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.     

The Power-Transition Crisis of the 240s BCE and the Creation of the Parthian State

This article combines historical analysis with international-relations theory to contend that geopolitical developments around the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state and a new international system of states in the ancient East. Since the death of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire had ruled over much of the East; however, disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the West caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s–230s BCE. The troubles of the Seleucid state caused what political scientists call a power-transition crisis that damaged Seleucid hegemony over the East when the Seleucid satraps of Parthia and Bactria declared their independence. Moreover, the deleterious civil wars between Seleucid dynasts in the West and the rebellions of eastern satraps encouraged the nomadic Parni tribe from the Central Asian steppe (later known as the Parthians), who had been seeking a new homeland for decades, to invade northeastern Iran and establish a new kingdom. With the Parni's successful conquest of Parthia and its immediate consequences, a new interstate system of tripolarity between the Seleucid Empire, Bactrian Kingdom, and the newly formed Parthian state emerged in the ancient East.     

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.     

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.     

Molecular identification and characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in ancient Egyptian mummies

A considerable number of molecular studies have provided evidence for the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTB) DNA in ancient skeletal and mummified material. Moreover first studies on the differentiation of sub‐types of the MTB (M. tuberculosis, M. bovis, M. africanum, M. microti, M. canettii) have successfully been performed on ancient tissue samples. In our present study we extend previous analyses and investigate bone and soft tissue samples from 118 ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletons from the Pre‐ to Early Dynastic site of Abydos and different tomb complexes in Thebes West, which were built and used between the Middle and New Kingdom until the Late Period (c. 2050–500 BC). The samples were tested for the presence of MTB DNA and further identified by spoligotyping. Twenty‐six samples provided molecular evidence for the presence of ancient mycobacterial DNA by amplification of a 123 base pair fragment of the repetitive element IS6110. Out of the 26 positive samples, 12 provided a complete spoligotyping signature, which was compared to an international database. Ten further cases showed an incomplete, patchy hybridization pattern, while in four cases no spoligotyping signature could be obtained. Interestingly, they all show either a M. tuberculosis or M. africanum pattern, but none revealed a M. bovis specific pattern. In the material from a Middle Kingdom tomb (used exclusively between c. 2050–1650 BC) several samples revealed a M. africanum type specific spoligotyping signature, while samples from later periods provided patterns typical for M. tuberculosis. This study clearly shows that spoligotyping can be used for the characterization of members of the MTB in historic tissue samples. In addition, our results do not support the theory that M. tuberculosis originated from the M. bovis type. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.