Medborgarskapande för ett nytt millennium : utbildning och medborgarfostran i 2000-talets Sverige.

Citizenship in the making for a new millenium – education and citizen formation in 21st century Sweden. The aim of this article is to analyse citizenship formation in Swedish education. In highlighting trends regarding the assignment of the educational system to provide for democratic citizenship there are certain depictions of citizenship prevail- ing. The first stresses an inward-looking and inward-feeling citizenship, characterizing the citizen as deliberative and emotional. The second stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship, characterizing the citizen as entrepreneurial and willing. Here, democracy is portrayed as already achieved. This, we argue, is hazardous as society risk being pictured as apolitical and democratically ‘saturated’. This situation does not open up for democratic change to come into question as desirable or even possible. Put differently, it leaves us with the notion that things have to be as they are, as we are living in the best of worlds.

Political participation as public pedagogy : The Educational Situation in Young People´s Political Conversations in Social Media

In this article we argue that young people’s political participation in the social media can be considered ‘public pedagogy’. The argument builds on a previous empirical analysis of a Swedish net community called Black Heart. Theoretically, the article is based on a particular notion of public pedagogy, education and Hannah Arendt’s expressive agonism. The political participation that takes place in the net community builds up an educational situation that involves central characteristics: communication, community building, a strong content focus and content production, argumentation and rule following. These characteristics pave the way for young people’s public voicing, experiencing, preferences and political interests that guide their everyday political life and learning – a phenomenon that we understand as a form of public pedagogy. 

What Counts as Young People's Civic Engagement in Times of Accountability? : On the Importance of Maintaining Openness about Young People's Civic Engagement in Education

One aspect of the ICCS study's measurement of young people's citizen competence is 'civic engagement'. In this article it is argued that even though the study's assessment captures important aspects of young people's civic engagement, too strong educational reliance on it may contribute to meagreness in the educaitonal assignment to see to an engaged citizenry. By providing deeper insight into the ICCS study's assessment rationale, and by presenting qualitatively derived examples of young people's civic engagement, it is suggested that in order to see to fruitful ways of approaching the educational task of providing for young people's civic engagement, we need to maintain openness to different depictions of civic engagement. Among them those that matter as such for the young people themselves in and through the social and material practices they take part in.

Från nationsbyggare till global marknadsnomad : Om medborgarskap i svensk utbildningspolitik under 1990-talet

I den här avhandlingen är intresset riktat mot svensk utbildningspolitik och medborgarskap. I tider av globalisering, och med ett etablerat svenskt medlemskap i Europeiska unionen, har det nationella policyskapandet kring utbildningens medborgardanande funktion hamnat under ökat tryck. I studien undersöks hur detta hanteras i svensk utbildningspolitik under 1990-talet, en tid som utmärker sig genom betydande förändringar på utbildningsområdet i Sverige. Frågan är, mera precist, vilken riktning för skolans, enligt lag befästa, uppdrag att fostra demokratiska medborgare som utstakas i svensk utbildningspolitik vid denna tid. Genom att fästa vikt vid mål, visioner och motiv som formuleras i utbildningspolitiska 1990-talstexter klarläggs förståelser av medborgarskap som karaktäriserar svensk utbildningspolitik under denna tid. Även en bredare historisk analys görs, ur vilken historiska målsättningar med skolans medborgarfostran som föregår 1990-talets framträder. Studiens syfte är kritiskt. Förståelserna granskas utifrån vad de innesluter och vad de utesluter, vilka möjliga konsekvenser de kan tänkas få för olika individer och grupper i samhället, och om det finns öppningar för tänkbara alternativ. Studien visar på två historiska skiften vad gäller medborgarskapets innehåll och mening i det inhemska policyskapandet. Det första skiftet äger rum under 1990-talets tidiga del. Då bryts en etablerad samhällsbyggande medborgarroll upp, till förmån för andra mera marknadsorienterade medborgarroller. Under 1990-talets senare del, då marknadsorienteringen förstärks i neoliberal riktning, sker ett andra skifte; en historiskt vedertagen gemenskapstanke – nationen – bryts upp som grund för medborgerlig gemenskap. Denna tanke ersätts av en annan som är globaliseringsinriktad, vilken visar sig ha andra inne- och uteslutande mekanismer för olika individer och samhällsgrupper. Utifrån dessa forskningsrön tecknas avslutningsvis några konturer till ett alternativt sätt att tänka kring medborgarskap och gemenskap. Detta alternativ tar form i ambitionen att, i högre grad än vad som blir synligt i svensk utbildningspolitik, resonera kring möjligheter för ett medborgarskap bortom förhandstecknade indelningsgrunder för ett “vi”. Språk som politisk och samhällelig förändringskraft ges en central betydelse i avhandlingen. I analysen av texternas tal om skolans medborgarfostrande roll undersöks pågående politiska motsättningar när det gäller att vinna tal- och tolkningsföreträde till skolans fostransmål. Utgångarna av dessa motsättningar belyses genom tre områden för medborgarfostran som urskilts som centrala; ett politiskt, ett kulturellt samt ett ekonomi- och arbetslivsriktat. Genom dessa har rådande medborgarskapsdiskurser tagit form, ur vilka de utbildningspolitiska förståelserna av medborgarskap gestaltas och diskuteras.

Funcionamento Familiar e Comportamento Anti-social e Delinquente

Este estudo visa aprofundar o conhecimento sistémico, relativamente à problemática do comportamento anti-social numa perspectiva do seu funcionamento familiar. Procurámos compreender a existência ou não de comportamentos anti-sociais e delinquentes nos subsistemas filiais de famílias disfuncionais, de uma comunidade socialmente conotada como estando associada à criminalidade. Em termos metodológicos utilizámos o questionário sociodemográfico (Correia, 2009), a FACES II – escala de avaliação da adaptabilidade e da coesão familiar (Olson et al., 1981) e a escala do comportamento anti-social e delinquente (Formiga & Gouveia, 2005). Os instrumentos de análise foram aplicados a 30 famílias, que revelaram maioritariamente ter um nível de coesão separada, uma adaptabilidade flexível, correspondendo a um tipo de família meio-termo. No entanto, uma análise individual dos resultados revela que um maior número de elementos percepciona a família ao nível da coesão como desmembrada, ao nível da adaptabilidade como flexível, e ao nível do tipo de família como extrema, indicando-nos que diferentes elementos percepcionam de forma diferente o funcionamento do seu sistema familiar. Relativamente aos comportamentos anti-sociais e delinquentes, um número considerável de elementos afirma praticar comportamentos anti-sociais, sendo o número de práticas delinquentes inferior. Apesar de não existir um número elevado de famílias extremas, concluímos que os elementos que pertencem a famílias tendencialmente disfuncionais, praticam maioritariamente comportamentos anti-sociais e delinquentes, sendo que os primeiros prevalecem relativamente aos segundos. /

Worries and possibilities in active citizenship : Three Swedish educational contexts

This article examines how the concept of active citizenship has been given a neo-liberal character by examining practice in three different educational contexts in Sweden. The concept of active citizenship has become influential in educational policy and practice throughout the European Union. The aim of this article is to highlight concerns at how this concept has come to be re-shaped by neo-liberal principles in Swedish education. The analysis highlights three themes, based on voice, ethical awareness and complexity and mutuality of lived experience, and argues that they provide the basis for a shift away from the present neo-liberal colouring of the concept.

RECQ5 promotes recombination and mutagenesis at targeted nicks through disruption of RAD51 filaments

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Neutrophil Chemotaxis in Multiple Chemoattractant Gradients

Chemotaxis, the phenomenon in which cells move in response to extracellular chemical gradients, plays a prominent role in the mammalian immune response. During this process, a number of chemical signals, called chemoattractants, are produced at or proximal to sites of infection and diffuse into the surrounding tissue. Immune cells sense these chemoattractants and move in the direction where their concentration is greatest, thereby locating the source of attractants and their associated targets. Leading the assault against new infections is a specialized class of leukocytes (white blood cells) known as neutrophils, which normally circulate in the bloodstream. Upon activation, these cells emigrate out of the vasculature and navigate through interstitial tissues toward target sites. There they phagocytose bacteria and release a number of proteases and reactive oxygen intermediates with antimicrobial activity. Neutrophils recruited by infected tissue in vivo are likely confronted by complex chemical environments consisting of a number of different chemoattractant species. These signals may include end target chemicals produced in the vicinity of the infectious agents, and endogenous chemicals released by local host tissues during the inflammatory response. To successfully locate their pathogenic targets within these chemically diverse and heterogeneous settings, activated neutrophils must be capable of distinguishing between the different signals and employing some sort of logic to prioritize among them. This ability to simultaneously process and interpret mulitple signals is thought to be essential for efficient navigation of the cells to target areas. In particular, aberrant cell signaling and defects in this functionality are known to contribute to medical conditions such as chronic inflammation, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. To elucidate the biomolecular mechanisms underlying the neutrophil response to different chemoattractants, a number of efforts have been made toward understanding how cells respond to different combinations of chemicals. Most notably, recent investigations have shown that in the presence of both end target and endogenous chemoattractant variants, the cells migrate preferentially toward the former type, even in very low relative concentrations of the latter. Interestingly, however, when the cells are exposed to two different endogenous chemical species, they exhibit a combinatorial response in which distant sources are favored over proximal sources. Some additional results also suggest that cells located between two endogenous chemoattractant sources will respond to the vectorial sum of the combined gradients. In the long run, this peculiar behavior could result in oscillatory cell trajectories between the two sources. To further explore the significance of these and other observations, particularly in the context of physiological conditions, we introduce in this work a simplified phenomenological model of neutrophil chemotaxis. In particular, this model incorporates a trait commonly known as directional persistence - the tendency for migrating neutrophils to continue moving in the same direction (much like momentum) - while also accounting for the dose-response characteristics of cells to different chemical species. Simulations based on this model suggest that the efficiency of cell migration in complex chemical environments depends significantly on the degree of directional persistence. In particular, with appropriate values for this parameter, cells can improve their odds of locating end targets by drifting through a network of attractant sources in a loosely-guided fashion. This corroborates the prediction that neutrophils randomly migrate from one chemoattractant source to the next while searching for their end targets. These cells may thus use persistence as a general mechanism to avoid being trapped near sources of endogenous chemoattractants - the mathematical analogue of local maxima in a global optimization problem. Moreover, this general foraging strategy may apply to other biological processes involving multiple signals and long-range navigation.

Proceedings from North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, Vol. 3

In this volume are represented the proceedings of the Third North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization held at Ryerson University in Toronto Canada on June 16-17, 2011. It contains 21 papers and one abstract.

Numerical methods for solar tomography in the STEREO era

In this thesis, we propose several advances in the numerical and computational algorithms that are used to determine tomographic estimates of physical parameters in the solar corona. We focus on methods for both global dynamic estimation of the coronal electron density and estimation of local transient phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections, from empirical observations acquired by instruments onboard the STEREO spacecraft. We present a first look at tomographic reconstructions of the solar corona from multiple points-of-view, which motivates the developments in this thesis. In particular, we propose a method for linear equality constrained state estimation that leads toward more physical global dynamic solar tomography estimates. We also present a formulation of the local static estimation problem, i.e., the tomographic estimation of local events and structures like coronal mass ejections, that couples the tomographic imaging problem to a phase field based level set method. This formulation will render feasible the 3D tomography of coronal mass ejections from limited observations. Finally, we develop a scalable algorithm for ray tracing dense meshes, which allows efficient computation of many of the tomographic projection matrices needed for the applications in this thesis.

Limits to tDCS effects in language:failures to modulate word production in healthy participants with frontal or temporal tDCS

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a method of non-invasive brain stimulation widely used to modulate cognitive functions. Recent studies, however, suggests that effects are unreliable, small and often non-significant at least when stimulation is applied in a single session to healthy individuals. We examined the effects of frontal and temporal lobe anodal tDCS on naming and reading tasks and considered possible interactions with linguistic activation and selection mechanisms as well possible interactions with item difficulty and participant individual variability. Across four separate experiments (N, Exp 1A = 18; 1B = 20; 1C = 18; 2 = 17), we failed to find any difference between real and sham stimulation. Moreover, we found no evidence of significant effects limited to particular conditions (i.e., those requiring suppression of semantic interference), to a subset of participants or to longer RTs. Our findings sound a cautionary note on using tDCS as a means to modulate cognitive performance. Consistent effects of tDCS may be difficult to demonstrate in healthy participants in reading and naming tasks, and be limited to cases of pathological neurophysiology and/or to the use of learning paradigms.

Modelos de acción colectiva: modelos de cambio social

El autor realiza una crítica interna de la teoría analítica de la acción colectiva, tal y como fue formulada por Mancur Olson, mostrando que tanto la racionalidad individual como la colectiva pueden funcionar de forma "perversa" o de forma socialmente beneficiosa, dependiendo del contexto.

A relação entre comportamentos auto lesivos e os comportamentos suicidários e o impacto do funcionamento familiar

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no ISPA- Instituto Universitário para obtenção de grau de Mestre na especialidade de Psicologia Clínica