The ancient concept "The world is a theatre" has been used by poets and philosophers at all times when talking about human conflicts or when describing human society. By focusing on the historical function of this use, the present dissertation examines four plays by Pedro Calderón de la Barca in relation to the schism of the Swedish Wasa dynasty: El sitio de Bredá, La protestación de la fe, La vida es sueño, Afectos de odio y amor. A parallel between Calderon's "auto sacramental" El gran teatro del mundo, Descartes' so called "mask" and the Neoplatonic "Art of Memory" (Giulio Camillo, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd) is established in order to explore the ontological and social background of the linguistic term "discourse". The heretic picture created by the European Counter Reformation is studied as the mimetic configuration of a collective fetish. Stephen Greenblatt's notion of "social energy" and Julia Kristeva's account of the fetish in poetical language, are, in this context, discussed with the intention to investigate how Calderón, to the Spanish audience, describes Wladislav Sigismund Vasa visit to Breda's siege and Queen Christina's convertion to the Catholic faith. The political and ideological debate of laws ruling the succession in Catholic and Protestant kingdoms are considered when discussing Diego de Saavedra y Fajardo's (from Catholic Spain) and Schering Rosenhane's (from Lutheran Sweden) political reflections on the issue; this is also compared to the ideological foundations of Calderon's play El gran teatro del mundo. Both King Sigismund Vasa's personal struggle to retain the Swedish crown and Queen Christina's abdication, are considered in the light of Calderon's La protestación de la fe and Rosenhane's political vision in his Hortus Regius. A special investigation is dedicated to the striking contrasts between the original emblems of Hortus Regius and those found today in Rosenhane's palace, having been painted there on the initiative of Rosenhane himself. The Catholic agitation against Machiavelli's definition of "virtue" and the Machiavellian and Catholic interpretation of "reason of state", are related to Calderon's theatre with the intention of evaluating the geopolitical aspects of Calderon's most famous play, La vida es sueño, and also with the purpose to initiate a discussion about the theatrical nature of political behaviour. The dissertation concludes by studying and comparing Calderon's, Bernardino de Rebolledo's (Spanish ambassador to Denmark at the time) and Francisco Bances Candamo's views on Queen Christina's personal aversion to marriage, with special attention paid to the symbolic dimensions of Queen Christina's Amaranta Order.

Exceptionally high FDI inflows into Ireland have been one of the main resources of Irish rapid economic growth, and earned the country a title of “Celtic Tiger”.  The goal of this thesis is to find out the driving sources behind this high inward investment and to examine whether Ireland has truly enjoyed higher amounts of FDI inflows than predicted by the model. This thesis analyzes the determinants of foreign direct investment in Ireland. The determinants being examined are GDP, GDP per capita, infrastructure, labor productivity, education and trade openness. The analyzed period is from 1997 to 2007 and data is collected for 30 OECD member states. With the help of the pooled regression we were able to obtain the following results: GDP, GDP per capita, infrastructure and education have a significant effect on FDI and FDI per capita inflows. However, labor productivity and trade openness turned out to be less significant in attracting FDI to Ireland. Moreover, based on the results, infrastructure had an unexpected negative sign, while the rest of the variables indicated expected positive relation to FDI.

This dissertation explores the emergence of the complexity paradigm in our technoscience culture and proposes "scientific fiction" as a genre of cultural studies based on that paradigm. Throughout this dissertation, I use the terms and concepts of complexity theory developed by new science, which revises the reductionism and linearity of classic science. The complexity paradigm signifies a system of all knowledge that conceives the productivity and creativity of the complexity created by interconnective and interactive dynamics among and within systems. As a literary response to the complexity paradigm, scientific fiction emphasizes the productivity and creativity of the complexity, offering the possibility of the human‘s co-evolution with technoscience. These characteristics of scientific fiction help articulate new ontological, ethical, and aesthetic visions for the posthuman. This dissertation ultimately highlights the strong feedback loops of technoscience, literature, and culture, which promote the complexity paradigm. By comparing Pat Cadigan‘s Synners as a scientific fiction novel and William Gibson‘s Neuromancer as a representative postmodern science fiction novel, Chapter II presents the defining characteristics of scientific fiction, reconfiguring humanity in relation to the technoscience environment. Furthermore, analyzing Greg Bear‘s Blood Music, the chapter claims that the human subject is an adaptive, self-organizing, interconnective system. Grounded in such understandings of humanity and subjectivity, the next chapter examines Marge Piercy‘s He, She and It to offer a new ethical perspective, or the complexity ethics, which establishes the interconnective and interactive relationship between the human and the technological as an evolutionary partner. The complexity ethics describes human behaviors and thoughts in our technoscience culture rather than prescribing a moral guideline. Next, in investigating Shelley Jackson‘s Patchwork Girl, a hypertext novel that rewrites Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, Chapter IV explores a new aesthetics appreciating the creativity of the complexity produced by interconnective and interactive dynamics. Finally, through the analyses of the scientific fiction novels, this dissertation suggests that scientific fiction is a transdisciplinary field that can offer new cultural visions.

The purpose of this work has been to shed light on the science of education, primarily in the period 1948-1971. The work also consists of the establishment of education as an academic discipline (1910-1948). The theoretical frame of reference is Kuhn's theory about the structure of scientific revolutions. The dissertation consists of two main parts: in the first part a paradigm analysis is treated, where some theoretical considerations are applied with a view to examine the effects of external factors on educational research. The purpose of the paradigm analysis was partly to identify and describe any prevailing system of scientific norms and values that may exist, and partly to characterize the outcome of the . analysis in terms of the theory of scientific revolutions. The total scientific production, descriptions of model studies and model examples made up the three materials that were subjected to an analysis with a view to finding out the nature of the underlying paradigm. The analyses of these three material indicated,both individually and in combination, that educational research during the period in question was dominated by one system of norms and values: a neobehaviouristic one. It also turned out to be possible to distinguish one approach as deviating from the others, viz. the hermeneutic approach. The conclusion was that educational research, visavi the theory of paradigm, was in a multiparadigmatic phase. But we could also observe variations of approaches within the framework of the predominating paradigm. We took this state of affairs as a point of departure for theoretical considerations about the status of paradigm in the social sciences. The basis for this policy was Kuhn's claim that paradigm is the most controlling dimension during phases of normal science. Therefore we examined the relationship between internal and external factors within the predominating paradigm in order to shed light on the principal question as to what the main impetus of the development in Swedish educational research had been. After several analyses the question was answered in the following manner. The existence of a predominant scientific system of norms and values probably constituted one of the main prerequisites of a massive concentration on educational research. However, external circumstances gradually developed for this system of values new problems in the way of analysis. In this way the nature of educational research changed from a concentration on psychometry to a. concentration on "school research". This state of affairs has also probably implied that the scientific ambition of educational research was gradually changed from descriptive and expository reports towards official reports on questions that are important for the authorities. / digitalisering@umu

Religious fundamentalism is a confusing and not well understood phenomenon in present day Western societies. In order to obtain fresh insights into what social forces and conditions affect religious organizational development such that they become fundamentalist organizations, this study seeks to analyze a religious group that historically has been mandated to integrate and utilize alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge into their canon of teachings. A triangulation study consisting of a content analysis of its accepted history and a discourse analysis of its accredited membership are utilized to gather data on this religious organization to understand the historical, organizational, and external social circumstances that have allowed this religious community to engage and interact with alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge without interpretations of conflict becoming a source of social strife within their organization.

Vi har identifierat att forskningen gällande Facebook som intern kommunikationskanal är bristfällig. Vår studie syftar därför till att undersöka hur facebookgrupper används som kommunikationskanal internt i organisationer och vilka förutsättningar sociala funktioner i intranät skapar. Vi har i vår studie använt oss av kvalitativa metoder i form av en informantintervju, 10 samtalsintervjuer med ledare och medarbetare på två organisationer och en innehållsanalys av material från en sluten facebookgrupp. Våra resultat tyder på att det finns många aspekter att ta hänsyn till om internkommunikationen sker på Facebook, däribland säkerhetsaspekten av informationen som publiceras samt gränsdragningen mellan den privata rollen och yrkesrollen. Bland våra slutsatser finner vi att samtliga respondenter anser att möjligheterna för dialog och delaktighet för samtliga medlemmar i en organisation ökar när kommunikationen sker internt på Facebook. I våra resultat konstateras även att i en av de valda organisationerna är endast 50 procent av de anställda medlemmar i facebookgruppen, något som talar emot möjligheterna för god internkommunikation och bra informationsspridning. Det genereras även ny teori i studien, då det hävdas att det i en av organisationerna är fler som har ett facebookkonto än en arbetsrelaterad mailadress. Detta påstående i relation till de traditionella kommunikationssätten kan tyda på ett kommande paradigmskifte inom internkommunikation, där sociala medier kan komma att ha en mer betydelsefull roll. / We have identified that the research regarding Facebook as an internal communication channel is lacking. Our study aims to investigate how Facebook Groups are used as a communication channel internally in organizations and what opportunities social functions in intranets creates. We have based our research in qualitative methodology, through one interview with an informant, 10 interviews with leaders and co-workers of two organizations and through a qualitative content analysis of the material from one closed facebook group. Our result shows that there are a lot of different aspects to be aware of when the internal communication occurs on Facebook. Examples of aspects are the safety aspect and the issues of managing boundaries between the professional and private role. Among our conclusions we state that all of our respondents consider that Facebook as a communication channel increases dialogue and participation in the organizations internal communication. We also state in our results that in one of the organizations, only 50 percent of the organizations members are members of the facebook group, which is something that argues against the opportunities of successful internal communication and sharing information. We also contribute with new theory in the field, when it is stated by one respondent that there are more members of the organization that have a Facebook account, then there are members that have a business mail. This indicates that there may be a future paradigm shift in the field of internal communication, where social media may have a more significant role.

The automated analysis of patients’ biomedical data can be used to derive diagnostic and prognostic inferences about the observed patients. Many noninvasive techniques for acquiring biomedical samples generate data that are characterized by a large number of distinct attributes (i.e. features) and a small number of observed patients (i.e. samples). Deriving reliable inferences, such as classifying a given patient as either cancerous or non-cancerous, using these biomedical data requires that the ratio r of the number of samples to the number of features be within the range 5 < r < 10. To satisfy this requirement, the original set of features in the biomedical datasets can be reduced to an ‘optimal’ subset of features that most discriminates the observed patients. Feature selection techniques strategically seek the ‘optimal’ subset. In this thesis, I present a new feature selection technique - multilevel feature selection. The technique seeks the ‘optimal’ feature subset in biomedical datasets using a multilevel search algorithm. This algorithm combines a hierarchical search framework with a search method. The framework, which provides the capability to easily adapt the technique to different forms of biomedical datasets, consists of increasingly coarse forms of the original feature set that are strategically and progressively explored by the search method. Tabu search (a search meta-heuristics) is the search method used in the multilevel feature selection technique. I evaluate the performance of the new technique, in terms of the solution quality, using experiments that compare the classification inferences derived from the result of the technique with those derived from the result of other feature selection techniques such as the basic tabu-search-based feature selection, sequential forward selection, and random feature selection. In the experiments, the same biomedical dataset is used and equivalent amount of computational resource is allocated to the evaluated techniques to provide a common basis for comparison. The empirical results show that the multilevel feature selection technique finds ‘optimal’ subsets that enable more accurate and stable classification than those selected using the other feature selection techniques. Also, a similar comparison of the new technique with a genetic algorithm feature selection technique that selects highly discriminatory regions of consecutive features shows that the multilevel technique finds subsets that enable more stable classification. / February 2006

Uppsatsen behandlar programmeringsspråket F# med mål att undersöka hur användbart det är för företag idag jämfört med andra språk. Arbetet är uppdelat i två delar. En teoretisk del redogör for språkets upplägg som hybridspråk och undersöker fördelarna hos den funktionalitet som hämtats från det objektorienterade samt det funktionella paradigmet respektive. Den andra delen består av en enkätundersökning som utförts där vi frågat systemutvecklare i Sverige om användandet av F# i deras verksamhet, samt vilka tankar de har kring språkets upplägg och framtid inom arbetsmarknaden. Slutligen jämförs vår teoretiska slutsats med resultatet från vår undersökning för att kunna avgöra om F# är något som är värt för företag att investera i, eller om det inte bidrar tillräckligt för att vara värt besväret.Resultatet blev att trots att det ger ett antal nya möjligheter i teorin då man kombinerar objektorienterad och funktionell programmering, så innebär detta i praktiken bara att slå ihop två komponenter som redan kunde kopplas samman sedan innan. Inget revolutionerande presenteras i F# och därför finns det heller ingen anledning för företag att bygga om sina existerande system - även om många respondenter i undersökningen fann konceptet intressant. / This essay processes the programming language F# in an attempt to discover its usefulness within companies today compared to other languages. The work is split into two parts. A theoretical part examines the structure of F# as a hybrid language and assesses the benefits of the functionalities that has been implemented from both the object oriented as well as the functional paradigm respectively. The second part presents the results of a performed survey where we have asked system developers in Sweden regarding the use of F# in their company, along with their thoughts regarding the structure and future of the language. Lastly, our theoretical analysis is compared with the results from our survey to determine whether F# is worth company’s investments, or contributes too little to be worth the hassle.2The results showed that despite combining object oriented and functional programming in theory opens up a number of new possibilities, it practically just means making a new language from two components which could already be connected. No revolutionary aspects are presented along with F# and therefore there is no reason for companies to rebuild their existing systems for this - even though many respondents of the survey found it an interesting concept.

Religious fundamentalism is a confusing and not well understood phenomenon in present day Western societies. In order to obtain fresh insights into what social forces and conditions affect religious organizational development such that they become fundamentalist organizations, this study seeks to analyze a religious group that historically has been mandated to integrate and utilize alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge into their canon of teachings. A triangulation study consisting of a content analysis of its accepted history and a discourse analysis of its accredited membership are utilized to gather data on this religious organization to understand the historical, organizational, and external social circumstances that have allowed this religious community to engage and interact with alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge without interpretations of conflict becoming a source of social strife within their organization.

This study focused on the issue of paradigms in Human Resource Development (HRD). Its purpose was to validate the HRD Cube as a synthesized model of HRD and to explicate some of the extant paradigms of HRD. The study was carried out by examining the text of articles published in Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD)-sponsored journals. Purposeful, stratified, and random sampling was used to select 16 articles published in AHRD-sponsored journals. Articles were treated as if they were the representative voice(s) of their author(s). Data units from within each article were identified and coded using two sequential techniques. First, units were axially coded and sorted into one of seven pre-determined categories based on the axioms of theory, research, and practice. Second, units were open coded using the constant comparative method, and themes and sub-themes were developed. Axial coding results identified a heavy emphasis on practice. The accumulation of units representing research and theory were comparatively smaller. Evidence of shared perspectives was found that emphasized the practice axiom. The accumulation of units emphasized research-practice, followed by theory-practice, and concluded with theory-research. Data units were also found that described all three axioms concurrently, theory-research-practice. Open coding results identified representative themes and sub-themes within each of the axiom-based categories of theory, research, and practice. Six themes developed in the theory category, 9 themes and 1 sub-theme developed in the research category, and 6 themes and 10 sub-themes developed in the practice category. The results provide evidence to support the overall construction of the HRD Cube. Theory, research, and practice perspectives of HRD were represented within the 16 articles used. The results also support the components described on each side of the HRD Cube. On the theory side, people, processes, and outcomes, and informing disciplines of HRD, were identified. Post-positive, interpretive, and critical epistemologies were identified on the research side. Individual, group, organizational, national, and global levels were identified on the practice side. Given the initial validation and support of the HRD Cube and of the components described within theory, research, and practice sides, within these 16 articles published in AHRD-sponsored journals, at least 18 prospective paradigms of HRD were identified.