Dutch research into the country house and its landscape

One of the unmistakable trends in current country house research is the growing interest in the landscape context of country houses. The unquestioned emphasis on the main house and the garden is increasingly giving way to an approach that includes or focuses on the wider setting: village, nature, town, infrastructure, farms, churches, and other country houses. This article sketches the rise of this approach and offers an overview of the various perspectives. Among the aspects covered by landscape studies are country house regions, choice of location, the productive landscape, infrastructure, the political landscape and the mental landscape. Although this growing interest in the landscape setting is one of the most important recent developments in country house research, most of these studies are predominantly descriptive. This article calls for the establishment of a firmer methodological and theoretical underpinning – a task to which it is to be hoped that future researchers will devote themselves.

Coastal Landscapes and Invisible Archaeology

The contribution aims to investigate the relationship between coastal landscapes, invisible archaeology and architectural design through the case of St. Peter’s Abbey archaeological site, in the fjord of Crapolla in Massa Lubrense, that has been the subject of an interdisciplinary research. In these particular situations, architectural design works on an interpretative condition where the intersection between reciprocal learnings takes on great importance in order to define design strategies for the valorization of the weaker archaeological traces in the contemporary territory. The Crapolla’s Abbey is an emblematic case, where the results achieved by different studies, from archaeological excavations to surveys, from studies on ancient materials and construction techniques to those on the spolia architecture, from landscape studies to geological ones, inevitably become the basis of architectural design, which has to be constantly updated, taking the connotations of an “open work” and becoming a sort of “building site of knowledge” in progress.

Die Sprachlandschaft des schulischen Raums

The study of signage in educational settings (‘schoolscape’) is a recent development in linguistic landscape research. Some approaches to schoolscapes focus on signs in schools of various types, which are coded for formal and functional characteristics, including language choice. Other approaches examine signs alongside spatial practices, e. g. the arrangement of furniture and classroom activities, thereby taking the viewpoints of teachers, students and parents into consideration. The research presented in this paper centers on school signs. We propose an analytical framework for schoolscape research which integrates the geosemiotic framework by Scollon and Scollon (2003), the classification of school signage by Gorter and Cenoz (2015), the notion of ‘sign genres’ from linguistic landscape studies and text linguistics, and a context-sensitive approach to spatial differences within educational institutions. Our framework includes four interlocking levels of examination: (a) discourses, i. e. knowledge-and-power configurations, indexed by a sign; (b) genres by which a discourse is materialized in space; (c) a sign’s precise spatial location, e. g. a classroom as opposed to the school foyer, and (d) the semiotic resources that are routinely deployed for various genres of school signage. Empirical evidence comes from a case study of a secondary school in Hamburg, with more than 550 signs photographed and coded. The paper presents an exhaustive analysis of this data in terms of seven discourses, each materialized by a number of genres and with a specific spatial distribution in the school. The potential of this framework for future schoolscape research is discussed.

Next-Generation Sequencing of Patients With Breast Cancer in Community Oncology Clinics

PURPOSE Molecular biomarkers informing disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment decisions in patients with breast cancer are being uncovered by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. In this study, we survey how NGS is used for patients with breast cancer in real-world settings with a focus on physician behaviors and sequencing results. METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients with breast cancer who received NGS testing from commercial vendors as part of standard of care from 2014 to 2019. A total of 2,635 NGS reports from 2,316 unique breast cancer patients were assessed. Hormone receptor and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 statuses were abstracted from patient medical records. Comparative gene amplification and mutation frequencies were analyzed using Pearson's correlation and Lin's concordance statistics. RESULTS The number of physicians ordering NGS tests for patients with breast cancer increased more than six-fold from 2014 to 2019. Tissue- and plasma-based tests were ordered roughly equally by 2019, with plasma-based testing ordered most frequently in hormone receptor–positive subtypes. Patients with triple-negative breast cancer were most likely to receive NGS testing. Gene amplifications including ERBB2 were detected less frequently in our real-world data set as compared to previous genomic landscape studies, whereas the opposite was true for gene mutations including ESR1. Pathogenic mutations in the PI3K pathway (38.6%) and DNA damage repair pathway (11.0%) were frequently reported. Alterations were also reported across other cellular pathways. CONCLUSION Overall, we found that an increasing number of physicians in community settings are adopting NGS in the care of patients with breast cancer. Discrepancies between our real-world NGS data and previous genomic landscape studies are likely owed to the prevalence of plasma-based testing in community oncology clinics, as the reference data were from tissue-based NGS alone.

Assessment of Landscape Character and Absorptivity Based on Digital Terrain Model Analysis—Case Study of Jelenia Góra City in Poland

In an era of significant growth in the availability of spatial data and continued advances in computing technologies, opportunities for new interpretations and solutions to the landscape research problems posed worldwide are emerging. This paper presents different possibilities of applying digital terrain model (DTM) data in research of various aspects of landscape. For this purpose, two different methods were proposed. The first was to identify a set of components of the Jelenia Góra city landscape character on the basis of the topographic position index and spatial distribution of land cover, while the second was to assess the landscape of Jelenia Góra city in terms of the possibility of adopting new elements, using the author’s scenic absorptivity method. The results indicate the structure of the components of the landscape character of Jelenia Góra city together with its spatial distribution, which also allowed for the delineation of landscape units. The scenic absorptivity analysis showed that there are isolated areas within Jelenia Góra city that are capable of accommodating significant size elements that would not adversely affect the city landscape. In conclusion, DTM data are able to significantly improve research methods in landscape studies.

Espacios agrarios, asentamientos prehispánicos y tecnología LiDAR en el área costera central del Ecuador

<p class="VARAbstract">The use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology has revolutionised pre-Hispanic archaeology in large tracts of Central America (Canuto et. al. 2018; Fisher et al. 2016; Garrison et al. 2019; Chase &amp; Weishampel, 2016). This contribution is particularly significant in areas in which jungles and a complex orography had precluded the implementation of large-scale landscape archaeology studies.</p><p class="VARAbstract">Although this technology has not been used in South America as intensively as in Central America (Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, among others), LiDAR is beginning to be used to answer questions concerning the interaction between the landscape, pre-Hispanic societies and their economic exploitation strategies (Amazonia, Peru) (Van Valkenburg et al., 2020). This work analyses one of the most important archaeological areas in central Ecuador, Cerros de Hojas-Jaboncillo (Figs. 1 &amp; 2), which has traditionally been identified as a major centre of the Manteña culture. This culture spanned the current provinces of Manabí, Santa Elena and Guayas between the 8^th and 15^th centuries AD.</p><p class="VARAbstract">Although the site was discovered in the early 20th century (Saville, 1907 &amp; 1910; Estrada, 1957) on the slopes and summits of the Chongón-Colonche and Balzar hills range (formerly called Sierra de Bálsamo), it has not been until recent moments that the characterization of its extension, its spatial conformation, as well as the main geoarchaeological characteristics of the site have begun to be possible (López, 2008; Delgado, 2009; Tobar, 2012; Lunniss, 2012; Veintimilla-Bustamante, 2012). The limitations of previous studies were largely due to the prevalence of thick sub-tropical forests, whose trees are sometimes 14 m tall.</p><p class="VARNormal">In 2016, a large-scale LiDAR flight covering 147.78 km² at a density of 9 ppm² has revealed the main features of the archaeological complex, including various sites that illustrate a multi-nuclear settlement pattern (Figs. 5, 8 &amp; 10). The study suggests that settlements, between 0.5 and 3 ha in size (Fig. 8), followed a common pattern, standing on small long hilltop plateaus. The complexes were visually connected and were linked by a road network.</p><p class="VARNormal">There is little doubt that one of the most important discoveries concerns the relationship between archaeological sites and complex agrarian systems, which point to the exploitation of wide areas. These had irrigation systems that involved rainwater retention and water resources maximisation (Figs. 6 &amp; 8). The system made intensive rainwater use during the humid season (December-May); it also took advantage of the coastal mists that ensure precipitations on the hilltops.</p><p class="VARNormal">At the same time, the LiDAR survey has established differences between the settlement pattern in the north-eastern sector, in which the interaction between settlements and the agro-system is not so obvious, and the south-western sector, whose settlements are clearly related to wide terraced systems.</p><p class="VARNormal">These results will allow for comparisons between Cerros de Hojas-Jaboncillo and other known Manteño sites, such as Japotó (Bouchard, 2010), Agua Blanca (McEwan &amp; Silva, 1992) and Ligüiqui. All of them point to the continued occupation of the same areas, and the continuity of some sites at least between the Guangala period (500 BC.-600 AD) and the late Manteño period (12^th-15^th centuries), as seen in Salango and its territory (Béarez, Gay &amp; Lunniss, 2012).</p><p class="VARNormal">Most research in the 20^th century has argued for an increase in social complexity during the classic Manteño period (8^th-11^th centuries), following a diffusionist explanatory pattern (Estrada, 1957). However, the LiDAR analysis of the Cerros de Hojas-Jaboncillo site points to prolonged periods of stable management of the environment, a response to the need to make use of the available resources. Archaeology, through large-scale landscape studies and the in-depth characterisation of sites through wide-ranging sampling methodologies can contribute to answering the question as to whether environmental management led to the formation of a “Manteño state” or whether this society can be better defined as a chiefdom (Touchard-Houlbert, 2010).</p><p class="VARNormal"><strong>Highlights:</strong></p><ul><li><p>The study focused on the LiDAR research of the Cerro de Hojas-Jaboncillo, the most important pre-Hispanic site in the Manabi province (Ecuador).</p></li><li><p>LiDAR technology has allowed users to identify an intense occupation in a forest area, where until now, it was impossible to detect archaeological structures.</p></li><li><p>The study has established the close relationship between the pre-Hispanic occupation model and the use of complex irrigation systems.</p></li></ul>

Elinor Wight Gardner: Pioneer Geoarcheologist, Quaternary Scientist and Geomorphologist

Elinor Wight Gardner (1892–1981) was the first female geologist who worked and published as a geoarcheologist. During her career, she worked in arid lands of North Africa, Mediterranean and the Near East, and was regarded as a pioneering geoscientist who made important contributions in multiple fields, including archeology, geomorphology, paleontology and Quaternary science. Despite her ground-breaking work at many archeological sites, Gardner’s impact has been largely unrecognized. Few details are known about her personal life; she was a private and reserved person who left limited first-hand accounts of her opinions and motivations. Gardner worked with charismatic figures such as her life-long friend and primary collaborator, the archeologist Gertrude Caton Thompson (1888–1985). This biography synthesizes primary sources and draws insights about Gardner’s character from her bibliography, publications and notebooks, and mentions by contemporary peers. Much attention has focused on the historical “ancestral passions” of characters working in the fields of geology and archeology, with much emphasis on the ‘founding fathers’ and significantly less recognition of its ‘grandmothers’. We bring attention to the full scope of Gardner’s insightful contributions through analysis of her important collaborative research projects linking archeology and landscape studies during the early twentieth century.