Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The Analysis of the Escape by W.S. Maugham Essay Example for Free

The Analysis of the Escape by W.S. Maugham Essay What we call a Chicago accent is actually called the Inland North American dialect. This encompasses the major cities around the Great Lakes. The dialect used to be considered the standard American accent until the region experienced a vowel shift, now called the North Cities Vowel Shift. Who Speaks the Chicago Dialect? Or rather, who doesnt? The answer, of course, is African Americans in the Chicago region, who have their own (and infinitely more interesting) dialect. Though this may be obvious. African Americans are the largest population group in Chicago, and it would be irresponsible to overlook the fact that the Chicago dialect is not used by the largest sector of the citys population. The most salient feature of the Chicago dialect is that it is undergoing the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This is most noticeable in words with the /ae/ vowel, which gets raised so that its close to /e/. Thus, bad sounds a bit like bed, or, beead. Another notable aspect of this vowel shift is that /o/ is fronted so that it is closer to /ah/. So hot sounds a lttle like hat. As an ongoing change, it is more prevalent and more pronounced among young people, middle-class people, and females, but it is quite widespread. nearly all white Chicagoans exhibit this vowel shift, at least to some extent. A more local vowel development is a monophthongization of /ow/ to /oh/, so that south becomes soth and down becomes don. This is more conservative and less widespread. Also we can notice that when a vowel sound moves into another vowel’s territory, the result may be a merger —as when the sound of caught comes to be pronounced with the tongue in the same region of the mouth as for cot. In a different pattern, the movement of one vowel spurs a reactive movement in a neighboring vowel. As with strangers in an elevator, one vowel shifts to keep its distance when another enters the space. These coordinated movements are heard in the Northern Cities Shift, which affects six different vowels, those appearing in caught, cot, cat, bit, bet and but. In this change, caught takes on a vowel similar to that originally used for cot. The cot vowel also shifts, becoming more like the vowel of cat. The vowel of cat takes a position closer to that ordinarily heard with bit and sometimes sounds like the â€Å"ea† in idea. Words like bit are pronounced with a vowel nearer to bet or even but whereas bet words have a vowel similar to that in cat or but, and the vowel but words comes to sound more like that of caught. When these changes are plotted according to the positioning of the tongue, the connections among them are clear and the shift resembles a clockwise rotation of the vowels in the mouth. The Northern Cities Shift: These guide words are positioned to represent where in the mouth the tongue is placed for those vowel sounds. The arrows indicate the directions of change affecting the sounds. Consonants The stereotype about Chicagoans is that they say dis instead of this, but thats not entirely accurate. The real pronunciation is somewhere in between. To approximate it, first pronounce /th/ the standard way, with the tip of your tongue between your teeth. Then, keeping your teeth apart, move the tip of your tongue to the back of your teeth. Thats the typical Chicago /th/. Contrast it with /d/, which is made with the teeth closed, and the tongue against the roof of the mouth. This is a conservative trait, and is more common among older people, working class people, and males. The unvoiced equivalent, that is, the /th/ of in the word thick is even more conservative. Vocabulary Chicago vocabulary is fairly unremarkable. As a cosmopolitan place, the vocabulary is more generalized than in rural areas, so that Chicagoans are at least familiar with words that were formerly used by dialectologists as markers of Southern dialect or Midland that is, the dialect in between Northern and Southern. Nevertheless, there are a few localisms which are worth mentioning: What other people call rubbernecking, Chicagoans call gaping thus an accident on the side of the road can cause a gapers delay or gapers block. Also, Chicagoans are more likely to use the term gym shoes. Grammar In Chicago, like in other American cities that had lots of German-speaking immigrants, with can be used more frequently as a verbal complement. Thus, while most Americans might say come with, Chicagoans can also say take with and have with. Consider the following bit of dialogue from Chicagoan David Mamets play American Buffalo,: Donny: (Talking about a gun) I dont want it with. Teach: Well, I want it with. In the 1996 film version, Donnys line sounds fine when delivered by Chicagoan Dennis Franz, but Angeleno Dustin Hoffman has trouble making Teachs line sound natural; hes clearly uncomfortable saying it.

Monday, August 5, 2019

Aim Of Molecular Gastronomy Media Essay

Aim Of Molecular Gastronomy Media Essay The art of cooking is as old as humanity and cooking is such an important part of our world which obviously needs scientific attention. Although science has contributed to food safety, hygiene and nutritional aspects, little has been done towards innovation and invention of new dishes. The ancient Greek words, gastro means stomach and nomos means law, collectively termed as gastronomy, which in contemporary hospitality industry means food and culture. It generally refers to the study of relationship between food and culture with interdisciplinary approaches. This literature attempts to explain molecular gastronomy, its origin and evolution, along with its relevance and contributions to the contemporary hospitality industry. Cooking and gastronomy Even though molecular gastronomy has attracted media attention for quite a while, still there is confusion about the true meaning of the term. To explain this, cooking and gastronomy has to be distinguished first. Cooking is the preparation of raw food into edible, whereas gastronomy is the knowledge of whatever concerns mans nourishment. Gastronomy is about chemical and physical transformation behind the preparation of any food, for example, the reason behind egg white puffs up when whipped or mayonnaise becomes firm. (This, 2006). According to HerveThis, the science of food is not new but dates back to second century BC, when preparation of meat stock-the aqueous solution obtained by thermal processing of animal tissues in water-has been of great interest. Since then, scientists have been interested in food and cooking which gave way to molecular gastronomy. If culinary history is scrutinised, it will be clear that, initially food experts studied the culinary science to steer clear of blind assumptions and unscientific ways of cooking. But today, the science of food has reached its extreme in the form of molecular gastronomy, which chemically examines the food and cooking in its molecular level to give a new face for cooking and change the total concept of commercial cooking in near future. Molecular gastronomy The scientific discipline dedicated to culinary industry and to gastronomical phenomena in general has been called molecular gastronomy the late Nicholas Kurti and HerveThis (This, 2005). Molecular gastronomy can also be defined as a field that attempts to improve the culinary techniques through understanding the composition and chemical transformations occurring in food during the process of cooking (Ankeny, Year Unknown). Gastronomy or molecular gastronomy is the science just like any other science in the world, which studies the cause and effect of anything that happens during cooking including the structural difference in same cooking ingredients of different quality, which have an effect on the final product. If we can answer the question, we can correct a mistake, use this knowledge to improve the cooking process or even invent new dishes or ways to prepare food. For example, if we know that when an egg is cooked, water evaporates, the proteins denature and polymerize to enclos e water, we can even use substitute methods to cook it, like adding alcohol to it, which denature the egg proteins and gives the same result. Molecular gastronomy also deals with the study of human senses and perception of taste, aroma, texture and temperature, in short, the sensory science known as chemesthesis (berham et. al, 2010). It studies the perception of senses in molecular level in order to understand how different dishes are perceived as awful, average, good or delicious, when they are made of similar ingredients. Although chemesthesis of human beings are the same, people of different genre appreciates different types of food. For example westerners cooking style is entirely different from Asians, and while Asians appreciate spicy food, most westerners do not. At a glance, molecular gastronomy can be described as applying the techniques of food scientists to fine dining drying, liquefying, gassing, freezing and generally transforming ingredients into surprising new forms and textures while maintaining the flavours. Early converts include French two-star chef Pierre Gagnaire, who added scallops with liquorice milk to his menu in 1991 (Hill. B, 2009). Aim of molecular gastronomy Being the science of cooking, molecular gastronomy has a few aims in the field of domestic and commercial cooking. It endeavours to remodel and scrutinise existing recipes, introduce new tools, products and methods, invent new dishes from the acquiring knowledge and use the appeal of food to promote food science (This, 2006). Before analysing the aims, a significant question is that, who is actually interested in molecular gastronomy? Is it the chefs who are interested in chemical and physical science of food or scientists who are interested in food and cooking? Answer could go both the ways. Chefs are always interested in innovation in culinary art, which obviously needed scientific help to explain the reasons for transformation that occur in the cooking process. For remodelling a recipe or innovating a new dish they had to understand what actually happens to any food when it undergoes different forms of cooking. For this reason they needed scientific help to explain the reasons behind any cooking process or transformation. But at the same time, scientists are interested in the scientific aspects of food rather than innovation and remodelling recipes. Hence, molecular gastronomy can be said to be teamwork of food science and cooking or in other words, chefs and scientists. However, chefs made use of scie ntific explanation of cooking processes which resulted in innovation in food industry or more apparently molecular gastronomy. But today, with worldwide recognition of molecular gastronomy, it has evolved as a collaboration of chefs, scientists, companies in food industry and culinary schools. In addition, efforts are being made to incorporate the new science into culinary schools to impart knowledge of molecular gastronomy into upcoming industry professionals to provide a new visage to the food and beverage industry. Continuing with the aims of molecular gastronomy, remodelling and scrutinising the existing recipes is one of the primary attempts, initially by educating the professionals about the chances of scientific approach to cooking art. Complex disperse systems formalism (This, 2006) was introduced to describe the microscopic structure of preparations with different phases, to help in this attempt. Consequently, many of the existing recipes has been modernized or modified to correct the mistakes, attain a better product and to better favour the palate of the customer. Educational efforts are equally important to standardise these remodelled recipes to achieve consistency. For this reason, several programmes were introduced in culinary schools internationally. In 2001, the experimental workshop on flavour was created in French schools. Universities in various countries, such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Argentina have set up professorships in this discipline. Since then, Canada and France have introduced new syllabus for culinary schools to include knowledge obtained from molecular gastronomy. In 2005, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Flavour, Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts was created in Reims, France, to promote gastronomy knowledge, including molecular gastronomy. New or remodelled recipes to a great extent involve new cooking techniques which need new systems and tools. So, quite obviously, molecular gastronomy is introducing or giving way to new cooking tools and techniques, taking the art of cooking into another level. In terms of new products, with the help of molecular gastronomy, it is now possible to customise the food to the need of different people with different diet requirements, without restricting the taste and palatability of their meals. For example, now a day, caviar can be artificially made (in fact something looks and tastes like caviar) from fruits and chemicals. Similarly, using the secret of food chemistry, different ingredients can be used to make several dishes which look, smells and tastes like original dishes, which have no ingredients of the original dish. Even though the dishes tastes and feel like original, the ingredients can be different, thus giving us an opportunity to try different dishes with in the diet restr ictions or in other words, altering an unhealthy food into healthy one without altering the original taste of the same. Health programmes that promote a balanced diet cannot succeed if people are unable to make intelligent choices about food. Traditional cooking is not a guarantee either for healthy food or for a rational preparation of food. This is where the scientific programme of molecular gastronomy can be useful. Science is the basis for new technology and innovation and it is not different in gastronomy. The achievements of science in the field of gastronomy have won a definite recognition worldwide. However, for chefs, and hopefully scientists as well, the main aim is to surprise and delight their guests with exciting, tasty and healthy food. Molecular gastronomy in contemporary hospitality industry With the development of tourism industry, the science of domestic and commercial cooking has moved from the hands of a few key players to the dominion of serious scientific venture. In the context of serious competition, every element in the food service industry is striving to adopt innovation and novelty using technology, to which molecular gastronomy has given a new face of distinctiveness. The cooking chemistry or molecular cuisine has helped the modern restaurants to a great extend to enhance cooking speed, service speed and very obviously the food quality along with the ability to keep the food fresh. A few techniques in molecular gastronomy Colloids Colloid is a chemical substance dispersed in molecular level evenly throughout one another. The particles of the dispersed substance are only suspended in the blend, unlike in a solution in which they are totally dissolved. This takes place because the elements in a colloid are larger than in a liquid. The colloidal system is used for making different types of foam, solid gel, emulsion and solid emulsion. Lecithin (Lecite) Lecithin is phospholipids extracted from soybean, partially water-soluble, and an emulsifier that helps fat and water stay together. For that reason, it is often added to chocolate, cheese, margarine, and salad dressing. It has health benefits, such as reducing cholesterol intensity. It is often added to flavoured liquids and then mixed to generate foams that are topped onto dishes to offer added appearance and texture. Maltodextrin powder Maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate consisting of dextrose (glucose), maltose, maltotriose and higher polysaccharides. Maltodextrin is used in a wide variety of products, extending from bodybuilders, animal trainers (horses and greyhounds) to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Tapioca maltrodextrin is a popular product used to make powdered oil and fat products such as white truffle powder, and olive oil powder. Guar Gum Guar is a white free flowing powder, completely soluble in hot or cold water to form a tasteless, odourless, non-toxic solution. Guar gum powder has five to eight times the coagulating power of starch. It is mainly used as a binding agent, mixtures, thickener, and emulsifier in food products, such as cheese spreads, ice cream and other frozen desserts. Methylcellulose This forms a gel when heated, and melts into liquid when it cools. This is similar to gelatine. This quality can improve a food if it undergoes heating in its preparation and requires stability at cooking temperature (for example: preventing a sauce from thinning out). It is used as a binding agent for foods that need to keep their parts collectively. Products such as pasta, vegetable burgers, onion rings, and potato products are improved by its combining strength. This is due to its cohesive nature at low temperatures and the structural integrity at higher temperatures. Implementation and provision of MG in hospitality industry Molecular gastronomy principles, practices and provisions items have captured the intellect of both the chefs and their customers worldwide. Although initially intended to cater for the high purpose of the gourmet market, molecular gastronomy has been welcomed in assorted areas of the hospitality industry. Useful dining restaurants, cafà ©s and bistros, avail venues, specialist bars, prestigious and mainstream hotels; and all the more establishments that specialise in pastry and desserts are incorporating this style of cuisine to assorted degrees into their operations. As any other fields, molecular gastronomy also attracted much criticism from food writers and chefs around the world. Many established chefs did not accept molecular gastronomy as scientific gastronomic phenomena but labelled it as temporary style of cuisine (Hill, 2009). But in the context of Australian hospitality industry, hampering of successful insertion of molecular gastronomy was a lack of firsthand experience and training, which was recognized both by industry as well as the government. Another barrier facing the Australian industry is the inadequate supply and high prices for specialist food chemicals and equipments to incorporate various techniques of molecular gastronomy. The distribution of these chemicals and equipments are limited to a few suppliers and shops. Even though this is the case, Hill had identified a few restaurants in Victoria such as Fenix, Interlude and Vue de monde that offer limited molecular gastronomic techniques throughout their menus. Competition There is no doubt that hospitality industry is facing increasing competition than ever before. To withstand this pressure of competition, chefs should be able to remain innovative and attract new as well as existing customers by satisfying their demandingly increasing sophisticated expectations. In fact people are always looking for new and unique experiences. As a result of this, in recent years there has been a great emphasis on innovation, creativity and importance of innovation competency. In response, many chefs has accepted the concept of molecular gastronomy and working on it to achieve greater innovative competency and occupational competency. In his model of innovative culinary competency, Lei Hu (2010) has positioned molecular gastronomy among new technologies that helps innovation, where other factors being creativity, culture, aesthetics, product, service and management. This underpins the fact that molecular gastronomy is a scientific gastronomic phenomenon as mentioned earlier in this literature, than a temporary style of cooking. In the age of technology dominating every aspect of human life, molecular gastronomy is the new cooking technique dominating mans nourishment. Culinary tourism Culinary tourism is a relatively new industry came into being in 2003. It can be described as a subset of tourism, where tourists also consider the enjoyment of interesting and traditional or novel and innovative food and drink, while people travel. This subset of tourism promotes every gastronomic experience, with every tourist pursuit for unique and memorable eating and drinking experience. Tourists always tend to consider the local cuisine of destination or at least consider the available cuisines, as dining out is one of the top most tourist activities and nearly 100% of tourists eat out when they travel. This trend gives a huge opportunity to restaurants use molecular gastronomy to innovate and attract their patrons. Molecular gastronomy in many parts of the world has revolutionized restaurant dining experience and at the same time, led to new enjoyment and appreciation of food. A few examples include EI Bulli in Spain and the Fat Duck in the United Kingdom (Barham et. al. 2010) , two restaurants that since adopting a new scientific approach to cooking have become widely regarded as among the best restaurants in the world. This is noticeable evidence of people accepting or influenced by the new cooking science or molecular gastronomy. When we look into the tourists trends, the opportunity for success of molecular gastronomy is apparently huge. 27 million leisure travellers have participated in culinary related travel in the last 3 years in the US, while spending $12 Billion directly on culinary related activities (Schmantowsky, year unknown). The actual market segment includes more affluent people, who are highly motivated to experience unique and memorable dining experience. Studies prove that on an average, one third of total travel budget goes towards food related activities. The top six culinary tourist destinations include California (14%), Florida (10%), New York (7%), Texas (6%), North Carolina (4%) and Georgia (4%) (Schmantowsky, year unknown). Molecular gastronomy could be a catalyst to culinary tourism which has a great potential to increase tourism generated revenue and the strategic partnership of culinary schools, hospitality organisations, chefs and scientists is the key to success of it. SWOT analysis Strengths Demand: From the time restaurants started utilizing molecular gastronomy for developing new dishes, public has widely accepted the uniqueness and newness of the experience. From the chefs point of view, MG is a tool for innovation in the field to attract their customers and stay in business. Without thinking about any downsides of the technique, thus the public as well as the industry has widely accepted molecular gastronomy, while expecting and demanding more from it. This increasing demand has made or will make molecular gastronomy much popular worldwide. Hospitality industrys enthusiasm to change: from the very early time, hospitality industry is changing every now and then, because of changing trends and tastes of customers, increasing competition, technology adoptation, and varying needs of customers. In fact this is the ever dynamic industry when compared to any other industries. This enthusiasm or eagerness of hospitality industry in general provides a great opportunity to make use of molecular gastronomy in its operations and a catalyst for further changes. Thus the science of food has got great support from the hospitality industry. As technology is easily imitated now days, due to globalisation, molecular gastronomy techniques could be easily learned by enthusiast chefs around the world. Supply of raw materials: due to the increasing demand for molecular gastronomy, the demand for the ingredients also has raised especially various thickeners, stabilizers and emulsifiers. Since the success of restaurants like EI Bulli and the fat duck, in 2005-06, this demand has further elevated. The supply of these ingredients is only available in large quantities to the food industry, restricting the use of these chemicals by untrained or unprofessional people, which is on a safer side (lersch, 2007). In Australia Suppliers has positive prospects to add value and expand their product range and services to the industry. Ingredients for molecular gastronomy Weaknesses Molecular gastronomy is still gaining popularity, and the knowledge and experience of it are limited in most parts of the world within the industry and culinary training providers. It will take fair amount of time to spread throughout the industry and will take further long period for standardisation of new recipes. Also there is limited accessibility to special ingredients and equipments such as smoking machine, blow torch and gastro vac which are much needed for cooking techniques, which is a constraint for this field at the moment. Due to the scarcity and limited accessibility, most countries working on molecular gastronomy are relying on imported goods and equipments which resulted in increased costs for the same. As most countries are relying on French and Spanish resources, where molecular gastronomy originated from, there is a limitation in independent research and experiment in the field. This situation is also made worst by the language barriers between these countries. In a ddition, the existing workload in the hospitality industry provides less time to chefs for research and experiment in molecular gastronomy. Also there are limited technical books published in English language making things much more difficult. Opportunities Hill recognizes a few opportunities for molecular gastronomy in the Australian hospitality industry, which is more or less similar to many other countries. Countries with limited access to the resources could gain knowledge and skills from internationally recognised expert chefs and broaden their set of skills by integrating molecular gastronomy into the existing culinary programmes. Apart from this professional networks should be promoted with increasing research and experiments in the field. Acquiring knowledge should be transferred to culinary students and the industry professionals to develop a culture with strong gastronomic foundation. Threats When focusing on threats to molecular gastronomy, the major barriers hindering the growth are once again the increased costs of commodities and equipments due to increased demand and supply issues. Another threat is the changing trends and demand of todays customers which may lead to decreasing popularity and in turn lead to less interest among chefs and decreased need for training in this area. It is contradictory to say that customers has widely accepted and are demanding for molecular gastronomy but at the same time changing customer behaviour can hinder the growth of molecular gastronomy. This is because the popular trend created by new dishes evolved from molecular gastronomy has been widely accepted by the public due to its newness and unique nature. But once it is popular and widely available everywhere, it is not any more new or unique. Moreover, people who have tried the molecular style of cuisine may not go for it every time, but stick back to their favourite recipes, unless molecular gastronomy can create captivating recipes every now and then. However, these reasons are not at all a barrier for the growth of this particular discipline till it gains its popularity around the world. There is another aspect of molecular gastronomy which is not emphasised in any of the studies: that is about the health. Most of the chemicals which are directly harmless to human body often have side effects. So, the intense use of chemicals in the cooking process should be of great concern. For example, most of the allopathic medicines which cures disease, mostly have foreseen negative side effects causing ill health. Just like that extreme use of various chemicals in molecular gastronomy to alter the physical form of foods should be studied in detail before it is commercially popular. More over the technique to change the texture, consistency and taste of food in molecular level could be maltreated in future just like invention of atomic reactions meant for energy are later used to make atom bombs, which is now a threat for human existence. Conclusion Molecular gastronomy is a pathway to innovation in culinary industry for chefs and a wonderful new enjoyment for the customers. Even though this field of science has proved its scientific nature and uniqueness, still there is a second opinion among the chefs in the industry. This may be due to the fact that major role in this respect is limited to the French and Spanish with limited resources available to the rest of the world. Better translation of the resources and international co-operation among the professionals may help to educate everyone working in the industry, thus creating a holistic awareness about this discipline. But at the same time, while molecular gastronomy gives way to unbelievable innovations, there is a need for preserving the old traditional recipes which remain successful without any alterations for years. Molecular gastronomy is a milestone in the culinary industry, taking it into another level, while correcting the old recipes scientifically and inventing new trendy ones. Hospitality being an ever dynamic industry, and with the evolution of culinary tourism, it became essential for entrepreneurs to exhibit innovation and new trends in customer service, which is enhanced by molecular gastronomy to a great extend. Although this is the case, due to limited awareness and popularity among the public, certain areas of molecular gastronomy is still in distrust. Intense use of chemicals to change the physical and chemical properties of food is giving room for scepticism. This calls for a controlling body in each country and globally for close monitoring the work in molecular gastronomy, as there are organisations to control food hygiene and nutrition. This will provide certain norms for experiments and new recipes using the molecular gastronomic technology, before it reaches the public.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard Essay -- Scripture Analysis

Introduction Jesus was a phenomenal communicator. In fact, Jesus was the greatest communicator to ever live. He used strategies and techniques that were previously unheard of to get his point across in any situation, regardless of the circumstances. What is interesting is that his most common form of speaking was in parables. He would use these analogies to provide a way of application for the gospel in people lives. The parable about the workers in the vineyard is one of many, but is one of the few that were only told in the book of Matthew. Although there a many assumptions as to the reasoning for this, nobody can be sure of the reason why this parable is nowhere to be found in the other gospels. It is especially confusing because in this parable Jesus talks about end times and entrance into heaven; which would have been, and still is, an important subject to any believer. Matthew 20:1-16 1 â€Å"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 â€Å"About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went. â€Å"He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 â€Å"‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. â€Å"He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 â€Å"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘C... ...mazing, but sets an example of how believers today can use relevant and modern examples and stories to share the Gospel and continue growing the body of Christ. Works Cited Barker, Kenneth L., ed., NIV Study Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008. Print. Blomberg, Craig L. "Matthew." The New American Commentary. 22. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1992. Print. Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison. "Matthew 19-28." International Critical Commentary. New York, NY: T&T Clark International, 2004. Print. Hagner, Donald A. "Matthew 14-28." Word Biblical Commentary. 33B. Dallas, TX: Word Incorporated, 1995. Print. Keck, Leander E. "Matthew, Mark." The New Interpreter's Bible. 8. Nashville, TN: Abington Press, 1995. Print. Luz, Urich. "Mathew 8-20." Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001. Print.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

The Growing Problem of Terrorism and Terrorists Essay -- Terrorists E

Individuals often establish belief systems in regard to attitudes, behaviors, religions, and other areas based on beliefs and practices that they accepted during the early stages of maturation when many of their interactions were influenced by their families, who both supported and practiced the same traditions. In America the customary stance toward these varied opinions is to view them with tolerance, regardless of how strange or wrong the belief or action might seem. While individually people may disagree with the beliefs of other people, under ordinary circumstances, most Americans would either offer friendly advice or completely ignore situations that would not lead to dangerous or deadly outcomes. However, it seems to me that some people within practically all groups, regardless of their designations, sometimes decide to carry their belief systems to the extreme. Extremists move into the category of fanatics or radicals who seek to establish their belief systems as the only means for achieving a desired outcome. When people become fanatics, they believe that their ideals are the only acceptable way to live. Some will seek to destroy others who do not believe or act as they do. At that point, extremists become terrorists because they try to force others to accept their practices in such areas as social behaviors, politics, and religion. Terrorists frequently want everyone to practice the same social behaviors. Dressing in a particular style, eating specific foods... The Growing Problem of Terrorism and Terrorists Essay -- Terrorists E Individuals often establish belief systems in regard to attitudes, behaviors, religions, and other areas based on beliefs and practices that they accepted during the early stages of maturation when many of their interactions were influenced by their families, who both supported and practiced the same traditions. In America the customary stance toward these varied opinions is to view them with tolerance, regardless of how strange or wrong the belief or action might seem. While individually people may disagree with the beliefs of other people, under ordinary circumstances, most Americans would either offer friendly advice or completely ignore situations that would not lead to dangerous or deadly outcomes. However, it seems to me that some people within practically all groups, regardless of their designations, sometimes decide to carry their belief systems to the extreme. Extremists move into the category of fanatics or radicals who seek to establish their belief systems as the only means for achieving a desired outcome. When people become fanatics, they believe that their ideals are the only acceptable way to live. Some will seek to destroy others who do not believe or act as they do. At that point, extremists become terrorists because they try to force others to accept their practices in such areas as social behaviors, politics, and religion. Terrorists frequently want everyone to practice the same social behaviors. Dressing in a particular style, eating specific foods...

Slips Of Fate -the Lottery Essay -- essays research papers

Slips of Fate In the short story 'The Lottery'; by Shirley Jackson, the author uses irony to expand on a theme of traditions that continue although they are ludicrous and barbaric. 'Like a lamb to slaughter'; comes to mind for both the characters in this story and the reader. The characters are honoring a tradition that is handed down to them from former generations. The reader is led through the seemingly normal and quaint little village, and is taken on a ride of ironic horror as they slowly grasp the eventual fate of one inhabitant of the village. The title 'The Lottery'; implies a contest with a winner of some kind, like a sweepstakes. When in reality the winner is actually the loser or person that will die by stoning. The village, by all appearances, seems to be a normal and ordinary place with its inhabitants meeting in a square with festival like intentions. However, the villagers know fully that when the drawing is over, one person in the community will die. Nonetheless, it is tradition. The atmosphere is casual yet anxious. Tessie Hutchinson arrives late because she 'clean forgot'; what day it is. It seems impossible to the reader that anyone would forget a day like lottery day. Her procrastination is logical but her excuse is lame. Mrs. Dunbar tells her son, 'I wish they'd hurry.'; Her anxiousness seems due to dread. She wants the dreaded hour over and done with. However, Mr. Summers states 'Let's finish quickly.'; as if there are other more important tasks that ...

Friday, August 2, 2019

Shadow Kiss Chapter 26

Twenty-six IT WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to believe. The Strigoi were practically right next door to us, waiting for nightfall so that they could finish their escape. Apparently, in the chaos of the attack, some of the Strigoi had obscured their tracks while others had made it look as though they might have exited through any number of points on campus. Caught up in our own aftermath, no one had given it much thought. The wards had been restored. As far as we were concerned, the Strigoi were gone, and that was what mattered. Now we had an odd situation before us. Under normal circumstances – not that a massive Strigoi attack was normal – we would have never pursued them. Those kidnapped by Strigoi were usually written off as dead, and, as my mother had pointed out, guardians rarely knew where to look for Strigoi. This time, however, we knew. The Strigoi were essentially trapped. It presented an interesting dilemma. Well, it wasn't a dilemma to me. I honestly couldn't figure out why we weren't in those caves right now, flushing out the Strigoi and looking for survivors. Dimitri and I hurried back, anxious to act on our news, but we had to wait until all the guardians gathered. â€Å"Do not interrupt them,† Dimitri told me as we were about to walk into the meeting that would decide our next course of action. We stood near the doorway, speaking in low voices. â€Å"I know how you feel. I know what you want to do. But ranting at them isn't going to help you get your way.† â€Å"Ranting?† I exclaimed, forgetting to speak softly. â€Å"I see it,† he said. â€Å"That fire's in you again – you want to tear somebody apart. It's what made you so deadly in the fight. But we're not fighting right now. The guardians have all the information. They'll make the right choice. You just have to be patient.† Part of what he said was true. In preparation for the meeting, we had relayed all our information and then done some more searching. Investigation had revealed that several years ago, one of the Moroi teachers had taught a geology class and mapped the caves out, providing us with everything we needed to know about them. The entrance was five miles from the Academy's back borders. The caves' longest chamber was about half a mile long, the far side letting out about twenty miles from the dirt road on the map. It had been believed that landslides had blocked both entrances. Now, we realized, clearing those out wouldn't be too difficult with Strigoi strength. But I wasn't sure I trusted what Dimitri said about the guardians making the right choice. Minutes before the meeting began, I appealed to my mother. â€Å"Please,† I told her. â€Å"We have to do this.† She looked me over. â€Å"If there's a rescue, it's not going to be a ‘we' thing. You aren't going.† â€Å"Why? Because our numbers were so badass the first time that no guardians died?† She flinched. â€Å"You know I can help. You know what I did. I'm a week away from my birthday and only a few months away from graduation. You think something magical's going to happen before then? I've got a few more things to learn, yeah, but I don't think that's big enough to stop me from helping. You guys need as much help as you can get, and there are plenty of other novices who are ready too. Bring Christian, and we'll be unstoppable.† â€Å"No,† she said quickly. â€Å"Not him. You should have never gotten a Moroi involved, let alone one as young as him.† â€Å"But you saw what he could do.† She didn't argue that. I saw the indecision on her face. She glanced at the time and sighed. â€Å"Let me check something.† I didn't know where she went, but she was fifteen minutes late for the meeting. By then, Alberta had already debriefed the guardians on what we'd learned. Mercifully, she skipped the details about how we'd gotten our data, so we didn't have to waste time explaining the ghost part. The caves' layout was examined in detail. People asked questions. Then decision time came. I braced myself. Fighting Strigoi had always meant relying on a defense strategy. We attacked only when attacked. Previous arguments for an offensive had always failed. I expected the same now. Only it didn't come. One by one, the guardians stood up and expressed their commitment to going on the rescue mission. As they did, I saw that fire Dimitri had spoken of. Everyone was ready for a fight. They wanted it. The Strigoi had gone too far. In our world, there were only a handful of places that were safe: the Royal Court and our academies. Children were sent to places like St. Vladimir's with the certainty they would be protected. That certainty had been shattered, and we wouldn't stand for that, especially if we could still save lives. An eager, victorious feeling burned in my chest. â€Å"Well, then,† said Alberta, glancing around. I think she was as surprised as I was, though she too had been in favor of a rescue. â€Å"We'll plan the logistics and head out. We've still got about nine hours of daylight to go after them before they leave.† â€Å"Wait,† said my mother, standing up. All eyes turned to her, but she didn't bat an eyelash under the scrutiny. She looked fierce and capable, and I was immensely proud of her. â€Å"I think there's one other thing we should consider. I think we should allow some of the senior novices to go.† This started a small outcry, but it only came from a minority. My mother gave an argument similar to what I had given her. She also maintained that novices would not be in the front lines but that we would serve more as backup should any Strigoi get through. The guardians had almost approved of this idea when she dropped another bomb on them. â€Å"I think we should bring some Moroi with us.† Celeste shot up. She had a huge gash on the side of her face. It made the bruise I'd seen on her the other day seem like a mosquito bite. â€Å"What? Are you insane?† My mother fixed her with a calm look. â€Å"No. We all know what Rose and Christian Ozera did. One of our biggest problems with Strigoi is getting past their strength and speed to go in for the kill. If we bring fire-using Moroi, we have a distraction that will give us an edge. We can cut them down.† A debate broke out. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to join in. I remembered Dimitri's words about not interrupting. Yet as I listened, I couldn't help my frustration. Every minute that passed was another minute we weren't going after Eddie and the others. It was another minute in which someone might die. I turned to where Dimitri sat beside me. â€Å"They're being idiots,† I hissed. His eyes were on Alberta, as she debated a guardian who usually worked the elementary campus. â€Å"No,† murmured Dimitri. â€Å"Watch. Change is happening before your eyes. People are going to remember this day as a turning point.† And he was right. Once again, the guardians slowly signed on with the idea. I think it was part of that same initiative that made them want to fight in the first place. We had to get back at the Strigoi. This was more than our fight – it was the Moroi's too. When my mother said she'd gotten a number of teachers to volunteer – they absolutely wouldn't allow students for this – the decision was made. The guardians were going after the Strigoi, and novices and Moroi would go with them. I felt triumphant and exultant. Dimitri was right. This was the moment our world would change. But not for four hours. â€Å"More guardians are coming,† Dimitri told me when I once again expressed my outrage. â€Å"In four hours, the Strigoi could have decided to have a snack!† â€Å"We need an overwhelming show of force,† he said. â€Å"We need every edge we can get. Yes, the Strigoi could kill a couple more before we get there. I don't want that, believe me. But if we go in unprepared, we could lose more lives than that.† My blood boiled. I knew he was right, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hated that. I hated being helpless. â€Å"Come on,† he said, gesturing toward the exit. â€Å"Let's take a walk.† â€Å"Where?† â€Å"It doesn't matter. We just need to get you calmed down, or you'll be in no shape to fight.† â€Å"Yeah? Are you afraid of my possibly insane dark side coming out?† â€Å"No, I'm afraid of your normal Rose Hathaway side coming out, the one that isn't afraid to jump in without thinking when she believes something is right.† I gave him a dry look. â€Å"Is there a difference?† â€Å"Yes. The second one scares me.† I resisted the urge to elbow him. For half a heartbeat, I wished I could close my eyes and forget about all the hurt and bloodshed around us. I wanted to lounge in bed with him, laughing and teasing, with neither of us worried about anything else except each other. That wasn't real, though. This was. â€Å"Won't they need you here?† I asked. â€Å"No. Most of what they're doing now is waiting for the others, and they have more than enough people right now to help plan the attack. Your mother's leading that.† I followed his gaze to where my mom stood, in the center of a group of guardians, pointing with sharp, forceful motions toward what looked like maps. I still never quite knew what to think about her, but watching her now, I couldn't help but admire her dedication. There was none of the dysfunctional annoyance I usually experienced around her. â€Å"Okay,† I said. â€Å"Let's go.† He took me on a loop around campus, and we surveyed some of the aftermath. Most of the damage wasn't to the campus itself, of course. It was to our people. Still, we could see some signs of the attack: damage to buildings, bloodstains in unexpected places, etc. Most noticeable of all was the mood. Even in full daylight, there was a darkness around us, a heavy sorrow that you could almost reach out and feel. I saw it on the faces of everyone we passed. I half-expected Dimitri to take me through where some of the injured were. He steered clear of that, however, and I could guess why. Lissa was helping out there, using her powers in small doses to heal the wounded. Adrian was as well, though he couldn't do nearly as much as her. They'd finally decided that it was worth risking everyone knowing about spirit. The tragedy here was too great. Besides, so much about spirit had gotten out at the trial that it had probably only been a matter of time anyway. Dimitri didn't want me near Lissa while she was using her magic, which I found interesting. He still didn't know if I really was â€Å"catching† her madness, but he apparently didn't want to take any chances. â€Å"You told me you had a theory about why the wards broke,† he said. We'd extended our circuit of campus, not far from where Jesse's society had met last night. I'd nearly forgotten. Once I'd pieced it together, the reason had been perfectly obvious. No one had really asked many questions about it, not yet. The immediate concerns had been to get new wards up and tend to our own people. The investigation would occur later. â€Å"Jesse's group was doing their initiation right here by the wards. You know how stakes can negate wards because the elements go against each other? I think it's the same thing. Their initiation rights used all the elements, and I think they negated the wards in the same way.† â€Å"Magic is used all the time on campus, though,† pointed out Dimitri. â€Å"In all the elements. Why has this never happened before?† â€Å"Because the magic isn't usually happening right on top of the wards. The wards are on the edges, so the two don't usually conflict. Also, I think it makes a difference in how the elements are being used. Magic is life, which is why it destroys Strigoi and why they can't cross it. The magic in stakes is used as a weapon. So was the magic in the torture session. When it's used in that sort of negative way, I think it cancels out good magic.† I shivered, recalling that sickening feeling I'd felt when Lissa had used spirit to torment Jesse. It hadn't been natural. Dimitri stared at a broken fence that marked one of the Academy's boundaries. â€Å"Incredible. I never would have thought that was possible, but it makes sense. The principle really is the same as for the stakes.† He smiled at me. â€Å"You've thought about this a lot.† â€Å"I don't know. It just sort of fell together in my head.† I glowered, thinking of Jesse's idiotic group. Bad enough they'd done what they did to Lissa. That was enough to make me want to go kick their asses (though not kill them anymore – I'd learned some restraint since last night). But this? Letting Strigoi into the school? How could something so stupid and petty on their part have led to this sort of disaster? It almost would have been better if they'd tried to make this happen, but no. It had come about through their glory-seeking game. â€Å"Idiots,† I muttered. The wind picked up. I shivered, and this time it was from the chilly temperature, not my own unease. Spring might be coming, but it certainly wasn't here yet. â€Å"Let's get back inside,† Dimitri said. We turned around, and as we walked toward the heart of the secondary campus, I saw it. The cabin. Neither of us slowed down or obviously looked at it, but I knew he was just as acutely aware of it as I was. He proved it when he spoke a moment later. â€Å"Rose, about what happened – â€Å" I groaned. â€Å"I knew it. I knew this was going to happen.† He glanced over at me, startled. â€Å"That what was going to happen?† â€Å"This. The part where you give me the huge lecture about how what we did was wrong and how we shouldn't have done it and how it's never going to happen again.† Until the words left my mouth, I didn't realize how much I'd feared he would say that. He still looked shocked. â€Å"Why would you think that?† â€Å"Because that's how you are,† I told him. I think I sounded a little hysterical. â€Å"You always want to do the right thing. And when you do the wrong thing, you then have to fix it and do the right thing. And I know you're going to say that what we did shouldn't have happened and that you wish – â€Å" The rest of what I might have said was smothered as Dimitri wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him in the shadow of a tree. Our lips met, and as we kissed, I forgot all about my worries and fears that he'd say what we'd done was a mistake. I even – as impossible as it seems – forgot about the death and destruction of the Strigoi. Just for a moment. When we finally broke apart, he still kept me close to him. â€Å"I don't think what we did was wrong,† he said softly. â€Å"I'm glad we did it. If we could go back in time, I'd do it again.† A swirling feeling burned within my chest. â€Å"Really? What made you change your mind?† â€Å"Because you're hard to resist,† he said, clearly amused at my surprise. â€Å"And †¦ do you remember what Rhonda said?† There was another shock, hearing her brought up. But then I recalled his face when he'd listened to her and what he'd said about his grandmother. I tried to remember Rhonda's exact words. â€Å"Something about how you're going to lose something†¦Ã¢â‚¬  I apparently didn't remember it so well. â€Å"‘You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.'† Naturally, he knew it word for word. I'd scoffed at the words at the time, but now I tried to decipher them. At first, I felt a surge of joy: I was what he valued most. Then I gave him a startled look. â€Å"Wait. You think I'm going to die? That's why you slept with me?† â€Å"No, no, of course not. I did what I did because †¦ believe me, it wasn't because of that. Regardless of the specifics – or if it's even true – she was right about how easily things can change. We try to do what's right, or rather, what others say is right. But sometimes, when that goes against who we are†¦you have to choose. Even before the Strigoi attack, as I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you – so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It's not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that's something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision †¦ there was nothing to hold us back.† He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. â€Å"Well, to hold me back. I'm speaking for myself. I don't mea n to act like I know exactly why you did it.† â€Å"I did it because I love you,† I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was. He laughed. â€Å"You can sum up in one sentence what it takes me a whole speech to get out.† â€Å"Because it's that simple. I love you, and I don't want to keep pretending like I don't.† â€Å"I don't either.† His hand dropped from my face and found my hand. Fingers entwined, we began walking again. â€Å"I don't want any more lies.† â€Å"Then what'll happen now? With us, I mean. Once all of this is done †¦ with the Strigoi†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Well, as much as I hate to reinforce your fears, you were right about one thing. We can't be together again – for the rest of the school year, that is. We're going to have to keep our distance.† I felt a little disappointed by this, but I knew with certainty he was right. We might finally have reached the point where we weren't going to deny our relationship anymore, but we could hardly flaunt it while I was still his student. Our feet splashed through slush. A few scattered birds sang in the trees, undoubtedly surprised to see so much activity in daylight around here. Dimitri stared off into the sky ahead, face thoughtful. â€Å"After you graduate and are out with Lissa †¦Ã¢â‚¬  He didn't finish. It took me a moment, but I realized what he was about to say. My heart nearly stopped. â€Å"You're going to ask to be reassigned, aren't you? You won't be her guardian.† â€Å"It's the only way we can be together.† â€Å"But we won't actually be together,† I pointed out. â€Å"Us staying with her gives us the same problem – me worrying more about you than her. She needs two guardians perfectly dedicated to her. If I can get assigned somewhere at Court, we'll be near each other all the time. And in a secure place like that, there's more flexibility with a guardian's schedule.† A whiny, selfish part of me wanted to immediately jump in with how much that sucked, but really, it didn't. There was no option we had that was ideal. Each one came with hard choices. I knew it was hard for him to give up Lissa. He cared about her and wanted to keep her safe with a passion that almost rivaled my own. But he cared about me more, and he had to make that sacrifice if he still wanted to honor his sense of duty. â€Å"Well,† I said, realizing something, â€Å"we might actually see more of each other if we're guarding different people. We can get time off together. If we were both with Lissa, we'd be swapping shifts and always be apart.† The trees were thinning up ahead, which was a shame, because I didn't want to let go of his hand. Still, a surge of hope and joy began to blossom in my chest. It felt wrong in the wake of such tragedy, but I couldn't help it. After all this time, after all the heartache, Dimitri and I were going to make this work. There was always the possibility he could get assigned away from the Court, but even so, we'd still manage to get some time off together every once in a while. The time apart would be agony, but we would make it work. And it would be better than continuing to live a lie. Yes, it was really going to happen. All of Deirdre's worries about me coping with conflicting pieces of my life would be for nothing. I was going to have it all. Lissa and Dimitri. The thought that I could be with both of them was going to make me strong. It would carry me through this Strigoi attack. I'd tuck it away in the back of my mind, like a good luck charm. Dimitri and I didn't say anything else for a while. Like always, we didn't have to. I knew he was feeling the same happy buzz I was, despite that stoic exterior. We were almost out of the forest, back in sight of the others, when he spoke again. â€Å"You'll be eighteen soon, but even so†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He sighed. â€Å"When this comes out, a lot of people aren't going to be happy.† â€Å"Yeah, well, they can deal.† Rumors and gossip I could handle. â€Å"I also have a feeling your mother's going to have a very ugly conversation with me.† â€Å"You're about to face down Strigoi, and my mother's the one you're scared of?† I could see a smile playing at his lips. â€Å"She's a force to be reckoned with. Where do you think you got it from?† I laughed. â€Å"It's a wonder you bother with me then.† â€Å"You're worth it, believe me.† He kissed me again, using the last of the forest's shadows for cover. In a normal world, this would have been a happy, romantic walk the morning after sex. We wouldn't be preparing for battle and worrying about our loved ones. We'd be laughing and teasing each other while secretly planning our next romantic getaway. We didn't live in a normal world, of course, but in this kiss, it was easy to imagine we did. He and I reluctantly broke apart and left the woods, heading back toward the guardians' building. Dark times were ahead of us, but with his kiss still burning on my lips, I felt like I could do anything. Even face down a pack of Strigoi.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Part of Speech Recognizer

Improving Identi?er Informativeness using Part of Speech Information Dave Binkley Matthew Hearn Dawn Lawrie Loyola University Maryland Baltimore MD 21210-2699, USA {binkley, lawrie}@cs. loyola. edu, [email  protected] edu Keywords: source code analysis tools, natural language processing, program comprehension, identi?er analysis Abstract Recent software development tools have exploited the mining of natural language information found within software and its supporting documentation. To make the most of this information, researchers have drawn upon the work of the natural language processing community for tools and techniques.One such tool provides part-of-speech information, which ?nds application in improving the searching of software repositories and extracting domain information found in identi?ers. Unfortunately, the natural language found is software differs from that found in standard prose. This difference potentially limits the effectiveness of off-the-shelf tools. The pres ented empirical investigation ?nds that this limitation can be partially overcome, resulting in a tagger that is up to 88% accurate when applied to source code identi?ers.The investigation then uses the improved part-of-speech information to tag a large corpus of over 145,000 ?eld names. From patterns in the tags several rules emerge that seek to improve structure-?eld naming. Source Part of Extract Split Apply Source ? Code ? Field ? Field ? ? Speech Template Code Mark-up Tagging Names Names Figure 1. Process for POS tagging of ?eld names. The text available in source-code artifacts, in particular a program’s identi?ers, has a very different structure. For example the words of an identi?er rarely form a grammatically correct sentence.This raises an interesting question: can an existing POS tagger be made to work well on the natural language found in source code? Better POS information would aid existing techniques that have used limited POS information to successfully improv e retrieval results from software repositories [1, 11] and have also investigated the comprehensibility of source code identi?ers [4, 6]. Fortunately, machine learning techniques are robust and, as reported in Section 2, good results are obtained using several sentence forming templates.This initial investigation also suggest rules speci?c for software that would improve tagging. For example the type of a declared variable can be factored into its tags. As an example application of POS tagging for source code, the tagger is then used to tag over 145,000 structure?eld names. Equivalence classes of tags are then examined to produce rules for the automatic identi?cation of poor names (as described in Section 3) and suggest improved names, which is left to future work. 1 IntroductionSoftware engineering can bene?t from leveraging tools and techniques of other disciplines. Traditionally, natural language processing (NLP) tools solve problems by processing the natural language found in do cuments such as news articles and web pages. One such NLP tool is a partof-speech (POS) tagger. Tagging is, for example, crucial to the Named-Entity Recognition [3], which enables information about a person to be tracked within and across documents. Many POS taggers are built using machine learning based on newswire training data.Conventional wisdom is that these taggers work well on the newswire and similar artifacts; however, their effectiveness degrades as the input moves further away from the highly structured sentences found in traditional newswire articles. 1 2 Part-of-Speech Tagging Before a POS tagger’s output can be used as input to down stream SE tools, the POS tagger itself needs to be vetted. This section describes an experiment performed to test the accuracy of POS tagging on ?eld names mined from source code. The process used for mining and tagging the ?elds is ?rst described, followed by the empirical results from the experiment.Figure 1 shows the pipeline used for the POS tagging of ?eld names. On the left, the input to the pipeline is mode=â€Å"space†/> (683 came from C++ ?les and 817 from Java ?les). A human accessor (and university student majoring in English) tagged the 1500 ?eld names with POS information producing the oracle set. This oracle set is used to evaluate the accuracy of automatic tagging techniques when applied to the test set. Preliminary study of the Stanford tagger indicates that it needed guidance when tagging ?eld names.Following the work of Abebe and Tonella [1], four templates were used to provide this guidance. Each template includes a slot into which the split ?eld name is inserted. Their accuracy is then evaluated using the oracle set. †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ Sentence Template: List Item Template: Verb Template: Noun Template: . – Please, . is a thing . Figure 2. XML queries for extracting C++ and Java ?elds from srcML. source code. This is then marked up using XML tags by srcML [5] to id entify various syntactic categories. Third, ?eld names are extracted from the marked-up source using XPath queries.Figure 2 shows the queries for C++ and Java. The fourth stage splits ?eld names by replacing underscores with spaces and inserting a space where the case changes from lowercase to uppercase. For example, the names spongeBob and sponge bob become sponge bob. After splitting, all characters are shifted to lowercase. This stage also ?lters names so that only those that consist entirely of dictionary words are retained. Filtering uses Debian’s American (6-2) dictionary package, which consists of the 98,569 words from Kevin Atkinson’s SCOWL word lists that have size 10 through 50 [2].This dictionary includes some common abbreviations, which are thus included in the ?nal data set. Future work will obviate the need for ?ltering through vocabulary normalization in which non-words are split into their abbreviations and then expanded to their natural language equiva lents [9]. The ?fth stage applies a set of templates (described below) to each separated ?eld name. Each template effectively wraps the words of the ?eld name in an attempt to improve the performance of the POS tagger. Finally, POS tagging is performed by Version 1. 6 of the Stanford Log-linear POS Tagger [12].The default options are used including the pretrained bidirectional model [10]. The remainder of this section considers empirical results concerning the effectiveness of the tagging pipeline. A total of 145,163 ?eld names were mined from 10,985 C++ ?les and 9,614 Java ?les found in 171 programs. From this full data set, 1500 names were randomly chosen as a test set 2 The Sentence Template, the simplest of the four, considers the identi?er itself to be a â€Å"sentence† by appending a period to the split ?eld. The List Item Template exploits the tagger having learned about POS information found in the sentence fragments used in lists.The Verb Template tries to encourage the tagger to treat the ?eld name as a verb or a verb phrase by pre?xing it with â€Å"Please,† since usually a command follows. Finally, the Noun Template tries to encourage the tagger to treat the ?eld as a noun by post?xing it with â€Å"is a thing† as was done by Abebe and Tonella [1]. Table 1 shows the accuracy of using each template applied to the test set with the output compared to the oracle. The major diagonal represents each technique in isolation while the remaining entries require two techniques to agree and thus lowering the percentage.The similarity of the percentages in a column gives an indication of how similar the set of correctly tagged names is for two techniques. For example, considering Sentence Template, Verb Template has the lowest overlap of the remaining three as indicated by it’s joint percentage of 71. 7%. Overall, the List Item Template performs the best, and the Sentence Template and Noun Template produce essentially identical resu lts getting the correct tagging on nearly all the same ?elds. Perhaps unsurprising, the Verb Template performs the worst.Nonetheless, it is interesting that this template does produce the correct output on 3. 2% of the ?elds where no other template succeeds. As shown in Table 2 overall at least one template correctly tagged 88% of the test set. This suggests that it may be possible to combine these results, perhaps using machine learning, to produce higher accuracy than achieved using the individual templates. Although 88% is lower than the 97% achieved by natural language taggers on the newswire data, the performance is still quite high considering the lack of context provided by the words of a single structure ?eld.Sentence List Item Verb Noun Sentence 79. 1% 76. 5& 71. 7% 77. 0% List Item 76. 5% 81. 7% 71. 0% 76. 0% Verb 71. 7% 71. 0% 76. 0% 70. 8% Noun 77. 0% 76. 0% 70. 8% 78. 7% this context is used to represent a current state, and is therefore not confusing. Rule 1 Non-boolea n ?eld names should never contain a present tense verb * * ? * * Table 1. Each percentage is the percent of correctly tagged ?eld names using both the row and column technique; thus the major diagonal represent each technique independently. Correct in all templates Correct in at least one template 68. 9% 88. 0% Table 2.Correctly tagged identi?ers As illustrated in the next section, the identi?cation is suf?ciently accurate for use by downstream consumer applications. 3 Rules for Improving Field Names As an example application of POS tagging for source code, the 145,163 ?eld names of the full data set were tagged using the List Item Template, which showed the best performance in Table 1. The resulting tags were then used to form equivalence classes of ?eld names. Analysis of these classes led to four rules for improving the names of structure ?elds. Rule violations can be automatically identi?ed using POS tagging.Further, as illustrated in the examples, by mining the source code it i s possible to suggest potential replacements. The assumption behind each rule is that high quality ?eld names will provide better conceptual information, which aids an engineer in the task of forming a mental understanding of the code. Correct part-of-speech information can help inform the naming of identi?ers, a process that is essential in communicating intent to future programmers. Each rule is ?rst informally introduced and then formalized. After each rule, the percentage of ?elds that violate the rule is given.Finally, some rules are followed by a discussion of rule exceptions or related notions. The ?rst rule observes that ?eld names represent objects not actions; thus they should avoid present-tense verbs. For example, the ?eld name create mp4, clearly implies an action, which is unlikely the intent (unless perhaps the ?eld represent a function pointer). Inspection of the source code reveals that this ?eld holds the desired mp4 video stream container type. Based on the contex t of its use, a better, less ambiguous name for this identi?er is created mp4 container type, which includes the past-tense verb created.A notable exception to this is ?elds of type boolean, like, for example, is logged in where the present tense of the verb â€Å"to be† is used. A present tense verb in 3 Violations detected: 27,743 (19. 1% of ?eld names) Looking at the violations of Rule 1 one pattern that emerges suggests an improvement to the POS tagger that would better specialize it to source code. A pattern that frequently occurs in GUI programming ?nds verbs used as adjectives when describing GUI elements such as buttons. Recognizing such ?elds based on their type should improve tagger accuracy. Consider the ?elds delete button and to a lesser extent continue box.In isolation these appears to represent actions. However they actually represent GUI elements. Thus, a special context-sensitive case in the POS tagger would tag such verbs as adjectives. The second rule consi ders ?eld names that contain only a verb. For example the ?eld name recycle. This name communicates little to a programmer unfamiliar with the code. Examination of the source code reveals that this variable is an integer and, based on the comments, it counts the â€Å"number of things recycled. †While this meaning can be inferred from the declaration and the comments surrounding it, ?eld name uses often occur far from their eclaration, reducing the value of the declared type and supporting comments. A potential ?x in this case is to change the name to recycled count or things recycled. Both alternatives improve the clarity of the name. Rule 2 Field names should never be only a verb ? ? or ? ? Violations detected: 4,661 (3. 2% ?eld names identi?ers) The third rule considers ?eld names that contain only an adjective. While adjectives are useful when used with a noun, an adjective alone relies too much on the type of the variable to fully explain its use.For example, consider th e identi?er interesting. In this case, the declared type of â€Å"list† provides the insight that this ?eld holds a list of â€Å"interesting† items. Replacing this ?eld with interesting list or interesting items should improve code understanding. Rule 3 Field names should never be only an adjective ? Violations detected: 5,487 (3. 8% ?eld names identi?ers) An interesting exception to this rule occurs with data structures where the ?eld name has an established conventional meaning. For example, when naming the next node in a linked list, next is commonly accepted.Other similar common names include â€Å"previous† and â€Å"current. † The ?nal rule deals with ?eld names for booleans. Boolean variables represent a state that is or is not and this notion needs to be obvious in the name. The identi?er deleted offers a good example. By itself there is no way to know for sure what is being represented. Is this a pointer to a deleted thing? Is it a count of dele ted things? Source code inspection reveals that such boolean variables tend to represent whether or not something is deleted. Thus a potential improved names include is deleted or was deleted.Rule 4 Boolean ?eld names should contain third person forms of the verb â€Å"to be† or the auxiliary verb â€Å"should† * ? is | was | should * 5 Summary This paper presents the results on an experiment into the accuracy of the Stanford Log-linear POS Tagger applied to ?eld names. The best template, List Item, has an accuracy of 81. 7%. If an optimal combination of the four templates were used the accuracy rises to 88%. These POS tags were then used to develop ?eld name formation rules that 28. 9% of the identi?ers violated. Thus the tagging can be used to support improved naming.Looking forward, two avenues of future work include automating this improvement and enhancing POS tagging for source code. For the ?rst, the source code would be mined for related terms to be used in sug gested improved names. The second would explore training a POS tagger using, for example, the machine learning technique domain adaptation [8], which emphasize the text in the training that is most similar to identi?ers to produce a POS tagger for identi?ers. 6 Acknowledgments Special thanks to Mike Collard for his help with srcML and the XPath queries and Phil Hearn for his help with creating the oracle set.Support for this work was provided by NSF grant CCF 0916081. Violations detected: 5,487 (3. 8% ?eld names identi?ers) Simply adding â€Å"is† or â€Å"was† to booleans does not guarantee a ?x to the problem. For example, take a boolean variable that indicates whether something should be allocated in a program. In this case, the boolean captures whether some event should take place in the future. In this example an appropriate temporal sense is missing from the name. A name like allocated does not provide enough information and naming it is allocated does not make l ogical sense in the context of the program.A solution to this naming problem is to change the identi?er to should be allocated, which includes the necessary temporal sense communicating that this boolean is a ?ag for something expected to happen in the future. References [1] S. L. Abebe and P. Tonella. Natural language parsing of program element names for concept extraction. In 18th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension. IEEE, 2010. [2] K. Atkinson. Spell checking oriented word lists (scowl). [3] E. Boschee, R. Weischedel, and A. Zamanian. Automatic information extraction.In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligence Analysis, 2005. [4] B. Caprile and P. Tonella. Restructuring program identi?er names. In ICSM, 2000. [5] ML Collard, HH Kagdi, and JI Maletic. An XML-based lightweight C++ fact extractor. Program Comprehension, 2003. 11th IEEE International Workshop on, pages 134–143, 2003. [6] E. Hà ¸st and B. Østvold. The programmer’ s lexicon, volume i: The verbs. In International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Beijing, China, September 2008. [7] E. W. Hà ¸st and B. M. Østvold. Debugging method names.In ECOOP 09. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009. [8] J. Jiang and C. Zhai. Instance weighting for domain adaptation in nlp. In ACL 2007, 2007. [9] D. Lawrie, D. Binkley, and C. Morrell. Normalizing source code vocabulary. In Proceedings of the 17th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, 2010. [10] L. Shen, G. Satta, and A. K. Joshi. Guided learning for bidirectional sequence classi?cation. In ACL 07. ACL, June 2007. [11] D. Shepherd, Z. P. Fry, E. Hill, L. Pollock, and K. Vijay-Shanker. Using natural language program analysis to locate and understand action-oriented conerns.In AOSD 07. ACM, March 2007. [12] K. Toutanova, D. Klein, C. Manning, and Y. Singer. Feature-rich part-of-speech tagging with a cyclic dependency network. In HLTNAACL 2003, 2003. 4 Related Work This section brie?y reviews three projects that use POS information. Each uses an off-the-shelf POS tagger or lookup table. First, Host et al. study naming of Java methods using a lookup table to assign POS tags [7]. Their aim is to ?nd what they call â€Å"naming bugs† by checking to see if the method’s implementation is properly indicated with the name of the method.Second, Abebe and Tonella study class, method, and attribute names using a POS tagger based on a modi?cation of minipar to formulate domain concepts [1]. Nouns in the identi?ers are examined to form ontological relations between concepts. Based on a case study, their approach improved concept searching. Finally, Shepherd et al. considered ?nding concepts in code using natural language information [11]. The resulting Find-Concept tool locates action-oriented concerns more effectively than the other tools and with less user effort. This is made possible by POS information applied to source code. 4