Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2004. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

This work aims to examine the setting of Latin-american cultural identity towards televisual production, as it is presented in public, cultural and/or educational medias. The starting point is the concept that Latin-americanity questions are poorly approached by Brazilian private media, considering the multiple interests on stake at each broadcast. The question of identity is approached from Landowski, Bauman, Hall, Canclini, Martín-Barbero and Sarlo, reckoning that it is built based on difference, through interaction with the other and, also, it is defined as such due to its historical development. Having the discursive semiotics of European inspiration as theoretic-methodological basis, the premises of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Greimas, Fontanille, Duarte and Castro, that are widely developed by the COMTV research group, are presented. As empirical objective, the limited TV series Os latino-americanos, produced by Televisión América Latina (TAL), was selected as research corpus. TAL unites audiovisual content from several Latin America independent producers, releasing these productions in its website and distributing them to associated TV channels all over the continent, majorly public, cultural and/or educational ones. In Brazil, the limited series aired on TV Escola, Canal Futura and TV Câmara. The chosen program has a factual profile and it has twelve episodes, each of them showing the identity of a Latin America country. In this sense, the general objective is to verify which traits are common to these different settings, and responsible for the Latin-americanity identity representation. / O presente trabalho propõe-se a examinar a configuração da identidade cultural latino-americana na produção televisual, tal como é apresentada nas mídias públicas, culturais e/ou educativas. Parte-se do pressuposto de que as questões da latino-americanidade são pouco abordadas pela mídia privada brasileira, tendo em vista os múltiplos interesses em jogo em cada transmissão. Aborda-se a questão da identidade a partir de Landowski, Bauman, Hall, Canclini, Martín-Barbero e Sarlo, considerando que ela é construída pela diferença, em interação com o outro, e também, que se configura como tal tendo em vista o seu desenvolvimento histórico. Utilizando como base teórico-metodológica a semiótica discursiva de inspiração europeia, apresentam-se as premissas de Saussure, Hjelmslev, Greimas, Fontanille, Duarte e Castro, bastante desenvolvidas pelo grupo de pesquisa COMTV. Como objeto empírico, foi selecionado como corpus de pesquisa o seriado Os latino-americanos, produzido pela Televisión América Latina (TAL). A TAL reúne conteúdo audiovisual de vários produtores independentes da América Latina, disponibilizando essas produções em seu site e distribuindo-as a canais de televisão associados de todo o continente, em sua grande maioria, públicos, culturais e/ou educativos. No Brasil, o seriado foi veiculado pela TV Escola, Canal Futura e TV Câmara. O seriado escolhido possui caráter factual e é composto por doze episódios, cada um deles retratando a identidade de um país da América Latina. Assim, o objetivo geral é verificar que traços são comuns nessas diferentes configurações, responsáveis pela representação da latino-americanidade.

The 2015 flood event in the Shire River basin was characterised by Malawi Government’s Department of Disaster Management (DoDMA) as the worst on record. It led to the damage in property worth millions of dollars with recovery still ongoing 3 years later. Over 150 fatalities were confirmed at the time with hundreds of others missing. The extent of the damage of the disaster was perhaps underlined by the swift adoption of the disaster management policy which was still in draft format then and the adoption of the climate change management policy a year later. In the aftermath of the disaster, as with most extreme weather events elsewhere around the world, questions were asked as to whether climate change might have had a hand in the occurrence of such an event and whether, going into a warmer climate, events of that nature of extremity will be the new normal. By using the risk-based event attribution methodology based on dedicated attribution experiments with a global climate model, and focusing on one of the sub-catchments of the Shire River basin, this study explored whether climate change from anthropogenic sources might have influenced the likelihood of such an event occurring. However, given the nature of hydrological events and the land use history of the basin, land use and cover change is another potential flood risk factor which, if overlooked, might affect conclusions with regards to the contribution of external factors to the risk of flooding. To account for both climate change and land use and land change, four sets of rainfallrunoff simulations were run using the Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalans-avdelning (HBV) hydrological model which has the ability to simulate the impact of land use and climate change on rainfall-runoff relationships. Each set was a combination of a climate scenario-either “factual” or “counter-factual”- and land use and cover change scenario-either factual (historical) or counterfactual (current). The climate scenarios were based on simulated rainfall and temperature from the HadAM3p model run in two modes-the “factual” and “counter-factual”- simulating the climate with atmospheric conditions closely resembling the atmosphere at the time of occurrence of the event and the climate as it would have been without human emissions of greenhouse gases. The proportion of the risk was calculated to determine how the risk of experiencing a flood of the January-April 2015 magnitude (for 1-day, 10- day, and 30-day maximum flows) changes with climate change only, land use and cover change only, as well as both climate change and land use and cover change. The results demonstrated that the probability of exceeding the 1-day maximum flow of the 2015 magnitude was lower in the factual (current) climate than in the counter-factual. However, changes in land use modify the flood risk such that, when land use change was accounted for, the extent of the reduction in the risk was lower. On the other hand, exceedance probabilities for 10-day and 30-day maximum flows were higher in the factual (current) climate. This was further heightened by changes in land use and cover. The study also established that observational uncertainties typical of the region may influence event attribution results to some extent. The results, which are based on a single attribution method and a single global climate model, do not span the method-model uncertainty range. As a consequence, the results are limited and do not constitute a fully defensible attribution statement.

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Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school. The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils’ reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon. The pupils also had to complete a questionnaire about their reading habits, how they go about understanding the texts better, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons. The pupils were interviewed to yield a little more information about how they comprehended the two different types of text. The study was conducted at two high schools geared to pupils with ASD, including a total of twelve pupils. Four of these pupils were also interviewed. The result of the reading comprehension tests show that the majority of the pupils found it easier to answer the questions about the factual text. The pupils who read a lot and are interested in reading achieved better results in both text assignments. There was a clear association between the pupils who have difficulties concentrating and finishing a book and their results on the reading comprehension tasks, which can be explained by their functional impairment. The result of the pupils’ questionnaire showed that they use different strategies when reading factual texts and literary texts. There were also differences in how the pupils work with different texts in school, both individually and together with other pupils, depending on which type of text it is. The help that pupils receive from their teachers can be limited by the pupils’ functional impairment, but according to the study this help is significant for the pupils’ reading comprehension, especially of literary texts.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2002. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

This dissertation examines the interplay of Situation Aspect and Viewpoint Aspect in two classes of constructions in Polish: i) anticausatives with and without Dative subjects, ex. (Jankowi) złamały się okulary John broke the glasses involuntarily / The glasses broke; and ii) Factual Imperfectives, ex. Jadłam obiad I have eaten my dinner. With the first type of construction, the concern is why the unintentional causer reading is obtainable only in telic contexts and how two classes of Polish anticausatives – one with prefixed verbs and one with unprefixed verbs – differ structurally. The question that arises with analyses of Factual Imperfective constructions (FIs) is about the untypical role of imperfective aspect: how is it possible that the imperfective morphemes that the Slavic literature (almost) unanimously pairs with English Progressives do not neutralize telicity as the Progressive does? The dissertation finds evidence supporting the view that Slavic lexical prefixes are telicity markers and secondary predicates (cf. Svenonius 2004, Žaucer 2009). It argues that imperfectives that lack any aspectual morpheme and have the accusative case assigned to a direct object, nonetheless possess a non-overt aspectual operator located in the domain of Viewpoint Aspect. The dissertation enriches the recent discussions concerned with the puzzle of how to account for various readings of the imperfective (Cipria & Roberts 2000, Hacquard 2006, Deo 2009) by providing a semantic analysis of an interpretation not attested in languages like French, Italian and Spanish on which the discussions have focused so far. I argue that the Russian and Polish patterns dubbed as Existential Factual Imperfectives (cf. Grønn 2003) carry a silent Epistemic Modal that selects the imperfective due to its right semantic type: <s,t> in contrast to the <t> type of the perfective. From a cross-linguistic perspective, this study is relevant for syntactic and semantic theories of aspect in natural language especially for the theory of imperfectivity. From a language specific perspective, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the particular aspect-related conditions that play a role in licensing oblique (Dative) causers in Polish.

Comparative advertising is widely used in the U.S and much remains to be learnt about when comparative advertising is used with the two forms of verbal claim; factual and evaluative claim. An experimental design with the 2 forms of verbal content (factual vs evaluative) and the two forms of comparative advertisements (direct vs indirect) were examined to identify the form of verbal content and comparison that would be most persuasive. In measuring the persuasiveness, attitude towards the brand and purchase intention were included as dependable variables. Results show that there was no significant difference between the two types of verbal content and the two types of comparisons which indicate that any forms of verbal content under any form of comparative advertisements is equally persuasive.

Modern intelligent monitoring systems use digital computer technology to analyze and evaluate physiological vital signs. This analytical and evaluative process is performed by algorithms developed for this purpose. The degree of 'intelligence' of the monitoring system is dependent on the 'sensitivity' and 'specificity' of these algorithms. In order to develop robust and clinically valid algorithms, a database of representative waveforms is required. The aim of this thesis was to create a neonatal vital signs database to be used for this purpose, by means of a computer-based central station. The computer was interfaced to a number of neonatal monitors (Neonatal ICU, Groote Schuur Hospital). The monitors were interrogated to obtain patient condition, ECG waveforms and respiration waveforms using the impedance technique. When possible, percentage oxygen saturation was also captured. The database contains 509 documented clinical records obtained from 35 patients and 20 records containing examples of technical alarm conditions and high frequency noise. Additional patient record data is included. Clinical events recorded include apnoea, bradycardia, periodic breathing tachycardia, tachypnoea and normal traces. These events were recorded against a variety of signal quality conditions that have been characterized in Appendix C. A prototype rate detection algorithm was checked using samples from the database.

A Critical Examination of A.J. Ayer's Moral Philosophy Ayer' s overall notion of ethics is that all normative ethical statements are cognitively meaningless. This thesis is an attempt to refute this claim. Ayer's notion is based, I think, on his following two convictions: ( i ) ethical statements are purely emotive, (ii) reasoning from factual premises to ethical conclusions is neither deductive nor inductive. Ethical statements are, according to Ayer, purely emotive because they are pure expressions of the feelings and emotions of the speaker. This means that ethical statements do not even report the speaker's mental state. I have shown that there are some voluntarily uttered ethical statements which are not expressive and hence that some ethical statements are not purely emotive. The controversy whether ethical statements can be deduced formally from factual statements is very old. I have switched the problem to a different direction by showing that the induction/deduction dichotomy is not adequate for reasoning. Other reasoning processes, like informal reasoning, allow one to deduce ethical conclusions from factual premises. It is also shown how Ayer's criterion of meaning, namely the verification principle, renders ethical statements meaningful. Finally, I have defended universalistic act-utilitarianism as a cognitive theory of ethics. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)