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Unclassified: structured silences in the archaeological archive
No full textBook synopsis: Archaeology as a discipline has undergone significant changes over the past decades, in particular concerning best practices for how to handle the vast quantities of data that the discipline generates. Much of this data has often ended up in physical — or, more recently, digital — archives and been left untouched for years, despite containing critical information. But as many recent research projects explore how best to unleash the potential of these archives through publication, digitization, and improved accessibility, attention is now turning to the best practices that should underpin this trend.
In this volume, scholars turn their attention to how best to work with and shape archaeological archives, and what this means for the field as a whole. The majority of case studies here explore archaeological sites in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, some of which are conflict zones today. However, the contributions also showcase more broadly the depth of research on archaeological archives as a whole, and offer reflections upon the relationship between archaeological practices and archival forms. In so doing, the volume is able to offer a unique dialogue on best practices for the dissemination and synthetization of knowledge from archives more generally, whether physical or digital
Argument mining with graph representation learning
Get PDFArgument Mining (AM) is a unique task in Natural Language Processing (NLP) that targets arguments: a meaningful logical structure in human language. Since the argument plays a significant role in the legal field, the interdisciplinary study of AM on legal texts has significant promise. For years, a pipeline architecture has been used as the standard paradigm in this area. Although this simplifies the development and management of AM systems, the connection between different parts of the pipeline causes inevitable shortcomings such as cascading error propagation. This paper presents an alternative perspective of the AM task, whereby legal documents are represented as graph structures and the AM task is undertaken as a hybrid approach incorporating Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), graph augmentation and collective classification. GNNs have been demonstrated to be an effective method for representation learning on graphs, and they have been successfully applied to many other NLP tasks. In contrast to previous pipeline-based architecture, our approach results in a single end-to-end classifier for the identification and classification of argumentative text segments. Experiments based on corpora from both
the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Jus-
tice of the European Union (CJEU) show that our approach achieves
strong results compared to state-of-the-art baselines. Both the graph
augmentation and collective classification steps are shown to improve performance on both datasets when compared to using GNNs
alone
Localising cosmopolitanism in place talk: semiotic landscape as stance object
No full textSociolinguistic research has begun to critique the generalised view of cosmopolitanism as indexed by the use of global and non-local languages and urge us to explore its variety and complexity as situated and dialogical practices. This article answers this call by examining how cosmopolitanism is localised in place talk. Drawing from a larger ethnographic study of language, space, and cosmopolitanism in Shanghai, the analysis focuses on how participants evoke, compare, and evaluate the semiotic landscapes of this Chinese megalopolis. While competing notions of cosmopolitanism emerge during the research interviews, stances taken towards them also perform divergent relationships to the city. This article thus demonstrates how, instead of being a binary opposition, cosmopolitan landscape is discursively reappropriated for the construction of local identities. It contributes to our understanding of how cosmopolitanism is reterritorialised in urban space
Extensive residence in a second language environment modifies perceptual strategies for suprasegmental categorization
Get PDFLanguages differ in the importance of acoustic dimensions for speech categorization. This poses a potential challenge for second language (L2) learners, and the extent to which adult L2 learners can acquire new perceptual strategies for speech categorization remains unclear. This study investigated the effects of extensive English L2 immersion on speech perception strategies and dimension-selective-attention ability in native Mandarin speakers. Experienced first language (L1) Mandarin speakers (length of U.K. residence > 3 years) demonstrated more native-like weighting of cues to L2 suprasegmental categorization relative to inexperienced Mandarin speakers (length of residence < 1 year), weighting duration more highly. However, both the experienced and the inexperienced Mandarin speakers continued to weight duration less highly and pitch more highly during musical beat categorization and struggled to ignore pitch and selectively attend to amplitude in speech, relative to native English speakers. These results suggest that adult L2 experience can lead to retuning of perceptual strategies in specific contexts, but global acoustic salience is more resistant to change
Offal Audio 1
No full textOffal Audio is a sound file distributed via WhatsApp. It is a collage of readings made using the AI voice generator Play HT of material from the journal Offal, with assorted sound sources. Offal publishes experimental and hybrid creative work by both established and new writers
Silently silenced: state-sanctioned killing of women
Get PDFSilently Silenced: State-Sanctioned Killing of Women examines States’ involvement in ‘feminicide’. Feminicide is understood as the gender-motivated killing of women and girls that States actively engage in, condone, excuse, or fail to prevent. We use the term ‘feminicide’ to refer to the various forms of State-sanctioned killing of women and girls. In this report, we outline States’ direct involvement and complicity in the killings of women and girls and explain these deaths as a product of gendered forms of structural violence upheld and sustained by the State. We examine 3 types of feminicide: gender- related killings of women directly perpetrated by the State, such as the death penalty and extrajudicial killings; gender-related killings of women committed by non-State actors that are excused or condoned by the State; and gender-related killings of women that the State failed to prevent
Public knowledge and opinion, crime, and criminal justice
Get PDFThis chapter summarizes research on public opinion about crime and criminal justice in developed industrialized societies. It starts with an assessment of what can be said about public knowledge about crime, documenting widespread misperceptions about the nature of crime, about crime trends, and about the criminal justice response to crime. It then considers public attitudes towards crime and justice, which tend to be largely negative. The chapter presents evidence of the links between levels of knowledge and attitudes to justice, suggesting that misinformation about crime and justice is the likely source of negative public ratings of the justice system. Penal populism and populist punitiveness are considered. The chapter ends by exploring issues of public trust in justice, confidence, and legitimacy
Assessing and predicting sustainability for maintaining silver collections. In Working Towards a Sustainable Past
No full textSustainability data for materials and electric energy
consumed vary with national location. Addition
ally, local climate can have a dramatic effect on
the amount of energy needed to maintain cultural
heritage environments. The first part of this re
search focused on the energy needed to maintain
a showcase at 55% RH. Measurements with a
Munters dehumidifier were made in different loca
tions. The variability of the showcase was removed
by estimates from a developed model. The vari
ability from the building fabric was removed by
estimates from an Energy Plus model. The focus of
the second part of this research was silver tarnish
and its prevention. Performance models allowed
geographic location effects to be estimated, and a
simple model was developed mainly from existing
data on the rate and prevention of silver tarnish.
Small areas of missing data were investigated.
Carbon footprint information was developed and
added to the model to allow predictions of differ
ent interventive, preventive and mixed scenarios
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