One document, many users: what happens when you re-purpose a document?

To assess global challenges surrounding issues such as climate change and invasive species requires a baseline of historical data. We are fortunate in biodiversity that such data exists in a rich body of literature. One such source of historical data is the Biologia Centrali-Americana (BCA), which documents the plant and animal life in Central America one hundred years’ ago, and which can be compared to contemporary species distributions. This valuable resource has recently been re-keyed and manually marked up by the INOTAXA project (http://www.inotaxa.org/). The 56-volume work is now being curated before wider release. The manual annotation of the BCA is both time consuming in its initial phases and demands expert review to curate the results. This manual approach to mining historic texts is not viable for large-scale works such as the BCA. Attempts to automate the process face the problem of not having suitable corpora against which to develop and then test automated solutions such as text mining. One project, ViBRANT (http://vbrant.eu/), sought to use the scale of the re-keyed data being produced by INOTAXA to develop a solution to this problem. However, this apparently straightforward task has thrown up many issues because different audiences have different requirements of the mark up. This presentation describes the process by which the BCA is being reworked from digitisation through to a curated document corpus. The intended users are biodiversity scientists who can use the corpus for taxonomic and biodiversity research, and computer scientists who can use it to develop new text mining and mark up tools. The presentation covers the different requirements of scientists in the two domains, how this affects the mark up required of the documents, and how to re-purpose the annotations to meet the needs of different and sometimes disparate scientific audiences

Linear programming applied to dairy cattle selection

Paper 1 outlines a generalization to Hill\u27s equations for predicting response to selection. Equations are developed that account for multiple stage selection in either or both sexes and the flow of genes for animals selected at later stages. The asymptotic response to a single cycle of selection is shown to agree with classical selection theory. The equations applied to a dairy progeny testing scheme representative of an artificial insemination organization in the USA. The predicted asymptotic rates to a single cycle of selection were overestimated by 6% and the cumulative response to continuous selection over 20 years was overestimated by 8% when single stage male selection model was compared to two stage selection model;A linear programming model that accounts for the economic consequences of response to selection to the producer enterprise over a given planning horizon is described in Paper 2. A procedure is given in detail for defining upper lower bound constraints on variables that are correlated in the linear programming model. The optimal response to selection per year for the production traits was closest to their maximums achievable from a gene-flow model. Of all the non-production traits, days open had the greatest proportion of its maximum achievable from a gene-flow model. The linear programming model was used to compute relative economic weights (REV). The REVs for milk, fat, and protein production were considerably larger than the REVs for the non-production traits for all planning horizons. Somatic cell score had the largest REVs of the non-production traits in all planning horizons;In the third paper multiple-trait REML was used to estimate the heritabilities and the genetic and phenotypic correlations for 48- and 72-mo herd life from sire models incorporating sire relationships. Two traits were defined for 48- and 72-mo herd life, true herd life (THL) and functional herd life (FHL), which were adjusted for milk production prior to culling. The genetic correlations were used to compute weights for indirect prediction of true and functional herd-life PTA from linear-type traits PTA. (Abstract shortened by UMI.

Procedural Error? Seventh Circuit Fails to Recognize “No Procedure” Is Not “Adequate Procedure”

When Jerry Markadonatos was arrested in the Village of Woodridge, Illinois, he was required to pay a thirty-dollar booking fee as required by Woodridge Municipal code, without any procedural process. Mr. Markadonatos challenged this fee as a violation of due process. He eventually brought both a procedural and substantive due process claim. By the time his claim reached the Seventh Circuit it had become particularly complicated in regards to whether the claim should be properly categorized as a procedural or substantive issue and whether Mr. Markadonatos had proper standing to make either claim. In an en banc hearing, the Seventh Circuit remained split on the issues, with one group avoiding the question altogether by determining the case based on interpreting the ordinance to avoid the constitutional issues. In doing so, the Seventh Circuit failed to recognize that the deprivation of property in the absence of any procedural process must be a procedural due process issue. Judge Hamilton made this argument in his dissent, which should have been adopted by the Seventh Circuit

Procedural Error? Seventh Circuit Fails to Recognize “No Procedure” Is Not “Adequate Procedure”

When Jerry Markadonatos was arrested in the Village of Woodridge, Illinois, he was required to pay a thirty-dollar booking fee as required by Woodridge Municipal code, without any procedural process. Mr. Markadonatos challenged this fee as a violation of due process. He eventually brought both a procedural and substantive due process claim. By the time his claim reached the Seventh Circuit it had become particularly complicated in regards to whether the claim should be properly categorized as a procedural or substantive issue and whether Mr. Markadonatos had proper standing to make either claim. In an en banc hearing, the Seventh Circuit remained split on the issues, with one group avoiding the question altogether by determining the case based on interpreting the ordinance to avoid the constitutional issues. In doing so, the Seventh Circuit failed to recognize that the deprivation of property in the absence of any procedural process must be a procedural due process issue. Judge Hamilton made this argument in his dissent, which should have been adopted by the Seventh Circuit

Bringing Pankaj Ghemawat to Africa: Measuring African economic integration

A wealth of literature dealing with trade liberalisation, capital market liberalisation, labour mobility and related issues concerning globalisation asserts that economies that are more integrated with the global economy and, more specifically with their neighbours, tend to enjoy higher sustained levels of growth. Empirical evidence with solid quantitative findings recently conducted by Pankaj Ghemawat has confirmed that more ‘open and connected’ economies display higher rates of economic growth, higher per capita income levels and greater levels of human welfare. Against this backdrop, it is notable that the available evidence – whilst incomplete – suggests that African economies are amongst the least integrated in the world. Given that integration and connectedness matter, and that there are material gaps in the evaluation of integration for African economies, it is important to develop better measures of African economies’ connectedness with their neighbours and with the world, how this connectedness is evolving and establish more comprehensive and robust means of economic integration compared to those historically available. Using Ghemawat’s framework, which measures flows of trade, capital, information and people (TCIP) to determine connectedness, we develop the Visa Africa integration index to provide a more comprehensive and detailed gauge of economic integration for 11 African countries in three clusters: East Africa, West Africa and Southern Africa. The index results suggest that African economies are emerging off a modest base, with some economies demonstrating progressive structural improvements toward higher levels of integration with their respective regions and the world. East Africa, in particular, shows signs of rising connectedness over the survey period. The index also illustrates that some countries are more integrated globally than regionally and vice versa, which is important information for policy makers toward improving deeper and broader integration in their respective regions. The index builds on previous research in the broad area of integration and helps us better understand the challenges and opportunities presented by Africa’s economic changes and some of the implications for economic growth.http://www.sajems.orgam2016Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS

From XML to XML: The why and how of making the biodiversity literature accessible to researchers

We present the ABLE document collection, which consists of a set of annotated volumes of the Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History). These follow our work on automating the markup of scanned copies of the biodiversity literature, for the purpose of supporting working taxonomists. We consider an enhanced TEI XML markup language, which is used as an intermediate stage in translating from the initial XML obtained from Optical Character Recognition to the target taXMLit. The intermediate representation allows additional information from external sources such as a taxonomic thesaurus to be incorporated before the final translation into taXMLit

Influencia de las variaciones de la densidad en la cobertera de los cinturones de pliegues y cabalgamientos: aportación de la modelización analógica en centrifugadora

We present an innovative centrifuge analogue modelling approach to evaluate the influence of density contrast on structure location and vergence affecting thin-skinned compressional settings. Our natural prototype involves a detached foreland basin characterized by a basal ductile evaporitic décollement overlain by a brittle-like cover comprising a set of rock density variations. The experimental programme included gravity spreading and shortening characterized by density contrast up to 0.5 gr/cm3. Density contrast boundaries were designed perpendicular to the shortening except for one case, where it was parallel. Under no horizontal stress conditions, i.e. the tectonically quiescence context, just the centrifuge force (up to almost 900g), the cover depicts a syncline-anticline structure were the inflexion point was localized along the density contrast boundary. Moreover, wavelength and amplitude increased following the density contrast rise. In compression, density contrast boundaries perpendicular to the shortening direction controlled the vergence of the developed structuresSe presenta un estudio basado en la modelización analógica en centrifugadora que analiza la influencia que tienen las variaciones laterales de densidad de las rocas en la localización y vergencia de las estructuras afectadas por una tectónica de piel fina en contextos compresivos. El prototipo natural esta constituido por una cuenca de antepaís cabalgante a favor de un nivel de despegue dúctil sobre el cual se apoya una cobertera frágil caracterizada por variaciones laterales de la densidad. El programa experimental incluye experimentos en ausencia de esfuerzos horizontales y compresivos donde los contrastes de densidad varían por debajo de 0,5 gr/cm3. Los límites entre dominios con diferente densidad son perpendiculares al acortamiento salvo en un caso donde es paralelo. En ausencia de esfuerzos horizontales, aplicando la fuerza centrífuga (hasta 900g) se desarrolla una estructura sinclinal-anticlinal cuyo punto de inflexión coincide con el límite entre diferentes densidades y cuya longitud de onda y amplitud aumentan a medida que aumenta el contraste de densidad. En contextos compresivos, los contrastes de densidad localizados perpendicularmente al acortamiento controlan la vergencia de las estructura