Nationality Classification Using Name Embeddings

Nationality identification unlocks important demographic information, with many applications in biomedical and sociological research. Existing name-based nationality classifiers use name substrings as features and are trained on small, unrepresentative sets of labeled names, typically extracted from Wikipedia. As a result, these methods achieve limited performance and cannot support fine-grained classification. We exploit the phenomena of homophily in communication patterns to learn name embeddings, a new representation that encodes gender, ethnicity, and nationality which is readily applicable to building classifiers and other systems. Through our analysis of 57M contact lists from a major Internet company, we are able to design a fine-grained nationality classifier covering 39 groups representing over 90% of the world population. In an evaluation against other published systems over 13 common classes, our F1 score (0.795) is substantial better than our closest competitor Ethnea (0.580). To the best of our knowledge, this is the most accurate, fine-grained nationality classifier available. As a social media application, we apply our classifiers to the followers of major Twitter celebrities over six different domains. We demonstrate stark differences in the ethnicities of the followers of Trump and Obama, and in the sports and entertainments favored by different groups. Finally, we identify an anomalous political figure whose presumably inflated following appears largely incapable of reading the language he posts in.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 4 table, accepted by CIKM 2017, Demo and free API: www.name-prism.co

Classification, natural history, and evolution of the subfamily Peloniinae Opitz (Coleoptera: Cleroidea: Cleridae). Part VIII. Systematics of the checkered beetle genus \u3ci\u3eChariessa\u3c/i\u3e Perty

The New World genus Chariessa Forster (Coleoptera: Cleroidea: Cleridae) is revised and includes C. catalina Opitz, new species, C. elegans Horn, C. dichroa (LeConte), C. floridana Schaeffer, C. pilosa (Forster), C. texana Wolcott, C. ramicornis Perty, C. vestita (Chevrolat), and C. duponti (Spinola). Enoplium pilosa var. marginata Say is synonymized with Chariessa pilosa Forster. Lectotypes are designated for C. pilosa (Forster), C. ramicornis Perty, and C. vestita (Chevrolat). Available information indicates that Chariessa adult and immature individuals are predatory on lignicolous insects with a particular affinity for cerambycids and buprestids that infest species of oak. It is postulated that Pleistocene speciation generated the North American components of Chariessa with more ancient southern species generated during the Middle Tertiary; after closures of the Middle American portals and orogeny of the South American Andes. Included in this treatise is a discussion of natural history, key to species, narratives of zoogeography and phylogeny, one diagram of a phylogenetic tree, 35 line drawings, eight SEM micrographs, twelve habitus photographs, nine photographs of male genitalia, and five distributional maps. El género del Nuevo Mundo Chariessa Forster es revisado e incluye C. catalina Opitz, especie nueva, C. elegans Horn, C. dichroa (LeConte), C. floridana Schaeffer, C. pilosa (Forster), C. texana Wolcott, C. ramicornis Perty, C. vestita (Chevrolat) y C. duponti (Spinola). Enoplium pilosa var. marginata Say es puesto en sinonimia con Chariessa pilosa Forster. Se designan Lectotipos para C. pilosa (Forster), C. ramicornis Perty y C. vestita (Chevrolat). La información disponible indica que los adultos e inmaduros de Chariessa son depredadores de insectos lignícolas con una preferencia para cerambicidos y bupréstidos que atacan varias especies de robles (Quercus). Se presenta la hipótesis de que los componentes norteamericanos de Chariessa fueron generados a partir de especies más antiguas de Suramérica durante el Terciario Medio, después del cierre del portal Mesoamericano y la orogénesis de los Andes suramericanos. En esta publicación incluimos información sobre historia natural del género, clave de las especies, discusión sobre zoogeografía y filogenia, un diagrama de árbol filogenético, 35 dibujos, ocho fotografías de microscopia electrónica, doce fotografías de especímenes, nueve fotografías de genitalia macho y cinco mapas de distribución de especies

Illustrated travel: steel engravings and their use in early 19th century topographical books, with special reference to Henry Fisher & Co..

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the introduction, production and sale of steel engravings in the illustrated picture books of the first half of the nineteenth century with particular reference to the publications of Henry Fisher, who began his career in Liverpool and continued it together with his son Robert in London. By looking at the processes from the initial artist's design through to its engraving and printing, and by establishing the interaction between the artist, author, publisher and engraver, this study will lead to a better understanding of both the economics and aesthetics of print production and determine the destination of these illustrated picture books by examining the relationship between the publisher and the public. Previous work on nineteenth-century topographical steel engraving has largely had a bibliographical rather than historiographical aim and has concentrated on the classification of images into regional units. Although useful these publications are not intended to be critical and do not lead to an understanding of the contextual background necessary to explain the enormous output and consumption of topographical steel-engraved books in the 1830s and 1840s. The two leading specialist topographical print-publishers were the London firms of Fisher, Son & Co. and George Virtue. The early career of Henry Fisher as a master printer of mainly religious publications issued in numbers is examined, and this study shows how his innovative marketing, selling and distribution methods led to these being adopted by others in the publishing trade. His transition from publisher of religious numbers in Liverpool to leading publisher of illustrated topographical works in London is investigated for the first time. As no records, account books or archives appear to have survived, this dissertation is based on the substantial number of illustrated travel books with steel-engraved plates that both firms produced between 1829 and 1844 as well as correspondence from Robert Fisher to the Irish artist George Petrie, in which Fisher explains some of 'the peculiarities of our business'. The two most prolific designers of illustrations for topographical picture books in this period were Thomas Allom (1804-1872) who worked for Fisher, and William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854) who worked for Virtue. Their contribution to the field of topographical book illustration has largely passed unnoticed by art historians who question whether mass produced images can be valued as art. Allom and Bartlett are usually classified as jobbing topographical artists or, at best, as architectural draughtsmen. A secondary aim of this dissertation is to offer a counterbalance to this view and show that their art was more genuinely creative than merely reproductive and moreover that their motives for doing this work were far from being similar

Malmsbury bluestone and quarries : Finding holes in history and heritage

Malmsbury bluestone was used widely from 1856 in buildings in Victoria, throughout Australia, and in New Zealand. It features in many structures listed on heritage registers, yet its presence is barely recognised. This largely results from the stone quarries, buildings and the men who laboured with it being absent from modern Australian historiography. The fame previously associated with the stone was lost when stone use for structural purposes, and the associated stone skills, declined; a situation exacerbated by poor recognition of the stone industry’s role in building our nation through heritage citations of structures. Inspired by E. P. Thompson, this thesis uses Critical Inquiry though microhistory and landscape analysis to regain the stone’s fame and rescue stoneworkers from the condescension of history. A detailed analysis of quarries, structures, the bluestone industry, and a rarely-attempted total reconstitution of the lives of 194 vital stoneworkers, reveals a valuable cultural heritage currently undervalued and at risk. Malmsbury stoneworkers came from diverse backgrounds but worked co-operatively to promote and sustain a local industry which supplied a nationally-vital building material, despite the absence of a regulatory framework to protect their lives and rights. Scientific methods document the geological properties of the stone and demonstrate how, in the absence of science, skilled stoneworkers nevertheless identified and worked a valuable resource. Modern science could however be used to test building stones in a non-destructive manner to determine the sources of currently unidentified building stones. This thesis significantly contributes to the limited discourse on the history and heritage of Australian stone use through the perspectives of cultural landscapes, labour history and built and cultural heritage. Malmsbury bluestone truly was the standard of excellence and, along with stoneworkers, warrants more extensive recognition in Australia’s Heritage registers.Doctor of Philosoph

Embodied Violence: Slavery and Settler Colonialism on America's Third Coast

This dissertation examines the intertwined histories of slavery and settler colonialism in Louisiana and the greater Gulf South from the Mississippian era through the early American republic, centering the violences that structured imperial expansion, racial capitalism, and territorial conquest. Rather than treating African enslavement and Indigenous elimination as parallel but distinct processes, this dissertation employs a synthetic framework that reveals their deep structural entanglements across French, Spanish, and Anglo-American regimes, foregrounding the centrality of Indigenous enslavement alongside African chattel slavery and their disproportional impacts on women and children. It demonstrates how settler colonial logics have been enacted through various legal and spatial regimes, but also through forms of ongoing structural violence, which have been embodied and are still experienced today. It further argues that the rise of the U.S. South and the consolidation of American empire were built on these interlocking systems of violence against Black and Indigenous peoples; slavery transformed the Gulf South and Lower Mississippi Valley from a richly networked Indigenous world to a racialized geography of elimination, enslavement, and extraction, practices which are foundational—not peripheral—to American settler colonialism. Using a place-based multi-sited historical methodology, this dissertation illuminates how Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous people have experienced and resisted such embodied violence, including reproductive control, forced displacement and diaspora, legal erasure, and intergenerational trauma. The epilogue brings this history into the present, examining how former Native American villages and cultural sites were turned into plantations and then petrochemical-industrial sites, perpetuating cycles of disease, disaster, and death against descendant communities and tribal nations for profit. By combining archival and decolonial methods, this dissertation reorients U.S. history from the margins, insisting on the Gulf South—the Third Coast—as central to the making, and unmaking, of American empire

Founding territorial sciences

International audienceThe “Founding Territorial Sciences” conference marked the birth of the International College of Territorial Sciences (CIST), a new research body devoted to the study of space and territory. The purpose of the conference was to answer the following question: Although the concept of territory is central to recent social changes, are we justified in seeking to establish the “territorial sciences” as a new academic field or discipline?To answer this question, we need to address a number of other issues. These include:– the issues raised by interdisciplinary research in other countries; if we want to develop an international network, we will need to ensure that similar initiatives are underway in other countries and that they are compatible with the research projects of the CIST;– the issues surrounding the questions addressed by researchers in the territorial sciences; though it has defined an initial set of research questions, the GIS may need to explore other avenues;– the issues surrounding the nature of the “territorial sciences”: should the territorial sciences be defined as an interdisciplinary field, i.e. as a set of disciplines brought together to understand the territorial dimension of their objects of study? Or should they be defined as an emerging discipline, the key concepts, principles and methods of which will need to be defined?The new field covers a wide range of disciplines extending well beyond the humanities and social sciences. The main theoretical and methodological challenges are to foster links between the humanities and social sciences and the life and earth sciences, the health sciences and the engineering sciences (modeling, complex systems, etc.). For example, the lack of collaboration between physicists and mathematicians working on climate change models and humanities and social science researchers concerned with the territorial impact of climate change has created a gap between global and local approaches.Finally, beyond the confines of academia, what is the proper relationship between the territorial sciences and territorial development strategies and practices?Le colloque « Fonder les sciences du territoire » a constitué le lancement scientifique du GIS CIST. Il devait répondre à cette question : nous savons que le territoire est au cœur d’un grand nombre des transformations des sociétés contemporaines, mais pour autant avons-nous raison de vouloir fonder les « sciences du territoire » ? Cela supposait de répondre à d’autres questions préalables :– sur la confrontation aux expériences interdisciplinaires étrangères dans le domaine. Si l’on veut constituer un réseau international, encore faut-il s’assurer de l’existence d’initiatives similaires à l’étranger et du degré de compatibilité avec elles ;– sur les thématiques des sciences du territoire, le GIS ayant lancé de premiers axes de travail mais devant rester ouvert à d’autres axes possibles ;– sur la nature de ces « sciences du territoire » : doivent-elles être conçues comme un champ multidisciplinaire c’est-à-dire comme un ensemble de disciplines scientifiques que l’on confronterait pour comprendre, de manière minimalement harmonisée, la dimension territoriale de leurs objets propres ? Ou doit-on aller jusqu’à considérer qu’il s’agirait d’une discipline scientifique émergente, dont il faudra alors définir les concepts, les lois et les méthodes d’analyse ?Le spectre des disciplines concernées est large, très au-delà des SHS. Car c’est dans la confrontation des SHS avec les sciences de la vie et de la terre, les sciences de santé et les sciences de l’ingénieur (modélisation, systèmes complexes…) que les enjeux théoriques et méthodologiques sont les plus grands. Par exemple le manque d’échanges entre les physiciens ou mathématiciens qui conçoivent les modèles du changement climatique, et les SHS dédiées à l’impact territorial de ce changement climatique, se traduit par une insuffisante interaction entre les analyses globales et locales.Enfin, au-delà des disciplines scientifiques, comment les sciences du territoire devraient-elles se situer par rapport aux pratiques du développement territorial

Thomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century

Thomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929) was arguably the most prolific English medieval historian of the early twentieth century. The son of an unsuccessful publican, he was described at his Oxford scholarship exam as ‘uncouth and untidy’; however he went on to publish hundreds of books throughout his distinguished career with a legacy that extended well beyond the academy. Tout pioneered the use of archival research, welcomed women into academia and augmented the University of Manchester’s growing reputation for pioneering research. This book presents the first full assessment of Tout’s life and work, from his early career at Lampeter, to his work in Manchester and his wide-ranging service to the study of history. Selected essays take a fresh and critical look at Tout’s own historical writing and discuss how his research shaped, and continues to shape, our understanding of the middle ages, particularly the fourteenth century. The book concludes with a personal reflection on Tout by his grandson, Tom Sharp

A moral economy of the land? Kinship, labour, and subsistence in nineteenth century Sutherland through the proceedings of the Napier Commission

Introduction: pages 1- 21