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This article describes research aimed at improving the accuracy of an information extraction (IE) system by treating coordinate structures systematically. Commas, coordinating conjunctions, and adjacent comma–conjunction pairs are considered to be potential indicators of coordination in natural language. A recursive algorithm is implemented which converts sentences containing classified potential coordinators into sequences of simple sentences. Several approaches to the classification of potential coordinators are presented, one exploiting memory-based learning, another exploiting the publicly available Stanford parser, and a hybrid approach that classifies commas and conjunctions using the former system and comma–conjunction pairs using the latter. The article describes the initial set of features developed for exploitation by the memory-based classifier and presents optimization of that classifier. A baseline system is also described. The sentence simplification module was exploited by an IE system. With regard to the automatic classifiers that form the basis for simplification, comparative evaluation demonstrated that IE can be performed with greatest accuracy when exploiting the hybrid classifier. It also demonstrated that a simple baseline classifier induces improved accuracy when compared to systems that ignore the presence of coordinate structures in input sentences. The article presents an analysis of the errors made by the different sentence simplification modules and the IE system that exploits them. Directions for future research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The feature ‘Politics, Economy and Class in National Socialist Germany’ derives from a workshop held in Oxford in December 2010, marking the twentieth anniversary of the death in 1990 of Tim Mason, a brilliant historian of Nazi Germany and fascism and a founding editor of History Workshop Journal. Mason’s research on the working class under Nazism had been dedicated to uncovering the hidden class struggles through which he believed German workers fought against Hitler and his regime. Twenty years later, class has lost much of its former empirical and analytic significance, and the workshop considered the ways in which the historiography of Nazi Germany and fascism has changed since then, as historians of Nazi Germany have taken up new concepts and categories: among them race, biopolitics, violence and generations. Of the papers selected for inclusion in this symposium, those by Eve Rosenhaft and Jane Caplan deal with race and gender, while those by Claudia Baldoli and Nick Stargardt examine Italian and German society during the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors reflect on the changes and developments in the publication and issues of the journal "German History." They focus on various achievements and transformations within the journal, considering its twenty-fifth foundation anniversary as initiated by the Committee of the German History Society. In addition, they highlight issues and topics published by the journal, centering on the political history and historical social practices in Germany.