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At the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, we have set out to explore the strengths and limitations of replication studies in the humanities in practice. We are doing so by replicating two original studies: one in the field of art history, the other in the field of history of science and religion. In this blog, we outline the design, purposes, and aims of these projects and explore some of the challenges.

Noun–noun concatenations can differ along two parameters. They can be compounds, i.e., single words, or constructs, i.e., constituents, and they can have modificational non-heads or referential non-heads. Of the four logical possibilities, one was argued not to exist: compounds of which the non-head is referential were considered to be principally excluded. In this article, I argue that Dutch has compounds with a referential non-head. They resemble the Dutch s-possessive in that their non-heads involve movement to a referential layer. However, unlike the possessive structures, the compounding structure contains head incorporation which results in word-hood. The article further discusses title expressions, such as Prince Charles, which are argued to be referential construct states. Together with the syntactic structure of titles plus proper names, the referential compounds further contribute evidence to the idea that a ban on N-to-D movement for certain uniquely referring roots, such as sun and Bronx, is extra-syntactic.

The subject of the dissertation is the investigation and mapping of Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov, the founder of “modern medicine” in Imperial Russia in the 19th century, Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Pirogov lived from 1810-1881 and is briefly and incorrectly only known in the world history of medicine as a military surgeon. He was a professor of applied anatomy and surgery from an early age, being the first to administer anaesthesia (ether) on the battlefield in the Caucasus during the summer of 1847. He was above all a scientist and teacher. He was also a member and correspondent of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, and forerunner of the International Red Cross. He wrote many (text)books with different disciplines as subject. Research shows that he is a late student of the Leiden Medical School from the 18th century.The question is: why is Herman Boerhaave, who lived in the late 17th – early 18th century, more famous than Nikolay I. Pirogov, who lived in the 19th century from 1810-1881.

Summary In 1617, two Dutch merchantmen collided in a storm on the North Sea. The incident resulted in extensive legal proceedings before the Supreme Court of Holland, Zeeland and West-Friesland, lasting until 1640. In an unprecedented decision, which was published as no. 40 of Jacob Coren’s well-known Observationes, the Court limited the liability of shipowners for inculpable ship collision to the value of their ship. Based both on extensive archival research and the text of Coren’s Observatio, the present article offers a detailed discussion of the facts and proceedings of the case, and sets out how the case was received by Roman-Dutch scholars. As it turns out, limitation of shipowner liability was analysed in terms of noxal surrender in order to reconcile shipowner liability for inculpable ship collision with contemporary perceptions of equity.

The report covers the detailed findings of the European Research Data Landscape study for 2021-2022. It includes deliverables 3.2 (on researcher practices), 4.2 (on research data FAIRness), and 5.2 (on research data repositories). The study was commissioned by the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the European Commission (specific contract No LC-01592199), and carried out by Visionary Analytics, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the European Future Innovation System (EFIS) Centre.

In eastern Mediterranean sediments, the titanium-to-aluminum ratio (Ti/Al) captures relative variability in eolian to river-derived material and predominantly integrates climate signals over the Saharan and Sahel regions. Long Ti/Al time series can, therefore, provide valuable records of North African humidity and aridity changes. X-ray fluorescence core scanning (XRF-CS) can generate near-continuous Ti/Al records with relatively modest effort and in an acceptable amount of time, provided that accurate Ti/Al values are acquired. Calibration of raw XRF-CS data to those of established analytical methods is an important pathway for obtaining the required accuracy. We assess how to obtain reliable XRF-CS Ti/Al calibration by using different calibration reference sample sets for a long sediment record from ODP Site 967 (eastern Mediterranean Sea). The accuracy of reference concentrations and the number of reference samples are important for reliable calibration. Our continuous Ti/Al record allows detailed time series analysis over the past 3 Myr. Near-direct control of low-latitude insolation on the timing and amplitude of North African aridity and humidity is observed from 3 to ∼ 1.2 Ma. In our Ti/Al record, most arid North African intervals (i.e., with the longest period and highest amplitude) occur after the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT; ∼ 1.2–0.7 Ma), when ice ages intensified. We also observe a subdued relationship between low-latitude insolation and North African climate after the MPT. These findings support the growing consensus that African climate became more sensitive to remote high-latitude climate when a threshold ice volume was reached during the MPT.

Voluntary associations played a role in processes of politicisation that are visible in Europe in the nineteenth century. This is not in itself a new insight, but we lack a good understanding of how and why this was the case. In my contribution I will reflect on various ways in which associational life broadened popular participation as well as broadened people’s understandings of politics between 1820-1860. Middle-class reformers of all sorts and stripes played an important role in reinventing voluntary associations as tools for political pressure. Using examples from such organizations as the Irish Catholic Association and British antislavery societies in the 1820s, and from a Dutch temperance society in the 1840s and 1850s, it will become clear that mass organization in politics could be very attractive, and was sometimes successful.