Archeological Significance Testing at 41BX17/271, the Granberg Site: A Multi-Component Site along the Salado Creek in Bexar County, Texas

The Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted archeological significance testing at 41BX17, the Granberg Site, from January to March 2006. The testing was conducted for the Texas Department of Transportation, Environmental Affairs Division (TxDOT-ENV). The Granberg Site sits on the eastern flood terrace of the Salado Creek south of Loop 410 in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. Planned road improvements including installation of a storm sewer line and a water main prompted the need to assess whether (1) cultural deposits including human remains still exist after previous testing and (2) if the deposits contribute to the site’s National Register of Historic Places eligibility. The archeological work was conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 4010. Steve A. Tomka served as Principal Investigator and Jennifer Thompson served as Project Archeologist. Fieldwork included mechanical auger boring and backhoe trenching to determine the horizontal extent of the site boundaries within the median of Loop 410 eastbound. Sixteen 1-x-1-m units were excavated to determine the distribution and integrity of the cultural deposits and to locate any possible burials that may still exist at the site. Materials recovered included burned rock features, chipped stone artifacts, animal bone, snail and mussel shell and charred plant remains. The distribution of the artifacts, the geomorphic investigations, the radiocarbon assays, and temporally diagnostic artifacts indicate the presence of Middle and Late Archaic archeological materials with good stratigraphic integrity. The Granberg Site was determined to be ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Following the completion of eligibility testing efforts, the TxDOT directed the CAR to develop a research design linking the data recovered from the various excavations at the Granberg Site with research goals. The CAR developed the research design (Munoz et al. 2007) under Work Authorization No. 57513SA005 with Cynthia M. Munoz serving as Project Archeologist. At roughly the time of the research design implementation, the CAR was the recipient of a donation of a collection of commingled human skeletal remains recovered from the Granberg Site. These remains were recovered from 41BX17/271 in 1962 by Harvey Kohnitz, an avocational archeologist, without knowledge or permission from the Texas Highway Department. The remains were stored at the Kohnitz home until his son, Mark Kohnitz, donated them to the CAR in 2007. An osteological analysis was conducted at the CAR laboratory during February 2008 for TxDOT, under Work Authorization No. 57513SA005 Supplemental Work Authorization No. 4. The results of this analysis are reported in Appendix H of this report. The commingled remains will be curated the CAR and all required documents, including an inventory, will be submitted to the National Park Service National NAGPRA Program to fulfill all obligations pertaining to the NAGPRA laws. All artifacts collected during this project and all project-associated documentation are permanently curated at the CAR according to Texas Historical Commission guidelines

Genomic profiling reveals spatial intra-tumor heterogeneity in follicular lymphoma

We are indebted to the patients for donating tumor specimens as part of this study. The authors thank the Centre de Ressources Biologiques (CRB)-Santé of Rennes (BB-0033-00056) for patient samples, Queen Mary University of London Genome Centre for Illumina Miseq sequencing, and the support by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London for Illumina Hiseq sequencing. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health. This work was supported by grants from the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund (KKL 757 awarded to J.O.), Cancer Research UK (22742 awarded to J.O., 15968 awarded to J.F., Clinical Research Fellowship awarded to S.A.), Bloodwise through funding of the Precision Medicine for Aggressive Lymphoma (PMAL) consortium, Centre for Genomic Health, Queen Mary University of London, Carte d’Identité des Tumeurs (CIT), Ligue National contre le Cancer, Pôle de biologie hospital universitaire de Rennes, CRB-Santé of Rennes (BB-0033-00056), and CeVi/Carnot program

The politics of vibrant matter: consistency, containment and the concrete of Mussolini’s bunker

This article explores the idea of how vibrancy can be produced. Specifically, the attempt is to investigate the multiplicities of vibrancy by considering one of Mussolini’s bunkers. The author examines the location of the bunker in the EUR (Esposizione Universale Romana) neighbourhood in Rome, the bunker’s materiality, and the context and social meaning of the bunker through a contemporary art exhibition called ‘Confronti’ (Confrontations) that took place in the bunker in 2009. The article argues that while emphasizing matter’s inherent vibrancy may be useful in some cases, there is also merit in further unpacking the ways in which vibrancy is produced. In this example, the concrete bunker expresses vibrancy through the processes involved in the emergent material form, and in the sustained politics and social considerations embedded in valuing tangible urban heritage

Re-establishing the ‘outsiders’: English press coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

In 2015, the England Women’s national football team finished third at the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Alongside the establishment of the Women’s Super League in 2011, the success of the women’s team posed a striking contrast to the recent failures of the England men’s team and in doing so presented a timely opportunity to examine the negotiation of hegemonic discourses on gender, sport and football. Drawing upon an ‘established-outsider’ approach, this article examines how, in newspaper coverage of the England women’s team, gendered constructions revealed processes of alteration, assimilation and resistance. Rather than suggesting that ‘established’ discourses assume a normative connection between masculinity and football, the findings reveal how gendered ‘boundaries’ were both challenged and protected in newspaper coverage. Despite their success, the discursive positioning of the women’s team as ‘outsiders’, served to (re)establish men’s football as superior, culturally salient and ‘better’ than the women’s team/game. Accordingly, we contend that attempts to build and, in many instances, rediscover the history of women’s football, can be used to challenge established cultural representations that draw exclusively from the history of the men’s game. In such instances, the 2015 Women’s World Cup provides a historical moment from which the women’s game can be relocated in a context of popular culture

Asymmetric response of forest and grassy biomes to climate variability across the African Humid Period : influenced by anthropogenic disturbance?

A comprehensive understanding of the relationship between land cover, climate change and disturbance dynamics is needed to inform scenarios of vegetation change on the African continent. Although significant advances have been made, large uncertainties exist in projections of future biodiversity and ecosystem change for the world's largest tropical landmass. To better illustrate the effects of climate–disturbance–ecosystem interactions on continental‐scale vegetation change, we apply a novel statistical multivariate envelope approach to subfossil pollen data and climate model outputs (TraCE‐21ka). We target paleoenvironmental records across continental Africa, from the African Humid Period (AHP: ca 14 700–5500 yr BP) – an interval of spatially and temporally variable hydroclimatic conditions – until recent times, to improve our understanding of overarching vegetation trends and to compare changes between forest and grassy biomes (savanna and grassland). Our results suggest that although climate variability was the dominant driver of change, forest and grassy biomes responded asymmetrically: 1) the climatic envelope of grassy biomes expanded, or persisted in increasingly diverse climatic conditions, during the second half of the AHP whilst that of forest did not; 2) forest retreat occurred much more slowly during the mid to late Holocene compared to the early AHP forest expansion; and 3) as forest and grassy biomes diverged during the second half of the AHP, their ecological relationship (envelope overlap) fundamentally changed. Based on these asymmetries and associated changes in human land use, we propose and discuss three hypotheses about the influence of anthropogenic disturbance on continental‐scale vegetation change

Search for Early Pancreatic Cancer Blood Biomarkers in Five European Prospective Population Biobanks Using Metabolomics

Most patients with pancreatic cancer present with advanced disease and die within the first year after diagnosis. Predictive biomarkers that signal the presence of pancreatic cancer in an early stage are desperately needed. We aimed to identify new and validate previously found plasma metabolomic biomarkers associated with early stages of pancreatic cancer. Prediagnostic blood samples from individuals who were to receive a diagnosis of pancreati

Late Holocene linkages between decade–century scale climate variability and productivity at Lake Tanganyika, Africa

Microlaminated sediment cores from the Kalya slope region of Lake Tanganyika provide a near-annually resolved paleoclimate record between ~~2,840 and 1,420 cal. yr B.P. demonstrating strong linkages between climate variability and lacustrine productivity. Laminae couplets comprise dark, terrigenous-dominated half couplets, interpreted as low density underflows deposited from riverine sources during the rainy season, alternating with light, planktonic diatomaceous ooze, with little terrigenous component, interpreted as windy/dry season deposits. Laminated portions of the studied cores consist of conspicuous dark and light colored bundles of laminae couplets. Light and dark bundles alternate at decadal time scales. Within dark bundles, both light and dark half couplets are significantly thinner than within light bundles, implying slower sediment accumulation rates during both seasons over those intervals. Time series analyses of laminae thickness patterns demonstrate significant periodicities at interannual¿centennial time scales. Longer time scale periodicities (multidecadal to centennial scale) of light and dark half couplet thicknesses are coherent and in some cases are similar to solar cycle periods on these time scales. Although laminae thickness cycles do not strongly covary with the actual ¿14C record for this same time period, two large ¿14C anomalies are associated with substantial decreases in both light and dark laminae thickness. In contrast to the multidecadal¿ centennial time scale, significant annual to decadal periodicities, which are broadly consistent with ENSO/PDO forcing and their impact on East African climate, are not coherent between light and dark half couplets. The coherency of light¿dark couplets at decadal¿centennial time scales, but not at shorter time scales, is consistent with a model of a long-term relationship between precipitation (recorded in wet season dark laminae thickness) and productivity (light laminae thickness), which is not manifest at shorter time scales. We hypothesize that this coupling results from long-term recharging of internal nutrient loading during wet periods (higher erosion of soil P) and reduced loading during drought intervals. The relationship is not expressed on short time scales during which the dominant control on productivity is wind-driven, dry season upwelling, which is uncorrelated with wet-season precipitation. Our record greatly extends the temporal record of this quasi-periodic behavior throughout the late Holocene and provides the first evidence linking decade- to century-scale episodes of enhanced productivity to enhanced precipitation levels and nutrient recharge in a productive tropical lake