Digital Humanities: An Explication

The relationship between computer science and digital humanities and the potential contributions of computer science to digital humanities cannot be reasonably discussed without defining what we mean by “digital humanities.” With a view to enabling this important discussion, we propose a concise definition of digital humanities centered around the construction of formal models

SMM: Detailed, Structured Morphological Analysis for Spanish

We present a morphological analyzer for Spanish called SMM. SMM is implemented in the grammar development framework Malaga, which is based on the formalism of Left-Associative Grammar. We briefly present the Malaga framework, describe the implementation decisions for some interesting morphological phenomena of Spanish, and report on the evaluation results from the analysis of corpora. SMM was originally only designed for analyzing word forms; in this article we outline two approaches for using SMM and the facilities provided by Malaga to also generate verbal paradigms. SMM can also be embedded into applications by making use of the Malagaprogramming interface; we briefly discuss some application scenarios

Computational linguistics for word processing: opportunities and limits

In this paper the authors briefly outline editing functions which use methods from computational linguistics and take the structures of natural languages into consideration. Such functions could reduce errors and better support writers in realizing their communicative goals. However, linguistic methods have limits, and there are various aspects software developers have to take into account to avoid creating a solution looking for a problem: Language-aware functions could be powerful tools for writers, but writers must not be forced to adapt to their tools

Academic writing and publishing beyond documents

Research on writing tools stopped in the late 1980s when Microsoft Word had achieved monopoly status. However, the development of the Web and the advent of mobile devices are increasingly rendering static print-like documents obsolete. In this vision paper we reflect on the impact of this development on scholarly writing and publishing. Academic publications increasingly include dynamic elements, e.g., code, data plots, and other visualizations, which clearly requires other tools for document production than traditional word processors. When the printed page no longer is the desired final product, content and form can be addressed explicitly and separately, thus emphasizing the structure of texts rather than the structure of documents. The resulting challenges have not yet been fully addressed by document engineering

Modelling Medieval Vagueness

The project An Agile Approach Towards Computational Modeling of Historiographical Uncertainty is building a taxonomy of historiographical uncertainty. We are focusing on early medieval texts as our case studies, because they are characterised by a high degree of “high stakes” uncertainty and a varied historiography characterised by a vivid debate. The additional factor of the manuscript text-transmission ensues that also the material aspect of the textual study will be covered in our attempt to build an adaptable taxonomy of historiographical uncertainty. Computational humanities need a robust methodological platform, that can be applied to a wide variety of projects. Uncertainty in general and geographical uncertainty in particular stand as the crucial aspects of this platform. We investigate a methodology of visualising geographical locales in historical texts and their historiographies that explicitly models uncertainty in

Nothing New Under the Sun? Computational Humanities and the Methodology of History

The example of historiography shows that quantitative methods have already been part of the humanities for a long time. Such methods alone therefore cannot be constitutive of the computational humanities (CH). It is also problematic and unsustainable to conceive it as a kind of “toolbox” of quantitative methods, as it places CH outside of the methodological traditions of the humanities disciplines. Instead, we need to remember that disciplines are defined by their research objects and the research questions they tackle. This means that we need to distinguish between applied and theoretical CH, and that applied CH must be firmly placed in the methodological scope and tradition of their mother disciplines. We posit that the supposed dichotomy of qualitative and quantitative methods is fallacious: neither will quantitative methods replace qualitative approaches in history, nor are they unnecessary—they are complementary

DataM – Biomass estimates (v3): a new database to quantify biomass availability in the European Union

In 2012, the Communication of the European Commission "Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe" (COM(2012)60) has put the development of the Bioeconomy at the forefront, as a way of reconciling economic growth and the green economy. But current official statistics fall short in providing relevant data to document this new concept. The establishment of the bioeconomy observatory (BISO) aims at filling this gap, compiling qualitative and quantitative data of relevance for policy makers. Considering that biomass is the raw material of the bioeconomy, JRC-IPTS together with the Nova- Institute has elaborated in the BISO framework a new database that quantifies the production and residues of biomass: DataM – Biomass estimates. Compared to existing databases like Eurostat-MFA (env_ac_mfa) and SERI Global material flows, this new database presents a higher level of disaggregation at the geographical and commodity level. Moreover, it allows gathering data either into fresh or dry matter. This database is stored in DataM, a JRC data management tool, and is accessible via two applications: the full version in datamintracomm for all European commission staff, and a public light version online datamweb. Apart from offering a quantification of crop biomass and residues at European level, these two applications also allows browsing data at member state and commodity level. A quantification of the European trade and biomass uses in biomass equivalent is foreseen in next versions, together with the integration of woody and aquatic product.JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

Reciprocal regulation of protein synthesis and carbon metabolism for thylakoid membrane biogenesis

Metabolic control of gene expression coordinates the levels of specific gene products to meet cellular demand for their activities. This control can be exerted by metabolites acting as regulatory signals and/or a class of metabolic enzymes with dual functions as regulators of gene expression. However, little is known about how metabolic signals affect the balance between enzymatic and regulatory roles of these dual functional proteins. We previously described the RNA binding activity of a 63 kDa chloroplast protein from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which has been implicated in expression of the psbA mRNA, encoding the D1 protein of photosystem II. Here, we identify this factor as dihydrolipoamide acetyltransferase (DLA2), a subunit of the chloroplast pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (cpPDC), which is known to provide acetyl-CoA for fatty acid synthesis. Analyses of RNAi lines revealed that DLA2 is involved in the synthesis of both D1 and acetyl-CoA. Gel filtration analyses demonstrated an RNP complex containing DLA2 and the chloroplast psbA mRNA specifically in cells metabolizing acetate. An intrinsic RNA binding activity of DLA2 was confirmed by in vitro RNA binding assays. Results of fluorescence microscopy and subcellular fractionation experiments support a role of DLA2 in acetate-dependent localization of the psbA mRNA to a translation zone within the chloroplast. Reciprocally, the activity of the cpPDC was specifically affected by binding of psbA mRNA. Beyond that, in silico analysis and in vitro RNA binding studies using recombinant proteins support the possibility that RNA binding is an ancient feature of dihydrolipoamide acetyltransferases. Our results suggest a regulatory function of DLA2 in response to growth on reduced carbon energy sources. This raises the intriguing possibility that this regulation functions to coordinate the synthesis of lipids and proteins for the biogenesis of photosynthetic membranes

Incertitude et histoire numérique

La recherche historique est toujours confrontée à l'incertitude en raison de l'incomplétude de notre connaissance du passé. Il est pourtant important de distinguer deux types d'incertitude: l'incertitude historique qui concerne les faits du passé et l'incertitude historiographique qui concerne l'interprétation de ces faits. En histoire numérique, les deux types représentent des défis majeurs pour la construction de modèles computationnels, car les cadres de modélisation computationnels actuels ne sont pas bien adaptés à l'incertitude habituellement rencontrée dans la recherche historique. Nous argumentons que la gestion de l'incertitude historiographique, étroitement liée aux récits historiques et aux modèles causaux, est indispensable pour la construction de modèles historiographiques computationnels

Historical Models and Serial Sources

Serial sources such as records, registers, and inventories are the ‘classic’ sources for quantitative history. Unstructured, narrative texts such as newspaper articles or reports were out of reach for historical analyses, both for practical reasons—availability, time needed for manual processing—and for methodological reasons: manual coding of texts is notoriously difficult and hampered by low inter-coder reliability. The recent availability of large amounts of digitized sources allows for the application of natural language processing, which has the potential to overcome these problems. However, the automatic evaluation of large amounts of texts—and historical texts in particular—for historical research also brings new challenges. First of all, it requires a source criticism that goes beyond the individual source and also considers the corpus as a whole. It is a well-known problem in corpus linguistics to determine the ‘balancedness’ of a corpus, but when analyzing the content of texts rather than ‘just’ the language, determining the ‘meaningfulness’ of a corpus is even more important. Second, automatic analyses require operationalizable descriptions of the information you are looking for. Third, automatically produced results require interpretation, in particular, when—as in history—the ultimate research question is qualitative, not quantitative. This, finally, poses the question, whether the insights gained could inform formal, i.e., machine-processable, models, which could serve as foundation and stepping stones for further research