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"This article seeks to understand mercantilism not as an elite philosophy, but as a process of interaction between private interests that stretched beyond London across England and the wider world, in which contribution to the public interest was asserted primarily by the capacity of a trade to support domestic employment in an increasingly global economy."

Hugo Bromley, England’s Mercantilism: Trading Companies, Employment and the Politics of Trade in Global History, 1688–1704, The English Historical Review, 2023;, cead177, doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead177 @histodon @histodons

"I argue that inclusion of Occam's razor is an essential factor that distinguishes science from superstition and pseudoscience. I also describe how the razor is embedded in Bayesian inference and argue that science is primarily the means to discover the simplest descriptions of our world."

McFadden, J. (2023). Razor sharp: The role of Occam's razor in science. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1530, 8–17. doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15086 @science

"Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous"

Pennycook G, Allan Cheyne J, Barr N, Koehler DJ, Fugelsang JA. On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making. 2015;10(6):549-563. doi: doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500006 @psychology

"This Element examines some of their concerns. It uses evidence that critics of peer review sometimes cite to show its failures, as well as empirical literature on the reception of bullshit, to advance positive claims about how the assessment of scholarly work is appropriately influenced by features of the context in which it appears: for example, by readers' knowledge of authorship or of publication venue."

Levy N. Philosophy, Bullshit, and Peer Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2024. doi: doi.org/10.1017/9781009256315 @philosophy

"Our project is revealing a new perspective on how these sites, contrary to previous assumptions, seem to have played a significant role in the configuration and evolution of trading networks throughout the Roman period."

Quevedo A, Hernández García Jde D, Gutiérrez-Rodríguez M, Moreno-Martín FJ, Mukai T, Capelli C. Impact of trading networks on a small island at the end of Late Antiquity: Isla del Fraile. Antiquity. 2023:1-9. doi: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.182 @archaeodons @antiquidons

"The findings gave a unique understanding of life and death in this early Christian Viking community and indicated that it was common to suffer from dental caries, tooth loss, infections of dental origin and tooth pain. These Vikings also manipulated their teeth through filing, tooth picking and other occupational behaviors."

Bertilsson C, Vretemark M, Lund H, Lingström P (2023) Caries prevalence and other dental pathological conditions in Vikings from Varnhem, Sweden. PLOS ONE 18(12): e0295282. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0 @archaeodons @science

"This article outlines a chronology for understanding the cultural importance in Britain of this voyage, from the New England chroniclers to the postcolonial critiques of historians today. In between, it offers a thematic analysis of the different groups which could use the story in their construction of morality and identity, from Romanticists and abolitionists to Anglo-American diplomats and civic boosters."

Edmund Downey, Tom Hulme, Martha Vandrei, The Mayflower and Historical Culture in Britain, 1620–2020, The English Historical Review, 2023;, cead152, doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead152 @histodon @histodons

"In his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein claims, puzzlingly, that ‘the proof creates a new concept’ (RFM III-41). This paper aims to contribute to clarifying this idea, and to showing how it marks a major break with the traditional conception of proof."

Sorin Bangu, Wittgenstein on Proof and Concept-Formation, The Philosophical Quarterly, 2023;, pqad111, doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqad111 @philosophy

"The authors present new archaeological discoveries from western and northern Mongolia, dating to the fourth and fifth centuries AD, including a wooden frame saddle with horse hide components from Urd Ulaan Uneet and an iron stirrup from Khukh Nuur. Together, these finds suggest that Mongolian groups were early adopters of stirrups and saddles, facilitating the expansion of nomadic hegemony across Eurasia and shaping the conduct of medieval mounted warfare."

Bayarsaikhan J, Turbat T, Bayandelger C, et al. The origins of saddles and riding technology in East Asia: discoveries from the Mongolian Altai. Antiquity. 2023:1-17. doi: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.172 @archaeodons @histodon @histodons

"To address questions about the real appearance of St Anthony, we applied body mass estimation equations to the osteometric measurements taken in 1981, during the public recognition of the Saint’s skeletal remains. Both the biomechanical and the morphometric approach were employed to solve some intrinsic limitations in the equations for body mass estimation from skeletal remains. The estimated body mass was used to assess the physique of the Saint with the body mass index."

Mongillo J, Vescovo G, Bramanti B (2021) Belly fat or bloating? New insights into the physical appearance of St Anthony of Padua. PLOS ONE 16(12): e0260505. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0 @science

"Medieval hospitals were founded to provide charity, but poverty and infirmity were broad and socially determined categories and little is known about the residents of these institutions and the pathways that led them there. Combining skeletal, isotopic and genetic data, the authors weave a collective biography of individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge."

Inskip S, Cessford C, Dittmar J, et al. Pathways to the medieval hospital: collective osteobiographies of poverty and charity. Antiquity. 2023;97(396):1581-1597. doi: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.167 @archaeodons @science

"Our results highlight the joint importance of network structure, commitment, and psycho-linguistic aspects of social interactions in characterizing grassroots collective action, and contribute to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that drive processes of behavior change of online groups."

Cava, L.L., Aiello, L.M. & Tagarelli, A. Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon. Sci Rep 13, 21626 (2023). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-482

"In this study, we developed a soft robotic model of the right heart that accurately mimics RV biomechanics and hemodynamics, including free wall, septal and valve motion."

Singh, M., Bonnemain, J., Ozturk, C. et al. Robotic right ventricle is a biohybrid platform that simulates right ventricular function in (patho)physiological conditions and intervention. Nat Cardiovasc Res (2023). doi.org/10.1038/s44161-023-003 @science @engineering

"The present study has highlighted the gene-culture co-migration with the demographic movements that occurred during the past two millennia in Central and East Asia. Additionally, this work contributes to a better understanding of the distribution of immunogenic erythrocyte polymorphisms with a view to improve transfusion safety."

Petit, F., Minnai, F., Chiaroni, J. et al. The radial expansion of the Diego blood group system polymorphisms in Asia: mark of co-migration with the Mongol conquests. Eur J Hum Genet 27, 125–132 (2019). doi.org/10.1038/s41431-018-024 @science @biology

Brozio JP, Stos-Gale Z, Müller J, Müller-Scheeßel N, Schultrich S, et al. (2023) The origin of Neolithic copper on the central Northern European plain and in Southern Scandinavia: Connectivities on a European scale. PLOS ONE 18(5): e0283007. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0 @archaeodons @science

"Ample evidence suggests that this landmass represents Christopher Columbus’s discoveries of the north coast of Cuba on his first voyage and the south coast of Cuba on his second voyage, voyages on which he claims to have discovered Asia."

Donald L. McGuirk (2014) The Presumed North America on the Waldseemüller World Map (1507): A Theory of Its Discovery by Christopher Columbus, Terrae Incognitae, 46:2, 86-102, DOI: doi.org/10.1179/0082288414Z.00

"In particular, I make a response to Wood’s suggestion in Archaeometry (2022, first view, ‘Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece’) that the end of the production of lead votive figurines in Sparta might have been caused by Athenian restrictions to Laurion lead exports, drawing on new LIA of the Spartan lead votives and wider considerations concerning the trade, cost and volume of lead in the 7th to 5th century bce Mediterranean."

Lloyd, J. T. (2023). Spartan dependence on Laurion lead. Archaeometry, 65(5), 1044–1058. doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12870 @archaeodons @histodon @histodons

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"Against the backdrop of the threat of war with Persia and an imminent Spartan invasion which resulted in the overthrow of Hippias (510 BCE), it is considered that a political transition occurred because Greece was both geologically and politically disposed to adopt this labour-intensive silver technology which helped to initiate, fund and protect the radical social experiment that became known as Classical Greece."

Wood, J. R. (2023). Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece. Archaeometry, 65(3), 570–586. doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12839 @archaeodons @histodon @histodons

"This book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatric ideas."

Thumiger, C. (2023). Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought: (Fifth Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: doi.org/10.1017/9781009241311 @bookstodon (68)

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"In applied linguistics generally and bilingualism research in particular, psychological variables remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences compared with cognitive ones. To better understand the under-researched psychological effects of bilingualism, this study investigated well-being, a psychological construct, based on a big-data survey."

Wang, J., & Wei, R. (2023). Is bilingualism linked to well-being? Evidence from a big-data survey. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-11. doi: doi.org/10.1017/S1366728923000 @linguistics @psychology

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