Quest for authenticity - representation of the Sami image in Christmas tourism

Tourism is one of important livelihoods in Lapland. Christmas tourism was launched in the early 1980s and it became a success story - being labelled as the most epochal tourism product in Finland. Hence, today Christmas tourists are one of the most significant foreign groups arriving to Lapland during the winter season and contributing considerably to the economics of the northeastern periphery of the EU. Christmas tourism concentrates around Father Christmas who uses reindeer for transportation. The Sämi are the only indigenous people in the EU. They are all stereotypically perceived to be reindeer herders. Somehow these three, that is, Santa Claus, reindeer and the Sämi, have been incorporated into same fairytale dominion. In practice, this has happened by using the most visible cultural but also significant identity marker of the Sämi, the Sämi costume. This, in turn, has created controversy over authenticity due to manners in which the costume is used in tourism - often in imitational, mismatched forms by non-Sämi. In this thesis, after relevant literature review I intend to establish how the Sâmi are represented in Christmas tourism through visual data consisting of ten images from three foreign sources. Then I clarify why and to whom it matters of how the Sâmi are represented in Christmas tourism with the aid of 65 questionnaires and nineteen expert interviews collected mainly in the Finnish Sâmi Home Region in October 2009. Through the multiplicity of the voices of various interest and ethnic groups and by using critical discourse analysis I attempt to give an overview of the respondents' opinions and look at some preliminary solutions to the controversy. Based on my data, the non-Sami appear to accept the Sami costume usage in Christmas tourism most readily. Consequently, respect and attitudinal changes have become the respondents' propositions in addition to common set of rules of how the Sami image could be appropriated without violating the integrity of the Sami people, or a similar system of S¿m¡ Duodji trademark guaranteeing the authenticity of the tourism products. Additionally, though half of the interviewees explicate Sami presence in Christmas tourism by adding local flavour to otherwise commercial enterprise, the other half see no rationale to connect facts with fiction, that is, the Sami with Santa Claus.

Quest for authenticity - representation of the Sami image in Christmas tourism

Tourism is one of important livelihoods in Lapland. Christmas tourism was launched in the early 1980s and it became a success story - being labelled as the most epochal tourism product in Finland. Hence, today Christmas tourists are one of the most significant foreign groups arriving to Lapland during the winter season and contributing considerably to the economics of the northeastern periphery of the EU. Christmas tourism concentrates around Father Christmas who uses reindeer for transportation. The Sämi are the only indigenous people in the EU. They are all stereotypically perceived to be reindeer herders. Somehow these three, that is, Santa Claus, reindeer and the Sämi, have been incorporated into same fairytale dominion. In practice, this has happened by using the most visible cultural but also significant identity marker of the Sämi, the Sämi costume. This, in turn, has created controversy over authenticity due to manners in which the costume is used in tourism - often in imitational, mismatched forms by non-Sämi. In this thesis, after relevant literature review I intend to establish how the Sâmi are represented in Christmas tourism through visual data consisting of ten images from three foreign sources. Then I clarify why and to whom it matters of how the Sâmi are represented in Christmas tourism with the aid of 65 questionnaires and nineteen expert interviews collected mainly in the Finnish Sâmi Home Region in October 2009. Through the multiplicity of the voices of various interest and ethnic groups and by using critical discourse analysis I attempt to give an overview of the respondents' opinions and look at some preliminary solutions to the controversy. Based on my data, the non-Sami appear to accept the Sami costume usage in Christmas tourism most readily. Consequently, respect and attitudinal changes have become the respondents' propositions in addition to common set of rules of how the Sami image could be appropriated without violating the integrity of the Sami people, or a similar system of S¿m¡ Duodji trademark guaranteeing the authenticity of the tourism products. Additionally, though half of the interviewees explicate Sami presence in Christmas tourism by adding local flavour to otherwise commercial enterprise, the other half see no rationale to connect facts with fiction, that is, the Sami with Santa Claus.

A Non-contact measurement technique to measure micro surface stress and obtain deformation profiles of the order of 1nm in Micro-cantilever based structures by single image Optical Diffraction method

A new method based on analysis of a single diffraction pattern is proposed to measure deflections in micro-cantilever (MC) based sensor probes, achieving typical deflection resolutions of 1nm and surface stress changes of 50 mu N/m. The proposed method employs a double MC structure where the deflection of one of the micro-cantilevers relative to the other due to surface stress changes results in a linear shift of intensity maxima of the Fraunhofer diffraction pattern of the transilluminated MC. Measurement of such shifts in the intensity maxima of a particular order along the length of the structure can be done to an accuracy of 0.01mm leading to the proposed sensitivity of deflection measurement in a typical microcantilever. This method can overcome the fundamental measurement sensitivity limit set by diffraction and pointing stability of laser beam in the widely used Optical Beam Deflection method (OBDM).

Blind image restoration based on the theory of high-dimensional space geometry

In practical situations, the causes of image blurring are often undiscovered or difficult to get known. However, traditional methods usually assume the knowledge of the blur has been known prior to the restoring process, which are not practicable for blind image restoration. A new method proposed in this paper aims exactly at blind image restoration. The restoration process is transformed into a problem of point distribution analysis in high-dimensional space. Experiments have proved that the restoration could be achieved using this method without re-knowledge of the image blur. In addition, the algorithm guarantees to be convergent and has simple computation.

Micro Insert: A Prototype Full-Ring PET Device for Improving the Image Resolution of a Small-Animal PET Scanner

A full-ring PET insert device should be able to enhance the image resolution of existing small-animal PET scanners. Methods: The device consists of 18 high-resolution PET detectors in a cylindric enclosure. Each detector contains a cerium-doped lutetium oxyorthosilicate array (12 x 12 crystals, 0.72 x 1.51 x 3.75 mm each) coupled to a position-sensitive photomultiplier tube via an optical fiber bundle made of 8 x 16 square multiclad fibers. Signals from the insert detectors are connected to the scanner through the electronics of the disabled first ring of detectors, which permits coincidence detection between the 2 systems. Energy resolution of a detector was measured using a Ge-68 point source, and a calibrated 68Ge point source stepped across the axial field of view (FOV) provided the sensitivity profile of the system. A Na-22 point source imaged at different offsets from the center characterized the in-plane resolution of the insert system. Imaging was then performed with a Derenzo phantom filled with 19.5 MBq of F-18-fluoride and imaged for 2 h; a 24.3-g mouse injected with 129.5 MBq of F-18-fluoride and imaged in 5 bed positions at 3.5 h after injection; and a 22.8-g mouse injected with 14.3 MBq of F-18-FDG and imaged for 2 h with electrocardiogram gating. Results: The energy resolution of a typical detector module at 511 keV is 19.0% +/- 3.1 %. The peak sensitivity of the system is approximately 2.67%. The image resolution of the system ranges from 1.0- to 1.8-mm full width at half maximum near the center of the FOV, depending on the type of coincidence events used for image reconstruction. Derenzo phantom and mouse bone images showed significant improvement in transaxial image resolution using the insert device. Mouse heart images demonstrated the gated imaging capability of the device. Conclusion: We have built a prototype full-ring insert device for a small-animal PET scanner to provide higher-resolution PET images within a reduced imaging FOV. Development of additional correction techniques are needed to achieve quantitative imaging with such an insert.

Application of digital image analysis to the study of banded spherulite during growing and melting process

A digital image analysis(DIA) technique can be applied directly to the image obtained by polarizing microscope. The time-resolved DIA apparatus including image collecting, showing and data analysis has been home-made. As an example, it has been used to study the banded spherulite in the blends of poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) and poly(styrene-ran-acrylonitrile) (SAN).