Vaelluskalojen palauttaminen rakennettuihin jokiin: Rakennettujen jokien tutkimustuloksia vuosilta 2011–2018

Vaelluskalakantojen palauttaminen rakennettuihin vesistöihin edellyttää monialaista tutkimustietoa kalojen elinkierron eri vaiheisiin liittyvistä haasteista ja niiden korjaustoimista. Myös vesistöjen eri käyttäjien ja intressiryhmien on löydettävä yhteinen tahtotila jokiympäristön ja sen kalaston kestävälle käytölle. Tämä puolestaan edellyttää viranomaisten, eri toiminnanharjoittajien ja sidosryhmien välillä avointa vuoropuhelua, yhteisten sovitteluratkaisujen hakemista ja omista eduista joustamista. Vaelluskalojen palauttamiseen liittyviin tietotarpeisiin on vastattu Luonnonvarakeskuksen (Luke) monialaisilla tutkimushankkeilla, joita on toteutettu rakennetuissa vesistöissä eri puolilla maatamme sekä Luken Kainuun kalantutkimusaseman kokeellisissa olosuhteissa. Tähän raporttiin on koottu vuosina 2011–2018 toiminnassa olleiden Luonnonvarakeskuksen (vuoteen 2015 asti Riista- ja kalatalouden tutkimuslaitos) hankkeiden tärkeimmät tulokset sekä julkaisuluettelo. Tässä esiteltäviä hankkeita ja raportin koostamista ohjasi erikoistutkija Aki Mäki-Petäys kevääseen 2019 asti. Useat näistä hankkeista on tehty yhteistyössä Helsingin, Itä-Suomen, Jyväskylän ja Oulun yliopistojen, Suomen ympäristökeskuksen (SYKE), Elintarviketurvallisuusviraston (Evira), Metsähallituksen, ELY-keskusten ja Pohjois-Pohjanmaan liiton kanssa, ja joissakin tapauksissa nämä tahot ovat olleet myös hankkeiden päävastuullisia toteuttajia. Tutkimushankkeita on rahoitettu myös osana laajempia ja useampivuotisia Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) – hankekokonaisuuksia, missä vesivoimayhtiöiden rahoitus on ollut merkittävässä osassa. Vaelluskalojen palauttaminen on monin paikoin mahdollista, jos eri käyttäjät ja intressiryhmät ovat sitoutuneet pitkäjänteiseen yhteistyöhön. Vesistökohteet ovat erilaisia, joten kaikkiin kohteisiin sopivaa ratkaisua ei yleensä ole, vaan toimenpiteissä on aina huomioitava vesistöjen erityispiirteet sekä mahdolliset muut reunaehdot. Kohteesta riippuen, toimenpiteinä tarvitaan: Toimivat kalojen vaellusväylät patojen ohitse sekä ylä- että alavirtaan, Elinympäristökunnostuksia sekä joki- ja purouomissa että niiden valuma-alueilla, Istutuskalojen sekä – toiminnan laadullista kehittämistä, Riittävää kalastuksen säätelyä, Myös muiden eliöryhmien kuin vaelluskalojen elinolosuhteiden parantamista, Realistisesti asetettuja vesistökohtaisia tavoitteita, Toimenpiteiden vaikuttavuuden seurantaa, Tehokasta ja yleistajuista viestintää sekä kaikkien sidosryhmien sitouttamista yhteistyöhön, Ajallisia ja taloudellisia resursseja. Aihepiirin tutkimustoimintaa viedään Lukessa eteenpäin vuodesta 2019 alkaen mm. Sateenvarjo III-, Kalatalouden ympäristöohjelma-, RiverGo- sekä monissa muissa yhteistyöhankkeissa. Toivomme, että tämä työ toimii tietopakettina monille muillekin hankkeille!201

The Universal Author Identifier System (UAI_Sys)

One common problem in the scientific research literature is that each one author cannot easily be identified uniquely. The problem arises when there are authors with identical names, authors who have changed their name(s) in the course of time, and authors whose names appear in alternative versions (for example: Jaakko Hyvärinen, and J. P. Hyvärinen) across the publications they have (co-) authored. The issue becomes more of a problem when data analysis utilizing author names is to be conducted, for example: in citation analysis. In this paper we introduce the Universal Author Identifier system, codenamed UAI_Sys. The system is web based and publicly available, enabling each one author to register/update his/her own metadata, plus acquire a unique identifier (UAI code), ensuring name disambiguation. As soon as UAI_Sys becomes accepted and enjoys worldwide use, selected author metadata will become globally available to all interested parties. Care is taken so that UAI_Sys comprises more than just a database for storing and handling author identifiers. Provision i

Spoken language skills in children with bilateral hearing aids or bilateral cochlear implants at the age of three years

Abstract Objectives: Early hearing aid (HA) fitting and cochlear implants (CIs) aim to reduce the effects of hearing loss (HL) on spoken language development. The goals of this study were (1) to examine spoken language skills of children with bilateral HAs and children with bilateral CIs; (2) to compare their language skills to the age-norms of peers with normal hearing (NH); and (3) to investigate factors associated with spoken language outcomes. Design: Spoken language results of 56 Finnish children with HL were obtained from a nationwide prospective multicenter study. Children with HL comprised two groups: children with mild-to-severe HL who used bilateral HAs (BiHA group, n = 28) and children with profound HL who used bilateral CIs (BiCI group, n = 28). Children’s spoken language comprehension, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and phonological skills were compared with normative values of children with NH at the age of three years. Odds ratio (OR) was calculated to compare proportions of children below age-norms in BiHA and BiCI groups. Factors associated with spoken language outcomes were modeled with analysis of covariance. Results: At the age of 3 years, 50%–96% of children with HL performed 1 SD or more below the mean of the normative sample of age-peers with NH in spoken language skills, depending on the language domain. Receptive vocabulary and phonological skills were the most vulnerable language domains. In receptive vocabulary, 82% of the children in the BiHA group and 50% of the children in the BiCI group scored 1 SD or more below the normative mean. The BiHA group was 4.4 times more likely to have poorer receptive vocabulary than the BiCI group. In phonological skills, 96% of children in the BiHA group and 60% of the children in the BiCI group scored 1 SD or more below the normative mean. The BiHA group was 18.0 times more likely to have poorer phonological skills than the BiCI group. The analysis of covariance models showed that unaided pure-tone average, PTA0.5–4 kHz, had a significant effect on spoken language comprehension in the BiHA group. For the BiCI group, age at HL diagnosis and age at CI activation had a significant effect on expressive vocabulary. High maternal level of education had a significant effect on language comprehension and expressive vocabulary and female gender on phonological skills. Conclusions: At the age of 3 years, especially receptive vocabulary and phonological skills caused difficulties for children with HL showing also considerable individual variation. Children with bilateral HAs seemed to be more likely to have poorer receptive vocabulary and phonological skills than children with bilateral CIs. A variety of factors was associated with outcomes in both groups. Close monitoring of spoken language skills of children with HL is important for ensuring similar opportunities for all children with HL and timely intervention, when needed

Morphological clustering of cell cultures based on size, shape, and texture features

High content screening for drug discovery in cancer research relies increasingly on cell-based models, using microscopic imaging as a primary readout. In combination, microscopic imaging and cell culturing provide powerful tools for studying cancer-relevant cell biology in vitro. As a result, an enormous amount of complex biometric image data is generated that can be used for high throughput and high content analyses. We present a method for computationally efficient and flexible quantification of multicellular structures or tumor spheroids, conducted in a semi-unsupervised manner. Our phenotypic clustering approach is based on morphological features, in particular, on size and novel shape and texture features. It consists of multiple automated steps in which the information characterizing the most relevant morphological features is first extracted from the images, the dimension of the features is reduced, and finally, structures are clustered into biologically meaningful groups. Local central moments and local binary operators characterize the texture, whereas shape features are obtained by an alignment to elliptical and smooth reference shapes. Using simulation studies, we show that the cluster identification performs well and demonstrates good repeatability in the presence of random orientation, size, rescaling, and texture. We show how the method can be applied to an actual high-content imaging dataset to find an intuitive and flexible summary of high content screens, not achievable with existing tools. Supplementary materials for this article are available online

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/‘proxy’ AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/‘proxy’ AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele