Agile in the Era of Digitalization : A Finnish Survey Study

This paper was a Candidate for the Best Full Paper.Peer reviewe

Does landscape-scale conservation management enhance the provision of ecosystem services?

Biodiversity conservation approaches are increasingly being implemented at the landscape-scale to support the maintenance of metapopulations and metacommunities. However, the impact of such interventions on the provision of ecosystem services is less well defined. Here we examine the potential impacts of landscape-scale conservation initiatives on ecosystem services, through analysis of five case study areas in England and Wales. The provision of multiple ecosystem services was projected according to current management plans and compared with a baseline scenario. Multicriteria analysis indicated that in most cases landscape-scale approaches lead to an overall increase in service provision. Consistent increases were projected in carbon storage, recreation and aesthetic value, as well as biodiversity value. However, most study areas provided evidence of trade-offs, particularly between provisioning services and other types of service. Results differed markedly between study areas, highlighting the importance of local context. These results suggest that landscape-scale conservation approaches are likely to be effective in increasing ecosystem service provision, but also indicate that associated costs can be significant, particularly in lowland areas

Radioactive decays at limits of nuclear stability

The last decades brought an impressive progress in synthesizing and studying properties of nuclides located very far from the beta stability line. Among the most fundamental properties of such exotic nuclides, usually established first, is the half-life, possible radioactive decay modes, and their relative probabilities. When approaching limits of nuclear stability, new decay modes set in. First, beta decays become accompanied by emission of nucleons from highly excited states of daughter nuclei. Second, when the nucleon separation energy becomes negative, nucleons start to be emitted from the ground state. Here, we present a review of the decay modes occurring close to the limits of stability. The experimental methods used to produce, identify and detect new species and their radiation are discussed. The current theoretical understanding of these decay processes is overviewed. The theoretical description of the most recently discovered and most complex radioactive process - the two-proton radioactivity - is discussed in more detail.Comment: Review, 68 pages, 39 figure

DNA copy number loss and allelic imbalance at 2p16 in lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure

Five to seven percent of lung tumours are estimated to occur because of occupational asbestos exposure. Using cDNA microarrays, we have earlier detected asbestos exposure-related genomic regions in lung cancer. The region at 2p was one of those that differed most between asbestos-exposed and non-exposed patients. Now, we evaluated genomic alterations at 2p22.1-p16.1 as a possible marker for asbestos exposure. Lung tumours from 205 patients with pulmonary asbestos fibre counts from 0 to 570 million fibres per gram of dry lung, were studied by fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) for DNA copy number alterations (CNA). The prevalence of loss at 2p16, shown by three different FISH probes, was significantly increased in lung tumours of asbestos-exposed patients compared with non-exposed (P=0.05). In addition, a low copy number loss at 2p16 associated significantly with high-level asbestos exposure (P=0.02). Furthermore, 27 of the tumours were studied for allelic imbalances (AI) at 2p22.1–p16.1 using 14 microsatellite markers and also AI at 2p16 was related to asbestos exposure (P=0.003). Our results suggest that alterations at 2p16 combined with other markers could be useful in diagnosing asbestos-related lung cancer

Methods and algorithms for unsupervised learning of morphology

This is an accepted manuscript of a chapter published by Springer in Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing. CICLing 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8403 in 2014 available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54906-9_15 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.This paper is a survey of methods and algorithms for unsupervised learning of morphology. We provide a description of the methods and algorithms used for morphological segmentation from a computational linguistics point of view. We survey morphological segmentation methods covering methods based on MDL (minimum description length), MLE (maximum likelihood estimation), MAP (maximum a posteriori), parametric and non-parametric Bayesian approaches. A review of the evaluation schemes for unsupervised morphological segmentation is also provided along with a summary of evaluation results on the Morpho Challenge evaluations.Published versio

The Finnish Think Tank Landscape : A Mixture of Consensualism and Adversity?

As a common feature of Nordic countries, the Finnish landscape of thinks tanks has been populated by large corporatist interest organisations and government-funded research organisations. In addition to this, since 2005, party-affiliated think tanks form a notable part of the picture. Recently, several small think tanks that are oriented towards specific themes, such as international relations, the environment and feminism, have been founded. This article examines Finnish developments in the field of think tanks with two objectives. First, it gives a general overview of the Finnish think tank landscape. Second, by using interview data and public mission statements of the most prominent think tanks, it explores how these organisations see their role in Finnish society. What is their relationship with media and the political machinery, and how does this relate to their position and activities as either consensual or adversarial actors? It is concluded that redeeming the place of think tanks in the Finnish polity is a continuing challenge, and resorting to adversarial tactics is not a favourable way to do so. This approach has mostly been attempted by neoliberal think tanks that, in the past, have also profited from corporatist structures to enhance their objectives.Peer reviewe

Anaerobic removal of 1-methoxy-2-propanol under ambient temperature in an EGSB reactor

Two laboratory-scale expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactors were operated at 18 and 25 C, respectively, for the treatment of synthetic wastewater composed of ethanol and 1-methoxy-2-propanol (M2P) in a mass ratio of 4:1. Reactors were operated first with continuous wastewater supply and after with discontinuous substrate supply (5 days a week, 16 h a day) to simulate shift working conditions. Under continuous wastewater supply chemical oxygen demand (COD), removal efficiency higher than 95 % was achieved at the end of the trial applying organic loading rates (OLR) of 29 and 43 kg COD m-3 day-1 at 18 and 25 C; thus, corresponding to M2P OLR of 6.4 and 9.3 kg COD m-3 day-1, respectively. During intermittent supply of substrate, good performance was recorded at both temperatures with an OLR of 30 kg COD m-3 day-1 (M2P OLR of 6.6 kg COD m-3 day-1). After 56 h without substrate supply, a decline in methane yield of 15¿30 % was observed due to the deactivation of the biomass. Specific methanogenic activity (SMA) assays were carried out at the end of the experiments. SMA values using 1-methoxy-2-propanol as substrate were 24.3 and 7.8 ml CH4 gVSS-1 day-1 at 25 C and at 18 C, respectively. This is the first attempt to investigate the removal of 1-methoxy-2-propanol by EGSB reactors

Collectivity and Configuration Mixing in \u3csup\u3e186,188\u3c/sup\u3ePb and \u3csup\u3e194\u3c/sup\u3ePo

Lifetimes of prolate intruder states in 186Pb and oblate intruder states in 194Po have been determined by employing, for the first time, the recoil-decay tagging technique in recoil distance Doppler-shift lifetime measurements. In addition, lifetime measurements of prolate states in 188Pb up to the 8+state were carried out using the recoil-gating method. The B(E2) values have been deduced from which deformation parameters lβ2l = 0.29(5) and lβ2l = 0.17(3) for the prolate and the oblate bands, respectively, have been extracted. The results also shed new light on the mixing between different shapes