Reuse is a measure for resource-saving materials and energy use, which is stressed in the concept of kretsloppsanpassning, or societal industrial ecology (SIE), as it will be termed in this thesis. Reuse is here used as a general term for any kind of reuse and divided into recirculation, upgrading and cascading, according to the degradation of the inner material structure. Reuse of construction materials in society is mainly done with the belief that any kind of reuse is environmentally beneficial. However, this assumption is seldom critically assessed. The aim of this thesis was to examine under which conditions reuse of construction materials in the Swedish building and transportation sectors is beneficial to the environment. In order to identify critical conditions, the environmental performance of actual building projects that to a large extent utilised reused building materials was assessed (Papers V-VI). To better understand the practice of SIE and how it was implemented, the transportation sector was studied (Paper I). In order to address the issue of assessing the environmental performance of construction material reuse, method development became an important part of this thesis. Methods and tools employed in this thesis were required to be able to simultaneously address different system boundaries and also involve simplification. Studying the implementation of SIE revealed the lack of a holistic approach in environmental management, though it is present in the overall objectives of the SIE concept (Paper I). This was concluded by studying the energy and material stocks and flows in a life-cycle perspective in the environmental management of the Swedish National Rail and Road administrations. The study showed that the SIE-related measures implemented were outflow oriented, while the material inflows were generally quantified. Overall, the management and use phases were addressed, while the construction and deconstruction phases were poorly considered. Studying environmental assessment methods showed that an important characteristic is the system boundaries, which to a large extent decide which issues could be addressed and what actually could be studied (Paper II). Environmental assessment methods applied to reuse of construction materials were organised in an assessment framework of four system levels: the material level, the local environment level, the narrow life-cycle level and the industrial system level. It was concluded that mainstream environmental assessment of construction material reuse that is performed in the process of development consent and also in research, mainly addresses the narrow scope of the material level. In order to apply a holistic approach to environmental assessments of reuse of construction materials, the system boundaries needed to be widened. When selecting system boundaries, methods and indicators, researchers indirectly decide on which environmental pressures we consider the most important (cf. Papers II - III). There are trade-offs between making broad or deep environmental assessments. To accomplish an environmental assessment wide in its scope requires abundant resources and is complicated to carry through. Simplifications of the complex reality are always needed. However, to counteract the risk of problem shifting, the simplified methods and indicators need to be balanced for environmental relevance and used with knowledge of what they reflect and what is left out (Paper III). One example of such method simultaneously environmentally relevant and capable to cope with wide system boundaries is the study of primary energy use in a life cycle perspective, applied to a material an energy use context (see Papers IV-VI). In searching for a tool to prioritise building materials in building research and environmental management of the building sector, the total amount of building materials present in the Swedish building material stock was multiplied by their embodied energy coefficients (Paper IV). This product was normalized for the building materials’ service life. The accounting resulted in an ordering of building material categories according to their energy intensity. These are, in decreasing order: wood materials, bricks and other ceramics, concrete and steel. After calculating energy use in a life-cycle perspective for the recirculation, upgrading and cascading of larger building reuse projects of concrete and clay bricks, it is not self-evident that reuse is beneficial for the environment (Paper V, VI). It mainly depends on the use of auxiliary materials and their embodied energy, but also the primary energy use for the reuse processes, such as transportation distance and mode between the deconstruction and construction sites. In order to improve the environmental benefits of reuse, primarily the auxiliary materials used in current reuse projects should be minimised. Otherwise, there is a risk that the energy use for these materials turns reuse into an unfavourable process for the environment. Furthermore, reuse should preferably be environmentally assessed with a wide scope before implementation. What is included in such environmental assessment is significant for the outcome and the pictured environmental performance. / On the day of the public defence of the doctoral thesis the status of article III was: Accepted.

This paper discusses the nature of extractive industries operating in less developed countries and the exploitative image they are faced with. In order to address this issue, this paper presents a thorough analysis of societal marketing by considering social initiatives undertaken by corporations to enhance wellfare in the host country. The positive attributes of societal marketing are emphasized through bottom up development and exemplified through LAMCO case study. These factors, along with the invloved actors, all contribute to the enhancement of the corporate image.

This thesis is a study of Parties as an outflow of societal changes where the aim has been to find out how parties are affected by societal changes and how they justify to new party formation. This is done by using a theory called Parties as an outflow of societal changes which is a theory developed by Swedish researchers in Political Science. To confirm the theory it is necessary to do an argumentation analysis of one external developed party’s electoral program. In this case the party selected is Feminist Initiative which brings a different view on how the society of Sweden should look like. Selected parts of the argumentative analysis will be examined with the purpose to give a perspective on how Feminist Initiative values the changes in society and how they describe their role as a new party. The main question of this study is; Are new parties an outflow of societal changes? The basic arguments includes that along with societal changes in Western Europe also changes the view of a representative democracy in which political parties play a central role. It is clear that societies have changed in different ways with the rampage of the globalization. Media’s role in the political realm has also increased and influences more in society. In the case of Sweden political parties have raised with different ideals, goals and visions of how Swedish society should look like. The result should confirm the thesis that changes in society contributes to party formation.

Improving throughput in the B. Tech. Nursing Sciences programme is a complex issue as not only the theoretical but also the practical component and undefined inner strengths of the student influence success. The purpose of this article is to report factors in the prospective students’ social background, their perceptions of nursing and nurses and their motivation that could influence their academic success in the first year of study. The research design was contextual, qualitative and exploratory. Triangulation of data gathering methods was obtained by using two instruments, a targeted selection interview and a written instrument. Data analysis was done through Tesch’s approach. The results indicate that prospective students perceive a nurse to be functioning from the affective domain, and that they judge themselves to be strong in the affective domain. The cognitive domain was rarely mentioned (7%). Due to the myths regarding the nursing profession, the profession continue to attract students who are interested in the myth and not the reality.

This study explored the nature of Future Session workshops in current Japan by identifying the motivations, conducting analysis from the point of view a deliberative democracy, and examining the potentials for developing future visions of society. Four workshops were targeted that dealt with a wide range of societal problems and commonly challenged existing societal structures. The study found that the workshops were motivated by the doubt over the current direction of the society, a demand for a crosscutting cooperation between different fields, and a need to foster proactive actors through participatory workshop processes. Accordingly, it is argued that “deliberative democracy of workshops” based on dialogue and collaboration rather than confrontational communication and competition constitutes a Japanese deliberative democracy. The study also shows that the created projects and processes of deliberation contained many critical perspectives towards the dominant societal structure and norms. Finally, it is concluded that the process of actualizing the projects should be reflected carefully and the potential of these methods depends on the overreaching objective of its use.

The primary aim of this thesis is to advance economics' understanding of the organization of political parties, for the purpose of explaining the policy choices that result from collective decision procedures. Motivating this inquiry is the benign neglect that the political party as an organization has long suffered from in economics, in a manner that mirrors depictions of the firm in early neoclassical analysis. Accordingly, this thesis first considers the question of the relative influence of different contributors to the political parties' electoral activities, i.e. special-interest groups contributing money and individual party activists volunteering their time, on their choice of policy platforms. It is found that the presence of activists induces parties to offer differentiated policy platforms, even in the presence of a special-interest group whose contributions are perfectly substitutable with those of activists. Concurrently, the special interest's influence is to bias the parties' platforms towards its preferred policy. Second, the internal dynamics of parties organized into factions sharing common goals are investigated. It is studied how they affect the party leader's choice of policies while in office and her accountability to voters, through the threat of her removal from the party's helm. While occasionally acting as a distortion on the election mechanism's effectiveness for keeping politicians accountable, the presence of the politician's party is accountability-enhancing especially in the presence of other distortions. This contributes to a second-best theory of politics. This thesis' secondary aim is to contribute to restoring the use of moral and ethical concerns in normative analysis and political economy. This is warranted by the fact that moral and ethical motives matter more in such contexts than in most market transactions, where rational self-interested behaviour largely prevails. This objective is primarily represented in this thesis' study of normative analysis as conditioned on a societal consensus. This study asks how redistributive policies are to be optimally-chosen when the extent of societal co-operation regarding work participation depends on a social norm. Its main finding is that constraining the social planner's choices on the extent of societal cohesion restricts the scope of redistribution compared with an unconstrained social planner. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2011-11-03 12:16:33.632

No description available.

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and volcanic activities has had devastating effects on human life. Risk is the probability of harmful consequences from the interaction of hazards and vulnerable conditions. With increasing numbers of people living in crowded cities and other vulnerable areas, it is more important than ever to advance our understanding of natural disasters and the ways in which humans respond to them. My interdisciplinary study reflected in my thesis includes integrated research on the risk assessment methods for natural hazards with focus on earthquake disasters. This thesis address firstly the development of a scaled risk assessment framework, comparative assessment of natural hazard losses, including respective case studies and global overview of natural hazard risk, and secondly a comparative risk assessment of geological disasters to elaborate the major disastrous hazards for global population. Furthermore, I evaluate the effect of past events in form of the number of losses with respect to the exposed population on the proneness of people to the disaster. I summarize acceptable risk criteria and the necessity of having a normalized framework for societal risk assessment. I evaluate the natural hazard risk assessment and acceptable risk criteria of 32 European countries. I also introduce the concept of resistance in both risk equation and in FN-curves. Resistance is the societal resilience of a society to the occurrence of a natural disaster. Moreover, using components of FN-curves (slopes and intercepts) for risk assessment of geological disasters based on real data, I showed that the world has been more at risk of earthquakes than tsunamis, volcanic activities and landslides since 1600. Also. based on the earthquake disasters data (1973-2010), I evaluated the temporal trend of hazard, risk, exposure and resistance of the world towards earthquake disasters. Our results does not provide any evidence of increase or decrease in the temporal trend of fatality rate and earthquake resistance while there is a significant decrease in the crude death rate. Finally, we evaluated the reliability of earthquake disaster system during 1950-2012 using probability of more than 1000 fatalities as probability of failure. Our yearly estimate of reliability at the beginning of each mission year shows that the avreage reliability of earthquake disaster system is very low (~0.3) and it is decreasing over time, too.

Abstract My dissertation studies public reception of the works of Ilmari Kianto (1874–1970). The guiding principle of my study is contextual analysis, which is a fruitful approach to the primarily social themes of Kianto’s works. The reception of contemporaries of Kianto did not focus so much on the aesthetic properties of his works but rather on their significance in the societal context of the era in which they were published. Later research into Kianto’s reception has focused on his currently canonised descriptions of Finnish folk life, Punainen viiva (The Red Line) and Ryysyrannan Jooseppi (Jooseppi from Ryysyranta) that are his most valued works from an aesthetic point of view. The purpose of my doctoral dissertation is to bridge the gap that both literary history and research literature have left behind. My study shows that all Kianto’s works – including his lyrics and novels – are invariably tied in with the most pressing societal, political and ethical issues of their time. Based on his works and how they were publicly received, Kianto can be perceived as being a significant participant in the debate on social questions and he brought many social issues to the attention of the public. When Kianto demanded freedom of religion and legalisation of civil marriage in his works, he received considerable support from his contemporaries, but this also led to blasphemy charges. Furthermore, my dissertation shows that the later public image of Kianto does not do any justice to the views of his contemporaries because the image highlights his reputation for being a ruthless “butcher” on the side of the Whites in the civil war, which is a view based on a certain widely distributed propaganda article. Observed through his public reception as a whole, Kianto was generally seen as being a spokesman for the poor and as a pacifist through his book Elämän ja kuoleman kentältä (From The Field of Life and Death), which he completed after the civil war in 1918 but which was rejected by publishers and published first in 1928. Kianto’s sentencing to a correctional institution for attempted high treason during the Finnish Winter War was the most tragic event for his literary reputation, which meant that he was expelled from the Writer’s Union and disfavoured all the way through until the 1950’s. / Tiivistelmä Väitöskirjani käsittelee Ilmari Kiannon (1874–1970) tuotannon julkista reseptiota Suomessa. Tutkimustani on ohjannut kontekstuaalinen analyysi, joka on ollut Kiannon teosten voittopuoleisesti yhteiskunnallisten teemojen kannalta hedelmällinen lähtökohta. Kiannon aikalaisvastaanotossa eivät korostuneet niinkään teosten esteettiset ominaisuudet, vaan teosten merkitys ilmestymisaikansa yhteiskunnallisessa kontekstissa. Myöhempi Kiannon tutkimuksellinen reseptio on keskittynyt tuotannon esteettisesti korkeatasoisimmiksi arvostettuihin ja suomalaisen kirjallisuuden kaanoniin nousseisiin kansankuvauksiin, Punaiseen viivaan ja Ryysyrannan Jooseppiin, jotka ovat jättäneet varjoonsa Kiannon muun tuotannon. Kiannon koko tuotannon läpikäyvää reseptiota käsittelevän väitöskirjani tarkoitus onkin täyttää sitä aukkoa, joka sekä kirjallisuushistorialta että tutkimuskirjallisuudelta on Kiannon osalta jäänyt. Tutkimukseni osoittaa, että Kiannon teokset nivoutuvat aina lyriikkaa ja romaanituotantoa myöten aikansa polttavimpiin yhteiskunnallisiin, poliittisiin ja eettisiin kysymyksiin. Kiantoa voidaankin teosten ja vastaanoton pohjalta pitää aikansa merkittävänä yhteiskunnallisena keskustelijana ja monien sosiaalisten ongelmien esilletuojana. Kiannon teosten vaateet lainsäädännön päivittämisestä modernin ajan ihmisen aatemaailmaa vastaavaksi muun muassa uskonnonvapauden ja siviiliavioliiton laillistamisen puolesta saivat aikalaisvastaanotossa runsaasti vastakaikua, mutta toivat myös jumalanpilkkasyytteitä. Tutkimukseni osoittaa myös, että Kiannosta jälkipolville muotoutunut julkisuuskuva ei tee oikeutta Kiannon koko aikalaisvastaanotolle, josta on jäänyt elämään lähinnä Kiannon maine säälimättömänä valkoisena ”lahtarina” yhden tietyn ahkerasti levitetyn propaganda-artikkelin takia. Koko vastaanoton kautta tarkasteltuna Kianto nähtiin yleisesti köyhälistön puolestapuhujana ja sisällissodan jälkeen jo vuonna 1918 valmistuneella teoksellaan Elämän ja kuoleman kentältä myös sodan vastustajana, joka joutui kustantajien hylkäämäksi ja sai ko. teoksensa julkaistua vasta vuonna 1928. Kiannon talvisodan aikaan saama kuritushuonetuomio sotapetoksen yrityksestä oli Kiannon kirjailijamaineen kannalta traagisin tapahtuma, joka merkitsi hänen erottamistaan Kirjailijaliitosta ja vuosikymmenen kestänyttä hylkimistään vastaanotossa aina 1950-luvulle asti.

Most of the research relating to children and death has been psychological or psychoanalytic in nature and has employed case studies or projective methodology. This study utilized a sociological perspective and was aimed at discovering the socialization processes that shape children's attitudes in this area of inquiry. The children's attitudes were examined in terms of four variables, their definitions of death, the relationship of age and death, their reaction to self-destruction and the destruction of others, and the affects of the media on them. Findings from this study of twenty-five children provided further support for the contention that attitudes are the result of learning experiences, i.e., socialization, involving significant others. For the most part, the children's responses were reflections of dominant social values and might therefore be considered the result of socializing factors.