<p>Vår tids syn på teknik ser vi tydliga spår av i dagens filmer, och kanske framförallt superhjältefilmer. Där använder sig både hjältar och skurkar av avancerad teknik i sin kamp mot varandra. Men även synen på biologi avspeglas i dessa filmer, och det mest intressanta är när dessa ställs mot varandra. Vi har jämfört två av vår tids största hjältar, en som använder sig av teknik och en som har biologiska krafter, för att se vilka likheter och skillnader som finns. Hjältarna det rör sig om är Spider-Man och Batman.</p>

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Marburg, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 166-172).

Several recent maritime accidents suggest that modern technology sometimes can make it difficult for mariners to navigate safely. A review of the literature also indicates that the technological remedies designed to prevent maritime accidents at times can be ineffective or counterproductive. To understand why, problem-oriented ethnography was used to collect and analyse data on how mariners understand their work and their tools. Over 4 years, 15 ships were visited; the ship types studied were small and large archipelago passenger ships and cargo ships. Mariners and others who work in the maritime industry were interviewed. What I found onboard were numerous examples of what I now call integration work. Integration is about co-ordination, co-operation and compromise. When humans and technology have to work together, the human (mostly) has to co-ordinate resources, co-operate with devices and compromise between means and ends. What mariners have to integrate to get work done include representations of data and information; rules, regulations and practice; human and machine work; and learning and practice. Mariners largely have to perform integration work themselves because machines cannot communicate in ways mariners see as useful. What developers and manufacturers choose to integrate into screens or systems is not always what the mariners would choose. There are other kinds of ‘mistakes’ mariners have to adapt to. Basically, they arise from conflicts between global rationality (rules, regulations and legislation) and local rationality (what gets defined as good seamanship at a particular time and place). When technology is used to replace human work this is not necessarily a straightforward or successful process. What it often means is that mariners have to work, sometimes very hard, to ‘construct’ a cooperational human-machine system. Even when technology works ‘as intended’ work of this kind is still required. Even in most ostensibly integrated systems, human operators still must perform integration work. In short, technology alone cannot solve the problems that technology created. Further, trying to fix ‘human error’ by incremental ‘improvements’ in technology or procedure tends to be largely ineffective due to the adaptive compensation by users. A systems view is necessary to make changes to a workplace. Finally, this research illustrates the value problem-oriented ethnography can have when it comes to collecting information on what users ‘mean’ and ‘really do’ and what designers ‘need’ to make technology easier and safer to use.

Syftet med den här studien var att beskriva och analysera hur personal inom missbrukarvården uppfattar betydelsen av klienters/patienters respektive sitt eget kön/genus i behandling. Vi har gjort en kvalitativ undersökning där vi intervjuat två kvinnliga och en manlig socialsekreterare, en kvinnlig behandlingshemspersonal samt en kvinnlig sjuksköterska. Textanalysen genomfördes med meningskategorisering. Materialet analyserade vi sedan utifrån ett genusperspektiv. Studiens huvudsakliga resultat visar att intervjupersonerna anser att kvinnor är mer utsatta, kvinnliga missbrukare har ofta varit sexuellt utnyttjade och blivit misshandlade samt att kvinnor befinner sig i minoritetsställning på behandlingshem. Intervju-personerna talar också om att kvinnor skäms mer för sitt missbruk än män, ofta i samband med moderskapet. De intervjuade upplever att de kvinnliga missbrukarnas dåliga erfarenheter av män samt det sexuella spel som ofta uppstår på blandade behandlingshem, kan vara anledningar till att män och kvinnor inte bör behandlas tillsammans. Undersökningens resultat visar även hur socialt och kulturellt skapade föreställningar om män och kvinnor kan påverka klienter såväl som personal.

No description available.

Conflicts between humans and leopards have intensified in the Junnar Forest Division (JFD), India due to a combination of factors: loss of natural habitats, increasing rural human densities, and increasing leopard populations. These rural and agrarian communities that have large sugarcane plantations are vulnerable to these conflicts in the form of livestock depredation and attacks on humans, which decrease the tolerance of locals towards leopards and may undermine local wildlife conservation activities. This study used structured interviews to explore local resident's views, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behavioral intentions towards leopards and their conservation. The mean attitudes and behavioral intentions of respondents (N = 154) was found to be positive towards leopards and their conservation. To understand behaviors towards leopards and their conservation, a socio-psychological theory, Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), was used. Results indicate a stronger attitudinal influence on locals' behavioral intention towards leopards and leopard conservation. Although several socioeconomic and demographic variables were found to be statistically significant in relation to attitudes, this study revealed the existence of social, psychological, and cultural variables that shape the locals' perceptions of leopards and their conservation. The current study shows that local peoples' attitudes toward leopards are complex, with the view held by the same person often being characterized by both negative and positive aspects. This study does reveal positive dimensions to the local peoples' perceptions of leopards, which are relevant to conservation of this animal and serve as a foundation for recommendations regarding regulatory interventions and educational and management strategies for the future.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

This thesis explores the themes, and trends within the novels of the acclaimed Syrian writer Hanna Mina. Three novels are discussed: Fragments of Memory (بقايا صور), The Swamp (المستنقع), and Sun on a Cloudy Day (الشمس في يوم غائم). The focus revolves around the relationship between rich and poor during a stage of transformation from imperial feudalism into urban modernity in Syria following the Second World War.

Herman Melville’s final novel The Confidence-Man destabilizes conventional Western models of ethical behavior, particularly Kantian notions of moral agency, by exposing and challenging their basis in rationality and a progressivist model of history. The Confidence-Man shows rationality to be nothing more than one way, among many other possible ways, that human beings attempt to fix the world in their understanding and justify their moral choices. I use these insights from The Confidence-Man to illuminate Melville’s opposition to the missionaries’ work of civilizing and Christianizing the South Seas islanders in his earlier travelogues. In Typee, his first novel, Melville demonstrates that layers of existence—in fact, real human lives—are denied when the story of human relations is framed as a narrative of progress. This thesis concludes by proposing that Melville reworks the idea of failure as a potential strategy against the totalizing narrative of advancing rationalism.

This project explores the effect eighteenth century reproductive theory had on Laurence Sterne�s use of satire in <i>The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</i> (1759 - 1767). Particular focus will be on the impact of the paternal and maternal imagination on the developing fetus, sexual facts and misconceptions common to eighteenth-century readers, as well as the changes in the gender dynamic of the birthing process (the man-midwife debate). There has been a lack of critical attention specifically on Tristram Shandy and its textual debt to medical treatises, midwifery texts, and folkloric medical tracts. Beyond this, I believe that the visual images also published in these works to be of great value in understanding the socio-historic background to sex and reproduction in the eighteenth century. I propose that the reader should look beyond the child-like antics of Walter and instead focus on Elizabeth as patient and Tristram as �experiment� within the historical-medical context of their contemporary culture. By expanding the context of relevant cultural materials that would have been available to Sterne, it is possible to read certain portions of the novel as a timeline of pregnancy through conception, gestation, and ultimately birth. I wish to examine the physical development not only of Tristram the character but also Tristram the novel, as the parallels between its creation and birth are obvious to even the most casual reader. Images of the autonomous fetus were quite well disseminated at this time and could be used to understand Tristram as a pseudo-fetal narrator, an author trapped somewhere in between a self-reliant free embryo writing and a grown man imprisoned by the calamities that befell him in-utero.