Visual completion in an illusory figure

The visual systems of humans and animals represent physical reality in a modified way, depending on the specific demands that the species in question has for survival. The ability to perceive visual illusions is found in independently evolved visual systems, from honeybees to humans. In humans, the ability emerges early, at the age of four months. Thus the perception of illusion is likely to reflect visual processes of fundamental importance for object perception in natural vision. The experiments reported in this thesis employed various modifications of the Kanizsa triangle, a drawn configuration composed of three black disks with missing sectors on a white background. The sectors appear to form the tips of a triangle. The visual system completes the physically empty area between the disks, generally called inducers, with giving the perception of an illusory triangle. The illusory triangle consists of an illusory surface bounded by illusory contours; the triangle appears brighter than and to lie above the background. If the sectors are coloured, the colour fills the illusory area, a phenomenon known as neon colour spreading . We investigated spatial limitations on the perception of Kanizsa-type illusions and how other stimuli and viewing parameters affected these limitations. We also studied complex configurations thick, bent, mobile and chromatic inducers - to determine whether illusions combining several attributes can be perceived. The results suggest that the visual system is highly effective in completing a percept. The perception of an illusory figure is spatially scale invariant when perceived at threshold. The processing time and the number of fixations modify the percept, making the perception of the illusion more probable in various viewing conditions. Furthermore, the fact that the illusion can be perceived when only one inducer is physically present at any given moment indicates the potential of single inducers. Apparently, modelling illusory figure perception will require a combination of low-level, local processes and higher-level integrative processes. Our studies with stimuli combining several attributes relevant to object perception demonstrate that the perception of an illusory figure is flexible and is maintained also when it contains colour and volume and when shown in movement. All in all, the results confirm the assumed importance of the visual processes related with the perception of illusory figures in everyday viewing. This is indicated by the variety of inducer modifications that can be made without destroying the percept. Furthermore, the illusion can acquire additional attributes from such modifications. Due to individual differences in the perception of illusory figures, universal values for absolute performance are not always meaningful, but stable trends and general relations do exist.

Dialogisuus ja kohtaaminen : Tutkimus kristillisten koulujen toimintakulttuurista kasvatussuhteen näkökulmasta

The main focus of this research was to describe the educational purpose of Christian schools within their operation culture. The Christian schools founded in Finland can be seen as part of a greater movement in Europe. In this research the dialogue and encounter in the educational scheme of Finnish Christian schools were examined by asking three research questions: 1. What is the nature of the dialogue in education in Finnish Christian schools? 2. How do the teachers describe themselves as educators? 3. What are the special characteristics in the operation culture of a Christian school? The educational relationship was regarded as fundamental and in the background reflected the absolute value of each student. Communication skills were viewed as essential in the building of relationships, which also included emotion communication skills as a broader view. The teachers expressed their comprehension of the meaning of the dialogue in the building of a relationship with practical examples. Students learned to understand one another's experiences by discussion and listening to one another. The values that created a connection were mutual appreciation, honesty, taking the other one into account, and the ability for empathy. Caring was regarded as a relationship between people, as well as a genuine mutual encounter, in which all parties would listen to one another and be heard by others. The respondents thought that individual attention and time were the keys to reaching well-being and an encounter. Students' commitment to the community was supported by mutual agreements, identifying with the common world, and encounters. The appearance of Christian love agape was named as the basis for an educational relationship. The answers emphasised shared everyday life at school. According to the teachers, the willingness for personal growth enabled encounters, although growth as such was often regarded as difficult. Cognitive emphasising and emotional experiencing from a dynamic perspective, were the means by which students' ethical understanding was comprehended. The teachers named three key factors to create a confidential relationship: a respectful attitude, courage, and genuineness. Within the school operational environment, a sense of community was emphasised, in which each student was taken into account individually. The active role of parents was an essential part of the school culture. The administration of the schools appeared committed. The additional pressure in school work came from efforts to ensure the official status of the school, as well as the large amount of administrative work involved in a private school. According to the research data, there was no evidence to support any elitism that is often associated with private schools.

Modeling Asymmetries in Financial Data with Multiplicative Error Models

This thesis addresses modeling of financial time series, especially stock market returns and daily price ranges. Modeling data of this kind can be approached with so-called multiplicative error models (MEM). These models nest several well known time series models such as GARCH, ACD and CARR models. They are able to capture many well established features of financial time series including volatility clustering and leptokurtosis. In contrast to these phenomena, different kinds of asymmetries have received relatively little attention in the existing literature. In this thesis asymmetries arise from various sources. They are observed in both conditional and unconditional distributions, for variables with non-negative values and for variables that have values on the real line. In the multivariate context asymmetries can be observed in the marginal distributions as well as in the relationships of the variables modeled. New methods for all these cases are proposed. Chapter 2 considers GARCH models and modeling of returns of two stock market indices. The chapter introduces the so-called generalized hyperbolic (GH) GARCH model to account for asymmetries in both conditional and unconditional distribution. In particular, two special cases of the GARCH-GH model which describe the data most accurately are proposed. They are found to improve the fit of the model when compared to symmetric GARCH models. The advantages of accounting for asymmetries are also observed through Value-at-Risk applications. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are provided in Chapter 3 of the thesis. In this chapter the so-called mixture conditional autoregressive range (MCARR) model is introduced, examined and applied to daily price ranges of the Hang Seng Index. The conditions for the strict and weak stationarity of the model as well as an expression for the autocorrelation function are obtained by writing the MCARR model as a first order autoregressive process with random coefficients. The chapter also introduces inverse gamma (IG) distribution to CARR models. The advantages of CARR-IG and MCARR-IG specifications over conventional CARR models are found in the empirical application both in- and out-of-sample. Chapter 4 discusses the simultaneous modeling of absolute returns and daily price ranges. In this part of the thesis a vector multiplicative error model (VMEM) with asymmetric Gumbel copula is found to provide substantial benefits over the existing VMEM models based on elliptical copulas. The proposed specification is able to capture the highly asymmetric dependence of the modeled variables thereby improving the performance of the model considerably. The economic significance of the results obtained is established when the information content of the volatility forecasts derived is examined.

Cyclosporine population pharmacokinetics in pediatric renal transplant recipients

Cyclosporine is an immunosuppressant drug with a narrow therapeutic index and large variability in pharmacokinetics. To improve cyclosporine dose individualization in children, we used population pharmacokinetic modeling to study the effects of developmental, clinical, and genetic factors on cyclosporine pharmacokinetics in altogether 176 subjects (age range: 0.36–20.2 years) before and up to 16 years after renal transplantation. Pre-transplantation test doses of cyclosporine were given intravenously (3 mg/kg) and orally (10 mg/kg), on separate occasions, followed by blood sampling for 24 hours (n=175). After transplantation, in a total of 137 patients, cyclosporine concentration was quantified at trough, two hours post-dose, or with dose-interval curves. One-hundred-four of the studied patients were genotyped for 17 putatively functionally significant sequence variations in the ABCB1, SLCO1B1, ABCC2, CYP3A4, CYP3A5, and NR1I2 genes. Pharmacokinetic modeling was performed with the nonlinear mixed effects modeling computer program, NONMEM. A 3-compartment population pharmacokinetic model with first order absorption without lag-time was used to describe the data. The most important covariate affecting systemic clearance and distribution volume was allometrically scaled body weight i.e. body weight**3/4 for clearance and absolute body weight for volume of distribution. The clearance adjusted by absolute body weight declined with age and pre-pubertal children (< 8 years) had an approximately 25% higher clearance/body weight (L/h/kg) than did older children. Adjustment of clearance for allometric body weight removed its relationship to age after the first year of life. This finding is consistent with a gradual reduction in relative liver size towards adult values, and a relatively constant CYP3A content in the liver from about 6–12 months of age to adulthood. The other significant covariates affecting cyclosporine clearance and volume of distribution were hematocrit, plasma cholesterol, and serum creatinine, explaining up to 20%–30% of inter-individual differences before transplantation. After transplantation, their predictive role was smaller, as the variations in hematocrit, plasma cholesterol, and serum creatinine were also smaller. Before transplantation, no clinical or demographic covariates were found to affect oral bioavailability, and no systematic age-related changes in oral bioavailability were observed. After transplantation, older children receiving cyclosporine twice daily as the gelatine capsule microemulsion formulation had an about 1.25–1.3 times higher bioavailability than did the younger children receiving the liquid microemulsion formulation thrice daily. Moreover, cyclosporine oral bioavailability increased over 1.5-fold in the first month after transplantation, returning thereafter gradually to its initial value in 1–1.5 years. The largest cyclosporine doses were administered in the first 3–6 months after transplantation, and thereafter the single doses of cyclosporine were often smaller than 3 mg/kg. Thus, the results suggest that cyclosporine displays dose-dependent, saturable pre-systemic metabolism even at low single doses, whereas complete saturation of CYP3A4 and MDR1 (P-glycoprotein) renders cyclosporine pharmacokinetics dose-linear at higher doses. No significant associations were found between genetic polymorphisms and cyclosporine pharmacokinetics before transplantation in the whole population for which genetic data was available (n=104). However, in children older than eight years (n=22), heterozygous and homozygous carriers of the ABCB1 c.2677T or c.1236T alleles had an about 1.3 times or 1.6 times higher oral bioavailability, respectively, than did non-carriers. After transplantation, none of the ABCB1 SNPs or any other SNPs were found to be associated with cyclosporine clearance or oral bioavailability in the whole population, in the patients older than eight years, or in the patients younger than eight years. In the whole population, in those patients carrying the NR1I2 g.-25385C–g.-24381A–g.-205_-200GAGAAG–g.7635G–g.8055C haplotype, however, the bioavailability of cyclosporine was about one tenth lower, per allele, than in non-carriers. This effect was significant also in a subgroup of patients older than eight years. Furthermore, in patients carrying the NR1I2 g.-25385C–g.-24381A–g.-205_-200GAGAAG–g.7635G–g.8055T haplotype, the bioavailability was almost one fifth higher, per allele, than in non-carriers. It may be possible to improve individualization of cyclosporine dosing in children by accounting for the effects of developmental factors (body weight, liver size), time after transplantation, and cyclosporine dosing frequency/formulation. Further studies are required on the predictive value of genotyping for individualization of cyclosporine dosing in children.

Monte Carlo Simulations of Molecular Clusters in Nucleation

A better understanding of the limiting step in a first order phase transition, the nucleation process, is of major importance to a variety of scientific fields ranging from atmospheric sciences to nanotechnology and even to cosmology. This is due to the fact that in most phase transitions the new phase is separated from the mother phase by a free energy barrier. This barrier is crossed in a process called nucleation. Nowadays it is considered that a significant fraction of all atmospheric particles is produced by vapor-to liquid nucleation. In atmospheric sciences, as well as in other scientific fields, the theoretical treatment of nucleation is mostly based on a theory known as the Classical Nucleation Theory. However, the Classical Nucleation Theory is known to have only a limited success in predicting the rate at which vapor-to-liquid nucleation takes place at given conditions. This thesis studies the unary homogeneous vapor-to-liquid nucleation from a statistical mechanics viewpoint. We apply Monte Carlo simulations of molecular clusters to calculate the free energy barrier separating the vapor and liquid phases and compare our results against the laboratory measurements and Classical Nucleation Theory predictions. According to our results, the work of adding a monomer to a cluster in equilibrium vapour is accurately described by the liquid drop model applied by the Classical Nucleation Theory, once the clusters are larger than some threshold size. The threshold cluster sizes contain only a few or some tens of molecules depending on the interaction potential and temperature. However, the error made in modeling the smallest of clusters as liquid drops results in an erroneous absolute value for the cluster work of formation throughout the size range, as predicted by the McGraw-Laaksonen scaling law. By calculating correction factors to Classical Nucleation Theory predictions for the nucleation barriers of argon and water, we show that the corrected predictions produce nucleation rates that are in good comparison with experiments. For the smallest clusters, the deviation between the simulation results and the liquid drop values are accurately modelled by the low order virial coefficients at modest temperatures and vapour densities, or in other words, in the validity range of the non-interacting cluster theory by Frenkel, Band and Bilj. Our results do not indicate a need for a size dependent replacement free energy correction. The results also indicate that Classical Nucleation Theory predicts the size of the critical cluster correctly. We also presents a new method for the calculation of the equilibrium vapour density, surface tension size dependence and planar surface tension directly from cluster simulations. We also show how the size dependence of the cluster surface tension in equimolar surface is a function of virial coefficients, a result confirmed by our cluster simulations.

Basic Human Values in the Workplace

Työntekijöiden henkilökohtaisia arvoja ja niiden yhteyksiä asenteisiin ei ole juuri tutkittu. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, onko suomalaisessa metalliteollisuuden yrityksen henkilöstön (N=1314) arvojen rakenne S. H. Schwartzin arvoteorian mukainen. Lisäksi tutkittiin arvojen yhteyksiä organisaatiomuutosta koskeviin asenteisiin ja tiedon jakamiseen työyhteisössä. Arvomittarina käytettiin uutta 40-osioista Portrait Value Questionnairea (PVQ). Mittarin validiteetti osoitettiin ver-taamalla nyt kerätyn aineiston arvorakennetta aikaisemmalla mittarilla kerättyihin arvoteorian mukaisiin yliopisto-opiskelijoiden vastauksiin. Organisaatiomuutosta koskevien asenteiden ja tiedonjakamisen mittarit luotiin laadullisissa esitutkimuksissa. Tilastolliset analyysit osoittivat, että toimihenkilöiden ja työntekijöiden arvojen rakenteet noudattivat pääosin Schwartzin teoriaa, mutta turvallisuusarvot sijaitsivat molemmissa ryhmissä universalismin ja hyväntahtoisuuden joukossa. Universalismi ja hyväntahtoisuus ennustivat myönteistä asennetta organisaatiomuutoksia kohtaan, mutta perinteiden ja mielihyvän arvostaminen liittyivät kielteisiin muutosasenteisiin. Sosiaalisia normeja kunnioittavien eli yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavien henkilöiden muut arvot vaikuttivat muutosasenteisiin vähemmän kuin niillä, joille yhdenmukaisuus ei ollut tärkeää. Lisäksi suoriutumisarvon yhteys muutosasenteisiin oli yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavilla henkilöillä positiivinen, mutta niillä, jotka eivät arvostaneet yhdenmukaisuutta, yhteys oli negatiivinen. Itseohjautuvuutta arvostavat henkilöt pitivät työyhteisönsä tiedon jakamista heikompana, kun taas hyväntahtoisuutta ja yhdenmukaisuutta arvostavat pitivät sitä muihin nähden parempana. Suoriutumisarvo oli yhteydessä tiedonjakamiseen vain silloin, kun yhdenmukaisuus oli tärkeää. Työpaikkojen (N=19) keskiarvoja vertailtaessa havaittiin, että ne työpaikat, joissa arvostettiin paljon universalismia, hyväntahtoisuutta ja yhdenmukaisuutta sekä vähän valtaa ja suoriutumista saivat henkilöstöltään parhaat arvioinnit tiedon jakamisesta. Tutkimukseen osallistuneet henkilöt jaettiin työtehtäviensä perusteella kolmeen ammatilliseen ympäristöön: konven-tionaaliseen (mm. taloushallinto), realistiseen (mm. tuotanto) ja yrittäjämäiseen (mm. myynti). Yrittäjämäisessä ammatillisessa ympäristössä toimivat arvostivat enemmän kuin konventionaalisessa ympäristössä toimivat valtaa, itseohjautuvuutta ja suoriutumista. Realistisessa ympäristössä arvostettiin enemmän perinteitä ja mielihyvää kuin yrittäjämäisessä ympäristössä. Ryhmien väliset erot arvoissa johtuivat koulutuksesta, iästä ja sukupuolijakaumasta.

The sources of moral motivation : studies on empathy, guilt, shame and values

The goals of this study were to analyze the forms of emotional tendencies that are likely to motivate moral behaviors, and to find correlates for these tendencies. In study 1, students narratives of their own guilt or shame experiences were analyzed. The results showed that pure shame was more likely to motivate avoidance than reparation, whereas guilt and combination of guilt and shame were likely to motivate reparation. However, all types of emotion could lead to chronic rumination if the person was not clearly responsible for the situation. In study 2, the relations of empathy with two measures of guilt were examined in a sample of 13- to 16-year-olds (N=113). Empathy was measured using Davis s IRI and guilt by Tangney s TOSCA and Hoffman s semi-projective story completion method that includes two different scenarios, guilt over cheating and guilt over inaction. Empathy correlated more strongly with both measures of guilt than the two measures correlated with each other. Hoffman s guilt over inaction was more strongly associated with empathy measures in girls than in boys, whereas for guilt over cheating the pattern was the opposite. Girls and boys who describe themselves as empathetic may emphasize different aspect of morality and feel guilty in different contexts. In study 3, cultural and gender differences in guilt and shame (TOSCA) and value priorities (the Schwartz Value Survey) were studied in samples of Finnish (N=156) and Peruvian (N=159) adolescents. Gender differences were found to be larger and more stereotypical among the Finns than among the Peruvians. Finnish girls were more prone to guilt and shame than boys were, whereas among the Peruvians there was no gender difference in guilt, and boys were more shame-prone than girls. The results support the view that psychological gender differences are largest individualistic societies. In study 4, the relations of value priorities to guilt, shame and empathy were examined in two samples, one of 15 19-year-old high school students (N = 207), and the other of military conscripts (N = 503). Guilt was, in both samples, positively related to valuing universalism, benevolence, tradition, and conformity, and negatively related to valuing power, hedonism, stimulation, and self-direction. The results for empathy were similar, but the relation to the openness conservation value dimension was weaker. Shame and personal distress were weakly related to values. In sum, shame without guilt and the TOSCA shame scale are tendencies that are unlikely to motivate moral behavior in Finnish cultural context. Guilt is likely to be connected to positive social behaviors, but excessive guilt can cause psychological problems. Moral emotional tendencies are related to culture, cultural conceptions of gender and to individual value priorities.

Measurement of the top quark mass and pp̅ →tt̅ cross section in the all-hadronic mode with the CDF II detector

We present a measurement of the top quark mass and of the top-antitop pair production cross section using p-pbar data collected with the CDFII detector at the Tevatron Collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.9 fb-1. We select events with six or more jets satisfying a number of kinematical requirements imposed by means of a neural network algorithm. At least one of these jets must originate from a b quark, as identified by the reconstruction of a secondary vertex inside the jet. The mass measurement is based on a likelihood fit incorporating reconstructed mass distributions representative of signal and background, where the absolute jet energy scale (JES) is measured simultaneously with the top quark mass. The measurement yields a value of 174.8 +- 2.4(stat+JES) ^{+1.2}_{-1.0}(syst) GeV/c^2, where the uncertainty from the absolute jet energy scale is evaluated together with the statistical uncertainty. The procedure measures also the amount of signal from which we derive a cross section, sigma_{ttbar} = 7.2 +- 0.5(stat) +- 1.0 (syst) +- 0.4 (lum) pb, for the measured values of top quark mass and JES.

Traditional patterns and textures as values for meaningful automatization in music

This contribution focuses on the accelerated loss of traditional sound patterning in music, parallel to the exponential loss of linguistic and cultural variety in a world increasingly 'globalized' by market policies and economic liberalization, in which scientific or technical justification plays a crucial role. As a suggestion to an alternative trend, composers and music theorists are invited to explore the world of design and patterning by grammar rules from non-dominant cultures, and to make an effort to understand their contextual usage and its transformation, in order to appreciate their symbolism and aesthetic depth. Practical examples are provided.

Monte Carlo simulations of molecular clusters in nucleation

A better understanding of the limiting step in a first order phase transition, the nucleation process, is of major importance to a variety of scientific fields ranging from atmospheric sciences to nanotechnology and even to cosmology. This is due to the fact that in most phase transitions the new phase is separated from the mother phase by a free energy barrier. This barrier is crossed in a process called nucleation. Nowadays it is considered that a significant fraction of all atmospheric particles is produced by vapor-to liquid nucleation. In atmospheric sciences, as well as in other scientific fields, the theoretical treatment of nucleation is mostly based on a theory known as the Classical Nucleation Theory. However, the Classical Nucleation Theory is known to have only a limited success in predicting the rate at which vapor-to-liquid nucleation takes place at given conditions. This thesis studies the unary homogeneous vapor-to-liquid nucleation from a statistical mechanics viewpoint. We apply Monte Carlo simulations of molecular clusters to calculate the free energy barrier separating the vapor and liquid phases and compare our results against the laboratory measurements and Classical Nucleation Theory predictions. According to our results, the work of adding a monomer to a cluster in equilibrium vapour is accurately described by the liquid drop model applied by the Classical Nucleation Theory, once the clusters are larger than some threshold size. The threshold cluster sizes contain only a few or some tens of molecules depending on the interaction potential and temperature. However, the error made in modeling the smallest of clusters as liquid drops results in an erroneous absolute value for the cluster work of formation throughout the size range, as predicted by the McGraw-Laaksonen scaling law. By calculating correction factors to Classical Nucleation Theory predictions for the nucleation barriers of argon and water, we show that the corrected predictions produce nucleation rates that are in good comparison with experiments. For the smallest clusters, the deviation between the simulation results and the liquid drop values are accurately modelled by the low order virial coefficients at modest temperatures and vapour densities, or in other words, in the validity range of the non-interacting cluster theory by Frenkel, Band and Bilj. Our results do not indicate a need for a size dependent replacement free energy correction. The results also indicate that Classical Nucleation Theory predicts the size of the critical cluster correctly. We also presents a new method for the calculation of the equilibrium vapour density, surface tension size dependence and planar surface tension directly from cluster simulations. We also show how the size dependence of the cluster surface tension in equimolar surface is a function of virial coefficients, a result confirmed by our cluster simulations.

Heating values of mature trees.

The effective heating values of the above and below ground biomass components of mature Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), Norway spruce (Picea abies), downy birch (Betula pubescens), silver birch (Betula pendula), grey alder (Alnus incana), black alder (Alnus glutinosa) and trembling aspen (Populus tremula) were studied. Each sample tree was divided into wood, bark and foliage components. Bomb calorimetry was used to determine the calorimetric heating values. The species is a significant factor in the heating value of individual tree components. The heating value of the wood proper is highest in conifers. Broad-leaved species have a higher heating value of bark than conifers. The species factor diminishes when the weighted heating value of crown, whole stems or stump-root-system are considered. The crown material has a higher heating value per unit weight in comparison with fuelwood from small-sized stems or wholetrees. The additional advantages of coniferous crown material are that it is a non-industrial biomass resource and is readily available. The variability of both the chemical composition and the heating value is small in any given tree component of any species. However, lignin, carbohydrate and extractive content were found to vary from one part of the tree to another and to correlate with the heating value.

Factors affecting perceptions of corporate social responsibility implementation: an emphasis on values

This dissertation is a broad study of factors affecting perceptions of CSR issues in multiple stakeholder realms, the main purpose being to determine the effects of the values of individuals on their perceptions regarding CSR. It examines perceptions of CSR both at the emic (observing individuals and stakeholders) and etic levels (conducting cross-cultural comparison) through a descriptive-empirical research strategy. The dissertation is based on quantitative interview data among Chinese, Finnish and US stakeholder groups of industry companies (with an emphasis on the forest industries) and consists of four published articles and two submitted manuscripts. Theoretically, this dissertation provides a valuable and unique philosophical and intellectual perspective on the contemporary study of CSR `The Harmony Approach to CSR'. Empirically, this dissertation does values assessment and CSR evaluation of a wide variety of business activities covering CSR reporting, business ethics, and three dimensions of CSR performance. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, this dissertation use survey methods to examine the perceptions and stakeholder salience in the context of CSR by describing, comparing the differences between demographic factors as well as hypothetical drivers behind perceptions. The results of study suggest that the CSR objective of a corporation's top management should be to manage the divergent and conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, taking others than key stakeholders into account as well. The importance of values as a driver of ethical behaviour and decision-making has been generally recognized. This dissertation provides more empirical proof of this theory by highlighting the effects of values on CSR perceptions. It suggests that since the way to encourage responsible behaviour and develop CSR is to develop individual values and cultivate their virtues, it is time to invoke the critical role of moral (ethics) education. The specific studies of China and comparison between Finland and the US contribute to a common understanding of the emerging CSR issues, problems and opportunities for the future of sustainability. The similarities among these countries can enhance international cooperation, while the differences will open up opportunities and diversified solutions for CSR in local conditions.