Search

Screening items for parameter drift helps protect against serious validity threats and ensure score comparability when equating forms. Although many high-stakes credentialing examinations operate with small sample sizes, few studies have investigated methods to detect drift in small sample equating. This study demonstrates that several newly researched drift detection strategies can improve equating accuracy under certain conditions with small samples where some anchor items display item parameter drift. Results showed that the recently proposed methods mINFIT and mOUTFIT as well as the more conventional Robust-z helped mitigate the adverse effects of drifting anchor items in conditions with higher drift levels or with more than 75 examinees. In contrast, the Logit Difference approach excessively removed invariant anchor items. The discussion provides recommendations on how practitioners working with small samples can use the results to make more informed decisions regarding item parameter drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The birth of the nautical chart in the late medieval period is seen as a watershed moment in the history of cartography. So far, however, the artisanal practices that permitted the proliferation of sea charts have remained poorly understood and little evidence has been recovered from extant charts on which to base the production history of the surviving charts. This article describes a systematic exploration of the techniques employed in the copying of coastlines on manuscript charts between the fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Attention is drawn to the ways different processes shaped contemporary late-medieval and early-modern understanding of the Mediterranean and what the techniques may reveal of that thinking. By reframing the charts in terms of their characteristics as drawings and placing map making in the broader context of two-dimensional graphic art, and by making use of the ever-growing corpus of high-resolution digital reproductions, we gain new insights into the chartmakers' changing approaches to the transmission of geographical information. At the same time, a number of directions for further research are opened up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Imago Mundi journal has awarded the tenth biennial Prize to Šima Krtalić for their article titled 'Anchoring the Image of the Sea: Copying Coastlines on Manuscript Nautical Charts from the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period'. The article was judged to have made the most significant contribution to the discipline. The judges, who were drawn from the Directors of Imago Mundi, considered articles published in volumes 73 and 74 of the journal. The winner received a prize of $2,000. The Imago Mundi Prize is sponsored by Jossy Nebenzahl on behalf of the late Kenneth Nebenzahl. The article is available for free on the Taylor & Francis website for six months. [Extracted from the article]

A former managing director of the Linthouse shipyard, he was the last of the old brigade of Clydeside Presbyterian shipbuilders to pass away and to a man blamed the shipyard trade unions as the major culprits in the demise of Clyde shipbuilding. Sandy Stephen, who died, aged 95 on 5 October 2022 at his baronial home in Balfron, Stirlingshire, was the seventh generation and last survivor of the shipbuilding dynasty that ran Alexander Stephen and Sons Ltd at Linthouse on the Upper Clyde. Although shipbuilding ceased at Linthouse, Stephen had the best steel-working facilities of the five merged shipyards and became the centre of UCS steelwork. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the discovery of an 18th century shipwreck near Drumbeg, North West of Scotland and presents the findings of the survey of the shipwreck site. Topics include the discovery of the shipwreck, the antiques found at the site which includes Naval Ordnance or cannons, the hull of the ship and the anchor recovered at the site. It presents an analysis of the ships construction period and the possible identification of the ship.