State racist governmentality: a Foucaultian discourse theoretical analysis of Finnish immigration policy

The thesis analyses the Finnish immigration apparatus through a Foucaultian governmentality framework and critiques the way immigration has been problematized. The immigration apparatus, ranging from discourses to various administrative regulations and their rationalities, is examined through the Finnish Aliens Act, Schengen visa regulations, and Finnish Immigration Services implementation documentation as well as through the related governmental bills and reports and parliamentary discussions and committee statements between 1999 and 2010. The thesis argues that the governmentality of immigration is a socio-evolutionary governmentality that relies on largely taken-for-granted conceptualisations of how society needs to be governed. The thesis shows that immigration control cannot be understood solely through the discourses of nationalism, liberalism and multiculturalism, but that these discourses themselves need to be understood in the light of a state racist socio-evolutionary constellation of power/knowledge at the heart of liberal governmentality and its naturalism. In the first instance, this claim is supported by a discourse theoretical analysis of the functioning of power/knowledge in immigration-related discourses. Additionally, the claim is supported by contrasting the analysis of discourses and rationalities of governing with an analysis of technologies of governing, i.e. rules and regulations of immigration control. The thesis then questions the governmentality of the immigration apparatus through various epistemological tools of decentring. These tools highlight how a commonsensical truth about immigration and its governing is produced through methods, such as utilising explanations relying on psychologism, historicism, naturalisation, market veridiction and universalism/particularism, which enable a silence and scarcity of meaning around the taken-for-granted modes of knowing immigration and its governing. Finally, this claim about state racist governmentality of immigration is evidenced by a comparison of the contemporary way of problematizing immigration with the way immigration was problematized by early American race hygienic immigration policies. This comparison insists that eugenics and social Darwinism should not be exceptionalised, but that their rationalities of governing should be evaluated in terms of the logic of making live and letting die that they propose. The thesis concludes that unacknowledged and taken-for-granted modes of knowing the world in socio-evolutionary terms and specifically in social Darwinist terms emphasizing social position as a measure of fitness and human worth and entailing an all-inclusive logic of racialisation have an impact on contemporary liberal ways of governing immigration both in general and in Finland in, at the point at which we think how immigration should be governed so that it promotes the health and wealth of the population and defends it from degeneration

Pemerintah dalam Kacamata Gamers (Peran Fasilitas dan Pembinaan) Atlet E-Sports di Kota Palembang

This research discusses governance from the perspective of gamers (the role of facilities and development) of e-sports athletes in the city of Palembang. The aim of this research is to find out the government's role in developing e-sports athletes in Palembang City andalso to provide information to professional players regarding the development of e-sports athletes in Palembang City. The method used in this research is a qualitative method using Jim Ife's role theory which consists of 4 aspects, namely the role of facilitator, the role of education, the role of representational and the role of technical ability. The results of this research include first, the facilities provided to Palembang esports to date have not been adequate or optimal; secondly, currently the esports coaches or coaches themselves have not been provided by the relevant agencies and there has also been no socialization regarding the coaching of esports athletes themselves; third, Dispora has not carried out and organized events or competitions because there is no readiness to organize the event itself; And fourth, until now the Dispora has not carried out its own selection process but rather the selection process is carried out directly by the respective communities

Molecular Dissection of the Cellular Reponse to Dengue Virus Infection

The immune response to viral infection involves a complexity of both innate and adaptive pathways at the cellular and the molecular level. There are many approaches to begin to define the pathways at work to control viral pathogenesis. The approach favored in this thesis was to conduct a broad screen of the innate immune response at the gene expression level of infected cells. The innate immune response is critical to the control of viral infections. Type I interferons (IFN), IFNα and IFNβ, are antiviral proteins that are an integral part of the innate immune response. Furthermore, by virtue of their effects on maturation and activation of antigen-presenting cells, IFNs are a pivotal link between the innate and adaptive immune systems. Most cell types produce type-I IFN when exposed to viruses. However, viruses have evolved multiple strategies to suppress IFN production or signaling. It is imperative to understand the virus-host interaction at the molecular level in order to identify as yet unknown mechanisms of the host antiviral response; these additional pathways may be useful in counteracting the viral suppression of IFN. Type-I IFNs regulate expression of at least five hundred genes, suggesting a complex network of signaling pathways. Depending on the cell type different proteins regulate the induction of IFN or the expression of IFN-inducible genes. Identification of proteins that induce selected IFN-inducible genes may provide synergistic activity with or may have an advantage over type-I IFN for anti-viral therapy in the future. Many diseases are untreatable if identified late in their progression. In resource-limited countries, many diseases are diagnosed clinically, which can lead to incorrect or delayed diagnosis and treatment. The identification of biomarkers of disease has the potential to guide the correct therapy in a timely fashion. The objective of this thesis was to identify novel anti-viral therapies and disease biomarkers for dengue virus (DENV) infection. DENV is a mosquito-borne positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus, which causes an estimated 50 million infections annually. Most DENV infections result in a febrile illness called Dengue fever (DF). Less frequently, infections cause Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), a potentially fatal vascular leakage syndrome associated with the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. At present patients infected with DENV can only be treated by intravenous fluid support to prevent hypovolemia and hypotensive shock. This treatment is less effective in severe cases if the diagnosis is delayed. Identification of therapeutics with both antiviral and immune-modulatory activity may lower patient mortality and reduce the burden of DENV on society. DENV infection is cleared in most individuals after a short period of viremia {Libraty, 2002 #2225}. Based on in vitro and mouse models, type-I and type-II IFN signaling pathways are thought to be critical in the regulation of DENV infection. Higher serum levels of type I and type II IFNs during acute DENV infection in patients lend support to the above hypothesis {Kurane, 1993 #2152; Libraty, 2002 #2225}. To understand the DENV-human host cell interaction at the molecular level, we performed global gene expression analysis on DENV-infected primary human cells using Affymetrix GeneChips (HG-U133A). We studied dendritic cells (DC), monocytes, B cells and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), all of which are known to be permissive to DENV infection. We first identified genes commonly regulated in multiple cell types in response to DENV infection; we hypothesized that understanding this common gene expression profile would identify signaling pathways involved in regulation of viral spread, activation of immune cells or induction of inflammation. Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), one of the 23 common response genes, was identified as a key link between type I and type II interferon response genes. Pretreatment of cells with recombinant TRAIL (rTRAIL) inhibited DENV replication in monocytes, B cells, HUVECs and DCs. Using the DC infection model, we showed that this inhibition of viral replication was apoptosis-independent. Type-I IFN receptor (IFNR) blocking experiments showed that signaling through the type-I IFN receptor played an important role in the antiviral activity of exogenous rTRAIL. Furthermore, TRAIL also significantly reduced the expression of mRNA and protein of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNFα, MIP-1β and IFNα) and chemokines (MCP-2, IP-10 and IL-6) in response to DENV infection. The data that TRAIL inhibits both viral replication and pro-inflammatory cytokine production suggest that TRAIL has therapeutic value in dengue. The endothelial cell is the site of pathology in DENV infection in vivo (vascular permeability and plasma leakage). To understand the direct effect of DENV infection on endothelial cells and its role in the induction of genes regulating vascular permeability, we compared gene expression in DENV-infected HUVECs to that of uninfected cells and cells infected with other RNA and DNA viruses, including flaviviruses (West Nile, yellow fever, and Japanese encephalitis viruses), bunyaviruses (Sin Nombre and Hantaan viruses), Epstein-Barr virus and vaccinia virus. Among the genes confirmed for their differential expression, ST2 (Interkeukin-1 receptor-like-1 protein-IL1RL1) and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) were identified to be upregulated specifically in response to DENV infection. Higher serum soluble ST2 (sST2) levels were detected in DENV-infected patients than in patients with other febrile illnesses (OFI) at the end of the febrile stage and at defervescence (p=0.0088 and p=0.0004, respectively). In addition, patients with secondary DENV infections had higher serum sST2 levels compared with patients with primary DENV infections (p=0.047 at the last day of fever and p=0.030 at defervescence). Higher levels of IDO activity (pIn conclusion, global gene expression analysis identified novel proteins with promising characteristics for the treatment and/or diagnosis of DENV infection. Although further studies will be needed to validate the clinical utility of TRAIL, sST2, and IDO, these studies demonstrate the utility of this unbiased genomics approach to identify therapies to currently incurable diseases

Existence of Higher Extremal K\"ahler Metrics on a Minimal Ruled Surface

In this paper we prove that on a special type of minimal ruled surface, which is an example of a `pseudo-Hirzebruch surface', every K\"ahler class admits a certain kind of `higher extremal K\"ahler metric', which is a K\"ahler metric whose corresponding top Chern form and volume form satisfy a nice equation motivated by analogy with the equation characterizing an extremal K\"ahler metric. From an already proven result, it will follow that this specific higher extremal K\"ahler metric cannot be a `higher constant scalar curvature K\"ahler (hcscK) metric', which is defined, again by analogy with the definition of a constant scalar curvature K\"ahler (cscK) metric, to be a K\"ahler metric whose top Chern form is harmonic. By doing a certain set of computations involving the top Bando-Futaki invariant we will conclude that hcscK metrics do not exist in any K\"ahler class on this surface.Comment: 26 Pages, AMS Article Style. Any comments are most welcom

Umbrella: A Unified Software Defined Development Framework

The Northbound (NB) APIs that SDN controllers provide differ in terms of architecture, syntax, naming convention, data resources, and usage. Using NB APIs to write SDN applications makes each application dependent on the API of a specific controller. To bring NB APIs from different vendors under one umbrella and make programming of SDN applications independent of specific controllers, we propose a unified software defined development framework that we call Umbrella. This paper presents the key components of the software and reports some preliminary results.Comment: work-in-progress paper, under submissio