This thesis interprets John Dewey’s theory of the moral life in the global context in order to shed a light on major ethical challenges of the process of globalization. Dewey’s perspective provides an explanation of (1) formation of the individual commitments to particular sets of values,(2) justification of the responsibilities to the distanced peoples as opposed to the responsibilities to the nearest and dearest peoples and (3)the meaning of democratic social arrangements on the global scale. In order to find a theoretical basis for justification of democracy in the globalizing world, the thesis reviews Dewey’s educational philosophy. His inquiry in the underlying ideas of public education reveals its core democratic meaning which points out the necessity of progressive democratic character education. This thesis suggests that in the current global context the existing educational bodies (such as UNDP and UNESCO) are insufficient in providing such a humanistic education which would actualize democracy as interdependence of all humans within civilization. In order to establish a just social order which would be responsive to every human being within civilization there is the need to maintain a democratic mode of associated living on the global scale where every human partakes in the accumulation of knowledge of civilization and benefits from it in return. Relying on Dewey's theoretical basis the thesis suggests the criteria which the global educational institution should fulfil in order to maintain democracy as a mode of associated living in the global society.

Flat plate systems are constructed with slabs directly supported on columns. Since there are no beams in the system, the behavior of connections between the slabs and columns play a crucial role. Due to the sudden and brittle nature of punching shear failures, slab-column connection design must be conducted with proper safety precautions. The first part of this study aims to evaluate the safety level of different design expressions in the codes. Fir this purpose, the ability of ACI 318-11, TS-500 and Eurocode-2 to estimate punching shear strength was examined in light of experimental results compiled from previous research. Interior and exterior connections were examined in the course of the study. In the second part of the study, beam and shell models were calibrated to simulate the load-deformation response of interior slab-column connections in light of experimental results. In the final part of this thesis, a typical floor plan of a flat plate system was analyzed to investigate the possibility of a progressivefailure mechanism after punching failure takes place at a slab-column connection. Minimum post-punching capacity required to avoid progressive punching failure in a floor was estimated. It is believed that, the results of this study can be helpful in guiding engineers in understanding the safety inherent in punching shear design expressions and to take necessary precautions against progressive collapse.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate buckling, post-buckling behaviors and failure characteristics of composite laminated plates under compressive loading with the help of finite element method and experiments. In the finite element analyses, eigen value extraction method is used to determine the critical buckling loads and nonlinear Riks and Newton-Raphson methods are employed to obtain post-buckling behaviors and failure loads. The effects of geometric imperfection amplitude on buckling and post-buckling are discussed. Buckling load, post buckling loaddisplacement relations, out of plane displacements and end shortening of the plates are determined numerically. Furthermore, the numerical results are compared with experimental findings for two different laminates made of woven fabric and unidirectional tapes where buckling, post-buckling behavior and structural failure of laminated plates were determined. The comparisons show that there is a good agreement between numerical and experimental results obtained for buckling load and post-buckling range. However, 15 % - 22 % differences are predicted between the experimental and numerical results for failure of laminates made of woven fabric whereas the laminates with uni-directional tapes show good agreement.

This thesis introduces the idea of progressive autonomy, namely future-oriented self-governance, based on the pursuit of desired goals that one has established for oneself. As the thesis shows, focus on this sort of activity, as well as its value and importance, has been largely left out of the existing literature on autonomy. In contrast, this activity is central to progressive autonomy, which, as this thesis puts forth, enables the individual to actively determine the course of his life. Throughout the process, the individual is author of his own narrative, which, as the ongoing fulfillment of desired goals, he experiences as both meaningful and worthwhile. The thesis does not frame the narrative of the progressively autonomous individual as merely a story or an account of events. Rather, it does so as a sequence events the progressively autonomous individual is directly responsible for bringing about, as well as concretely situated in. He is, in other words, part and parcel of his narrative, as opposed to, say, a novelist who physically stands apart from the events he imagines and writes. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that, though the progressively autonomous individual is motivated by his own desires, he is more than just a pleasure seeker; he is strategically morally responsible. Such responsibility involves and is characterized by rejecting certain motives that undermine the actual achievement of desired goals, while affirming other motives that facilitate this achievement. This, as the thesis shows, renders the progressively autonomous individual more responsible than one who partakes in this rejection or affirmation, without regard to how either will impact one’s future.

Rationale: Amphetamine abuse by adolescents predicts long-term drug dependence. Heightened vulnerability to drug abuse could be due to higher sensitivity to drug’s reinforcing effects. Rodents are used to study age-related sensitivities to drugs. Objective: We compared intravenous amphetamine self-administration between adolescent and adult male rats on an operant schedule of reinforcement measuring the reinforcing efficacy of a drug. Methods: After surgery, adolescent and adult rats acquired lever-pressing behavior reinforced by amphetamine infusions. Results: Both age groups exhibited more infusions per session as dose increased. However, neither the number of infusions per session nor total amphetamine intake differed across age groups. Conclusion: Although rapid transition is reliable to test reinforcing properties of stimulants, results suggest that amphetamine is an equally efficacious reinforcer among both age groups. In regards to humans, these results suggest that other factors, like social influences, explain higher rates of drug intake by adolescent compared with adult humans.

ABSTRACT Dr. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), the leading American figure in industrial medicine during the early to mid-1900s, left behind a body of rhetoric that is important in the history of American feminist discourse and American public address. Her discourse is the exemplary of feminist-pragmatist rhetoric, a genre of cross-gender communication developed by New Women associated with Hull House and the University of Chicago between 1892 and 1918. Hamilton’s rhetoric illuminates a key event in the history of the American rhetorical tradition—the emergence of the modern woman from her late-Victorian beginnings through her Progressive self-transformation. This study is approached as a rhetorical biography. It tracks Hamilton’s evolution from “reticent scientist” to outspoken feminist-pragmatist by examining family, educational, peer and social influences on her development; and through critical analysis of her speeches, technical writing, books, and popular and specialty magazine articles over a 36-year period, from 1907 to 1943.

This thesis introduces the idea of progressive autonomy, namely future-oriented self-governance, based on the pursuit of desired goals that one has established for oneself. As the thesis shows, focus on this sort of activity, as well as its value and importance, has been largely left out of the existing literature on autonomy. In contrast, this activity is central to progressive autonomy, which, as this thesis puts forth, enables the individual to actively determine the course of his life. Throughout the process, the individual is author of his own narrative, which, as the ongoing fulfillment of desired goals, he experiences as both meaningful and worthwhile. The thesis does not frame the narrative of the progressively autonomous individual as merely a story or an account of events. Rather, it does so as a sequence events the progressively autonomous individual is directly responsible for bringing about, as well as concretely situated in. He is, in other words, part and parcel of his narrative, as opposed to, say, a novelist who physically stands apart from the events he imagines and writes. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that, though the progressively autonomous individual is motivated by his own desires, he is more than just a pleasure seeker; he is strategically morally responsible. Such responsibility involves and is characterized by rejecting certain motives that undermine the actual achievement of desired goals, while affirming other motives that facilitate this achievement. This, as the thesis shows, renders the progressively autonomous individual more responsible than one who partakes in this rejection or affirmation, without regard to how either will impact one’s future.

Lossless image compression has many applications, for example, in medical imaging, space photograph and film industry. In this thesis, we propose an efficient lossless image compression scheme for both binary images and gray-scale images. The scheme first decomposes images into a set of progressively refined binary sequences and then uses the context-based, adaptive arithmetic coding algorithm to encode these sequences. In order to deal with the context dilution problem in arithmetic coding, we propose a Lloyd-like iterative algorithm to quantize contexts. Fixing the set of input contexts and the number of quantized contexts, our context quantization algorithm iteratively finds the optimum context mapping in the sense of minimizing the compression rate. Experimental results show that by combining image decomposition and context quantization, our scheme can achieve competitive lossless compression performance compared to the JBIG algorithm for binary images, and the CALIC algorithm for gray-scale images. In contrast to CALIC, our scheme provides the additional feature of allowing progressive transmission of gray-scale images, which is very appealing in applications such as web browsing.

This dissertation describes the introduction and development of school journeys within the Swedish elementary schools during the period 1890 to 1940. The study focuses on how the jour­neys were perceived, organised and performed by elementary school teachers and their pupils. The development of school journeys is mainly due to two different organisations: The Elemen­tary School Teachers of Sweden (Sveriges allmänna folkskollärarförening, SAF) and the Swe­dish Tourist Association (Svenska Turistföreningen, STF). The latter started to support school journeys performed by elementary schools in 1898, by allowing teachers to apply for economic benefits. SAF, on the other hand, helped the development of journeys through the production of guidelines. They also appointed a special School Journey Committee 1899 that were to pro­mote school journeys, and they introduced special youth hostels for travelling school-classes in about 50 cities in Sweden during 1897-1930. School journeys were introduced in Sweden in 1894. The term was used to describe longer journeys taken by school children under the direction of teachers. Its intention was to give the pupil direct experience of the work that had been done in the classroom. The subjects that were dealt with in school, geography, history and nature studies, were thus objectified during the journey. Children were to see and experience such things that hitherto had been nothing but names. In this dissertation the different purposes of the journeys are discussed and it is argued that the journeys became a mean to translate into practise some of the progressive educational prin­ciples that Swedish progressive educators discussed at the end of the nineteenth century. These principles included that education should be based on direct observation, that it should pro­mote self-activity and that it should give the pupils a sense of the national community and shape their national identity. The study consists of three parts. The first part deals with the origin of school journeys and the educational principle of direct observation. The second part presents the ways the notion of school journeys were translated into practise. The third part discusses the image of Sweden that was presented to the children, through the journeys. / digitalisering@umu

Abstract Background: The Gluteus Medius (GM) muscle has an important role in stabilizing the pelvis and controlling the knees during athletic activities. Weakness in the GM can affect performance negatively and increase the risk of lower extremity (LE) injuries. During functional activities different parts of the muscle becomes activated depending on the degree of hip flexion. However, many GM strength exercises only train the GM in one fixed degree of hip flexion. Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a new training device designed to increase the muscle activation of the GM during progressive hip flexion in squats. Methods: The new device was developed to offer resistance training against hip abduction during squats. To be able to validate the new device in activating the GM, 32 female athletes (mean age 20 ± 3) with various athletic backgrounds was included in the study. All subjects performed squats on and off the device while surface electromyographical (SEMG) activity was recorded from GM on both sides of the body. Results: All test subjects were able to perform the squat and to activate the GM. When the squats were performed on the new device the muscle activation in GM was significantly higher compared to bodyweight squats (Z=-4.9, p < 0.001). Correlation tests between a complete sequence of five squats and one selected repetition revealed that activation was consistent throughout the exercise, (right GM: rs = 0.93, p < 0.001, left GM: rp = 0.92, p < 0.001) . No differences in activation were found between the right and left GM when squatting on the device. Conclusion: This study showed that the newly developed training device increased the muscle activity in GM during squats. Moreover, the results showed that squatting on the device activates the left and right side of the body equally and that the GM was activated during the whole exercise, under ongoing hip flexion. This information could be used to develop new training methods with the aim to improve stabilization of the pelvis and lower extremities during functional activities. / Sammanfattning Bakgrund: Gluteus medius (GM) fyller en viktig funktion vid idrottsliga aktiviteter genom att den stabiliserar bäckenet och kontrollerar knäna. Svaghet i GM kan påverka prestationen negativt samt öka risken för skador i de lägre extremiteterna (LE). Vid funktionella aktiviteter aktiveras olika delar av GM beroende på graden av höftflexion. Många styrkeövningar för GM tränar emellertid muskeln i endast en fixerad grad av höft flexion. Syfte: Syftet med den här studien har varit att utveckla samt validera ett nytt träningsredskap, designat för att optimera muskelaktiveringen av GM under höftflexion. Metod: Träningsredskapet utvecklades för att erbjuda motstånd mot abduktion vid knäböj. För att validera redskapets förmåga att aktivera GM inkluderades 32 kvinnliga idrottare (medelålder, 20 ± 3 år) med varierande idrottslig bakgrund. Alla försökspersoner utförde knäböjningar med och utan träningsredskapet samtidigt som elektromyografisk aktivitet mättes i höger och vänster GM. Resultat: Alla försökspersoner kunde utföra knäböjningar och lyckades aktivera GM. Knäböjningar som utfördes på träningsredskapet resulterade i signifikant högre aktivering av GM jämfört med knäböjningar utan redskapet (Z=-4.9, p < 0.001). Korrelations test mellan kompletta sekvenser om fem repetitioner och enstaka repetitioner visade att aktiveringen var konstant under hela övningen, (höger GM: rs = 0.93, p < 0.001, vänster GM: rp = 0.92, p < 0.001). Inga skillnader i aktivering hittades mellan höger och vänster GM vid knäböjningar på redskapet. Slutsats: Studien visade att det utvecklade träningsredskapet ökade aktiveringen av GM vid knäböjningar. Resultaten visade också att denna aktivitet var jämnt fördelad mellan höger och vänster GM samt att aktiveringen var konstant under hela övningen. Resultaten i denna studien kan användas för att utveckla nya träningsmetoder med syfte att förbättra stabiliseringen av bäckenet och de lägre extremiteterna vid funktionella aktiviteter.