Reproducing Hierarchies at the APSA Annual Meeting: Patterns of Panel Attendance by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

Research on the political science profession has shown that homophilous research networks—that is, those organized along the lines of gender and race/ethnicity—reproduce hierarchies. Research networks composed of white men experience the most prestige and lead to the most opportunities. This study documents homophilous networks in a setting where they likely are nurtured: academic conferences. Drawing data from the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, we examine the correspondence between the gender and the racial/ethnic composition of section members, panelists, and audience members for four research sections: Political Methodology; Political Psychology; Race, Ethnicity, and Politics; and Women and Politics. We find that attendees’ and panelists’ gender and racial/ethnic identity largely mirror the dominant gender and racial/ethnic group in their section. These findings indicate that homophily manifests at academic conferences and that efforts to diversify research networks should consider who listens to whom in these settings

A Feasibility Study of Automated Support for Similarity Analysis of Natural Language Requirements in Market-Driven Development

In market-driven software development there is a strong need for support to handle congestion in the requirements engineering process, which may occur as the demand for short time-to-market is combined with a rapid arrival of new requirements from many different sources. Automated analysis of the continuous flow of incoming requirements provides an opportunity to increase the efficiency of the requirements engineering process. This paper presents empirical evaluations of the benefit of automated similarity analysis of textual requirements, where existing information retrieval techniques are used to statistically measure requirements similarity. The results show that automated analysis of similarity among textual requirements is a promising technique that may provide effective support in identifying relationships between requirements

Dutch parallel corpus: a balanced parallel corpus for Dutch-English and Dutch-French

status: publishe

Assessing the Accuracy of Discourse Connective Translations: Validation of an Automatic Metric

Automatic metrics for the evaluation of machine translation (MT) compute scores that characterize globally certain aspects of MT quality such as adequacy and fluency. This paper introduces a reference-based metric that is focused on a particular class of function words, namely discourse connectives, of particular importance for text structuring, and rather challenging for MT. To measure the accuracy of connective translation (ACT), the metric relies on automatic word-level alignment between a source sentence and respectively the reference and candidate translations, along with other heuristics for comparing translations of discourse connectives. Using a dictionary of equivalents, the translations are scored automatically, or, for better precision, semi-automatically. The precision of the ACT metric is assessed by human judges on sample data for English/French and English/Arabic translations: the ACT scores are on average within 2% of human scores. The ACT metric is then applied to several commercial and research MT systems, providing an assessment of their performance on discourse connectives

Spin-orbit-enhanced robustness of supercurrent in graphene/WS2Josephson junctions

We demonstrate the enhanced robustness of the supercurrent through graphene-based Josephson junctions in which strong spin-orbit interactions (SOIs) are induced. We compare the persistence of a supercurrent at high out-of-plane magnetic fields between Josephson junctions with graphene on hexagonal boron-nitride and graphene on WS2, where strong SOIs are induced via the proximity effect. We find that in the shortest junctions both systems display signatures of induced superconductivity, characterized by a suppressed differential resistance at a low current, in magnetic fields up to 1 T. In longer junctions, however, only graphene on WS2 exhibits induced superconductivity features in such high magnetic fields, and they even persist up to 7 T. We argue that these robust superconducting signatures arise from quasiballistic edge states stabilized by the strong SOIs induced in graphene by WS2

An Automated, Language-Based Approach to the Creation of Component Libraries

A major promise of component-based software engineering is the reduction of application development time and costs by reusing software components. The existence of and access to component libraries, as well as the ability to build such libraries in the first place, is therefore key in a component-based development infrastructure to facilitate the envisioned reuse. We believe that the future demand for component libraries will increase substantially because many companies are about to adopt the software product line ideas. Due to the lack of a general standard for component libraries and because of the restrictions of existing ones, it is very often the case that new reuse libraries are written from scratch to fit a user's specific requirements. An additional problem is the size and the focus of (existing) component libraries or component repositories. With an increasing size and a broadening focus of the library it becomes harder to retrieve the "right" components due to more complex classification structures, which hinders effective reuse. This will lead to a large number of specific libraries, rather than to the global all-encompassing single one. This work introduces a component library description language, which allows for the definition of a component library, its provided functionality, and its associated semantics on a high level of abstraction. The language compiler uses those definitions made in the (XML-based) language to automatically generate a component library, which is a user-defined, customized application, including a web-based user interface and a persistent storage facility to store the components handled by the library. The language approach allows for the rapid development of domain specific component libraries in a time and cost efficient manner and therefore supports the need for fast creation of reuse libraries with minimal up-front investment

Subduction and accumulation of lawsonite eclogite and garnet blueschist in eastern Australia

Lawsonite eclogite and garnet blueschist occur as metre‐scale blocks within serpentinite mélange in the southern New England Orogen (SNEO) in eastern Australia. These high‐P fragments are the products of early Palaeozoic subduction of the palaeo‐Pacific plate beneath East Gondwana. Lu–Hf, Sm–Nd, and U–Pb geochronological data from Port Macquarie show that eclogite mineral assemblages formed between c. 500 and 470 Ma ago and became mixed together within a serpentinite‐filled subduction channel. Age data and P–T modelling indicate lawsonite eclogite formed at ~2.7 GPa and 590°C at c. 490 Ma, whereas peak garnet in blueschist formed at ~2.0 GPa and 550°C at c. 470 Ma. The post‐peak evolution of lawsonite eclogite was associated with the preservation of pristine lawsonite‐bearing assemblages and the formation of glaucophane. By contrast, the garnet blueschist was derived from a precursor garnet–omphacite assemblage. The geochronological data from these different aged high‐P assemblages indicate the high‐P rocks were formed during subduction on the margin of cratonic Australia during the Cambro‐Ordovician. The rocks however now reside in the Devonian–Carboniferous southern SNEO, which forms the youngest and most outboard of the eastern Gondwanan Australian orogenic belts. Geodynamic modelling suggests that over the time‐scales that subduction products accumulated, the high‐P rocks migrated large distances (~>1,000 km) during slab retreat. Consequently, high‐P rocks that are trapped in subduction channels may also migrate large distances prior to exhumation, potentially becoming incorporated into younger orogenic belts whose evolution is not directly related to the formation of the exhumed high‐P rocks.Renée Tamblyn, Martin Hand, David Kelsey, Robert Anczkiewicz, David Oc

Resubduction of lawsonite eclogite within a serpentinite-filled subduction channel

Translating burial and exhumation histories from the petrological and geochronological record of high-pressure assemblages in subduction channels is key to understanding subduction channel processes. Convective return flow, either serpentinite or sediment hosted, has been suggested as a potential mechanism to retrieve rocks from significant depths and exhume them. Numerical modelling predicts that during convective flow, subducted material can be cycled within a serpentinite-filled subduction channel. Geochronological and petrological evidences for such cycling during subduction are preserved in lawsonite eclogite from serpentinite melange in the Southern New England Orogen, eastern Australia. Ar–Ar, Rb–Sr phengite and U–Pb titanite geochronology, supported by phase equilibrium forward modelling and mineral zoning, suggest Cambro–Ordovician eclogite underwent two stages of burial separated by a stage of partial exhumation. The initial subduction of the eclogite at ca. 490 Ma formed porphyroblastic prograde-zoned garnet and lawsonite at approximate P–T conditions of at least 2.9 GPa and 600 °C. Partial exhumation to at least 2.0 GPa and 500 °C is recorded by garnet dissolution. Reburial of the eclogite resulted in growth of new Mg-rich garnet rims, growth of new prograde-zoned phengite and recrystallization of titanite at P–T conditions of approximately 2.7 GPa and 590 °C. U–Pb titanite, and Ar–Ar and Rb–Sr phengite ages constrain the timing of reburial to ca. 450 Ma. This was followed by a second exhumation event at approximately 1.9 GPa and 520 °C. These conditions fall along a cold approximate geotherm of 230 °C/GPa. The inferred changes in pressure suggest the lawsonite eclogite underwent depth cycling within the subduction channel. Geochronological data indicate that partial exhumation and reburial occurred over ca. 50 M y., providing some estimation on the timescales of material convective cycling in the subduction channel.R. Tamblyn, M. Hand, L. Morrissey, T. Zack, G. Phillips, D. Oc

Metabolic control during the neonatal period in phenylketonuria:associations with childhood IQ

Background In phenylketonuria, treatment and subsequent lowering of phenylalanine levels usually occur within the first month of life. This study investigated whether different indicators of metabolic control during the neonatal period were associated with IQ during late childhood/early adolescence. Methods Overall phenylalanine concentration during the first month of life (total "area under the curve"), proportion of phenylalanine concentrations above upper target level (360 mu mol/L) and proportion below lower target level (120 mu mol/L) during this period, diagnostic phenylalanine levels, number of days until phenylalanine levels were 360 mu mol/L during the first month of life negatively correlated with IQ in late childhood/early adolescence. Separately, phenylalanine concentrations during different periods within the first month of life (0-10 days, 11-20 days, 21-30 days) were negatively correlated with later IQ as well, but correlation strengths did not differ significantly. No further significant associations were found. Conclusions In phenylketonuria, achievement of target-range phenylalanine levels during the neonatal period is important for cognition later in life, also when compared to other indicators of metabolic control. Impact In phenylketonuria, it remains unclear during which age periods or developmental stages metabolic control is most important for later cognitive outcomes. Phenylalanine levels during the neonatal period were clearly and negatively related to later IQ, whereas no significant associations were observed for other indices of metabolic control. This emphasizes the relative importance of this period for cognitive development in phenylketonuria. No further distinctions were observed in strength of associations with later IQ between different indicators of metabolic control during the neonatal period. Thus, achievement of good metabolic control within 1 month after birth appears "safe" with respect to later cognitive outcomes

A Novel and Robust Approach for Pro-Drop Language Translation

A significant challenge for machine translation (MT) is the phenomena of dropped pronouns (DPs), where certain classes of pronouns are frequently dropped in the source language but should be retained in the target language. In response to this common problem, we propose a semi-supervised approach with a universal framework to recall missing pronouns in translation. Firstly, we build training data for DP generation in which the DPs are automatically labelled according to the alignment information from a parallel corpus. Secondly, we build a deep learning-based DP generator for input sentences in decoding when no corresponding references exist. More specifically, the generation has two phases: (1) DP position detection, which is modeled as a sequential labelling task with recurrent neural networks; and (2) DP prediction, which employs a multilayer perceptron with rich features. Finally, we integrate the above outputs into our statistical MT (SMT) system to recall missing pronouns by both extracting rules from the DP-labelled training data and translating the DP-generated input sentences. To validate the robustness of our approach, we investigate our approach on both Chinese–English and Japanese–English corpora extracted from movie subtitles. Compared with an SMT baseline system, experimental results show that our approach achieves a significant improvement of++1.58 BLEU points in translation performance with 66% F-score for DP generation accuracy for Chinese–English, and nearly++1 BLEU point with 58% F-score for Japanese–English. We believe that this work could help both MT researchers and industries to boost the performance of MT systems between pro-drop and non-pro-drop languages