Automatic Compositor Attribution in the First Folio of Shakespeare

Compositor attribution, the clustering of pages in a historical printed document by the individual who set the type, is a bibliographic task that relies on analysis of orthographic variation and inspection of visual details of the printed page. In this paper, we introduce a novel unsupervised model that jointly describes the textual and visual features needed to distinguish compositors. Applied to images of Shakespeare's First Folio, our model predicts attributions that agree with the manual judgements of bibliographers with an accuracy of 87%, even on text that is the output of OCR.Comment: Short paper (6 pages) accepted at ACL 201

Written Corrective Feedback and the Development of L2 Learner Language : A longitudinal study of lower secondary EFL writing in Norway

Master´s thesis in English (EN501)Aiming to explore teacher written corrective feedback and learner errors qualitatively and longitudinally, the present study investigates two teachers’ WCF to errors in the written production of three lower secondary EFL students in Norway over the course of three school years. The study is divided in four parts: an error analysis of the students’ writing once every six months, a feedback analysis of the teachers’ WCF to errors in the same samples of writing, a tracking of possible improvement in selected types of errorsin subsequent writing (for error categories corrected by the teacher and revised by the student), and a semi-structured interview to include the teachers’ perspective and beliefs about WCF practice, both their own and in general. The study revealed that the participating students did not work enough with revision to benefit from the learning potential of the teachers’ WCF. Additionally, it seems that authentic teacher WCF is neither focused nor comprehensive, but rather somewhere in between

Reconsidering Res Judicata: A Comparative Perspective

We aimed to prospectively investigate the paternal antigen-induced cytokine secretion by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in response to hormone treatment in women undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and to examine the predictive value of the cytokine secretion profile in the outcome of IVF treatment, in a pilot study. Twenty-five women were included and IVF treatment was successful for six and unsuccessful for 19 women. Blood samples were collected before IVF treatment, on four occasions during IVF and four weeks after embryo transfer. The numbers of Th1-, Th2- and Th17-associated cytokine-secreting cells and cytokine levels in cell supernatants were analysed by enzyme-linked immunospot-forming (ELISpot), enzyme-linked immune-sorbent (ELISA) or Luminex assay. None of the cytokines (IFN-γ, IL-4, IL-5, IL-10, IL-12, IL-13, IL-17, TNF and GM-CSF) had any predictive value regarding IVF outcome. The majority of the cytokines reached their peak levels at ovum pick-up, suggesting an enhancing influence of the hormonal stimulation. Pregnancy was associated with a high number of IL-4-, IL-5- and IL-13-secreting cells four weeks after ET. In conclusion, the results do not support our hypothesis of a more pronounced peripheral Th1 and Th17 deviation towards paternal antigens in infertile women with an unsuccessful IVF outcome, although this is based on a small number of observations. A larger study is required to confirm this conclusion. Higher numbers of Th2-associated cytokine-secreting cells in pregnant women four weeks after ET do corroborate the hypothesis of a Th2 deviation during pregnancy

The Future Librarian: A Diverse and Complex Professional

The library professional is an active actor in the information society and the professional identity is affected by societal and cultural phenomena as well as technological changes. The library users’ changing information behavior, different forms of information, and information overload challenge the professional perspective; what is the core expertise of the library profession and what new skills are needed in the future? The library profession meets a growing complexity in its role and it becomes difficult to balance the generalist and expertise level of the profession (Stover 2004). Desirable future skills are related to operating and navigating on the Internet, and being open for interaction with the users on the Internet. At the same time the professional identity is firmly anchored in the traditional core values and competences of librarianship (Huvila et al. 2013). This paper discusses the challenge of the diversity of the expected qualities of librarians. The paper has both a professional as well as an educational point of view. How do we educate library professionals of tomorrow in a society where information and information related activities are continuously growing and changing? What are the core competencies, what are the key challenges, and how do we find a balance between technical and social skills? This paper is based on empirical work looking into expectations of the future library profession among library directors, as well as LIS-students

Total Variation Graph Neural Networks

Source at https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/.Recently proposed Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) for vertex clustering are trained with an unsupervised minimum cut objective, approximated by a Spectral Clustering (SC) relaxation. However, the SC relaxation is loose and, while it offers a closed-form solution, it also yields overly smooth cluster assignments that poorly separate the vertices. In this paper, we propose a GNN model that computes cluster assignments by optimizing a tighter relaxation of the minimum cut based on graph total variation (GTV). The cluster assignments can be used directly to perform vertex clustering or to implement graph pooling in a graph classification framework. Our model consists of two core components: i) a message-passing layer that minimizes the ℓ1 distance in the features of adjacent vertices, which is key to achieving sharp transitions between clusters; ii) an unsupervised loss function that minimizes the GTV of the cluster assignments while ensuring balanced partitions. Experimental results show that our model outperforms other GNNs for vertex clustering and graph classification

The structure of a tetrameric α-carbonic anhydrase fromThermovibrio ammonificansreveals a core formed around intermolecular disulfides that contribute to its thermostability

Carbonic anhydrase enzymes catalyse the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate. A thermophilic Thermovibrio ammonificans α-carbonic anhydrase (TaCA) has been expressed in Escherichia coli and structurally and biochemically characterized. The crystal structure of TaCA has been determined in its native form and in two complexes with bound inhibitors. The tetrameric enzyme is stabilized by a unique core in the centre of the molecule formed by two intersubunit disulfides and a single lysine residue from each monomer that is involved in intersubunit ionic interactions. The structure of this core protects the intersubunit disulfides from reduction, whereas the conserved intrasubunit disulfides are not formed in the reducing environment of the E. coli host cytosol. When oxidized to mimic the environment of the periplasmic space, TaCA has increased thermostability, retaining 90% activity after incubation at 70°C for 1 h, making it a good candidate for industrial carbon-dioxide capture. The reduction of all TaCA cysteines resulted in dissociation of the tetrameric molecule into monomers with lower activity and reduced thermostability. Unlike other characterized α-carbonic anhydrases, TaCA does not display esterase activity towards p-nitrophenyl acetate, which appears to result from the increased rigidity of its protein scaffold