In December of 2002, an organization called Clonaid released the news that the first human clone had been born. This company is the offspring of an emerging religious movement, the Raelian movement. Whether the story is true or not, the emergence and growth of this movement suggest that people are looking beyond major world religions, creating a religious outlook (which is a hybrid of dominant religions) with the tenets of extraterrestrial intelligent design, human consciousness, and scientific and technological development. It is a new spin on science as religion, with components of science fiction.<p>To better understand the significance of this movement in contemporary North American culture, the following research is based upon a narrative analysis of the accounts of five members of the movement. The thesis will elaborate on such topics as the sociology of religion, science, biotechnology, social movements and cults, science fiction, and the role of stories in shaping meaning of our place and relationships in the world. The reason for this study is to ascertain characteristics of those participating in the movement: who is joining, why they are joining, and what they are getting out of it. The research uses narrative analysis to focus on the stories of individual members, to provide the best view of the movement, from the inside-out. What emerges is an elaborate depiction of the significance of the Raelian movement in the world through individual members interpretations.

This thesis is the result of two years of study in archival science at the Department of ABM (archive, library, museum) at Uppsala University, Sweden. The purpose of the thesis is to highlight community archives, specifically how the community archive "Archive for the Unexplained" in Norrköping operates as a community archive and handles received documents and records of ufo-reports from UFO-Sweden. Our focus has been to study record- keeping and how the documents are made available to promote the possibility of transparency, research, and ar- chival retrieval. The analysis is divided into two parts: the archive and its internal archival structure, as well as the records. The analysis of the archival structure is focused on how the archive operates as a community archive based on the theory of Terry Cook's four paradigms, which aims to show how archives have gone from closed archives to open places for knowledge. The results of this thesis show how the Archive for the Unexplained as a community archive in contrasts to archives that operate in the official authority and fulfill a vital role in the paranormal field and how its material is primarily used for investigating Unexplained phenomena while it is providing a creative space for a narrative of a fictional and folkloristic nature. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.

Over the last years the UFO-phenomenon has created considerable attraction in US-media. The reasons are twofold: 1) Since the fall of 2017 there has been an increased official acknowledgement of the phenomena 2) Several spectacular revelations have been publicized, both triggering a lager media coverage. But why is this topic so salient in the US? How are media and UFO-coverage interrelated?  Our thesis investigates the coverage of the phenomena in one of the largest US media outlets, The New York Times. Focusing on the period 15 December 2017 – 1 August 2023, when the acknowledgement of Pentagons secret UFO-program also known as Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) happened. Then on 26 July 2023, a whistleblower by the name of David Grusch testified in front of congress with allegations of a government conspiracy – including the possession of Alien vehicles and non-human biologics. Therefore, we have selected 51 articles and carried out a thematic analysis. We have not studied other US news outlets because The New York Times brought some serious legitimacy to the UFO-phenomena with their 2017 article about the Pentagons secret UFO-program and got financial resources to dig deep – a sensationalism you might not find elsewhere.  In the results, we were able to present two themes that emerged during the process. These were rivalry between two nations and public disclosures and reactions from the public. The rivalry between the two nations resulted in three subcategories: the near space area, spy balloons, and technological threat perception. In the theme of public reactions, we used six subcategories. These included scientific skepticism, UFO observations and reports, the desired understanding of the public, government confirmation of the secret UFO program AATIP, increased transparency and scientific discussion, and also whistleblower testimonies. This made us to answer our research questions, which were as follows: How has The New York Times' reporting on the UFO phenomenon been shaped from December 15, 2017, to August 1, 2023? Are there patterns and variations in how The New York Times has treated UFO-related articles during the aforementioned time period?

After developing for a century, science fictions and movies are becoming huge culture enterprises in Europe and America. But in Taiwan, the audiences and readers are only interested in special effect Hollywood movies or comics, science fictions are still considered deduction novels and being put aside. Writers don¡¦t want to invest their time to initiate a science fiction, but Hwang-Hai does. Hwang-Hai had TB since he was young. He dropped out from school at grade 8 to fight the disease. Beyond his sickness, he kept learning and practicing writing, and making a profit from payment of written to improve his family finance. He started his science fiction writing when he was 26 years old, and kept on writing until now, for 40 years. His creation list is just like an epitome of Taiwan science fiction literature history. He was an ascetic monk of science fiction writing, walking haltingly, alone on his way, kept standing on and became evergreen of science literature among Taiwan writers. TB like the shadow following Hwang-Hai during his adolescent, but he kept on learning and writing. At age 31, he passed high school educational authenticate exam and joint college entrance examination, accomplished his dream on college study. After age 40, he won a lot award on literature and his achievement is approved by literary circles. Hwang-Hai¡¦s writing includes literary novels, prose, columns, science articles, and adult and children science fictions. The author wants to build up the interaction between science evolutions and the developing history of science fictions by historical analysis, and tries to establish the relationship among scientific hermeneutics, sociology, arts, psychology and philology by theoretical research, and studies the details of his creations one by one on literature text, to posit his role in science literature history of Taiwan. Keywords: Science fiction, Hwang-Hai, Robot, UFO, time machine, Scientific Hermeneutics.

Objet volant non identifié, OVNI, depuis ses origines ce phénomène est resté énigmatique et élusif.Cette étude propose d'en étudier les personnes, les soucoupistes, ou les « ufologues » pour reprendre leur propre terminologie et la discipline qu'ils créèrent pour tenter de percer ce mystère.Le soucoupisme, pour reprendre le terme français, s'est construit autour de l'objet ovni pour tenter de l'éclairer de bien des manières. Il n'y a donc pas un seul soucoupisme, mais bien plusieurs, répartis entre les différentes générations : la première, née après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, convaincue de la matérialité des ovnis ; la deuxième, à partir de 1977, qui voit dans cet objet la manifestation de la psychologie humaine ; la troisième, dès le début des années 90, convaincue que l'ovni cache les plus sombres desseins de gouvernements occultes ; et la quatrième, après les années 2000, pour laquelle l'ovni est avant tout un produit médiatique.Ces quatre générations cohabitent encore aujourd'hui, et se nourrissent les unes des autres.Beaucoup de soucoupistes consacrent entièrement leur vie aux ovnis, marqués par une observation, une idée ou une peur. Ils alimentent, en même temps que leur quête de la vérité, une véritable guerre inter-générationnelle où chaque propos est récupéré et détourné à l'avantage du camp qui le brandit.Cette étude en propose un tour d'horizon. / Unidentified flying object, UFO, since its origins this phenomenon remained enigmatic and elusive.This study proposes to study people, saucers, or "ufologists" to use their own terminology, and the discipline they created to try to unravel this mystery.The ufology was built around the UFO object to try to illuminate it in many ways. So there is not a single ufology, but many, divided between different generations : the first, born after the Second World War, convinced of the materiality of UFOs ; the second, from 1977, who sees in this object the manifestation of human psychology ; the third, from the beginning of the 90s, convinced that the UFO hides the darkest designs of occult governments ; and the fourth, after the 2000s, for which the UFO is above all a media product.These four generations still live today, and feed on each other. Many ufologists devote their entire lives to UFOs, marked by an observation, an idea or a fear. They feed, along with their quest for truth, a real inter-generational war where each statement is recovered and diverted to the advantage of the camp that brandishes it.This study provides an overview.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:33:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alex Pinheiro das Gracas.pdf: 2761846 bytes, checksum: a904945394b1c705b72df3268f5bdab8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-27 / The adoption of ontologically well founded languages for building ontologies has acquiring more adopters, however its widespread use stumble on using difficulties by inexperienced modelers. This dissertation proposes a methodological guide to support the building of domain ontologies using the ontologically well founded language OntoUML. This guide through the analysis of language structure, restrictions and design patterns helps the designer on the modeling process. Beyond, the building support interactions are used to generate a design rationale. At last, it is presented a Web application implementing the ideas proposed in this work / A adoção de linguagens ontologicamente bem fundamentadas para construção de ontologias, apesar de vir ganhando mais adeptos, esbarra nas dificuldades da utilização desta linguagem por modeladores inexperientes. Este trabalho propõe um guia metodológico para apoiar as construções de ontologias utilizando a linguagem OntoUML Este guia auxilia o projetista no processo de modelagem através do estudo da estrutura da linguagem, suas restrições sintáticas e padrões de projetos. Além disso, as interações com o modelador na utilização deste guia são utilizadas para gerar um design rationale do processo de modelagem. Por final é apresentada uma implementação Web de uma ferramenta que demonstra as propostas apresentadas neste trabalho

This study focuses on the discourse that orders and creates a logic of the extraterrestrial during postmodernity, what I term "Fringe." Using Foucault's notion of discourse, I define and theorize Fringe and its formation during postmodernity, looking at the particular features of the historical moment post-1960 that contributed to the creation and regulation of a particular extraterrestrial. I then investigate historical conceptions of the extraterrestrial from Aquinas to Kant. This genealogy of the extraterrestrial reveals a rich history of the extraterrestrial and compares this history with Fringe. After this I discuss two precursors of Fringe discourse: the Society for Psychical Research and the writings of anomalous researcher Charles Fort. This investigation of pre-Fringe notions of the psychical in discourse shows how the SPR and Fort's work both created new ways of looking at and speaking about phenomena falling outside the purview of "normal science" and contributed to the formation of Fringe while also being distinguishable from it. Finally, I analyze two popular iterations of Fringe discourse—the ancient aliens hypothesis and the abduction narrative—as popularized in the works of Erich von Däniken and Whitley Strieber.

La sécurité-innocuité est une propriété émergente des systèmes critiques de sécurité (SCS), notamment les systèmes ferroviaires. Cet aspect émergent complexifie leur processus du développement et nécessite un raisonnement judicieux permettant de diminuer les dangers. Cette thèse propose une approche ontologique qui intègre les activités de sécurité dès les premières phases de conception des SCS. Ce cadre structuré offre une harmonisation sémantique entre les domaines impliqués, tels que l'ingénierie de sécurité et l'Ingénierie des Exigences Dirigée par les Buts (IEDB). La logique métier intégrée dans cette approche est validée par des cas d'étude ferroviaires d'accidents réels et d'une mission télé-opérée. Dans un premier temps, nous avons proposé une ontologie d'analyse dysfonctionnelle appelée DAO et fondée sur l'ontologie de haut niveau UFO. DAO considère les aspects sociaux-techniques et environnementaux des SCS et intègre les différents types de fautes et de propriétés cognitives liés respectivement aux défaillances techniques et aux erreurs humaines. Le modèle conceptuel de DAO est exprimé en OntoUML et formalisé en langage OWL afin de fournir un support de raisonnement. Ensuite, un pont sémantique est établi entre les mesures de sécurité, les buts de sécurité et les exigences de sécurité par le développement d'une ontologie de gestion de sécurité orientée-but, appelée GOSMO. La gestion des décisions de sécurité s’appuie sur la réinterprétation du modèle de contrôle d'accès Or-Bac d'un point de vue sécurité-innocuité. Afin d'assurer la cohérence globale des exigences, GOSMO permet de structurer la gestion des évolutions des exigences et leur traçabilité. / Safety is an emergent property of safety critical systems (SCS), including railway systems. This emergent aspect exacerbates their development process and requires a thorough reasoning to reduce hazards. This thesis proposes an ontological approach that integrates safety activities from the early design stages of SCS. This structured framework provides a semantic harmonization between the involved domains, such as safety engineering and Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE). The business logic integrated in this approach is validated by real rail accident scenarios and a remotely operated task. At first, we proposed a dysfunctional analysis ontology called DAO and based on the high-level ontology UFO. DAO considers the socio-technical and environmental aspects of SCS and integrates the different types of faults and cognitive properties that are respectively related to technical failures and human errors. The DAO conceptual model is expressed in OntoUML and formalized in OWL language in order to provide a reasoning support. Then, a semantic bridge is established between safety measures, safety goals and safety requirements through the development of a goal-oriented security management ontology, called GOSMO. The management of safety decisions is based on the reinterpretation of the Or-Bac access control model from a safety point of view. In order to ensure the overall consistency of requirements, GOSMO allows structuring the management of requirements changes and their traceability

<p>Denna uppsats handlar om människor som tror på existensen av utomjordiskt liv och påstår att det har skett möten och kontakter mellan människor och livsformer från andra planeter. Mitt syfte har varit att undersöka närmare vad tron på utomjordiskt liv kan innebära och om det finns religiösa inslag i detta och om detta gestaltar sig som en religion eller livsåskådning. Jag har studerat materialet utifrån ett religionsvetenskapligt perspektiv och sökt efter att åskådliggöra om den sortens övertygelse bildar grunden för en livsåskådning eller religion och vad det kan innebära. Vad har dessa människor, vars idéer och tro jag studerat i denna uppsats, för åsikter?</p><p>I min uppsats har jag arbetat utifrån Ulf Sjödins tolkning av Jeffners definition av begreppet livsåskådning och Helmer Ringgrens religionsdefinition. Den frågeställning jag utgått ifrån är om tron på utomjordiska existenser är en livsåskådning eller religion och i sådana fall på vilket sätt och i vilken utsträckning den yttrar sig. Det är vad min uppsats kommer att försöka belysa och besvara utifrån den möjlighet och tid jag haft tillgodo för arbetet.</p>

In this essay, I examine the ways in which new myths were made of Barack Obama in the months leading up to, and immediately following, the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election at three sites of cultural production: a UFO-based religious movement historically grounded in the black Israelite religious tradition, TIME magazine’s 2008 “Person of the Year” edition, and Sean Hannity’s “The Real Barack Obama” airing on the FOX News network. I argue that, while the content of these three Obama-myths varies considerable, the ways in which these myths are constructed, and function, are in fact rather similar.