scholarly journals A spatial connectivity approach to landscapes of conflict: Julius Caesar and the assault to Puig Ciutat (NE Iberian Peninsula)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Rubio-Campillo ◽  
Eduard Ble ◽  
Àngels Pujol ◽  
Roger Sala ◽  
Robert Tamba

Landscape plays a vital role in the development of military campaigns through the definition of geostrategic landmarks that structure the control of the territory, the imposition of constraints to the movement of armies, and the identification of positions that facilitate defensive tactics against aggressors. These factors are linked to the study of past spatial mobility which is typically performed using Least-Cost Path analysis (LCP). LCP identifies the optimal route that connects any two given points based on minimizing the accumulated cost based on a friction surface map, thus allowing archaeologists to identify the most efficient pathways across a territory. The main challenge of LCP analysis for archaeological regions is that optimal pathways are not well suited to define general mobility patterns within highly uncertain scenarios. Connectivity modelling based on Circuit Theory (CT) is an alternative approach to the study of mobility. CT does not generate a single path like LCP does; it captures the connectivity of an entire region identifying not only optimal paths, but also bottlenecks, dead-ends and any other spatial feature that may impact movement.We present here a framework to study landscapes of conflict using connectivity modelling; the framework combines CT, visibility analysis and statistical hypothesis testing to understand the reasons behind the assault and destruction of Puig Ciutat (NE Iberian Peninsula) during Julius Caesar's civil war. Results suggest that the site exerted decisive control over a highly connected area linking two possible logistical bases (Emporion and Massalia) to the armies fighting at Ilerda (49 BC).

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
María Soto

The Picamoixons site is a rockshelter located in the province of Tarragona (NE Iberian Peninsula). It was object of two rescue campaigns during 1988 and 1993, which led to the recovery of a complete archaeological assemblage, including stone tools as well as faunal and portable art remains that date the occupation to the 14th to 11th millennium BP (calibrated). This study involves a petrographic characterisation of the stone-tool assemblage in order to establish: 1) the procurement areas, 2) the raw materials management strategies and 3) the mobility radius and territorial sizes of the hunter-gatherers groups that occupied the site. The method applied comprises in a multiscale analysis that includes systematic prospection, the petrographic characterisation of geological and archaeological samples, an analysis of the chert types represented in the knapping sequence, and the definition of the mobility axes and areas frequented according to lithic procurement.A petrographic analysis of the chert in the prospected area led to the definition of nine macroscopic varieties related to five types (Vilaplana, Morera, Maset, Vilella and Tossa cherts), related to Lower and Upper Muschelkalk (Triassic), Lutetian, Bartonian (Palaeocene) and Sannonian (Oligocene) deposits.The study of the knapping sequences indicates the main exploitation of Bartonian cherts (Tossa type), and the use of Lutetian cherts (Maset and Morera types) for configuring retouched tools. The exploitation of the remaining raw material types identified is considered sporadic and opportunistic.Defining the procurement areas enabled the mobility radius to be assessed as between 3 and 30 km, highlighting the importance of the fluvial basins as natural movement pathways. The results indicate that the main procurement territory was 16 km2 in area, associable with a forager radius. The most remote procurement distances suggest a maximum exploitation area of 260 km2, defining an intra-regional range. This range presents parallelisms with various contemporaneous hunter-gatherers groups in Western Europe, suggesting a progressive mobility reduction dynamic during the Late Pleistocene-Initial Holocene.


Author(s):  
Vrinda Bhat ◽  
Surekha S. Medikeri ◽  
Shobha G. Hiremath

Samskara is defined as a process of bringing about a desired modification or establishing a change of property in a drug or group of drugs. In the process of Aushadhi Nirmana, varied number of procedures (Samskaras) are adopted to inculcate the desired dosage form and efficacy to the medicine. Among all Samskaras, Kaala plays a vital role in Ayurvedic pharmaceutics. Kaala is a constant factor which follows incoherently in every step of Aushadhi Nirmana. Active principles of plants vary in every season and at different quarters of the day. After the collection of drugs for a pharmaceutical preparation, Kaala plays its role during Paka of various formulations. The definition of pharmaceutics does not end with mere production of a dosage form but also includes its safety and efficacy. Kaala has the potential to influence both these factors. Thus, our Acharyas have provided meticulous information on Ayurvedic pharmaceutics giving prime importance to a minute, yet very significant aspect called “Kaala”.


Author(s):  
Steven J. R. Ellis

Tabernae were ubiquitous among all Roman cities, lining the busiest streets and dominating their most crowded intersections, and in numbers not known by any other form of building. That they played a vital role in the operation of the city—indeed in the very definition of urbanization—is a point too often under-appreciated in Roman studies, or at best assumed. The Roman Retail Revolution is a thorough investigation into the social and economic worlds of the Roman shop. With a focus on food and drink outlets, and with a critical analysis of both archaeological material and textual sources, Ellis challenges many of the conventional ideas about the place of retailing in the Roman city. A new framework is forwarded, for example, to understand the motivations behind urban investment in tabernae. Their historical development is also unraveled to identify three major waves—or, revolutions—in the shaping of retail landscapes. Two new bodies of evidence underpin the volume. The first is generated from the University of Cincinnati’s recent archaeological excavations into a Pompeian neighborhood of close to twenty shop-fronts. The second comes from a field survey of the retail landscapes of more than a hundred cities from across the Roman world. The richness of this information, combined with an interdisciplinary approach to the lives of the Roman sub-elite, results in a refreshingly original look at the history of retailing and urbanism in the Roman world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Vlcek ◽  
Shize Yang ◽  
Yongji Gong ◽  
Pulickel Ajayan ◽  
Wu Zhou ◽  
...  

AbstractExploration of structure-property relationships as a function of dopant concentration is commonly based on mean field theories for solid solutions. However, such theories that work well for semiconductors tend to fail in materials with strong correlations, either in electronic behavior or chemical segregation. In these cases, the details of atomic arrangements are generally not explored and analyzed. The knowledge of the generative physics and chemistry of the material can obviate this problem, since defect configuration libraries as stochastic representation of atomic level structures can be generated, or parameters of mesoscopic thermodynamic models can be derived. To obtain such information for improved predictions, we use data from atomically resolved microscopic images that visualize complex structural correlations within the system and translate them into statistical mechanical models of structure formation. Given the significant uncertainties about the microscopic aspects of the material’s processing history along with the limited number of available images, we combine model optimization techniques with the principles of statistical hypothesis testing. We demonstrate the approach on data from a series of atomically-resolved scanning transmission electron microscopy images of MoxRe1-xS2 at varying ratios of Mo/Re stoichiometries, for which we propose an effective interaction model that is then used to generate atomic configurations and make testable predictions at a range of concentrations and formation temperatures.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 1153
Author(s):  
Elysia Racanelli ◽  
Abdulhadi Jfri ◽  
Amnah Gefri ◽  
Elizabeth O’Brien ◽  
Ivan Litvinov ◽  
...  

Background: Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is a rare complication of hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). Objectives: To conduct a systematic review and an individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis to describe the clinical characteristics of HS patients developing cSCC and determine predictors of poor outcome. Methods: Medline/PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were searched for studies reporting cSCC arising in patients with HS from inception to December 2019. A routine descriptive analysis, statistical hypothesis testing, and Kaplan–Meier survival curves/Cox proportional hazards regression models were performed. Results: A total of 34 case reports and series including 138 patients were included in the study. The majority of patients were males (81.6%), White (83.3%), and smokers (n = 22/27 reported) with a mean age of 53.5 years. Most patients had gluteal (87.8%), Hurley stage 3 HS (88.6%). The mean time from the diagnosis of HS to the development of cSCC was 24.7 years. Human papillomavirus was identified in 12/38 patients tested. Almost 50% of individuals had nodal metastasis and 31.3% had distant metastases. Half of the patients succumbed to their disease. Conclusions: cSCC is a rare but life-threatening complication seen in HS patients, mainly occurring in White males who are smokers with severe, long-standing gluteal HS. Regular clinical examination and biopsy of any suspicious lesions in high-risk patients should be considered. The use of HPV vaccination as a preventive and possibly curative method needs to be explored.


Author(s):  
Alma Andersson ◽  
Joakim Lundeberg

Abstract Motivation Collection of spatial signals in large numbers has become a routine task in multiple omics-fields, but parsing of these rich datasets still pose certain challenges. In whole or near-full transcriptome spatial techniques, spurious expression profiles are intermixed with those exhibiting an organized structure. To distinguish profiles with spatial patterns from the background noise, a metric that enables quantification of spatial structure is desirable. Current methods designed for similar purposes tend to be built around a framework of statistical hypothesis testing, hence we were compelled to explore a fundamentally different strategy. Results We propose an unexplored approach to analyze spatial transcriptomics data, simulating diffusion of individual transcripts to extract genes with spatial patterns. The method performed as expected when presented with synthetic data. When applied to real data, it identified genes with distinct spatial profiles, involved in key biological processes or characteristic for certain cell types. Compared to existing methods, ours seemed to be less informed by the genes’ expression levels and showed better time performance when run with multiple cores. Availabilityand implementation Open-source Python package with a command line interface (CLI), freely available at https://github.com/almaan/sepal under an MIT licence. A mirror of the GitHub repository can be found at Zenodo, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.4573237. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


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