Medierepresentationer av etnicitetsochmigrationsrelaterade frågor inomäldreomsorgen i Sverige och Finland

Media representations of ethnicity- and migration-related issues within the elderly care in Sweden and Finland Research on welfare regimes and migration regimes has shown that Sweden and Finland have similar elderly care regimes but different migration regimes. It is against this backdrop that we set out to study what Swedish and Finnish daily press focusing on elderly care has written about ethnic minorities, migrants and migration. The study uses quantitative content analysis to analyze 241 daily newspaper articles published between 1995 and 2008. This article presents the themes that have been discussed, the elderly care actors that have been in focus (i.e. whether the focus has been on elderly care recipients, elderly care providers or informal caregivers), the ethnic backgrounds that these actors have had (i.e. whether the focus has been on the ethnic majority or on ethnic minorities) and the type of explanatory frameworks that the newspaper articles in focus have used. On the basis of this, we problematize the representations of ethnic minorities, migrants and migration that the newspaper articles in question put forth and the fact that the Swedish and Finnish daily press treats the issues at hand as if migration is mostly an issue that can be relegated to the periphery of the elderly care sectors’ agenda. 

Föreställningar om klass och kön i Arbetsförmedlingens yrkesbeskrivningar?

Notions of Class and Gender in the Employment Service Job Descriptions This article examines whether job descriptions emphasize different characteristics and competences depending on the occupations’ social class and gender relations. The study is partly a replication of a similar analysis conducted by Gesser in the 1970s. The purpose is to examine the prevalence of stereotypes in occupational descriptions provided by the Swedish state, and if the descriptions contribute to class and gender labeling of occupations and, by extension, its practitioners. Previous research has shown that career guiding materials are characterized by notions of the appropriate practitioner’s class and gender. In this study we depart from the concept of doxa and argue that stereotypical images of occupations are based on common sense that remains unquestioned. The study draws on a quantitative content analysis of 420 job descriptions analyzed by various statistical methods. The overall results show that there are systematic differences. In general, social class seems to have greater impact than gender on what kind of competences that are emphasized in the descriptions. Social skills are emphasized in female dominated occupations, while physical abilities are highlighted in male-dominated occupations. To some extent, these results are uncontroversial, as it also portraits abilities necessary to do the work in different kind of occupations

Variação, contato e mudança linguística em Moçambique e Cabo Verde : A concordância variável de número em sintagmas nominais do português

This study investigates variable noun phrase number agreement (VNA) in two second language varieties of Portuguese, spoken in Maputo, Mozambique and in Mindelo, Cape Verde. Quantitative VARBRUL analysis is carried out based on recordings made in Maputo and Mindelo 2007 and 2008. Previous quantitative studies on VNA in varieties of Brazilian Portuguese (Guy, 1981; Lopes, 2001; Andrade, 2003) as well as on VNA in first and second language varieties of Portuguese from São Tomé (Baxter, 2004; Figueiredo, 2008, 2010) indicate contact between Portuguese and African languages as the main origin of this phenomenon. VNA in Brazilian Portuguese is, however, interpreted by Scherre (1988) and Naro & Scherre (1993, 2007) as the result of language internal drift. Varieties of Portuguese from Mozambique and Cape Verde are particularly interesting to contrast in order to investigate influences from African languages on VNA, as in Mozambique Bantu languages are first languages of the vast majority of Portuguese speakers, whereas in Cape Verde, practically all Portuguese speakers are first language speakers of Cape Verdean Creole, whose substrates are West African, and not Bantu, languages. Comparison is also made with previous studies from Brazil and São Tomé. The results of this study comment previously postulated explanations for VNA in Portuguese in various ways. The analysis of the variables onset age and age stratum indicates that VNA in the analyzed varieties is a phenomenon linked to the acquisition of Portuguese as a second language and/or language contact rather than the result of internal drift. The fact that all the compared varieties tend to mark plural on pre-head components contradicts Bantu transfer as an explanation for this pattern, and raises the need to also consider more general explanations based on language contact. The basic structural similarity between the compared varieties suggests the existence of a grammatical restructuring continuum.

A Computer Vision Framework For Finger-Tapping Evaluation In Parkinson's Disease

Objective: To define and evaluate a Computer-Vision (CV) method for scoring Paced Finger-Tapping (PFT) in Parkinson's disease (PD) using quantitative motion analysis of index-fingers and to compare the obtained scores to the UPDRS (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale) finger-taps (FT). Background: The naked-eye evaluation of PFT in clinical practice results in coarse resolution to determine PD status. Besides, sensor mechanisms for PFT evaluation may cause patients discomfort. In order to avoid cost and effort of applying wearable sensors, a CV system for non-invasive PFT evaluation is introduced. Methods: A database of 221 PFT videos from 6 PD patients was processed. The subjects were instructed to position their hands above their shoulders besides the face and tap the index-finger against the thumb consistently with speed. They were facing towards a pivoted camera during recording. The videos were rated by two clinicians between symptom levels 0-to-3 using UPDRS-FT. The CV method incorporates a motion analyzer and a face detector. The method detects the face of testee in each video-frame. The frame is split into two images from face-rectangle center. Two regions of interest are located in each image to detect index-finger motion of left and right hands respectively. The tracking of opening and closing phases of dominant hand index-finger produces a tapping time-series. This time-series is normalized by the face height. The normalization calibrates the amplitude in tapping signal which is affected by the varying distance between camera and subject (farther the camera, lesser the amplitude). A total of 15 features were classified using K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier to characterize the symptoms levels in UPDRS-FT. The target ratings provided by the raters were averaged. Results: A 10-fold cross validation in KNN classified 221 videos between 3 symptom levels with 75% accuracy. An area under the receiver operating characteristic curves of 82.6% supports feasibility of the obtained features to replicate clinical assessments. Conclusions: The system is able to track index-finger motion to estimate tapping symptoms in PD. It has certain advantages compared to other technologies (e.g. magnetic sensors, accelerometers etc.) for PFT evaluation to improve and automate the ratings

Financial time series analysis : Chaos and neurodynamics approach

This work aims at combining the Chaos theory postulates and Artificial Neural Networks classification and predictive capability, in the field of financial time series prediction. Chaos theory, provides valuable qualitative and quantitative tools to decide on the predictability of a chaotic system. Quantitative measurements based on Chaos theory, are used, to decide a-priori whether a time series, or a portion of a time series is predictable, while Chaos theory based qualitative tools are used to provide further observations and analysis on the predictability, in cases where measurements provide negative answers. Phase space reconstruction is achieved by time delay embedding resulting in multiple embedded vectors. The cognitive approach suggested, is inspired by the capability of some chartists to predict the direction of an index by looking at the price time series. Thus, in this work, the calculation of the embedding dimension and the separation, in Takens‘ embedding theorem for phase space reconstruction, is not limited to False Nearest Neighbor, Differential Entropy or other specific method, rather, this work is interested in all embedding dimensions and separations that are regarded as different ways of looking at a time series by different chartists, based on their expectations. Prior to the prediction, the embedded vectors of the phase space are classified with Fuzzy-ART, then, for each class a back propagation Neural Network is trained to predict the last element of each vector, whereas all previous elements of a vector are used as features.