Documentary Sources Research Articles

From Oblivion to Life: The Recovery of Intangible Cultural Heritage through the Anti-Aircraft Shelters of the Spanish Civil War

This article examines the rehabilitation of anti-aircraft shelters from the Spanish Civil War in Alicante, Spain. Funded by European resources and managed by local public administration, these shelters have been restored as cultural and tourist attractions. This study aims to analyze their role in preserving and promoting intangible cultural heritage, with a focus on their significance as tangible remnants of a historical period and their reflection on survival practices during the war. This research investigates the impact of public management in rehabilitating these shelters and in disseminating their history and culture. It explores decision-making processes, community engagement, and strategies for promoting cultural tourism. Employing a mixed methodology, this study gathers primary data through interviews with individuals who witnessed the war and secondary data from documentary and bibliographic sources. Findings suggest that the rehabilitation of these shelters has been pivotal in preserving Alicante’s historical memory and cultural heritage. Making the shelters accessible to the public facilitates knowledge transmission about the Spanish Civil War, promotes cultural tourism, and engages the local community in the dissemination of history and culture. This study’s results and conclusions are relevant for academics, professionals, and cultural heritage managers at both national and international levels, offering insights into the effective preservation and promotion of historical sites.

An analytical survey of zinc white historical and modern artists’ materials

This study is the first systematic survey of a large corpus of zinc white (ZnO) artists’ materials. Zinc white is a white pigment developed within the wave of 19th-century technological developments in the paint industry. The composition, particle morphology and size, and luminescence of 49 zinc white samples from artists’ materials were characterized, including three references of known synthesis methods (indirect and direct) and synthesized by the authors (ZnO nanosmoke). The corpus included historical and modern zinc white pigment powders and paint materials from the leading European and American color manufacturers. The study aims to characterize and evaluate the variability of the properties of zinc white and its paint formulations. The reference materials presented properties in agreement with the literature: indirect ZnO exhibited submicron prismoidal blue-luminescent particles of higher purity than direct ZnO, which had larger acicular green-luminescent particles. ZnO nanosmoke presented acicular (tetrapod-like) blue/green-luminescent nanoparticles. Composition, particle morphology, size, and documentary sources suggested a production via the indirect method for the analyzed corpus. However, the luminescence behavior was more complex to interpret. The fundamental emission of ZnO was not always detected, even in pure ZnO powders. Three trends were identified: smaller ZnO particles for the most recent samples; green luminescence connected to larger particle size; fewer trace elements, and of the same type (i.e., lead, sulfur) for historical materials. Another interesting finding was the detection of hydrozincite in some powders, likely a degradation product of ZnO. In terms of methodology, cathodoluminescence proved a valuable tool for pigment identification. The study provides a database of zinc white references for pigment and artwork analysis.

Alibaba in Mexico: Adapting the digital villages model to Latin America

Based on experiences in China where rural development has reputedly been accelerated through use of its e-commerce platforms to create Taobao Villages, Chinese digital conglomerate Alibaba has sought to export its vision of “inclusive globalisation” to other economies in the Global South. Its initiatives intended to reduce inequality by specifically supporting small enterprises. Some research has already charted its multi-dimensional Electronic World Trade Platform approach. However, its more narrowly-focused Digital Villages approach, currently being implemented in Latin America, has still not been analyzed. Drawing on data from interviews and documentary sources, this article analyses the activities of Atomic88, an Alibaba subsidiary in Mexico, which (initially) focused on digitally-enabled development of small enterprise. It finds that Alibaba’s nascent position in an e-commerce market dominated by US and Latin American platforms led it to follow a quite different path from the Chinese Taobao Village Model. It sought out the action areas – training and consultancy – that would not directly compete with incumbents, and worked as an indirect facilitator of local actors, rather than directly intervening. While short-term inequality-reduction impact of Alibaba’s approach could be called into question, what it has done is build relationships with key digital economy stakeholders in Mexico. These show signs of providing valuable stepping stones toward a larger and more direct presence of Alibaba in the Mexican market.

The political origins of corporate transparency: forging strange coalitions through information rules and policy entrepreneurship

When does business support corporate transparency laws, and how do they succeed despite opposition from other powerful business groups? Existing research converges on a common causal pathway: Crises increase public issue salience and open windows of opportunity for policy entrepreneurs to pressure politicians into adopting transparency laws. Examining the case of beneficial ownership transparency (BOT) laws, I theorize an alternative causal pathway where past policy decisions mandating information collection by certain industries produce inter-industry divergence in their policy preferences and undermine opposition business lobbying. Civil society groups can then engage in policy entrepreneurship to integrate supportive regulated industries into new coalitions. Large, organizationally diverse ‘strange coalitions’ increase political pressure on policymakers, leading to the adoption of corporate transparency laws. I conduct a structured, focused comparison of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia as parallel demonstrations of this causal pathway. I combine primary and secondary source documentation with 44 semi-structured interviews to trace failed and successful attempts to adopt BOT laws during the 2010s and early 2020s. I center endogenous feedback processes as a primary cause of transparency, provide further evidence of when firms prefer stronger regulation, and highlight the continued importance of domestic interests in transnational policy issues.

New Contributions Regarding the Barniz de Pasto Collection at the Museo de América, Madrid

This article describes the objects in the barniz de Pasto collection at the Museo de América, Madrid. The barniz de Pasto technique will be described, as well as the historical documentary sources that have previously discussed this varnish. The article will also mention the historical reasons why Spain is the European country in which the greatest number of objects decorated with varnish have been found, in both religious and private collections. The main body of the article discusses all the barniz de Pasto objects held in the Museum collection, focuses on the history of their arrival at the Museum, and investigates their possible origin, with the help of ample photographs. The final section examines the Museum’s three most recent acquisitions, completed in the second half of 2022, in detail.

Dark complexion in the nineteenth century baseball of remediano and cienfueguero

“Dark complexion in the nineteenth-century baseball of Remedio and Cienfuegos" is not a specific scientific article focused on raciality from history. Its content offers, from the analysis, description and interpretation of primary sources, the participation of blacks and mestizos in the baseball life of the declared Cuban historical regions during the 19th century. The aforementioned allows declaring that the content of the present research production is unpublished. In general terms, the methodology used is based on the resources offered by the Dialectical Materialist conception of History, without discarding certain essential elements that need to be handled from a synchronic perspective, without the expository discourse responding to a type of comparative analysis strictly speaking, but to a specific historical reconstruction. Among the methods used are theoretical, historical-logical and analysis-synthesis methods. As for empirical methods, bibliographic-documentary methods were used. Likewise, the procedures of external criticism and internal criticism were used to work with the different newspaper and documentary sources. This work allowed establishing the relationships between the facts and phenomena inherent to the sociocultural influence of baseball as a sports practice in Remedios and Cienfuegos in the blacks and mestizos during the stated period.

Past Forward: Holocaust Testimony in Documentary Film

Abstract This paper addresses the use of oral history sources in my practice of documentary filmmaking as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. It examines how the filmic documentation of oral history sources can reflect aspects of testimony, memory, and postmemory, as they are theorized in the field of Holocaust Studies. In my film “Past Forward: Journeys to Transnistria,” I document the challenge of relating an intergenerational and cross-cultural story while preserving historical accuracy. Filmed in Ukraine in 2002, it tells the story of my mother, a child-survivor of the Romanian Holocaust. Through oral testimony, the film captures my mother’s survival story as she tells it to me and later to her granddaughter who documents it for a history school project. It then retraces my mother’s journey between 1941 and 1944 from her hometown of Dorohoi, Romania to Transnistria as it was called then under German-allied Romanian occupation. Survivor’s testimony combined with onsite witness interviews, and an archival military map, were used to trace the story of a little Jewish Romanian girl who survived the journey to Transnistria. Recently available archival sources have further validated her story. It has also contributed to locating the film within the broader context of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

APLICACIÓN DE BLOCKCHAIN EN DIFERENTES SECTORES: REVISIÓN LITERARIA

Blockchain technology is based on a decentralized blockchain, it has features such as non-corruption, decentralized technology, enhanced security, distributed records, consensus, faster agreements, immutability, fault tolerance andtransparency. It has had different applications and appears as one of the technological trends guiding the research interest of companies and universities. This article investigated a collection of 63 documentary sources such as: research,journal and review articles, books, surveys and conference proceedings. This was done through databases such as Mendeley, Google Scholar, ACM, Scopus and Virtualpro. The search criteria were: 1) Keyword «Blockchain» and, 2)Articles published between the years 2019 and 2023. Where it is assigned as an objective to provide an overview of research and publications on the Blockchain world. It has as a result to generate an overview that allows to determine thegaps both in research and publication, as well as in technological development related to this topic, identifying the sectors with the highest and lowest production of research and publications. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21017/rimci.2024.v11.n21.a154

Gymnastics and USSR Sports Policy in 1918—1941

The aim of this study is to present and discuss the formation and development of one of the popular sports in the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1930s, namely, artistic gymnastics, which includes competitions on various gymnastic apparatuses as well as in free exercises and balance jumps. The authors trace the historical path of this sport within the context of the Soviet government’s policy on organizing the Soviet physical culture movement. The study examines the activities of public gymnastics organizations and the issues surrounding their closure. Special attention is given to the challenges faced by the development of artistic gymnastics during this period, including the state of the material and technical base, organization of systematic training sessions, and the availability of qualified coaching staff. The research materials demonstrate that the development of this sport took place under difficult conditions, from restrictions in the 1920s to a mass gymnastics movement in the 1930s. Based on documentary sources and central periodicals, the authors reconstruct the methods and forms of the formation and development of Soviet artistic gymnastics as a mass sport. It is argued that systematic competitions for the USSR championship stimulated the growth of gymnasts’ sporting and technical achievements

Open scientific content search tools for research and education

Introduction. The concept of open science, actively promoted in recent decades, as well as technological innovations, make the culture of information retrieval a significant element in the development of the information society, which has a significant impact on scientific activity, education, management, social processes, etc. Indicators of the level of culture of information retrieval are knowledge of basic methods and means of obtaining information, including skills and abilities to work with information resources and search engines. The culture of information retrieval helps improve the quality of information extraction from increasingly large open information arrays. Open tools for searching scientific content are the most important, but require training during operation, they are components of the global market of information resources and services, allowing the selection of relevant information from large data sets in accordance with user requests.Purpose setting. The study sets the task of studying the applicability of individual scientific search systems (Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, Internet Archive Scholar and BASE) for information searching when conducting research and in educational processes, developing competencies to improve the level of information culture of specialists in the field of library and information sciences.Methodology and methods of the study. The research was carried out using comparative and system analysis methods, mathematical methods for processing statistical data, and content analysis of documentary sources of information. The methodological basis was practice-oriented and competency-based approaches aimed at developing the professional skills of librarians and library scientists in searching for digital content and using open access resources.Results. The analysis made it possible to draw conclusions about the capabilities of search systems, methods for retrieving information and the specifics of the reflection of publications in them, as well as the most acceptable conditions for information retrieval in the field of «library and information sciences», which makes it possible to more rationally use the potential of systems and quickly obtain complete and relevant scientific information on the topic.Conclusions. The results of the study add a new dimension to our knowledge of scientific search engines. The study presents evidence that Google Scholar is a powerful tool for searching Russian literature in the field of library science in terms of articles from scientific journals, as well as detecting a limited volume of some other types of publications with the ability to evaluate with Google Scholar Metrics. It is concluded that Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, Internet Archive Scholar and BASE, despite being positioned as effective tools for searching scientific information in various disciplines, require caution in use, because these systems cannot guarantee comprehensive results and are not complete sources of bibliographic data, but can be considered in conjunction with other resources, taking into account the availability of advanced search engines and additional services. Knowledge of scientific search engines contributes to improving the culture of information retrieval, the culture of users, their qualifications and professionalism.

Genetic history of Cambridgeshire before and after the Black Death.

The extent of the devastation of the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) on European populations is known from documentary sources and its bacterial source illuminated by studies of ancient pathogen DNA. What has remained less understood is the effect of the pandemic on human mobility and genetic diversity at the local scale. Here, we report 275 ancient genomes, including 109 with coverage >0.1×, from later medieval and postmedieval Cambridgeshire of individuals buried before and after the Black Death. Consistent with the function of the institutions, we found a lack of close relatives among the friars and the inmates of the hospital in contrast to their abundance in general urban and rural parish communities. While we detect long-term shifts in local genetic ancestry in Cambridgeshire, we find no evidence of major changes in genetic ancestry nor higher differentiation of immune loci between cohorts living before and after the Black Death.

Exploring Lessons from Soviet Diplomacy and Western Allied Cooperation in World War II

Based on an analysis of documentary sources from Russian, American, and British archives, this article delves into the intricacies of coalition diplomacy among the Allies during World War II. It places special emphasis on the adherence to obligations and coalition behavior norms, encompassing respect for partners' interests, maintaining unity amidst divergences, coordinating actions towards shared objectives, and avoiding actions that risk coalition breakdown. The comparative analysis of Soviet and Anglo-American diplomacy reveals that the principal members of the anti-Hitler coalition generally adhered to these norms, contributing to the ultimate defeat of their common adversary. However, the study indicates that the Soviet Union exhibited greater fidelity in fulfilling its obligations and was more proactive in institutionalizing the coalition for enhanced stability and equal participation in strategic decision-making for war conduct and postwar arrangements. This quest for parity was often impeded by the Western powers' reluctance to accept the Soviet Union as an enduring, equal partner and legitimate member of the great powers' club, both during and after the war. This hesitance, the article argues, was rooted not just in geopolitical considerations but also in deep-seated cultural factors, particularly the traditional Western sense of superiority and perception of Russia as a 'lesser' civilization not fit for inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic community. The article brings to light lesser-known documents from US and UK archives to illustrate this mindset. It also acknowledges dissenting voices in Anglo-American political spheres who advocated for a more equitable relationship with the USSR. However, these perspectives did not significantly alter the overarching direction of Western policy.

One catastrophic flood every millennium: Synchronicity of extreme floods and global warm periods in the multi-archive record of the Roman theatre of Guadix (Granada, SE Spain)

Past global changes are typically registered in both natural (e.g., geologic-geomorphological, atmospheric-climatic, hydrologic-glacial and biological) and cultural records (e.g., archaeological, historical and documentary sources). Nevertheless, there are few sites in the world where sedimentary and archaeological evidence combine to provide information about two or more past millennial climate changes. In this regard, the Roman city of Guadix (Granada, SE Spain) represents a singular location, whose Roman theatre (1st century CE), recently discovered in 2007, contains palaeo-flood evidences that can be related to the two latest global warm periods: the Roman and Medieval epochs.In this research, detailed geological analyses are carried out. These analyses consisted in careful descriptions of vertical stratigraphic sections (lithology, structures…) and lateral correlation panels; as well as fluvial facies models to interpret the sedimentary environments for each sequence. This sedimentological information was combined with the study of archaeological remains, radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence, and three major flood events have been identified: two of them dating back to the beginning of the 1st century CE (period of the Pax Romana Empire); and the other occurring at the end of the 12th century (Islamic Almohad period). Such extreme hydrological events were synchronous with two warm periods: the Roman Climatic Optimum and the Medieval Warm Period. This seems to suggest that the meteorological fluctuations associated to climate changes during warming periods (such as the current one associated with present-day climate change) very likely produce such extraordinary or extreme events, which can mobilise large amounts of solid load (sands, silts and clays) and trigger sudden changes in the configuration of the river system (channel avulsions, meander cut-offs and captures among tributaries) and alluvial fans (at tributary mouths).We believe that the documented observations provide an analogy for the current warming period. In this regard, flood risk management in the current city of Guadix, whose hazard and risk maps were drawn up according to the criteria of the European Flood Directive, should take into account: (i) the millennial recurrent character of catastrophic floods in Guadix, well above the 500-year return period officially considered; (ii) the importance of the mobilisation of solid load in flood hazard and risk, which can obstruct drains and reduce the capacity of channels and bridges; (iii) the geomorphological dynamics, capable of modifying the position of the channels and thus the delimitation of hazard and risk zones; (iv) the role of non-permanent tributaries of the Guadix River during storms and heavy rain, related to quasi-stationary convective cells. Only in this way, will flood hazard and risk maps be useful in territorial and urban planning, civil protection during emergencies and the reduction of damage from future catastrophic floods. The present study highlights how geoarchaeological and palaeo-environmental records can be a highly valuable source of data for the improvement of flood hazard assessments in the 21st Century.

To the history of pandemics: statistics and forecast.

The article is devoted to the study of human experience related to fight against a viral disease known as influenza infection. The outbreaks of the disease occurred over several millennia and described in the surviving documentary sources are considered. The main attention is paid to investigations of native epidemiologists on this problem. In particular, an analysis of works published more than 80 years ago is shown. It is emphasized that some elements of the influenza epidemic described in this publication are in many respects similar to the features of the modern coronavirus pandemic. History of studies devoted to mechanism of infection transmission is described. Significant attention is paid to the developments of scientists associated with the problem of identifying the causative agent of the disease. The contribution of native scientists in revealing the features of the pathogenesis of infection diseases is highlighted. It is noted that important factors in the spread of infection nowadays are globalization and migration processes. It is emphasized that the speed of infectious diseases spread is considerably caused by the capabilities of modern transport too. The history of studies related to the prevention of influenza by immunization and vaccination is reviewed. A comparative analysis of the application of these prophylactic arrangements in a historical retrospective is given. The possibility of preventing the spread of a viral infection by taking appropriate measures was emphasized. The important role of the mass media is indicated, which consists in timely and truthful information of the population. The position of leading modern scientists on this issue, in particular, M. Honigsbaum, K. G. Vasiliev, S. V. Komisarenko etc. is cited. It is summarized, that the works of native epidemiologists L. V. Hromashevskyi, N. F. Gamaleya, D. S. Samoilovych and others has not lost its relevance and can be the basis for the searching effective methods to combat influenza infection in future.

Military construction and military duty in Dagestan in 1928–1940: a historical and socio-cultural aspects

The article considers the historical and socio-cultural aspects of military development in the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1928 to 1940, taking into account the growing interest in society and the scientific community in military history, including the problem of involving the peoples of national regions of the country in the process of formation and further development of the Soviet Armed Forces. In the research the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, as well as comparative historical, problem-chronological, statistical and descriptive methods have been used; new publications and documentary sources that have not previously been introduced into scientific circulation have been employed.The historical and social and cultural aspects of military development in the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1928 to 1940 have been considered. - from the moment of the first compulsory conscription of Dagestanis for military service in the ranks of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) until the adoption in September 1939 by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the new Law “On General Military Duty”. This event marked the beginning of the implementation of military service by representatives of the male youth of the peoples of Dagestan service on a common basis with all nationalities of the USSR.The research characterizes the work of the authorities to establish military registration of the male part of the population and pre-conscription training of young people in a multinational region. The gender component of the process of formation of military service has been highlighted; the features of the implementation of Soviet military construction in Dagestan within the designated chronological framework identified and prospects and scope of application of the research results characterized.

FAVA: high-quality functional association networks inferred from scRNA-seq and proteomics data.

Protein networks are commonly used for understanding how proteins interact. However, they are typically biased by data availability, favoring well-studied proteins with more interactions. To uncover functions of understudied proteins, we must use data that are not affected by this literature bias, such as single-cell RNA-seq and proteomics. Due to data sparseness and redundancy, functional association analysis becomes complex. To address this, we have developed FAVA (Functional Associations using Variational Autoencoders), which compresses high-dimensional data into a low-dimensional space. FAVA infers networks from high-dimensional omics data with much higher accuracy than existing methods, across a diverse collection of real as well as simulated datasets. FAVA can process large datasets with over 0.5 million conditions and has predicted 4210 interactions between 1039 understudied proteins. Our findings showcase FAVA's capability to offer novel perspectives on protein interactions. FAVA functions within the scverse ecosystem, employing AnnData as its input source. Source code, documentation, and tutorials for FAVA are accessible on GitHub at https://github.com/mikelkou/fava. FAVA can also be installed and used via pip/PyPI <pip install favapy> as well as via the scverse ecosystem https://github.com/scverse/ecosystem-packages/tree/main/packages/favapy.

Historical Evolution of Cultural Landscape Studies in Cuba: Trends and Classificatory Perspectives

This article aims to assess the historical evolution of cultural landscape studies in Cuba and their trends and classificatory perspectives. This study used a documentary research methodology supported by diverse procedures, such as compilation and active reading of documentary sources on the subject in question, internal and external analysis of the information obtained and its synthesis, textual processing, and generalization. This revision facilitated the determination of the main tendencies in the geographical study of Cuba's cultural landscape: 1) cultural landscape as anthropogenic landscape and 2) cultural landscape as heritage. It also presents classificatory perspectives for studying cultural landscape in Cuba based on the analysis of the predominant proposals in the national and international scope.

RefseqR: an R package for common computational operations with records on RefSeq collection

Abstract Summary We introduce refseqR, an R package that offers a user-friendly solution, enabling common computational operations on RefSeq entries (GenBank, NCBI). The package is specifically designed to interact with records curated from the RefSeq database. Most importantly, the interoperability and integration with several Bioconductor objects allow connections to be applied to other projects. Availability and implementation The package refseqR is implemented in R and published under the MIT open-source license. The source code, documentation, and usage instructions are available on CRAN (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=refseqR).

TransAnnot-a fast transcriptome annotation pipeline.

The annotation of deeply sequenced, de novo assembled transcriptomes continues to be a challenge as some of the state-of-the-art tools are slow, difficult to install, and hard to use. We have tackled these issues with TransAnnot, a fast, automated transcriptome annotation pipeline that is easy to install and use. Leveraging the fast sequence searches provided by the MMseqs2 suite, TransAnnot offers one-step annotation of homologs from Swiss-Prot, gene ontology terms and orthogroups from eggNOG, and functional domains from Pfam. Users also have the option to annotate against custom databases. TransAnnot accepts sequencing reads (short and long), nucleotide sequences, or amino acid sequences as input for annotation. When benchmarked with test data sets of amino acid sequences, TransAnnot was 333, 284, and 18 times faster than comparable tools such as EnTAP, Trinotate, and eggNOG-mapper respectively. TransAnnot is free to use, open sourced under GPLv3, and is implemented in C++ and Bash. Source code, documentation, and pre-compiled binaries are available at https://github.com/soedinglab/transannot. TransAnnot is also available via bioconda (https://anaconda.org/bioconda/transannot).

Zambia’s Support for the African National Congress’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka, 1967–1992

ABSTRACT This article explores the contribution Zambia made to the liberation struggle in South Africa by hosting the ANC’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka. It relies on a combination of archival evidence (audio and documentary sources) from both countries, and interviews conducted with the broadcasters and other media workers of both Radio Freedom and the Zambian national broadcaster. The article argues that Zambia offered immense support to Radio Freedom in the form of broadcasting equipment, working space and airtime on the external services of the national broadcaster. While it waxed and waned in the early years, this assistance increased considerably in the aftermath of the Soweto student uprising of 1976, which enabled the ANC to have a sonic presence among its supporters back home, where listening to this radio was illegal. The support given to Radio Freedom was not isolated but part of a wider struggle and solidarity with the liberation movements in the Southern African region fighting white minority rule. Through Radio Freedom, the ANC was able to shape the course of the unfolding struggle and internal political developments and to attain the cultural hegemony of the Charterist tradition over the Africanist and Black Consciousness camp.