Paraphrastic Reformulations in Spoken Corpora

International audienceOur work addresses the automatic detection of paraphrastic reformulation in French spoken corpora. The proposed approach is syn-tagmatic. It is based on specific markers and the specificities of the spoken language. Manual multi-dimensional annotation performed by two annotators provides fine-grained reference data. An automatic method is proposed in order to decide whether sentences contain or not paraphras-tic relations. The obtained results show up to 66.4% precision. Analysis of the manual annotations indicates that few paraphrastic segments show morphological modifications (inflection, derivation or compounding) and that the syntactic equivalence between the segments is seldom respected, as these usually belong to different syntactic categories

A Feasibility Study of Quantifying Longitudinal Brain Changes in Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) Encephalitis Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Stereology.

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether it is feasible to quantify acute change in temporal lobe volume and total oedema volumes in herpes simplex virus (HSV) encephalitis as a preliminary to a trial of corticosteroid therapy. METHODS: The study analysed serially acquired magnetic resonance images (MRI), of patients with acute HSV encephalitis who had neuroimaging repeated within four weeks of the first scan. We performed volumetric measurements of the left and right temporal lobes and of cerebral oedema visible on T2 weighted Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) images using stereology in conjunction with point counting. RESULTS: Temporal lobe volumes increased on average by 1.6% (standard deviation (SD 11%) in five patients who had not received corticosteroid therapy and decreased in two patients who had received corticosteroids by 8.5%. FLAIR hyperintensity volumes increased by 9% in patients not receiving treatment with corticosteroids and decreased by 29% in the two patients that had received corticosteroids. CONCLUSIONS: This study has shown it is feasible to quantify acute change in temporal lobe and total oedema volumes in HSV encephalitis and suggests a potential resolution of swelling in response to corticosteroid therapy. These techniques could be used as part of a randomized control trial to investigate the efficacy of corticosteroids for treating HSV encephalitis in conjunction with assessing clinical outcomes and could be of potential value in helping to predict the clinical outcomes of patients with HSV encephalitis

Business models in rail infrastructure: explaining innovation

Policy decisions about the UK railway industry often draw on models and frameworks that treat technology and organisational processes as static and unchanging. As a result, policy makers often have limited understanding of how changes in policy will influence organisational knowledge, learning and the allocation of risk that subsequently affects innovation and system development. This paper applies a business model lens, focused on the mechanisms firms use to create and capture value, to connect policy decisions to subsequent changes in the organisation and industrial structure of the UK railway sector. By analysing innovation-related activity across several different governance structures, the paper highlights how policy impacts in network-based infrastructure sectors are mediated by business strategy, sometimes leading to unintended outcomes. The findings suggest that policy to improve the performance should focus upon coordination rather than just ownership. The application of a business model approach to complement existing economic and policy models in system analysis for policy decisions is advocated

Mundane objects in the city: Laundry practices and the making and remaking of public/private sociality and space in London and New York

The paper considers how shifting laundry practices and technologies associated with dirty washing have over time summoned different spaces, socialities and socio-spatial assemblages in the city, enrolling different actors and multiple publics and constituting different associations, networks and relations in its wake as it travels from the home and back again. It argues that rather than being an inert object of unpleasant matter, whose encounter with humans has been largely restricted to certain categories of person for its transformation to re-use, and thus passed unnoticed, the paper explores how laundry practices have figured in producing and reproducing gendered (and classed) relations of labour, and enacting multiple socio-spatial, and gendered, relations and assemblages in the city, which have largely gone unnoticed in accounts of everyday urban life

Middle Neolithic farming of open-air sites in SE France: new insights from archaeobotanical investigations of three wells found at Les Bagnoles (L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Dépt. Vaucluse, France)

Previous reviews of Middle Neolithic agricultural practice (4400–3500 cal bc) in southern France have highlighted a change in crop assemblages after 4000 cal bc, with a reduction of naked wheat and an increase of emmer and partly of einkorn. The recent investigation of three wells from the site of Les Bagnoles (4250–3800 cal bc) in the periphery of the southern Rhône valley yielded an unprecedented amount of waterlogged uncharred and charred plant macro remains that offer new insights into crop diversity and its changes over time. The results from the wells at Les Bagnoles were compared with other dated sunken features from open-air sites (in contrast to caves and rock shelters), with the aim of identifying patterns sug-gesting changes in the crop spectra between the early (MN1) and late (MN2) Middle Neolithic phases from taphonomically comparable contexts. The results from Les Bagnoles demonstrate that oil crops and pulses are underrepresented in dry sites and that they were a significant part of Middle Neolithic agriculture. They also indicate an increase in the representation of einkorn (instead of emmer) during MN2 that is also visible in other open-air sites. The comparison of the archaeobotani-cal results with silo storage capacity values as a proxy for average production capacity per household leads us to propose a possible drop in naked wheat productivity and opens new questions in factors affecting crop choice at the beginning of the 4th millennium cal bc

Characterisation and Carriage Ratio of Clostridium difficile Strains Isolated from a Community-Dwelling Elderly Population in the United Kingdom

Background Community-associated Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) appears to be an increasing problem. Reported carriage rates by C.difficile are debatable with suggestions that primary asymptomatic carriage is associated with decreased risk of subsequent diarrhoea. However, knowledge of potential reservoirs and intestinal carriage rates in the community, particularly in the elderly, the most susceptible group, is limited. We have determined the presence of C.difficile in the faeces of a healthy elderly cohort living outside of long-term care facilities (LCFs) in the United Kingdom. Methods Faecal samples from 149 community-based healthy elderly volunteers (median age 81 years) were screened for C.difficile using direct (Brazier's CCEY) and enrichment (Cooked Meat broth) culture methods and a glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) immunoassay. Isolates were PCR-ribotyped and analysed for toxin production and the presence of toxin genes. Results Of 149 faecal samples submitted, six (4%) were found to contain C.difficile. One particular sample was positive by both the GDH immunoassay and direct culture, and concurrently produced two distinct strain types: one toxigenic and the other non-toxigenic. The other five samples were only positive by enrichment culture method. Overall, four C.difficile isolates were non-toxigenic (PCR-ribotypes 009, 026 (n = 2) and 039), while three were toxigenic (PCR-ribotypes 003, 005 and 106). All individuals who had a positive culture were symptom-free and none of them had a history of CDI and/or antibiotics use in the 3 month period preceding recruitment. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first study of the presence of C.difficile in healthy elderly community-dwelling individuals residing outside of LCFs. The observed carriage rate is lower than that reported for individuals in LCFs and interestingly no individual carried the common epidemic strain PCR-ribotype 027 (NAP1/BI). Further follow-up of asymptomatic carriers in the community, is required to evaluate host susceptibility to CDI and identify dynamic changes in the host and microbial environment that are associated with pathogenicity

Jowett’s Thucydides: A corpus-based analysis of translation as political intervention

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is a key text in the classical Greek canon and an important source of insights into the structures and tensions at the heart of ancient Athenian democracy. Consequently, modern interpretations of his analysis have repeatedly played a major role in shaping debates on the viability and desirability of democratic rule. This paper aims to build on previous discussion of Benjamin Jowett's 1881 translation of Thucydides by applying a comparative corpus-based methodology to explore how this translator's own personal politics shaped his re-presentation of this text. The analysis reveals a striking emphasis on the position and activity of democratic leaders throughout Jowett’s version, strongly consistent with the ideology of leadership that he developed during his career as Master of Balliol College, Oxford