Female voices in the context of Irish emigration: A linguistic analysis of gender differences in private correspondence

The past few decades have witnessed an increasing interest in private correspondence as a source of information for linguistic analysis. Letter collections represent an invaluable source of evidence at a historical and sociological level and, it has been argued, they are also unique sources for the documentation of language development. Recent research has shown how this type of written data can help in analyzing the correlation between social status/gender and language change. Other uses of personal letters have served to document the presence and development of specific syntactic structures. Within the realm of this genre, the value of emigrant letters is enormous, given that they reflect language features that were transported away from the environments in which they initially emerged. This paper takes a bottom-up approach to the analysis of the language of Irish emigrants and concentrates specifically on gender differences in the use of certain linguistic devices. By applying the tools and techniques of corpus linguistics, this study analyses the expression of closeness, spontaneity and solidarity in the use of a few significant features such as pragmatic markers and pronominal forms. The data under investigation is a corpus of letters written between 1840 and 1920 by members of two families who emigrated from Ireland to Argentina. The paper also argues that, given that letter writing is often at the intersection between spoken and written discourse, this type of approach can help us reconstruct the most characteristic properties of spoken discourse in the past

Automated Identification and Differentiation of Spectrally Similar Hydrothermal Minerals on Mars

Early telescopic observations corroborated hydration related absorptions on Mars in the infrared. Images from the Viking missions led to speculation of hydrothermal alteration and were followed by two missions which mapped the spatial variability of the ~ 3 m hydration feature. Since then, the Compact Reconnaissance Imager for Mars (CRISM) has provided high spatial resolution (up to 18m) spectral identification of a suite of hydrothermal and diagenetic minerals which have illuminated a range of formation mechanisms. Presence/absence and spatial segregation or mixing of minerals like prehnite, epidote, chlorite amphiboles, and mixed-layer Fe/Mg smectite-chlorite provide valuable evidence for the geologic setting of deposits on Earth, and these phases are often used as temperature and aqueous chemistry indicators in terrestrial systems. Mapping the distribution of these phases will help to answer whether Mars had widespread conditions favorable for low-grade metamorphism and diagenesis, or only focused hydrothermal systems in areas of high heat flow. Further characterizing the chemistry and structure of these phases will then help to answer how most of the widespread Fe/Mg phyllosilicates formed, further defining early geochemical cycling and climate. A fully automated approach for accurate mapping of important hydrothermal mineral phases on Mars has been a challenge. Due to overlapping features in the M-OH region (~2.2-2.4 m), the strongest absorption features of chlorite, prehnite, and epidote in the short-wave infrared are difficult to distinguish from one another and from the most commonly occurring hydrated silicates on Mars, Fe/Mg smectites. Weaker absorptions are present in both prehnite and epidote which help to distinguish them from chlorite and smectites, but their relative strength in the presence of noise and spatial mixing is often too low to confidently identify them without the noise suppression and feature enhancement methods described here. The spectral signatures of mixed-layer Fe/Mg smectite-chlorite and partially chloritized Fe/Mg smectites have not yet been adequately assessed. Here we evaluate the effectiveness of two empirical and statistical methods for identifying and differentiating these phases using CRISM data

Linguistic identity and the study of emigrant letters: Irish English in the making

This paper builds on the findings from a larger research project that analyses written data extracted from a corpus of emigrant letters. This preliminary study is an exploration of the Irish Emigration Database (IED), an electronic word-searchable collection of primary source documents on Irish emigration to North America (USA and Canada) in the 18th and 19th centuries. The IED contains a variety of original material including emigrant letters, newspaper articles, shipping advertisements, shipping news, passenger lists, offi cial government reports, family papers, births, deaths and marriages and extracts from books and periodicals. The paper focuses specifi cally on the sections dealing with transcriptions of Emigrant Letters sent home and Letters to Irish Emigrants abroad, from which CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, is developed. Our study is intended as a fi rst step towards an empirical diachronic account of an important period for the formation of Irish English. A close look at the ocurrence in the corpus of some features such as the use of the progressive form (e.g. I am reading) and the uses of will vs. shall reveals that these features were already part of what is known as Irish English nowadays. Our study covers the period from the early eighteenth century to 1840, a timespan that stretches from the beginning to the middle of the main period of language shift from Irish to English.Identidad lingüística y el estudio de cartas de emigrantes: la formación del inglés de Irlanda. Este artículo se basa en los resultados de un proyecto de investigación que analiza los datos extraídos de un corpus de cartas de emigrantes. Este estudio es una exploración preliminar de la Irish Emigration Database (IED), una colección electrónica de fuentes relacionadas con la emigración irlandesa a América del Norte (EE.UU. y Canadá) en los siglos XVIII y XIX. La base de datos IED contiene una gran variedad de material original que incluye cartas de emigrantes, artículos de periódicos, anuncios, noticias, noticias, listas de pasajeros, informes ofi ciales del gobierno, documentos familiares, partidas de nacimiento, matrimonio y defunción, y extractos de libros y publicaciones periódicas. El presente artículo se centra específi camente en las secciones que se ocupan de las transcripciones de la correspondencia entre emigrantes irlandeses en el extranjero y sus familiares y amigos en Irlanda. Estos documentos constituyen la base de CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence. Nuestro estudio pretende ser un primer paso hacia un estudio diacrónico empírico de un período de gran importancia para la formación del inglés de Irlanda. Un análisis exhaustivo de el uso en el corpus de algunas características tales como el uso de la forma continua (por ejemplo, I am reading) y los usos de las formas will y shall demuestra que estas estructuras sintácticas formaban ya parte de lo que en la actualidad se conoce como Irish English. Nuestro estudio abarca el período comprendido entre principios del siglo XVIII hasta 1840, un lapso que abarca desde el principio hasta la mitad del período en el que el inglés vino a sustituir al irlandés como lengua principal

Linguistic identity and the study of emigrant letters: Irish English in the making

This paper builds on the findings from a larger research project that analyses written data extracted from a corpus of emigrant letters. This preliminary study is an exploration of the Irish Emigration Database (IED), an electronic word-searchable collection of primary source documents on Irish emigration to North America (USA and Canada) in the 18th and 19th centuries. The IED contains a variety of original material including emigrant letters, newspaper articles, shipping advertisements, shipping news, passenger lists, offi cial government reports, family papers, births, deaths and marriages and extracts from books and periodicals. The paper focuses specifi cally on the sections dealing with transcriptions of Emigrant Letters sent home and Letters to Irish Emigrants abroad, from which CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, is developed. Our study is intended as a fi rst step towards an empirical diachronic account of an important period for the formation of Irish English. A close look at the ocurrence in the corpus of some features such as the use of the progressive form (e.g. I am reading) and the uses of will vs. shall reveals that these features were already part of what is known as Irish English nowadays. Our study covers the period from the early eighteenth century to 1840, a timespan that stretches from the beginning to the middle of the main period of language shift from Irish to English.Identidad lingüística y el estudio de cartas de emigrantes: la formación del inglés de Irlanda. Este artículo se basa en los resultados de un proyecto de investigación que analiza los datos extraídos de un corpus de cartas de emigrantes. Este estudio es una exploración preliminar de la Irish Emigration Database (IED), una colección electrónica de fuentes relacionadas con la emigración irlandesa a América del Norte (EE.UU. y Canadá) en los siglos XVIII y XIX. La base de datos IED contiene una gran variedad de material original que incluye cartas de emigrantes, artículos de periódicos, anuncios, noticias, noticias, listas de pasajeros, informes ofi ciales del gobierno, documentos familiares, partidas de nacimiento, matrimonio y defunción, y extractos de libros y publicaciones periódicas. El presente artículo se centra específi camente en las secciones que se ocupan de las transcripciones de la correspondencia entre emigrantes irlandeses en el extranjero y sus familiares y amigos en Irlanda. Estos documentos constituyen la base de CORIECOR, the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence. Nuestro estudio pretende ser un primer paso hacia un estudio diacrónico empírico de un período de gran importancia para la formación del inglés de Irlanda. Un análisis exhaustivo de el uso en el corpus de algunas características tales como el uso de la forma continua (por ejemplo, I am reading) y los usos de las formas will y shall demuestra que estas estructuras sintácticas formaban ya parte de lo que en la actualidad se conoce como Irish English. Nuestro estudio abarca el período comprendido entre principios del siglo XVIII hasta 1840, un lapso que abarca desde el principio hasta la mitad del período en el que el inglés vino a sustituir al irlandés como lengua principal

Space Station Freedom photovoltaic power module design status

Electric power generation for Space Station Freedom will be provided by four photovoltaic (PV) power modules using silicon solar cells during Phase 1 operation. Each PV power module requires two solar arrays with 32,800 solar cells generating 18.75 kW of dc power for a total of 75 kW. A portion of this power will be stored in nickel-hydrogen batteries for use during eclipse, and the balance will be processed and converted to 20 kHz ac power for distribution to end users through the power management and distribution system. The design incorporates an optimized thermal control system, pointing and tracking provision with the application of gimbals, and the use of orbital replacement units (ORU's) to achieve modularization. Design status of the PV power module, as derived from major trade studies, is discussed at hardware levels ranging from component to system. Details of the design are presented where appropriate