OCRonym: Entity Extraction and Retrieval for Scanned Books

In the past five years, massive book-scanning projects have produced an explosion in the number of sources for the humanities, available on-line to the broadest possible audiences. Transcribing page images by optical character recognition makes many searching and browsing tasks practical for scholars. But even low OCR error rates compound into high probability of error in a given sentence, and the error rate is even higher for names. We propose to build a prototype system for information extraction and retrieval of noisy OCR. In particular, we will optimize the extraction and retrieval of names, which are highly informative features for detecting topics and events in documents. We will build statistical models of characters and words from scanned books to improve lexical coverage, and we will improve name categorization and disambiguation by linking document contexts to external sources such as Wikipedia. Our testbed comes from over one million scanned books from the Internet Archive

Can We Save the Traditional Family Farm?

What is a traditional family farm? Is it a family of four living on a farm and supplying all of the labor, capital and management or is it a family corporation with four families supplying all of the capital and management? These types of questions continue to arise in policy debates, as they have for many years. While subject to heated debate and the core of many people’s positions on farm programs the answer is more sociological as it is becoming less and less economically relevant. Whether these types of farms or any other farm sizes should survive is not a question that can be answered by a policy analyst. The job of an analyst is to determine if and under what conditions family farms can survive. To this end, this paper reviews the various definitions of family farms and draws inferences as to the economic and financial survival of these different size farms using the results generated from simulating representative farms.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Diversity and Donations: The Effect of Religious and Ethnic Diversity on Charitable Giving

We explore the effects of local ethnic and religious diversity on individual donations to private charities. Using 10-year neighborhood-level panels derived from personal tax records in Canada, we find that diversity has a detrimental effect on charitable donations. A 10 percentage point increase in ethnic diversity reduces donations by 14%, and a 10 percentage point increase in religious diversity reduces donations by 10%. The ethnic diversity effect is driven by a within-group disposition among non-minorities, and is most evident in high income, but low education areas. The religious diversity effect is driven by a within-group disposition among Catholics, and is concentrated in high income and high education areas. Despite these large effects on amount donated, we find no evidence that increasing diversity affects the fraction of households that donate. Over the period studied, ethnic diversity rises by 6 percentage points and religious diversity rises by 4 percentage points; our results suggest that charities receive about 12% less in total donations. As areas like North America continue to grow more diverse over time, our results imply that these demographic changes may have significant implications for the charitable sector.

The large-scale Structure and dynamics of the local universe

This thesis investigates the dynamics of the local Universe with particular reference to discovering the source of the Local Group (LG) motion. A redshift survey of the Great Attractor (GA) region, thought responsible for a significant fraction of the LG motion, is presented. Over 3053 galaxies, located in both clusters and filaments, were targeted using the 2dF on the AAT. Velocity distributions and mass estimates for nine clusters are reported. Together with redshifts from the literature, this survey reveals the dominant feature in the core of the GA to be a large filament extending from Abell S0639 (l= 281º, b=+11º) towards a point at I ~ 5º b ~ -50º , encompassing the Cen-Crux, CIZA J1324.7-5736, Norma and Pavo II clusters. A new model of the local velocity field out to ՅՕՕh(^-1) Мрc is derived from the combined REFLEX, BCS and CIZA surveys: the RBC catalogue. This is the first all-sky, X-ray selected galaxy cluster sample. The reconstruction includes an intrinsic correction for the bias of clusters in tracing the total density field. The velocity fields from both this reconstruction and that of the PSCz survey are compared to the observed peculiar velocities of 98 local type la supernovae (SNIa). The best fits are respectively found for values of βRBC(= Ω(^0.6)m /(^b)RBC) = 0.39±0.20 and βι = 0.55±0.06. These results are found to be robust to culls of the SNIa sample by distance, host-galaxy extinction and the reference frame in which the comparison is carried out. As the PSCz preferentially samples late-type galaxies, the derived density field under- Samples the contributions from regions of greatest over density, precisely the regions traced by the RBC survey. When combined in the ratio 78% PSCz, 22% RBC these two complimentary reconstructions are a better fit to the ресuliar velocities of the same SNIa sample than either one alone. Compared to galaxy surveys, which only see contributions to the LG motion from structures within -60h(^-1) Мрc, previous cluster surveys have argued that sources at much greater distances (~150h(^-1) Mpc) influence local dynamics. However, the RBC reconstruction presented here shows similar contributions from the same depths as the PSCz, which is partly attributed to the intrinsic bias correction and inclusion of the Virgo cluster in the RBC. The extended GA region, defined as the volume enclosed by 250 < / <350º, 一45 < ь < 45º and 2000 <cz< 6000 km s (^-1) is found to be responsible for 65% of the LG motion, whilst the more distant (~ 145h(^-1) Mpc) SSC only accounts for 12%

Post-Freedom to Farm Shifts in Regional Production Patterns

The FAIR Act of 1996, also known as the Freedom to Farm Act (ACT) dismantled many of the agriculture policy tools in use for the last 25 years. Gone were target prices, deficiency payments, and set asides. In their place were expanded marketing loan programs to effectively include wheat and feed grains and oilseeds in addition to cotton and rice. Full planting flexibility has been popular with farmers who are no longer constrained by base acres. Grain merchants and other volume oriented agribusinesses praise the elimination of set asides. The sharp decline in farm prices for all major program commodities since 1996 has left most farmers questioning the income safety net provisions of the FAIR Act. The flexibility and marketing loan provisions continue to be praised. Farm program changes in the 1996 farm bill rendered methods of crop supply response estimation based on econometric models, using historic data, difficult at best. Yet it can, and has been, hypothesized that the Act resulted in major shifts in regional crop production patterns. This paper draws inferences from changes in acres planted among crops for representative farms in the Texas A&M Agricultural and Food Policy Center’s (AFPC) farm data base. AFPC has maintained longitudinal data for more than three dozen representative crop farms across states, regions, farm size, and type of farm since 1990. The farms were updated in 1999 as to their crop mix changes following the ACT and the crop mix changes observed in the updates are summarized here. United States aggregate production shifts are identified from NASS data. Implications for future potential acreage changes are identified. The commodity focus includes feedgrains, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Patterns of glacio‐isostatic adjustment in mainland Scotland: new data from western central Scotland, proximal to the zone of maximum rebound

The results of geomorphological mapping and survey of Lateglacial and Holocene displaced shorelines in the Clyde estuary and around Loch Lomond, western central Scotland are described. On the basis of morphology, sedimentology, altitude and radiocarbon dating, four discrete shorelines are identified and are correlated with previously identified Scottish displaced shorelines. The shoreline formerly referred to as the Main Postglacial Shoreline is renamed the Menteith Shoreline. This body of data, combined with data on displaced shorelines for Scotland as a whole has been analysed using Gaussian quadratic trend surface analysis in order to determine the centre of glacio‐isostatic displacement for each shoreline. These Gaussian models of palaeo‐relative sea‐level suggest that the zone of greatest displacement lay NNW of Loch Lomond in the Lateglacial then moved SSE to the region of Loch Lomond during the Holocene and the Clyde in the Late Holocene. The factors responsible for the movement of the zone of greatest uplift are discussed, including temporal variations in the ice‐sheet thickness, variations in water load in the adjacent sea‐lochs and neotectonic processes. Comparison is made with glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models. A sensitivity analysis has been carried out on the use of Gaussian trend surface analysis glacio‐isostatic modelling and this is included in the research evaluation, and reported in full in the Supporting Information files, along with the raw data used throughout this study