Entangled By Salt: Historical Archaeology of Seafarers and Things in the Venezuelan Caribbean, 1624–1880

This doctoral dissertation is aimed at determining changes in seafarer-thing relationships—which I define as entanglements—from 1624 to 1880 at two saltpans on two islands of the Venezuelan Caribbean. Three sites with four occupational phases will be discussed: one site with two occupational phases (Dutch, 1624–1638; Anglo-American, 1638–1781) on the island of La Tortuga, and two sites each comprising one occupational phase (multi-component, c. 1700–1800; Dutch Antillean/US American, 1810s–1880) on the island of Cayo Sal, in the Los Roques Archipelago. More specifically, this research seeks to determine how the development of European capitalism and consumerism impacted entanglements involving seafarers and things during short-term and seasonal events of salt cultivation and raking at the saltpans, while concomitantly exploring how seafarers navigated and shaped such multi-faceted phenomena. to answer this research question, a multiscalar spatiotemporal framework is formulated, which involves three spatial scales: the local, regional and supra-regional; and three temporal scales: the short-term, medium-term and long-term. as regards the theoretical framework, the spatial characteristics of entanglements beyond the site are primarily analyzed by developing and operationalizing the concept of itineraries of things. Diachronic change through time in entanglements will be explored by means of the concept of assemblages of practice. as an interdisciplinary historical archaeological project, this dissertation research employs the documentary record, oral sources and an analysis of the archaeological remains and their depositional contexts systematically excavated at the saltpan sites of Punta Salinas (TR/S) on La Tortuga Island, as well as Uespen de la Salina (CS/A) and Los Escombros (CS/B) on Cayo Sal. The archaeological excavations at these seasonal and temporary salt-raker campsites have brought to light the diverse material belongings of 17th- through 19th-century seafarers from Anglo-America, France, the Netherlands Antilles, Bermuda, and the Low Countries, among others. The exhaustive vessel-level analysis of the thousands of recovered things combined with the examination of written descriptions of personal possessions and practices at sea, aids in understanding where these items came from (their itineraries) and, more importantly, how assemblages of practice (involving seafarers and things) were enmeshed in the everyday practices of salt cultivation, fishing, dining and drinking. By inserting the assemblages of practice into the three-scale perspective of space and time and by critically comparing them, this dissertation endeavors to diversify our understanding of the recursive relationship between everyday seafarer-thing entanglements evidenced in assemblages of practice and the “big given” of the large-scale and long-term phenomena of capitalism and the attendant growth of consumerism

Le Robert – Îlet Chancel

Le projet « Archéologie des petites îles de la Martinique », après l’Îlet Oscar en 2006 puis l’Îlet Madame en 2016, s’est intéressé en 2013 à l’Îlet Chancel, dépendant de la commune du Robert. D’une longueur de 2 km, l’Îlet Chancel est le plus grand de la Martinique. Le programme de prospection archéologique de l’îlet Chancel a été conduit en juillet-août 2013. Les propriétaires ne l’ont autorisé que sur une toute petite partie de l’îlet : la plage du Trapèze. L’opération a donc couvert toute..

Le Robert – Îlet Madame

Le projet « Archéologie des petites îles de la Martinique », commencé en 2006, avec la prospection archéologique de l’Îlet Oscar, s’est poursuivi en 2012 sur l’Îlet Madame, sur la commune du Robert. Sur la base de notre expérience de plusieurs dizaines d’années de recherches systématiques pionnières au large des côtes du Venezuela, nous considérons que les « petites » îles peuvent livrer des informations intéressantes et inattendues sur l’archéologie locale et régionale. Elles ont été considé..

Fiscal Policy in Poland under Transition

Based on statistics provided by the Ministry of Finance and Central Statistical Office, the paper provides an analyses of the economic transition experienced by Poland paying particular attention to the fiscal policy.Poland, Economic Transition, Fiscal Policy

Evaluation of diagnostic classifiers using artificial clinical cases

Evaluation of classifiers in diagnosis support systems is a non-trivial task. It can be done in a form of controlled and blinded clinical trial, which is often difficult and costly. We propose a new method for generating artificial medical cases from a knowledge base, utilizing the concept of so-called medical diamonds. Cases generated using this method have features analogous to that of double-blinded trial and, thus, can be used for measuring sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic classifiers. This is easy and low-cost method of evaluation and comparison of classifiers in diagnosis support systems. We demonstrate that this method is able to produce valuable results when used for evaluation of similarity-based classifiers as well as shallow and deep neural networks

Radiotherapy combined with hormonal therapy in prostate cancer: the state of the art

Androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) is used routinely in combination with definitive external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) in patients with high-risk clinically localized or locally advanced disease. The combined treatment (ADT–EBRT) also seems to play a significant role in improving treatment results in the intermediate-risk group of prostate cancer patients. On the other hand, there is a growing body of evidence that treatment with ADT can be associated with serious and lifelong adverse events including osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many others. Almost all ADT adverse events are time dependant and tend to increase in severity with prolongation of hormonal manipulation. Therefore, it is crucial to clearly state the optimal schedule for ADT in combination with EBRT, that maintaining the positive effect on treatment efficacy would keep the adverse events risk at reasonable level. To achieve this goal, treatment schedule may have to be highly individualized on the basis of the patient-specific potential vulnerability to adverse events. In this study, the concise and evidence-based review of current literature concerning the general rationales for combining radiotherapy and hormonal therapy, its mechanism, treatment results, and toxicity profile is presented

Компьютерная психодиагностика

Substantiated the thesis that computer psychodiagnosis formed in independent field of research, with the aim of creating a psychodiagnostic tools for the development of methods to work with experimental psychological information

Steam Explosion Pretreatment of Beechwood. Part 1: Comparison of the Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Washed Solids and Whole Pretreatment Slurry at Different Solid Loadings

Steam explosion is a well-known process to pretreat lignocellulosic biomass in order to enhance sugar yields in enzymatic hydrolysis, but pretreatment conditions have to be optimized individually for each material. In this study, we investigated how the results of a pretreatment optimization procedure are influenced by the chosen reaction conditions in the enzymatic hydrolysis. Beechwood was pretreated by steam explosion and the resulting biomass was subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis at glucan loadings of 1% and 5% employing either washed solids or the whole pretreatment slurry. For enzymatic hydrolysis in both reaction modes at a glucan loading of 1%, the glucose yields markedly increased with increasing severity and with increasing pretreatment temperature at identical severities and maximal values were reached at a pretreatment temperature of 230 °C. However, the optimal severity was 5.0 for washed solids enzymatic hydrolysis, but only 4.75 for whole slurry enzymatic hydrolysis. When the glucan loading was increased to 5%, glucose yields hardly increased for pretreatment temperatures between 210 and 230 °C at a given severity, and a pretreatment temperature of 220 °C was sufficient under these conditions. Consequently, it is important to precisely choose the desired conditions of the enzymatic hydrolysis reaction, when aiming to optimize the pretreatment conditions for a certain biomass

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration prior to total nephrectomy are prognostic factors in localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC)

AbstractBackgroundRadical nephrectomy is the gold standard for treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but even for localized disease the survival rates are still unsatisfactory. Identification of prognostic factorsl is the basis for future treatment strategies for an individual patient.AimThe aim of our study was to assess the usefulness of the concentration of IL-6 and CRP as prognostic factors in patients after nephrectomy due to localized RCC.Materials and methodsOur prospective study included 89 patients (55 men and 34 women) who had been surgically treated for RCC. The examined group included patients with localized advanced disease (from T1 to T3) with no metastases in lymph nodes (N0), and with no distant metastases (M0). All patients had blood samples drawn three times during the study (one day before surgery, six days after surgery and 6 months after surgery) to evaluate the concentration of CRP and IL-6. In each patient RCC of the kidney was removed during radical nephrectomy. Statistical analysis was conducted using statistica v.7.0.ResultsStatistically significant relationships were found between the concentration of CRP before the operation and OS (p=0.0001). CRP concentration at baseline was statistically significantly correlated with CSS (p=0.0004). The level of IL-6 assessed before the surgery was significantly correlated with survival times such as OS (p=0.0096) and CSS (p=0.0002). The concentration of IL-6 and CRP measured 6 days after surgery and 6 months after surgery were not statistically significantly correlated with survival times.ConclusionsResults of our study showed that elevated levels of IL-6 and CRP in peripheral blood before surgery of RCC were correlated with worse OS and CSS