ANNIS: a linguistic database for exploring information structure

In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of our first version of the database "ANNIS" (ANNotation of Information Structure). For research based on empirical data, ANNIS provides a uniform environment for storing this data together with its linguistic annotations. A central database promotes standardized annotation, which facilitates interpretation and comparison of the data. ANNIS is used through a standard web browser and offers tier-based visualization of data and annotations, as well as search facilities that allow for cross-level and cross-sentential queries. The paper motivates the design of the system, characterizes its user interface, and provides an initial technical evaluation of ANNIS with respect to data size and query processing

ANNIS

In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of our first version of the database "ANNIS" ("ANNotation of Information Structure"). For research based on empirical data, ANNIS provides a uniform environment for storing this data together with its linguistic annotations. A central database promotes standardized annotation, which facilitates interpretation and comparison of the data. ANNIS is used through a standard web browser and offers tier-based visualization of data and annotations, as well as search facilities that allow for cross-level and cross-sentential queries. The paper motivates the design of the system, characterizes its user interface, and provides an initial technical evaluation of ANNIS with respect to data size and query processing

X‐ray tomoscopy reveals the dynamics of ice templating

Little experimentally explored and understood are the complex dynamics of microstructure formation by ice-templating when aqueous solutions or slurries are directionally solidified (freeze cast) into cellular solids. With synchrotron-based, time-resolved X-ray tomoscopy it is possible to study in situ under well-defined conditions the anisotropic, partially faceted growth of ice crystals in aqueous systems. Obtaining one full tomogram per second for ≈270 s with a spatial resolution of 6 µm, it is possible to capture with minimal X-ray absorption, the freezing front in a 3% weight/volume (w/v) sucrose-in-water solution, which typically progresses at 5–30 µm s−1 for applied cooling rates of = 1–10 °C min−1. These time and length scales render X-ray tomoscopy ideally suited to quantify in 3D ice crystal growth and templating phenomena that determine the performance-defining hierarchical architecture of freeze-cast materials: a complex pore morphology and “ridges”, “jellyfish cap”, and “tentacle”-like secondary features, which decorate the cell walls