The brick Chapel at St. Mary's City, Maryland, built around 1667, would have been an impressive structure on a colonial frontier where all the other buildings were built only of wood. While the ...building is no longer extant, the bricks remaining in the buried foundations hold information about the technologies and materials used by brickmakers in the 17th-century Chesapeake region. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and petrographic analysis of thin sections were used to compare the Chapel bricks and other 17th-century bricks and tiles from several Chesapeake contexts to locally available clay sources. While the composition of the Chapel bricks is generally consistent with that of clays available in southern Maryland, these historic materials could not be linked to any one deposit, and may reflect the mixing of clays from multiple sources. In contrast, building materials from other 17th-century buildings at St. Mary's City could be more precisely “matched” to specific local clay deposits. This paper reports on our initial investigations toward understanding the technology of the Chapel bricks and their relationship to other bricks from St. Mary's City.
It has been 18 years since Andrée Rosenfeld suggested that the rock-art
of north Queensland changed from non-figurative to mainly figurative
forms some 5-4000 years ago. Her views were based on a ...small regional
database and on indirect chronological evidence. This paper looks afresh
at the antiquity of north Queensland's rock-art by reviewing the
existing evidence — much elaborated since Rosenfeld's pioneering work —
and by presenting new AMS radiocarbon results undertaken directly on
rock-art. Her general chronological model is supported and refined by
these new findings.
Using a modified wet-chemical pretreatment coupled with plasma-chemical oxidation, we have dated several rock paintings containing charcoal as pigment. Because rock paintings are important, ...irreplaceable cultural materials, many of which are disappearing due to natural causes and vandalism, the extraction of the available scientific content is of great importance. A NaOH pretreatment scheme allows us to obtain dates on samples of only a few milligrams of total background and charcoal material while still removing humic acid contamination. Studies of the efficacy of the pretreatment in comparison with the standard acid-alkali-acid pretreatment show no statistical difference in the results obtained on both "synthetic" samples of known-age charcoal mixed with limestone and charcoal pigment from a rock painting in Montana. We have now plasma-chemically oxidized and, using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), radiocarbon dated charcoal-pigmented paintings from west Texas, California, and the Chillagoe and Mitchell-Palmer regions of Australia.
Dated Rock Paintings at Red Cliffs, Arizona Armitage, Ruth Ann; Hyman, Marian; Rowe, Marvin W. ...
The Kiva (Tucson, Ariz.),
01/2000, Letnik:
65, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article presents radiocarbon dates for painted motifs at Red Cliffs, west of Sedona in the northeastern corner of Yavapai County, Arizona. All rock painting shields at the Red Cliffs sites have ...usually been attributed to the Sinagua. Black pigment from one shield motif and an overlying white dot on another motif yielded uncalibrated radiocarbon dates of 1080 and 550 years B.P., respectively. The black pigment sample dates to a time when the region was extensively used. Assuming that the two shields were painted contemporaneously, the age of the white dot sample suggests that a later cultural group altered Sinagua paintings at Red Cliffs after the Sinagua abandoned the region.
Objective
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with increased cardiovascular event (CVE) risk. The impact of statins in RA is not established. We assessed whether atorvastatin is superior to ...placebo for the primary prevention of CVEs in RA patients.
Methods
A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial was designed to detect a 32% CVE risk reduction based on an estimated 1.6% per annum event rate with 80% power at P < 0.05. RA patients age >50 years or with a disease duration of >10 years who did not have clinical atherosclerosis, diabetes, or myopathy received atorvastatin 40 mg daily or matching placebo. The primary end point was a composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke, transient ischemic attack, or any arterial revascularization. Secondary and tertiary end points included plasma lipids and safety.
Results
A total of 3,002 patients (mean age 61 years; 74% female) were followed up for a median of 2.51 years (interquartile range IQR 1.90, 3.49 years) (7,827 patient‐years). The study was terminated early due to a lower than expected event rate (0.70% per annum). Of the 1,504 patients receiving atorvastatin, 24 (1.6%) experienced a primary end point, compared with 36 (2.4%) of the 1,498 receiving placebo (hazard ratio HR 0.66 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.39, 1.11; P = 0.115 and adjusted HR 0.60 95% CI 0.32, 1.15; P = 0.127). At trial end, patients receiving atorvastatin had a mean ± SD low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol level 0.77 ± 0.04 mmoles/liter lower than those receiving placebo (P < 0.0001). C‐reactive protein level was also significantly lower in the atorvastatin group than the placebo group (median 2.59 mg/liter IQR 0.94, 6.08 versus 3.60 mg/liter IQR 1.47, 7.49; P < 0.0001). CVE risk reduction per mmole/liter reduction in LDL cholesterol was 42% (95% CI −14%, 70%). The rates of adverse events in the atorvastatin group (n = 298 19.8%) and placebo group (n = 292 19.5%) were similar.
Conclusion
Atorvastatin 40 mg daily is safe and results in a significantly greater reduction of LDL cholesterol level than placebo in patients with RA. The 34% CVE risk reduction is consistent with the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration meta‐analysis of statin effects in other populations.
The other material components of crucial importance to the brewery's production were of course the grains and fruits fermented to make the political beverage, selected by the Wari specialist brewers ...for their recipes. While the fruits are especially prevalent after extended periods of heavy rain, they are present on trees in the study area year-round. ...while maize is a fairly water intensive crop, molle is a drought resistant tree that consistently produces fruit. ...it was both local resourcing of ceramic vessels for brewing and serving the alcoholic beverage and a focus on a set of brewing ingredients that were locally produced and resilient to climatic variations in production that created a sustainable brewing operation for four centuries. Patrick Ryan Williams is an associate curator and head of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, IL; Donna Nash is in the Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Joshua Henkin is in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Ruth Ann Armitage is in the Department of Chemistry, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti.
Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is an important source of hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation. Although UCB is often collected from unrelated donors, directed umbilical cord blood (DCB) from ...sibling donors also provides an important source of UCB for transplantation. This report summarizes the experience in collection, testing, storage, and transplantation of DCB units by the National Blood Service for England and North Wales over 10 years. Eligibility for collection was based on an existing sibling suffering from a disease that may be treated by stem cell transplantation or a family history that could result in the birth of a sibling with a disease that could be treated by stem cell transplantation. Collections were made on the provision that the sibling's clinician was willing to financially support the collection and to take responsibility for medical review of the mother and potential recipient. Given the high investment in UCB banking and the introduction of new regulations and mandatory licensing under the European Union Tissues and Cells Directive and those proposed in the U.S., this report details the procedures that we have used for DCB donations, the outcome data where donations have been used for transplantation, and it provides some timely recommendations for best practices. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.
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