Does Cedomon work?

In 2003 there was an experiment in Agrifood Research Finland (Vihti), which compared Cedomon, Baytan, wood smoke treatment and no-treatment. Barley and oat were chosen to the experiment

Appendix: List of Jô-ô's Tea utensils

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Multifrequency studies of gigahertz-peaked spectrum sources and candidates

Gigahertz-peaked spectrum (GPS) sources are compact radio sources located in centres of distant active galaxies. The shape of the radio continuum spectrum of GPS sources is convex, the flux density increases towards high frequencies and decreases above a turnover at gigahertz-frequencies. Whereas the majority of extragalactic radio sources extend well outside of their host galaxies, these compact sources reside only in the central regions of their host. For this reason studying GPS sources can provide us with information on the structure and the properties of active galactic nuclei. In this thesis, the radio spectra and the total flux density variability of GPS sources are studied. We have collected an extensive database of radio observations of GPS sources and candidates from the monitoring programmes of Metsähovi Radio Observatory and University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory, and from the literature. We have also made new observations of the sources. In the literature, the GPS classification is often done using few non-simultaneous data points presuming that the sources are not variable. Our results show that this approach has produced samples that are heavily contaminated by misclassified sources. Among the quasar-type GPS sources classified in the literature, there is only a small fraction of genuine GPS sources as highly variable sources with temporary GPS features in their radio spectrum have been misclassified as GPS sources. The fraction of genuine GPS galaxies was found to be larger but the contamination was significant also in galaxy-type samples. In addition, the genuine GPS sources were found to be variable contrary to earlier conception. Cluster analyses of GPS sources presented in this thesis also support the view of heterogeneous GPS samples. The blazar-type sources with temporarily gigahertz-peaked spectra clearly stood out as their own cluster, and the sources with confirmed GPS-type spectra formed several different clusters. This result supports the view that there are different types of genuine GPS sources

Introduction

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Wabi as an Aesthetic Concept

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An empirical study with the Finnish consumer confidence indicator and Google searches

There are 3.5 billion searches globally on Google every day. This thesis analyses whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future value of the consumer confidence indicator in Finland. This is interesting since the official statistics of consumer confidence are published with a reporting lag. In order to assess the information contained in Google search queries, this study compares a simple predictive model of consumer confidence to a model that contains variables formed from Google data. When compared to a simple benchmark, Google search queries improve the prediction of the present by 5 % measured by mean absolute error. Moreover, the results show that current search activity provides useful information for the consumer confidence predictions up to six months ahead. However, the predictive ability Google data for forecasting purposes appear to vary over time. When the consumer confidence fluctuates more suddenly, Google data improves the accuracy of nowcasts over the benchmark more than on the periods when the fluctuations are modest. More generally, the results of this thesis suggest that Google searches contain useful information of the present and the near future consumer confidence indicator in Finland

Bibliography

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Wabi as a Philosophical Concept

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Conclusions

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Becoming (a) public : What the concept of public reveals about a programmatic public pedagogy at the university

This article extends the ongoing argumentation of 'public', publics and universities by providing a conceptual discussion of issues at the core of the public sphere: how does public form and exist amid private and individual life and pursuits, and how does a collective public body identify itself. The discussion is placed in dialogue with two earlier contributions to 'becoming (a) public' by Simons and Masschelein (European Educational Research Journal, 8(2), 204-217, 2009) and Biesta (Social & Cultural Geography, 13(7), 683-697, 2012). Brought together, these contributions constitute a definition of a programmatic public pedagogy at the university. This article develops the definition of a programmatic public pedagogy by drawing on the conceptual core meanings of public in continental antiquity, Enlightenment and American pragmatism. The author discusses public as (1) indefinitely circulating discourses, (2) sociability between strangers, (3) macro structures and (4) the political public sphere. The article reveals that the 'becoming (a) public' extends and occurs across a broad spectrum, and that the discursive and sociable manifestations of public are not secondary to explicitly political action but have an inherent value in themselves. The article distinguishes the character of public as constant openness to the emergence of what is yet not known from interpretations that locate public in the existing structures, ideologies and forms of action. The dialogue with Simons and Masschelein and Biesta shows that this distinction has critical implications on how programmatic public pedagogy is understood at the university.This article extends the ongoing argumentation of 'public', publics and universities by providing a conceptual discussion of issues at the core of the public sphere: how does public form and exist amid private and individual life and pursuits, and how does a collective public body identify itself. The discussion is placed in dialogue with two earlier contributions to 'becoming (a) public' by Simons and Masschelein (European Educational Research Journal, 8(2), 204-217, 2009) and Biesta (Social & Cultural Geography, 13(7), 683-697, 2012). Brought together, these contributions constitute a definition of a programmatic public pedagogy at the university. This article develops the definition of a programmatic public pedagogy by drawing on the conceptual core meanings of public in continental antiquity, Enlightenment and American pragmatism. The author discusses public as (1) indefinitely circulating discourses, (2) sociability between strangers, (3) macro structures and (4) the political public sphere. The article reveals that the 'becoming (a) public' extends and occurs across a broad spectrum, and that the discursive and sociable manifestations of public are not secondary to explicitly political action but have an inherent value in themselves. The article distinguishes the character of public as constant openness to the emergence of what is yet not known from interpretations that locate public in the existing structures, ideologies and forms of action. The dialogue with Simons and Masschelein and Biesta shows that this distinction has critical implications on how programmatic public pedagogy is understood at the university.Peer reviewe