Studies on Inequalities in Information Society. Proceedings of the Conference, Well-Being in the Information Society

Siirretty Doriast

Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography

This open access book is about socio-spatial theory in, and the nature of, Nordic geography. From both historical and contemporary perspectives, the book engages with theorisations of geography in the Nordic countries. Including chapters by geographers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, it reflects how theories about the relations between the social and the spatial have been developed, adopted and critiqued in Nordic human geography in relation to a wide range of themes, concepts and approaches. The book also traces institutional developments, distinct geographical traditions and intellectual histories, as well as authors’ own experiences as geographers in and beyond the Nordic area. The chapters together introduce and engage with debates and discussions that permeate Nordic geography and allows readers a glimpse of geographical thinking and the role of socio-spatial theory in the Nordic countries. By providing insights into how geographical ideas emerge, travel and are translated and adapted in specific contexts, the book contributes to debates about historical-geographical situatedness and theorisations of geography

Multimetal smithing : An urban craft in rural settings?

Multimetal smithing should be defined as the use of more than one metal and/or different metalworking techniques within thesame crafts-milieu. This complex metalworking has long been linked to centrality, central places and urbanity in Scandinavia.It has been extensively argued that fine casting and smithing, as well as manufacture utilizing precious metals was exclusivelyundertaken within early urban settings or the “central places” pre-dating these. Furthermore, the presence of complex metalcraftsmanship has been used as a driving indicator of the political, social and economic superiority of certain sites, therebyenhancing their identity as “centralities”.Recent research has come to challenge the universality of this link between urbanity, centrality and complex metalworkingas sites in rural settings with evidence of multimetal smithing are being identified. This shows that the relationship between thecraft and centrality (urbanity) must be nuanced and that perhaps multimetal craftsmanship should be reconsidered as an urbanindicator.The thesis project “From Crucible and onto Anvil” started in 2015 and focuses on sites housing remains of multimetalcraftsmanship dating primarily from 500-1000 AD. Within the project a comprehensive survey of sites will be used to evaluate thepresence of multimetal craftsmanship in the landscape. Sites in selected target areas will also be subject to intra-site analysisfocusing on workshop organisation, production output, metalworking techniques and chronological variances.A key aim in the project is to elucidate the conceptual aspects of complex metalworking. The term multimetality is used toanalytically frame all the societal and economic aspects of multimetal craftsmanship. Through this inclusive perspective both thecraftsmanship and the metalworkers behind it are positioned within the overall socioeconomic framework. The metalworkers,their skills and competences as well as the products of their labour are viewed as dynamic actors in the landscape and on thearenas of political economy of the Late Iron Age.The survey has already revealed interesting aspects concerning multimetal smithing and urbanity. Although the multimetalsites do cluster against areas of early urban development there are also other patterns emerging. Multimetal craftsmanship – both as practice and concept – was well represented in both rural peripheral settings and urban crafts-milieus. This means that therole of multimetality as part of an “urban conceptual package” is crucial to investigate. Such an approach will have the dual endsof properly understanding the craft and its societal implications, but also further the knowledge of the phenomenon of urbanityas a whole. Was multimetal smithing part of an “urban package” that spread into the rural landscape? Did the multimetality differbetween urban and rural crafts-milieus? How does early urbanity relate to the chronology of multimetal craftsmanship?This paper aims to counter these questions using examples from the survey of multimetal sites conducted within the thesisproject. A comparison between selected sites will be presented. The purpose of this is to evaluate the role of multimetality withinthe “urban package” and discuss the role of complex metalworking in the establishment of urban arenas of interaction in LateIron Age Scandinavia

"The Role of Formal Education in the promotion of European Unity, with special reference to the U.K., Netherlands, West Germany and France".

Not availabl

A disk-resident suffix tree index and generic framework for managing tunable indexes

This thesis introduces two related technologies. The first is a disk-resident index for biological sequence data, and the second is a framework and toolkit for the management of operational parameters for applications of which this index is typical. The Top-Compressed Suffix Tree is a novel data structure that can be used to provide a scalable, disk-resident index for large sequences. This data structure is based on the suffix tree, but has been designed to overcome the problems associated with using such structures on secondary memory. Top-Compressed Suffix Trees can be constructed incrementally, allowing indexes to be created that are larger than the amount of available main memory. Correspondingly, querying such an index only requires part of the data structure to be resident in main memory, thus allowing support for on-demand faulting and eviction of index sections during search. Such an index may be of great benefit to scientists requiring efficient access to vast repositories of genomic data. The Generic Index Development and Operation Framework (GIDOF) is a framework and toolkit that supports various tasks relating to the management of operational parameters. The performance of an index's implementation is typically influenced by several operational parameters parameters that must be tuned carefully if optimum performance is to be obtained. Indexes implemented using GIDOF can be structured in such a way that values of selected operational parameters can be adjusted; resulting in an index implementation that can be tuned to suit a given workload or system environment. This thesis presents a detailed description of the design of both the Top-Compressed Suffix Tree and the algorithms that operate over it. Extensive performance measurements are then presented and discussed, covering such aspects of index performance as construction time, average query performance and the size of the completed index. An overview of the GIDOF parameter model and toolkit is then given together with examples of how this framework can be used to manage tunable indexes, such as the Top-Compressed Suffix Tree