Combining different Technologies in a Funerary Archaeology content and language integrated Learning (CLIL) Course

The aim of this paper is to describe a project in which Italian undergraduate students at the Palaeopathology Division of Pisa University will attend a two-year Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) course combining the study of funerary archaeology with English as vehicular language. At the presence of a subject and language teacher working together, the trainees will use different types of technology including devices such as electronic blackboards and Word applications with user-friendly interfaces (Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), audio tapes, DVDs, videos taken from important satellite television programmes (BBC, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc.). The activities will range from reading parts of funerary archaeology texts scanned and put onto the computer, to gap-filling exercises by listening to a recording, matching words with their definitions, jumbled sentences, etc. A number of resources will be prepared by the learners, for example a bilingual glossary of archaeology terms with definitions extracted from authentic texts, as well as an English grammar with examples-in-context of the basic grammar items, to be exploited by the students of future courses. While performing the different tasks, the learners will be involved in the learning of funerary archaeology content, in improving their language skills, and in understanding how to use different technological tools. In the summer period at the end of the first year, more sophisticated technology will support the students during the explorations at an archeological site in the small village of Benabbio in northern Tuscany. In particular, the excavations of 14th century bodies on the one hand, and of corpses of people who were victims of the 1855 cholera epidemic on the other, will be carried out using surveying tools that can contribute to the understanding of the underground features. Such tools include geo-radars which help the archaeologists collect information about the location of past human cultures in a particular area; G.I.S., the science that allows to view, interpret, and visualize data concerning maps, globes, reports, and charts; aerial photography, by which it is possible to detect traces of buried structures that are not visible at ground level. Finally, some of the bodies will be submitted to computerized axial tomography (C.A.T.) for a more thorough investigation that can reveal and clarify certain types of information that would have been impossible to obtain in the past. Understanding of the different technologies used for geographic inquiry and treatment of the bodies will also be part of the content course in funerary archaeology held by the subject teacher. The students will be able to experiment the tools, exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, and speaking about their work with British peers from the United Kingdom, who are spending the summer period at Benabbio on exchange courses, and graduating in funerary archaeology in their country. The final exam will consist of a dissertation written in English in which the students will describe particular tasks in which they have been involved, as well as an oral Powerpoint presentation illustrating a particular phase of the excavation activities. Technology-supported tools have become increasingly available in educational contexts, allowing trainees to learn from practical experiences, to be engaged in authentic tasks and build up their self confidence for communication in real life situations

LEARNING THE ROPES: A SOFTWARE TOOL FOR CLIL COURSES IN MARITIME SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS

This paper outlines a proposal for maritime English language teaching in public and private Nautical Schools and other maritime educational institutions and establishments in Italy, using a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. The courses are addressed in particular to those students who would like to take up a marine career as officers, engineers or other crew members of the Merchant Navy, and thus require an adequate knowledge of seafaring terminology, but can also be interesting for those wishing to explore the origins and development of maritime language. In order to provide a more challenging environment and better opportunity for the learning of seafaring terms and expressions in English, students are supported by Mariterm, a lexical database, organized in semantic relations, available at the Institute for Computational Linguistics (ILC) of the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa.

Grey Literature for Natural Language Processing: a Terminological and Statistical Approach

This paper presents the results of a study on grey literature (GL) in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Our data has been collected in a corpus of ca 13,000 records corresponding to the titles of papers presented at International Conferences from 1950 to June 2008. A statistical representation of the most significant terms relative to GL in NLP and other interrelated disciplines associates old and new words, highlighting the terminological changes that have taken place in the course of time. Aim of our study is to contribute to the creation of language resources for the extraction of GL coming from the Web in order to help prevent the disappearance of documents containing NLP words that have undergone rapid development over the last decades. This paper is organised as follows: after a general introduction to our work, section 2 provides a historical overview of NLP; sections 3 and 4 offer an account of the most relevant terms used by specialists in different periods, and indicative of the changes that have taken place; section 5 describes the methodology we have used and also contains information on our GL database and a graphical representation of the data. Finally, the conclusions stress the need to integrate pre-existing or obsolete words and expressions, creating NLP synonym relations

An English Grammar and a bilingual Glossary acting as complementary Tools for a CLIL-based Course

This paper describes how two complementary tools, an English grammar and a bilingual (Italian- English) glossary, can be expanded by University students attending a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) course in which a funerary archaeology lecturer, an English language instructor and an archaeologist work together, integrating content and language. This work is part of a wider project carried out at the Division of Palaeopathology, History of Medicine and Bioethics, and approved by the University of Pisa. Starting from a sample of Italian and English monographic texts and other publications in printed or electronic form dealing with the subject of funerary archaeology and other related research areas (anthropology, field archaeology, anatomy and chemistry, which can provide new insights into past civilizations, cultures and practices so far undiscovered), we have extracted separate, preliminary lists of specialized terms. The students working alone, in pairs or in groups, are asked to expand these lists, tracking down additional words with their definitions and example sentences drawn from other authoritative sources. The information with specification of the authors and detailed bibliographical references should be written in independent appropriately labelled files, and sent to the computer analyst responsible for the computer software editing. The reading of various definitions at different levels of depth will enable the user to understand better, have a clearer and more exhaustive picture of a particular word, concept, or phenomenon. The glossary, addressed to the students who are at the same time creators and users of the product, can also be of interest to professors, scholars or translators who need to dispose of the specialised terms of funerary archaeology in a language other than their own. Many of the definitions and other types of useful information can be exploited to illustrate the different grammar points and structures of an easy-to-use on-line English intermediate-level grammar book, to study the grammar not in isolation but in meaningful contexts and real-life situations, to encourage the learners to become active explorers of the language. This ongoing grammar can be a valuable resource for students with minimum linguistic knowledge and competence, but also be useful to those wishing to improve the English language, enhancing their learning proficiency. Implementation of the two complementary products - grammar and glossary - will proceed together, contributing to the learning of funerary archaeology on the part of the students, both learners and creators of the two tools. As we know, the possibilities offered by the computer in terms of space, links, cross-references, etc. make it possible to organize and customize the material, meeting as much as possible the users\u27 needs. The technological tools increasingly available in the educational context support both the subject and language teacher in making the learning process easier and more engaging, helping clarify certain concepts in a non-traditional way in order to accomplish various instructional objectives

Step-by-step Organization of a University CLIL Course

This paper reports on the organization of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) University courses in funerary archaeology held at the Division of Palaeopathology of Pisa University. We outline the different steps involved in the practical implementation of the proposed approach, which include choice of topic, linguistic content, tasks and strategies, and we describe the ways in which CLIL can be used both in the classroom and in archaeological fieldwork excavations for teaching of the discipline and practical experience with leading scholars in the field. Each two-hour lesson slot is divided into four parts, devoted to both the receptive (reading, listening) and productive (writing, speaking) skills, which constantly expose the students to language, helping them understand the contents of the discipline. It is necessary to take into account the additional difficulties students attending the courses might have, which are due to their having to learn basic and academic language skills and new subject concepts at the same time. All the material relevant to the course is simplified and adapted to the needs and language of the students, who are supported by authentic materials in the form of text-books, articles, tutorials, illustrations, audio and video recordings, and by a number of activities ranging from gap-filling exercises, matching words with their definitions, jumbled sentences, sentence formation, preparation of posters, powerpoint demonstrations. The trainees are also involved in increasing an ongoing bilingual English-Italian glossary and contextualized English grammar. Working individually, then in pairs and in small groups, they are responsible for the different areas of the discipline. Funerary archaeology is the study of death, ancient burials and human skeletal remains, body disposal, etc., and includes skeleton anthropology, bone diagenesis, taphonomic anthropology, as well as other features comprising excavation phases, techniques and tools employed, field archaeology

Linguistic Miner

Abstract: In this paper we present a project titled "Linguistic Miner", designed and coordinated by Eugenio Picchi. The project arises from the availability of the PiSystem tools and the familiarity with the automatic treatment of human language. The project goal is the extraction of linguistic information from the texts and the validation of linguistic patterns. We show the objectives and the results of the project as achieved in the first months of work

ApoA-I mimetic administration, but not increased apoA-I-containing HDL, inhibits tumour growth in a mouse model of inherited breast cancer

Low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) have been associated with breast cancer risk, but several epidemiologic studies have reported contradictory results with regard to the relationship between apolipoprotein (apo) A-I and breast cancer. We aimed to determine the effects of human apoA-I overexpression and administration of specific apoA-I mimetic peptide (D-4F) on tumour progression by using mammary tumour virus-polyoma middle T-antigen transgenic (PyMT) mice as a model of inherited breast cancer. Expression of human apoA-I in the mice did not affect tumour onset and growth in PyMT transgenic mice, despite an increase in the HDLc level. In contrast, D-4F treatment significantly increased tumour latency and inhibited the development of tumours. The effects of D-4F on tumour development were independent of 27-hydroxycholesterol. However, D-4F treatment reduced the plasma oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) levels in mice and prevented oxLDL-mediated proliferative response in human breast adenocarcinoma MCF-7 cells. In conclusion, our study shows that D-4F, but not apoA-I-containing HDL, hinders tumour growth in mice with inherited breast cancer in association with a higher protection against LDL oxidative modification.This work was partly funded by Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, Instituto de Salud Carlos III: FIS PI11/01076 (to F.V-B.), PI12/00291 (to J.C.E-G.) and PI13/02507 (to A.C.), and RETIC RIC RD12/0042/0055 (to A.C.); by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, SAF2011-23402 (to A.F.V); by an intramural project of the Institut de Recerca de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau (IR15-P5); and by grant from the Academy of Finland #257545 (to M.J.). CIBER de Diabetes y Enfermedades Metabólicas Asociadas is an Instituto de Salud Carlos III Project. A.M.F. and S.T.R. were funded by HL-30568 and by a Leducq Foundation Network grant, and J.M.C. is an APIF fellowship recipient (Universitat de Barcelona).Peer Reviewe

ApoA-I Mimetic administration, but not increased apoA-I-containing HDL, inhibits tumour growth in a mouse model of inherited breast cancer.

Low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) have been associated with breast cancer risk, but several epidemiologic studies have reported contradictory results with regard to the relationship between apolipoprotein (apo) A-I and breast cancer. We aimed to determine the effects of human apoA-I overexpression and administration of specific apoA-I mimetic peptide (D-4F) on tumour progression by using mammary tumour virus-polyoma middle T-antigen transgenic (PyMT) mice as a model of inherited breast cancer. Expression of human apoA-I in the mice did not affect tumour onset and growth in PyMT transgenic mice, despite an increase in the HDLc level. In contrast, D-4F treatment significantly increased tumour latency and inhibited the development of tumours. The effects of D-4F on tumour development were independent of 27-hydroxycholesterol. However, D-4F treatment reduced the plasma oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) levels in mice and prevented oxLDL-mediated proliferative response in human breast adenocarcinoma MCF-7 cells. In conclusion, our study shows that D-4F, but not apoA-I-containing HDL, hinders tumour growth in mice with inherited breast cancer in association with a higher protection against LDL oxidative modificatio

ApoA-I mimetic administration, but not increased apoA-I-containing HDL, inhibits tumour growth in a mouse model of inherited breast cancer

Low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) have been associated with breast cancer risk, but several epidemiologic studies have reported contradictory results with regard to the relationship between apolipoprotein (apo) A-I and breast cancer. We aimed to determine the effects of human apoA-I overexpression and administration of specific apoA-I mimetic peptide (D-4F) on tumour progression by using mammary tumour virus-polyoma middle T-antigen transgenic (PyMT) mice as a model of inherited breast cancer. Expression of human apoA-I in the mice did not affect tumour onset and growth in PyMT transgenic mice, despite an increase in the HDLc level. In contrast, D-4F treatment significantly increased tumour latency and inhibited the development of tumours. The effects of D-4F on tumour development were independent of 27-hydroxycholesterol. However, D-4F treatment reduced the plasma oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) levels in mice and prevented oxLDL-mediated proliferative response in human breast adenocarcinoma MCF-7 cells. In conclusion, our study shows that D-4F, but not apoA-I-containing HDL, hinders tumour growth in mice with inherited breast cancer in association with a higher protection against LDL oxidative modification