By year 2020, developed countries pledged to mobilize USD100 billion per year towards mitigation of greenhouse gases and strategies of adaptation. This redistribution from Annex I (developed) countries to developing countries represents a near doubling of current official development assistance levels, yet future strategies of adaptation remain nebulous. Definitions, opinions and agendas of adaptation have evolved into new global development strategy, but will externally-designed strategies threaten an adaptive process that should be community-led and environmentally-contextual? Little empirical research has been conducted on adaptation as an international development strategy that consists of massive earmarking of funds to institute and later demonstrate that projects are related to climate change. Through semi-structured interviews with international and development organizations, national and local governments, civil society and community focus groups, this research chronicles Malawi's polycentric response to climate change vulnerability. Using site-visits to numerous active adaptation projects in Malawi as case-studies, this research examines who the stakeholders are in this process, what adaptation looks like and how the overall concept of this new development strategy can be improved. / text

Individuals of Mexican descent have resided in the United States for more than a century and a half and during that time have experienced varying degrees of acceptance. As American society has generally adopted the view that "foreigners" should assimilate to mainstream American culture, many individuals of Mexican descent have faced demands to distance themselves from their culture in order to adopt the behaviors and values consistent with White American culture. While many ethnic groups may have faced similar circumstances, the experiences of individuals of Mexican descent may differ from those of others due to the close proximity of Mexico to the United States and the constant flow of Mexican immigrants, which together may contribute to their retention of their native culture. As individuals of Mexican descent experience greater contact with their native and White American culture, particularly while in pursuit in success, it becomes necessary to understand what pressures individuals experience when among their White American and same-ethnicity peers. Furthermore, it is necessary to examine how they negotiate their bicultural contexts in response to the pressures they face. Using a sample of university student who were of Mexican descent, this study employed qualitative methods and select measures to explore their perceptions of pressures faced and adaptive strategies utilized when among their White American and same-ethnicity peers. The results from the present study indicated that the participants believed their culture continues to be seen as inferior and is unaccepted by White Americans. As a result of their beliefs, which were reinforced by their minority status, stereotypes, and intergroup experiences, many reported experiencing distress when among their White peers. Among their same-ethnicity peers, many reported experiencing pressure to remain connected to their culture. Despite different definitions of what remaining connected meant, the most commonly referenced criterion included being fluent in Spanish and having to overcome struggles. In order to negotiate their bicultural settings, the majority of the participants utilized an adaptive approach to their bicultural contexts that allowed them the flexibility to draw from both cultures in a manner that was consistent with their values, beliefs, and cultural identity. / text

In animals, humans and robots, imitative behaviours are very useful for acting, learning and communicating. Implementing imitation in autonomous robots is still a challenge and one of the main problems is to make them choose when and who to imitate. We start from minimalist architectures, following a bottom-up approach, to progressively complete them. Based on imitation processes in nature, many architectures have been developed and implemented to increase quality (essentially in terms of reproducing actions with accuracy) of imitation in robots. Nevertheless, autonomous robots need architectures where imitative behaviour is well integrated with the other behaviours like seeking for stability, exploration or exploitation. Moreover, whether to express imitative behaviours or not should also depend on the history of interactions (positive or negative) between robots and their interactive partners. In this thesis, we show with real robots how low-level imitation can emerge from other essential behaviours and how affect can modulate the way they are exhibited. On top of proposing a novel vision of imitation, we show how agents can autonomously switch between these behaviours depending on affective bonds they have developed. Moreover, with simple architectures, we are able to reproduce behaviours observed in nature, and we present a new way to tackle the issue of learning at different time scales in continuous time and space with discretization.

Abstract Title: How to translate cultural references Language: French Author: Helena Forsell University/Department/Year: Linnaeus University/School of Language and Literature/2014 The main focus of this paper has been to find out which difficulties the translator comes across when trying to find cultural references that will apply in the target text. Since the original text treats a cultural aspect concerning the French gastronomic meal, the aim has also been to find out whether a deeply human trait, such as eating a meal in the company of others, produces translation problems despite a fairly common ground between French and Swedish culture. The source text used in this study is Convention pour la Sauvegarde du Patrimoine culturel immatériel, Dossier de Candidature n◦00437, which was published in 2010 and translated into Swedish in 2014. The main translation strategies used are adaptation, equivalence, addition and omission. Keywords: Cultural adaptation, translation strategies, reference, metonymy.

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Divergent natural selection for use of locally abundant resources can lead to diversification within and across species. However, the consequences of divergent selection for phenotypic evolution also depend on the development of variation. Because relationships among traits such as shared developmental timing or common involvement in an organismal function can channel variation generated during development, these relationships strongly influence the direction of evolution.During development of the mammalian mandible multiple tissues of distinct developmental origins interact with inputs from the functioning of attached muscles to produce a cohesive and well integrated trait. In soricid shrews, part of the mandible matures late in ontogeny, coinciding with the onset of foraging. In this case, foraging-linked muscle activity should influence the development of the late maturing mandibular region. Here, I show that variation in this late ossifying region reveals the local functional requirements of the jaw and results in an opportunity to decouple internal and external sources of variation (developmental and environmental respectively) in the mandible. Capitalizing on this feature of the Sorex system, I empirically examined the historical persistence of internal and external patterns of variation, the consequences of variation patterning for ecological and morphological diversification across taxa, and differences between early and late ossifying regions in their contribution to local adaptation in mandible morphology.I found that the functional requirements of diet directed mandible development and determined species similarity in both mandible morphology and function. Timing of bone maturation determined the morphological effects of foraging-linked muscle activity, resulting in differential expression of adaptive variation in the late maturing region. Further, I found higher levels of interspecific variation in the late maturing region of the mandible, and showed that interspecific divergence in foraging morphology occurs along the lines delineated by epigenetic inputs of muscle on bone formation during late ontogeny within species. These findings indicate that differences in functional requirements are critical for divergence among taxa in this system. Further, these results suggest that, when external inputs into trait development are indicative of local functional requirements, the same epigenetic mechanism of development can generate diversity both within and among taxa.