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Storytelling is a universal activity, but the way in which discourse structure is used to persuasively convey ideas and emotions may depend on cultural factors.  Because first-person accounts of life experiences can have a powerful impact in how a person is perceived, the storyteller may instinctively employ specific strategies to shape the audience's perception. Hypothesizing that some of the differences in storytelling can be captured by the use of narrative levels and subjectivity, we analyzed over one thousand narratives taken from personal weblogs. First, we compared stories from three different cultures written in their native languages: English, Chinese and Farsi. Second, we examined the impact of these two discourse properties on a reader's attitude and behavior toward the narrator. We found surprising similarities and differences in how stories are structured along these two dimensions across cultures. These discourse properties have a small but significant impact on a reader's behavioral response toward the narrator.

Describes a methodology for creating networks of subject terms by manually representing a large number of common-sense activities that are broadly related to image subject terms. Application of this methodology to the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials produced 768 representations that supported users of a prototype browsing-based retrieval system in searching large, indexed photograph collections. (Author/AEF)

BackgroundResearch on cerebral stroke symptoms using hospital records has reported that women experience more nontraditional symptoms of stroke (eg, mental status change, pain) than men do. This is an important issue because nontraditional symptoms may delay the decision to get medical assistance and increase the difficulty of correct diagnosis. In the present study, we investigate sex differences in the stroke experience as described in stories on weblogs. ObjectiveThe goal of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using the Internet as a source of data for basic research on stroke experiences. MethodsStroke experiences described in blogs were identified by using StoryUpgrade, a program that searches blog posts using a fictional prototype story. In this study, the prototype story was a description of a stroke experience. Retrieved stories coded by the researchers as relevant were used to update the search query and retrieve more stories using relevance feedback. Stories were coded for first- or third-person narrator, traditional and nontraditional patient symptoms, type of stroke, patient sex and age, delay before seeking medical assistance, and delay at hospital and in treatment. ResultsThere were 191 relevant stroke stories of which 174 stories reported symptoms (52.3% female and 47.7% male patients). There were no sex differences for each traditional or nontraditional stroke symptom by chi-square analysis (all Ps>.05). Type of narrator, however, affected report of traditional and nontraditional symptoms. Female first-person narrators (ie, the patient) were more likely to report mental status change (56.3%, 27/48) than male first-person narrators (36.4%, 16/44), a marginally significant effect by logistic regression (P=.056), whereas reports of third-person narrators did not differ for women (27.9%, 12/43) and men (28.2%, 11/39) patients. There were more reports of at least 1 nontraditional symptom in the 92 first-person reports (44.6%, 41/92) than in the 82 third-person reports (25.6%, 21/82, P=.006). Ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke was reported in 67 and 29 stories, respectively. Nontraditional symptoms varied with stroke type with 1 or more nontraditional symptoms reported for 79.3% (23/29) of hemorrhagic stroke patients and 53.7% (36/67) of ischemic stroke patients (P=.001). ConclusionsThe results replicate previous findings based on hospital interview data supporting the reliability of findings from weblogs. New findings include the effect of first- versus third-person narrator on sex differences in the report of nontraditional symptoms. This result suggests that narrator is an important variable to be examined in future studies. A fragmentary data problem limits some conclusions because important information, such as age, was not consistently reported. Age trends strengthen the feasibility of using the Internet for stroke research because older adults have significantly increased their Internet use in recent years.

The recovery of Vibrio alginolyticus from copper toxicity and the production of copper-binding proteins given a copper-stressed continuous culture is discussed. Experiments involved the assessment of the effect of copper on the growth of V. alginolyticus, the amount of copper-resistant cells and the production of extracellular protein producion in continuous culture. Itwas found that V. alginolyticus can recover from copper toxicity as extracellular copper-binding proteins were also produced.