The thesis examines the social memory of Soviet period in Ukraine on the national and regional levels drawing on the conceptual framework of social memory as shared, normative and formative knowledge of the past, subject to contentious interpretations of various groups and reflecting the power structure of the society. The analysis of the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repressions in Ukraine, the law on the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainian nation, and the decommunization laws shows that on the official level Ukraine moved from an ambivalent attitude towards the Soviet legacy, in which Stalinism was repudiated, to the condemnation of Soviet power as a whole. On the regional level, the study reveals the divisive memory of the Soviet past. The analysis of the activities of the Memorial Society, of monuments to the prisoners executed in Lviv by retreating Soviets in June of 1941, of the Museum-Prison on Lontsky street and other museums and monuments shows that in Lviv, as in the Baltic States, the Soviet power is viewed as an alien regime, imposed on freedom-loving Ukrainians by Soviet Russia tyranny. On the opposite side of Lviv is Donetsk. The analysis of the memorial landscape of the city shows that the Donbas memory of the 1930s, as in Soviet times and in Russia, is based on an official forgetting of the repressions. The general assessment of the Soviet past is positive is incorporated into the collective identity of Donetsk as its integral part. After the Euromaidan events of late 2013-early 2014 the opposite memories of the Soviet past became even more apparent. Soviet past in Ukraine is a complex historical period. Examples of post-second world war Western Europe shows that a society, which wants to rebuild itself after a traumatic, divisive past, has to work through this past critically and honestly through an extremely difficult, but necessary open public debate. Only free exchange of opinions, where diversity of perspectives and interpretations of the Soviet experience would be heard, will allow Ukrainian society to grasp the complexity of the Soviet past and to build an inclusive, pluralist democracy.

abstract: This study contributes to the literature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by offering rhetorical and discourse analysis of political graffiti on a wall built by Israel in Palestine. The analysis attempts to answer the urgent questions of why, who, when, how and for whom these graffiti exist. The data collected for the analysis consists of personal photos of graffiti taken randomly in 2010 and 2013 in Bethlehem, on the Palestinian side of the massive wall. Several theories in rhetoric and discourse analysis were consulted to perform the technical rhetorical and linguistic analyses of the graffiti utterances, images, and messages in selected photos of the graffiti. Social, physical, psychological and political factors that affect communication between the wall graffitists and their readers is discussed to assist in the interpretation of the messages of these graffiti from a Palestinian perspective. The findings of this qualitative study show that graffiti on such a high profile site are not typical of violent gang graffiti as commonly interpreted in the US, but rather contribute a universal interactive rhetorical mode employed by local and international graffitists to show their solidarity and demands for basic human rights for a misrepresented culture. Moreover, the wall graffiti function as evidence that graffiti has evolved into a formal performing art that can be found in respected art galleries. The wall graffiti create a dialogue between uncoordinated actors who come from different orientations to produce an array of positions not usually present in corporate media outlets. The analysis of the wall shows that these graffiti promote deep cultural and historical understanding, as well as break down boundaries and stereotypes. The collective threefold result of the analysis is the following: First, graffiti on the wall have a collective universal motive; second, the graffiti give voice to the voiceless; and third, the graffiti can prompt a sociopolitical change that can lead to a long overdue peaceful resolution to the conflict. Keywords: Political rhetoric, discourse analysis, Burke, Halliday, Banksy, political graffiti, street art, Arab graffiti, rhetorical and linguistic patterns, dramatistic, identification, universality, Palestine divisive wall, intertextuality / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

In 2020 our academic library, located in East Tennessee, created a student-focused book club designed to spark discussions around the concepts of race, gender, sexuality, social justice, and the systemic oppression of disenfranchised groups. Now in its seventh semester, our Diverse Characters Book Club has gained in popularity. However, while our book club is garnering more campus visibility and more administrative support, our state has passed, and continues to introduce legislation, that makes it increasingly difficult to teach about racism, homophobia, and sexism in public higher education institutions. We feel now is more important than ever to continue this discourse. Our book club provides a safe space for students to discuss these issues with the learning outcomes of recognizing racism, injustice, privilege, and the way these issues affect all our lives. Are you an academic librarian working in a state with laws against teaching divisive concepts? Are you worried you will no longer have the freedom to discuss diversity and inclusion with students? Join academic librarians from a university in Tennessee, who created a Diverse Characters Book Club to keep these conversations alive. You will leave this session with ideas on how create your own DEI book club, how to navigate divisive concepts laws, and how to continue the important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion even, and especially, in an atmosphere of censorship.

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the relation between corporate governance and firm performance. The theme of this study is that the widely documented long-term underperformance in equity carve-outs can be partly explained by weak corporate governance. The first essay presented in Chapter 2 explores the effect of shareholder-rights protection on the performance of a sample of firms that initiated a carve-out during the period 1983-2004. Using the Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick (2003) index and Bebchuk, Cohen, and Ferrell (2004) entrenchment index, as proxies for the quality of shareholder-rights protection, I provide evidence that firms with better shareholder rights protection outperform those with weaker rights protection. Results indicate that the weaker the rights protection, the greater the degree of underperformance. Overall, the results are robust to measures of firm performance and to model specification. The second essay presented in Chapter 3 examines the relation between firm performance and board structure. In particular, I study how board size, board independence, and CEO duality influence firm performance. I find that board size for non-financial firms is negatively related to firm performance but positively associated with performance for financial firms. Board independence is positively related to firm performance and CEO duality is negatively associated with performance for both financial and non-financial firms. These results are robust to various measures of firm performance. The conflicting evidence on board size, between financials and non-financials, seems to suggest that the scope and complexity of a firm.s operations drives board size. The third essay presented in Chapter 4 investigates corporate ownership and firm performance. I focus on insider ownership, outside blockholder ownership, and ownership concentration. Results show that insider ownership is negatively related to firm performance even at low levels of insider ownership levels. It is plausible that the combination of parent ownership and management ownership in the subsidiary exacerbate the entrenchment effect thus overwhelming the incentive alignment effects that theory posits. I document a positive relation between outside blockholder ownership and firm performance. And finally, I show that the level of ownership concentration increases (decreases) in anticipation of positive (negative) changes in firm performance.

Normalization is important for a large range of phenomena in biological neural systems such as light adaptation in the retina, context dependent decision making and probabilistic inference. In a normalizing circuit the activity of one neuron/-group of neurons is divisively rescaled in relation to the activity of other neurons/­­groups. This creates neural responses invariant to certain stimulus dimensions and dynamically adapts the range over which a neural system can respond discriminatively on stimuli. This thesis examines whether a biologically realistic normalizing circuit can be implemented by a spiking neural network model based on the columnar structure found in cortex. This was done by constructing and evaluating a highly structured spiking neural network model, modelling layer 2/3 of a cortical hypercolumn using a group of neurons as the basic computational unit. The results show that the structure of this hypercolumn module does not per se create a normalizing network. For most model versions the modulatory effect is better described as subtractive inhibition. However three mechanisms that shift the modulatory effect towards normalization were found: An increase in membrane variance for increased modulatory inputs; variability in neuron excitability and connections; and short-term depression on the driving synapses. Moreover it is shown that by combining those mechanisms it is possible to create a spiking neural network that implements approximate normalization over at least ten times increase in input magnitude. These results point towards possible normalizing mechanisms in a cortical hypercolumn; however more studies are needed to assess whether any of those could in fact be a viable explanation for normalization in the biological nervous system. / Normalisering är viktigt för en lång rad fenomen i biologiska nervsystem såsom näthinnans ljusanpassning, kontextberoende beslutsfattande och probabilistisk inferens. I en normaliserande krets skalas aktiviteten hos en nervcell/grupp av nervceller om i relation till aktiviteten hos andra nervceller/grupper. Detta ger neurala svar som är invarianta i förhållande till vissa dimensioner hos stimuli, och anpassar dynamiskt för vilka inputmagnituder ett system kan särskilja mellan stimuli. Den här uppsatsen undersöker huruvida en biologiskt realistisk normal­iserande krets kan implementeras av ett spikande neuronnätverk konstruerat med utgångspunkt från kolumnstrukturen i kortex. Detta gjordes genom att konstruera och utvärdera ett hårt strukturerat rekurrent spikande neuronnätverk, som modellerar lager 2/3 av en kortikal hyperkolumn med en grupp av neuroner som grundläggande beräkningsenhet. Resultaten visar att strukturen i hyperkolumn­modulen inte i sig skapar ett normaliserande nätverk. För de flesta nätverks­versioner implementerar nätverket en modulerande effekt som bättre beskrivs som subtraktiv inhibition. Dock hittades tre mekanismer som skapar ett mer normaliserande nätverk: Ökad membranvarians för större modulerande inputs; variabilitet i excitabilitet och inkommande kopplingar; och korttidsdepression på drivande synapser. Det visas också att genom att kombinera dessa mekanismer är det möjligt att skapa ett spikande neuronnät som approximerar normalisering över ett en åtminstone tio gångers ökning av storleken på input. Detta pekar på möjliga normaliserande mekanismer i en kortikal hyperkolumn, men ytterligare studier är nödvändiga för att avgöra om en eller flera av dessa kan vara en förklaring till hur normalisering är implementerat i biologiska nervsystem.

Les quinze dernières années ont été marquées par une croissance exponentielle du domaine du Web tant dans le nombre de sites Web disponibles que dans le nombre d'utilisateurs de ces sites. Cette croissance a généré de très grandes masses de données relatives aux traces d'usage duWeb par les internautes, celles-ci enregistrées dans des fichiers logs Web. De plus, les propriétaires de ces sites ont exprimé le besoin de mieux comprendre leurs visiteurs afin de mieux répondre à leurs attentes. Le Web Usage Mining (WUM), domaine de recherche assez récent, correspond justement au processus d'extraction des connaissances à partir des données (ECD) appliqué aux données d'usage sur le Web. Il comporte trois étapes principales : le prétraitement des données, la découverte des schémas et l'analyse (ou l'interprétation) des résultats. Un processus WUM extrait des patrons de comportement à partir des données d'usage et, éventuellement, à partir d'informations sur le site (structure et contenu) et sur les utilisateurs du site (profils). La quantité des données d'usage à analyser ainsi que leur faible qualité (en particulier l'absence de structuration) sont les principaux problèmes en WUM. Les algorithmes classiques de fouille de données appliqués sur ces données donnent généralement des résultats décevants en termes de pratiques des internautes (par exemple des patrons séquentiels évidents, dénués d'intérêt). Dans cette thèse, nous apportons deux contributions importantes pour un processus WUM, implémentées dans notre bo^³te à outils AxisLogMiner. Nous proposons une méthodologie générale de prétraitement des logs Web et une méthodologie générale divisive avec trois approches (ainsi que des méthodes concrètes associées) pour la découverte des motifs séquentiels ayant un faible support. Notre première contribution concerne le prétraitement des données d'usage Web, domaine encore très peu abordé dans la littérature. L'originalité de la méthodologie de prétraitement proposée consiste dans le fait qu'elle prend en compte l'aspect multi-sites du WUM, indispensable pour appréhender les pratiques des internautes qui naviguent de fa»con transparente, par exemple, sur plusieurs sites Web d'une même organisation. Outre l'intégration des principaux travaux existants sur ce thème, nous proposons dans notre méthodologie quatre étapes distinctes : la fusion des fichiers logs, le nettoyage, la structuration et l'agrégation des données. En particulier, nous proposons plusieurs heuristiques pour le nettoyage des robots Web, des variables agrégées décrivant les sessions et les visites, ainsi que l'enregistrement de ces données dans un modèle relationnel. Plusieurs expérimentations ont été réalisées, montrant que notre méthodologie permet une forte réduction (jusqu'à 10 fois) du nombre des requêtes initiales et offre des logs structurés plus riches pour l'étape suivante de fouille de données. Notre deuxième contribution vise la découverte à partir d'un fichier log prétraité de grande taille, des comportements minoritaires correspondant à des motifs séquentiels de très faible support. Pour cela, nous proposons une méthodologie générale visant à diviser le fichier log prétraité en sous-logs, se déclinant selon trois approches d'extraction de motifs séquentiels au support faible (Séquentielle, Itérative et Hiérarchique). Celles-ci ont été implémentées dans des méthodes concrètes hybrides mettant en jeu des algorithmes de classification et d'extraction de motifs séquentiels. Plusieurs expérimentations, réalisées sur des logs issus de sites académiques, nous ont permis de découvrir des motifs séquentiels intéressants ayant un support très faible, dont la découverte par un algorithme classique de type Apriori était impossible. Enfin, nous proposons une boite à outils appelée AxisLogMiner, qui supporte notre méthodologie de prétraitement et, actuellement, deux méthodes concrètes hybrides pour la découverte des motifs séquentiels en WUM. Cette boite à outils a donné lieu à de nombreux prétraitements de fichiers logs et aussi à des expérimentations avec nos méthodes implémentées.