Two Byzantine craftsmen in fifteenth-century London

It is generally thought, largely on the basis of a letter of Cardinal Bessarion, that, by the 1440s, the Byzantine Empire had been completely overtaken by the West in all spheres of technical expertise. This idea is challenged the evidence of some documents the Public Record Office in London which show that, between at least 1441 and 1483, two gold wire drawers from Constantinople, named Andronicus and Alexius Effomatos, lived and worked in the English capital. It is argued that these craftsmen were welcomed because they specialised in making gold thread of a type which had long been manufactured in Byzantium but was superior in strength and economy to that produced in England. Indeed, since the earliest evidence for native English production of this type of gold thread dates from the period of their residence in London, there is at least the possibility that they actually introduced their craft into England, reversing the relative balance of technology as it is usually portrayed.     

The Influence of Data Aggregation on the Stability of p-Median Location Model Solutions

Location planning often makes use of data in an aggregate form without a clear understanding of the consequences. Although research has been directed toward addressing aggregate data usage in location planning, there have been conflicting findings on the stability of location model solutions obtained using aggregated data. This paper analyzes the question of location model solution stability from a somewhat different perspective than previous researchers in that locational configurations identified for aggregate data are evaluated using the original disaggregate data. Analytical results demonstrate that a high level of solution stability does exist when aggregated data are utilized. Further, this analysis is based upon the use of what can be expected to be worst case aggregation approaches. This suggests that the use of aggregate data is adequate for conducting locational studies.     

A Note on Adjusting National Input-Output Data for Regional Table Construction

Regional analysts face a trade-off between timeliness and detail of commodity-industry data. The trade-off exists because the Bureau of Economic Analysis national aggregated annual update tables are published for years more recent than those for which the disaggregated benchmark accounts are available. Conventional wisdom holds that regionalization should precede aggregation, so a disaggregated foundation table is preferred to an aggregation of that same table. This paper shows that the Table Disaggregation and Adjustment (TDA) method of Jackson and Comer (1993) produces a better foundation for regionalization than an unadjusted benchmark, price-updated benchmark, or aggregated annual update table.     

Scientology's winning streak (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In this editorial the author considers the effect of recent legal judgments enabling Scientology weddings in England.