In Search of a Genre: An Analysis of Political Campaign Rhetoric Used in Swing Races in the 2018 Midterm Elections

This study examined one press release and one video ad from six Democratic candidates running for the United States Congress in swing states and districts in the 2018 midterm elections. The purpose of this study was to determine if the rhetoric used by Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Congress in swing races constitutes a specific genre of political communication. Generic criticism was employed as a theoretical frame to determine if there was a common genre within this situated political communication. In addition, Burke’s cluster criticism was used to provide a close reading of the texts to identify key themes in the rhetoric. The two methods suggested the possibility of the development of a genre of communication used by Democratic candidates running in swing races for the United States Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The rhetorical cluster analysis revealed that themes of justice, inclusivity, bipartisanship, people above politics, and independence were used strategically by all of the candidates included in the study, suggesting strategic thematic language use that may be employed to win over voters in swing districts in midterm elections. The paper upon which this poster was based was written for the Senior Seminar course in Communication Arts. The paper was competitively selected for and subsequently presented at the Northwest Communication Association Conference in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in April 2019

Instead of simply paying for losses, Europe should institutecost-effective adaptation measures to meet the challengesposed by climate change.

Climate change is no longer an abstract concept, but one that is costing Europe and the world in both human and economic terms. Writing that climate change could cost the world trillions every year within a few decades, Annika Ahtonen argues for more policies from Europe geared towards helping member states and regions adapt to climate change, rather than the current approach of simply paying for losses

Testing for change-points in long-range dependent time series by means of a self-normalized Wilcoxon test

We propose a testing procedure based on the Wilcoxon two-sample test statistic in order to test for change-points in the mean of long-range dependent data. We show that the corresponding self-normalized test statistic converges in distribution to a non-degenerate limit under the hypothesis that no change occurred and that it diverges to infinity under the alternative of a change-point with constant height. Furthermore, we derive the asymptotic distribution of the self-normalized Wilcoxon test statistic under local alternatives, that is under the assumption that the height of the level shift decreases as the sample size increases. Regarding the finite sample performance, simulation results confirm that the self-normalized Wilcoxon test yields a consistent discrimination between hypothesis and alternative and that its empirical size is already close to the significance level for moderate sample sizes

Issues in usability studies for alerting in digital libraries

Alerting Services inform users of Digital Libraries about new or changed content of their favorite Digital Library collection, or about new documents discussing a topic they are interested in. The users define their interest in form of subscriptions; the alerting service filters new or changed documents against all user subscriptions and notifies the users about matches found. To define their subscriptions, users may, e.g., select a journal from a list, or a topic from a classification. Few services support the definition of IR type queries, or advanced combinations of queries and metadata selections

Sir Edward Grey, Germany, and the Origins of the First World War: A Re-Evaluation

Historians have variously condemned British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey for contributing to the escalation of the July Crisis of 1914, and praised him as an heroic advocate of peace. Addressing this conundrum, this article first assesses historiographical debates around the significance of Grey’s policy towards Germany in the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. It then traces Grey’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Germany on the one hand, and the Entente on the other. Finally, it provides an innovative analysis of Grey’s policy from the vantage point of Berlin, arguing that in July 1914 decisions taken by the governments of other countries escalated the crisis and were taken regardless of Grey’s position. The article concludes that current historiography overestimates British agency in July 1914 and that Grey was not as important to the outcome of the crisis as both his critics and his defenders have claimed. His actions could not change the minds of those on the continent who were bent on war

Ammonia based sanitation technology

Water-borne sanitation of toilet waste is not a viable option for the estimated 2.6 billion people that lack improved sanitation throughout the world. In Environmental Systems Analysis, source separating sewage systems have proven to be of interest, since both energy and nutrients are saved compared with conventional systems. As the urine and faecal matter contribute with the majority of nutrients to wastewater but constitute a small part of the volume, these fractions are suitable for nutrient recycling to agriculture. The potential content of pathogenic (disease causing) microorganisms makes it a necessity to sanitise the material before use as a fertiliser, especially as many pathogens are zoonotic, infecting both man and animal. The main objective of this study was to evaluate ammonia based sanitation technology for source separated urine and faeces aiming for production of safe fertilisers. To achieve this objective, the inactivation kinetics of several groups of organisms was investigated in relation to concentration of free ammonia, NH3, temperature and dry matter content. Inactivation of Ascaris suum eggs, Salmonella spp. Enterococcus spp., S. Typhimurium phage 28B, an f-specific RNA phage MS2 and a coliphage ΦX 174 was monitored in spiked human urine and faeces. Storage of urine diluted 1:0, 1:1 and 1:3 with water was studied at 4, 14, 24, and 34°C. Faecal material, source separated dry, was treated with urea at concentrations ranging from 0.5% to 2% at 14, 24, and 34°C. Faecal material with ash amendments was studied at 24 and 34°C, separately and with supplementary addition of 1% urea. Temperature was found to be a key factor for the efficiency of the ammonia based sanitation, both through synergy and by affecting transformation of ammonia into NH3. At 34°C the NH3 concentrations in urine and faecal material resulted in short decimal reduction (D) values for microorganism concentrations, except for the bacteriophage 28B, which showed little inactivation in stored faecal material. At 24°C, treatments of both urine and faeces with NH3 concentrations of 50 mM and above gave significant reductions whereas at lower concentrations (urine 1:3 and storage of faecal matter) little inactivation of bacteriophage 28B and ascaris eggs was observed. This means that urine must be collected as concentrated as possible in order to contain sufficient ammonia to reduce pathogens by storage. Treatment with urea, a 2% addition resulted in stable pH and NH3 concentrations that resulted in fast Salmonella spp. inactivation even at 4°C and 14°C, and inactivation of ascaris and the bacteriophage at temperature 24°C and above. Coverage with ash and lime during collection can give an enhanced pathogen inactivation when later treated in closed containers. Accompanying urea treatment of faeces collected with ash is possible but with a high pH (>10) in the material urea will not be degraded and thus not contribute to inactivation

Supporting Change-Aware Semantic Web Services

The Semantic Web is not only evolving into a provider of structured meaningful content and knowledge representation, but also into a provider of services. While most of these services support external users of the SW, we focus on a vital service within the SW – change management and adaptation. Change is a ubiquitous feature of the SW. In this paper, we propose a service architecture that embraces and utilises change to provide higher quality services. We introduce pilot implementations of two supporting services within this architecture