Lastenvalvoja : turvaamassa lasten oikeuksia elämään, elatukseen ja kahteen vanhempaan

Pro gradu -tutkielmassani tutkin lastenvalvojan ammatin syntymistä, mihin tarpeeseen ammatti syntyi ja millainen oli tuon aikainen yhteiskunnallinen tilanne, sekä ammatin kehittymistä vuosien varrella yhteiskunnallisten muutosten mukana. Kyseessä on laadullinen tutkimus, joka on toteutettu narratiivisena kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Aineistona on käytetty aikaisempaa tutkimuskirjallisuutta sekä oikeuskirjallisuutta. Teoreettisena viitekehyksenä tutkielmassa on sosiaalinen konstruktionismi, ja aineistoa tarkasteltu etenkin sosiaaliseen konstruktionismiin kuuluvan normikehä-käsitteen kautta. Tarkastelen aineistoa myös lapsen edun näkökulmasta. Aineistoa analysoitaessa ammatin kehityksessä nousi esille kolme ajanjaksoa: ammatin synty, murros perhekäsityksessä kaupungistumisen myötä sekä nykyaika. Ammatti syntyi vuonna 1922, jolloin astui voimaan Laki avioliiton ulkopuolella syntyneistä lapsista ja laissa lastenvalvoja määrättiin ajamaan aviottoman lapsen etua ja perimään elatus makaajalta. Lain tarkoituksena oli pyrkiä ehkäisemään aviottomien lasten suurta lapsikuolleisuutta sekä parantamaan aviottomien lasten asemaa. Kristinuskon vahva asema ja avioliitolle perustuva perhekäsitys olivat luoneet avioliiton ulkopuolisia lapsia syrjivän normikehän. Yhteiskunnallinen muutos perhekäsityksissä 1960–1970-luvuilla johti avioerojen kasvuun, jolloin lastenvalvojan työtehtävät laajenivat vuoden 1975 isyyslain myötä koskemaan myös avioliitossa syntyneitä lapsia ja heidän elatuksesta sopimisesta. Nykypäivänä lastenvalvoja sopii lasten elatuksesta ja tapaamisesta, sopimuksia leimaavat erityisesti vanhempien yhdenvertainen asema vanhempina sekä lapsen edun ensisijaisuus

Strategisk planering för anpassning till förändrad nederbörd i Svenska städer

Denna uppsats fokuserar på hur planeringen i Sverige ser ut för att hantera en ökad nederbörd. Klimatet förändras världen över och temperaturerna stiger. Ett förändrat klimat leder till fler intensiva regn och perioder av torka och översvämning. Urbana miljöer är byggda på ett sätt som ökar risken för översvämning vid kraftiga regn. Vattnets naturliga kretslopp är utbytt mot ett konstruerat system som snabbt leder undan vattnet till reningsverk och recipienter. Konsekvenserna av ett skyfall blir större i urbana miljöer än mark och kan innebära stora värdeförluster. Synen på hur översvämningsrisken bör hanteras har gått från användning av olika översvämningsskydd, till att handla om att med gröna och blåa strukturer ge plats åt stadens vatten. För att på ett långsiktigt och hållbart sätt hantera en ökad nederbörd behöver dagvattensystemet avlastas genom anpassningsåtgärder som mer liknar naturens sätt att hantera vatten. Uppsatsen ger en introducerande översiktlig bild av hur arbetet med att utveckla hållbar dagvattenhantering ser ut i dag, främst ur ett nationellt perspektiv.This study focuses on how the planning to cope with extreme rainfall in urban environments is today. The climate is changing worldwide. A warmer climate leads to changes in water flow with increased and more intense precipitation, which leads to periods of drought and flooding. The construction of urban environments increases the risk of flooding during heavy rain. The natural water cycle is replaced with an engineered system that as quickly as possible leads the water to the sewage treatment plants and receiving waters. The consequences of a heavy rain will be greater than on natural land and could mean great loss of value. The view of how the risk of flooding should be managed have gone from the use of different flood protection, towards the use of green and blue structures to make space for water structures in the city. The aim is to manage the water in a more natural way. This essay is an introduction and overview of how the work to develop sustainable storm water management is today, mainly from a national perspective

Shared use of public parkland as children´s outdoor environment in preschools : a case study with children´s perspective

Denna uppsats handlar om hur samutnyttjande av offentlig utemiljöer som barns utemiljö i förskolan har fungerat sett ur ett barnperspektiv och med barns aktivitet i fokus. Det täta stadsbyggnadsidealet har lett till att barns rörelsefrihet i stadsmiljöer har minskat generellt och särskilt för små barn. I fallstudien har två förskolor med starkt begränsade egna förskolegårdar undersökts genom miljöbeskrivningar, samtalsintervjuer med personal, observationer och gåturer med barn. Resultatet visar att samutnyttjandet av offentliga parkmiljö ägde rum i snitt 1-2 gånger per vecka uteslutande under förmiddagarna och för de yngre barnen ännu mer sällan. Samutnyttjandet innebar en ökad arbetsbelastning för personalen i synnerhet om den offentliga miljön hade andra besökare samtidigt. Ett högt besökstryck kunde också begränsa barnens aktiviteter. De slutsatser som dras av studiens resultat är att: - Samutnyttjandet begränsade barnens möjligheter till utomhusaktivitet genom att påverka mängden utevistelse till det negativa i de två fallen. - Samutnyttjandet innebar en stressfaktor för personalen, vilket i förlängningen påverkade barnens aktivitet negativt. - Andra parkbesökare kan verka både negativt och positivt på barnens aktivitet.This paper is about how the shared use of public parkland as a children's outdoor environment in preschools has worked out. A case study with children´s perspective and with children's activity in focus has been conducted. The densification processes have led to the reduction of children's mobility in urban environments, and especially for younger children. The case study has explored two preschools with much limited outdoor environments through environmental descriptions, staff interviews, observations and child led walks. The result shows that the shared use took place on average 1-2 times a week exclusively before lunch, and for the younger children even more rarely. The shared use meant an increased workload on the staff, especially if the public environment had other visitors at the same time. A high visitor pressure could also limit the children's activities. Conclusions drawn from the result of the study are: - The shared use limited children's possibilities for outdoor activity by reducing the amount of time spent in the outdoor environment in the two cases. - The utilization meant a stress factor for the staff, which in the long run affected the children's activity negatively. - Other visitors to the park can act both negatively and positively on the children's activit

Geographical distance between child and parent after a union dissolution in Sweden, 1974-2011

Background: Divorce is associated with a weakened relationship between the child and the nonresident parent, usually the father. This loss of contact is likely to be even further exacerbated if this parent lives at a substantial distance from the child. Objective: This paper analyzes how the distance between children and nonresident parents, the year after a parental separation, has changed during a 40-year period in Sweden, and whether this is related to changes in child custody policies. Methods: We use Swedish population register data that includes exact geographical coordinates for children and their nonresident parents in the year after separation. We analyze how average distance and the likelihood of living very close to, or very far from, a nonresident parent has changed over this period, using OLS and logistic regression models. Results: Results show a gradual decrease in the distance between children and nonresident parents from the 1970s until the early 1990s, after which the trend stalled at a low level. In 2011, 50Š of all children lived within 2 kilometers of their nonresident parent. We find no evidence of direct policy effects, indicated by any sudden changes in distance after the introduction of a new custody policy. High-income parents have changed their post-divorce residential patterns at a faster pace than low-income parents. Conclusions: Our results indicate a diffusion process where distances between children and nonresident parents gradually decreased until the 1990s. Contribution: This paper demonstrates that the change has not been directly influenced by custody law reforms promoting dual parent responsibility

WebSTR: a population-wide database of short tandem repeat variation in humans.

Short tandem repeats (STRs) are consecutive repetitions of one to six nucleotide motifs. They are hypervariable due to the high prevalence of repeat unit insertions or deletions primarily caused by polymerase slippage during replication. Genetic variation at STRs has been shown to influence a range of traits in humans, including gene expression, cancer risk, and autism. Until recently STRs have been poorly studied since they pose significant challenges to bioinformatics analyses. Moreover, genome-wide analysis of STR variation in population-scale cohorts requires large amounts of data and computational resources. However, the recent advent of genome-wide analysis tools has resulted in multiple large genome-wide datasets of STR variation spanning nearly two million genomic loci in thousands of individuals from diverse populations. Here we present WebSTR, a database of genetic variation and other characteristics of genome-wide STRs across human populations. WebSTR is based on reference panels of more than 1.7 million human STRs created with state of the art repeat annotation methods and can easily be extended to include additional cohorts or species. It currently contains data based on STR genotypes for individuals from the 1000 Genomes Project, H3Africa, the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project and colorectal cancer patients from the TCGA dataset. WebSTR is implemented as a relational database with programmatic access available through an API and a web portal for browsing data. The web portal is publicly available at http://webstr.ucsd.edu

The multi-faceted Swedish Heureka forest decision support system: context, functionality, design, and 10 years experiences of its use

For several decades, computerized forest decision support systems (DSS) have helped managers and decision makers to analyze different management options and supported the search for preferred management alternatives. In Sweden, a country rich in forests and with a long tradition in intensive forest management, such systems have been developed and available since the 1970s. Changes in societal as well as in forest owners' preferences and objectives in the 1990s led to a need for forest DSS handling broader perspectives compared to precedent single-objective timber-oriented systems. In Sweden, this led to the initiation of a research programme in the beginning of the 2000s aiming at developing a versatile and multi-objective forest DSS, resulting in the first version of the Heureka forest DSS released in 2009. The system handles several forest values, such as timber and biofuel production, carbon sequestration, dead wood dynamics, habitat for species, recreation and susceptibility to forest damages (spruce bark beetle, wind-throw and root rot). It contains a suite of software for different problem settings and geographical scales and uses simulation as well as optimization techniques. Three software handle projections of the forest using a common core of growth and yield models for simulating forest dynamics. A fourth software, built for multi-criteria decision analysis and including a web-version, enables also group decision making and participatory planning. For more than 10 years, the Heureka system has been used in teaching, environmental analysis, research and as decision support in practical forestry. For example, several research groups using the system for analyses in different problem areas have so far published more than 80 scientific papers. The system is used for nation-wide forest impact analysis for policy support and all large and many medium-sized forest owners use it for their long-term forest planning, meaning that it directly influences forest management decisions and activities on more than 50% of the Swedish forest area. Besides presenting the present system and its use, we also discuss lessons learned and potential future development

Archaeological and historical materials as a means to explore Finnish crop history

In Northern Europe, barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) has been cultivated for almost 6000 years. Thus far, 150-year-old grains from historical collections have been used to investigate the distribution of barley diversity and how the species has spread across the region. Genetic studies of archaeobotanical material from agrarian sites could potentially clarify earlier migration patterns and cast further light on the origin of barley landraces. In this study, we aimed to evaluate different archaeological and historical materials with respect to DNA content, and to explore connections between Late Iron Age and medieval barley populations and historical samples of barley landraces in north-west Europe. The material analysed consisted of archaeological samples of charred barley grains from four sites in southern Finland, and historical material, with 33 samples obtained from two herbaria and the seed collections of the Swedish museum of cultural history.The DNA concentrations obtained from charred archaeological barley remains were too low for successful KASP genotyping confirming previously reported difficulties in obtaining aDNA from charred remains. Historical samples from herbaria and seed collection confirmed previously shown strong genetic differentiation between two-row and six-row barley. Six-row barley accessions from northern and southern Finland tended to cluster apart, while no geographical structuring was observed among two-row barley. Genotyping of functional markers revealed that the majority of barley cultivated in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was late-flowering under increasing day-length, supporting previous findings from northern European barley.</p

Long-term effects of no-take zones in Swedish waters

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly established worldwide to protect and restore degraded ecosystems. However, the level of protection varies among MPAs and has been found to affect the outcome of the closure. In no-take zones (NTZs), no fishing or extraction of marine organisms is allowed. The EU Commission recently committed to protect 30% of European waters by 2030 through the updated Biodiversity Strategy. Importantly, one third of these 30% should be of strict protection. Exactly what is meant by strict protection is not entirely clear, but fishing would likely have to be fully or largely prohibited in these areas. This new target for strictly protected areas highlights the need to evaluate the ecological effects of NTZs, particularly in regions like northern Europe where such evaluations are scarce. The Swedish NTZs made up approximately two thirds of the total areal extent of NTZs in Europe a decade ago. Given that these areas have been closed for at least 10 years and can provide insights into long-term effects of NTZs on fish and ecosystems, they are of broad interest in light of the new 10% strict protection by 2030 commitment by EU member states.In total, eight NTZs in Swedish coastal and offshore waters were evaluated in the current report, with respect to primarily the responses of focal species for the conservation measure, but in some of the areas also ecosystem responses. Five of the NTZs were established in 2009-2011, as part of a government commission, while the other three had been established earlier. The results of the evaluations are presented in a synthesis and also in separate, more detailed chapters for each of the eight NTZs. Overall, the results suggest that NTZs can increase abundances and biomasses of fish and decapod crustaceans, given that the closed areas are strategically placed and of an appropriate size in relation to the life cycle of the focal species. A meta-regression of the effects on focal species of the NTZs showed that CPUE was on average 2.6 times higher after three years of protection, and 3.8 times higher than in the fished reference areas after six years of protection. The proportion of old and large individuals increased in most NTZs, and thereby also the reproductive potential of populations. The increase in abundance of large predatory fish also likely contributed to restoring ecosystem functions, such as top-down control. These effects appeared after a 5-year period and in many cases remained and continued to increase in the longer term (>10 years). In the two areas where cod was the focal species of the NTZs, positive responses were weak, likely as an effect of long-term past, and in the Kattegat still present, recruitment overfishing. In the Baltic Sea, predation by grey seal and cormorant was in some cases so high that it likely counteracted the positive effects of removing fisheries and led to stock declines in the NTZs. In most cases, the introduction of the NTZs has likely decreased the total fishing effort rather than displacing it to adjacent areas. In the Kattegat NTZ, however, the purpose was explicitly to displace an unselective coastal mixed bottom-trawl fishery targeting Norway lobster and flatfish to areas where the bycatches of mature cod were smaller. In two areas that were reopened to fishing after 5 years, the positive effects of the NTZs on fish stocks eroded quickly to pre-closure levels despite that the areas remained closed during the spawning period, highlighting that permanent closures may be necessary to maintain positive effects.We conclude from the Swedish case studies that NTZs may well function as a complement to other fisheries management measures, such as catch, effort and gear regulations. The experiences from the current evaluation show that NTZs can be an important tool for fisheries management especially for local coastal fish populations and areas with mixed fisheries, as well as in cases where there is a need to counteract adverse ecosystem effects of fishing. NTZs are also needed as reference for marine environmental management, and for understanding the effects of fishing on fish populations and other ecosystem components in relation to other pressures. MPAs where the protection of both fish and their habitats is combined may be an important instrument for ecosystembased management, where the recovery of large predatory fish may lead to a restoration of important ecosystem functions and contribute to improving decayed habitats.With the new Biodiversity Strategy, EUs level of ambition for marine conservation increases significantly, with the goal of 30% of coastal and marine waters protected by 2030, and, importantly, one third of these areas being strictly protected. From a conservation perspective, rare, sensitive and/or charismatic species or habitats are often in focus when designating MPAs, and displacement of fisheries is then considered an unwanted side effect. However, if the establishment of strictly protected areas also aims to rebuild fish stocks, these MPAs should be placed in heavily fished areas and designed to protect depleted populations by accounting for their home ranges to generate positive outcomes. Thus, extensive displacement of fisheries is required to reach benefits for depleted populations, and need to be accounted for e.g. by specific regulations outside the strictly protected areas. These new extensive EU goals for MPA establishment pose a challenge for management, but at the same time offer an opportunity to bridge the current gap between conservation and fisheries management