Star Wars as modern myth : a comparative analysis of George Lucas`s Star Wars and Joseph Campbell´s The hero with a thousand faces

Masteoppgave i engelsk- Universitetet i Agder 201

The Metaphor of Marriage in Hosea

Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). The message of Hosea is provocative. For this very reason, the biblical book of Hosea has frustrated and intrigued scholars for over two millennia. Scholarly debate has raged due to the implications the text has for the character of God and His prophet, and the ways in which God interacts with His people. It cannot, however, be claimed that the discussion has been concluded; “from centuries of critical debate only one consensus on the book of Hosea emerges: that it is a disturbing, fragmented, outrageous and notoriously problematic text

The loyal editor effect: Russian online journalism after independence

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2016.1200797This article investigates what effect pressure from owners - via loyal editors, had on journalistic output at the popular Russian online newspapers Lenta and Gazeta. Using novel methods to analyse a dataset of nearly 1 million texts from the period 2010-2015, this article separates the effect of a changing news agenda from new editorial priorities. Statistical tests show that changes in output coincide temporally with editorial change, and that the direction of change sees new editors move away from publication patterns associated with other independent outlets. In both Gazeta and Lenta, editorial changes were accompanied by a move away from core news areas such as domestic and international politics, towards lifestyle and human interest subjects. The loyal editor effect resulted in a 50% reduction in coverage of controversial legal proceedings, together with the business dealings of Russian elites

Revolution or Evolution: The Development of the Concern for the Preservation of Information Uncovered during Archaeological Excavations in Israel and Palestine (1890-1980)

The ICCROM conference of 1983 in Nicosia represents a turning point in the profession of archaeological conservation; here it was expressed that conservators no longer were concerned only with the preservation of excavated objects, but also with archaeological information. This study of the development of concern for the preservation of information from archaeological excavations in Palestine traces the discipline from Flinders Petrie’s first stratigraphic excavation in the region at the end of the nineteenth century to the heyday of American processual archaeology. Special attention is paid to the development of professionalism in the discipline, as made evident by the archaeologists’ efforts to remain at the cutting edge of their field, publish efficiently, and preserve the material they uncovered. It will be shown that interestingly, despite only excavating for six weeks, Petrie’s ideals in 1890 were closer to those of the 1983 conference than most his successors. The study is a response to those who have claimed that archaeology did not truly begin in the region until the 1950s and that the work done prior to this time is irrelevant for study. It is intended as a reminder of the need for professional humility and of the degree of continuity present in all intellectual disciplines that so easily is forgotten

Sustaining public agency in caring for heritage: critical perspectives on participation through co-design

This thesis explores how heritage organisations in the UK are attempting to build capacity and sustainability in community groups involved in caring for heritage places during austerity. It is based on a broad interdisciplinary reading of critical perspectives on public participation. From this vantage point, I argue that the forms of participation facilitated by participatory initiatives in the sector are constrained by perceptions of public deficits and legitimate heritage expertise, which in turn are bound up in established definitions of heritage and its cultural significance. As a result, participatory initiatives reproduce the characteristics of network governance and incumbent democratisation, whereby community groups who share professional values are asked to augment professional capacity, as opposed to more critical forms of democratisation that foreground public agency. By critically engaging with my three case studies, Archaeology Scotland’s Adopt-a-Monument scheme, Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place interface and associated projects and my own co-design project with three community groups in Yorkshire, I demonstrate how public agency is limited in practice in each case, despite individuals’ critical intentions. In response, I argue that increasing and sustaining public agency in caring for heritage requires carefully designing participatory projects in ways that foreground participants’ skills and interests. My analysis demonstrates that in order to realise such interventions, they must be based in reconceptualised definitions of heritage and more nuanced understandings of participation deficits and legitimate heritage expertise. In doing so, my thesis contributes to the growing body of scholarship that argues increasing public participation is not a critical intervention in and of itself, but a means by which control can be both retained and relinquished

Automatic Generation of Custom Image Recognition Models

In this thesis, we examine the viability of training a convolutional neural network using synthetic data. The cnn is used for image recognition in an rms. We create a program that can render 3D models from STL files as images with varied backgrounds. The process of creating and training an image recognition model is also automated. Lastly, the model is used for image recognition. The report compares different methods and hyperparameters used in training a model. Transfer learning is found to be suited for synthetic datasets. Using the pre-trained feature extraction layers of the VGG-16 model, we train an image recognition model with better than 90% accuracy in the laboratory. We then demonstrate the use of this model for object detection, and suggest avenues for further development

Popular with the Robots: Accusation and Automation in the Argentine Presidential Elections, 2015

Accusations of dishonourable campaigning have featured in every Argentine presidential election since the return to democracy in 1983. Yet, allegations made in the elections this October and November looked different from earlier ones. The campaign team for the centre-leftist candidate Daniel Scioli argued that Cambiemos, the centre-right coalition led by Mauricio Macri, was abusing the political affordances of social media by running a Twitter campaign via ‘50,000’ fake accounts. This paper presents evidence suggesting that both teams promoted their campaigns through automation on Twitter. Although the Macri campaign was subtler, both teams appear to have used automation to the same end: maximizing the diffusion of party content and creating an inflated image of their popularity. Neither team attempted to muffle or engage with opposing voices through automation. We argue that in a political culture fixated on the appearance of popularity, the use of automation to simulate mass support appears an organic development as campaigning enters the still unregulated Twittersphere. We compare our findings to the uses of automation in the Russian Twittersphere and conclude that there may be greater variation in the political usage of Twitter between political contexts than between different types of political event occurring in the same country.This study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (grant number RP2012-C-017).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-016-9233-

Exploration of the plastic-binding potential of lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases

Lytiske polysakkaridmonooksygenaser (LPMO-er) er enkelt-kopper enzymer som besitter en unik egenskap til å oksidere krystallinske overflater av motstandsdyktige polysakkarider som er utilgjengelige for konvensjonelle hydrolytiske enzymer. Den kraftfulle naturen til reaktive oksygenarter som dannes av LPMO-er, har fått noen forskere til å tro at disse enzymene kan være relevante for oksidativ nedbrytning av andre polymerer som er motstandsdyktige mot hydrolyse, inkludert plastmaterialer. Denne ideen er delvis basert på tanken om at den høye krystalliniteten og hydrofobiteten til materialer som polyetylen, til en viss grad, kan ligne overflateegenskapene til de naturlige substratene som LPMO-er fra før kan oksidere (for eksempel cellulose eller kitin). Denne avhandlingen hadde som mål å undersøke om den potensielle likheten mellom uløselige polysakkarider og plastmaterialer fører til at LPMO-er binder seg til polyetylen (PE), polyetylentereftalat (PET) og polypropylen (PP). For å svare på dette spørsmålet ble det utført screening-eksperimenter med LPMO-er fra ulike LPMO-familier, og flere screening-teknikker ble evaluert, inkludert konkurranseanalyser av binding med LPMO-er, cellulose og plastmaterialer av interesse. Resultatene som ble oppnådd i dette prosjektet indikerer at noen, men ikke alle, LPMO-er faktisk har en merkbar grad av binding til LDPE, HDPE og PP. Dette gjelder spesielt for CelS2 (også referert til som ScLPMO10C), en modellbakteriell LPMO som består av en katalytisk domene tilhørende familie 10 og en tilleggsfamilie 2 karbohydratbindingsmodul (CBM). Denne LPMO-en ble grundig undersøkt ved å sammenligne bindingen til plastmaterialer med bindingdataene som ble oppnådd med to konstruerte varianter av enzymet: CelS2TR, som mangler CBM, og CelS2-CBM1, som har en familie 1 karbohydratbindingsmodul i stedet for familie 2 CBM til den naturlige typen. CelS2-CBM1 ble designet og produsert som en del av dette prosjektet. Eksperimentene indikerte at det er CBM og ikke den katalytiske domenen til CelS2 som bidrar mest til den observerte bindingen til plastmaterialer. Viktigst er det at evnen til familie 2 CBM til å veilede LPMO-ens binding til plastmaterialer viste seg å være mye høyere enn familie 1 CBM. Derfor representerer karbohydratbindingsmodulen til den ville typen CelS2 et potensielt startpunkt for fremtidige proteiningeniørkampanjer med mål om å skape proteiner som sterkt kan binde seg til krystallinske hydrofobe polymerer, som for eksempel PELytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are mono-copper enzymes that possess a unique ability to oxidize crystalline surfaces of recalcitrant polysaccharides that are inaccessible to canonical hydrolytic enzymes. The powerful nature of reactive oxygen species generated by LPMOs has led some researchers to believe that these enzymes may be relevant to oxidative degradation of other polymers resistant to hydrolysis, including plastics. This idea is partly based on the notion that the high crystallinity and hydrophobicity of materials such as polyethylene may to some extent resemble the surface properties of known LPMO substrates (e.g., cellulose or chitin). This thesis was aimed at investigating whether the potential similarity between insoluble polysaccharides and industry relevant plastics results in ability of LPMOs to bind polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP). To address this question, screening experiments featuring a variety of LPMOs were performed, and multiple screening techniques were evaluated, including binding competition assays with LPMOs, cellulose and plastics of interest. The results obtained in this thesis project indicate that some but not all LPMOs indeed possess a noticeable degree of binding to LDPE, HDPE, and PP. This is particularly the case for CelS2 (also referred to as ScLPMO10C), a model bacterial LPMO comprising a family 10 catalytic domain and an auxiliary family 2 carbohydrate-binding module (CBM). This LPMO was studied in detail by comparing its binding to plastics to the binding data obtained with two engineered variants of the enzyme: CelS2TR, lacking CBM, and CelS2-CBM1, possessing a family 1 carbohydrate-binding module instead of the wild-type CBM. The later protein was designed and produced as the part of this project. The experiments indicated that it is the CBM and not the catalytic domain of CelS2 that contributes most to the observed binding to plastics. Importantly, the ability of family 2 CBM to guide the LPMO binding to plastics was shown to be much higher than of family 1 CBM. Therefore, the carbohydrate-binding module of the wild-type CelS2 represents a potential starting point for future protein engineering campaigns aimed at creating proteins that can strongly bind to crystalline hydrophobic polymers, such as PE