The Sensitivity of Annually Laminated Lake Sediments in Central and Eastern Finland to the Late Holocene Climate

This dissertation discusses sedimentary varve formation and Late Holocene paleoenvironmental and climatic variation. Varved sediment records from five lakes in central and eastern Finland were studied. Three varve records, 3 000 - 4 000 years long, from the clastic-biogenic sediments of Lake Kalliojärvi and Lake Kuninkaisenlampi and biogenic sediments of Lake Kallio-Kourujärvi were reconstructed. In addition, two short records that cover the last 100 years were constructed from Lake Kantele and Lake Linnanlampi. These lakes were cored after an intensive search for previously unknown varved lakes. Piston and freeze cores of sedimentary sequences were obtained from each lake basin for varve, magnetic and chemical analyses. Sediments were impregnated in epoxy resin and the physical varve properties, which include total varve thickness and laminae thicknesses, were analyzed using either a stereographic microscope under dark field illumination or a digital image analysis technique. Paleomagnetic secular variation of the Earth’s magnetic field was measured from Lake Kallio-Kourujärvi, Kalliojärvi and Kuninkaisenlampi sediments and inclination and relative declination were obtained. The major paleomagnetic secular variation features of the records are in agreement with both North Karelian Stack and Fennostack and support the varve dating. The varve data were subjected to statistical analyses in order to study the relationship between hydroclimate and varve characteristics. The results highlight the influence of catchment dynamics in varve formation. Clastic lamina thickness has been previously related to spring flood intensity controlled by snow accumulation. However, this study shows an inverse relationship between snow accumulation and clastic lamina thickness in lakes located in the region of fine-grained tills. This could be explained by the frost sensitivity of fine-grained tills, where enhanced erosion on catchment is interpreted as a result of frost that prevents infiltration of melt waters into the ground. Consequently, in years with deeper ground frost the surface run-off during melting season is increased, thus increasing the amount of catchment derived mineral matter in the lake. The frost formation is strongest during winters with low snow accumulation. The clastic laminae of the Lake Kalliojärvi in central Finland, located in an area dominated by sand moraines, are positively correlated and sensitive to winter precipitation and snow accumulation. Biogenic laminae at the lakes with low trophic status were sensitive to precipitation. Enhanced precipitation not only increases the nutrient transport from the catchment into the lake, but also increases the transportation of terrigenous organic matter. Lake Kalliojärvi record reflects the North Atlantic Oscillation variability, very likely through increased snow accumulation during the positive NAO phase. The long varve record from Lake Kuninkaisenlampi reflects solar activity variation in detail and atmospheric blocking related to cold and less snowy winters would explain this link. Based on the results of this study the catchment characteristics and the region impose a strong control over which climatic forcing the lake is sensitive to.Siirretty Doriast

Aspects of objectivity and objective reference in Kant’s transcendental idealism

This study analyzes and lays out different aspects of Kant’s account of the concept of objectivity and objective reference in the broad view, as well as their conditions, to show the relevance of Kant’s view to contemporary philosophy, and to answer some of the criticisms expressed toward Kant, which criticisms often seem to be based on misguided readings of his doctrines. I aim to show that Kant’s philosophy is not – contrary to what is often claimed – overly subjectivistic with the expense of losing objectivity. Rather, his theory of objectivity and objective reference is both coherent and relevant as a philosophical theory today. Furthermore, Kant's account of objectivity, as well as subjectivity, is essential in understanding the origin and meaning of the modern concept of objectivity, which concept is crucial to science in general. In the beginning chapters I outline the most important philosophers and traditions which Kant was both using and criticizing. After this I show how Kant’s transcendental idealism along with its notion of a priori forms of intuition and a priori concepts of the understanding proved to be requirements for objective reference. The key of objective reference lies in the necessary agreement of the categories to the objects of experience. However, these formal conditions are not the only conditions of proper, actual objective reference, as we also need to materialize the forms and concepts by both senses and language, which offer us sensations and words for judgments. Thus I argue that a more full list of the conditions of objective reference in Kant’s case would consist of the purely formal conditions of experience, that is, the forms of intuition and the categories as the concepts of an object in general, and most of all the capacity to unite representations in the act of apperception, and what I have called the material or empirical conditions of objective reference, that is, our actual senses, as well as a language by which we can materialize judgments. This work hopefully contributes first of all to the study of Kant's theoretical philosophy. In addition, the work is related to such fields as philosophy of science and conceptual history, because of the historical role of the concept of objectivity. Furthermore, the study may prove relevant to discussions in philosophy of language, and finally the discussion concerning the interpretation of Kant's philosophy among the contemporary speculative realists.Tutkimus analysoi ja esittelee Kantin objektiivisuuden ja objektiivisen referenssin käsitteiden eri aspekteja ja ehtoja, ja pyrkii osoittamaan Kantin näkemyksen merkittävyyden nykyfilosofialle. Samalla tutkimus vastaa joihinkin Kantia vastaan esitettyihin kritiikkeihin, jotka usein perustuvat puutteellisille tai virheellisille tulkinnoille Kantin opeista. Pyrin näyttämään, ettei Kantin filosofiaa ole syytä pitää kaiken objektiivisuuden kadottavan subjektiivisuuden filosofian esikuvana, kuten valitettavan usein tunnutaan olettavan. Sen sijaan Kantin teoria objektiivisuudesta ja objektiivisesta referenssistä on sekä koherentti että merkityksellinen nykyajan filosofian ja tieteen kannalta. Lisäksi Kantin käsitys objektiivisuudesta ja subjektiivisuudesta on olennainen pyrittäessä ymmärtämään nykyaikaista objektiivisuuden käsitettä, joka on keskeinen tieteelle ylipäänsä. Ensimmäisissä luvuissa hahmottelen Kantin filosofista kontekstia suhteessa niihin filosofeihin ja oppeihin joita Kant itse sekä hyödynsi että kritisoi. Tämän jälkeen osoitan miten Kantin oppi transsendentaalisesta idealismista, mukaan lukien sen keskeiset käsitteet intuition a priori -muodoista ja ymmärryksen a priori - käsitteista, onnistuu perustelemaan objektiivisen referenssin mahdollisuuden, jonka ydin on ymmärryksen peruskäsitteiden (kategorioiden) ja kokemuksen kohteiden (objektien) välisessä välttämättömässä yhteensopivuudessa. Nämä muodolliset a priori –ehdot eivät kuitenkaan yksinään riitä todelliseen objektiiviseen referenssiin, johon tarvitsemme myös empiirisiä elementtejä, kuten aisteja ja kieltä. Näin ollen väitän, että kattavampi luettelo objektiivisen referenssin edellytyksistä sisältää muodollisten a priori -elementtien (intuition ja ymmärryksen muodot) lisäksi myös materiaalisia, empiriisiä ehtoja, kuten aistit ja näiden tuottamat aistimukset, sekä kielen, jonka avulla arvostelmat on mahdollista materialisoida. Tutkimuksella on toivottavasti annettavaa useammalle kuin yhdelle filosofian tutkimuskentälle, mutta lähtökohtaisesti se kuuluu filosofian historian tutkimukseen ja Kantin teoreettisen filosofian tutkimukseen. Työ sivuaa myös sellaisia filosofian aloja kuin tieteenfilosofia ja käsitehistoria, ennen kaikkea objektiivisuuden käsitteen historiallisen merkittävyyden takia. Lisäksi työllä saattaa olla relevanssia kielifilosofialle sekä lukuisille Kantiin liittyville kiistoille tämänhetkisten spekulatiivisten realistien piirissä

Segmental Durations of Speech

This dissertation considers the segmental durations of speech from the viewpoint of speech technology, especially speech synthesis. The idea is that better models of segmental durations lead to higher naturalness and better intelligibility. These features are the key factors for better usability and generality of synthesized speech technology. Even though the studies are based on a Finnish corpus the approaches apply to all other languages as well. This is possibly due to the fact that most of the studies included in this dissertation are about universal effects taking place on utterance boundaries. Also the methods invented and used here are suitable for any other study of another language. This study is based on two corpora of news reading speech and sentences read aloud. The other corpus is read aloud by a 39-year-old male, whilst the other consists of several speakers in various situations. The use of two corpora is twofold: it involves a comparison of the corpora and a broader view on the matters of interest. The dissertation begins with an overview to the phonemes and the quantity system in the Finnish language. Especially, we are covering the intrinsic durations of phonemes and phoneme categories, as well as the difference of duration between short and long phonemes. The phoneme categories are presented to facilitate the problem of variability of speech segments. In this dissertation we cover the boundary-adjacent effects on segmental durations. In initial positions of utterances we find that there seems to be initial shortening in Finnish, but the result depends on the level of detail and on the individual phoneme. On the phoneme level we find that the shortening or lengthening only affects the very first ones at the beginning of an utterance. However, on average, the effect seems to shorten the whole first word on the word level. We establish the effect of final lengthening in Finnish. The effect in Finnish has been an open question for a long time, whilst Finnish has been the last missing piece for it to be a universal phenomenon. Final lengthening is studied from various angles and it is also shown that it is not a mere effect of prominence or an effect of speech corpus with high inter- and intra-speaker variation. The effect of final lengthening seems to extend from the final to the penultimate word. On a phoneme level it reaches a much wider area than the initial effect. We also present a normalization method suitable for corpus studies on segmental durations. The method uses an utterance-level normalization approach to capture the pattern of segmental durations within each utterance. This prevents the impact of various problematic variations within the corpora. The normalization is used in a study on final lengthening to show that the results on the effect are not caused by variation in the material. The dissertation shows an implementation and prowess of speech synthesis on a mobile platform. We find that the rule-based method of speech synthesis is a real-time software solution, but the signal generation process slows down the system beyond real time. Future aspects of speech synthesis on limited platforms are discussed. The dissertation considers ethical issues on the development of speech technology. The main focus is on the development of speech synthesis with high naturalness, but the problems and solutions are applicable to any other speech technology approaches.Siirretty Doriast

Vakuutusyhtiön esimiesten ja asiantuntijoiden Excel-täydennyskoulutus

Jatkuvasti kehittyvä tietotekniikka vaatii jatkuvaa henkilöstön osaamisen kehittämistä maailman yrityksissä. Yritysten on pysyttävä tietotekniikan kehityksessä mukana, jotta sen kilpailukyky markkinoilla säilyisi mahdollisimman hyvänä. Tämän takia monissa yrityksissä järjestetään tietotekniikkaan liittyviä koulutustapahtumia tai ne ostetaan ulkopuoliselta taholta palveluina. Toiminnallisen opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli kouluttaa toimeksiantajan esimiehiä ja asiantuntijoita Excel-ohjelmiston täydennyskoulutuksessa. Koulutusta varten kohdeyrityksen henkilöstölle tehtiin esiselvitys, jolla jaettiin osallistujat kolmeen eri tasoryhmään oman osaamisen perusteella. Toimeksiantaja on Euroopan alueella toimiva yritys. Koulutuksia järjestettiin yhteensä kolme kahdessa eri kaupungissa, joissa kyseisellä yrityksellä on Suomessa toimistot. Koulutukset järjestettiin toimeksiantajan pyynnöstä kiireellisinä loppuvuodesta 2012. Koulutusten yhteydessä hankittiin palaute koulutuksista. Palautteiden, tehtävien ja haastattelujen analysointi suoritettiin alkuvuodesta 2013. Analyysit ovat tämän opinnäytetyön tulokset. Tässä opinnäytetyössä koulutettava Excel-ohjelmistoversio on Excel 2003, mutta opinnäytetyössä käsitellään myös Excel 2003:n ja Excel 2007:n välisiä eroja. Opinnäytetyö sisältää myös aikuiskoulutuksen, oppimisen ja kouluttamisen teoriaa sekä käytännön kokemuksen perusteella hankittuja vinkkejä ja ohjeita parhaan mahdollisen koulutuksen pitämiseen.Updating the Excel software management skills of managers and specialists at an insurance company Constantly evolving information technology requires constant development of employee’s information skills in companies all around the world. Companies need to remain involved in the development of information technology, in order to maintain their competitiveness in the market as much as possible. For this reason, many companies hold IT-related training courses for their employees or services are purchased from a third party. The purpose of this thesis project was to provide training to the managers and experts of an insurance company in the use of the Excel software application. For the purposes of this IT training the company's employees were mapped and divided in to three skill levels depending on the trainees' knowledge levels. The company is a European insurance firm. The training sessions held three times in two different cities in Finland, where the company has branch offices. The sessions were held at the urgent request of the company in late 2012, after which feedback was also collected on the training. The feedback, tasks, and interviews were analyzed in early 2013. This data formed the results of this study. In this thesis project the version of the Excel software used was Excel 2003, but the thesis also examines differences between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on concepts of adult education, learning and training and also guidelines on how to organize the best possible education

Market Integration of Farmed Trout in Germany

Price formation and integration of markets supplied by both farmed and captured fish is studied. Markets for trout and potential substitutes imported to Germany are analysed, and market delineation and market leaders identified. It is found that markets for small portion-sized farmed trout with white meat are related to, rather than completely separate from, other fish markets, and that markets for these trout are more closely linked to markets for captured fish than to farmed salmon. The implications are that although the part of the trout business operating with small freshwater ponds remains relatively unaffected by developments in other fish markets, careful attention should be paid to markets for and management of capture fisheries like cod, halibut, redfish, and mackerel, than to markets for farmed salmon.Price formation, market integration, captured-farmed fish, Production Economics, F15, Q21, Q22,