Till Europas försvar? : En analys av flyktingdiskursen i Visegrád-länderna

The current refugee crisis in Europe has led to an increased presence of the subject in the European debate. In many countries, refugees are met with suspicion and hatred as a result of widespread islamophobia, and this particular movement is clearly visible in Central Europe. The Visegrád group, an alliance between Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary originally formed to accelerate the countries’ reintegration in the European community has become a way for the central European countries to argue against EU refugee quotas. This paper sets out to further analyse the current discourse on refugees of four political leaders from each member state of the Visegrád group by investigating the use of Van Leeuwen’s four legitimisation strategies. By using a complementary idea analysis, the importance of factors such as identity, history and islamophobia will be revealed. The result shows that the issue of migration does not only revolve around refugees, but also brings into account questions of sovereignty and other values that are important to the Central European nations due to their troubled pasts. Moreover, islamophobia, the idea of “Fortress Europe” and the myth of the “bulwark of Christianity” play important parts in the Central European discourse on migration

Pseudomonas sp. strain MF30 suppresses Fusarium wilt of tomato in vivo

In a search of bacterial biological control agents, 50 bacterial isolates collected from roots of wild plants in northern Sweden were tested in vivo for suppression of wilt of tomato caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici. Tomato plants were sown in 10-cm-diam. pots and after 21 d 7 ml of bacterial suspension (ca. 2x109 cfu ml-1) was poured into the soil around each plant. Two days later, 10 ml of pathogen suspension was soil-inoculated (106 conidia ml-1) around the same plants. After a further 20 days, disease incidence was measured. One bacterial isolate, MF30, protected plants from Fusarium wilt, even though the fungal pathogen and not MF30 actually colonized the plant. Several mechanisms may have contributed to the suppression of Fusarium wilt, including systemic induced resistance. The MF30 strain is highly similar to members of the RNA group I of the Pseudomonas fluorescens, well known for its capacity to induce systemic resistance

Critical aspects of phytoalexins in potato

vokKirjasto Aj-KPerunan fytoaleksiinit: kriittinen tarkastel

Narrating Independence - A Narrative Analysis of Contemporary Estonian and Latvian Narratives about Independence

In 2018, several European nations celebrated their centennial anniversaries of independence. Two of them, Estonia and Latvia, had never been independent before 1918, and for these nations, the events surrounding independence therefore have a special meaning. This is not least made evident by the historical development that they have gone through over the course of the past century, having been incorporated in the Soviet Union for fifty years before regaining independence in 1991. This study sets out to explore how historical narratives about independence told in predominately commemorative speeches, given by political leaders in Estonia and Latvia in the period 2017-2020, are constructed in relation to historical consciousness. Other points of interest are the stories’ abilities to justify Estonian and Latvian relations to external actors such as Russia, EU and NATO as well as their abilities to construct national identity. The project was done by applying a narrative analysis based on William Labov’s elements of a narrative, focusing on three elements where expressions of historical consciousness were most likely to be manifested. As a theoretical framework, theories about historical consciousness and historical narration have been used to explain the sense-making functions of the studied narratives. The results show that the identified narratives show proof of historical consciousness, with extensive connections to metanarratives dominating in Estonia and Latvia, drawing on references about the live-through period of suffering during the Soviet era and a period of thriving in the post-Soviet era, using historical narration to justify relations to Russia, EU, and NATO, with varying degrees of optimism. The dominant view is that the respective nation has and must pursue the ability to act independently, regardless of external actors. The Estonian and Latvian narratives are to a large extent similar in terms of historical consciousness but differ most of all in the way the issue of how unity between ethnic groups is treated

Modelling News Sentiment Flow Using Spatial Hawkes Processes: Dependencies Between Topics and Countries

This Master Thesis proposes to use a Spatial Hawkes Process to model the news flow in the world. The spatial part is divided in both geographical areas as well as different topics. Therefore, in the Hawkes model every news article corresponds to a point in space and time. In a certain region and topic the intensity of the released articles will be modelled with the Hawkes Process. This can be of interest for various applications depending on the topic and region chosen. The data in this project comes from the company RavenPack which has labelled every news article with a topic and a region. The area specifically examined in this report will be the relations between the different areas in the news flow. A comparison will also be done between some different spatial divisions to see if different behaviour can be captured with a more complex model, with more regions and topics. The model is compared to a Poisson Process model. It seems that the Hawkes model works better than the Poisson Process to model the intensity of the different parts of the news flow in all cases. The results also indicates that a very flexible model will be able to capture more cases that are known from history. The complex model sees connections that increase the intensity during hectic times in the recent past news flow, for example during Brexit and the Arab Spring. However it seems that with more regions the model is prone to overfit and a simpler model may be preferable for out of sample use

Pour une mobilisation des jeunes - Une analyse du discours politique de Jean-Luc Mélenchon aux élections présidentielles 2017

In recent years, several leftist movements have achieved success in national elections in Europe, mainly in Spain and Greece. Something that all these parties have in common has been their ability to mobilize a large number of young voters. One of the most successful politicians in this regard is French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of left-wing party La France Insoumise, who was the most popular candidate in the French presidential elections of 2017 among the youth. This paper sets out to further investigate the success of Mélenchon in terms of political discourse. The objective is to see if he uses a particular kind of language which appears appealing to young voters. Based on a theoretical framework based on research in the areas of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, a thematical and linguistic analysis is performed on eight different speeches from Mélenchon’s presidential campaign 2017. The results show that there is indeed a lot of factors in Mélenchon’s discourse that can be considered as appealing to the young electorate, both thematically and linguistically, that certainly might have had an impact on the results of the first round of the French presidential elections 2017

TMV-particle borne enhancer of a tobacco RNA-replicase

According to separation studies it has been evident that a tobacco RNA-replicase after TMV-infection consists of two parts. The larger part is host-directed and will be combined with a virus borne small protein which considerably enhances the RNA-replicase activity and is therefore named replicase enhancer, Ree. This compound was found at HPLC-separations of TMV-coat proteins, and was detected using polymerase assay with a radioactive nucleotide involved. Molecular weight has been determined by mass spectrometry: with FT ICR MS to get the size – 6 023.3 - and with MALDI TOF MS to obtain a sequence of the 54 amino acids involved. Presumably Ree is fixed to the TMV-RNA at infection. The enzyme seems to produce minus-strands of the virus RNA

TMV-particle borne enhancer of a tobacco RNA-replicase

According to separation studies it has been evident that a tobacco RNA-replicase after TMV-infection consists of two parts. The larger part is host-directed and will be combined with a virus borne small protein which considerably enhances the RNA-replicase activity and is therefore named replicase enhancer, Ree. This compound was found at HPLC-separations of TMV-coat proteins, and was detected using polymerase assay with a radioactive nucleotide involved. Molecular weight has been determined by mass spectrometry: with FT ICR MS to get the size – 6 023.3 - and with MALDI TOF MS to obtain a sequence of the 54 amino acids involved. Presumably Ree is fixed to the TMV-RNA at infection. The enzyme seems to produce minus-strands of the virus RNA