This thesis details an action research project conducted into the theme of 'improving the functioning of a Faculty of Agriculture'. The Faculty had been changing to an experiential paradigm of learning over a period of ten years when the research began. The initial impetus for the research was a feeling of concern by many members of the Faculty about the impacts of this change. A research team of six members, which met regularly for 12 months, was organised. The research began with the assumption 'that an Action Research team can intervene in the life of an organisation for the benefit of that organisation, to bring about situation improvement'. There was an initial expectation that issues of accountability, responsibility and management within the Faculty, would be the focus of the research team. However, during the course of the research, the personal professional practice of the researchers became the focus. Analysis of the data highlighted a link between the technical, practical and emancipatory modes of Action Research, and the four stages of group development - dependency, conflict, cohesion and interdependency. The role of facilitation in the conduct of Action Research was highlighted, and the nature of the 'client' role was subjected to scrutiny. The wider ramifications of this research are discussed, particularly as they relate to the role of Action Research in improving large organisations, and as a tool to improve farming communities. In both cases, the concept of the 'critical community' was emphasised as an ideal to be aimed for in Action Research teams. To achieve such a group, the belief systems of members need to be brought out, to enable a group to develop in its interactions to a stage where issues can be properly dealt with, rather than only the assumed symptoms of underlying issues. A process of critique and reflection in an immediate and ongoing way has been shown to assist in this process of group development towards a critical community / Master of Science (Hons)

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship between certain descriptive and prescriptive elements in Modernisation theory, and selected phases in Maori development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This analysis also extends to consideration of the significance of intentional development, as defined by Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton (Cowen & Shenton, 1996), as the emerging basis for such development.The particular focus within the theoretical framework is on the characteristics and implications of social transformation that are said to accompany rapid economic development - particularly for non-Western peoples living within an emerging Western economic environment. As a corollary of this, consideration is given to the evident conversion from such transitions being unplanned consequences of the forces of economic development, to the increasingly conscious, planned bases for the processes of modernisation being applied to Maori development.This thesis concludes that there has been a discernable intensification in the forces of modernisation impacting on Maori, and that this has been complemented by more deliberate efforts - at a governmental level - to advance this process. One consequence of this trend has been that the alternative models for Maori development have been virtually excluded, even from consideration by successive Governments, and that a singular theoretical model has become the near-universal standard for governmental discourse about this area of indigenous development in New Zealand.

台灣和墨西哥皆是二次戰後的新興工業國，但是四十年的發展過程卻是兩種不同的結果，台灣的出口導向政策，使台灣能持續四十年的穩定發展，而墨西哥進口代替政策，卻是危機連連。除了政策面差異，就理論的層面，分析兩國在世界資本體系的生存和發展之道。本論文分析之範圍，自二次大戰後至一九九○年止。本論文分析之架構，以西方現化理論和依賴理論為主軸，從縱橫兩面比較台灣與墨西哥之發展差異。

Alcohol and tobacco are drugs of abuse which are legal to sell and consume in most western societies. Addiction to these two substances has major social and health implications worldwide. The brain structure known to mediate addictive behaviour is the dopaminergic mesocorticolimbic system. Dopaminegic neurons arise from the ventral tegmental area, project to the nucleus accumbens and interact with the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Chronic alcoholism elicits marked damage in the prefrontal cortex with significant loss of neurons and glia. The key components of addiction, tolerance and dependence, are thought to be the result of semipermanent adaptive changes in gene expression. Gene expression profiling of the mesocorticolimbic system from human alcoholics and alcohol-dependent animals has revealed highly region-specific alterations. How these molecular changes result in the development of alcohol dependence in humans is not fully understood. Complicating factors in human alcoholism include a high comorbidity with smoking, socioeconomic factors and the prevalence of underlying psychological pathologies. Gene expression profiling of the prefrontal cortex of six alcoholics and six controls resulted in the identification of functional gene groups sensitive to alcoholism. Mitochondrial function was found down regulated while mRNA levels of genes involved in stress response and cell protection were elevated. These results correlate with the pathology of the prefrontal cortex in chronic alcoholism. Some of the control cases used for gene expression profiling were later identified as chronic smokers, while all of the alcoholics were heavy smokers. To date the heavy co-morbidity of alcoholism with smoking has not been taken into account. Thus the expression of selected genes were investigated by realtime PCR in an extended case set of non-smoking alcoholics, smoking alcoholics, smoking non-alcoholics and non-smoking, non-alcoholics. This study revealed that alcoholism itself had a significant impact on the expression of midkine, the high affinity glial glutamate transporter, member 1 and the tissue inhibitor of the metalloproteinase 3. Heavy smoking itself led to a small but significant elevation of MDK mRNA levels as well as an increase in variation of excitatory amino acid transporter 1 and metalloproteinase inhibitor, member 3 expression. Apolipoprotein D however was induced by chronic smoking but not by alcohol dependence. These results highlight the need of careful case selection in future studies on gene expression in the human alcoholic brain. Peptide antibodies were produced to midkine and a polyclonal antibody against the excitatory amino acid transporter 1 was obtained from a collaborating laboratory. Western blots utilizing these antibodies revealed a marked increase in midkine and excitatory amino acid transporter 1 protein in alcoholics compared to non-smoking and non-drinking controls. In coronal sections of human prefrontal cortex of alcoholics and non-smoking non-drinking controls, immunofluorescence of midkine was obtained from nuclei throughout the layers of the cortex and from the cell bodies of a distinct set of astrocytes in cortical layer II. Double staining with glial fibrillary acidic protein revealed that a portion of midkine-positive nuclei were localised in glial cells. There was no difference in immunostaining of alcohol and control sections with midkine. In summary these results indicate that midkine protein is induced in the prefrontal cortex of the chronic alcoholic. However, this increase in protein may not be strong enough to be visualised by immunohistochemistry. Midkine induction may be reflective of reparative processes in the prefrontal cortex of the chronic alcoholic. Excitatory amino acid transporter 1 staining in non-alcoholic, non-smoking control cases were obtained as a confluent band in cortical layer II and sparsely in deeper cortical layers. Excitatory amino acid transporter 1 immunoreactivity overlapped partially with glial fibrillary acidic protein labelling. In chronic alcoholics, excitatory amino acid transporter 1 staining in the area between the cortical layer II and VI was significantly increased. At withdrawal, glutamate levels may reach toxic levels in the cortex. The increase in cells expressing excitatory amino acid transporter 1 throughout the cortical layers may indicate a protective measure of this brain region in the chronic alcoholic. Additionally, layer specific expression of midkine and excitatory amino acid transporter 1 in the prefrontal cortex of the healthy individual may implicate a specialised role of these astrocytes.

<p>Syftet med denna studie var att få en ökad kunskap och förståelse för betydelsen av andliga upplevelser för att kunna bryta ett beroende, samt vad andliga upplevelser betyder för att lyckas hålla sig drogfri. Den frågeställning som studien utgick ifrån var: Hur beskriver ett mindre urval av intervjupersoner sina erfarenheter av andliga upplevelser för att kunna bryta ett beroende, samt för att kunna kvarstå i drogfrihet? Datainsamlingen bestod av fyra djupintervjuer med personer med egna erfarenheter på området andlighet och beroende. Studien följde således en kvalitativ design och utgick från en hermeneutisk vetenskapsfilosofisk position. De viktigaste resultaten visade på att erfarenheten av andliga upplevelser hos intervjupersonerna har haft stor betydelse för att kunna bryta ett beroende samt att kunna kvarstå i drogfrihet. En slutsats som kan dras är att det är viktigt att beakta den andliga dimensionen vid beroendeproblematik. Studiens resultat ligger i linje med vad tidigare forskning visat.</p>

<p>The aim with this study is to evaluate if standardization of sustainable housing is a practical solution to address the objectives/reach the goals of sustainable housing. The point of departure is that eco-labelling of houses is a way to put sustainable housing into practice. The Nordic Swan criteria for small houses and the UK Code for Sustainable Homes are two recently developed schemes for sustainable construction and design. These two labelling systems are chosen as case studies in order to compare and examine the practice of sustainable housing. How can the goals of sustainable housing be met in the form of eco- labelling? What are the benefits and obstacles/limitations for the cases to be effective and sustainable?  What can explain differences between the two cases? And is the function and organisation of the cases best explained by sustainable development ideas or ecological modernization?  It is suggested in the view of path dependency theory that the UK’s and Sweden’s decisions based on their expectations concerning development of the EU flower has made their respective eco-labelling of houses to have different organisational structure. The Code as a sector-specific label has the advantage, compared to the Swan, of being able to change its structure depending on the needs of pressure in the network of government, business and consumers.  The Code has several criteria concerning sustainable living besides criteria concerning environmental construction of the house and can therefore be considered as part of the sustainable development discourse.</p>

No description available.

<p>IKEA is probably one of the most well known Swedish companies in the world. During thepast decades millions of people all across the globe have decorated their homes according tothe style of IKEA. But just exactly how big and influential are they? Many, if not to say all,municipalities in Sweden wants IKEA to establish and build their famous stores in one oftheir towns. But at what cost? When deciding on a municipality to establish in, IKEAnormally tends to have an advantage when it comes to controlling the conditions and terms ofthe establishment.To undertake this dissertation I use a theory based upon the inter-organizational theoriescalled resource dependency theory. The theory stresses the importance of controlling andobtaining resources as an organization among other organizations in order to survive. Fromthe theory one can see a pattern that organizations with a lot of resources tend to have biggeradvantage when dealing with other organizations.The question I want to answer was if the municipality of Karlstad has eroded its dominantplane when dealing with strong financial actors like IKEA?This is a case study of IKEA and their establishment in Karlstad. Unfortunately IKEA choosenot to be a part of the thesis due to lack of time. The method used in the dissertation is basedupon interviews with high senior officials that were involved in the establishment in one wayor another. To supplement the interviews a document study was performed.The result of the study is surprising in two ways. First of all the fact that IKEA has been sucha strong actor during the negotiations which gave them nearly whatever they asked for. Thesecond reason is the fact that the municipality has eroded its dominant plane in such anobvious way. If IKEA did want to, they could have built a store where ever they wanted.IKEA is probably one of the most well known Swedish companies in the world. During thepast decades millions of people all across the globe have decorated their homes according tothe style of IKEA. But just exactly how big and influential are they? Many, if not to say all,municipalities in Sweden wants IKEA to establish and build their famous stores in one oftheir towns. But at what cost? When deciding on a municipality to establish in, IKEAnormally tends to have an advantage when it comes to controlling the conditions and terms ofthe establishment.To undertake this dissertation I use a theory based upon the inter-organizational theoriescalled resource dependency theory. The theory stresses the importance of controlling andobtaining resources as an organization among other organizations in order to survive. Fromthe theory one can see a pattern that organizations with a lot of resources tend to have biggeradvantage when dealing with other organizations.The question I want to answer was if the municipality of Karlstad has eroded its dominantplane when dealing with strong financial actors like IKEA?This is a case study of IKEA and their establishment in Karlstad. Unfortunately IKEA choosenot to be a part of the thesis due to lack of time. The method used in the dissertation is basedupon interviews with high senior officials that were involved in the establishment in one wayor another. To supplement the interviews a document study was performed.The result of the study is surprising in two ways. First of all the fact that IKEA has been sucha strong actor during the negotiations which gave them nearly whatever they asked for. Thesecond reason is the fact that the municipality has eroded its dominant plane in such anobvious way. If IKEA did want to, they could have built a store where ever they wanted.</p>

Management of data imprecision has become increasingly important, especially with the advance of technology enabling applications to collect and store huge amount data from multiple sources. Data collected in such applications involve a large number of variables and various types of data imperfections. These data, when used in knowledge discovery applications, require the following: 1) computationally efficient algorithms that works faster with limited resources, 2) an effective methodology for modeling data imperfections and 3) procedures for enabling knowledge discovery and quantifying and propagating partial or incomplete knowledge throughout the decision-making process. Bayesian Networks (BNs) provide a convenient framework for modeling these applications probabilistically enabling a compact representation of the joint probability distribution involving large numbers of variables. BNs also form the foundation for a number of computationally efficient algorithms for making inferences. The underlying probabilistic approach however is not sufficiently capable of handling the wider range of data imperfections that may appear in many new applications (e.g., medical data). Dempster-Shafer theory on the other hand provides a strong framework for modeling a broader range of data imperfections. However, it must overcome the challenge of a potentially enormous computational burden. In this dissertation, we introduce the joint Dirichlet BoE, a certain mass assignment in the DS theoretic framework, that simplifies the computational complexity while enabling one to model many common types of data imperfections. We first use this Dirichlet BoE model to enhance the performance of the EM algorithm used in learning BN parameters from data with missing values. To form a framework of reasoning with the Dirichlet BoE, the DS theoretic notions of conditionals, independence and conditional independence are revisited. These notions are then used to develop the DS-BN, a BN-like graphical model in the DS theoretic framework, that enables a compact representation of the joint Dirichlet BoE. We also show how one may use the DS-BN in different types of reasoning tasks. A local message passing scheme is developed for efficient propagation of evidence in the DS-BN. We also extend the use of the joint Dirichlet BoE to Markov models and hidden Markov models to address the uncertainty arising due to inadequate training data. Finally, we present the results of various experiments carried out on synthetically generated data sets as well as data sets from medical applications.

In recent years, sentimentalist care ethics has been developed and defended as a normative ethical theory alongside and in opposition to Kantian liberalism. Carol Gilligan introduced the idea of a woman’s moral perspective that emphasizes maintaining relationships and responding to need, and saw it as a different way of framing moral issues. Care ethics is no longer associated only with women, and it is presented as a theory for both men and women that has its own distinctive accounts of ethical notions like justice and autonomy. These accounts have developed from analyses of injustice towards women and uncaring attitudes that they face in patriarchal societies, but ironically, care ethics has failed to discuss women’s anger at their own mistreatment, and their inability to deal with that anger. This notable lacuna in the care ethics literature is of philosophical importance because analyzing the phenomenon of women’s anger uncovers epistemic issues that have not been addressed. I discuss these epistemic issues in order to strengthen care ethics from within and extend it into other areas of ethics. My goal is to make care ethics a real contender among normative ethical theories and a truly feminist ethic.