Unca Don and Unca Scrooge’s Guide to History. Representations of the Past in the Disney Comics of Don Rosa

This thesis studies the various forms and layers of representations of the past that can be found in the Disney comics of Don Rosa. To stay true to the legacy of renowned comic book artist Carl Barks, Rosa has stopped time in the duck universe to the 1950’s: the decade when Barks created his most noted stories. There is a special feel of historicalness in Rosa’s duck stories, as his characters recall events that occurred in both Rosa’s own stories as well as Barks’. Rosa has shed new light to the past of the characters by writing and illustrating the history of Scrooge McDuck, one of the most beloved Disney characters. Rosa is also adamant that the historical facts used in his stories are always correct and based on thorough research. The methodological tools used in the analysis of the comics come from the fields of comic book studies, film theory, and history culture. Film and comics are recognized by many scholars as very similar media, which share elements that make them comparable in many ways. This thesis utilizes studies on historical film, narrative and genre, which provide valuable insight and comparisons for analysis. The thesis consists of three main chapters, the first of which deconstructs the duck universe in the stories in order to understand how the historicalness in them is created,and which outside elements might affect them, including the genre of Disney comics, publishers, and the legacy of Barks. The next chapter focuses on The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series, i.e. the stories which are located in the past. Such stories feature similar representations of history as for example Westerns. They also compress and alter history to meet the restrictions of the medium of comics. The last part focuses on the adventure stories which draw inspiration from for example mythology, and take the characters to strange and mystical, but yet historical worlds. Such treasure-hunting stories show similarity to the action-adventure genre in film and for example their stereotypical representations of foreign cultures. Finally, the chapter addresses the problematic of historical fiction and its capability to write history.

Language of the Future, Language of the PRC –Representations of Putonghua in South China Morning Post

As the national language of the PRC, the world's growing economic power and the sovereign of Hong Kong, Putonghua is a language with multiple facets of relevance for the current Special Administrative Region. This paper seeks to explore and explain different representations of Putonghua in Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper South China Morning Post in articles published between January 2012 and February 2013. The representations are studied in the context of the different discourses in which they appear, some of which feature language(s) as a central theme and some more marginally. An overview is first presented of the scholarly research on the most important developments in Hong Kong's complex language scene from the beginnings of the colony until present day, with the aim of detecting developments and attitudes with potential relevance or parallels to the context of Putonghua today. The paper then reflects on the media and its role in producing and perpetuating discourses in the society, before turning to more practical considerations on Hong Kong's English and Chinese language media and the role of South China Morning Post in it. The methods used in analysing the discourses are those of discourse analysis, with textual analysis as its starting point, in which close attention is paid to linguistic forms as the concrete representations of meanings in a text. Particularly the immediate contexts of the appearances of the word “Putonghua” in the articles were studied carefully to detect vocabulary, grammar and semantical choices as signs of different discourses, potentially also revealing fundamental underlying assumptions and other “hidden meanings” in the text. Some of the most distinctive discourses in which different representations of Putonghua appeared were the Instrumental value for the individual (in which Putonghua was represented as a form of social capital); Othering of the mainlanders (in which Putonghua served as a concrete marker of distinction); Belonging to China (Putonghua as a symbol of unity); and Cultural distinctiveness of Hong Kong (Putonghua as a threat to Hong Kong's history and culture, as embodied in Cantonese). Some of these discourses were more prominent than others, and for example the discourse of Belonging to China was relatively rarely enacted in Hongkongers' voices. In general, the findings were not surprising in the light of the history, but showed a fair degree of consistency with what has been written earlier about the languages and attitudes towards them in Hong Kong. It has often been noted that Putonghua and its relation with Cantonese is a matter linked with the social identity of the colony and its citizens. While it appeared that there were no strict taboos in the representations of Putonghua in the societal context, the possibility of self-censorship cannot be ruled out as a factor toning down political discourses in the representations.

Central auditory processing and the acquisition of phonology in 2-year-old children with recurrent acute otitis media

Middle ear infections (acute otitis media, AOM) are among the most common infectious diseases in childhood, their incidence being greatest at the age of 6–12 months. Approximately 10–30% of children undergo repetitive periods of AOM, referred to as recurrent acute otitis media (RAOM). Middle ear fluid during an AOM episode causes, on average, 20–30 dB of hearing loss lasting from a few days to as much as a couple of months. It is well known that even a mild permanent hearing loss has an effect on language development but so far there is no consensus regarding the consequences of RAOM on childhood language acquisition. The results of studies on middle ear infections and language development have been partly discrepant and the exact effects of RAOM on the developing central auditory nervous system are as yet unknown. This thesis aims to examine central auditory processing and speech production among 2-year-old children with RAOM. Event-related potentials (ERPs) extracted from electroencephalography can be used to objectively investigate the functioning of the central auditory nervous system. For the first time this thesis has utilized auditory ERPs to study sound encoding and preattentive auditory discrimination of speech stimuli, and neural mechanisms of involuntary auditory attention in children with RAOM. Furthermore, the level of phonological development was studied by investigating the number and the quality of consonants produced by these children. Acquisition of consonant phonemes, which are harder to hear than vowels, is a good indicator of the ability to form accurate memory representations of ambient language and has not been studied previously in Finnish-speaking children with RAOM. The results showed that the cortical sound encoding was intact but the preattentive auditory discrimination of multiple speech sound features was atypical in those children with RAOM. Furthermore, their neural mechanisms of auditory attention differed from those of their peers, thus indicating that children with RAOM are atypically sensitive to novel but meaningless sounds. The children with RAOM also produced fewer consonants than their controls. Noticeably, they had a delay in the acquisition of word-medial consonants and the Finnish phoneme /s/, which is acoustically challenging to perceive compared to the other Finnish phonemes. The findings indicate the immaturity of central auditory processing in the children with RAOM, and this might also emerge in speech production. This thesis also showed that the effects of RAOM on central auditory processing are long-lasting because the children had healthy ears at the time of the study. An effective neural network for speech sound processing is a basic requisite of language acquisition, and RAOM in early childhood should be considered as a risk factor for language development.

Näyttöpäätetyön kuormituksen tasaaminen media-assistenttiopiskelijoilla

Opinnäytetyömme tarkoituksena oli antaa Omnia ammattikoulun media-assistenttiopiskelijoille tietoa näyttöpäätetyöhön liittyvistä kuormitustekijöistä ja ergonomiasta. Opinnäytetyömme tavoitteena on vastata kysymykseen " Mitä media-assistenttiopiskelijoiden tulisi tietää, jotta he osaisivat kuormittaa itseään sopivasti näyttöpäätetyössä?". Koostimme opinnäytetyömme kirjallisuudesta ja tutkimuksista saatujen tietojen pohjalta. Näistä muodostui opinnäytetyömme teoreettinen viitekehys sekä perustelut opinnäytetyömme tuotoksen sisällölle. Tutkimusten mukaan tuki- ja liikuntaelimistön kuormituksen tasaamiseen voi vaikuttaa vähentämällä haitallisesti kuormittavia työjaksoja, vaihtamalla työasentoja, säätämällä työvälineitä ja tauottamalla työntekoa. Opinnäytetyömme kirjallisessa osiossa perehdyimme näyttöpäätetyön ergonomiaan ja kuormittavuuteen media-assistenttiopiskelijoilla. Opinnäytetyömme tuotoksena oli "Kevennä kuormitusta näyttöpäätteen äärellä"- CD-Rom, jossa on 39 diaa. CD-Rom sisältää tietoa niska-hartiaseudun ja selän rakenteesta sekä toiminnasta, lihastyötavoista, niskaa ja selkää kuormittavista tekijöistä näyttöpäätteen äärellä työskennellessä, työpisteen säätelystä ja optimaalisesta istuma-asennosta, sekä vinkkejä kuormituksen keventämiseen mm. tauottamisen avulla. Testasimme CD-Rom:n sisältöä yhdellä Omnia ammattikoulun media-assistenttiopiskelijaryhmällä järjestämällä ergonomiaohjauksen. Palautteen pohjalta kehittelimme työn lopulliseen muotoonsa. Opinnäytetyömme tuotosta käytetään Omnia ammattikoulun media-assistenttiopiskelijoiden ergonomiaohjauksen välineenä. Työmme soveltuu myös muiden näyttöpäätteen äärellä työskentelevien henkilöiden ja ryhmien ergonomiaohjauksen välineeksi. "Kevennä kuormitusta näyttöpäätteen äärellä" - CD-Romia voivat hyödyntää fysioterapeutit, muut ergonomiaohjauksia antavat toimihenkilöt sekä Kunto-Stadia.

Compaction of growth media based on Sphagnum peat during one-year culturing of container seedlings

Tiivistelmä: Turvepohjaisten kasvualustojen tiivistyminen yksivuotisessa paakkutaimikasvatuksessa