Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks [Scholarly Article - Nature, March 2022]

Title:

Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks 

 

Authors:

Yannis Assael, Thea Sommerschield, Brendan Shillingford, Mahyar Bordbar, John Pavlopoulos, Marita Chatzipanagiotou, Ion Androutsopoulos, Jonathan Prag & Nando de Freitas 

 

Published:

Nature, 9 March 2022

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z

 

Abstract:

Ancient history relies on disciplines such as epigraphy—the study of inscribed texts known as inscriptions—for evidence of the thought, language, society and history of past civilizations. However, over the centuries, many inscriptions have been damaged to the point of illegibility, transported far from their original location and their date of writing is steeped in uncertainty. Here we present Ithaca, a deep neural network for the textual restoration, geographical attribution and chronological attribution of ancient Greek inscriptions. Ithaca is designed to assist and expand the historian’s workflow. The architecture of Ithaca focuses on collaboration, decision support and interpretability. While Ithaca alone achieves 62% accuracy when restoring damaged texts, the use of Ithaca by historians improved their accuracy from 25% to 72%, confirming the synergistic effect of this research tool. Ithaca can attribute inscriptions to their original location with an accuracy of 71% and can date them to less than 30 years of their ground-truth ranges, redating key texts of Classical Athens and contributing to topical debates in ancient history. This research shows how models such as Ithaca can unlock the cooperative potential between artificial intelligence and historians, transformationally impacting the way that we study and write about one of the most important periods in human history.

Rhodes University, South Africa - How colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of biodiversity

Title:

How colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of biodiversity

Published:

Rhodes University, 16 February 2022

https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/howcolonialhistoryandglobaleconomicsdistortourunderstandingofbiodivers.html

From the news article:

In an article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Rhodes University PhD student Aviwe Matiwane shows, along with six other researchers, how colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity.

New book examines how science and tech shaped South African history [by William Beinart & Saul Dubow Smuts; Online ISBN: 9781108938198]

Title:

 

 

Authors:

William Beinart Professor, University of Oxford  

&

Saul Dubow Smuts, Professor of Commonwealth History, University of Cambridge

 

Published:

The Conversation, 10 February 2022

https://theconversation.com/new-book-examines-how-science-and-tech-shaped-south-african-history-175669

 

From the article:

There were many strands in the weaving of this history, some neglected in the focus on race and political power. These include the profound role that science and technology played in shaping South Africa’s history. In our new book, The Scientific Imagination in South Africa, 1700 to the Present, we offer a historical overview of scientific ideas, practices and institutions in South Africa over more than three centuries.

 

Student movements and politics in Latin America: a historical reconceptualization [Scholarly Article - Higher Education, 4 February 2021]

Title:

Student movements and politics in Latin America: a historical reconceptualization

 

Author:

Imanol Ordorika

Affiliations: 

Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

&

University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Published:

Higher Education, 4 February 2021

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-020-00656-6

Abstract:

Student movements have played a significant political role in the history of Latin America. Since the beginning of the 20th century until now, students have transformed their universities, resisted totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and struggled against US military occupations. In the early 1900s these movements promoted university reforms, autonomy, shared governance, Latin Americanism, and university obligations towards social change. During the 1960s and 1970s, they fought for democratization and committed to attempts for profound radical transformations of society in many countries. In the 1980s student movements resisted structural adjustment policies and attempts to increase tuition. A decade later they continued to defend public universities against privatization and marketization brought about by the neoliberal model. In spite of these historical facts, mainstream literature in the 1980s and 1990s predicted the decline and even death of student movements in the region. A historical reconceptualization of student mobilization is presented in this article in order to fully grasp the impact and sustained presence of student movements in Latin America up to the present day. In this way it is possible to understand the existing links between movements over time and across countries, the continuity and shifts in student discourses, demands and strategies, and the emergence of new struggles for gender equality and to eradicate violence against women.