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

Polarization Limits in K-Rb Spin-Exchange Mixtures

We present measurements of the optical absorption of K vapor at 795 nm due to the presence of high pressure He gas. The results set a limit on the polarization attainable in hybrid spin-exchange optical pumping of He-3

Conservation and Optimal Use of Rangelands

In previous papers we have considered the optimal mix of biodiversity in semi-arid rangelands, focusing on the steady state. This paper addresses the question of conservation in the optimal use of rangelands. That is, it considers the optimal trajectory of biodiversity change. There are two issues involved in the question of timing. One is the uncertainty associated with the fact that many changes in the flora and fauna of rangelands are 'event-driven'. They depend on stochastic parameters taking particular values before a change of state can occur. A second issue relates to the lag structure of changes. In a system that involves a mix of fast and slow variables, in which the approach to the optimum is not 'most rapid', the optimal trajectory may require the system to remain in an apparently stable intermediate equilibrium for some time before it converges to the optimum state. The paper discusses the role of conservation in the optimal use of rangeland resources.Biodiversity, Rangelands

Nutrient Trading in the Chesapeake Bay Region: An Analysis of Supply and Demand

This report provides an overview of nutrient trading programs as they currently exist in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and examines the potential for supply and demand of credits within those markets. In addition, the analysis considers the potential impacts of Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily Loads on nutrient trading - particularly those on the agricultural sector's ability to generate credits

Nucleon Magnetic Moments and Electric Polarizabilities

Electromagnetic properties of the nucleon are explored with lattice QCD using a novel technique. Focusing on background electric fields, we show how the electric polarizability can be extracted from nucleon correlation functions. A crucial step concerns addressing contributions from the magnetic moment, which affects the relativistic propagation of nucleons in electric fields. By properly handing these contributions, we can determine both magnetic moments and electric polarizabilities. Lattice results from anisotropic clover lattices are presented. Our method is not limited to the neutron; we show results for the proton as well.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, talk given at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Villasimius, Italy, June 14-19, 201