Annotating a corpus of Early Modern English writing for categories of discourse presentation

This article discusses the process of annotating a small corpus of Early Modern English writing that we have constructed in order to investigate the diachronic development of speech, writing and thought presentation. The work we have done so far is a pilot investigation for a planned larger project. We have constructed a corpus of approximately 40,000 words of Early Modern English (EModE) fiction and news journalism and annotated it for categories of discourse presentation (DP) drawn from a model originally proposed by Leech and Short (1981). This has allowed us to quantify the types of discourse presentation within the corpus and to compare our findings against those from a similarly annotated corpus of Present Day English (PDE) writing (reported in Semino and Short 2004). Our results so far appear to indicate developing stylistic tendencies in fiction and news texts in the Early Modern period, and suggest that it would be profitable to extend the project through the construction of a larger corpus incorporating a greater number of text-types in order to test our hypotheses more rigorously. In this article we concentrate specifically on describing the annotation phase of the project. We discuss the criteria by which we defined the various discourse presentation categories in order to make clear our analytical methodology, as well as the issues we were confronted with in 2 trying to annotate in a systematic and retrievable way. We conclude with some preliminary results to illustrate the value of this kind of annotation and suggest some hypotheses resulting from this pilot investigation

Thinking about the news : thought presentation in early modern English news writing

Walker and McIntyre investigate the forms and functions of discourse presentation in a corpus of Early Modern English news reporting, concentrating particularly on thought presentation. They describe they manually annotated the corpus using discourse presentation categories and consider the methodological issues associated with corpus annotation for categories that are function rather than form-based. They explain how they ensured the replicability of their annotation using principles that are likely to be valuable for anyone manually annotating a corpus for function-based categories. They compare quantitative findings from their corpus against a similarly annotated corpus of present day English news journalism in order to determine diachronic changes in discourse presentation frequencies. They then offer a qualitative analysis of the function of thought presentation in Early Modern English news

A Machine Learning Approach to Jet-Surface Interaction Noise Modeling

This paper investigates using machine learning to rapidly develop empirical models suitable for system-level aircraft noise studies. In particular, machine learning is used to train a neural network to predict the noise spectra produced by a round jet near a surface over a range of surface lengths, surface standoff distances, jet Mach numbers, and observer angles. These spectra include two sources, jet-mixing noise and jet-surface interaction (JSI) noise, with different scale factors as well as surface shielding and reflection effects to create a multi- dimensional problem. A second model is then trained using data from three rectangular nozzles to include nozzle aspect ratio in the spectral prediction. The training and validation data are from an extensive jet-surface interaction noise database acquired at the NASA Glenn Research Center's Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory. Although the number of training and validation points is small compared a typical machine learning application, the results of this investigation show that this approach is viable if the underlying data are well behaved

Fraud and Abuse Panel

A panel discussion on some concerns that we have about value based reimbursement structures. The panel today consists of two private practice attorneys and one government attorney. We have litigators and regulatory attorneys, so a good mix of attorneys across the spectrum

Pilbara steer growth evaluation : 1994 - 1996

Growth potential of steers in the Pilbara - a summary. The trial was conducted over a range of conditions on three locations. The pasture type at Wyloo, the Ashburton River frontage, which is regarded as one of the most productive pasture types in the area, combined with conservative stocking, a fresh paddock and excellent seasonal conditions during 1995, gives us an indication of the District\u27s potential. In extrapolating any of these data to other cases, consideration must be given to adjustment bas

Investigating teeth eruption and eating quality

In Australia, a sheep ceases to be a lamb as soon as the eruption of its first permanent incisor teeth is evident. As part of a wider program to investigate a number of aspects of sheep meat eating quality, a project was undertaken to determine whether lamb eating quality would be compromised if sheep with partially erupted teeth continued to be classified as lamb. Overall, the results indicated that meat from young sheep with partially erupted teeth was unlikely to be inferior in eating quality than the meat currently classified as lamb

Towards 'men who have sex with menappropriate' health services in South Africa

Health programming for men who have sex with men (MSM) in South Africa has been ignored or absent until fairly recently, despite this population being at high risk for HIV acquisition and transmission. Anova Health Institute, with support from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)/United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in collaboration with the South African National Department of Health, launched the first state sector MSM-targeted sexual health clinic in 2010. The clinic has been successful in attracting and retaining MSM in care, and lessons learned are described in this article. Components contributing to the creation of MSM-appropriate healthcare services are discussed

Diagnosis and Treatment of the Meso-Acromion of the Shoulder

The failed fusion between two acromial apophyses, called an os acromiale, is often asymptomatic and found incidentally during evaluation for unrelated shoulder pathology. Though this is frequently not the primary pain source, a mobile os acromiale fragment can cause inflammation at the pseudarthrosis site, rotator cuff impingement, or AC joint arthritis. Varying operative techniques exist with good to satisfactory results for symptomatic patients. Several operative techniques have been described including open excision, open reduction-internal fixation (ORIF), arthroscopic acromioplasty or subacromial decompression, and arthroscopic excision. Open excision of a meso-acromion can lead to persistent pain and deltoid weakness and atrophy. The management of a meso-acromial fragment with ORIF can also result in persistent pain and deltoid weakness and atrophy with nonunion of the fragments. Arthroscopic excision of the meso-acromion is described as a viable alternative for surgical candidates

Citizen science as a new tool in dog cognition research

The work of Á.M. was supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA 01 031).Family dogs and dog owners offer a potentially powerful way to conduct citizen science to answer questions about animal behavior that are difficult to answer with more conventional approaches. Here we evaluate the quality of the first data on dog cognition collected by citizen scientists using the Dognition. com website. We conducted analyses to understand if data generated by over 500 citizen scientists replicates internally and in comparison to previously published findings. Half of participants participated for free while the other half paid for access. The website provided each participant a temperament questionnaire and instructions on how to conduct a series of ten cognitive tests. Participation required internet access, a dog and some common household items. Participants could record their responses on any PC, tablet or smartphone from anywhere in the world and data were retained on servers. Results from citizen scientists and their dogs replicated a number of previously described phenomena from conventional lab-based research. There was little evidence that citizen scientists manipulated their results. To illustrate the potential uses of relatively large samples of citizen science data, we then used factor analysis to examine individual differences across the cognitive tasks. The data were best explained by multiple factors in support of the hypothesis that nonhumans, including dogs, can evolve multiple cognitive domains that vary independently. This analysis suggests that in the future, citizen scientists will generate useful datasets that test hypotheses and answer questions as a complement to conventional laboratory techniques used to study dog psychology.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe