Adaptation of boreal field crop production to climate change

Peer reviewe

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement

Acknowledgements

Agricultural and Food Science expresses its sincere thanks to the referees for their constructive critical reviews of one or more manuscripts during the year 2016

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgemen

Acknowledgements

Agricultural and Food Science expresses its sincere thanks to the referees for their constructive critical reviews of one or more manuscripts during the year 2018

Acknowledgement of referees

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Sequence analysis of pooled bacterial samples enables identification of strain variation in group A streptococcus

Knowledge of the genomic variation among different strains of a pathogenic microbial species can help in selecting optimal candidates for diagnostic assays and vaccine development. Pooled sequencing (Pool-seq) is a cost effective approach for population level genetic studies that require large numbers of samples such as various strains of a microbe. To test the use of Pool-seq in identifying variation, we pooled DNA of 100 Streptococcus pyogenes strains of different emm types in two pools, each containing 50 strains. We used four variant calling tools (Freebayes, UnifiedGenotyper, SNVer, and SAMtools) and one emm1 strain, SF370, as a reference genome. In total 63719 SNPs and 164 INDELs were identified in the two pools concordantly by at least two of the tools. Majority of the variants (93.4%) from six individually sequenced strains used in the pools could be identified from the two pools and 72.3% and 97.4% of the variants in the pools could be mined from the analysis of the 44 complete Str. pyogenes genomes and 3407 sequence runs deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive respectively. We conclude that DNA sequencing of pooled samples of large numbers of bacterial strains is a robust, rapid and cost-efficient way to discover sequence variation.Peer reviewe

The benefits and challenges of technology neutral regulation

Abstract. This master’s thesis is based on a scientific article “The Benefits and Challenges of a of Technology Neutral Regulation — A Scoping Review” (Puhakainen & Väyrynen, 2021). The article was published in the PACIS conference during summer 2021. A scoping literature review was conducted to answer to the research question of the article: “What are the benefits and challenges related to a technology neutral regulation of ICT?”. In total, 4 different categories of benefits were identified, while 7 different categories for challenges were identified. This master’s thesis further explains how the research and article writing process of said published article went on. It also continues the research on the principle of technology neutrality that was started with the article. The topic of technology neutrality was examined because it is still an undertheorized tool for legislation which also divides opinion of the researchers. The research questions examined in this thesis revolved around how the tone regarding technology neutrality has developed based on the research that was included in the article, and how some of the groundbreaking research was discussed in subsequent research. According to the results, the tone has shifted from mostly positive and accepting to questioning and critique. Also, some themes that were addressed in the research papers were examined more thoroughly. These themes were theory of the principle of technology neutrality, spectrums, and legal access to traffic data and privacy. Future research questions were suggested. The general result of this master’s thesis is the notion that the principle of technology neutrality and applying it to regulation are still in progress, as the scholars have major disagreement regarding whether technology neutrality is possible or worth pursuing, and whether these questions differ depending on the context of where the principle is to be applied