A Programming Approach to Minimizing and Maximizing Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics

A programming approach is presented for identifying the form of the weights matrix W which either minimizes or maximizes the value of Moran's spatial autocorrelation statistic for a specified vector of data values. Both nonlinear and linear programming solutions are presented. The former are necessary when the sum of the links in W is unspecified while the latter can be used if this sum is fixed. The approach is illustrated using data examined in previous studies for two variables measured for the counties of Eire. While programming solutions involving different sets of constraints are derived, all yield solutions in which the number of nonzero elements in W is considerably smaller than that in W defined using the contiguity relationships between the counties. In graph theory terms, all of the Ws derived define multicomponent graphs. Other characteristics of the derived Ws are also presented.     

Book Reviews

ROBERT E. CONRAD. Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xxvi, 515. $50.00 cloth; $16.50 paper (US). Reviewed by A.J.R. Russell-Wood

STEPHEN KERN. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880–1918. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. 372. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Frank M. Turner

ESCOTT REID. On Duty: A Canadian at the Making of the United Nations, 1945–1946. Toronto: McClelland &; Stewart, 1983. Pp. xxii, 181. $16.95 (Can.). Reviewed by Robert Bothwell

LESTER LANOLEY. The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900–1934. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1983. Pp. vii-viii, 255. $26.00 (US). Reviewed by Richard D. Challener

RICHARD BOSWORTH. Italy and the Approach of the First World War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 174. $22.50 (US). Reviewed by Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.

ROBERT MIRAK. Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. xiv, 384. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by George B. Kooshian, Jr.

LEE FEIGON. Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 297. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by William Saywell

GHARLES CRUICKSHANK. SOE in the Far East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. 285. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by David Stafford

F.H. HINSLEY et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations. Volume III, Part 1. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xvi, 690. $39.50 (US). Reviewed by Patrick Beesly

RICHARD HOUGH. The Great War at Sea, 1914–1918. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xviii, 353. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Jon Tetsuro Sumida

HERMIA OLIVER. The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London. New York: St Martin's Press, 1983. Pp. 176. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by Haia Shpayer-Makov

STEWART A. STEHLIN. Weimar and the Vatican 1919–1933: German-Vatican Diplomatic Relations in the Interwar Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. 490. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by John S. Conway

GEORGE F.G. STANLEY. The War of 1812: Land Operations. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, 1983. Pp. 489. $24.95 (Can.); J.C.A. STAGG, Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp. 538. $49.00 (US). Reviewed by William Stinchcombe

JACOB TOURY. Die Jüdische Presse im Österreichischen Kaiserreich: Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Akkulturation 1802–1918. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1983. Pp. 171. Reviewed by George O. Kent

GOTTFRIED NIEDHART, ed. Der Westen und die Sowjetunion: Einstellungen und Politik gegenüber der UdSSR in Euro pa und in den USA seit 1917. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1983. Pp. 372. DM 48. Reviewed by Gerhard L. Weinberg

DANIEL H. THOMAS. The Guarantee of Belgian Independence and Integrity in European Diplomacy, 1830's–1930's. Kingston, Rhode Island: D.H. Thomas Publishing, 1983. Pp. xv, 789. Reviewed by D. Stevenson

FRED v. CARSTENSEN. American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. vii, 289. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by John P. Mckay

JULIANNA PUSKAS. From Hungary to the United States, 1880–1914. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982; distributed in North America by Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983. Pp. 225. $24.25 (US). Reviewed by Janos M. Bak

ROGER CHICKERING. We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1044. Boston: George Allen &; Unwin, 1983. Pp. 365. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by George L. Mosse

PETER KRTCDTE. Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy, 1500–1800, translated by V.R. Berghahn. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 191. $39.95 (US). Reviewed by Phyllis Deane

JAMES WILLIAM MORLEY, ed. The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent 1933–1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Reviewed by Samuel C. Chu

ERIC HOBSBAWM, TERENCE RANGER, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 320. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter Stansky

AVI SHLAIM. The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. xiii, 463. $38.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert A. Divine

JAMES CRACRAFT, ed. The Soviet Union Today: An Interpretative Guide. Chicago: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1983. Pp. ix, 348. $9.95 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence W. Lerner

M.J. TREBILCOCK, J.R.S. PRICHABD, T.J. COURCHENE, J. WHALLEY, eds. Federalism and the Canadian Economic Union. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. $25.00 (Can.). Reviewed by Eric Kierans

PHILIP S. KHOURY. Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. xi, 153. $34.50 (US). Reviewed by James Jankowski

PAUL MOSLEY. The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1963. Cambridge and New York: Gambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 289. $49.50 (US). Reviewed by Robert O. Collins     

Remarks on the Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet

A reply by two North American geographers to the preceding article presents some recent results of North American studies and suggests that the role of water bodies in influencing cyclogenesis is not universal. The Black Sea is cited as an example of a large water body that does not act as a major source of cyclonic activity. Other arguments are presented questioning the significance of the large proglacial lakes in influencing storm tracks near the margin of the ice sheet.     

Re-Ghettoization: Armenian Christian Neighborhoods in Multicultural Tehran

This paper incorporates a study of “re-ghettoization” among the Armenian Christians of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on how legal marginalization has led to the emergence of an entirely separate existence from the Muslim majority in Tehran among Armenians born after the revolution. By focusing on the spatial and social divisions of the hayashatner (Armenian neighborhoods) and the “social” ghetto of the Ararat Compound, this article addresses the question: what are the social implications for religious discrimination in the Muslim Middle East? This paper is based on three extensive blocks of fieldwork carried out in Iran from 2010 to 2015.     

Digging deeper into the limits of ancient DNA research on syphilis

The search for the origins of syphilis has a long history in the medical and anthropological literatures. If we know more about the emergence of the pathogen that causes the disease in humans we will understand its evolution through time and space as well as shed light on its current state in living populations. Ancient DNA techniques used to isolate Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum DNA from archaeological human specimens provide direct evidence of its existence in the past. However to date, only Kolman et al. (1999) have been successful in this endeavour, while other attempts have failed (e.g., Barnes and Thomas, 2006; Bouwman and Brown, 2005). Why has there been little success? This paper serves to compliment and add relevant information to Bouwman and Brown's and Barnes and Thomas' discussion concerning our inability to apply ancient DNA techniques to study venereal syphilis in past human populations.Our approach utilized 15 different human specimens from different geographies and different temporal periods: eight samples come from medically diagnosed individuals archived during the American Civil War period; six originate from the United Kingdom and predate 1492 with four of these samples having been previously analyzed by Bouwman and Brown and one sample comes from historic Canada. Human mitochondrial and amelogenin DNA, as well as several genes from the Treponema organism were analyzed revealing the relatively good preservation of human multi-copy and single copy DNA but not treponemal DNA. This study also incorporates a unique molecular experiment using rabbits infected with venereal syphilis to help illustrate that treponemal DNA disseminates to bone early during the first stages of infection but is not present in later stages of the disease using the techniques presented in this study.