Search

We describe the case of a 69-year-old woman who presented with a decline in vision in the left eye and was found to have a choroidal lesion with clinical and echographic features concerning for primary uveal melanoma. Systemic imaging identified numerous metastases to the liver, kidneys, paratracheal lymph nodes, lung, and brain. The hepatic lesion was biopsied, and genetic analysis identified a Val600Glu (c.1799T>A) BRAF mutation, consistent with a cutaneous primary malignancy, although no primary tumor was identified. This case highlights that metastasis to the choroid is a rare presentation of nonuveal melanoma that can mimic primary uveal melanoma. Genetic analysis of tumor tissue can identify the origin of the melanoma and guide treatment options. Systemic imaging should be performed prior to intervention for choroidal neoplasms.

In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, John Terrell (2020) objected to the proposition that islands can offer model systems to study human behavior and ecodyn...

The present contribution highlights results of the recent irradiation campaigns applied to screen mechanical properties of advanced tungsten and copper-based materials—main candidates for the application in the plasma-facing components (PFC) in the European DEMO, which has also been presented at 28th IAEA fusion energy conference. The main challenges in the formulated irradiation programme were linked to: (I) assessment of the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature of newly developed tungsten-based materials; (ii) investigation of an industrial pure tungsten grade under high temperature irradiation, reflecting operational conditions in the high flux divertor region; (iii) assessment of the high temperature strength of CuCrZr-based alloys and composites developed to enable the extension of the operational window for the heat sink materials. The development and choice of the advanced materials is driven naturally by the need to extend the operation temperature/fluence window thereby enlarging the design space for PFCs. The obtained results helped identifying the prospective tungsten and copper-based material grades as well as yielded a number of unexpected results pointing at severe degradation of the mechanical properties due to the irradiation. The results are discussed along with the highlights of the microstructural examination. An outlook for near future investigations involving in-depth post-irradiation examination and further irradiation campaigns is provided.

To simulate turbulent flames with high accuracy at low computational cost, Rieth et al. [“A hybrid flamelet finite-rate chemistry approach for efficient LES with a transported FDF,” Combust. Flame 199, 183–193 (2019)] have developed a hybrid method combining a combustion sub-grid model with assumed filtered density function (FDF) with a transported FDF approach. The present paper extends the hybrid approach to a stratified flame from the Cambridge stratified flame series. In contrast to the conventional Lagrangian FDF transport approach, the hybrid model applies Lagrangian particles to solve FDF transport only in selected regions, while an assumed FDF is applied in the remaining domain. With the hybrid model, the overall number of particles is strongly reduced compared to the conventional Lagrangian FDF transport model, promising great savings in computational cost. To provide a basis for the comparisons, simulations with assumed FDF or transported FDF only have also been performed. The present work aims to show the advantage of the Lagrangian transported FDF and the hybrid approach for a highly stratified flame, one of the most challenging members of the well-known Cambridge stratified flame series. Different criteria are tested for triggering the switch-over between the methods to maximize the efficiency of the hybrid approach, where basic flame quantities such as mixture fraction were predicted well with the assumed FDF model, and the temperature and mass fraction of carbon monoxide were predicted better by the hybrid method, featuring the transported FDF technique.

Examining how past human populations responded to environmental and climatic changes is a central focus of the historical sciences. The use of summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for estimating relative population sizes provides a widely applicable method in this research area. Paleodemographic reconstructions and modeling with SPDs, however, are stymied by a lack of accepted methods for model fitting, tools for assessing the demographic impact of environmental or climatic variables, and a means for formal multi-model comparison. These deficiencies severely limit our ability to reliably resolve crucial questions of past human-environment interactions. We propose a solution using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to fit complex demographic models to observed SPDs. Using a case study from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a location that has long been the focus of debate regarding the impact of environmental and climatic changes on its human population, we find that past populations were resilient to environmental and climatic challenges. Our findings support a growing body of evidence showing stable and sustainable communities on the island. The ABC framework offers a novel approach for exploring regions and time periods where questions of climate-induced demographic and cultural change remain unresolved., Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates can be used to estimate past demography, but methods to test for associations with environmental change are lacking. Here, DiNapoli et al. propose an approach using Approximate Bayesian Computation and illustrate it in a case study of Rapa Nui.

Jeff Clark's archaeological research on Eastern Tutuila Island provided the first regional scale settlement pattern data in American Samoa that could be meaningfully compared to earlier data drawn from projects on the archipelago's western islands, Savaiʻi and ʻUpolu. Building on Clark's work, in this paper we generate a spatial and temporal geodatabase incorporating 900 archaeological sites and 520 age estimates spanning the entirety of the Sāmoan Islands. The Sāmoa Archaeological Geospatial Database is useful for addressing a number of regional research questions using spatial and temporal data at multiple geographic scales; however, preliminary work must first be conducted to convert site data into comparable lower-scale analytical units. To highlight this process, we provide an example drawn from Clark's archaeological surveys in ʻAoa Valley, Tutuila Island. Finally, we suggest that a siteless survey approach is necessary to generate comparable data for settlement pattern and landscape analyses.

The timing and choice of initial settlement location are examined on the small island of Tavua in Fiji’s Mamanuca Group. The mid- to late-Holocene sea-level retreat influenced the island’s coastal ...

Since the investigations of Spoehr in the 1950s, most researchers have accepted a date of ∼3500 BP/1500 BC for the initial human settlement of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. The relationship of this early expansion beyond Island Southeast Asia, characterized by Lapita-like pottery, to the appearance of Lapita in Near Oceania, generally was either given little thought or largely ignored. The Lapita settlement of Near Oceania is almost universally regarded as the initial expansion of Austronesian speakers into the Pacific, followed a few centuries later by a rapid migration to the east into Remote Oceania. More recently, however, radiocarbon evidence from several sites suggests that initial late Holocene expansion into the Pacific occurred in the Mariana Islands. This hypothesis needs critical evaluation. To this end, we created site- and region-level Bayesian calibration models. Results estimate that initial Lapita occupation of the Mussau Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago occurred b...

Simple Summary Brain metastases are common in melanoma and are often associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Although many new treatments for melanoma have been approved in recent years, including immune checkpoint inhibitors and BRAF/MEK inhibitors, limited data are available for survival for patients with brain metastases treated with these novel therapies. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate current surgical, radiation, and systemic therapies over the past 10 years in melanoma patients with brain metastases. Our study noted increased overall survival in patients treated with craniotomy and CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitors, while whole brain radiation was associated with poorer overall survival. Abstract Brain metastases commonly develop in melanoma and are associated with poor overall survival of about five to nine months. Fortunately, new therapies, including immune checkpoint inhibitors and BRAF/MEK inhibitors, have been developed. The aim of this study was to identify outcomes of different treatment strategies in patients with melanoma brain metastases in the era of checkpoint inhibitors. Patients with brain metastases secondary to melanoma were identified at a single institution. Univariate and multivariable analyses were performed to identify baseline and treatment factors, which correlated with progression-free and overall survival. A total of 209 patients with melanoma brain metastases were identified. The median overall survival of the cohort was 5.3 months. On multivariable analysis, the presence of non-cranial metastatic disease, poor performance status (ECOG 2–4), whole-brain radiation therapy, and older age at diagnosis of brain metastasis were associated with poorer overall survival. Craniotomy (HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.45–0.97) and treatment with a CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitor (HR 0.55, 95% CI 0.32–0.94) were the only interventions associated with improved overall survival. Further studies with novel agents are needed to extend lifespan in patients with brain metastases in melanoma.

We summarise previous provenance research of Sāmoan lithic and ceramic artefacts, noting the timing and relative frequency of artefact transfers. Our summary suggests few intra- and extra-archipelago artefact transfers for the first two millennia, but that these modestly increased in the last 800 years of the prehistoric sequence. The late distribution of Sāmoan basalt around the Pacific was spatially expansive, but proportionally small. These results have implications for explaining both the development of Polynesian society and basalt artefact exchange. RESUME Nous presentons ici une revue des travaux engages sur la provenance des artefacts lithiques et ceramiques samoans, en insistant sur temporalite et la frequence relative des transferts d'objets. Notre synthese suggere assez peu d’echanges dans et hors de l'archipel durant les deux premiers millenaires, mais une augmentation moderee de ces transferts au cours des 800 dernieres annees de la sequence prehistorique. La distribution tardive des outils de basalte de Samoa apparait geographiquement etendue dans le Pacifique, mais quantitativement reduite. Ces resultats apportent des eclairages sur le developpement de la societe polynesienne ainsi que sur les echanges d'outils en basalte.

Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) presents a quintessential case where the tempo of investment in monumentality is central to debates regarding societal collapse, with the common narrative positing that statue platform (ahu) construction ceased sometime around AD 1600 following an ecological, cultural, and demographic catastrophe. This narrative remains especially popular in fields outside archaeology that treat collapse as historical fact and use Rapa Nui as a model for collapse more generally. Resolving the tempo of “collapse” events, however, is often fraught with ambiguity given a lack of formal modeling, uncritical use of radiocarbon estimates, and inattention to information embedded in stratigraphic features. Here, we use a Bayesian model-based approach to examine the tempo of events associated with arguments about collapse on Rapa Nui. We integrate radiocarbon dates, relative architectural stratigraphy, and ethnohistoric accounts to quantify the onset, rate, and end of monument construction as a means of testing the collapse hypothesis. We demonstrate that ahu construction began soon after colonization and increased rapidly, sometime between the early-14th and mid-15th centuries AD, with a steady rate of construction events that continued beyond European contact in 1722. Our results demonstrate a lack of evidence for a pre-contact ‘collapse’ and instead offer strong support for a new emerging model of resilient communities that continued their long-term traditions despite the impacts of European arrival. Methodologically, our model-based approach to testing hypotheses regarding the chronology of collapse can be extended to other case studies around the world where similar debates remain difficult to resolve.

Kuli'ou'ou Rockshelter (Site O1) in the Hawaiian Islands has a certain status as the first archaeological site in the Pacific Islands to be directly dated via the then newly introduced radiocarbon method. The original date of 946 180 before 1950, from the base of the rockshelter's cultural deposit, greatly influenced archaeologists' views of regional cultural sequences in East Polynesia. We present the results of six new AMS 14C dates run on Kuli'ou'ou Rockshelter wood charcoal which has been identified to short-lived and medium-lived species. We use these data, along with a re-evaluation of the two dates obtained by the original excavators, Kenneth Emory and Yosi Sinoto, to present a revised chronology for the rockshelter. In addition, we discuss new wood charcoal identifications from the two lower layers at Site O1 for illuminating general vegetation patterns in the Expansion to Proto-Historic periods. Finally, the broader implications of our revised chronology are considered for the prehistoric sequence of O'ahu Island and in the larger context of the settlement sequence for the Hawaiian archipelago.

Recent estimates of when Hawai’i was colonized by Polynesians display considerable variability, with dates ranging from about A.D. 800 to 1250. Using high resolution paleoenvironmental coring data and a carefully defined set of archaeological radiocarbon dates, a Bayesian model for initial settlement was constructed. The pollen and charcoal assemblages of the core record made it possible to identify and date the prehuman period and also the start of human settlement using a simple depositional model. The archaeological and paleoenvironmental estimates of the colonization date show a striking convergence, indicating that initial settlement occurred at A.D. 940–1130 at a 95 percent highest posterior density region (HPD), and most probably between A.D. 1000 to 1100, using a 67 percent HPD. This analysis highlights problems that may occur when paleoenvironmental core chronologies are based on bulk soil dates. Further research on the dating of the bones ofRattus exulans, a Polynesian introduction, may refine the dating model, as would archaeological investigations focused on potential early site locations.

The first people in Sāmoa produced a varied ceramic archaeological record including a single deposit with decorated Lapita ceramics on the island of ‘Upolu in the west of the archipelago and a nearly contemporaneous plainware deposit over 250 km to the east on Ofu Island. Post-Lapita ceramic change across Sāmoa is similar with almost no decoration, local ceramic production, limited vessel form diversity, and changing frequencies of thin- and thick-wares. This Sāmoan ceramic record is different from nearby Tonga and Fiji where early decorated Lapita ceramics are widely distributed, there are no thickness-defined ware types, and for Fiji, post-Lapita ceramics are more variable. Here we investigate the apparent uniqueness of the Sāmoan ceramic record through an analysis of early plainware ceramics, the second oldest after the Ofu deposits, from Tutuila Island in the center of the Sāmoan archipelago. Our assemblage-specific findings are similar to other Sāmoan plainware analyses, but we suggest the ceramic and other archaeological evidence from Sāmoa and the region indicates Sāmoa was colonized by a few isolated groups and that within the context of cultural transmission of ceramic variants, selection explains thickness variation and likely other aspects of Sāmoan ceramic change.

We assess 926 radiocarbon dates from Hawai’i Island, the largest assemblage of dates compiled from a single island in Oceania. Based on a classificatory approach that arranges the dates based on their reliability, accuracy, and precision, our results indicate that the most reliable estimate for the initial Polynesian colonization of Hawai’i Island is AD 1220–1261, ∼250 to 450 years later than the current consensus. This conclusion is strikingly convergent with recent estimates for the colonization of remote East Polynesia. Our analysis highlights the need for wood charcoal identification to insure selection of short-lived plants/plant parts for radiocarbon dating, and that a reliance on dating unidentified wood charcoal is a waste of resources that only serves to retard progress in refining the settlement chronology of Hawai’i Island and other locations.

Mechanical tests have been performed at 550 °C under vacuum on the ferritic–martensitic steel EUROFER97. These experiments included fatigue tests, creep tests and combined creep–fatigue tests. The latter showed significant cyclic softening in the fatigue stage and a remarkable break-down of creep strength in the creep stage. The cyclic softening behaviour was almost identical for all tests and therefore insensitive to the different strain amplitudes. SEM of the specimen’s fracture surfaces and free surfaces revealed that networks of coagulated surface cracks formed during creep–fatigue were not failure relevant. TEM imaging displayed a drastic drop in dislocation density, and a considerable formation of precipitates and subgrain-structures in all tests. Pure fatigue led to the strongest reduction of dislocation density, whereas creep–fatigue induced the most pronounced formation of precipitates. Obviously, the internal softening due to prior cycling led to accelerated creep. Hence, a modified damage model for creep–fatigue load cases was proposed.

Among the Lapita-bearing island groups of the Pacific, Sāmoa is unusual for having a relatively large land area but only one cultural deposit containing Lapita ceramics. Although it has been proposed that additional Lapita settlements may have been distributed along the coasts of much of the archipelago, investigations have not located these deposits nor reliably dated early Polynesian Plainware deposits older than ∼2500 cal BP. We combine a chronometric hygiene protocol and a GIS-based model of the paleoshoreline to examine the temporal and spatial distribution of pre-2000 cal BP archaeological deposits in the islands. Using the currently available suite of radiocarbon dates, it is apparent that only by ∼2300–2000 cal BP were a number of settlements occupied across the archipelago. Acknowledging that a variety of geomorphological processes have changed the Sāmoan landscape, we developed a GIS-based model of the ∼3000 cal BP coastlines of Tutuila and Aunu’u Islands, which suggest that suitable sa...

An understanding of sin as a manifestation of brokenheartedness offers a way of framing the healing task before the therapist and the “Disconnected/Unplugged Man” client. The client's addiction to Internet pornography may be a means by which he is unconsciously replicating his heretofore silenced story of abuses of linear power. Embodied community and relational power offer pathways to authentic and life‐giving relationships of love and presence.

The corpus of radiocarbon dates for Sāmoan archaeology has grown exponentially since the pioneering work of Green and Davidson in the 1960s, enabling us to re-analyze the archipelago's cultural chronology. A reliable and valid radiocarbon chronology forms the basis for describing and explaining cultural variability and change in the central Pacific. Towards that end, in this paper we compile the available radiocarbon dates from published and unpublished (“grey literature”) sources. We critically evaluate 236 radiocarbon dates following a chronometric hygiene protocol to identify the most secure and reliable age estimates. We accept 147 dates (62.3%) as a means of addressing two significant issues for Sāmoan prehistory: (1) the chronology of settlement and human expansion across the archipelago pre-2000 cal BP, which relates to issues of Lapita colonization, and the effect of island geomorphology on settlement; and (2) analysis of the so-called “Dark Ages” (ca. 1500–1000 cal BP), a period relevant to issues of social complexity and East Polynesian settlement. Our research highlights the need for a rigorous sampling protocol for radiocarbon dating.

The authors describe the case of a 19-year-old female with shunted aqueductal stenosis who presented with low-pressure hydrocephalus that responded to negative pressure drainage. A magnetic resonance elastography scan performed 3 weeks later demonstrated very low brain tissue stiffness (high brain tissue compliance). An analysis of the importance of this finding in understanding this rare condition is discussed.

Colonization of Remote Oceania resulted in the discovery of thousands of islands spread across an enormous area of the Pacific Ocean. Beginning as early as approximately 3500 cal. B.P. in Western Micronesia, populations began an expansion westward eventually settling East Polynesia over two millennia later. Although this general pattern is well-established, the reliability of colonization chronologies for particular islands and island groups varies significantly. This chapter synthesizes and critiques current interpretations of radiocarbon and other dating estimates for colonization of the major islands across the region and provides recommendations for future research and chronology building, highlighting the potential for Bayesian analyses. Estimates for the colonization of Hawai'i are presented as a case study.

Confusion about the mandated reporting of child abuse was discovered in a case study to be widespread, including at the state level. Such extensive confusion serves to keep citizens from both seeing the depth of suffering to which children are subjected and responding appropriately to their suffering; and it serves to keep society dissociated from the impact violence has on us.

Review(s) of: First settlement of remote Oceania: Earliest sites in the Mariana Islands, by Mike T. Carson, Springer, New York 2014, ISBN 978-3-319-01046-5 (pb); 978-3-319-01047-2 (ebook). Pp. ix+ 149. 49.99 euros (pb), 41.64 euros (e).

Requirements elicitation and documentation are complex activities. The quality of their products can improve through stakeholders' participation, particularly in projects with high uncertainty. However, participative requirements engineering, especially in distributed environments, needs a platform that can support effective collaboration among often diverse stakeholders. Wikipedia has proved the flexibility of wikis for collaborating on content creation in general. In this article, the authors adapt this approach to support active stakeholder participation in RE. They include a document structure for wiki-based RE and discuss challenges and solutions based on their experience with several industry and academic projects. This article is part of a special issue on stakeholders in requirements engineering.

Small structures with dimensions in the nanometer regime play an important role within a lot of modern technological branches like, for example, genetics, chip fabrication, material science, medicine, or chemistry. While highly sophisticated characterization methods would be necessary to study such nanostructures, computational methods and models have made their entrance into the field of nanotechnology. The present work gives an overview of the problems connected with quantum mechanics, many-particle systems, and nanophysical models. Further, the application of molecular dynamics (MD)--a typical computational method suitable for modelling at the nanolevel--is introduced and outlined. The setup and use of specific MD models, advanced computation techniques, and efficient algorithms are discussed, while the focus is laid on the subjects nanodesign and nanoengineering which are demonstrated for the example of metallic nanostructures. Finally, the introduced techniques and methods are applied to stability studies of theoretical nanomachines.