Spatial Filtering for Identifying a Shortest Path Around Obstacles

The shortest path between two locations is crucial for location modeling, spatial analysis, and wayfinding in complex environments. When no transportation system or network exists, continuous space movement adds substantial complexity to identifying a best path as there are increased travel options as well as barriers inhibiting potential movement. To derive the shortest path, various methods have been developed. Recent work has attempted to exploit spatial knowledge and geographic information system functionality, representing significant advantages over existing methods. However, a high density of obstacles increases computational complexity making real‐time solution difficult in some situations. This article presents a spatial filtering method to enhance Euclidean shortest path derivation in complex environments. The new approach offers substantial computational improvement while still guaranteeing an optimal path is found. Application results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach and its comparative superiority.     

Inference in Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression

A recent paper expands the well-known geographically weighted regression (GWR) framework significantly by allowing the bandwidth or smoothing factor in GWR to be derived separately for each covariate in the model—a framework referred to as multiscale GWR (MGWR). However, one limitation of the MGWR framework is that, until now, no inference about the local parameter estimates was possible. Formally, the so-called “hat matrix,” which projects the observed response vector into the predicted response vector, was available in GWR but not in MGWR. This paper addresses this limitation by reframing GWR as a Generalized Additive Model, extending this framework to MGWR and then deriving standard errors for the local parameters in MGWR. In addition, we also demonstrate how the effective number of parameters can be obtained for the overall fit of an MGWR model and for each of the covariates within the model. This statistic is essential for comparing model fit between MGWR, GWR, and traditional global models, as well as for adjusting multiple hypothesis tests. We demonstrate these advances to the MGWR framework with both a simulated data set and a real-world data set and provide a link to new software for MGWR (MGWR1.0) which includes the novel inferential framework for MGWR described here.     

The regular canons and the liturgy of the Latin East

ABSTRACT

The present paper examines liturgical rites practised in the crusader states from the perspective of its agents, introducing the monastic and institutional framework in which the liturgy was commissioned and performed, that is, the history of canons regular in the Latin East. The first part identifies the normative basis of the Augustinian canons’ vita communis and looks into the relationship between the clerics’ monastic customs and their liturgical observances. The second part investigates how the canons’ spiritual ideals influenced particular components and features of their liturgy, focusing on the mimetic highlights of the church year and their importance for the way in which the canons strove to impersonate the Apostles and the primitive Christian community of Jerusalem.     

‘‘This Secret Town’: British Intelligence,the Special Relationship,and the Vietnam War’

This article seeks to revise our understanding of Cold War intelligence as a practice. The conventional view is that Britain's MI6 waged a battle in the shadows consisting of espionage and covert action. However, a number of MI6 officers operated as observers, conducting what we might call ‘intelligence without espionage’. The dual identity of these officers raises important questions about how intelligence operated in the blurred space between traditional diplomacy and human espionage using agents. Using the case of MI6 officers in the British Consulate-General in Hanoi between 1965 and 1972, this article explores how a dual identity provided alternative means of acquiring intelligence within a highly secure state that exhibited remarkable paranoia about foreign spies. Furthermore, the United States lacked diplomatic representation in Hanoi and so the British Consulate provided a remarkable window for Western intelligence on the effect of ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’, Lyndon Johnson's escalating air campaign against North Vietnam. Both Johnson and Harold Wilson were avid readers of this material. Accordingly, in the context of the Cold War intelligence partnership between the UK and US, the consulate in Hanoi was an example of the ‘inverse’ special relationship, in which Britain enjoyed unique value.     

Platon im Arzneibuch und der Heller am Tresen Pharmazie im 16. Jahrhundert zwischen Humanismus,Stadtgesellschaft und Ökonomie

The study focuses on the development of pharmacopoeas during the early modern time. First, the >Nouvo Receptario< of 1499 came out in Florence as the first printed pharmacopoea of a north‐Italian town, edited by the guild of medicins and apothercaries. Following trading routes the idea of >pharmacopoea< arrived in Nuremberg, where the counsil of the town asked the humanist Valerius Cordus to prepare such a book. Printed in 1546, it quickly became the standard in preparing medicines for other towns in southern Germany. At Augsburg, a wealthy and powerful town, the physicians wrote their own pharmacopoea which was printed in 1564. The comparison of the three pharmacopoeas shows that its printing depended on the social stucture and the financial aspects of each town. But even if the apothecaries, the doctors or the mayors were trained in the humanistic tradtion, the materia medica still continued in the arabic tradition, i.e. the old drugs and preparations remained in these pharmacopoeas, probably for financial reasons.     

Financialization and Global Commodity Chains: Distributional Implications for Cotton in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Restructuring of global and local markets has led to an increased influence of commodity derivatives markets on commodity price setting. This has critical implications for price risks experienced by actors along commodity chains. Commodity derivatives markets have undergone significant changes that have been referred to as the ‘financialization of commodities’, which we define as an increase in trading activity by financial investors and the reorientation of business strategies by commodity trading houses towards risk management and financial activities. This article assesses how these global financialization processes affect commodity producers in low‐income countries via the operational dynamics of global commodity chains and national market structures. It investigates how prices are set and transmitted and how risks are distributed and managed in the cotton sectors in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Tanzania. It concludes that uneven exposure to price instability and access to price risk management have important distributional implications. Whilst international traders have the capacity to deal with price risks through hedging, in addition to expanding their profit possibilities through financial activities on derivatives markets, local actors in producing countries face the challenge of increased short‐termism — albeit to different extents depending on national market structures — with limited access to risk management.