Unmarked Sites Research Articles

Improving GPR interpretation by applying image-enhancing attributes and machine learning techniques: A case study over Green Hill Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) enables noninvasive imaging in structural mapping applications such as unmarked grave detection. However, burial signatures can be cryptic and require expert analysis. This study investigates attribute enhancement and machine learning to automate identification of variable-signature graves at Green Hill Cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Nine complementary seismic attributes were computed from the GPR envelope reflectivity volume to boost discontinuities and patterns indicative of shafts. Coherent energy, pseudofrequency, and similarity transforms showed optimal visualization enhancement. These volumes were input into unsupervised k-means and self-organizing map (SOM) machine learning models to cluster potential burial sites. Both methods accurately characterized strong anomaly reflections associated with apparent grave boundaries. However, limitations emerged in classifying subtler signatures that are likely linked to deteriorated or deeper interments. SOM clustering provided finer segmentation between noise and targets. Collectively, attributes amplified burial edges for easier recognition, while machine learning clustering expedited identification of most vault structures and unmarked sites. However, edge case discrimination remains a challenge. Results suggest that hybrid human-machine learning analysis can enhance efficiency over purely manual interpretation. With further method refinement, automated attribute and machine learning workflows show strong potential for accelerating GPR-based cemetery and archaeological mapping.

Blind date: female fossorial amphisbaenians prefer scent marks of large and healthy males.

Selecting a good mate is a decision with important fitness consequences. For this reason, mate choice has promoted the evolution of sexual ornaments signaling the quality of an individual. In fossorial animals, inhabiting visually restricted underground environments, chemical senses should be very important for mate choice. We examined whether sexual chemical signals (substrate scent marks) produced by males of the Iberian worm lizard, Blanus cinereus, a strictly fossorial blind amphisbaenian, provide information to females on morphological traits and health state. We administered corticosterone (CORT) to males simulating a continuous stressor affecting their health. Females preferred settling at sites scent-marked by males in comparison with similar sites with female scent or unmarked sites, but the attractiveness of males' scent differed between individuals. Females preferred scent marks of larger/older males and with a higher immune response, while their body condition and CORT treatment were unrelated to female preferences. Chemical analyses showed that proportions of some compounds in precloacal secretions of males (used to produce scent marks) were correlated with the morphological (body size) and health state (immune response and body condition, but not CORT treatment) of these males. These results suggest that females may make site-selection decisions based on assessing the chemical characteristics of males' scent marks, which were reliably related to some of the traits of the male that produced the scent. Therefore, females might use chemical senses to increase the opportunities to find and mate with males of high quality, coping with the restrictions of the subterranean environment.

Life and Death on the Tuapeka Goldfields — stakeholder input for a community museum's bioarchaeology-based exhibit

This practice insight describes community consultation and creation of an exhibit that was installed in a local museum to share findings from research involving excavations of historic cemeteries. Two individuals who had been buried in unmarked sites in historic cemeteries in the town of Lawrence, in the Otago region of New Zealand were exhumed for bioarchaeological research that included biochemical methods. Results were combined with cultural and environmental information from the Otago goldrush era to reconstruct lives of these settlers and tell their stories in the exhibit described here. Community values about exhibit representations related to human remains were explored through 16 semi-structured stakeholder interviews. Interviewees overwhelmingly but not unanimously supported the creation of an exhibit about this research. Interviewees recommended things to exclude from the exhibit (human remains or images of them) as well as information and objects to include. Information was compiled from multiple sources, including: existing bioarchaeological research findings; interviews with descendant groups, community, and other stakeholders; and historical archives. Information from these multiple sources was combined to create osteobiographies of two individuals — a woman and a Chinese journeyman — who had lived in Lawrence during the goldrush period (1850–1910). These osteobiographies formed the basis of an exhibit that was created and installed in a community museum in the town where their graves were located.

Vernacular historical practices on Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland

The approach employed by memory activists to sites of memory often involves historical practices. This paper presents the results of the examination of historical practices undertaken in locations of Holocaust violence during World War II and the disposal of victims’ remains that were not memorialised properly according to local residents or other groups with an interest in the sites’ past. The analysed practices were observed in the course of field research in various locations in Poland. The goal of the research was to describe these practices, discuss their critical potential, and indicate their distinct features as activities pertaining to contested sites of memory. A central tool for approaching this task is found in concepts of “non-site of memory” and “vernacular historian” as introduced to the debate by Claude Lanzmann and Lyle Dick. As a result, the article presents the cases of four vernacular historians whose practices are experimental combinations of the components of the work of professional historians and ways of working conditioned by local cultural environments, individual experience and commitment to communal life. Although vernacular history is sometimes considered of little value by academic historians, the research shows that the practices in question have the potential to produce new, socially relevant knowledge. Two distinct features of vernacular historical practices in non-sites of memory were observed: these unmarked sites of burial attract activists and prompt them to undertake historical practices; vernacular historians of these locations often undertake unconventional, sometimes experimental activities..

Coupling high-throughput mapping with proteomics analysis delineates cis-regulatory elements at high resolution.

Growing evidence suggests that functional cis-regulatory elements (cis-REs) not only exist in epigenetically marked but also in unmarked sites of the human genome. While it is already difficult to identify cis-REs in the epigenetically marked sites, interrogating cis-REs residing within the unmarked sites is even more challenging. Here, we report adapting Reel-seq, an in vitro high-throughput (HTP) technique, to fine-map cis-REs at high resolution over a large region of the human genome in a systematic and continuous manner. Using Reel-seq, as a proof-of-principle, we identified 408 candidate cis-REs by mapping a 58 kb core region on the aging-related CDKN2A/B locus that harbors p16INK4a. By coupling Reel-seq with FREP-MS, a proteomics analysis technique, we characterized two cis-REs, one in an epigenetically marked site and the other in an epigenetically unmarked site. These elements are shown to regulate the p16INK4a expression over an ∼100 kb distance by recruiting the poly(A) binding protein PABPC1 and the transcription factor FOXC2. Downregulation of either PABPC1 or FOXC2 in human endothelial cells (ECs) can induce the p16INK4a-dependent cellular senescence. Thus, we confirmed the utility of Reel-seq and FREP-MS analyses for the systematic identification of cis-REs at high resolution over a large region of the human genome.

Rectified Sites of Violence from Westgate to Lampedusa: Exploring the Link between Public Amnesia and Conflict in Ongoing Confrontations

Abstract This article investigates whether and how public amnesia of violent incidents such as mass drownings or mass killings impacts ongoing conflict dynamics. Specifically, the article compares and contrasts two forms of public amnesia in the relatively little-studied space of the rectified site – a site of violence returned to prior use without monumentation or commemoration. Looking at the unmarked sites of violence in East Africa’s confrontation with Al-Shabaab, such as the Westgate Mall, and the Mediterranean crossings within the system of migration deterrence, the article asks: How do rectification practices and associated public production of silence feed into conflict dynamics and conflict transformation? The article shows that while public amnesia tends to entrench the confrontation, recognition through commemoration needs to be calibrated carefully in order to avoid further conflict escalation. Epistemic redress must precede physical and symbolic memory work in rectified sites of violence. By tackling the puzzle of (non)commemoration and active forgetting of violence in contexts of ongoing confrontation, the article decentres dominant transitional justice concerns over memory from the present to the absent, and from the space of the ‘post’ to the lingering ‘in-between’ of conflict that defines many contemporary violent confrontations.

Bone memory: the necrogeography of the Armenian Genocide in Dayr al-Zur, Syria

This article discusses how Armenians have collected, displayed and exchanged the bones of their murdered ancestors in formal and informal ceremonies of remembrance in Dayr al-Zur, Syria – the final destination for hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the deportations of 1915. These pilgrimages – replete with overlapping secular and nationalist motifs – are a modern variant of historical pilgrimage practices; yet these bones are more than relics. Bone rituals, displays and vernacular memorials are enacted in spaces of memory that lie outside of official state memorials, making unmarked sites of atrocity more legible. Vernacular memorial practices are of particular interest as we consider new archives for the history of the Armenian Genocide. The rehabilitation of this historical site into public consciousness is particularly urgent, since the Armenian Genocide Memorial Museum and Martyr’s Church at the centre of the pilgrimage site were both destroyed by ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) in 2014.

Material mnemonics and competing narratives in Palestine-Israel

ABSTRACTSince 1948 the re-designation of depopulated Palestinian villages as national parks has evoked Lippet’s “cartography of nowhere”, as ruins and unmarked sites are subsumed in the process of material forgetting. Juxtaposing narratives and material mnemonics, this article assumes the villages of Deir Yassin, Suba, Kufr Bir’im and Iqrit as case studies to determine the extent to which memory infuses ruins with the ability to counter contemporary narratives. The article subsequently explores the use of debris in the sustenance of national memory, and questions how far “haunting” the land through commemorative tours and in situ story-telling renders the ruins noeuds de mémoire, as opposed to lieux de mémoire. Finally, the transition of the ruins from sites of history to sites of activism is charted through the use of theatre and technology that draw on the past and present as forms of cultural resistance.

Memory and the everyday landscape of violence in post-genocide Cambodia

This paper addresses the politics of memory in post-genocide Cambodia. Since 1979 genocide has been selectively memorialized in the country, with two sites receiving official commemoration: the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes and the killing fields at Choeung Ek. However, the Cambodian genocide was not limited to these two sites. Through a case study of two unmarked sites—the Sre Lieu mass grave at Koh Sla Dam and the Kampong Chhnang Airfield—we highlight the salience, and significance, of taking seriously those sites of violence that have not received official commemoration. We argue that the history of Cambodia's genocide, as well as attempts to promote transitional justice, must remain cognizant of how memories and memorials become political resources. In particular, we contend that a focus on the unremarked sites of past violence provides critical insight into our contemporary understandings of the politics of remembering and of forgetting.

Feasibility of the use of a novel soft tissue stiffness meter

Simple but objective measurement of soft tissue consistency would be advantageous in the assessment of many neurological, lymphostatic and venous disorders. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the feasibility of using a novel hand-held computerized soft tissue stiffness meter (STSM). The STSM describes the soft tissue stiffness (STS) in the form of the instantaneous force (N) by which the tissue resists the constant deformation produced by a cylindrical intender. Firstly, the STSM was used to test elastomer samples with known mechanical properties. In the in vivo assessment, 12 healthy, nondisabled adults (age range, 24–57 years) and 16 subjects with chronic myofascial neck pain syndrome (age range, 27–55 years) were studied. To study the reproducibility (coefficient of variation (CV(%))) of the method, the measurement sites were either marked with a marker pen (marked points) or localized anatomically (unmarked points). Measurements were made from the dorsal forearm (Arm), trapezius (Tra), levator scapulae (Lev), infraspinatus (Inf) and deltoideus (Del) muscle areas. STS in the forearm was studied during different types of short-term relative isometric loading of the muscle as well as during venous occlusion. STS values of the myofascial trigger points in the Lev muscles were evaluated bilaterally. A linear, positive relationship was found between the indenter force (N) and the dynamic compressive modulus (MPa) of elastomer stiffness (r2 = 0.90, n = 9). Intra- and interrater CVs of marked and unmarked sites varied between 4.31% and 12.06%. STS increased linearly along the relative muscle load (r2 = 0.96) and nonlinearly during the venous occlusion (r2 = 0.97). Statistically significant regional variation of STS was found between the different measurement sites (p < 0.05). In conclusion, STSM can evaluate tissue stiffness quantitatively and yield reproducible data.

Excretory deposits surrounding food sites facilitate social learning of food preferences in Norway rats

Experiments were conducted to investigate the communication and social learning of food preferences via excretory marking amoungst adult male Norway rats, Rattus norvegicus. In experiment 1 animals were placed in a large enclosure with a choice of two food sites each containing a different novel food. For rats in the experimental conditions the enclosure had previosly house four “demonstrator” conspecifics that had eaten one of the foods at one of the sites, whilst controls were placed in a clean enclosure. Experimental animals consistently ate more of the diet eaten by their demonstrators than controls, and consumed more food in total. The experiment also investigated whether this marking of food sites could result in social learning. Animals were replaced in a clean enclosure with a choice between the two foods at unmarked sites, 24 h after their first experience in the soiled enclosure, and again exhibited a preference for the demonstrators’ diet. The remaining experiments investigated the communication process underlying these results. From these it is concluded that what renders food sites attractive to ras is a stimulus complex that includes local urine marking of the sites and peripheral urinal and faecal deposits, neither of which on their own is sufficient to mediate the transmission of information about food preference, but which together is an effective means of transmitting information between rats.