Intercultural Learning and Hybridity in the Culture Laboratory

The number of immigrant students in vocational education and training is steadily increasing in Finland. This poses challenges for teachers and schools. This research focuses on emerging questions of intercultural learning in the context of immigrant training, and on a method the Culture Laboratory that was developed in an attempt to respond to the challenges. The main methodological and theoretical framework lies in cultural-historical activity theory, developmental work research, and in the concepts of the intercultural and hybridity. The empirical material consists of videotaped recordings of discussions in the Culture Laboratory. The five main research questions focused on the strengths and limitations of the Culture Laboratory as a tool for intercultural learning, the significance of disturbances in it, the potential of suggestions for intercultural learning, paper as a mediating artifact , and the concept of intercultural space. The findings showed that the Culture Laboratory offered a solid background for developing intercultural learning. The disturbances manifested revealed a multitude of scripts and activities. It was also suggested that the structure of expansive learning could start from externalization instead of internalization. The suggestions the participants made opened up a hybrid learning space for intercultural development, and offered a good springboard for new ideas. Learning in Paperland posed both challenges and opportunities for immigrant students, and different paper trails emerged. Intercultural space in the Culture Laboratory was a developmental zone in which a hybrid process of observing, comparing, and creating took place. Key words: intercultural learning, immigrant training, cultural-historical activity theory, developmental work research,

Grammar and disciplinary culture : a corpus-based study

The present study provides a usage-based account of how three grammatical structures, declarative content clauses, interrogative content clause and as-predicative constructions, are used in academic research articles. These structures may be used in both knowledge claims and citations, and they often express evaluative meanings. Using the methodology of quantitative corpus linguistics, I investigate how the culture of the academic discipline influences the way in which these constructions are used in research articles. The study compares the rates of occurrence of these grammatical structures and investigates their co-occurrence patterns in articles representing four different disciplines (medicine, physics, law, and literary criticism). The analysis is based on a purpose-built 2-million-word corpus, which has been part-of-speech tagged. The analysis demonstrates that the use of these grammatical structures varies between disciplines, and further shows that the differences observed in the corpus data are linked with differences in the nature of knowledge and the patterns of enquiry. The constructions in focus tend to be more frequently used in the soft disciplines, law and literary criticism, where their co-occurrence patterns are also more varied. This reflects both the greater variety of topics discussed in these disciplines, and the higher frequency of references to statements made by other researchers. Knowledge-building in the soft fields normally requires a careful contextualisation of the arguments, giving rise to statements reporting earlier research employing the constructions in focus. In contrast, knowledgebuilding in the hard fields is typically a cumulative process, based on agreed-upon methods of analysis. This characteristic is reflected in the structure and contents of research reports, which offer fewer opportunities for using these constructions.

Literaturnaja skazka A.M. Remizova (1900-1920-e gody)

Literary tale of A.M. Remizov (1900’s – 1920’s) The thesis is devoted to a detailed historical-literary description of a tale as a genre tradition in the creative work of Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov (1877-1957), one of the major Russian prose writers of the 20’s century. This very approach allows to specify the place and functional meaning of this genre in literary practice of the writer and to appeal to one of the key problems of the 20-21 century literature history – a specific of modernistic literature composition principle and a role of montage techniques in its formation. Remizov was working on tales during his whole life, though the most productive years of folklore studies fell to 1900’s – 1910’s. During this period he intensively studied folklore materials, narrated several hundreds of folk tales and in 1900’s – 1920’s published eight tale collections which played a significant role in the formation of stylistic and compositional principles of his prose of the 1910’s – 1920’s, especially montage techniques, which in its turn influenced the development of the narrative forms in the Russian post-revolutionary literature. At the same time a tale has specified not only poetics but also problematics of Remizov’s creative work, as when choosing folklore sources the writer always alluded to modern themes and relevant intellectual trends. The current research work, based on various archive materials and a wide spectrum of modern historical-literary data, complies four chapters with a consistent description of creation history, publication and critics’ reviews of Remizov’s tale collections and single tales contributing to his creative evolution characteristic. Furthermore, the work refers to composition and subject of the particular collections. On the whole it enables to follow up genre dynamics. The first chapter of the work is devoted to Posolon’ (Sunwise), the earliest tale collection of Remizov. The main feature of the collection is that its composition is oriented on the agrarian calendar and the subject – on the system of mythological views reflected in the Russian folklore. This very collection to a large extent corresponds to the writer’s views on the myth represented in Pis’mo v redaktsiyu (Letter to the Editor). The history of this manifesto appearing is analyzed in the second chapter. The incident which caused its forthcoming contributed to ‘legitimization’ of Remizov’s narrations as a relevant genre of modern literature and to upgrading the writer in professional hierarchy. The third chapter analyzes Remizov’s collections of 1900’s – early 1920’s, a result of Remizov’s scrupulous work with a specific tale material. He is acting here as a tale repertory researcher and in some cases as a collector as well. The means of such collections’ topical organization is not the myth but the hero of the tale. According to this principle single pieces are grouped into cycles, which then form complicated montage constructs. Texts themselves can be viewed as a sort of hyper-quotations, as they in fact entirely coincide with their original sources. Besides, collections usually have their own ideal patterns. In the fourth chapter a connection of Remizov’s creative work with folk fun culture and a tradition of the folklore noel story is being demonstrated on Zavetnyie skazy (Secret Tales) material. A consistent collections’ history creation analysis convinces us that the tale was a sort of laboratory in which main writer’s prose methods were being worked out.

Playing "Nordic": The Women of Niskavuori, Agri/Culture, and Imagining Finland on the Third Reich Stage

The theatrical censorship of the Third Reich considered the playwright's race and politics alongside the content of the drama. Given the political stigma of its "leftist" author, it is rather surprising that Hella Wuolijoki's Niskavuoren naiset opened in 1938 at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. The play ran for fourteen performances before being closed by the Reichsdramaturgie, apparently at the instigation of Finnish critics. Yet this was not the end of the play's or its author's fortunes in the Third Reich, as the possibility of staging the play was raised several times over the next four years, coming to a close in 1942. Playing "Nordic" examines the ideological and theatrical background of this extended "cultural performance," as a means to reopening and reconstructing the work of the 1938 Die Frauen auf Niskavuori. Written by a Finnish, northern, "Nordic" author, and preoccupied with the dynamics of rural culture in an increasingly urbanized world, Niskavuoren naiset was understood in the Third Reich to illustrate and reinforce the racial, agri/cultural themes of Blut und Boden ("veri ja maa"). Playing "Nordic" examines this thematic relationship in three phases. The first phase uses archival materials to investigate the Reichsdramaturgie's understanding of the play and its author, and its ongoing discussion of Wuolijoki from 1937 to 1942. Play evaluator Sigmund Graff's description of Niskavuoren naiset as hamsunartig, or "Hamsun-esque," inspires the second phase of the dissertation, which first elaborates the meanings of Blut und Boden through a reading of contemporary "racial" theory and anthropology, and then assesses the representation of Finland within this discourse, one of the dominant cultural paradigms of the Third Reich. Imaging Finland for German audiences, the play stood among analogous, continued efforts to represent Finland and the rural life in the Third Reich, colored by Blut und Boden: art and agricultural exhibitions, essays and propaganda literature, mass demonstrations of the peasantry. This wider framework for the performance of "Finland" materializes the abstract or theoretical program of Blut und Boden in its everyday performed meanings; as such it provides the essential background for reading the Hamburg production of Die Frauen auf Niskavuori, which sustains the third and final phase. The German translation and the Hamburg photographic record are compared with the Helsinki premiere to assess the impact of Blut und Boden on the representation of Wuolijoki's play in the Third Reich. The journalistic critical response illuminates the effect that the dramatic complex of rural and racial values - generically identified as Bauerndrama in the Third Reich - had on the reception of the play; at the same time, both visual and critical documents also suggest possible moments of theatrical dissent in the Hamburg production. Playing "Nordic" undertakes a documentary and cultural reading of the changing theatrical meanings of Wuolijoki's Niskavuoren naiset as it crossed the frontier from Finland to the stage of the Third Reich. It also provides a model for the ways theatrical signification operates within a network of cultural and ideological meanings, suggesting the ideological work of theatrical production depends on, reinforces, and contests that tissue of values. Although Finnish criticism of Niskavuoren naiset has assumed the play's Blut und Boden resonance contributed to Wuolijoki's success in the Third Reich, this study shows a considerably more complex situation. This revealing production dramatizes the changing uses of plays in a politicized national and transnational context. As part of the framing of "Nordic" identity on the wider stage of the Third Reich, Die Frauen auf Niskavuori exemplifies the conjunction of concurrent - sometimes independent, sometimes interlocking - "racial" and national ideologies.

Cortical processing of musical pitch as reflected by behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

In a musical context, the pitch of sounds is encoded according to domain-general principles not confined to music or even to audition overall but common to other perceptual and cognitive processes (such as multiple pattern encoding and feature integration), and to domain-specific and culture-specific properties related to a particular musical system only (such as the pitch steps of the Western tonal system). The studies included in this thesis shed light on the processing stages during which pitch encoding occurs on the basis of both domain-general and music-specific properties, and elucidate the putative brain mechanisms underlying pitch-related music perception. Study I showed, in subjects without formal musical education, that the pitch and timbre of multiple sounds are integrated as unified object representations in sensory memory before attentional intervention. Similarly, multiple pattern pitches are simultaneously maintained in non-musicians' sensory memory (Study II). These findings demonstrate the degree of sophistication of pitch processing at the sensory memory stage, requiring neither attention nor any special expertise of the subjects. Furthermore, music- and culture-specific properties, such as the pitch steps of the equal-tempered musical scale, are automatically discriminated in sensory memory even by subjects without formal musical education (Studies III and IV). The cognitive processing of pitch according to culture-specific musical-scale schemata hence occurs as early as at the sensory-memory stage of pitch analysis. Exposure and cortical plasticity seem to be involved in musical pitch encoding. For instance, after only one hour of laboratory training, the neural representations of pitch in the auditory cortex are altered (Study V). However, faulty brain mechanisms for attentive processing of fine-grained pitch steps lead to inborn deficits in music perception and recognition such as those encountered in congenital amusia (Study VI). These findings suggest that predispositions for exact pitch-step discrimination together with long-term exposure to music govern the acquisition of the automatized schematic knowledge of the music of a particular culture that even non-musicians possess.

Assessing organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems : Methodological evidence from studies in nuclear power plant maintenance organizations

Failures in industrial organizations dealing with hazardous technologies can have widespread consequences for the safety of the workers and the general population. Psychology can have a major role in contributing to the safe and reliable operation of these technologies. Most current models of safety management in complex sociotechnical systems such as nuclear power plant maintenance are either non-contextual or based on an overly-rational image of an organization. Thus, they fail to grasp either the actual requirements of the work or the socially-constructed nature of the work in question. The general aim of the present study is to develop and test a methodology for contextual assessment of organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. This is done by demonstrating the findings that the application of the emerging methodology produces in the domain of maintenance of a nuclear power plant (NPP). The concepts of organizational culture and organizational core task (OCT) are operationalized and tested in the case studies. We argue that when the complexity of the work, technology and social environment is increased, the significance of the most implicit features of organizational culture as a means of coordinating the work and achieving safety and effectiveness of the activities also increases. For this reason a cultural perspective could provide additional insight into the problem of safety management. The present study aims to determine; (1) the elements of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems; (2) the demands the maintenance task sets for the organizational culture; (3) how the current organizational culture at the case organizations supports the perception and fulfilment of the demands of the maintenance work; (4) the similarities and differences between the maintenance cultures at the case organizations, and (5) the necessary assessment of the organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems. Three in-depth case studies were carried out at the maintenance units of three Nordic NPPs. The case studies employed an iterative and multimethod research strategy. The following methods were used: interviews, CULTURE-survey, seminars, document analysis and group work. Both cultural analysis and task modelling were carried out. The results indicate that organizational culture in complex sociotechnical systems can be characterised according to three qualitatively different elements: structure, internal integration and conceptions. All three of these elements of culture as well as their interrelations have to be considered in organizational assessments or important aspects of the organizational dynamics will be overlooked. On the basis of OCT modelling, the maintenance core task was defined as balancing between three critical demands: anticipating the condition of the plant and conducting preventive maintenance accordingly, reacting to unexpected technical faults and monitoring and reflecting on the effects of maintenance actions and the condition of the plant. The results indicate that safety was highly valued at all three plants, and in that sense they all had strong safety cultures. In other respects the cultural features were quite different, and thus the culturally-accepted means of maintaining high safety also differed. The handicraft nature of maintenance work was emphasised as a source of identity at the NPPs. Overall, the importance of safety was taken for granted, but the cultural norms concerning the appropriate means to guarantee it were little reflected. A sense of control, personal responsibility and organizational changes emerged as challenging issues at all the plants. The study shows that in complex sociotechnical systems it is both necessary and possible to analyse the safety and effectiveness of the organizational culture. Safety in complex sociotechnical systems cannot be understood or managed without understanding the demands of the organizational core task and managing the dynamics between the three elements of the organizational culture.

Studies on the pro-oxidative properties and neurotoxic potential of Angeli's salt-derived nitroxyl (HNO/NO-)

The biological function of nitric oxide and its oxidized forms has received a great deal of attention over the past two decades. However much less attention has been focused on the reduced nitric oxide, nitroxyl (HNO). Unlike NO, HNO is highly reactive species and thus it needs to be generated by using donor compounds under experimental conditions. Currently there is only one donor available, Angeli s salt, which releases HNO in a controlled fashion under pysiological conditions. Prior studies have shown the pro-oxidative and cytotoxic potential of Angeli s salt compared to NO donors. The high reactivity of HNO with cysteine thiols is considered to form the biochemical basis for its unique properties compared to other nitrogen oxides. Such thiol modification cold result in disturbances of vital cellular functions and subsequently to death of disturbance sensitive cells, such as neurons. Therefore modification of proteins and lipids was studied in vitro and the potential neurotoxicity was studied in vivo by local infusion of Angeli s salt into the rat central nervous system. The results show that under aerobic in vitro conditions, HNO can, subsequent to autoxidation, cause irreversible oxidative modification of proteins and lipids. These effects are not however seen in cell culture or following infusion of Angeli s salt directly into the rat central nervous tissue likely due to presence of lower oxygen and higher thiol concentration. However, due to high reactivity with thiols, HNO can cause irreversible inactivation of cysteine modification sensitive enzymes such as cysteine proteases papain in vitro and cathepsin B in cell culture. Furthermore it was shown that infusion of HNO releasing Angeli s salt into the rat central nervous system causes necrotic cell death and motor dysfunction following infusion into the lumbal intrathecal space. In conclusion, the acute neurotoxic potential of Angeli s salt was shown to be relatively low, but still higher compared to NO donors. HNO was shown to affect numerous cellular processes which could result in neurotoxicity if HNO was produced in vivo.

New molecular strategies for prevention of fibroproliferative vascular disease : An experimental approach to restenosis

Vascular intimal hyperplasia is a major complication following angioplasty. The hallmark feature of this disorder is accumulation of dedifferentiated smooth muscle cells (SMCs) to the luminal side of the injured artery, cellular proliferation, migration, and synthesis of extracellular matrix. This finally results in intimal hyperplasia, which is currently considered an untreatable condition. According to current knowledge, a major part of neointimal cells derive from circulating precursor cells. This has outdated the traditional in vitro cell culture methods of studying neointimal cell migration and proliferation using cultured medial SMCs. Somatostatin and some of its analogs with different selectivity for the five somatostatin receptors (sst1 through sst5) have been shown to have vasculoprotective properties in animal studies. However, clinical trials using analogs selective for sst2/sst3/sst5 to prevent restenosis after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) have failed to show any major benefits. Sirolimus is a cell cycle inhibitor that has been suggested to act synergistically with the protein-tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib to inhibit intimal hyperplasia in rat already at well-tolerated submaximal oral doses. The mechanisms behind this synergy and its long-term efficacy are not known. The aim of this study was to set up an ex vivo vascular explant culture model to measure neointimal cell activity without excluding the participation of circulating progenitor cells. Furthermore, two novel potential vasculoprotective treatment strategies were evaluated in detail in rat models of intimal hyperplasia and in the ex vivo explant model: sst1/sst4-selective somatostatin receptor analogs and combination treatment with sirolimus and imatinib. This study shows how whole vessel explants can be used to study the kinetics of neointimal cells and their progenitors, and to evaluate the anti-migratory and anti-proliferative properties of potential vasculoprotective compounds. It also shows how the influx of neointimal progenitor cells occurs already during the first days after vascular injury, how the contribution of cell migration is more important in the injury response than cell proliferation, and how the adventitia actively contribute in vascular repair. The vasculoprotective effect of somatostatin is mediated preferentially through sst4, and through inhibition of cell migration rather than of proliferation, which may explain why sst2/sst3/sst5-selective analogs have failed in clinical trials. Furthermore, a brief early oral treatment with the combination of sirolimus and imatinib at submaximal doses results in long-term synergistic suppression of intimal hyperplasia. The synergy is a result of inhibition of post-operative thrombocytosis and leukocytosis, inhibition of neointimal cell migration to the injury-site, and maintenance of cell integrity by inhibition of apoptosis and SMC dedifferentiation. In conclusion, the influx of progenitor cells already during the first days after injury and the high neointimal cell migratory activity underlines the importance of early therapeutic intervention with anti-migratory compounds to prevent neointimal hyperplasia. Sst4-selective analogs and the combination therapy with sirolimus and imatinib represent potential targets for the development of such vasculoprotective therapies.

Modern techniques in detection, identification and quantification of bacteria and peptides from foods

Standards have been placed to regulate the microbial and preservative contents to assure that foods are safe to the consumer. In a case of a food-related disease outbreak, it is crucial to be able to detect and identify quickly and accurately the cause of the disease. In addition, for every day control of food microbial and preservative contents, the detection methods must be easily performed for numerous food samples. In this present study, quicker alternative methods were studied for identification of bacteria by DNA fingerprinting. A flow cytometry method was developed as an alternative to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, the golden method . DNA fragment sizing by an ultrasensitive flow cytometer was able to discriminate species and strains in a reproducible and comparable manner to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. This new method was hundreds times faster and 200,000 times more sensitive. Additionally, another DNA fingerprinting identification method was developed based on single-enzyme amplified fragment length polymorphism (SE-AFLP). This method allowed the differentiation of genera, species, and strains of pathogenic bacteria of Bacilli, Staphylococci, Yersinia, and Escherichia coli. These fingerprinting patterns obtained by SE-AFLP were simpler and easier to analyze than those by the traditional amplified fragment length polymorphism by double enzyme digestion. Nisin (E234) is added as a preservative to different types of foods, especially dairy products, around the world. Various detection methods exist for nisin, but they lack in sensitivity, speed or specificity. In this present study, a sensitive nisin-induced green fluorescent protein (GFPuv) bioassay was developed using the Lactococcus lactis two-component signal system NisRK and the nisin-inducible nisA promoter. The bioassay was extremely sensitive with detection limit of 10 pg/ml in culture supernatant. In addition, it was compatible for quantification from various food matrices, such as milk, salad dressings, processed cheese, liquid eggs, and canned tomatoes. Wine has good antimicrobial properties due to its alcohol concentration, low pH, and organic content and therefore often assumed to be microbially safe to consume. Another aim of this thesis was to study the microbiota of wines returned by customers complaining of food-poisoning symptoms. By partial 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, ribotyping, and boar spermatozoa motility assay, it was identified that one of the wines contained a Bacillus simplex BAC91, which produced a heat-stable substance toxic to the mitochondria of sperm cells. The antibacterial activity of wine was tested on the vegetative cells and spores of B. simplex BAC91, B. cereus type strain ATCC 14579 and cereulide-producing B. cereus F4810/72. Although the vegetative cells and spores of B. simplex BAC91 were sensitive to the antimicrobial effects of wine, the spores of B. cereus strains ATCC 14579 and F4810/72 stayed viable for at least 4 months. According to these results, Bacillus spp., more specifically spores, can be a possible risk to the wine consumer.

Beasts on Fields. Human-Wildlife Conflicts in Nature-Culture Borderlands

Human-wildlife conflicts are today an integral part of the rural development discourse. In this research, the main focus is on the spatial explanation which is not a very common approach in the reviewed literature. My research hypothesis is based on the assumption that human-wildlife conflicts occur when a wild animal crosses a perceived borderline between the nature and culture and enters into the realms of the other. The borderline between nature and culture marks a perceived division of spatial content in our senses of place. The animal subject that crosses this border becomes a subject out of place meaning that the animal is then spatially located in a space where it should not be or where it does not belong according to tradition, custom, rules, law, public opinion, prevailing discourse or some other criteria set by human beings. An appearance of a wild animal in a domesticated space brings an uncontrolled subject into that space where humans have previously commanded total control of all other natural elements. A wild animal out of place may also threaten the biosecurity of the place in question. I carried out a case study in the Liwale district in south-eastern Tanzania to test my hypothesis during June and July 2002. I also collected documents and carried out interviews in Dar es Salaam in 2003. I studied the human-wildlife conflicts in six rural villages, where a total of 183 persons participated in the village meetings. My research methods included semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, questionnaire survey and Q- methodology. The rural communities in the Liwale district have a long-history of co-existing with wildlife and they still have traditional knowledge of wildlife management and hunting. Wildlife conservation through the establishment of game reserves during the colonial era has escalated human-wildlife conflicts in the Liwale district. This study shows that the villagers perceive some wild animals differently in their images of the African countryside than the district and regional level civil servants do. From the small scale subsistence farmers point of views, wild animals continue to challenge the separation of the wild (the forests) and the domestics spaces (the cultivated fields) by moving across the perceived borders in search of food and shelter. As a result, the farmers may loose their crops, livestock or even their own lives in the confrontations of wild animals. Human-wildlife conflicts in the Liwale district are manifold and cannot be explained simply on the basis of attitudes or perceived images of landscapes. However, the spatial explanation of these conflicts provides us some more understanding of why human-wildlife conflicts are so widely found across the world.