Incorporating Punctuation Into the Sentence Grammar: A Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar Perspective

Punctuation helps us to structure, and thus to understand, texts. Many uses of punctuation straddle the line between syntax and discourse, because they serve to combine multiple propositions within a single orthographic sentence. They allow us to insert discourse-level relations at the level of a single sentence. Just as people make use of information from punctuation in processing what they read, computers can use information from punctuation in processing texts automatically. Most current natural language processing systems fail to take punctuation into account at all, losing a valuable source of information about the text. Those which do mostly do so in a superficial way, again failing to fully exploit the information conveyed by punctuation. To be able to make use of such information in a computational system, we must first characterize its uses and find a suitable representation for encoding them. The work here focuses on extending a syntactic grammar to handle phenomena occurring within a single sentence which have punctuation as an integral component. Punctuation marks are treated as full-fledged lexical items in a Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar, which is an extremely well-suited formalism for encoding punctuation in the sentence grammar. Each mark anchors its own elementary trees and imposes constraints on the surrounding lexical items. I have analyzed data representing a wide variety of constructions, and added treatments of them to the large English grammar which is part of the XTAG system. The advantages of using LTAG are that its elementary units are structured trees of a suitable size for stating the constraints we are interested in, and the derivation histories it produces contain information the discourse grammar will need about which elementary units have used and how they have been combined. I also consider in detail a few particularly interesting constructions where the sentence and discourse grammars meet-appositives, reported speech and uses of parentheses. My results confirm that punctuation can be used in analyzing sentences to increase the coverage of the grammar, reduce the ambiguity of certain word sequences and facilitate discourse-level processing of the texts

Joint analysis of stressors and ecosystem services to enhance restoration effectiveness

With increasing pressure placed on natural systems by growing human populations, both scientists and resource managers need a better understanding of the relationships between cumulative stress from human activities and valued ecosystem services. Societies often seek to mitigate threats to these services through large-scale, costly restoration projects, such as the over one billion dollar Great Lakes Restoration Initiative currently underway. To help inform these efforts, we merged high-resolution spatial analyses of environmental stressors with mapping of ecosystem services for all five Great Lakes. Cumulative ecosystem stress is highest in near-shore habitats, but also extends offshore in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. Variation in cumulative stress is driven largely by spatial concordance among multiple stressors, indicating the importance of considering all stressors when planning restoration activities. In addition, highly stressed areas reflect numerous different combinations of stressors rather than a single suite of problems, suggesting that a detailed understanding of the stressors needing alleviation could improve restoration planning. We also find that many important areas for fisheries and recreation are subject to high stress, indicating that ecosystem degradation could be threatening key services. Current restoration efforts have targeted high-stress sites almost exclusively, but generally without knowledge of the full range of stressors affecting these locations or differences among sites in service provisioning. Our results demonstrate that joint spatial analysis of stressors and ecosystem services can provide a critical foundation for maximizing social and ecological benefits from restoration investments. www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1213841110/-/DCSupplementa

Microplanning with Communicative Intentions: The SPUD System

The process of microplanning in Natural Language Generation (NLG) encompasses a range of problems in which a generator must bridge underlying domain-specific representations and general linguistic representations. These problems include constructing linguistic referring expressions to identify domain objects, selecting lexical items to express domain concepts, and using complex linguistic constructions to concisely convey related domain facts. In this paper, we argue that such problems are best solved through a uniform, comprehensive, declarative process. In our approach, the generator directly explores a search space for utterances described by a linguistic grammar. At each stage of search, the generator uses a model of interpretation, which characterizes the potential links between the utterance and the domain and context, to assess its progress in conveying domain-specific representations. We further address the challenges for implementation and knowledge representation in this approach. We show how to implement this approach effectively by using the lexicalized tree-adjoining grammar formalism (LTAG) to connect structure to meaning and using modal logic programming to connect meaning to context. We articulate a detailed methodology for designing grammatical and conceptua

Effects of past and current crop management on soil microbial biomass and activity

As soil biota is influenced by a number of factors, including land use and management techniques, changing management practices could have significant effects on the soil microbial properties and processes. An experiment was conducted to investigate differences in soil microbiological properties caused by long- and short-term management practices. Intact monolith lysimeters (0.2 m2 surface area) were taken from two sites of the same soil type that had been under long-term organic or conventional crop management and were then subjected to the same 2½-year crop rotation (winter barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), maize (Zea mais L.), lupin (Lupinus angustifolius L.) rape (Brassica napus L. ssp. oleifera)) and two fertiliser regimes (following common organic and conventional practices). Soil samples were taken after crop harvest and analysed for microbial biomass C and N, microbial activity (fluorescein diacetate hydrolysis, arginine deaminase activity, dehydrogenase activity) and total C and N. The incorporation of the green manure stimulated growth and activity of the microbial communities in soils of both management histories. Soil microbial properties did not show any differences between organically and conventionally fertilised soils, indicating that crop rotation and plant type had a larger influence on the microbial biomass and enzyme activities than fertilisation. Initial differences in microbial biomass declined, while the effects of farm management history were still evident in enzyme activities and total C and N. Links between enzyme activities and microbial biomass C varied depending on treatment indicating differences in microbial community composition

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570