Framework for Assessing Public Transportation Sustainability in Planning and Policy-Making

Transportation plays a key role in urban sustainability planning and urban greenhouse gas emission reductions. Globally, cities have established sustainability agendas and policies to guide the shift from traditional private automobile dependent transportation systems towards an increased use of public transportation, cycling, and walking. While the surrounding physical urban form and governance structures condition public transportation services, there are also many other factors to consider when discussing sustainability. As such, comprehensive planning and policy-oriented assessment frameworks that are independent of local conditions are still largely missing in literature. This paper presents a Public Transportation Sustainability Indicator List (PTSIL) that provides a platform for an integrated assessment of environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability through an indicator-based approach. To demonstrate its use, the PTSIL is applied to analyze the policy documents of public transportation agencies in Helsinki, Finland, and Toronto, Canada. The results show that while both cities achieve relatively high scores in all dimensions, there is still high variability among individual indicators. The PTSIL presents a missed stepping stone between descriptive definitions of transportation sustainability and case specific sustainability performance assessments, offering an opportunity within the planning and policy-making sectors to review, assess, and develop public transportation services comprehensively.Peer reviewe

The GROUSE project III: Ks-band observations of the thermal emission from WASP-33b

In recent years, day-side emission from about a dozen hot Jupiters has been detected through ground-based secondary eclipse observations in the near-infrared. These near-infrared observations are vital for determining the energy budgets of hot Jupiters, since they probe the planet's spectral energy distribution near its peak. The aim of this work is to measure the Ks-band secondary eclipse depth of WASP-33b, the first planet discovered to transit an A-type star. This planet receives the highest level of irradiation of all transiting planets discovered to date. Furthermore, its host-star shows pulsations and is classified as a low-amplitude delta-Scuti. As part of our GROUnd-based Secondary Eclipse (GROUSE) project we have obtained observations of two separate secondary eclipses of WASP-33b in the Ks-band using the LIRIS instrument on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The telescope was significantly defocused to avoid saturation of the detector for this bright star (K~7.5). To increase the stability and the cadence of the observations, they were performed in staring mode. We collected a total of 5100 and 6900 frames for the first and the second night respectively, both with an average cadence of 3.3 seconds. On the second night the eclipse is detected at the 12-sigma level, with a measured eclipse depth of 0.244+0.027-0.020 %. This eclipse depth corresponds to a brightness temperature of 3270+115-160 K. The measured brightness temperature on the second night is consistent with the expected equilibrium temperature for a planet with a very low albedo and a rapid re-radiation of the absorbed stellar light. For the other night the short out-of-eclipse baseline prevents good corrections for the stellar pulsations and systematic effects, which makes this dataset unreliable for eclipse depth measurements. This demonstrates the need of getting a sufficient out-of-eclipse baseline.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Seamless nowcasting system development at the Finnish Meteorological Institute

Presentación realizada en la 3rd European Nowcasting Conference, celebrada en la sede central de AEMET en Madrid del 24 al 26 de abril de 2019

Parameter estimators of random intersection graphs with thinned communities

This paper studies a statistical network model generated by a large number of randomly sized overlapping communities, where any pair of nodes sharing a community is linked with probability $q$ via the community. In the special case with $q=1$ the model reduces to a random intersection graph which is known to generate high levels of transitivity also in the sparse context. The parameter $q$ adds a degree of freedom and leads to a parsimonious and analytically tractable network model with tunable density, transitivity, and degree fluctuations. We prove that the parameters of this model can be consistently estimated in the large and sparse limiting regime using moment estimators based on partially observed densities of links, 2-stars, and triangles.Comment: 15 page

Kristillinen rukous tiedonlähteenä:kyselytutkimus suomalaisten kristittyjen uskonnollisesta tiedonhankinnasta

Tiivistelmä. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tarkoituksena on tarkastella suomalaisten kristittyjen rukouksen käyttöä tiedonlähteenä. Tarkastelun kohteena on erityisesti, minkälaisia rukousaiheita suomalaiset kristityt esittävät rukouksissaan, minkälaisiin ongelmiin he hakevat apua rukouksen kautta ja minkälaisia rukousvastauksia tai tuntemuksia he kokevat saavansa rukouksen kautta. Tutkimuksessa kartoitetaan myös muita tiedonlähteitä, joita suomalaiset kristityt hyödyntävät uskonnollisessa tiedonhankinnassa, ja selvitetään, minkälaista roolia rukous esittää tässä tiedonhankinnassa. Tutkimus edustaa yksilön kokemusmaailmaa tarkastelevaa fenomenologis-hermeneuttista tutkimusperinnettä ja sen teoreettisena viitekehyksenä toimivat aiempien uskonnollista tiedonhankintaa koskevien tutkimusten lisäksi Savolaisen (1993) arkielämän tiedonhankinnan malli. Aiemmasta uskonnollisen tiedonhankinnan tutkimuksesta tärkeimmäksi tutkimuksen johtoajatukseksi nousee Michelsin (2013) ajatus rukouksesta tiedonlähteenä. Tutkimus toteutettiin verkkokyselynä 21.4.-31.5.2021 välisenä aikana. Kyselyyn tuli määräaikaan mennessä 199 vastausta. Kyselyn vastauksista ilmeni, että rukous on kiinteä osa suomalaisten kristittyjen jokapäiväistä arkielämää. Rukous liittyy sekä toistuviin jokapäiväisiin rutiineihin että elämässä vastaan tuleviin ei-rutiininomaisiin ongelmatilanteisiin. Rukouksen kautta pyritään kokonaisvaltaiseen elämänhallintaan sekä kognitiivisesti että affektiivisesti: Jumalalta pyydetään ymmärrystä ja viisautta päätöksentekoon sekä mielenrauhaa. Myös muiden ihmisten puolesta kannetut esirukoukset ovat tärkeä rukousaihe suomalaisille kristityille. Kyselyn vastauksista korostuu Jumalan tahdon ensisijaisuus yksilön omaan tahtoon nähden: rukoilijan saama rukousvastaus ei välttämättä ole sellainen, mitä hän on odottanut, mutta tietoisuus Jumalan suomasta huolenpidosta ja turvasta tuo kuitenkin hänelle tunteen siitä, että kaikki järjestyy parhain päin. Rukous on Raamatun ohella tärkeimpiä tiedonlähteitä suomalaisille kristityille ja rukouksen avulla arvioidaan sekä Raamatusta että muista tiedonlähteistä saatua informaatiota. Tämä kyselytutkimus tarjoaa yleiskatsauksen suomalaisten kristittyjen rukoukseen tiedonhankinnan kontekstissa, mutta aiheen käsittelyä voisi syventää esimerkiksi henkilökohtaisemmilla haastattelumuodoilla, kuten puolistrukturoiduilla haastatteluilla tai syvähaastatteluilla. Syväluotaavammalla haastattelumetodilla voitaisiin pureutua tarkemmin esimerkiksi eri kirkkokuntien ja suuntausten jäsenten rukouskäytäntöihin tiedonhankinnan kontekstissa. Myös rukoukseen motivoivat tuntemukset tai tilanteet voisivat tarjota jatkotutkimuksen aihetta suomalaisten kristittyjen uskonnollisesta tiedonhankinnasta saadun kuvan syventämiseksi

Insulin autoantibodies as determined by competitive radiobinding assay are positively correlated with impaired beta-cell function — The Ulm-Frankfurt population study

Out of a random population of 4208 non-diabetic pupils without a family history of Type I diabetes 44 (1.05%) individuals had islet cell antibody (ICA) levels greater or equal to 5 Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (JDF) units. 39 of these ICA-positives could be repeatedly tested for circulating insulin autoantibodies (CIAA) using a competitive radiobinding assay. The results were compared with the insulin responses in the intravenous glucose tolerance tests (IVGTT) and with HLA types. Six pupils were positive for CIAA. All of them had complement-fixing ICA, and 5 of them were HLA-DR4 positive. Three of the 6 showed a first-phase insulin response below the first percentile of normal controls. Our data indicate that in population-based studies CIAA can be considered as a high risk marker for impaired beta-cell function in non-diabetic ICA-positive individuals

Feasibility of Active Ingredient (AI) development for new biocides in the EU

Biocides usage covers a vast industrial area and the history of biocide and other antimicrobial agent usage in various forms and applications dates back centuries. While the emerging EU regulations (BPD, REACH and others) strive to increase the safety and the eco-efficiency of chemical products and production processes, such changes may also create voids in the availability of current biocides due to outphasing. The present study evaluated the need for new Active Ingredient (AI) development. The feasibility of such development was explored, and the data of economic feasibility analysis shows that, contrary to general expectations, AI development can become profitable within certain economic boundaries

Colonic Involvement in a Patient with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia

Various gastrointestinal infiltrations have been described in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). Here, we report a 69-year-old man with CLL and anaemia in whom the macroscopic finding of colonoscopy was normal, but the histological specimens revealed lymphocytic leukemia in ileum and in colon. If a CLL patient has any symptoms suggesting a possible GI manifestation of the haematologic disease or anaemia not explained by bone marrow infiltration or hemolysis, the diagnostic evaluation should include endoscopies with adequate biopsies

Forest inventory attribute estimation using airborne laser scanning, aerial stereoimagery, radargrammetry and interferometry - Finnish experiences of the 3D techniques

Three-dimensional (3D) remote sensing has enabled detailed mapping of terrain and vegetation heights. Consequently, forest inventory attributes are estimated more and more using point clouds and normalized surface models. In practical applications, mainly airborne laser scanning (ALS) has been used in forest resource mapping. The current status is that ALS-based forest inventories are widespread, and the popularity of ALS has also raised interest toward alternative 3D techniques, including airborne and spaceborne techniques. Point clouds can be generated using photogrammetry, radargrammetry and interferometry. Airborne stereo imagery can be used in deriving photogrammetric point clouds, as very-high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are used in radargrammetry and interferometry. ALS is capable of mapping both the terrain and tree heights in mixed forest conditions, which is an advantage over aerial images or SAR data. However, in many jurisdictions, a detailed ALS-based digital terrain model is already available, and that enables linking photogrammetric or SAR-derived heights to heights above the ground. In other words, in forest conditions, the height of single trees, height of the canopy and/or density of the canopy can be measured and used in estimation of forest inventory attributes. In this paper, first we review experiences of the use of digital stereo imagery and spaceborne SAR in estimation of forest inventory attributes in Finland, and we compare techniques to ALS. In addition, we aim to present new implications based on our experiences