentary evidence behind FB and TW effects, our results provide suggestive evidence of the “boundary condition” of the visual nudge effect. Finally, empirical evidence indicates the dynamic and curvilinear effect of visual nudges on positivity over time, such that the informational value of visual nudging is most prominent if communicated 3 to 5 weeks ahead of time, on average. Our results demonstrate the informational value of visual nudges communicated through pertinent social media channels, as well as their capacity to improve public health outcomes. This suggests the feasibility of institutional actors using social media engagement to promote safe behaviors. We conclude by discussing how our findings may be used to develop more effective communication strategies regarding public perceptions of mask use and other relevant safety measures.

Promoting a New Kind of Education: Greek and Roman Philosophical Protreptic, by Daniel Markovich

Promoting a New Kind of Education: Greek and Roman Philosophical Protreptic, by Daniel Markovich

Diagnostic Predictors of Immunotherapy Response in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) binds PD-1 on CD8+ lymphocytes, inhibiting their cytotoxic action. Its aberrant expression by head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cells leads to immune escape. Pembrolizumab and nivolumab, two humanized monoclonal antibodies against PD-1, have been approved in HNSCC treatment, but ~60% of patients with recurrent or metastatic HNSCC fail to respond to immunotherapy and only 20 to 30% of treated patients have long-term benefits. The purpose of this review is to analyze all the fragmentary evidence present in the literature to identify what future diagnostic markers could be useful for predicting, together with PD-L1 CPS, the response to immunotherapy and its durability. We searched PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials and we summarize the evidence collected in this review. We confirmed that PD-L1 CPS is a predictor of response to immunotherapy, but it should be measured across multiple biopsies and repeatedly over time. PD-L2, IFN-γ, EGFR, VEGF, TGF-β, TMB, blood TMB, CD73, TILs, alternative splicing, tumor microenvironment, and some macroscopic and radiological features are promising predictors worthy of further studies. Studies comparing predictors appear to give greater potency to TMB and CXCR9.

A Study on Plant Structure

This paper propose image processing algorithms to recognize The Plant structure in Plant Kingdom. Anatomy is one of the oldest disciplines of plant science, and there is a huge amount of accumulated knowledge. At the same time, anatomy is highly important as a linking medium between several key branches of modern plant science. Detailed anatomical studies, these days using X-ray microtomography, allow much more detailed understanding of plant fossils and thus facilitate the accumulation of greatly extended non-molecular data sets. The use of anatomy is one of most efficient ways of increasing the number of characters in data sets employed to link fossil and extant plants. This link is essential for achieving the ambitious goal of acquiring a holistic knowledge of plant evolution combining the direct, but fragmentary evidence from the fossil record and the indirect, though highly informative data of molecular phylogenetics and phylogenomics. Anatomy is one of key tools of evo-devo research. Indeed, analyses of gene expression patterns are performed using anatomical techniques. More importantly, developmental biology of plants explores functioning of plant meristems and aspects of cell and tissue differentiation, the topics that have a long history of research in the framework of plant anatomy. Anatomy provides detailed information of the developmental processes in extant and extinct plants. Obviously, the detailed knowledge assembled through centuries of anatomical research has great perspectives of use in evolutionary developmental biology. Many theories developed in plant anatomy can be tested using molecular tools (e.g. Povilus et al., 2020), but it is important to pose the questions. Anatomy has many implications for plant physiology and ecology and provides an excellent tool for investigating historical aspects of these disciplines, including those related to climate change.

Between Memory and History

A relationship between Saul Friedländer’s autobiographical text When Memory Comes and his historical magnus opus Nazi Germany and the Jews has been suggested by Stéphane Bou. This article develops this suggestion, focusing on the narrative choices Friedländer made in his major historical work. An analysis of the use of estrangement and fragmentary evidence unveils their cognitive implications.

The Neglected Sibling: NLRP2 Inflammasome in the Nervous System.

While classical NOD-like receptor pyrin domain containing protein 1 (NLRP1) and NLRP3 inflammasomal proteins have been extensively investigated, the contribution of NLRP2 is still ill-defined in the nervous system. Given the putative significance of NLRP2 in orchestrating neuroinflammation, further inquiry is needed to gain a better understanding of its connectome, hence its specific targeting may hold a promising therapeutic implication. Therefore, bioinformatical approach for extracting information, specifically in the context of neuropathologies, is also undoubtedly preferred. To the best of our knowledge, there is no review study selectively targeting only NLRP2. Increasing, but still fragmentary evidence should encourage researchers to thoroughly investigate this inflammasome in various animal- and human models. Taken together, herein we aimed to review the current literature focusing on the role of NLRP2 inflammasome in the nervous system and more importantly, we provide an algorithm-based protein network of human NLRP2 for elucidating potentially valuable molecular partnerships that can be the beginning of a new discourse and future therapeutic considerations.

“Between Finland and Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s land”: Ukrainian national project through the eyes of Herman Gummerus

This article considers the cooperation between the Ukrainian and Finnish national movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The political aspects of the cooperation are viewed through the lens of Herman Gregorius Gummerus’ biography (1877-1948). In contemporary historiography, Herman Gummerus is mostly known for his historical studies that focus on the economic history of ancient Rome. Whereas the majority of studies on Ukrainian-Finnish cooperation in the early twentieth century contain only fragmentary evidence of his political and diplomatic activities, the author of the article considers it necessary to present the biographical essay with a special focus on Herman Gummerus’ participation in the Finnish activists’ movement during two periods of “Russification of Finland” (1899-1905, 1908-1917) and after World War One. Herman Gummerus’ attitude towards the Ukrainian national state project (including the Ukrainian State or the Second Hetmanate, dated 1918) is reconstructed on the basis of his memoirs “Ukraine on the cusp. Six months at the head of the Finnish Embassy in Kyiv” (Ukrainan murrosajoilta - Kuusi kuukautta lähetystön päällikkönä Kievissä) (1931).