The Ritualized Bodies of Cybele's Galli and the Methodological Problem of the Plurality of Explanations

The explanandum in this article is the self-castration of Cybele's Galli. The explanans is the various theories that have been put forward to elucidate this phenomenon. The author begins by sketching out the complicated religio-historical scene for this ritual, then introduces the plurality of theories concerning Galli's ritual self-castration, so that the intellectual dilemma of evaluation and preference is obvious; which one of the theories is decisive? Are they necessary or sufficient? Do they compete or cooperate? The aim of this article is also to make a critical methodological evaluation of the use of psychological determinants in religio-historical studies of the self-castration of the Galli in the cult of Cybele and Attis

Decoding the Hermetic Discourse in Salomon Trismosin's Splendor Solis - A Semiotic Study of Three Ways of Reading

Alchemy and the Hermetic Art are terms that denote a most interesting transitional space, circumscribing an opaque region of human cultural history, shared between matter and psyche, between phantasmagoric reveries and practical experiments, between sincere natural theology and conscious fraud. This is an area of human experience that has been notoriously difficult to define and understand, and which has triggered off contradictory interpretations that are, in their own, of semiotic interest. It has been said that a text — in our case Splendor Solis, and the Hermetic–alchemical texts at large — is a picnic, a Dutch party, in which the author provides the words and the reader, especially a reader with too much or too little erudition, comes up with the meaning of the words. In this article, the author tries to give an overview of the general interpretations of alchemy that have been put forward, and apply Umberto Eco's intentional approach to these interpretations, viz. consider them as various sorts of intentions. The author uses a pseudonymous alchemical tractate from the sixteenth century, Salomon Trismosin's treatise Splendor Solis as an opportunity to picture and evaluate the three main decodings of alchemy that have been attempted; a chemical, a religious—soteriological and a psychological. The author also explores the intertextual web in the Hermetic discourse, and see if its mapping can generate usable knowledge about what has, since the Middle Ages, been called alchemy: a term acknowledging the taking up of a science or art which had been cultivated by Muslim and Nestorian scholars, but with its fountain head in Late Antiquity.

The semiosis of prayer and the creation of plausible fictional worlds

Prayer and incantation can perhaps be said to be 'mechanisms' that promise that lack will be liquidated and that there is an unlimited signator, a father, or some other metaphysical creature, standing behind and legitimizing the discourse. A way of communicating with the Unlimited that is privileged by an interpretive community that read the prayers aloud and enacted the magical stage-scripts. These highly overlapping categories function as one of the most common subforms of religious discourse for the creation, actualization and maintenance of plausible fictional worlds. They are liminal and transitional mechanisms that manipulate an empirical reader to phase-shift from an actual world to a plausible, by being inscribed in a possible and fictional world, thus creating a model reader, that perceives and acts according to the plausible world outlined by a given interpretive community, and that hears god talking in voces magicae and in god-speaking silence

Inferring Students’ Self-Assessed Concentration Levels in Daily Life Using Biosignal Data From Wearables

The ability to concentrate well is an important determinant of students’ learning outcomes but remains poorly understood. In this work we investigated whether there exists a mapping between students’ biosignals and perceived concentration levels. If we succeed in this mapping, a wearable can function as a Concentration Tracker, a novel feature that is missing from current wearables. For this, a wearable wristband was used to record students’ heart rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, skin conductivity and acceleration from body changes. Additionally, students self-assessed their concentration levels using a smartphone application. We improved the accuracy by utilizing a big amount of unlabelled biodata from outside the study sessions. Our best boosted regression tree model predicted students’ concentration level with only 1.7% NMAE error. The predictions for a user not in the training set were much weaker; the best model, a convolutional neural network, achieved a prediction NMAE error of 30.7%. This implies that the users generated biosignals highly individually. Thus, models are not well transferable from one user to another without rooting them in user-specific data. Contrary to stress research, our results showed that skin conductivity had mostly a negative correlation with students’ concentration levels. Also diverging from stress reactions, skin temperature had mainly a positive correlation. Conductivity and temperature were the two dominant predictors. Further, the results suggest that an element of deep, effortless concentration was present in the learning experience of the subjects. Altogether, our work demonstrates that a concentration tracking wearable for improving learning is technically achievable

Det sociala arbetet och närståendevården på Åland : En kontextuell studie av socialsekreterarens/socialarbetarens arbete

Only abstract. Paper copies of master’s theses are listed in the Helka database (http://www.helsinki.fi/helka). Electronic copies of master’s theses are either available as open access or only on thesis terminals in the Helsinki University Library.Vain tiivistelmä. Sidottujen gradujen saatavuuden voit tarkistaa Helka-tietokannasta (http://www.helsinki.fi/helka). Digitaaliset gradut voivat olla luettavissa avoimesti verkossa tai rajoitetusti kirjaston opinnäytekioskeilla.Endast sammandrag. Inbundna avhandlingar kan sökas i Helka-databasen (http://www.helsinki.fi/helka). Elektroniska kopior av avhandlingar finns antingen öppet på nätet eller endast tillgängliga i bibliotekets avhandlingsterminaler.Syftet med avhandlingen var att försöka förstå betingelserna för socialt arbete med närståendevården på Åland genom att sätta in det i ett ekonomiskt, organisatoriskt, socialt och kulturellt sammanhang. Den åländska kontexten var av speciellt intresse. Utgångspunkten har främst varit att fokusera på hur arbetet med närståendevården löper i kommunerna samt vilka villkor arbetet i kommunerna har. Fokus lades också på hur central fråga närståendevården är för åländskt socialt arbete. Som avhandlingens teoretiska referensram fungerar en kontextuell utgångspunkt. Malcolm Paynes teori om hur socialt arbete konstrueras av politiska, sociala och ekonomiska förhållanden utgör huvudteorin. Ett kvalitativt närmandesätt har använts i den empiriska studien, därtill har den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun använts som metod. Analysmaterialet består av tio temaintervjuer med åländska socialsekreterare/socialarbetare. Resultatet visar att närståendevården utgör en liten del av socialsekreterarens/socialarbetarens vardag men att det hör till en av de angenämare uppgifterna. Faktorer som lagstiftning, kommunens ekonomi och politik bidrar till konstruerandet av det sociala arbetet tillsammans med klientelet och socialarbetaren. Den åländska kontexten i form av ett samhälle som kännetecknas av en befolkning med en stark identitet och ett starkt socialt nätverk bidrar också. Resultatet stöder således Paynes teori om konstruktionen av socialt arbete

Virtuell gemenskap – ett informationsvetenskapligt perspektiv på ungdomars cyberkultur

Varför deltar ungdomar i virtuella gemenskaper? Vad får de ut av det och är ett engagemang i en gemenskap av någon betydelse för deras vardagsliv? Det här är grundfrågeställningarna i avhandlingen vars övergripande målsättning är att öka kunskapen om de ungas spontana användning av Internet under fritiden. De ungas virtuella mötesplatser är i hög grad de ungas egen värld, en plats där de skapar sig sin egen cyberkultur. Genom observationer och intervjuer utforskas denna värld ur ett informationsvetenskapligt perspektiv, d.v.s fokuseringen är på informationshanteringen, informationskällorna och deras tillförlitlighet. I intervjuerna deltog 29 svenskspråkiga flickor och pojkar i åldern 11-21 år. De kom från 11 olika orter i Nyland, Åboland, Åland och Österbotten och de flesta av dem var medlemmar i den den virtuella gemenskapen LunarStorm, en mötesplats som skapats för ungdomar i Sverige. Den bild som framträder visar hur informationshanteringen ser ut i en för ungdomar central vardagsmiljö där syftet för dem som vistas i miljön inte är något annat än umgänge och där informationsflödet är ägnat att stärka detta umgänge. Den belyser varför de egna kamraterna i miljön är oumbärliga och vilken roll de spelar för att medlemskapet i gemenskapen skall ha ett mervärde. Avhandlingen utmynnar i en diskussion om den virtuella gemenskapens betydelse i förhållande till ungdomars utveckling av informationskompetens, självkännedom, tillit i relationer och socialt kapital

Three Strategic Pillars: Finnish University Libraries\u27 Network Fuelling Open Science and Access to Research-Based Information

In the fast-developing landscape of open science, university libraries need to constantly keep up to date in order to provide expert services that meet the current and future needs of researchers, students, and anyone in need of research-based information. Joint actions are needed both nationally and internationally. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that open science currently only gives partial access to research information. A significant part of the information resources are behind paywalls, and as library premises have been closed for the public walk-in access, the information resources have not been accessible to a wider audience. The Finnish University Libraries’ Network, FUN, acts as a collaborative forum for Finnish university library directors. FUN encourages university libraries to experiment with new modes of operation, to demonstrate impact, and to increase the visibility of the library operations. In this paper, we explore how a network like FUN can promote open science and provide access to research-based information. The strategy of FUN builds on three pillars: Impact – Visibility – Experiment. These three pillars form our framework. We use multiple methods to describe the strategy and give examples of the practices, and also discuss the challenges faced in the new circumstances. University libraries work towards open science together with other important stakeholders such as researchers, publishers and funding agencies. Still, there is a need to voice the concerns of the university libraries as their role differs from those of the other stakeholders. Through its actions, FUN seeks to make the work of Finnish university libraries more visible both within the network and in the society, and thus increase the impact of the libraries in promoting open science and access to research information. Since during the COVID-19 pandemic access to information has been limited, FUN, together with other stakeholders, has taken action and sent a petition to Finnish scientific publishers to temporarily open their publications. One of the three pillars in FUN’s strategy is Experiment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, of most importance for FUN has proved to be establishing a culture of sharing experiences with colleagues, so that every library can benefit from the endeavours of others

Three Strategic Pillars : Finnish University Libraries' Network Fuelling Open Science and Access to Research-Based Information

In the fast-developing landscape of open science, university libraries need to constantly keep up to date in order to provide expert services that meet the current and future needs of researchers, students, and anyone in need of research-based information. Joint actions are needed both nationally and internationally. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that open science currently only gives partial access to research information. A significant part of the information resources are behind paywalls, and as library premises have been closed for the public walk-in access, the information resources have not been accessible to a wider audience. The Finnish University Libraries’ Network, FUN, acts as a collaborative forum for Finnish university library directors. FUN encourages university libraries to experiment with new modes of operation, to demonstrate impact, and to increase the visibility of the library operations. In this paper, we explore how a network like FUN can promote open science and provide access to research-based information. The strategy of FUN builds on three pillars: Impact – Visibility – Experiment. These three pillars form our framework. We use multiple methods to describe the strategy and give examples of the practices, and also discuss the challenges faced in the new circumstances. University libraries work towards open science together with other important stakeholders such as researchers, publishers and funding agencies. Still, there is a need to voice the concerns of the university libraries as their role differs from those of the other stakeholders. Through its actions, FUN seeks to make the work of Finnish university libraries more visible both within the network and in the society, and thus increase the impact of the libraries in promoting open science and access to research information. Since during the COVID-19 pandemic access to information has been limited, FUN, together with other stakeholders, has taken action and sent a petition to Finnish scientific publishers to temporarily open their publications. One of the three pillars in FUN’s strategy is Experiment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, of most importance for FUN has proved to be establishing a culture of sharing experiences with colleagues, so that every library can benefit from the endeavours of others.©2021 The Authors. Published by IATUL, International Association of University Libraries.fi=vertaisarvioimaton|en=nonPeerReviewed