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Dominic Boyer, The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. 240 pp. Dominic Boyer's signal achievement in The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era [...]

A test was made of the generality of the connotative meaning scores of evaluation, activity, and potency in a dictionary of the 1000 most frequent words in English that has been used as the basis of a computer system to measure the expression of emotional tone. This was done by correlating those scores with the values for evaluation and activity given for words also found in two independently created dictionaries, one based upon adults' ratings and one upon ratings by children. In replicated findings reported by the authors of the dictionary for adults' responses support for the generality of evaluation scores was more strong than that for activity scores. For the ratings by children the generality of both evaluation and activity dimensions received strong support.

Using injections of fluorescein dextran amine (FDA) combined with activity-dependent uptake of sulforhodamine 101 (SR101), brainstem circuits presumed to be involved in hypoglossal motor output were investigated. Injections into the cerebellar cortex combined with retrograde labeling of the peripheral hypoglossal nerve demonstrate convergence at the level of the medial reticular formation. This convergence suggests an integrative region for afferent feedback from the hypoglossal nerve and information through the Purkinje cell layer of the cerebellar cortex. Injections of FDA into the cerebellar nuclei also demonstrate a bilateral efferent projection to the hypoglossal motor neurons. The SR101 data suggest a reciprocal pathway between the medulla and the trigeminal nuclei. This pathway was identified through peripheral hypoglossal stimulation while SR101 was bath applied to a semi-intact brainstem preparation. Additionally, the SR101 uptake clearly labeled the ventrolateral hypoglossal nuclei, the medial reticular formation and the Purkinje cell layer of the cerebellar cortex. The trigeminal nuclei coordinate the motor output of the levator mandibulae complex, the mouth closing muscles, and this pathway may provide a mechanism for coordinating tongue movements (through hypoglossal nuclei) with jaw movements during feeding. Taken together, these data provide additional insight for understanding the neurophysiological pathways used to coordinate the proper timing of feeding motor output in anurans.

A comparison was made of the levels and patterns of emotional tone scores in four successive versions of three stories that have been translated from German by Ellis to illustrate his argument that the Grimm Brothers made extensive revisions from the proported manuscript of the stories to their celebrated first edition versions. This objective analysis was based upon the evaluation, activity, and potency of the emotions connoted by those of the 1000 most frequent English words detected by the computer as occurring in the narratives. The stores were: The King's Daughter and The Enchanted Prince: Frog King, Sleeping Beauty, and The Little Brother and Little Sister (Hansel and Gretel). Changes in story length, in mean levels of emotional tone, and in patterns of emotional tone across story versions support Ellis's judgement that subsequent revisions were less drastic than the first one, from the manuscript. It was also shown that the stories are quite different from each other in level and pattern of emotional tone.