Encounters with the Virtual : The Experience of Art In Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy

My thesis concerns the notion of existence as an encounter, as developed in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (1925 1995). What this denotes is a critical stance towards a major current in Western philosophical tradition which Deleuze nominates as representational thinking. Such thinking strives to provide a stable ground for identities by appealing to transcendent structures behind the apparent reality and explaining the manifest diversity of the given by such notions as essence, idea, God, or totality of the world. In contrast to this, Deleuze states that abstractions such as these do not explain anything, but rather that they need to be explained. Yet, Deleuze does not appeal merely to the given. He sees that one must posit a genetic element that accounts for experience, and this element must not be naïvely traced from the empirical. Deleuze nominates his philosophy as transcendental empiricism and he seeks to bring together the approaches of both empiricism and transcendental philosophy. In chapter one I look into the motivations of Deleuze s transcendental empiricism and analyse it as an encounter between Deleuze s readings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. This encounter regards, first of all, the question of subjectivity and results in a conception of identity as non-essential process. A pre-given concept of identity does not explain the nature of things, but the concept itself must be explained. From this point of view, the process of individualisation must become the central concern. In chapter two I discuss Deleuze s concept of the affect as the basis of identity and his affiliation with the theories of Gilbert Simondon and Jakob von Uexküll. From this basis develops a morphogenetic theory of individuation-as-process. In analysing such a process of individuation, the modal category of the virtual becomes of great value, being an open, indeterminate charge of potentiality. As the virtual concerns becoming or the continuous process of actualisation, then time, rather than space, will be the privileged field of consideration. Chapter three is devoted to the discussion of the temporal aspect of the virtual and difference-without-identity. The essentially temporal process of subjectification results in a conception of the subject as composition: an assemblage of heterogeneous elements. Therefore art and aesthetic experience is valued by Deleuze because they disclose the construct-like nature of subjectivity in the sensations they produce. Through the domain of the aesthetic the subject is immersed in the network of affectivity that is the material diversity of the world. Chapter four addresses a phenomenon displaying this diversified indentity: the simulacrum an identity that is not grounded in an essence. Developed on the basis of the simulacrum, a theory of identity as assemblage emerges in chapter five. As the problematic of simulacra concerns perhaps foremost the artistic presentation, I shall look into the identity of a work of art as assemblage. To take an example of a concrete artistic practice and to remain within the problematic of the simulacrum, I shall finally address the question of reproduction particularly in the case recorded music and its identity regarding the work of art. In conclusion, I propose that by overturning its initial representational schema, phonographic music addresses its own medium and turns it into an inscription of difference, exposing the listener to an encounter with the virtual.

Implementing virtual collaborative inquiry practises in a middle-school context

The aim of the present study was to investigate the challenges that relate to the implementation of virtual inquiry practises in middle school. The case was a school course in which a group of Finnish students (N = 14) and teachers (N = 7) completed group inquiries through virtual collaboration, using a web-based learning environment. The task was to accomplish a cross-disciplinary inquiry into cultural issues. The students worked mainly at home and took much responsibility for their course achievements. The investigators analysed the pedagogical design of the course and the content of the participants' interaction patterns in the web-based environment, using qualitative content analysis and social network analysis. The findings suggest that the students succeeded in producing distinctive cultural products, and both the students and the teachers adopted novel roles during the inquiry. The web-based learning environment was used more as a coordination tool for organizing the collaborative work than as a forum for epistemic inquiry. The tension between the school curriculum and the inquiry practises was manifest in the participants' discussions of the assessment criteria of the course.

Medicines information sources and services for consumers : A special focus on the Internet and people with depression

The range of consumer health and medicines information sources has diversified along with the increased use of the Internet. This has led to a drive to develop medicines information services and to better incorporate the Internet and e-mail into routine practice in health care and in community pharmacies. To support the development of such services more information is needed about the use of online information by consumers, particularly of those who may be the most likely to use and to benefit from the new sources and modes of medicines communication. This study explored the role and utilization of the Internet-based medicines information and information services in the context of a wider network of information sources accessible to the public in Finland. The overall aim was to gather information to develop better and more accessible sources of information for consumers and services to better meet the needs of consumers. Special focus was on the needs and information behavior among people with depression and using antidepressant medicines. This study applied both qualitative and quantitative methods. Consumer medicines information needs and sources were identified by analyzing the utilization of the University Pharmacy operated national drug information call center (Study I) and surveying Finnish adults (n=2348) use of the different medicines information sources (Study II). The utilization of the Internet as a source of antidepressant information among people with depression was explored by focus group discussions among people with depression and with current or past use of the antidepressant(s) (n=29, Studies III & IV). Pharmacy response to the needs of consumers in term of providing e-mail counseling was assessed by conducting a virtual pseudo customer study among the Finnish community pharmacies (n=161, Study V). Physicians and pharmacists were the primary sources of medicines information. People with mental disorders were more frequent users of telephone- and Internet-based medicines information sources and patient information leaflets than people without mental disorders. These sources were used to complement rather than replace information provided face-to-face by health professionals. People with depression used the Internet to seek facts about antidepressants, to share experiences with peers, and for the curiosity. They described that the access to online drug information was empowering. Some people reported lacking the skills necessary to assess the quality of online information. E-mail medication counseling services provided by community pharmacies were rare and varied in quality. Study results suggest that rather than discouraging the use of the Internet, health professionals should direct patients to use accurate and reliable sources of online medicines information. Health care providers, including community pharmacies should also seek to develop new ways of communicating information about medicines with consumers. This study determined that people with depression and using antidepressants need services enabling interactive communication not only with health care professionals, but also with peers. Further research should be focused on developing medicines information service facilitating communication among different patient and consumer groups.

Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network : Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth Century Epistolary English

This study deals with language change and variation in the correspondence of the eighteenth-century Bluestocking circle, a social network which provided learned men and women with an informal environment for the pursuit of scholarly entertainment. Elizabeth Montagu (1718 1800), a notable social hostess and a Shakespearean scholar, was one of their key figures. The study presents the reconstruction of Elizabeth Montagu s social networks from her youth to her later years with a special focus on the Bluestocking circle, and linguistic research on private correspondence between Montagu and her Bluestocking friends and family members between the years 1738 1778. The epistolary language use is investigated using the methods and frameworks of corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, and social network analysis. The approach is diachronic and concerns real-time language change. The research is based on a selection of manuscript letters which I have edited and compiled into an electronic corpus (Bluestocking Corpus). I have also devised a network strength scale in order to quantify the strength of network ties and to compare the results of the linguistic research with the network analysis. The studies range from the reconstruction and analysis of Elizabeth Montagu s most prominent social networks to the analysis of changing morphosyntactic features and spelling variation in Montagu s and her network members correspondence. The linguistic studies look at the use of the progressive construction, preposition stranding and pied piping, and spelling variation in terms of preterite and past participle endings in the regular paradigm (-ed, - d, -d, - t, -t) and full / contracted spellings of auxiliary verbs. The results are analysed in terms of social network membership, sociolinguistic variables of the correspondents, and, when relevant, aspects of eighteenth-century linguistic prescriptivism. The studies showed a slight diachronic increase in the use of the progressive, a significant decrease of the stigmatised preposition stranding and increase of pied piping, and relatively informal but socially controlled epistolary spelling. Certain significant changes in Elizabeth Montagu s language use over the years could be attributed to her increasingly prominent social standing and the changes in her social networks, and the strength of ties correlated strongly with the use of the progressive in the Bluestocking Corpus. Gender, social rank, and register in terms of kinship/friendship had a significant influence in language use, and an effect of prescriptivism could also be detected. Elizabeth Montagu s network ties resulted in language variation in terms of network membership, her own position in a given network, and the social factors that controlled eighteenth-century interaction. When all the network ties are strong, linguistic variation seems to be essentially linked to the social variables of the informants.

Virtual versus classroom language teaching : A comparative study of the learning outcomes and student responses between two English reading comprehension groups

A 26-hour English reading comprehension course was taught to two groups of second year Finnish Pharmacy students: a virtual group (33 students) and a teacher-taught group (25 students). The aims of the teaching experiment were to find out: 1.What has to be taken into account when teaching English reading comprehension to students of pharmacy via the Internet and using TopClass? 2. How will the learning outcomes of the virtual group and the control group differ? 3. How will the students and the Department of Pharmacy respond to the different and new method, i.e. the virtual teaching method? 4. Will it be possible to test English reading comprehension learning material using the groupware tool TopClass? The virtual exercises were written within the Internet authoring environment, TopClass. The virtual group was given the reading material and grammar booklet on paper, but they did the reading comprehension tasks (written by the teacher), autonomously via the Internet. The control group was taught by the same teacher in 12 2-hour sessions, while the virtual group could work independently within the given six weeks. Both groups studied the same material: ten pharmaceutical articles with reading comprehension tasks as well as grammar and vocabulary exercises. Both groups took the same final test. Students in both groups were asked to evaluate the course using a 1 to 5 rating scale and they were also asked to assess their respective courses verbally. A detailed analysis of the different aspects of the student evaluation is given. Conclusions: 1.The virtual students learned pharmaceutical English relatively well but not significantly better than the classroom students 2. The overall student satisfaction in the virtual pharmacy English reading comprehension group was found to be higher than that in the teacher-taught control group. 3. Virtual learning is easier for linguistically more able students; less able students need more time with the teacher. 4. The sample in this study is rather small, but it is a pioneering study. 5. The Department of Pharmacy in the University of Helsinki wishes to incorporate virtual English reading comprehension teaching in its curriculum. 6. The sophisticated and versatile TopClass system is relatively easy for a traditional teacher and quite easy for the students to learn. It can be used e.g. for automatic checking of routine answers and document transfer, which both lighten the workloads of both parties. It is especially convenient for teaching reading comprehension. Key words: English reading comprehension, teacher-taught class, virtual class, attitudes of students, learning outcomes

Collaborative Design in a Virtual Learning Environment : Three Design Experiments in Textile Teacher Education

The aim of the study was to analyze and facilitate collaborative design in a virtual learning environment (VLE). Discussions of virtual design in design education have typically focused on technological or communication issues, not on pedagogical issues. Yet in order to facilitate collaborative design, it is also necessary to address the pedagogical issues related to the virtual design process. In this study, the progressive inquiry model of collaborative designing was used to give a structural level of facilitation to students working in the VLE. According to this model, all aspects of inquiry, such as creating the design context, constructing a design idea, evaluating the idea, and searching for new information, can be shared in a design community. The study consists of three design projects: 1) designing clothes for premature babies, 2) designing conference bags for an international conference, and 3) designing tactile books for visually impaired children. These design projects constituted a continuum of design experiments, each of which highlighted certain perspectives on collaborative designing. The design experiments were organized so that the participants worked in design teams, both face-to-face and virtually. The first design experiment focused on peer collaboration among textile teacher students in the VLE. The second design experiment took into consideration end-users needs by using a participatory design approach. The third design experiment intensified computer-supported collaboration between students and domain experts. The virtual learning environments, in these design experiments, were designed to support knowledge-building pedagogy and progressive inquiry learning. These environments enabled a detailed recording of all computer-mediated interactions and data related to virtual designing. The data analysis was based on qualitative content analysis of design statements in the VLE. This study indicated four crucial issues concerning collaborative design in the VLE in craft and design education. Firstly, using the collaborative design process in craft and design education gives rise to special challenges of building learning communities, creating appropriate design tasks for them, and providing tools for collaborative activities. Secondly, the progressive inquiry model of collaborative designing can be used as a scaffold support for design thinking and for reflection on the design process. Thirdly, participation and distributed expertise can be facilitated by considering the key stakeholders who are related to the design task or design context, and getting them to participate in virtual designing. Fourthly, in the collaborative design process, it is important that team members create and improve visual and technical ideas together, not just agree or disagree about proposed ideas. Therefore, viewing the VLE as a medium for collaborative construction of the design objects appears crucial in order to understand and facilitate the complex processes in collaborative designing.

Cellular and network mechanisms generating spontaneous population events in the immature rat hippocampus

Distinct endogenous network events, generated independently of sensory input, are a general feature of various structures of the immature central nervous system. In the immature hippocampus, these type of events are seen as "giant depolarizing potentials" (GDPs) in intracellular recordings in vitro. GABA, the major inhibitory neurotransmitter of the adult brain, has a depolarizing action in immature neurons, and GDPs have been proposed to be driven by GABAergic transmission. Moreover, GDPs have been thought to reflect an early pattern that disappears during development in parallel with the maturation of hyperpolarizing GABAergic inhibition. However, the adult hippocampus in vivo also generates endogenous network events known as sharp (positive) waves (SPWs), which reflect synchronous discharges of CA3 pyramidal neurons and are thought to be involved in cognitive functions. In this thesis, mechanisms of GDP generation were studied with intra- and extracellular recordings in the neonatal rat hippocampus in vitro and in vivo. Immature CA3 pyramidal neurons were found to generate intrinsic bursts of spikes and to act as cellular pacemakers for GDP activity whereas depolarizing GABAergic signalling was found to have a temporally non-patterned facilitatory role in the generation of the network events. Furthermore, the data indicate that the intrinsic bursts of neonatal CA3 pyramidal neurons and, consequently, GDPs are driven by a persistent Na+ current and terminated by a slow Ca2+-dependent K+ current. Gramicidin-perforated patch recordings showed that the depolarizing driving force for GABAA receptor-mediated actions is provided by Cl- uptake via the Na-K-C1 cotransporter, NKCC1, in the immature CA3 pyramids. A specific blocker of NKCC1, bumetanide, inhibited SPWs and GDPs in the neonatal rat hippocampus in vivo and in vitro, respectively. Finally, pharmacological blockade of the GABA transporter-1 prolonged the decay of the large GDP-associated GABA transients but not of single postsynaptic GABAA receptor-mediated currents. As a whole the data in this thesis indicate that the mechanism of GDP generation, based on the interconnected network of bursting CA3 pyramidal neurons, is similar to that involved in adult SPW activity. Hence, GDPs do not reflect a network pattern that disappears during development but they are the in vitro counterpart of neonatal SPWs.

VEGFR-3 and Tie pathways in vascular network formation

The blood and lymphatic vascular systems are essential for life, but they may become harnessed for sinister purposes in pathological conditions. For example, tumors learn to grow a network of blood vessels (angiogenesis), securing a source of oxygen and nutrients for sustained growth. On the other hand, damage to the lymph nodes and the collecting lymphatic vessels may lead to lymphedema, a debilitating condition characterized by peripheral edema and susceptibility to infections. Promoting the growth of new lymphatic vessels (lymphangiogenesis) is an attractive approach to treat lymphedema patients. Angiopoietin-1 (Ang1), a ligand for the endothelial receptor tyrosine kinases Tie1 and Tie2. The Ang1/Tie2 pathway has previously been implicated in promoting endothelial stability and integrity of EC monolayers. The studies presented here elucidate a novel function for Ang1 as a lymphangiogenic factor. Ang1 is known to decrease the permeability of blood vessels, and could thus act as a more global antagonist of plasma leakage and tissue edema by promoting growth of lymphatic vessels and thereby facilitating removal of excess fluid and other plasma components from the interstitium. These findings reinforce the idea that Ang1 may have therapeutic value in conditions of tissue edema. VEGFR-3 is present on all endothelia during development, but in the adult its expression becomes restricted to the lymphatic endothelium. VEGF-C and VEGF-D are ligands for VEGFR-3, and potently promote lymphangiogenesis in adult tissues, with direct and remarkably specific effects on the lymphatic endothelium in adult tissues. The data presented here show that VEGF-C and VEGF-D therapy can restore collecting lymphatic vessels in a novel orthotopic model of breast cancer-related lymphedema. Furthermore, the study introduces a novel approach to improve VEGF-C/VEGF-D therapy by using engineered heparin-binding forms of VEGF-C, which induced the rapid formation of organized lymphatic vessels. Importantly, VEGF-C therapy also greatly improved the survival and integration of lymph node transplants. The combination of lymph node transplantation and VEGF-C therapy provides a basis for future therapy of lymphedema. In adults, VEGFR-3 expression is restricted to the lymphatic endothelium and the fenestrated endothelia of certain endocrine organs. These results show that VEGFR-3 is induced at the onset of angiogenesis in the tip cells that lead the formation of new vessel sprouts, providing a tumor-specific vascular target. VEGFR-3 acts downstream of VEGF/VEGFR-2 signals, but, once induced, can sustain angiogenesis when VEGFR-2 signaling is inhibited. The data presented here implicate VEGFR-3 as a novel regulator of sprouting angiogenesis along with its role in regulating lymphatic vessel growth. Targeting VEGFR-3 may provide added efficacy to currently available anti-angiogenic therapeutics, which typically target the VEGF/VEGFR-2 pathway.

Automatic Lameness Detection in a Milking Robot : Instrumentation, measurement software, algorithms for data analysis and a neural network model

The aim of this thesis is to develop a fully automatic lameness detection system that operates in a milking robot. The instrumentation, measurement software, algorithms for data analysis and a neural network model for lameness detection were developed. Automatic milking has become a common practice in dairy husbandry, and in the year 2006 about 4000 farms worldwide used over 6000 milking robots. There is a worldwide movement with the objective of fully automating every process from feeding to milking. Increase in automation is a consequence of increasing farm sizes, the demand for more efficient production and the growth of labour costs. As the level of automation increases, the time that the cattle keeper uses for monitoring animals often decreases. This has created a need for systems for automatically monitoring the health of farm animals. The popularity of milking robots also offers a new and unique possibility to monitor animals in a single confined space up to four times daily. Lameness is a crucial welfare issue in the modern dairy industry. Limb disorders cause serious welfare, health and economic problems especially in loose housing of cattle. Lameness causes losses in milk production and leads to early culling of animals. These costs could be reduced with early identification and treatment. At present, only a few methods for automatically detecting lameness have been developed, and the most common methods used for lameness detection and assessment are various visual locomotion scoring systems. The problem with locomotion scoring is that it needs experience to be conducted properly, it is labour intensive as an on-farm method and the results are subjective. A four balance system for measuring the leg load distribution of dairy cows during milking in order to detect lameness was developed and set up in the University of Helsinki Research farm Suitia. The leg weights of 73 cows were successfully recorded during almost 10,000 robotic milkings over a period of 5 months. The cows were locomotion scored weekly, and the lame cows were inspected clinically for hoof lesions. Unsuccessful measurements, caused by cows standing outside the balances, were removed from the data with a special algorithm, and the mean leg loads and the number of kicks during milking was calculated. In order to develop an expert system to automatically detect lameness cases, a model was needed. A probabilistic neural network (PNN) classifier model was chosen for the task. The data was divided in two parts and 5,074 measurements from 37 cows were used to train the model. The operation of the model was evaluated for its ability to detect lameness in the validating dataset, which had 4,868 measurements from 36 cows. The model was able to classify 96% of the measurements correctly as sound or lame cows, and 100% of the lameness cases in the validation data were identified. The number of measurements causing false alarms was 1.1%. The developed model has the potential to be used for on-farm decision support and can be used in a real-time lameness monitoring system.

Data mining for telecommunications network log analysis

Telecommunications network management is based on huge amounts of data that are continuously collected from elements and devices from all around the network. The data is monitored and analysed to provide information for decision making in all operation functions. Knowledge discovery and data mining methods can support fast-pace decision making in network operations. In this thesis, I analyse decision making on different levels of network operations. I identify the requirements decision-making sets for knowledge discovery and data mining tools and methods, and I study resources that are available to them. I then propose two methods for augmenting and applying frequent sets to support everyday decision making. The proposed methods are Comprehensive Log Compression for log data summarisation and Queryable Log Compression for semantic compression of log data. Finally I suggest a model for a continuous knowledge discovery process and outline how it can be implemented and integrated to the existing network operations infrastructure.

The Most Probable Bayesian Network and Beyond

This doctoral dissertation introduces an algorithm for constructing the most probable Bayesian network from data for small domains. The algorithm is used to show that a popular goodness criterion for the Bayesian networks has a severe sensitivity problem. The dissertation then proposes an information theoretic criterion that avoids the problem.