Clover rot (Sclerotinia trifolium) and Fusarium fungi in organic red clover in Finland

Sclerotinia trifolium is economically one of the most important pathogens of red clover in Europe and North America, while many Fusarium species can cause root rot in red clover in certain environmental conditions. During the years 2003-2004 S. trifolium was found only in the Northern and Eastern part of Finland, although in 1960's it was common everywhere in Finland

Professional development of technology integration into teaching:the perceptions of the providers of in-service education

Abstract. Using technology in teaching has been increasing and teachers’ challenge is to maintain their professional competencies in digital pedagogy. The providers of in-service education facilitate teachers to develop in technological as well as in pedagogical skills. In Finland, continuing professional education is a part of teachers’ work, but research literature shows that a great part of teachers never participates to in-service education programmes. Therefore, it is imperative to study how to make continuing professional development efficient in order for the teachers to gain from it as much as they can. The aim of this master’s Thesis is to find out how the providers of in-service education perceive the use of technology in education. This entails the perception of what ICT skills and technologies are beneficial in teaching. The other central aim is to find out how they perceive teachers’ continuing professional development in technological skills and how quality in-service education can promote them. The theoretical framework used in the present thesis focusses on the theories and literature concerning professional development, both in the general respect as well as from the viewpoint of technological competencies. In addition, the research uses the Technological-pedagogical content knowledge framework (TPACK) as an analytical tool. The analysis of this study will be carried by theory directed content analysis. The research material has been collected by electric questionnaire and an interview. The material consists of 7 participants’ responses. Technology was seen in conflicting light. On one hand, technology offers many possibilities in diversifying teaching and the development of technology was perceived to drastically change teachers’ profession. On the other hand, the results corroborated findings about the increased demands of teachers’ to be experts of digital pedagogy. They are expected to be motivated and to take responsibility in developing their competencies as well as learning on their own time. Teachers were perceived to be slow in responding to changes caused by rapidly developing technology, yet they were expected to keep up with it. The participants are themselves experts in digital pedagogies, with backgrounds in the field of education as well as deep personal interest towards technology, which may benefit in focussing the training to pedagogies rather than specific technological skills. They provide both short and long-term programmes, the latter of which offers the most advantages.Tiivistelmä. Tietotekniikan käyttö opetuksessa on lisääntynyt ja opettajien haasteena on pitää huolta ammatillisesta osaamisestaan tieto- ja viestintäteknologian hyödyntämisessä opetuskäytössä. Täydennyskouluttajat auttavat opettajia kehittymään pedagogiikan ja tietotekniikan keinoin. Suomessa täydennyskouluttautuminen on osa opettajan työtä, mutta tutkimukset osoittavat, että osa opettajista ei osallistu lainkaan täydennyskoulutukseen. Tämän vuoksi on tärkeää tutkia, kuinka täydennyskoulutuksesta saadaan tehokasta, jotta opettajat saavat täydennyskoulutuksesta mahdollisimman paljon hyötyä. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tarkoituksena on selvittää täydennyskouluttajien näkemyksiä siitä, miten tietotekniikkaa hyödynnetään opetuksessa. Tämä pitää sisällään käsitykset siitä, miten tietotekniset taidot ja tietotekniset laitteet auttavat opetuksessa. Toinen keskeinen tutkimuksen tavoite on selvittää, kuinka he näkevät opettajien ammatillisen kehityksen tietotekniikan opetuskäytössä ja kuinka laadukas täydennyskoulutus voi tätä edistää. Teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä tarkastellaan opettajien ammatillisen kehittymisen teoriaa ja tutkimuksia sekä yleisesti että TVT-taitojen kehittymisen kannalta. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa perehdytään teknologian opetuskäytön teoriaan käyttämällä apuna teknologispedagogisen sisältötiedon viitekehystä, eli TPACK-mallia. Tämän tutkimuksen analyysi toteutetaan laadullisen teoriaohjaavan sisällönanalyysin keinoin. Tutkimuksen aineistonkeruu on toteutettu sähköisellä kyselylomakkeella ja yhdellä puolistrukturoidulla haastattelulla. Aineisto koostuu 7 täydennyskouluttajan vastauksista. Teknologia nähtiin tuloksissa ristiriitaisessa valossa. Teknologia tarjoaa monia mahdollisuuksia monipuolistaa opetusta ja teknologian kehitys katsottiin mullistavan opettajan tehtävät tulevaisuudessa. Toisaalta tutkimuksen tuloksissa näkyy opettajien lisääntyneet vaatimukset olla digitaalisen pedagogiikan osaajia. Heidän odotetaan olevan motivoituneita ja ottavan vastuuta oman ammattitaitonsa kehittämisessä sekä heidän odotettiin oppivan omalla ajallaan. Opettajia pidettiin ammattikuntana hitaana reagoimaan teknologian aiheuttamiin muutoksiin, mutta samalla heitä odotettiin pysyvän teknologian kehityksen tahdissa. Vastaajat itse ovat digitaalisen pedagogiikan asiantuntijoita, joilla on sekä kasvatustieteellinen tausta että syvä kiinnostus teknologiaa kohtaan, mistä saattaa olla etua täydennyskoulutuksen kohdistamisessa pedagogiikkaan irtonaisten digitaitojen sijaan. He tarjoavat sekä lyhyt- että pitkäaikaisia koulutuksia, joista tutkimustiedon valossa pitkäaikaiset koulutukset tarjoavat eniten hyötyä

Integration of Arctic Node threat intelligence sharing platform with Suricata

Abstract. The Internet has connected the modern world. Nowadays anyone can access anything straight from their home computer. Everything and everyone has a presence in the cyber domain, including those who seek to conduct criminal activities. In response to this, the field of cyber security has been born. Cyber threat intelligence refers to information about cyber threats such as computers with open vulnerabilities and malicious Internet sites. The amount of available information is vast and the only way to handle such a large amount of data is automation. Threat intelligence sharing platforms have been developed for this task. They are used to fetch threat intelligence data from multiple sources, harmonize and analyze the data, and share it further. One part of the automation process is the integration of threat intelligence sharing platforms with other cyber security applications. The goal of this thesis was to integrate a new intrusion detection and prevention system into the Arctic Node threat intelligence sharing platform. Suricata was chosen as the integrated system. A new integration submodule was created for Arctic Node to convert threat intelligence collected by the platform into Suricata rules and send it automatically to Suricata. One of the prominent features of this new module was the capability to deduplicate the output data. The new integration submodule was compared to a similar functionality in another threat intelligence sharing platform, MISP. Testing was conducted in a custom virtual environment using real threat intelligence from seven different feeds. The results of these tests indicated that the new submodule was able to notice a greater number of possible threats, and it generated a more diverse set of different types of Suricata rules from the same input data. Deduplication was found to only have a small impact in reducing the size of the generated rule set as the overlap between different threat intelligence feeds was minimal.Arctic Node -alustan yhdistäminen Suricataohjelmaan. Tiivistelmä. Internet on yhdistänyt nykyajan maailman. Kaikilla on pääsy kaikkialle suoraan kotikoneelta. Myös rikolliset ovat havainneet tämän, ja hakkerointi on noussut modernin maailman suureksi riesaksi. Internetissä tapahtuvan rikollisuuden estämiseksi on syntynyt kyberturvallisuuden ala. Tietoturvatieto käsittää tietoa eri uhkatekijöistä internetissä. Tieto voi koskea esimerkiksi vaarallisia sivustoja tai haavoittuvaisia tietokoneita. Tietoturvatietoa on olemassa valtavasti, eikä kaikkea tätä tietoa voida hallita manuaalisesti, vaan sen hallinta täytyy automatisoida. Tietoturvatiedon hallintaa varten on kehitetty erilaisia tietoturvatiedon hallinta-alustoja, joilla tietoa voidaan kerätä eri lähteistä, rikastaa, analysoida ja jakaa eteenpäin. Yksi tietoturvatiedon hallinta-alustojen toiminnallisuuden osa-alueista on niiden integraatio toisten tietoturvaohjelmien kanssa. Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena oli yhdistää uusi tietoturvaohjelma Arctic Node -alustaan. Yhdistettäväksi ohjelmaksi valittiin Suricata. Diplomityössä tehtiin toiminnallisuus, joka muuttaa Arctic Node -alustan keräämää tietoturvatietoa Suricata-säännöiksi ja joka kykenee jakamaan säännöt automaattisesti Suricata-ohjelmalle. Yksi tämän toiminnallisuuden tavoitteista oli poistaa toisto luoduista Suricata-säännöistä, jotta jokainen sääntö olisi uniikki. Arctic Node -alustan uutta toiminnallisuutta testattiin MISP-alustan samanlaista toiminnallisuutta vastaan. Testin tuloksena oli, että uusi toiminnallisuus tuotti jonkin verran enemmän Suricata-sääntöjä kuin MISP-alusta samoilla tietoturvalähteillä, ja säännöt olivat myös monipuolisempia kuin MISP-alustan luomat säännöt. Testeissä Arctic Node -alustan tuottamat säännöt havaitsivat haitallista liikennettä paremmin kuin MISP-alustan tuottamat säännöt. Testeissä ei havaittu Suricata-sääntöjen toiston poistamisen olevan kovinkaan merkittävää, koska tietoturvalähteiden välillä on melko vähän päällekkäisyyksiä

Simulation of radiation-induced structural transformation in amorphous metals

Molecular-dynamics simulations investigating the radiation-induced structural transformations in metallic glasses are reported. We have studied three models of an equilibrium simple glass, possessing a pronounced icosahedral local order. Two of these are monatomic and one represents the amorphous Ni-P alloy. A detailed analysis of the evolution of the structural damage induced by irradiation is presented. In all the systems, a persistent residual reduction in icosahedral order is observed. An important finding of this study is that the metallic glasses are able to sustain a considerable increase in the number of vacancies which arises as a result of the irradiation-induced structural transformationPeer reviewe

Ab initio study of point defects in CdF2

The plane-wave pseudopotential method is used to study point defects in CdF2. We present comprehensive results for the native defects as well as for dominant impurities. In addition to Fi, VCd and OF were found to be easily formed compensating acceptors. For In and Ga impurities the experimentally observed large Stokes shift could not be established, and the results rule out symmetric atomic relaxation as the mechanism leading to the bistable behavior. The limitations of the present approach utilizing density-functional theory and the local-density approximation in the case of ionic materials are addressed.Peer reviewe

Higher-dimensional multifractal value sets for conformal infinite graph directed Markov systems

We give a description of the level sets in the higher dimensional multifractal formalism for infinite conformal graph directed Markov systems. If these systems possess a certain degree of regularity this description is complete in the sense that we identify all values with non-empty level sets and determine their Hausdorff dimension. This result is also partially new for the finite alphabet case.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur

Unraveling the Infrared Transient VVV-WIT-06: The Case for the Origin as a Classical Nova

Indexación: Scopus.E.Y.H. acknowledges the support provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1613472 and by the Florida Space Grant Consortium. L.G. acknowledges support from the FINCA visitor programme. The research work at the Physical Research Laboratory is funded by the Department of Space, Government of India. Facility: Magellan: Baade(FIRE).The enigmatic near-infrared transient VVV-WIT-06 underwent a large-amplitude eruption of unclear origin in 2013 July. Based on its light curve properties and late-time post-outburst spectra, various possibilities have been proposed in the literature for the origin of the object, namely a Type I supernova, a classical nova (CN), or a violent stellar merger event. We show that, of these possibilities, an origin in a CN outburst convincingly explains the observed properties of VVV-WIT-06. We estimate that the absolute K-band magnitude of the nova at maximum was M k = -8.2 ±0.5, its distance d = 13.35 ±2.18 kpc, and the extinction A v = 15.0 ±0.55 mag. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae5d

Mouse MIM, a tissue-specific regulator of cytoskeletal dynamics, interacts with ATP-actin monomers through its C-terminal WH2 domain

The WH2 (WASP homology domain-2) is a small actin monomer-binding motif and is found in many proteins that regulate the actin cytoskeleton, including the beta-thymosins, ciboulot, WASP, and verprolin/WIP (WASP-interacting protein). In sequence database searches we identified a novel mouse protein containing a WH2 domain in its C-terminal region. This mouse gene also shows strong sequence homology to human MIM (Missing in Metastasis), a cDNA fragment that is present in non-metastatic but absent in metastatic bladder cancer cell lines. Northern blot and in situ hybridizations show that MIM is strongly expressed in the developing neurons and skeletal and cardiac muscles in mouse embryos. In adult mice, the strongest expression of MIM mRNA is in liver, outer layers of the kidney, and in the Purkinje cells of the brain. Recombinant MIM protein interacts with actin monomers and inhibits actin filament nucleation in vitro. However, the MIM/ATP-G-actin complex can participate in actin filament assembly at the barbed end. MIM binds ATP-G-actin with a higher affinity (K-D = 0.06 muM) than ADP-G-actin (K-D = 0.3 muM) and inhibits the nucleotide exchange on actin monomers. Site-directed mutagenesis demonstrates that the actin monomer-binding site resides in the C-terminal WH2 domain of MIM. Overexpression of mouse MIM in NIH 3T3 cells results in the disappearance of actin stress fibers and appearance of abnormal actin filament structures. These data show that MIM is an ATP-G-actin binding protein that regulates cytoskeletal dynamics in specialized mammalian cell-types