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Studying changes in land use per capita is critical for understanding the interactions between humans and ecosystems, and for modeling the impacts of land use changes on climate systems. However, many uncertainties in historical estimates significantly hinder climate modeling. This study estimated the per capita cropland area in traditional agricultural regions of China over the past millennium using historical-document-based and modern statistical cropland and population data. The findings showed that changes in the per capita cropland area in the provinces of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River could be characterized into three stages: slow decrease, rapid increase, and fluctuating decrease, whereas, in the provinces of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, there was a continuous decrease. Spatially, the per capita cropland area was higher in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and lower in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the study period. The per capita cropland areas showed clear differences in the HYDE dataset and our study; the corresponding values of our study were 2.1–8.0, 1.7–8.2, and 1.6–8.8 times higher than those from the HYDE dataset for the early Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old Jawi Manuscripts (OJM) are crucial to historical studies, offering insights into past societies. However, degradation from mishandling and environmental factors can impair their legibility. To preserve OJM, image inpainting and segmentation are essential for restoring corrupted areas and identifying text. Recently, the Gaussian Regularization Segmentation (GRS) model has shown effectiveness in intensity inhomogeneity grayscale image segmentation, though it was not designed for corrupted OJM images. Therefore, this study aimed to reformulate the GRS model to restore and segment text from real corrupted OJM images. The methodology begins with the incorporation of the Mumford-Shah and Bertalmio inpainting models into the GRS model as new fitting terms, resulting in the Modified Gaussian Regularization Segmentation Mumford-Shah (MGRSM) model and the Modified Gaussian Regularization Segmentation Bertalmio (MGRSB) model, respectively. MATLAB was used to implement these models, and their performance was assessed on 30 corrupted OJM samples from Malay Ethnomathematics Research Group, with expert evaluations and efficiency measured by average elapsed time. The MGRSM model achieved 38.4 percent and 12.4 percent higher overall total scores from experts in terms of segmentation accuracy compared to the GRS and MGRSB models, respectively. While the GRS model is the fastest, the MGRSM model provides superior accuracy, with an average processing time of 9.35 seconds, making it the most optimal for restoring and segmenting OJM images. This approach not only enhances the preservation of historical manuscripts but also provides a practical tool for researchers and historians in safeguarding our cultural heritage.

We present a novel approach for automatically classifying illustrations from historical Chinese local gazetteers using modern deep learning techniques. Our goal is to facilitate the digital organization and study of a large quantity of digitized local gazetteers. We evaluate the performance of eight state-of-the-art deep neural networks on a dataset of 4,309 manually labeled and organized images of Chinese local gazetteer illustrations, grouped into three coarse categories and nine fine classes according to their contents. Our experiments show that DaViT achieved the highest classification accuracy of 93.9 per cent and F1-score of 90.6 per cent. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of deep learning models in accurately recognizing and categorizing historical local gazetteer illustrations. We also developed a user-friendly web service to enable researchers easy access to the developed models. The potential for extending this method to other collections of scanned documents beyond Chinese local gazetteers makes a significant contribution to the study of visual materials in the arts and history in the digital humanities field. The dataset used in this study is publicly available and can be used for further research in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Handwriting-based technologies have progressed significantly over the years. Scientists have worked beyond just recognizing pieces of plain text from paper. With archaeological advancements, discovery of ancient documents has not been as scarce as it was in the past. However, such documents are discovered in perfect condition once in a blue-moon. They are often subjected to degradation due to the perils of time and understanding them requires skilled manpower which is not easy to find. Here, an automated system is proposed for this task. The proposed system uses a new CNN-based framework to analyze the macro and micro features of an image to recognize the text. Experiments are performed with over 250K historical images of numerals from a publicly available dataset and a highest accuracy of 99.68% is obtained. The data is further subjected to different type of noises and distortions. A novel technique is used to introduce synthesized degradation in the documents. The system performs steadily in all these experimental scenarios. Comparative analysis indicates that our results are higher than the reported works and other standard techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novels and history have an intertwined relationship, as both rely on shared elements such as memory and narration to convey events and characters. Many writers such as Ali Ahmed Bakathir, Jurji Zaydan, and Aly Al-Garem have preferred the historical novel as a medium for exploring historical events and characters, focusing on both the form and content in their works. This relates to many reasons such as culture, education, having the glory of Arabia and Islam emerge, and the call to imitate role models. In spite of the importance of these objectives, the representation of history in the narrative blog in recent history has not merely been to retain the past but has also been used to mask the reality and incidents of the present, as has been represented in Gamal al-Ghitani's novel Al-Zini Barakat and Mohamed Jibril's From the Papers of Abu Al-Tayyib Al-Mutannabi. This study analyzes Mohamed Mustagab, who blended imagination and history in his narrative writing, and his work The Secret History of Numan Abd al-Hafiz. The study aims to identify the interferences between the novel and history by focusing on the techniques the author employed to blend oral and written traditions while maintaining the literary and imaginary aspects of the text. Additionally, the study explores the author's use of a language resembling folk narration characterized by distinct linguistic and grammatical features in comparison to formal scientific writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying changes in land use per capita is critical for understanding the interactions between humans and ecosystems, and for modeling the impacts of land use changes on climate systems. However, many uncertainties in historical estimates significantly hinder climate modeling. This study estimated the per capita cropland area in traditional agricultural regions of China over the past millennium using historical-document-based and modern statistical cropland and population data. The findings showed that changes in the per capita cropland area in the provinces of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River could be characterized into three stages: slow decrease, rapid increase, and fluctuating decrease, whereas, in the provinces of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, there was a continuous decrease. Spatially, the per capita cropland area was higher in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and lower in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the study period. The per capita cropland areas showed clear differences in the HYDE dataset and our study; the corresponding values of our study were 2.1–8.0, 1.7–8.2, and 1.6–8.8 times higher than those from the HYDE dataset for the early Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, respectively.

Layout Analysis (the identification of zones and their classification) is the first step along line segmentation in Optical Character Recognition and similar tasks. The ability of identifying main body of text from marginal text or running titles makes the difference between extracting the work full text of a digitized book and noisy outputs. We show that most segmenters focus on pixel classification and that polygonization of this output has not been used as a target for the latest competition on historical document (ICDAR 2017 and onwards), despite being the focus in the early 2010s. We propose to shift, for efficiency, the task from a pixel classification-based polygonization to an object detection using isothetic rectangles. We compare the output of Kraken and YOLOv5 in terms of segmentation and show that the later severely outperforms the first on small datasets (1110 samples and below). We release two datasets for training and evaluation on historical documents as well as a new package, YALTAi, which injects YOLOv5 in the segmentation pipeline of Kraken 4.1.

Copyright of Investigación Bibliotecológica is the property of UNAM, Centro Universitario de Investigaciones Bibliotecologicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) was not only a priest and a poet: he also wrote reports from cultural and political events and provided feedback to the works of others. Among other things, he considerably contributed to the publication of the minutes and diary from the Slovak national assembly held in Martin on 6th and 7th June 1861 where the Memorandum of the Slovak nation was adopted. A. Sládkovič assembled all the materials from the event and prepared them for publication. His goals in this regard were to provide information, preserve the memory of the events, and reflect on the activities of the Slovak nationally-oriented intelligentsia. In this way, he captured the personalities connected to the national movement and events forming national awareness. The article describes the circumstances under which A. Sládkovič participated on the documenting of the memorandum assembly and shows that he contributed not only to the preparation of the materials for publication, but also to the capturing of the atmosphere under which the document was written.

Andrej Sládkovič (1820 - 1872) was not only a priest and a poet: he also wrote reports from cultural and political events and provided feedback to the works of others. Among other things, he considerably contributed to the publication of the minutes and diary from the Slovak national assembly held in Martin on 6th and 7th June 1861 where the Memorandum of the Slovak nation was adopted. A. Sládkovič assembled all the materials from the event and prepared them for publication. His goals in this regard were to provide information, preserve the memory of the events, and reflect on the activities of the Slovak nationally-oriented intelligentsia. In this way, he captured the personalities connected to the national movement and events forming national awareness. The article describes the circumstances under which A. Sládkovič participated on the documenting of the memorandum assembly and shows that he contributed not only to the preparation of the materials for publication, but also to the capturing of the atmosphere under which the document was written. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sectio F: Historia is the property of Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

"Travel writing in Urdu started in nineteenth century travelogue of Yousaf Hussain Kamboh Posh "Ajaibat Farhang" is the first Travelogue of Urdu Travelogue of "Hajj" of Dr. Shaheen Zaide is a historical document. She described the very aspect of her journey, sufferings and observations in detail as the reader reads, he feels that he is with her in the journey. She makes his more interesting by presented rodad of journey in fiction style.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Larq Journal for Philosophy, Linguistics & Social Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of História Unisinos is the property of Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Intus-Legere Historia is the property of Intus-Legere Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents the results of the study of the methodology of internal critique of written sources used by Ukrainian historians in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century who worked on the history of education. The authors state that in Ukrainian historical science there is no synthesised study of the methodology of internal critique of written sources that was used by the researchers of the history of education. It is investigated that during the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, Ukrainian scholars gradually improved the internal critique of the sources. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Ukrainian historians had mostly used documents rather uncritically, "extracting" from them information about the past without proper verification. It was often made without regard to the author's position of the source, the explanatory and rhetorical layer of the document. But since the 1850s, the understanding of the need to delve into the text of the source and comprehend the position of the author of the historical document has been established in Ukrainian historical science critically. It was found that Ukrainian historians of education barely applied internal criticism to the so-called "official" sources on the history of education (legislation, statutes of educational institutions, reporting documentation of educational authorities, minutes of meetings of pedagogical or academic councils, etc.). These documents were not in doubt, especially if they concerned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On the other hand, Ukrainian scholars have shown the ability to prove the authenticity of the evidence of a written historical document both by analysing only its content and by comparing the content of this source with other sources. The article proves that in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Ukrainian historians most often used the following procedures among the methods of internal criticism of the written source to determine the authenticity of a historical document: by indicating the specifics of the document; by analysing the author's ability to reflect reality adequately; by analysing the motives of the author by confirming the information from one source related to the previous location, chronologically, thematically and ideologically; and through the use of logical and epistemological procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow River has caused suffering to people with its devastating floods throughout human history. Understanding the occurrence of Yellow River floods and their relationship with climate change is crucial for sustainable water governance in North China. Here we synthesize historical and climatic records in the Yellow River basin to investigate their relationship during the past two millennia. Based on historical archives of river floods and levee breaches, we developed a decadally resolved Yellow River flooding frequency record from 221 BCE to 1949 CE, which provides a rare chance to perceive the river's long-term flood dynamics. As revealed, the Yellow River flooding can be divided into two distinct stages: an early stage of low-frequency floods from the 220s BCE to the 890s CE; and a late stage of high-frequency floods during the 900s–1940s CE. A substantial increase in flooding frequency around the 10th century fell within the transition period into the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), during which the Yellow River basin featured warm and wet climate conditions. Coincidentally, human management of the Yellow River intensified as a response to more severe and frequent floods. The intense river management persisted thereafter and resulted in the super-elevation of the riverbed, which made the river more prone to flooding. Consequently, the Yellow River flooding frequency remained high even after entering the Little Ice Age, during which the river basin featured cool temperature and reduced precipitation. Our study suggests that the dramatic transition from a previous cool, dry into a warm, wet climate during the MCA period triggered intense human management of river channels and the establishment of the flood-prone nature of the Yellow River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we tackle the problem of categorizing and identifying cross-depicted historical motifs using recent deep learning techniques, with aim of developing a content-based image retrieval system. As cross-depiction, we understand the problem that the same object can be represented (depicted) in various ways. The objects of interest in this research are watermarks, which are crucial for dating manuscripts. For watermarks, cross-depiction arises due to two reasons: (i) there are many similar representations of the same motif, and (ii) there are several ways of capturing the watermarks, i.e., as the watermarks are not visible on a scan or photograph, the watermarks are typically retrieved via hand tracing, rubbing, or special photographic techniques. This leads to different representations of the same (or similar) objects, making it hard for pattern recognition methods to recognize the watermarks. While this is a simple problem for human experts, computer vision techniques have problems generalizing from the various depiction possibilities. In this paper, we present a study where we use deep neural networks for categorization of watermarks with varying levels of detail. The macro-averaged F1-score on an imbalanced 12 category classification task is 88.3%, the multi-labelling performance (Jaccard Index) on a 622 label task is 79.5%. To analyze the usefulness of an image-based system for assisting humanities scholars in cataloguing manuscripts, we also measure the performance of similarity matching on expert-crafted test sets of varying sizes (50 and 1000 watermark samples). A significant outcome is that all relevant results belonging to the same super-class are found by our system (Mean Average Precision of 100%), despite the cross-depicted nature of the motifs. This result has not been achieved in the literature so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Shenyang Agricultural University is the property of Journal of Shenyang Agricultural University Editorial Department and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Binarization of ancient degraded document images is a very important step for their preservation and digital use. In this paper, a new simple threshold-based method is proposed for binarization of ancient degraded documents. The proposed method is inspired from the most popular threshold-based methods by exploiting texture information features extracted from both the filtered image using the Gabor filter and the original degraded document. Firstly, a preprocessing stage using the Wiener filter is performed on the degraded image for facilitating the binarization. Then, a Gabor filter bank is weighted according to the dominant slant of the document's image script for estimating the binarization threshold. Finally, a post-processing stage is applied based on morphological operator for reducing some artifacts. For setting optimal parameters, a new protocol is proposed in the design stage by taking into account the degradation type. Exhaustive experiments are achieved using standard DIBCO datasets series reorganized according to the degradation type and the year of contest. Obtained results are compared against various well-known threshold-based methods. On the other hand, a comparison is achieved with the state-of-the-art methods. Promising results and stability are noticed for the proposed technique, specifically for ink bleed-through degradation and low-contrasted documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]