The ASK Corpus – a Language Learner Corpus of Norwegian as a Second Language

In our paper we present the design and interface of ASK, a language learner corpus of Norwegian as a second language which contains essays collected from language tests on two different proficiency levels as well as personal data from the test takers. In addition, the corpus also contains texts and relevant personal data from native Norwegians as control data. The texts as well as the personal data are marked up in XML according to the TEI Guidelines. In order to be able to classify errors in the texts, we have introduced new attributes to the TEI corr and sic tags. For each error tag, a correct form is also in the text annotation. Finally, we employ an automatic tagger developed for standard Norwegian, the Oslo-Bergen Tagger , together with a facility for manual tag correction. As corpus query system, we are using the Corpus Workbench developed at the University of Stuttgart together with a web search interface developed at Aksis, University of Bergen. The system allows for searching for combinations of words, error types, grammatical annotation and personal data.publishedVersio

ECORREGIÕES DA BACIA HIDROGRÁFICA DO RIO IVAÍ, PARANÁ, BRASIL: UMA CONTRIBUIÇAO METODOLÓGICA PARA A GESTÃO DE BACIAS HIDROGRÁFICAS

À partir da elaboração do Plano Nacional de Recursos Hídricos, o Brasil manifestou a necessidade de conhecer melhor os recursos disponíveis e planejar gestão destes recursos em diferentes escalas espaciais. As metodologias de delimitação de regiões naturais homogêneas podem auxiliar o país a elaborar seus planos de gestão atendendo a estas necessidades. Este artigo tem por objetivo identificar as ecorregiões naturais da bacia hidrográfica do rio Ivaí, no Estado do Paraná, de forma a avaliar a aplicabilidade e a contribuição desta metodologia de delimitação de regiões naturais homogêneas para o gerenciamento dos recursos hídricos no Brasil. Após uma revisão da literatura e a seleção de uma metodologia de compartimentação, foi realizado um inventário dos fatores de controle da bacia hidrográfica. Estes fatores de controle foram sobrepostos dois a dois resultando em três cartas de síntese. A sobreposição destas cartas de síntese resultou na Carta de Ecorregiões Naturais da bacia do Ivaí. Esta carta é composta de cinco grandes ecorregiões, cada uma delas dividida em duas sub-ecorregiões. Ao final, a metodologia de delimitação de ecorregiões proposta mostrou ser uma boa ferramenta para fazer a síntese da complexidade de paisagens e orientar os futuros trabalhos de gestão destes recursos. Palavras-chave: Rio Ivaí. Ecorregiões. Recursos hídricos.Bacia hidrográfica. Compartimentação. Ecoregions of the Ivai River Basin, Parana State, Brazil: a methodological contribuition to watershed management Since the elaboration of the Water Resources National Plan, Brazil has become aware of the necessity to better understand their available resources and plan the management of these resources at different spatial scales. The methodology of delimiting natural homogeneous regions can help Brazil to adapt its management plans to its needs. This paper aims to identify the natural ecoregions of the Ivaí watershed, in Parana State, in order to assess the applicability and the contribution of this methodology of delimiting natural homogeneous regions to water resources management in Brazil. After a review of the literature and the selection of a methodology, an inventory of the control factors of the watershed is made. These control factors are superimposed to produce three synthesis maps. The superposition of these three synthesis maps results in the Map of Natural Ecoregions of the Ivai Watershed. This map presents five major ecoregions, each one of which is subdivided into two sub-ecoregions. The method of delimitation of ecoregions is found to be a useful tool for the synthesis of complex landscapes and for the development of management guides for these resources. Key words: Ivai river. Ecoregions. Water ressources. Watershed. Compartimentation

The Young Stellar Population of the Nearby Late-Type Galaxy NGC 1311

We have extracted PSF-fitted stellar photometry from near-ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope, of the nearby (D ~ 5.5 Mpc) SBm galaxy NGC 1311. The ultraviolet and optical data reveal a population of hot main sequence stars with ages of 2-10 Myr. We also find populations of blue supergiants with ages between 10 and 40 Myr and red supergiants with ages between 10 and 100 Myr. Our near-infrared data shows evidence of star formation going back ~1 Gyr, in agreement with previous work. Fits to isochrones indicate a metallicity of Z ~ 0.004. The ratio of blue to red supergiants is consistent with this metallicity. This indicates that NGC 1311 follows the well-known luminosity-metallicity relation for late-type dwarf galaxies. About half of the hot main sequence stars and blue supergiants are found in two regions in the inner part of NGC 1311. These two regions are each about 200 pc across, and thus have crossing times roughly equal to the 10 Myr age we find for the dominant young population. The Luminosity Functions of the supergiants indicate a slowly rising star formation rate (of 0.001 Solar masses per year) from ~100 Myr ago until ~15 Myr ago, followed by a strong enhancement (to 0.01 Solar Masses per year) at ~10 Myr ago. We see no compelling evidence for gaps in the star-forming history of NGC 1311 over the last 100 Myr, and, with lower significance, none over the last Gyr. This argues against a bursting mode, and in favor of a gasping or breathing mode for the recent star-formation history.Comment: AASTex, 34 pages, 13 postscript figures. Accepted for publication by The Astronomical Journa

FORTIS: Pathfinder to the Lyman Continuum

Shull et al. (1999) have asserted that the contribution of stars, relative to quasars, to the metagalactic background radiation that ionizes most of the baryons in the universe remains almost completely unknown at all epochs. The potential to directly quantify this contribution at low redshift has recently become possible with the identification by GALEX of large numbers of sparsely distributed faint ultraviolet galaxies. Neither STIS nor FUSE nor GALEX have the ability to efficiently survey these sparse fields and directly measure the Lyman continuum radiation that may leak into the low redshift (z < 0.4) intergalactic medium. We present here a design for a new type of far ultraviolet spectrograph, one that is more sensitive, covers wider fields, and can provide spectra and images of a large number of objects simultaneously, called the Far-ultraviolet Off Rowland-circle Telescope for Imaging and Spectroscopy (FORTIS). We intend to use a sounding rocket flight to validate the new instrument with a simple long-slit observation of the starburst populations in the galaxy M83. If however, the long-slit were replaced with microshutter array, this design could isolate the chains of blue galaxies found by GALEX over an ~30' diameter field-of-view and directly address the Lyman continuum problem in a long duration orbital mission. Thus, our development of the sounding rocket instrument is a pathfinder to a new wide field spectroscopic technology for enabling the potential discovery of the long hypothesized but elusive Lyman continuum radiation that is thought to leak from low redshift galaxies and contribute to the ionization of the universe.Comment: 10 pages to appear in Proceeedings of SPIE Vol. 5488, UV to Gamma Ray Space Telescope System

A framework for modelling soil structure dynamics induced by biological activity

Acknowledgments: This work was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS) in the project “Soil structure and soil degradation: improved model tools to meet sustainable development goals under climate and land use change” (grant no. 2018-02319). We would also like to thank Mikael Sasha Dooha for carrying out the measurements for the water retention curves shown in figure 4.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Anisotropy studies around the galactic centre at EeV energies with the Auger Observatory

Data from the Pierre Auger Observatory are analyzed to search for anisotropies near the direction of the Galactic Centre at EeV energies. The exposure of the surface array in this part of the sky is already significantly larger than that of the fore-runner experiments. Our results do not support previous findings of localized excesses in the AGASA and SUGAR data. We set an upper bound on a point-like flux of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic Centre which excludes several scenarios predicting sources of EeV neutrons from Sagittarius $A$. Also the events detected simultaneously by the surface and fluorescence detectors (the `hybrid' data set), which have better pointing accuracy but are less numerous than those of the surface array alone, do not show any significant localized excess from this direction.Comment: Matches published versio

The exposure of the hybrid detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is a detector for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. It consists of a surface array to measure secondary particles at ground level and a fluorescence detector to measure the development of air showers in the atmosphere above the array. The "hybrid" detection mode combines the information from the two subsystems. We describe the determination of the hybrid exposure for events observed by the fluorescence telescopes in coincidence with at least one water-Cherenkov detector of the surface array. A detailed knowledge of the time dependence of the detection operations is crucial for an accurate evaluation of the exposure. We discuss the relevance of monitoring data collected during operations, such as the status of the fluorescence detector, background light and atmospheric conditions, that are used in both simulation and reconstruction.Comment: Paper accepted by Astroparticle Physic

Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV

We describe the measurement of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of the longitudinal development of air showers induced by cosmic rays. Almost four thousand events above 10^18 eV observed by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory in coincidence with at least one surface detector station are selected for the analysis. The average shower maximum was found to evolve with energy at a rate of (106 +35/-21) g/cm^2/decade below 10^(18.24 +/- 0.05) eV and (24 +/- 3) g/cm^2/decade above this energy. The measured shower-to-shower fluctuations decrease from about 55 to 26 g/cm^2. The interpretation of these results in terms of the cosmic ray mass composition is briefly discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication by PR