Hello, Twitter Bot!:Towards a Bot Ethics of Response and Responsibility

In this paper, we explore the troubles and potentials at stake in the developments and deployments of lively technologies like Twitter bots, and how they challenge traditional ideas of ethical responsibility. We suggest that there is a tendency for bot ethics to revolve around the desire to differentiate between bot and human, which does not address what we understand to be the cultural anxieties at stake in the blurring boundaries between human and technology. Here we take some tentative steps towards rethinking and reimagining bot-human relationships through a feminist ethics of responsibility as response by taking as our starting point our own experience with bot creation, the Twitter bot “Hello30762308.” The bot was designed to respond with a “hello” to other Twitter users’ #hello, but quickly went in directions not intended by its creators.

The contribution of alternative habitats for conservation of plant species associated with threatened semi-natural grasslands

Conservation of species associated with semi-natural grasslands, a threatened habitat, is dependent on their ability to disperse between the few and fragmented patches remaining in the landscape. To maintain metapopulations dynamics and reduce the risk of regional extinction, it is essential to know whether other, more widespread, habitats can act as alternative habitat for the biodiversity associated with threatened habitats. Here, we study how four widespread habitat types in boreal landscapes—forest, permanent grassland, abandoned grassland and road verge—can contribute to the conservation of plant species found in semi-natural grasslands which is a species-rich ecosystem important for plant and pollinator diversity that has experienced extensive reduction, fragmentation and isolation. We compare richness of all vascular plants, insect-pollinated plants and semi-natural grassland specialists among habitat types in two regions is Norway where semi-natural grasslands are few and fragmented. Based on overlap in community composition and local species richness, road verges were the most promising alternative habitat for both insect-pollinated plants and semi-natural grasslands specialists. Several habitat specialist species were, however, only found in semi-natural grasslands and, for these species, no other habitat can be considered suitable as alternative habitat. Our results highlight that a holistic management perspective is needed to maintain biodiversity associated with semi-natural grasslands. Thus, both the protection of remaining patches of the primary, threatened habitats as well as management of widespread, alternative habitats in the landscape should be prioritized.publishedVersio

Missing Links and Non/Human Queerings: an Introduction

In recent years, questions regarding the ontological status of the human have been raised with renewed interest and imagination within various fields of critical thought. In the face of biotechnological findings and increasingly advanced technologies that connect as well as disturb settled boundaries, whether geographical or bodily, not to mention philosophical questionings of traditional western humanism, the boundaries of the human subject have been contested. The human body, traditionally imagined as closed and autonomous, has been opened up to a world of forces and agencies that are strange, other and often deeply disturbing when viewed from an anthropocentric standpoint. Rather than close down anxieties concerning such boundary transgressions and ontological uncertainties, scholars – not least within areas such as feminist, posthumanist and queer theory – have argued that here lie possibilities as well as an ethical urgency to rethink the human subject, its world(s) and its others. Indeed, what might it mean to view the world from positions that do not take the pure and autonomous human form as its starting point? And what ethical considerations does such a viewpoint demand of us

Hvordan lykkes som sponsor av kultur- og sportsarrangementer.

Denne oppgaven omhandler tema sponsing. Med problemstillingen: “Hvordan lykkes som sponsor av kultur- og sportsarrangementer? “For at vi skulle få det fokuset vi ønsket under oppgaven, så valgte vi å ta i bruk noen undertema: ”Hvorfor velger bedrifter å sponse? Hva gjør de største og mest vellykkede sponsorene? Hva gjør de mindre sponsorene for å lykkes? Har de fellestrekk? Eventuelt, hva gjør de ulikt? ”. Ved hjelp av en kvalitativ metode, fikk vi brukt respondentenes svar til å fremlegge en bredere forståelse for teori vi hadde tillært oss tidligere i oppgaven, som vi senere kunne bruke til å utforme en konklusjon på hva som skal til for å lykkes som sponsor av kultur- og sportsarrangementer. Vi ønsket med denne oppgaven å finne ut hva sponsorer gjør for å lykkes, hvilken metoder de tar i bruk i form av eksponering og aktivering, og hvilke bak arbeid som ligger i et sponsorat. Konklusjon vi endte opp med forklarer dette at et vellykket sponsorat, kommer ann på hva bedriften legger i sponsingen, da i form av forståelse av sponsing som et kommunikasjons verktøy og god forståelse på hvilket marked og målgruppe de skal nå ut til. For å lykkes som sponsor så må man legge mye arbeid i utvalget, utførelsen og etterarbeidet. Det er viktig at sponsingen har en tydelig link til de andre kommunikasjonsmiksene bedriften tar i bruk. Denne oppgaven skal vise bedrifter hvor fokuset burde ligge under et sponsorat, hva de må ta i betraktning både før, etter og under en sponsoraktivitet. Selv om det ikke finnes en fastsatt oppskrift på hvordan å lykkes som sponsor, så finnes det viktige elementer som er universale for alle sponsorer

Prenatal Exposure to Perfluorooctanoate and Risk of Overweight at 20 Years of Age: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background: Perfluoroalkyl acids are persistent compounds used in various industrial -applications. Of these compounds, perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) is currently detected in humans worldwide. A recent study on low-dose developmental exposure to PFOA in mice reported increased weight and elevated biomarkers of adiposity in postpubertal female offspring