This afterword reflects on the articles in this special issue, and places them within the context of other historiographic surveys of early modern women, including three from the 1990s and two more recent ones. It highlights similarities and differences in the scholarship on the Low Countries and that of other parts of Europe, and points particularly to common trends, including an emphasis on women’s actions and agency rather than representations of women or men’s ideas about women; a stress on specific spaces and routes, including the Atlantic World; the importance of material culture in examining many kinds of topics; a broadening of the notion of ‘literature’ and ‘art’ to include a wider range of genres and makers; attention to differences among women and the ways these intersected with gender; the growing use of digital technologies; and the importance of trans-disciplinary and sometimes transnational collaborations. Methods and theories developed in the Low Countries have provided models for other parts of Europe, and those developed elsewhere have sometimes been applied in the Netherlands, though more of this is possible.
The importance of the role of women as artists has been recognised and rightly continues to be researched. However, although there are exceptions, the scholarship that has been produced over the past two decades does not sufficiently challenge patriarchal, male-centric art historical research, with its focus on the so-called ‘creative genius’. The result, whether intentional or not, has been a continued emphasis on so-called stars, exceptional women, and trailblazers. Promising scholarship has focused on the role of women as artisan-makers or considered the gender-specific circumstances in which women operated. This scholarship, while of critical importance, unwittingly validates the assumption that the creation and production of (fine) art in the long seventeenth century in the Low Countries was primarily a man’s affair, with women relegated to more peripheral roles. If we are to truly write an inclusive art history, however, we must be willing to re-examine, expand, and even re-define traditional concepts in art history as they relate to the creation and production of art, pursue interdisciplinarity, and adopt the tools at our disposal, notably technical and object-based art history and the digital humanities.
This paper analyzes international collaborations in Computer Science, focusing on three major players: China, the European Union, and the United States. Drawing from a comprehensive literature review, we examine collaboration patterns, research impact, retraction rates, and the role of the Development Index in shaping research outcomes. Our findings show that while China, the EU, and the US lead global research efforts, other regions are narrowing the gap in publication volume. Collaborations involving these key regions tend to have lower retraction rates, reflecting stronger adherence to scientific standards. We also find that countries with a Very High Development Index contribute to research with higher citation rates and fewer retractions. Overall, this study highlights the value of international collaboration and the importance of inclusive, ethical practices in advancing global research in Computer Science.
Abstract This article contributes to burgeoning research on the alien population of late medieval England, that is, residents who had been born outside the realm. It focuses on the borough of Lynn – known as King's Lynn from 1536 – which was one of England's most prosperous port towns throughout the late Middle Ages. Covering the period from 1421 to 1524, during which the majority of immigrants were artisans from the Low Countries, the article traces their participation in both economic and civic life. In doing so, it places the experience of Dutch and other immigrants in Lynn within their wider historical context of alien immigration, both locally and nationally.
As the world marked the midterm of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, many countries are still struggling to monitor their climate and disaster risk because of the expensive large-scale survey of the distribution of exposure and physical vulnerability and, hence, are not on track in reducing risks amidst the intensifying effects of climate change. We present an ongoing effort in mapping this vital information using machine learning and time-series remote sensing from publicly available Sentinel-1 SAR GRD and Sentinel-2 Harmonized MSI. We introduce the development of "OpenSendaiBench" consisting of 47 countries wherein most are least developed (LDCs), trained ResNet-50 deep learning models, and demonstrated the region of Dhaka, Bangladesh by mapping the distribution of its informal constructions. As a pioneering effort in auditing global disaster risk over time, this paper aims to advance the area of large-scale risk quantification in informing our collective long-term efforts in reducing climate and disaster risk.
Due to limited resources and fast economic growth, designing optimal transportation road networks with traffic simulation and validation in a cost-effective manner is vital for developing countries, where extensive manual testing is expensive and often infeasible. Current rule-based road design generators lack diversity, a key feature for design robustness. Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) learn stochastic policies to sample from an unnormalized reward distribution, thus generating high-quality solutions while preserving their diversity. In this work, we formulate the problem of linking incident roads to the circular junction of a roundabout by a Markov decision process, and we leverage GFlowNets as the Junction-Art road generator. We compare our method with related methods and our empirical results show that our method achieves better diversity while preserving a high validity score.
Introduction: Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 1 in 3 women and poses a major human rights threat and public health burden, yet there is great variation in risk globally. Whilst individual risk factors are well-studied, less research has focussed on the structural and contextual drivers of IPV and how these co-occur to create contexts of high risk. Methods: We compiled IPV drivers from freely-accessible global country-level data sources and combined gender inequality, natural disasters, conflict, colonialism, socioeconomic development and inequality, homicide and social discrimination in a latent class analysis, and identified underlying ‘risk contexts’ based on fit statistics and theoretical plausibility (N=5,732 country-years; 190 countries). We used multinomial regression to compare risk contexts according to: proportion of population with disability, HIV/AIDS, refugee status, and mental health disorders; proportion of men with drug use disorders; men’s alcohol consumption; and population median age (N=1,654-5,725 country-years). Finally, we compared prevalence of physical and/or sexual IPV experienced by women in the past 12 months across risk contexts (N=3,175 country-years). Results: Three distinct risk contexts were identified: 1) non-patriarchal egalitarian, low rates of homicide; 2) patriarchal post-colonial, high rates of homicide; 3) patriarchal post-colonial conflict and disaster-affected. Compared to non-patriarchal egalitarian contexts, patriarchal post-colonial contexts had a younger age distribution and a higher prevalence of drug use disorders, but a lower prevalence of mental health disorders and a smaller refugee population. IPV risk was highest in the two patriarchal post-colonial contexts and associated with country income classification. Conclusions: Whilst our findings support the importance of gender norms in shaping women’s risk of experiencing IPV, they also point towards an association with a history of colonialism. To effectively address IPV for women in high prevalence contexts, structural interventions and policies are needed that address not only gender norms, but also broader structural inequalities arising from colonialism.
Using an unbalanced panel data covering 75 countries from 1991 to 2019, we explore how the political risk impacts on food reserve ratio. The empirical findings show that an increasing political risk negatively affect food reserve ratio, and same effects hold for both internal risk and external risk. Moreover, we find that the increasing external or internal risks both negatively affect production and exports, but external risk does not significantly impact on imports and it positively impacts on consumption, while internal risk negatively impacts on imports and consumption. The results suggest that most of governments have difficulty to raise subsequent food reserve ratio in face of an increasing political risk, no matter it is an internal risk or an external risk although the mechanisms behind the impacts are different.
This reply is based on the ‘online first’-version of the article ‘Gas, Oil and Heritage: Well-oiled Histories and Corporate Sponsorship in Dutch Museums (1990-2021)’, BMGN – Low Countries Review (Online first 2021) 1-28 by Plets and Kuijt, published in September 2021. The page numbers and footnotes mentioned in this reply therefor refer to the online first article. You can find this version here, https://bmgn-lchr.nl/article/view/7028/online-first. An amended version of Plets and Kuijt’s article was published in March 2022, both online and in print, DOI: https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.7028.
The page numbers and footnotes mentioned in this reply refer to the ‘online first’-version of the article ‘Gas, Oil and Heritage: Well oiled Histories and Corporate Sponsorship in Dutch Museums (1990-2021)’, BMGN – Low Countries Review (Online first 2021) 1-28 by Plets and Kuijt, published in September 2021. You can find this version here, https://bmgn-lchr.nl/article/view/7028/online-first. A reply to this article by Ad Maas has been published here: https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.11658. An amended version of Plets and Kuijt’s article was published in March 2022, both online and in print, DOI: https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.7028.
The cultural dynamics of reception are best understood as a reiterative process of reshaping and reframing. Reception as an object of critical study embraces first the history of how texts were read, disseminated, and consumed across media, languages, and geographical regions. But if this is the first port of call, such analysis quickly draws in questions about the relationship between reception and production, audience and agency, about contemporary and posthumous reputation. This special issue investigates the ways in which the act of reception is a reiterative process on a continuous spectrum with cultural production. Receivers — of texts, events, reputations — are mediators, creatively reconstituting that which they receive according to their own agendas and contemporary imperatives. The articles in this collection embrace international, comparative, and new material contexts for early modern reception studies as they address poetry, romance, letters, history, hagiography, autobiography, and literary reviews. The transnational perspectives that emerge lead from the Low Countries to Italy, Ireland to France and the Spanish Netherlands, Spain to England, and England to France. The introductory essay for the issue additionally examines recent digital projects concerned with the history of reading and reception, exploring in particular how digital resource design foregrounds questions of representation and our immersion, as critics, in the act of reception.
Pulmonary embolism (PE) is among the most common causes of maternal death in developed countries (1, 2). A potential explanation, besides the fact that pregnancy is associated with an increased risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE), is that diagnosing PE is particularly challenging during pregnancy. Pregnant women often have symptoms and signs suggestive of PE, such as shortness of breath or tachycardia (3). Evidence to guide clinicians on how to manage women with suspected PE is limited (4, 5). Because no prospective diagnostic management study has been published, clinical practice guidelines provide highly variable recommendations (59). Use of conventional diagnostic algorithms for PE is limited by several factors. Pregnant women were excluded from studies that derived and validated models assessing pretest clinical probability of PE, and no specific tool to assess pretest probability is available in this setting (7, 10). In the nonpregnant population, the D-dimer test, a simple, noninvasive, and inexpensive blood test, may be used to rule out PE in around 30% of outpatients who do not have a high pretest clinical probability (1114). The lack of a pretest probability assessment tool and the lack of prospective data confirming the safety of ruling out PE on the basis of a negative D-dimer result have limited the adoption of the D-dimer test in this setting. Moreover, D-dimer levels increase during pregnancy, limiting the chance of a negative result, although the exact yield of D-dimer for the diagnosis of VTE during pregnancy has never been formally evaluated (15). Given the limitations of noninvasive testing, most pregnant women with suspected PE require chest imaging tests, either a ventilationperfusion (V/Q) lung scan or computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA). Which to use during pregnancy has been a matter of debate, mainly due to concerns about the consequences of radiation for the mother and the fetus (16, 17). However, scientific societies and experts agree that the risks associated with either test are much lower than the potential risks of inappropriate or incomplete diagnostic management, such as death due to undiagnosed PE or bleeding and long-term management consequences of misdiagnosed PE (9, 1820). The rate of inconclusive test results leading to further testing is also a concern, with some retrospective studies suggesting that the rate of inconclusive CTPA results is much higher during pregnancy (21, 22). Use of bilateral lower limb venous compression ultrasonography (CUS) before chest imaging has been advocated. The finding of proximal deep venous thrombosis (DVT) is highly suggestive of PE, allowing for confirmation of the diagnosis without the need for additional chest imaging or anticoagulant treatment (23). However, others have raised concerns over the limited yield of CUS in the absence of DVT symptoms and its potentially lower accuracy during pregnancy (16). To address these knowledge gaps, we conducted a prospective diagnostic management outcome study for diagnosis of PE in pregnant women. We evaluated a diagnostic algorithm that included an assessment of pretest clinical probability using the revised Geneva score, a highly sensitive D-dimer test, bilateral CUS, CTPA, and a V/Q scan if results of CTPA were inconclusive (Figure 1). Figure 1. Diagnostic algorithm used in the study. CTPA= computed tomography pulmonary angiography; CUS= compression ultrasonography; PE= pulmonary embolism; V/Q= ventilationperfusion. Methods Study Population We conducted a multicenter, multinational, prospective diagnostic management outcome study. We screened outpatient pregnant women presenting at 1 of the participating centers with clinically suspected PE, defined as acute onset of new or worsening shortness of breath or chest pain without another obvious cause. Exclusion criteria were age less than 18 years, allergy to iodinated contrast agent, impaired renal function (defined as creatinine clearance <30 mL/min based on the CockcroftGault formula), diagnosis before presentation, indication for or current receipt of full-dose anticoagulation, and inaccessibility for follow-up. The study was performed in 2 countries (France and Switzerland), and 11 centers actively enrolled patients. The study was approved by the ethics committee according to legislation at each study site, and written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Diagnostic Work-up Pretest probability of PE was determined using the revised Geneva score. A D-dimer test was performed in all women by using the highly sensitive Vidas assay (bioMrieux). Pulmonary embolism was excluded in women who had low or intermediate pretest probability and a negative D-dimer result (<500 g/L). Women who had high pretest probability or a positive D-dimer result underwent bilateral CUS. The test was performed in a standard manner, with B-mode ultrasonography in transverse view and compression of the deep veins of the lower limbs (including the common femoral, femoral, popliteal, peroneal, and posterior tibial veins) along their whole length in the thigh and calf. We used the commonly accepted diagnostic criterion for DVT of lack of compressibility of a deep vein. When proximal DVT (popliteal vein or above) was found, PE was considered to be confirmed and no further testing was done. Women with a negative result on CUS underwent CTPA. The protocol for CTPA consisted of an evaluation of the pulmonary arteries up to and including the subsegmental vessels. Patients were examined while holding their breath or breathing shallowly, depending on the degree of dyspnea. Pulmonary embolism was considered to be present if contrast material outlined an intraluminal defect or if a vessel was totally occluded by low-attenuation material. Only multidetector CT machines were used. The acquisition parameters for CTPA were injection of a total volume of 100 mL of nonionic contrast material (iodine concentration, 300 to 350 mg/mL) with a power injector at 3 to 5 mL/s; imaging 9 to 20 seconds after initiation of the contrast material injection; scanning performed at 1.0 to 1.3 mm per section, with a pitch of 1.25 to 1.75, 120 kV, and 115 to 260 mA; and reconstruction of images at 0.6- to 0.8-mm intervals. If results of CTPA were inconclusive, a V/Q lung scan was performed, using 6 planar views and interpretation according to the PIOPED (Prospective Investigation Of Pulmonary Embolism Diagnosis) criteria. The complete diagnostic algorithm is depicted in Figure 1. Follow-up Patients with negative results on the diagnostic work-up were considered to not have PE, did not receive anticoagulant treatment, and had 3 months of clinical follow-up. They were instructed to contact the study team in case of new or worsening symptoms and were interviewed by telephone by the study coordinators at the end of follow-up using a standardized questionnaire. Whenever a possible event was disclosed, the clinical history, results of diagnostic tests, and clinic or admission reports were collected for adjudication. A 3-member independent adjudication committee reviewed all suspected VTE events, with blinding to the initial diagnostic work-up. Adjudication was based on full consensus. Outcomes The primary outcome was risk for adjudicated VTE events during the 3-month follow-up in women who did not receive anticoagulant therapy on the basis of negative results on the initial work-up. We calculated 95% CIs based on the Wilson score method without continuity correction (24) using an online calculator (25). Sample Size Estimation For the diagnostic strategy to be deemed safe, we determined a priori that the upper limit of the 95% CI around the estimate of 3-month VTE risk should not be higher than 3.0%. Hypothesizing a 5% prevalence of PE and a 1.5% 3-month thromboembolic risk after normal results on CTPA, we concluded that a sample of 300 patients would allow confirmation of the safety of the diagnostic strategy. Role of the Funding Source The funding sources had no role in the study design, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Results Between August 2008 and July 2016, 441 pregnant women were screened. Seventeen declined to participate; 11 were unable to provide consent; 9 had testing for PE before being approached; 5 were allergic to contrast media; 1 was receiving long-term, full-dose anticoagulant treatment; 2 withdrew consent during the study; and 1 was not pregnant, leaving 395 who were included in the study. Characteristics of the included women are presented in Table 1. Seventeen were receiving prophylactic anticoagulation at inclusion, mainly for a previous VTE. The study flow chart is shown in Figure 2. Table 1. Characteristics of Included Patients* Figure 2. Study flow chart: intention-to-diagnose analysis. Three-month VTE risk among patients who did not receive anticoagulant treatment after negative results on the work-up was 0.0% (CI, 0.0% to 1.0%). CTPA= computed tomography pulmonary angiography; CUS= compression ultrasonography; PE= pulmonary embolism; V/Q= ventilationperfusion; VTE= venous thromboembolism. Pretest probability was low in 192 women (48.6%), intermediate in 200 (50.6%), and high in 3 (0.8%). Among the 392 women who did not have high pretest probability, 46 (11.7%) had a negative D-dimer result, 341 (87%) had a positive result, and 5 (1.3%) had no D-dimer testing. The proportion of negative D-dimer results decreased with increasing gestational age (21 of 83 [25.3%] during the first trimester, 19 of 170 [11.1%] during the second trimester, and 6 of 142 [4.2%] during the third trimester). Of note, 11 women underwent CTPA despite a negative D-dimer result; 10 had negative CTPA results, and 1 had an inconclusive result followed by a normal V/Q scan. Of the 349 women with a positive D-dimer result, no D-dimer test, or high pretest probability, 321 (92%) had negative results on CUS, 7 (2.0%) ha
Between 1557 and 1565, the Antwerp city council carried out almost all of its executions of religious dissidents by drowning them in secret. This presents a puzzle to current historiography, as historians of capital punishment have identified the public and spectacular nature of early modern executions as their defining elements. To understand these secret executions, this article traces contemporary notions of secrecy and openness using a wide range of sources, including chronicles, martyrologies, correspondences, and bailiff accounts. It argues that in this period, the concept of secrecy had more to do with closing off space than with hiding knowledge, and that both hiding and showing were important strategies in the performing of executions. The authorities did not control these; rather, by negotiating the dynamics of hiding and showing executions, the central authorities, local magistrates, and the religious groups whose members were being executed constructed their meaning and effect. As such, the case of the secret executions in Antwerp nuances the current paradigm of executions as public events orchestrated by authorities to display sovereign power.
The energy trade is an important pillar of each country's development, making up for the imbalance in the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Geopolitical risks affect the energy trade of various countries to a certain extent, but the causes of geopolitical risks are complex, and energy trade also involves many aspects, so the impact of geopolitics on energy trade is also complex. Based on the monthly data from 2000 to 2020 of 17 emerging economies, this paper employs the fixed-effect model and the regression-discontinuity (RD) model to verify the negative impact of geopolitics on energy trade first and then analyze the mechanism and heterogeneity of the impact. The following conclusions are drawn: First, geopolitics has a significant negative impact on the import and export of the energy trade, and the inhibition on the export is greater than that on the import. Second, the impact mechanism of geopolitics on the energy trade is reflected in the lagging effect and mediating effect on the imports and exports; that is, the negative impact of geopolitics on energy trade continued to be significant 10 months later. Coal and crude oil prices, as mediating variables, decreased to reduce the imports and exports, whereas natural gas prices showed an increase. Third, the impact of geopolitics on energy trade is heterogeneous in terms of national attribute characteristics and geo-event types.
We propose an original application of screening methods using machine learning to detect collusive groups of firms in procurement auctions. As a methodical innovation, we calculate coalition-based screens by forming coalitions of bidders in tenders to flag bid-rigging cartels. Using Swiss, Japanese and Italian procurement data, we investigate the effectiveness of our method in different countries and auction settings, in our cases first-price sealed-bid and mean-price sealed-bid auctions. We correctly classify 90\% of the collusive and competitive coalitions when applying four machine learning algorithms: lasso, support vector machine, random forest, and super learner ensemble method. Finally, we find that coalition-based screens for the variance and the uniformity of bids are in all the cases the most important predictors according the random forest.
Giovanni Abramo, Dag W. Aksnes, Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo
In this study, the scientific performance of Italian and Norwegian university professors is analysed using bibliometric indicators. The study is based on over 36,000 individuals and their publication output during the period 2011-2015. Applying a multidimensional indicator in which several aspects of the research performance are captured, we find large differences in the performance of men and women. These gender differences are evident across all analysed levels, such as country, field, and academic position. However, most of the gender differences can be explained by the tails of the distributions-in particular, there is a much higher proportion of men among the top 10% performing scientists. For the remaining 90% of the population, the gender differences are practically non-existent. The results of the two countries, which differ in terms of the societal role of women, are contrasting. Further, we discuss possible biases that are intrinsic in quantitative performance indicators, which might disfavour female researchers.
Gianpaolo Zammarchi, Francesco Mola, Claudio Conversano
During the recent Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, the microblogging service Twitter has been widely used to share opinions and reactions to events. Italy was one of the first European countries to be severely affected by the outbreak and to establish lockdown and stay-at-home orders, potentially leading to country reputation damage. We resort to sentiment analysis to investigate changes in opinions about Italy reported on Twitter before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Using different lexicons-based methods, we find a breakpoint corresponding to the date of the first established case of COVID-19 in Italy that causes a relevant change in sentiment scores used as proxy of the country reputation. Next, we demonstrate that sentiment scores about Italy are strongly associated with the levels of the FTSE-MIB index, the Italian Stock Exchange main index, as they serve as early detection signals of changes in the values of FTSE-MIB. Finally, we make a content-based classification of tweets into positive and negative and use two machine learning classifiers to validate the assigned polarity of tweets posted before and after the outbreak.