Internalized Misogyny in Hip Hop: From Socio-Political Voice to Profit-Driven Objectification

Hip Hop, with its social-political properties, is a genre that often discusses oppression and social injustice. This thesis aims at exploring how the genre contradicts these values with its view of women. In this context, the thesis addresses the following question: “are women in Hip Hop aiming to become self-empowered and part of the feminist movement, or are they continuing an internalized misogyny that is embedded in the culture of Hip Hop?

Psychotic depression and suicide risk - a mixed methods study

Background The reasons behind suicide are multifactorial, complex, and poorly understood. Despite decades of research, suicide rates remain elevated both during hospitalization as well as shortly after discharge. Clinically relevant knowledge and tools for suicide risk assessments to guide decision-making processes in acute settings are needed. Objectives The thesis objective was to examine and improve understanding of the complex relationship between psychotic depression and suicide behaviour. We also examined risk factors of clinical relevance in hospital settings, both during treatment, and after discharge. Methods This research project used a sequential exploratory strategy, commencing with a qualitative part (paper 1-2), followed by a quantitative part (paper 3-4). In paper 1 and 2, we conducted qualitative interviews with nine patients diagnosed with psychotic depression as part of uni- or bipolar disorder. Papers 3 and 4 used data from the naturalistic prospective cohort study Suicidality in Psychiatric Emergency Admissions. In paper 3, we included all patients with depression (N= 1846) in a representative sample to identify risk factors for suicide using a cox regression analysis. Paper 4 investigated a mixed diagnostic sample of 7000 acutely admitted inpatients to identify imminent- and short-term risk factors for suicide. The findings from all four papers were combined into a secondary analysis, where we thematically synthesized the perspectives of patients’ experiences with the main findings from the prospective cohort study based on clinical assessment. Results thematic summarized Our main finding was that psychotic symptoms in depression are associated with increased suicide risk, both short- and long-term (Paper 3). A possible mechanism to explain this association is the combination of intense emotional suffering and cognitive impairment which may motivate impulsive behaviour in psychotic depression (Papers 1 and 2). Depressed mood including overvalued ideas and delusions of self-blame and guilt predicted suicide the first following week after admission (Paper 4). The association of intense affective states with both imminent and long-term suicide risk factors was supported by patient experiences of sleeplessness and intense anxiety as warning signs for suicidal behaviour (Paper 1 and 2). In further support of this, depression severity assessed by the Health of the Nation Scale item 7 predicted suicide the first following week after admission (Paper 4). We found higher short-term suicide rates in patients diagnosed with psychotic depression as compared to those without psychotic symptoms at all follow-up points (Paper 3). A diagnosis of psychotic depression and depression severity assessed by MADRS depression scale as independent predictors of suicide provided knowledge on the long-term perspective (median 5.5 years follow-up). Also of clinical importance is our finding that self-report of suicidal ideation is not a good measure of imminent, short- or long-term suicide risk. Our qualitative findings indicate that shame, psychotically motivated paranoid ideation and impulsivity motivated underreporting of both suicidal ideation and psychotic symptoms in themselves. This may partly explain why, despite reporting less suicidal ideation/planning on admission, the suicide rate was higher for patients with psychotic symptoms on admission than for those without such symptoms (Paper 3). Although reported suicidal ideation was less relevant for clinical risk assessment, paper 3 and 4 identified male gender and recent suicide attempt as significant risk factors for completed suicide. The last main finding was that patients found both security measures and a treatment approach focusing on modifying psychotic experiences, intense anxiety and sleeplessness was helpful during hospitalization. Taking the time to talk to establish good patient relations is essential for optimal treatment conditions. Conclusions The periods of acute inpatient treatment and immediately post- discharge are associated with the highest suicide risk. High symptom load as well as a diagnosis of psychotic depression, especially the presence of overvalued ideas and delusions of self-blame and guilt, appear to indicate especially high suicide risk regardless of time horizon. Identifying delusions and other psychotic symptoms is thus of the utmost importance. Psychosis- and depression-focused interventions and treatment approaches aiming specifically to reduce both psychotic and affective symptom load may act as a suicide prevention strategy for psychotic depressed patients. We found self-report of suicidal ideation of limited relevance when assessing suicide risk. Such assessments should thus always be combined with thorough clinical assessment by trained staff. This is especially true when assessing patients with psychotic depression, but especially given the frequent underreporting of psychotic symptoms, it remains important with any patient admitted for a depressive episode. Structured depression rating scales for clinician use may meaningfully contribute to suicide risk assessments. When assessing acute admission patients, we recommend paying particularly close attention to males, and patients with prior and recent suicide attempts

Discrimnation of herring populations in a northern Norwegian fjord: genetic and biological aspects

From a trawl survey in a fjord system in northern Norway, it has been possible to separate catches of herring into two distinct groups characterized by different number of vertebrae (VS). Low- vertebral herring (VS = 52-55) belong to a local stock of spring-spawning fjord stock called the Balsfjord herring. High-vertebral herring (VS = 56-60) belong to an immigrating population of Atlanto- Scandian herring spawned off the Norwegian coast. The separation between the stocks was verified by genetic analysis of herring samples using enzyme electrophoresis. The Balsfjord -herring is characterized by a very high frequency ( 0.93) of a rare allele (designated 110) at the LDH-2 locus which is expressed in white muscle tissue. In comparison, this allele is usually not found (frequency < 0. 01) in samples of Atlanto-Scandian herring. The discrimination between the two stocks in Balsfjord was, however, evident from the biological data obtained (age distribution, VS, mean length and length distributions) as well as the genetic characters investigated. In addition, the Balsfjord herring, especially at mature stage, seem to be distributed at 60-200 m depth and was caught by using bottom trawl. The Atlanto- Scandian herring, mainly 2 or 3 years old, was found in the upper water layer (0-60 m). The genetic data indicate very limited or no gene flow between the two herring stocks in Balsfjord. This fjord system, therefore, offers unique possibility to study interaction and isolating mechanisms with regards to marine fish stocks

Finansielle kontrakter i norske såkornfond : en empirisk analyse

Vi har i vår oppgave sett på kontrakter i såkornfond og sammenlignet disse med kontrakter i Venturekapitalfond. Vi har sett på dette i lys av prinsipal-agent teori, Miller og Modiligianis teori om kapitalstruktur og hold-up teori. Resultatene vi har funnet har vi vurdert opp mot resultater Kaplan og Strømberg (2003) fant for VC markedet i USA, og resultater Bienz og Walz (2005) fant for markedet i Tyskland. Vi har i oppgaven sett at det er mange av de samme problemene såkorn og VC står overfor, men grunnet at såkornfondenes porteføljebedrifter er svært unge og det er stor risiko knyttet til investeringer i disse selskapene, så løser de enkelte av disse problemene på forskjellig måte. Spesielt måten fondene finansierer selskapene på er svært forskjellig fra såkorn til VC. Måten såkorn velger å fokusere på det mulige oppsidepotensialet i en investering med opsjoner i stede for å sikre nedsiden skiller også såkorn fra VC

Strong Authentication for Web services with Mobile Universal Identity

To access services on the Web, users need quite often to have accounts, i.e. user names and passwords. This becomes a problem when the number of accounts keeps increasing at the same time password is a very weak form of authentication exposing the users to fraud and abuses. To address both mentioned issues we propose a Mobile Universal identity, which by combining Internet identifiers with mobile identifiers is capable of delivering strong authentication for Internet services. By introducing an identity provider, the solution enables the user to employ the Mobile Universal identity for multiple service providers. By federation with other identities, Mobile Universal identity can be used with service providers worldwide.© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. This is the authors' accepted and refereed manuscript to the article. Locked until 2016-08-08

Evaluation of SPUNG* and Other Equations of State for Use in Carbon Capture and Storage Modelling

AbstractIn this work, Equations of State (EoS) relevant for carbon capture and storage modelling have been evaluated for pure CO2 and CO2-mixtures with particular focus on the extended corresponding state approach, SPUNG/SRK. Our work continues the search of an EoS which is accurate, consistent and computationally fast for CO2-mixtures. These EoS have been evaluated: Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK), SRK with Peneloux shift, Peng-Robinson, Lee-Kesler, SPUNG/SRK and the multi-parameter approach GERG-2004. The EoS were compared to the accurate reference EoS by Span and Wagner for pure CO2. Only SPUNG/SRK and GERG-2004 predicted the density accurately near the critical point (< 1.5% Absolute Average Deviation (AAD)). For binary mixtures, Lee-Kesler and SPUNG/SRK had similar accuracy in density predictions. SRK had a sufficient accuracy for the gas phase below the critical point (<2.5%), and Peng Robinson had a decent accuracy for liquid mixtures (<3%). GERG-2004 was the most accurate EoS for all the single phase density predictions. It was also the best EoS for all the VLE predictions except for mixtures containing CO2 and O2, where it had deviations in the bubble point predictions (∼20% AAD). Even though multi-parameter EoS such as GERG-2004 are state-of-the-art for high accuracy predictions, this work shows that extended corresponding state EoS may be an excellent compromise between computational speed and accuracy. The SPUNG approach combines high accuracy with a versatile and transparent methodology. New experimental data may easily be taken into account to improve the predictive abilities in the two phase region. The approach may be improved and extended to enable applications for more difficult systems, such as polar mixtures with CO2 and H2O