Origin and Promotion of Artificial Field Rearing Technology of Tussah

The artificial field rearing technology of Tussah silkworm is the first creation of China's sericulture, and thus opened the industrialization process of modern silk industry in the world. Because the literature on the origin and dissemination of the artificial field rearing of tussah is more in ancient Chinese books, the international overall research on the technology of the artificial field rearing of tussah academic papers is very rare. By referring to many ancient documents and translating them, this paper points out that the origin of artificial field rearing technology of tussah silkworm is in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty (from the beginning of the 15th century to the middle of the 15th century), and the only place of its origin is the mountainous area in the southwest of Shandong province, from which it spread to Henan, Sichuan, Anhui, Guizhou, Japan, Russia and European countries.

An Experimental Reproduction Study on Characteristics of Woodblock Printing on Traditional Korean Paper (Hanji)

The history of printing technology in Korea is studied by investigating existing ancient documents and records and comparing accumulated data and knowledge. Cultural property research requires non-destructive testing and observation with the naked eye or aided by a microscope. Researchers’ experience and knowledge are required even though they cannot guarantee the outcome. For ancient documents and records that are presumed to consist of woodblock printing, wood type printing, metal type printing, or their combinations, each researcher draws various opinions and conclusions. This often causes confusion and divides the opinions of ordinary citizens and field specialists. Among them, the criteria for judging ancient documents or books printed using woodblock and metal movable material are ambiguous. Academic research on the development history of printing technology in ancient Korea has been stagnant, and conflicts among researchers have also erupted. Involvement of national investigative agencies not specialized in cultural properties has exacerbated the situation. In this study, we investigated printing characteristics that are likely to serve as more objective judgment criteria by quantitatively analyzing the experiments of retrieving several sheets of Korean paper (Hanji) using a replicated Hunminjeongeum (訓民正音) woodblock and quantitatively analyzing the images of the printed papers. In addition, the validity and questions for the typical phenomena presented as a method for distinguishing between woodblock and metal print are reviewed. We investigated the possibility of developing new objective judgement criteria through quantitative analysis using image analysis and investigating the printing characteristics of Korean paper through a reproduction experiment of woodblock printing.

14C DATING OF THE ERLITOU SITE

ABSTRACT This article outlines the research progress on radiocarbon (14C) dating of the Erlitou site. The Erlitou site, belonging to the Bronze Age, located in Yanshi, Henan province, China, was discovered by archaeologists in 1959 when they investigated the Xia people’s remains in the area where the Xia people lived according to the records of ancient documents. Since then, there has been a standing debate about whether the site belongs to the Xia or Shang dynasty. By the mid-1990s, several hundred discussion articles on the issue had been published, but the question was still unresolved. Therefore, evidence from the chronology has attracted a great amount of attention. The dating of the Erlitou site began in the 1970s, and since the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project began in the mid-1990s, by application of wiggle-matching on the basis of improving the dating accuracy, the date of the Erlitou site has gradually become clear, which provides a basis for the archaeological research on the Xia and Shang dynasties.

Source base of financial policy of the voivodeship chancelleries of Prikamye in the XVII–XVIII centuries

The subject of this research is source base of financial policy of the voivodeship chancelleries of Prikamye in the XVII–XVII centuries.  Systematization of the material that contains records on the financial administration in the Russian State, including regional material, is relevant at the current stage of the development of historical science. Detailed analysis is conducted on the sources for studying the financial policy of the county establishments of Prikamye, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents and other archives of the Russian Federation; characteristic is given to the content of funds. It is noted that most informative material on the history of financial policy of the county establishments of Prikamye is stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents, which is substantiated by the peculiarities of acquisition of central archives. The scientific novelty lies in systematization of the source base for studying the financial policy of voivodeship chancelleries of Prikamye in the XVII–XVIII centuries. The author reviews the types of sources stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents. The financial reports stored in other archives are not as representative for the research of the topic at hand. The provided overview of the archival funds and materials introduces the source base into the scientific discourse that gives perspective on the local financial administration. The conclusion is made that the studied material is sufficient for characterizing the financial peculiarities of operation of voivodeship chancelleries of Prikamye during the XVII–XVIII centuries.

DCNet: Noise-Robust Convolutional Neural Networks for Degradation Classification on Ancient Documents

Analysis of degraded ancient documents is challenging due to the severity and combination of degradation present in a single image. Ancient documents also suffer from additional noise during the digitalization process, particularly when digitalization is done using low-specification devices and/or under poor illumination conditions. The noises over the degraded ancient documents certainly cause a troublesome document analysis. In this paper, we propose a new noise-robust convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture for degradation classification of noisy ancient documents, which is called a degradation classification network (DCNet). DCNet was constructed based on the ResNet101, MobileNetV2, and ShuffleNet architectures. Furthermore, we propose a new self-transition layer following DCNet. We trained the DCNet using (1) noise-free document images and (2) heavy-noise (zero mean Gaussian noise (ZMGN) and speckle) document images. Then, we tested the resulted models with document images containing different levels of ZMGN and speckle noise. We compared our results to three CNN benchmarking architectures, namely MobileNet, ShuffleNet, and ResNet101. In general, the proposed architecture performed better than MobileNet, ShuffleNet, ResNet101, and conventional machine learning (support vector machine and random forest), particularly for documents with heavy noise.

Analisis Kepenulisan Surat 1 Petrus: Suatu Tanggapan Terhadap Teori Pseudonymous

The pseudonymous theory in the authorship of 1 Peter is a threat to the authority of 1 Peter. This article aims to respond to the pseudonymous theory. Although it does not represent the view of the evangelical interpreter as a whole, this article attempts to maintain the authority of 1 Peter as an integral part of the Bible. The author presents internal and external evidences that supports the theory that Peter wrote the letter. The author analyzes the material, the writing’s purposes, literature and outline to show internal evidence. The author also presents the ancient documents which have recorded Peter as the author of 1 Peter. The belief in the authority of 1 Peter is to encourage believers to respect every passage in the Bible as the spiritual mind of God. Thus, believers have a solid foundation in thinking, speaking and acting according to God's Word.

The ideal Benedictine Monastery: From the Saint Gall map to ontologies

We present an OWL 2 ontology, called SaintGall, representing the Saint Gall plan, one of the most ancient documents arrived intact to us. The Saint Gall plan describes the ideal model of a Benedictine monastic complex that inspired the design of many European monasteries. The structural, functional, and architectural specification of an ideal Benedectine monastery is modeled by the SaintGall ontology, which allows one to analyse and model the Monastery architectural type. This work started with the purpose of relating Catania’s San Nicolò l’Arena Benedectine Monastery with the abstract notion of Benedectine monastery, in the ambit of an ontological model based on the renovation works carried out by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo and developed by the same authors. The SaintGall ontology opens a research path aiming at comparing different monastic architectures that can be useful in any intervention of refurbishment or design for a monastery.