Bank Networks from Text: Interrelations, Centrality and Determinants

In the wake of the still ongoing global financial crisis, bank interdependencies have come into focus in trying to assess linkages among banks and systemic risk. To date, such analysis has largely been based on numerical data. By contrast, this study attempts to gain further insight into bank interconnections by tapping into financial discourse. We present a text-to-network process, which has its basis in co-occurrences of bank names and can be analyzed quantitatively and visualized. To quantify bank importance, we propose an information centrality measure to rank and assess trends of bank centrality in discussion. For qualitative assessment of bank networks, we put forward a visual, interactive interface for better illustrating network structures. We illustrate the text-based approach on European Large and Complex Banking Groups (LCBGs) during the ongoing financial crisis by quantifying bank interrelations and centrality from discussion in 3M news articles, spanning 2007Q1 to 2014Q3.Comment: Quantitative Finance, forthcoming in 201

A Recurrent Neural Model with Attention for the Recognition of Chinese Implicit Discourse Relations

We introduce an attention-based Bi-LSTM for Chinese implicit discourse relations and demonstrate that modeling argument pairs as a joint sequence can outperform word order-agnostic approaches. Our model benefits from a partial sampling scheme and is conceptually simple, yet achieves state-of-the-art performance on the Chinese Discourse Treebank. We also visualize its attention activity to illustrate the model's ability to selectively focus on the relevant parts of an input sequence.Comment: To appear at ACL2017, code available at https://github.com/sronnqvist/discourse-ablst

Intensiivikuntoutumiskurssin vaikutukset asiakkaille

Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli osallistua sekä havainnoida Länsi-vantaalla järjestetyn intensiivikuntoutumiskurssin toimintaa sekä sen vaikutuksia asiakkaille. Tarkoituksena oli myös saada mahdollisimman monipuolinen kuva kurssista, joka on suunnattu Vantaalaisille päihdekuntoutujille. Intensiivikurssi on osa A-klinikan toimintaa, jossa käsitellään riippuvuutta, retkahtamista sekä sen ehkäisyä, tunteiden säätelyä sekä toipumista. Opinnäytetyö oli osallistava sekä havainnoiva tutkimus, mikä tarkoitti käytännössä omaa osallistumista kurssiin havainnoivana tarkkailijana syksyllä 2016. Teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä käsitellään päihdekuntoutusta sekä alkoholismin hoitoa Suomessa. Lisäksi käsiteltäviä aiheita on Mindfullnes, dialektinen käyttäytymisterapia, psykososiaalinen hoito sekä toiminnallisuus. Nämä aiheet toimivat punaisena lankana läpi kurssin. Kurssilla ei anneta varsinaista terapiaa vaan näistä teorioista ja menetelmistä käytetään päihdetyöhön sovellettuja malleja. Opinnäytetyö sisältää oman osallisuuden, joka oli iso osa koko prosessia. Omaan osallisuuteen kuului havainnointi, teoriaan perehtyminen, vuorovaikutus yhdessä asiakkaiden kanssa sekä nimetön kyselylomake. Osallisuudessa tarkoitus oli hahmottaa kokonaiskuva kurssista mahdollisimman laajasti. Tähän kuului myös oman itsensä reflektointi osallisena havainnoijana suhteessa opiskelijan rooliin. Palute jota kurssista annettiin oli lähinnä positiivista ja tämän perusteella tämän kaltaisen kurssin järjestämin olisi tulevaisuudessakin tärkeää. Tulevaisuudessa tämänkaltaisen avopalvelun toiminnan tarjoaminen päihdekuntoutujille on varmasti olennainen osa päihdehoitoa. Jatkotutkimuskohteena voisi olla laadullinen tutkimus, jossa selvitetään laajemmin asiakkaiden kokemuksia sekä tarvetta kurssiin. Tämä työ ei ollut laadullinen eikä määrällinen tutkimus, vaan tässä pyrittiin hahmottamaan kokonaiskuva A-klinikan kurssista.The objective of this thesis was to participate in an intensive rehabilitation course in western Vantaa and to observe its effects on clients. The objective was also to make a diverse overview of the course that targets substance addicted people in Vantaa. The intensive course is one function of A-klinikka, whose aim is to deal with addiction, relapse and its prevention, emotional regulation and convalescence. This thesis was a participating and observing study, which in practice meant participating as an observer in the course in fall of the year 2016. The theoretical framework covers rehabilitation from substance abuse and alcoholism in Finland. In addition topics such as mindfulness, dialectic behavioural therapy, psychosocial treatment and functionality. These topics are the common thread throughout the course. The course does not provide actual therapy, but instead uses these theories and methods for treatment of substance addiction. Participating in the course was a large part of the thesis. It included observation, familiarization with the theory, interaction with clients and an anonymous questionnaire. The objective of participating was to build a comprehensive understanding of the course. This included self- reflection as a participating observer with respect to the role of student. The feedback from the course was mostly positive and on the basis of this similar courses would be important in the future. In the future this kind of activity of outpatient services for the substance addicted is surely an integral part of substance abuse counseling. A further area of study could be a qualitative study of client experiences and demand for the course. This thesis is not a qualitative or quantitative study, but instead an overview of the A-klinikka course

Modeling an integrated market for sawlogs, pulpwood and forest bioenergy

Traditionally, most applications in the initial stage of forest supply chain deal with sawlogs to sawmills, pulpwood to pulp or paper mills and forest residues to heating plants. However, in the past decades, soaring prices of fossil fuel, global awareness about CO2 emission and increasing attention to domestic resource security have boosted the development of alternative renewable energy, among which forest bioenergy is the most promising and feasible choice for medium- and large-scale heating and electricity generation. Different subsidies and incentive policies for green energy further promote the utilization of forest bioenergy. As a result, there is a trend that pulpwood may be forwarded to heating plants as complementary forest bioenergy. Though pulpwood is more expensive than forest residues, it is more efficient to transport and has higher energy content. The competition between traditional forest industries and wood-energy facilities, expected to grow in the future, is very sensitive for the forest companies as they are involved in all activities. In this paper, we develop a model that all raw materials in the forest, i.e. sawlogs, pulpwood and forest residues, and byproducts from sawmills, i.e. wood chips and bark, exist in an integrated market where pulpwood can be sent to heating plants as bioenergy. It represents a multi-period multi-commodity network planning problem with multiple sources of supply, i.e. pre-selected harvest areas, and multiple kinds of destination, i.e. sawmills, pulp mills and heating plants. The decisions incorporate purchasing the raw materials in harvest areas, reassigning byproducts from sawmills, transporting those assortments to different points for chipping, storing, wood-processing or wood-fired, and replenishing fossil fuel when necessary. Moreover, different from the classic wood procurement problem, we take the unit purchasing costs of raw materials as variables, on which the corresponding supplies of different assortments linearly depend. With this price mechanism, the popularity of harvest areas can be distinguished. The objective of the problem is to minimize the total cost for the integrated market including the purchasing cost of raw materials. Therefore, the model is a quadratic programming (QP) problem with a quadratic objective function and linear constraints. A large case study in southern Sweden under different scenario assumptions is implemented to simulate the integrated market and to study how price restriction, market regulation, demand fluctuation, policy implementation and exogenous change in price for fossil fuel will influence the entire wood flows. Pair-wise comparisons show that in the integrated market, competition for raw materials between forest bioenergy facilities and traditional forest industries pushes up the purchasing costs of pulpwood. The results also demonstrate that resources can be effectively utilized with the price mechanism in supply market. The overall energy value of forest bioenergy delivered to heating plants is 23% more than the amount in the situation when volume and unit purchasing cost of raw materials are fixed.Forest supply chain; integrated market; bioenergy; wood procurement; wood distribution; quadratic programming

Assessing the areas of concern regarding decarbonisation of industrial microgrids based on a novel classification framework

This thesis is made for a technology company in Vaasa, Finland which has the focus on decarbonisation of microgrids through optimisation with different aspects in mind, such as, reducing emissions, decreasing fuel consumption, increasing grid reliability and asset availability, and lowering operation costs. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the fundamental areas of concern, when making an early assessment of the potential for decarbonisation through optimisation in industrial microgrids. This is done through a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with experts with different areas of expertise in the company. The interviews are then analysed and compared to relevant literature in the field. The outcome is a proposed classification framework grouped into three different sections: generation, network & control, and load. These sections are further divided into different sub-sections with own themes, where categories are listed. Additionally, some suggestions on further utilisation are also proposed in the work, for example, in customer conversations or as an aid for experts.Detta diplomarbete är gjort åt ett teknologiföretag beläget i Vasa, Finland, vilket fokuserar på utfasning av fossila bränslen (eng. decarbonisation) i mikronätverk genom optimering inom olika fokusområden. Exempel på dessa är minskning av utsläpp och bränsleförbrukning, ökning av nätverksstabilitet och tillgänglighet av elproduktionsanläggningar samt optimering av driftskostnader. Målet med diplomarbetet är att utreda inom vilka områden det kan uppstå utmaningar när man i ett tidigt skede kartlägger möjligheterna för utfasning av fossila bränslen genom optimering i industriella mikronätverk. Det här är gjort genom en kvalitativ studie baserad på semistrukturerade intervjuer med sakkunniga med olika expertisområden inom företaget i fråga. Intervjuerna är sedan analyserade och jämförda med relevant litteratur inom ämnet. Resultatet av studien är ett klassificeringssystem indelat i tre olika huvudområden: generering, nätverk & kontroll och last. Dessa är vidare uppdelade i underområden med egna teman i vilka olika kategorier är listade. Därtill i arbetet ges även förslag på användningsområden för detta klassificeringssystem, exempelvis i kundsamtal eller som hjälpmedel för experter

Assessing the areas of concern regarding decarbonisation of industrial microgrids based on a novel classification framework

This thesis is made for a technology company in Vaasa, Finland which has the focus on decarbonisation of microgrids through optimisation with different aspects in mind, such as, reducing emissions, decreasing fuel consumption, increasing grid reliability and asset availability, and lowering operation costs. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the fundamental areas of concern, when making an early assessment of the potential for decarbonisation through optimisation in industrial microgrids. This is done through a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with experts with different areas of expertise in the company. The interviews are then analysed and compared to relevant literature in the field. The outcome is a proposed classification framework grouped into three different sections: generation, network & control, and load. These sections are further divided into different sub-sections with own themes, where categories are listed. Additionally, some suggestions on further utilisation are also proposed in the work, for example, in customer conversations or as an aid for experts.Detta diplomarbete är gjort åt ett teknologiföretag beläget i Vasa, Finland, vilket fokuserar på utfasning av fossila bränslen (eng. decarbonisation) i mikronätverk genom optimering inom olika fokusområden. Exempel på dessa är minskning av utsläpp och bränsleförbrukning, ökning av nätverksstabilitet och tillgänglighet av elproduktionsanläggningar samt optimering av driftskostnader. Målet med diplomarbetet är att utreda inom vilka områden det kan uppstå utmaningar när man i ett tidigt skede kartlägger möjligheterna för utfasning av fossila bränslen genom optimering i industriella mikronätverk. Det här är gjort genom en kvalitativ studie baserad på semistrukturerade intervjuer med sakkunniga med olika expertisområden inom företaget i fråga. Intervjuerna är sedan analyserade och jämförda med relevant litteratur inom ämnet. Resultatet av studien är ett klassificeringssystem indelat i tre olika huvudområden: generering, nätverk & kontroll och last. Dessa är vidare uppdelade i underområden med egna teman i vilka olika kategorier är listade. Därtill i arbetet ges även förslag på användningsområden för detta klassificeringssystem, exempelvis i kundsamtal eller som hjälpmedel för experter

Towards a shared understanding : A study of the intersubjective management of critique between an artist and a critic

This article scrutinizes the trajectory of an evaluation of the visual appearance of an artistic installation, during a conversation between a visual artist and a critic. The study analyzes how the artist receives and responds to the critic’s evaluations of the artwork in three different phases of evaluative discourse: an initial, an elaborating, and a concluding one. The artist’s responses change from minimal responses and hypothetical solutions, via repeating utterances, to overt agreements and outspoken explanations. The development of the artist’s response to the critic’s evaluations reflects an increase in the participants’ shared intersubjective understanding and in the artist’s strengthened epistemic position: the critique can be accepted only after the artist has gone through interactional phases that lead up to an appreciation of the critique that thus can be commented on and partly transformed.This article scrutinizes the trajectory of an evaluation of the visual appearance of an artistic installation, during a conversation between a visual artist and a critic. The study analyzes how the artist receives and responds to the critic’s evaluations of the artwork in three different phases of evaluative discourse: an initial, an elaborating, and a concluding one. The artist’s responses change from minimal responses and hypothetical solutions, via repeating utterances, to overt agreements and outspoken explanations. The development of the artist’s response to the critic’s evaluations reflects an increase in the participants’ shared intersubjective understanding and in the artist’s strengthened epistemic position: the critique can be accepted only after the artist has gone through interactional phases that lead up to an appreciation of the critique that thus can be commented on and partly transformed.Peer reviewe

Den frivilliga brandkårens potential i integration av unga män : En kvalitativ studie inom projektet Young Euroman

Detta examensarbete utgör den andra fasen av ett trefasigt projekt med namnet ”Young Euroman”. Syftet i andra fasen är att utreda tredje sektorns potential i integrationen av andra generationens unga invandrarmän i det finländska samhället, vilken syn och eventuella förväntningar unga invandrarmän har på tredje sektorn samt hur potentialen och förväntningarna möter varandra. Med hjälp av teoretisk kunskap och intervjuer kartläggs också faktorer som kan främja eller förhindra integration och utslagning. Examensarbetet utfördes som en kvalitativ studie. Vi intervjuade tre föreningsrepresentanter och fyra unga invandrarmän. Tredje sektorn är avgränsad till den frivilliga brandkåren inom Svenskfinland och andra generationens unga invandrare till män i åldern 18-30. Utgående från vår teori samt respondenternas intervjusvar framgår det att tredje sektorn har potential att främja integration och hindra utslagning. Dock saknas kunskap och kännedom om andra generationens invandrare. I motsats till teorin framkommer det av respondenternas svar att unga män inte anser sig behöva stöd i integrationen, vilket kan förklara att unga män inte hittar verksamheten. Eftersom det bara finns ett litet antal av andra generationens invandrare i Finland är två av våra respondenter första generationens invandrare.This thesis is the second phase of a project called “Young Euroman” that consists of three phases. The purpose in the second phase is to investigate the potential of the third sector in integration of second generation young male immigrants in the Finnish society, the outlooks and the possible expectations that young male immigrants might have of the third sector and how the potential and expectations meet. With the help of theoretical knowledge and interviews factors are identified that can promote or prevent integration and exclusion. The work was conducted as a qualitative study. We interviewed three association representatives and four young male immigrants. The third sector is limited to the fire brigade youth activities in Swedish Finland and second generation immigrant youth to males in the ages between 18-30 years. Based on our theory and interviews we concluded that the third sector has potential in the promotion of integration and prevention of exclusion. However there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of second generation immigrants. In contrary to the theory it appears that the respondents do not consider themselves to be in need of support in integration. This can explain why the young males do not find the third sector’s activities. Two of our respondents are first generation immigrants since there is only a small number of second generation immigrants in Finland