Marrying Universal Dependencies and Universal Morphology

The Universal Dependencies (UD) and Universal Morphology (UniMorph) projects each present schemata for annotating the morphosyntactic details of language. Each project also provides corpora of annotated text in many languages - UD at the token level and UniMorph at the type level. As each corpus is built by different annotators, language-specific decisions hinder the goal of universal schemata. With compatibility of tags, each project's annotations could be used to validate the other's. Additionally, the availability of both type- and token-level resources would be a boon to tasks such as parsing and homograph disambiguation. To ease this interoperability, we present a deterministic mapping from Universal Dependencies v2 features into the UniMorph schema. We validate our approach by lookup in the UniMorph corpora and find a macro-average of 64.13% recall. We also note incompatibilities due to paucity of data on either side. Finally, we present a critical evaluation of the foundations, strengths, and weaknesses of the two annotation projects.Comment: UDW1

"Austropop" : Stationen der Entwicklung einer nationalen Pop- und Rockmusik

Urban stormwater is a crucial resource at a time when climate change and population growth threaten freshwater supplies; but there are health risks from contaminants, such as toxic metals. It is vitally important to understand how to use this resource safely and responsibly. Our study investigated the extent of metal contamination in vegetable crops irrigated with stormwater under short- and long-term conditions. We created artificially aged gardens by adding metal-contaminated sediment to soil, simulating accumulation of metals in the soil from irrigation with raw stormwater over zero, five and ten years. Our crops--French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala), and beetroot (Beta vulgaris)--were irrigated twice a week for 11 weeks, with either synthetic stormwater or potable water. They were then tested for concentrations of Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu and Zn. An accumulation of Pb was the most marked sign of contamination, with six of nine French bean and seven of nine beetroot leaf samples breaching Australia's existing guidelines. Metal concentration in a crop tended to increase with the effective age of the garden; but importantly, its rate of increase did not match the rate of increase in the soil. Our study also highlighted differences in sensitivity between different crop types. French bean demonstrated the highest levels of uptake, while kale displayed restrictive behaviour. Our study makes it clear: irrigation with stormwater is indeed feasible, as long as appropriate crops are selected and media are frequently turned over. We have also shown that an understanding of such risks yields meaningful information on appropriate safeguards. A holistic approach is needed--to account for all routes to toxic metal exposure, including especially Pb. A major outcome of our study is critical information for minimising health risks from stormwater irrigation of crops

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

• The AMOC is key to maintaining the mild climate of the UK. • The AMOC is predicted to decline in the 21st century in response to a changing climate. • Past abrupt changes in the AMOC have had dramatic climate consequences. • There is growing evidence that the AMOC has been declining for at least a decade, pushing the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability into a cool phase. • Short term fluctuations in the AMOC have proved to have unexpected impacts, including being linked with severe winters and abrupt sea-level rise

Effects of negative energy balance on liver gene and protein expression during the early postpartum period and its impacts on dairy cow fertility

End of project reportNegative energy balance (NEB) is a severe metabolic affecting high yielding dairy cows early post partum with both concurrent and latent negative effects on cow fertility as well as on milk production and cow health. The seasonal nature of Irish dairy production necessitates high cow fertility and a compact spring calving pattern in order to maximise grass utilisation. Poor dairy cow reproductive performance currently costs the Irish cattle industry in excess of €400 million annually. High milk yields have been associated with lower reproductive efficiency, and it has been suggested that this effect is probably mediated through its effects on the energy balance of the cow during lactation. The modern high genetic merit dairy cow prioritises nutrient supply towards milk production in early lactation and this demand takes precedence over the provision of optimal conditions for reproduction. In this study we used the bovine Affymetrix 23,000 gene microarray, which contains the most comprehensive set of bovine genes to be assembled and provides a means of investigating the modifying influences of energy balance on liver gene expression. Cows in severe negative energy balance (SNEB) in early lactation showed altered hepatic gene expression in metabolic processes as well as a down regulation of the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) system, where insulin like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), growth hormone receptor variant 1A (GHR1A) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-acid labile subunit (IGFBP-ALS) were down regulated compared to the cows in the moderate negative energy balance MNEB group, consistent with a five-fold reduction in systemic concentrations of IGF1 in the SNEB group.Cows in SNEB showed elevated expression of key genes involved in the inflammatory response such as interleukin-8 (IL-8). There was a down regulation of genes involved in cellular growth in SNEB cows and moreover a negative regulator of cellular proliferation (HGFIN) was up regulated in SNEB cows, which is likely to compromise adaptation and recovery from NEB. The puma method of analysis revealed that 417 genes were differentially regulated by EB (P<0.05), of these genes 190 were up-regulated while 227 were down-regulated, with 405 genes having known biological functions. From Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA), lipid catabolism was found to be the process most affected by differences in EB status