Introducing a corpus of conversational stories. Construction and annotation of the Narrative Corpus

Although widely seen as critical both in terms of its frequency and its social significance as a prime means of encoding and perpetuating moral stance and configuring self and identity, conversational narrative has received little attention in corpus linguistics. In this paper we describe the construction and annotation of a corpus that is intended to advance the linguistic theory of this fundamental mode of everyday social interaction: the Narrative Corpus (NC). The NC contains narratives extracted from the demographically-sampled sub-corpus of the British National Corpus (BNC) (XML version). It includes more than 500 narratives, socially balanced in terms of participant sex, age, and social class. We describe the extraction techniques, selection criteria, and sampling methods used in constructing the NC. Further, we describe four levels of annotation implemented in the corpus: speaker (social information on speakers), text (text Ids, title, type of story, type of embedding etc.), textual components (pre-/post-narrative talk, narrative, and narrative-initial/final utterances), and utterance (participation roles, quotatives and reporting modes). A brief rationale is given for each level of annotation, and possible avenues of research facilitated by the annotation are sketched out

Second Language Learner Knowledge of Verb–Argument Constructions: Effects of Language Transfer and Typology

This article examines second language (L2) learner knowledge of English verb–argument constructions (VACs), for example, the ‘V against n’ construction. It investigates to what extent constructions underpin L2 learners' linguistic competence, how VAC mental representations in native speakers and learners differ, and whether there are observable effects of the learners' first language. Native speakers of English and advanced learners of 3 different first language backgrounds (Czech, German, Spanish) were asked to generate the first verb that came to mind to fill the gap in 20 sparse VAC frames like “she ____ against the….” The comparison of learner and native speaker verb responses highlights crosslinguistic transfer effects as well as effects of language typology that impact verb semantics (cf. Talmy, 1985). Our findings suggest that learners whose L1 is, like English, satellite‐framed (here Czech and German) produce more target‐like verbs than learners whose L1 is verb‐framed (here Spanish).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109566/1/modl12149.pd

Usage‐Based Language: Investigating the Latent Structures That Underpin Acquisition

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96768/1/j.1467-9922.2012.00736.x.pd

Big data in the new media environment

Bentley et al. argue for the social scientific contextualization of “big data” by proposing a four-quadrant model. We suggest extensions of the east–west (i.e., socially motivated versus independently motivated) decision-making dimension in light of findings from social psychology and neuroscience. We outline a method that leverages linguistic tools to connect insights across fields that address the individuals underlying big-data media streams

Nutrient modulation in the management of disease-induced muscle wasting: evidence from human studies

Purpose of review: In addition to being essential for movement, skeletal muscles act as both a store and source of key macronutrients. As such, muscle is an important tissue for whole body homeostasis, undergoing muscle wasting in times of starvation, disease, and stress, for example, to provide energy substrates for other tissues. Yet, muscle wasting is also associated with disability, comorbidities, and mortality. As nutrition is so crucial to maintaining muscle homeostasis 'in health', it has been postulated that muscle wasting in cachexia syndromes may be alleviated by nutritional interventions. This review will highlight recent work in this area in relation to muscle kinetics, the acute metabolic (e.g. dietary protein), and longer-term effects of dietary interventions. Recent findings: Whole body and skeletal muscle protein synthesis invariably exhibit deranged kinetics (favouring catabolism) in wasting states; further, many of these conditions harbour blunted anabolic responses to protein nutrition compared with healthy controls. These derangements underlie muscle wasting. Recent trials of essential amino acid and protein-based nutrition have shown some potential for therapeutic benefit. Summary: Nutritional modulation, particularly of dietary amino acids, may have benefits to prevent or attenuate disease-induced muscle wasting. Nonetheless, there remains a lack of recent studies exploring these key concepts to make conclusive recommendations

Dynamic contention management for distributed applications

PhD ThesisDistributed applications often make use of replicated state to afford a greater level of availability and throughput. This is achieved by allowing individual processes to progress without requiring prior synchronisation. This approach, termed optimistic replication, results in divergent replicas that must be reconciled to achieve an overall consistent state. Concurrent operations to shared objects in the replicas result in conflicting updates that require reconciliatory action to rectify. This typically takes the form of compensatory execution or simply undoing and rolling back client state. When considering user interaction with the application, there exists relationships and intent in the ordering and execution of these operations. The enactment of reconciliation that determines one action as conflicted may have far reaching implications with regards to the user’s original intent. In such scenarios, the compensatory action applied to a conflict may require previous operations to also be undone or compensated such that the user’s intent is maintained. Therefore, an ability to manage the contention to the shared data across the distributed application to pre-emptively lower conflicts resulting from these infringements is desirable. The aim is to not hinder throughput, achieved from the weaker consistency model known as eventual consistency. In this thesis, a model is presented for a contention management framework that schedules access using the expected execution inherent in the application domain to best inform the contention manager. A backoff scheme is employed to create an access schedule, preserving user intent for applications that require this high level of maintenance for user actions. By using such an approach, this results in a performance improvement seen in the reduction of the overall number of conflicts, while also improving overall system throughput. This thesis describes how the contention management scheme operates and, through experimentation, the performance benefits received

Recent developments in deuterium oxide tracer approaches to measure rates of substrate turnover: implications for protein, lipid, and nucleic acid research

Purpose of review: Methods that inform on dynamic metabolism that can be applied to clinical populations to understand disease progression and responses to therapeutic interventions are of great importance. This review perspective will highlight recent advances, development, and applications of the multivalent stable isotope tracer deuterium oxide (D2O) to the study of substrate metabolism with particular reference to protein, lipids, and nucleic acids, and how these methods can be readily applied within clinical and pharmaceutical research. Recent findings: Advances in the application of D2O techniques now permit the simultaneous dynamic measurement of a range of substrates (i.e. protein, lipid, and nucleic acids, along with the potential for OMICs methodologies) with minimal invasiveness further creating opportunities for long-term ‘free living’ measures that can be used in clinical settings. These techniques have recently been applied to ageing populations and further in cancer patients revealing altered muscle protein metabolism. Additionally, the efficacy of numerous drugs in improving lipoprotein profiles and controlling cellular proliferation in leukaemia have been revealed. Summary: D2O provides opportunities to create a more holistic picture of in-vivo metabolic phenotypes, providing a unique platform for development in clinical applications, and the emerging field of personalized medicine