Exploring lexical patterns in text : lexical cohesion analysis with WordNet

We present a system for the linguistic exploration and analysis of lexical cohesion in English texts. Using an electronic thesaurus-like resource, Princeton WordNet, and the Brown Corpus of English, we have implemented a process of annotating text with lexical chains and a graphical user interface for inspection of the annotated text. We describe the system and report on some sample linguistic analyses carried out using the combined thesaurus-corpus resource

Kuration und Exploration des Korpus "Diskurs in der Weimarer Republik"

A single abstract from the DHd-2016 Book of Abstracts.Sofern eine editorische Arbeit an dieser Publikation stattgefunden hat, dann bestand diese aus der Eliminierung von Bindestrichen in Überschriften, die aufgrund fehlerhafter Silbentrennung entstanden sind, der Vereinheitlichung von Namen der Autor*innen in das Schema "Nachname, Vorname" und/oder der Trennung von Überschrift und Unterüberschrift durch die Setzung eines Punktes, sofern notwendig

Life-Cycle Assessment of Chemical Production Processes: A Tool for Ecological Optimization

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has gained in recent years widespread acceptance as an environmental management tool to assess and valuate the environmental impacts (resource consumption and emissions to nature) of products and processes, covering the whole life cycle from cradle (extraction of raw material) to grave (final disposal). Applied to chemical manufacturing, LCA allows to compare the ecological performance of synthesis processes, guide process developers to weak points and improvement options, and avoid suboptimizations. In our Consumer Care Chemicals Division, we apply LCA routinely to sales products as well as manufacturing-process chains, and we developed a specialized LCA computer system ECOSYS for that purpose. Material flow, energy, and waste data for all in-house manufacturing processes are extracted from our company data bases into ECOSYS. For meaningful comparisons of whole life cycles, we must include LCA results for the raw materials bought from other suppliers, and since such data are rarely available, appropriate estimation procedures were developed. The multitude of ecological burdens calculated over the life cycle can be judged and compared by a variety of valuation schemes, e.g. according to the Swiss BUW AL or the modern Eco-indicator 95 method. ECOSYS is not restricted to existing, operational processes, but allows the process developer to test his hypothetical designs (e.g. derived from a simulation tool) at a very early stage. If process alternatives use different raw materials, a narrow judgement on data for the process step alone may lead to suboptimization, whereas LCA results that consider all preceding syntheses of intermediates allow a more objective comparison. As an example, two synthesis paths for DNS (4,4?-dinitro-2,2?-stilbenedisulfonic acid disodium salt) were compared: The older, established route uses NaOCI in aqueous media as an oxidant, whereas the method more recently introduced in one of our production plants is based on air oxidation in liquid ammonia. The latter produces considerably less waste and is favorable with respect to many ecological parameters, including energy consumption, over the whole life cycle

Identification of a Gene Expression Signature Common to Distinct Cancer Pathways

Mutations in cancer-causing genes induce changes in gene expression programs critical for malignant cell transformation. Publicly available gene expression profiles produced by modulating the expression of distinct cancer genes may therefore represent a rich resource for the identification of gene signatures common to seemingly unrelated cancer genes. We combined automatic retrieval with manual validation to obtain a data set of high-quality gene microarray profiles. This data set was used to create logical models of the signaling events underlying the observed expression changes produced by various cancer genes and allowed to uncover unknown and verifiable interactions. Data clustering revealed novel sets of gene expression profiles commonly regulated by distinct cancer genes. Our method allows retrieval of significant new information and testable hypotheses from a pool of deposited cancer gene expression experiments that are otherwise not apparent or appear insignificant from single measurements. The complete results are available through a web-application at http://biodata.ethz.ch/cgi-bin/geologic

Long-Term Quality of Life After Hepatic Resection: Health Is not Simply the Absence of Disease

Background: Due to advances in operative methods and perioperative care, mortality and morbidity following major hepatic resection have decreased substantially, making long-term quality of life (QoL) an increasingly prominent issue. We evaluated whether postoperative diagnosis was associated with long-term QoL and health in patients requiring hepatic surgery for benign or malignant disease. Methods: QoL was evaluated using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 and the liver-specific QLQ-LMC21 module. Results: Between 2002 and 2006, 249 patients underwent hepatic surgery for malignant (76%) and benign (24%) conditions. One hundred thirty-five patients were available for QoL analysis after a mean of 26.5months. There was no statistical difference in global QoL scores between patients with malignant and benign diseases (p=0.367). Neither the extent of the resection (≥2 segments vs. <2 segments; p=0.975; OR=0.988; 95% CI=0.461-2.119) nor patient age had a significant influence on overall QoL (p=0.092). Conclusions: These results indicate that long-term QoL for patients who underwent liver resection for malignant disease is quite good and that a poor clinical prognosis does not seem to correlate with a poor Qo