Vähemmistövaltiokirkon synty : Ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan ja valtion suhteiden muotoutuminen Suomessa 1917-1922

The Birth of the Minority State Church Development of the legal relationship between the state of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church 1917 1922 Mika Nokelainen, University of Helsinki, Finland. The present research seeks to explain how the legal relationship developed between the state of Finland and the Orthodox Church of Finland. The main focus is on three statutes: 1) the Statute of the Orthodox Church in Finland as stated by Prime Minister J. K. Paasikivi s cabinet in November 1918, 2) The Republican Constitution of July 1919 and 3) The Freedom of Religion Act of 1923. This study examines how different political goals influenced the three statutes mentioned above. Another important factor that is taken into account is the attitude of the Lutheran Church of Finland, the church of the national majority, towards the Orthodox minority and its judicial position in the country. Finland became independent in December 1917, in the aftermath of the November Revolution in Russia. The Orthodox Church already had hundreds of years of history in Finland. In the 19th century, several statutes by emperors of Russia had made the Orthodox Church an official state church of Finland. Due to the long history of the Orthodox Church in Finland, Prime Minister Paasikivi s cabinet made the decision to support the church in the spring of 1918. Furthermore, the cabinet s goal to occupy East Karelia increased its willingness to support the church. The Finnish-national Orthodox Church was needed to educate the East-Karelians. A new statute on the Orthodox Church in Finland came into force in November 1918, reorganising the administration, economy and legal relationship between the church and state in Finland. With this statue, the cabinet gained some authority over the church. Sections of this statute made possible, for example, the cabinet s interference in the internal affairs of the church. The Republican Constitution of 1919 included the principle of freedom of religion. The state, which previously had been Lutheran, now became non-denominational. However, the Republican Constitution explicitly mentioned the Lutheran as well as the Orthodox Church, which indirectly confirmed the position of the Orthodox Church as the second state church of Finland. This position was finally confirmed by the Freedom of Religion Act in 1923. In general, the Lutheran Church of Finland did not resist the judicial position of the Orthodox Church. However, some Lutherans regarded the Orthodox Church with suspicion because of its intimate connection with Russia.

Reinventing Nordic Openness : Transparency and State Information in Finland

The study explores new ideational changes in the information strategy of the Finnish state between 1998 and 2007, after a juncture in Finnish governing in the early 1990s. The study scrutinizes the economic reframing of institutional openness in Finland that comes with significant and often unintended institutional consequences of transparency. Most notably, the constitutional principle of publicity (julkisuusperiaate), a Nordic institutional peculiarity allowing public access to state information, is now becoming an instrument of economic performance and accountability through results. Finland has a long institutional history in the publicity of government information, acknowledged by law since 1951. Nevertheless, access to government information became a policy concern in the mid-1990s, involving a historical narrative of openness as a Nordic tradition of Finnish governing Nordic openness (pohjoismainen avoimuus). International interest in transparency of governance has also marked an opening for institutional re-descriptions in Nordic context. The essential added value, or contradictory term, that transparency has on the Finnish conceptualisation of governing is the innovation that public acts of governing can be economically efficient. This is most apparent in the new attempts at providing standardised information on government and expressing it in numbers. In Finland, the publicity of government information has been a concept of democratic connotations, but new internationally diffusing ideas of performance and national economic competitiveness are discussed under the notion of transparency and its peer concepts openness and public (sector) information, which are also newcomers to Finnish vocabulary of governing. The above concepts often conflict with one another, paving the way to unintended consequences for the reforms conducted in their name. Moreover, the study argues that the policy concerns over openness and public sector information are linked to the new drive for transparency. Drawing on theories of new institutionalism, political economy, and conceptual history, the study argues for a reinvention of Nordic openness in two senses. First, in referring to institutional history, the policy discourse of Nordic openness discovers an administrative tradition in response to new dilemmas of public governance. Moreover, this normatively appealing discourse also legitimizes the new ideational changes. Second, a former mechanism of democratic accountability is being reframed with market and performance ideas, mostly originating from the sphere of transnational governance and governance indices. Mobilizing different research techniques and data (public documents of the Finnish government and international organizations, some 30 interviews of Finnish civil servants, and statistical time series), the study asks how the above ideational changes have been possible, pointing to the importance of nationalistically appealing historical narratives and normative concepts of governing. Concerning institutional developments, the study analyses the ideational changes in central steering mechanisms (political, normative and financial steering) and the introduction of budget transparency and performance management in two cases: census data (Population Register Centre) and foreign political information (Ministry for Foreign Affairs). The new policy domain of governance indices is also explored as a type of transparency. The study further asks what institutional transformations are to be observed in the above cases and in the accountability system. The study concludes that while the information rights of citizens have been reinforced and recalibrated during the period under scrutiny, there has also been a conversion of institutional practices towards economic performance. As the discourse of Nordic openness has been rather unquestioned, the new internationally circulating ideas of transparency and the knowledge economy have entered this discourse without public notice. Since the mid 1990s, state registry data has been perceived as an exploitable economic resource in Finland and in the EU public sector information. This is a parallel development to the new drive for budget transparency in organisations as vital to the state as the Population Register Centre, which has led to marketization of census data in Finland, an international exceptionality. In the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the post-Cold War rhetorical shift from secrecy to performance-driven openness marked a conversion in institutional practices that now see information services with high regards. But this has not necessarily led to the increased publicity of foreign political information. In this context, openness is also defined as sharing information with select actors, as a trust based non-public activity, deemed necessary amid the global economic competition. Regarding accountability system, deliberation and performance now overlap, making it increasingly difficult to identify to whom and for what the public administration is accountable. These evolving institutional practices are characterised by unintended consequences and paradoxes. History is a paradoxical component in the above institutional change, as long-term institutional developments now justify short-term reforms.

The Church and Its Boundaries : A Study of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC

The relationship between the Orthodox Churches and the World Council of Churches (WCC) became a crisis just before the 8th Assembly of the WCC in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1998. The Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC (SC), inaugurated in Harare, worked during the period 1999 2002 to solve the crisis and to secure the Orthodox participation in the WCC. The purpose of this study is: 1) to clarify the theological motives for the inauguration of the SC and the theological argumentation of the Orthodox criticism; 2) to write a reliable history and analysis of the SC; 3) to outline the theological argumentation, which structures the debate, and 4) to investigate the ecclesiological questions that arise from the SC material. The study spans the years 1998 to 2006, from the WCC Harare Assembly to the Porto Alegre Assembly. Hence, the initiation and immediate reception of the Special Commission are included in the study. The sources of this study are all the material produced by and for the SC. The method employed is systematic analysis. The focus of the study is on theological argumentation; the historical context and political motives that played a part in the Orthodox-WCC relations are not discussed in detail. The study shows how the initial, specific and individual Orthodox concerns developed into a profound ecclesiological discussion and also led to concrete changes in WCC practices, the best known of which is the change to decision-making by consensus. The Final Report of the SC contains five main themes, namely, ecclesiology, decision-making, worship/common prayer, membership and representation, and social and ethical issues. The main achievement of the SC was that it secured the Orthodox membership in the WCC. The ecclesiological conclusions made in the Final Report are twofold. On the one hand, it confirms that the very act of belonging to the WCC means the commitment to discuss the relationship between a church and churches. The SC recommended that baptism should be added as a criterion for membership in the WCC, and the member churches should continue to work towards the mutual recognition of each other s baptism. These elements strengthen the ecclesiological character of the WCC. On the other hand, when the Final Report discusses common prayer, the ecclesiological conclusions are much more cautious, and the ecclesiological neutrality of the WCC is emphasized several times. The SC repeatedly emphasized that the WCC is a fellowship of churches. The concept of koinonia, which has otherwise been important in recent ecclesiological questions, was not much applied by the SC. The comparison of the results of the SC to parallel ecclesiological documents of the WCC (Nature and Mission of the Church, Called to Be the One Church) shows that they all acknowledge the different ecclesiological starting points of the member churches, and, following that, a variety of legitimate views on the relation of the Church to the churches. Despite the change from preserving the koinonia to promises of eschatological koinonia, all the documents affirm that the goal of the ecumenical movement is still full, visible unity.

A sequential analysis of "nú" and "núna" in Icelandic conversation

This thesis is an empirical study of how two words in Icelandic, "nú" and "núna", are used in contemporary Icelandic conversation. My aims in this study are, first, to explain the differences between the temporal functions of "nú" and "núna", and, second, to describe the non-temporal functions of "nú". In the analysis, a focus is placed on comparing the sequential placement of the two words, on their syntactical distribution, and on their prosodic realization. The empirical data comprise 14 hours and 11 minutes of naturally occurring conversation recorded between 1996 and 2003. The selected conversations represent a wide range of interactional contexts including informal dinner parties, institutional and non-institutional telephone conversations, radio programs for teenagers, phone-in programs, and, finally, a political debate on television. The theoretical and methodological framework is interactional linguistics, which can be described as linguistically oriented conversation analysis (CA). A comparison of "nú" and "núna" shows that the two words have different syntactic distributions. "Nú" has a clear tendency to occur in the front field, before the finite verb, while "núna" typically occurs in the end field, after the object. It is argued that this syntactic difference reflects a functional difference between "nú" and "núna". A sequential analysis of "núna" shows that the word refers to an unspecified period of time which includes the utterance time as well as some time in the past and in the future. This temporal relation is referred to as reference time. "Nú", by contrast, is mainly used in three different environments: a) in temporal comparisons, 2) in transitions, and 3) when the speaker is taking an affective stance. The non-temporal functions of "nú" are divided into three categories: a) "nú" as a tone particle, 2) "nú" as an utterance particle, and 3) "nú" as a dialogue particle. "Nú" as a tone particle is syntactically integrated and can occur in two syntactic positions: pre-verbally and post-verbally. I argue that these instances are employed in utterances in which a speaker is foregrounding information or marking it as particularly important. The study shows that, although these instances are typically prosodically non-prominent and unstressed, they are in some cases delivered with stress and with a higher pitch than the surrounding talk. "Nú" as an utterance particle occurs turn-initially and is syntactically non-integrated. By using "nú", speakers show continuity between turns and link new turns to prior ones. These instances initiate either continuations by the same speaker or new turns after speaker shifts. "Nú" as a dialogue particle occurs as a turn of its own. The study shows that these instances register informings in prior turns as unexpected or as a departure from the normal state of affairs. "Nú" as a dialogue particle is often delivered with a prolonged vowel and a recognizable intonation contour. A comparative sequential and prosodic analysis shows that in these cases there is a correlation between the function of "nú" and the intonation contour by which it is delivered. Finally, I argue that despite the many functions of "nú", all the instances can be said to have a common denominator, which is to display attention towards the present moment and the utterances which are produced prior or after the production of "nú". Instead of anchoring the utterances in external time or reference time, these instances position the utterance in discourse internal time, or discourse time.

The viral coat protein is regulated by HSP70 and HSP40 in Potato virus A infection

Plus-stranded (plus) RNA viruses multiply within a cellular environment as tightly integrated units and rely on the genetic information carried within their genomes for multiplication and, hence, persistence. The minimal genomes of plus RNA viruses are unable to encode the molecular machineries that are required for virus multiplication. This sets requisites for the virus, which must form compatible interactions with host components during multiplication to successfully utilize primary metabolites as building blocks or metabolic energy, and to divert the protein synthesis machinery for production of viral proteins. In fact, the emerging picture of a virus-infected cell displays tight integration with the virus, from simple host and virus protein interactions through to major changes in the physiological state of the host cell. This study set out to develop a method for the identification of host components, mainly host proteins, that interact with proteins of Potato virus A (PVA; Potyvirus) during infection. This goal was approached by developing affinity-tag based methods for the purification of viral proteins complexed with associated host proteins from infected plants. Using this method, host membrane-associated viral ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes were obtained, and several host and viral proteins could be identified as components of these complexes. One of the host proteins identified using this strategy was a member of the heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) family, and this protein was chosen for further analysis. To enable the analysis of viral gene expression, a second method was developed based on Agrobacterium-mediated virus genome delivery into plant cells, and detection of virally expressed Renilla luciferase (RLUC) as a quantitative measure of viral gene expression. Using this method, it was observed that down-regulation of HSP70 caused a PVA coat protein (CP)-mediated defect associated with replication. Further experimentation suggested that CP can inhibit viral gene expression and that a distinct translational activity coupled to replication, referred to as replication-associated translation (RAT), exists. Unlike translation of replication-deficient viral RNA, RAT was dependent on HSP70 and its co-chaperone CPIP. HSP70 and CPIP together regulated CP turnover by promoting its modification by ubiquitin. Based on these results, an HSP70 and CPIP-driven mechanism that functions to regulate CP during viral RNA replication and/or translation is proposed, possibly to prevent premature particle assembly caused by CP association with viral RNA.

Gender, Politics and Democratisation in Cameroon

Gender perceptions, religious belief systems, and political thought have excluded women from politics, for ages, around the world. Combining feminist and modernisation theorists in my theoretical framework, I examine the trends in patriarchal Europe and I highlight the gender-sensitive model of the Nordic countries. Retracing local gender patterns from precolonial to postcolonial eras in sub-Saharan Africa, I explore the links between perceptions, needs, resources, education and women's political participation in Cameroon. Democratisation is supposed to open up political participation, to grant equal opportunities to all adults. One ironic feature of the liberalisation process in Cameroon has been the decrease of women in parliamentarian representation (14% in 1988, 6% in 1992, 5% in 1997 and 10% in 2002). What social, cultural and institutional mechanisms produced this paradoxical outcome, the exclusion of half the population? The gender complementarity of the indigenous context has been lost to male prevalence privileged by education, church, law, employment, economy and politics in the public sphere; most women are marginalised in the private sphere. Nation building and development have failed; ethnicism and individualism are growing. Some hope lies in the growing civil society. From two surveys and 21 focus groups across Cameroon, in 2000 and 2002, some significant results of the processed empirical data reveal low electoral registration (34.5% women and 65.9% men), contrasted by the willingness to run for municipal elections (33.3 % women and 45.2% men). The co-existence of customary and statutory laws, the corrupt political system and fraudulent practices, contribute to the marginalisation of women and men who are interested in politics. A large majority of female respondents consider female politicians more trustworthy and capable than their male counterparts; they even foresee the appointment of a female Prime Minister. The Nordic countries have institutionalised gender equality in their legislation, policies and practices. France has improved women's political inclusion with the parity laws; Rwanda is another model of women's representation, thanks to its post-conflict constitution. From my analysis, Cameroonian institutions, men and more so women, may learn and borrow from these experiences, in order to design and implement a sustainable and gender-balanced democracy. Keywords: democratisation, politics, gender equality, feminism, citizenship, Cameroon, Nordic countries, Finland, France, United Kingdom, quotas, societal social psychology.

Growing Flowers in the Frost: Civic Activity, Citizenship and Gender in Russia

This study analyzes civic activity, citizenship and their gendered manifestations in contemporary Russia. It is based on a case study conducted in the city of Tver , located in the vicinity of Moscow, during 2001-2005. The data consists of interviews with civic activists and municipal and regional authorities; observations of civic organizations; and a quantitative survey conducted among local civic groups. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study draws upon a micro perspective on organization, discourse analysis, gender and citizenship theories and Pierre Bourdieu s theory of fields and capital. This study develops theoretical understanding of the characteristics and logic of civic organization in Russia. It shows that social class centrally structures the field of civic activity. Organizations can be seen as a vehicle of the educated class to advocate their interests, help themselves and seek both social and individual-level change. The study also argues that civic organizations founded during the post-Soviet era are often an institutionalized form of informal social networks. Networks, which were a central element of everyday interaction in Soviet society, are a resource and often the only resource available that can be made use of in contemporary organizational activities. The study argues that gender operates as a key structuring principle in the Russian socio-political community. Civic activity is often discursively associated with femininity and institutional politics with masculinity. Women tend to participate more than men in civic organizations, while men dominate the formal political domain. The study shows that civic organizations are important loci of communality. This communality, however, differs from the communality envisioned in the communitarian and social capital debates in the West. It is selective communality , as it is restricted to the members of the organizations and does not create generalized reciprocity and trust. Civic organizations tend to build upon and reproduce the traditional Russian organizational form of circles , kruzhki. Along with the analysis of civic activities, the study also examines the redefinition of the role and functions of the state. The authorities interviewed in this study understand civic organizations as serving those goals and interests determined by the authorities, instead of viewing them as sites of citizens self-organization around interests and problems citizens themselves deem important, or as a counterforce to the state. By contrast, civic activists understand the core of organizational activity to be advocacy of their interests and rights, tackling social problems, the pursuit of wider social change and self-help. Co-operation between authorities and organizations tends to be personified and based upon unequal, hierarchical patron-client arrangements, which inhibits the development of democratic governance. The study will be published in Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series later this year.

Regulating Food Consumption : Studies of change and variation in Europe

The role of people as buyers and eaters of food has changed significantly. From being protected by a paternalistic welfare state, people appear to be accorded more freedom and responsibility as individuals, where attention is redirected from the state towards market relations. Many have asserted that these changes are accompanied by fragmentation, individualisation, and privatisation, leading to individual uncertainty and lack of confidence. But empirical observations do not always confirm this, distrust is not necessarily growing and while responsibilities may change, the state still plays an active role. This dissertation explores changing relationships between states and markets, on the one hand, and ordinary people in their capacities as consumers and citizens, on the other. Do we see the emergence of new forms of regulation of food consumption? If so, what is the scope and what are the characteristics? Theories of regulation addressing questions about individualisation and self-governance are combined with a conceptualisation of consumption as processes of institutionalisation, involving daily routines, the division of labour between production and consumption, and the institutional field in which consumption is embedded. The analyses focus on the involvement of the state, food producers and scientific, first of all nutritional, expertise in regulating consumption, and on popular responses. Two periods come out as important, first when the ideas of “designing the good life” emerged, giving the state a very particular role in regulating food consumption, and, second, when this “designing” is replaced by ideas of choice and individual responsibility. One might say that “consumer choice” has become a mode of regulation. I use mainly historical studies from Norway to analyse the shifting role of the state in regulating food consumption, complemented with population surveys from six European countries to study how modernisation processes are associated with trust. The studies find that changing regulation is not only a question of societal or state vs individual responsibilities. Degrees of organisation and formalisation are important as well. While increasing organisation may represent discipline and abuses of power (including exploitation of consumer loyalty), organisation can also, to the consumer, provide higher predictability, systems to deal with malfeasance, and efficiency which may provide conditions for acting. The welfare state and the neo-liberal state have very different types of solutions. The welfare state solution is based on (national) egalitarianism, paternalism and discipline (of the market as well as households). Such solutions are still prominent in Norway. Individualisation and self-regulation may represent a regulatory response not only to a declining legitimacy of this kind of interventionism, but also increasing organisational complexity. This is reflected in large-scale re-regulation of markets as well as in relationships with households and consumers. Individualisation of responsibility is to the consumer not a matter of the number of choices that are presented on the shelves, but how choice as a form of consumer based involvement is institutionalised. It is recognition of people as “end-consumers”, as social actors, with systems of empowerment politically as well as via the provisioning system. ‘Consumer choice’ as a regulatory strategy includes not only communicative efforts to make people into “choosing consumers”, but also the provision of institutions which recognise consumer interests and agency. When this is lacking we find distrust as representing powerlessness. Individual responsibility-taking represents agency and is not always a matter of loyal support to shared goals, but involves protest and creativity. More informal (‘communitarian’) innovations may be an indication of that, where self-realisation is intimately combined with responsibility for social problems. But as solutions to counteract existing imbalances of power in the food market the impacts of such initiatives are probably more as part of consumer mobilisation and politicisation than as alternative provisioning.

Canopy processes, fluxes and microclimate in a pine forest

Interaction between forests and the atmosphere occurs by radiative and turbulent transport. The fluxes of energy and mass between surface and the atmosphere directly influence the properties of the lower atmosphere and in longer time scales the global climate. Boreal forest ecosystems are central in the global climate system, and its responses to human activities, because they are significant sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and of aerosol particles. The aim of the present work was to improve our understanding on the existing interplay between biologically active canopy, microenvironment and turbulent flow and quantify. In specific, the aim was to quantify the contribution of different canopy layers to whole forest fluxes. For this purpose, long-term micrometeorological and ecological measurements made in a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) forest at SMEAR II research station in Southern Finland were used. The properties of turbulent flow are strongly modified by the interaction between the canopy elements: momentum is efficiently absorbed in the upper layers of the canopy, mean wind speed and turbulence intensities decrease rapidly towards the forest floor and power spectra is modulated by spectral short-cut . In the relative open forest, diabatic stability above the canopy explained much of the changes in velocity statistics within the canopy except in strongly stable stratification. Large eddies, ranging from tens to hundred meters in size, were responsible for the major fraction of turbulent transport between a forest and the atmosphere. Because of this, the eddy-covariance (EC) method proved to be successful for measuring energy and mass exchange inside a forest canopy with exception of strongly stable conditions. Vertical variations of within canopy microclimate, light attenuation in particular, affect strongly the assimilation and transpiration rates. According to model simulations, assimilation rate decreases with height more rapidly than stomatal conductance (gs) and transpiration and, consequently, the vertical source-sink distributions for carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O) diverge. Upscaling from a shoot scale to canopy scale was found to be sensitive to chosen stomatal control description. The upscaled canopy level CO2 fluxes can vary as much as 15 % and H2O fluxes 30 % even if the gs models are calibrated against same leaf-level dataset. A pine forest has distinct overstory and understory layers, which both contribute significantly to canopy scale fluxes. The forest floor vegetation and soil accounted between 18 and 25 % of evapotranspiration and between 10 and 20 % of sensible heat exchange. Forest floor was also an important deposition surface for aerosol particles; between 10 and 35 % of dry deposition of particles within size range 10 30 nm occurred there. Because of the northern latitudes, seasonal cycle of climatic factors strongly influence the surface fluxes. Besides the seasonal constraints, partitioning of available energy to sensible and latent heat depends, through stomatal control, on the physiological state of the vegetation. In spring, available energy is consumed mainly as sensible heat and latent heat flux peaked about two months later, in July August. On the other hand, annual evapotranspiration remains rather stable over range of environmental conditions and thus any increase of accumulated radiation affects primarily the sensible heat exchange. Finally, autumn temperature had strong effect on ecosystem respiration but its influence on photosynthetic CO2 uptake was restricted by low radiation levels. Therefore, the projected autumn warming in the coming decades will presumably reduce the positive effects of earlier spring recovery in terms of carbon uptake potential of boreal forests.

Modern Societal Impulses and their Nordic Manifestations : On Emancipation and Constraint in Societal Development

The 1980s and the early 1990s have proved to be an important turning point in the history of the Nordic welfare states. After this breaking point, the Nordic social order has been built upon a new foundation. This study shows that the new order is mainly built upon new hierarchies and control mechanisms that have been developed consistently through economic and labour market policy measures. During the post-war period Nordic welfare states to an increasing extent created equality of opportunity and scope for agency among people. Public social services were available for all and the tax-benefit system maintained a level income distribution. During this golden era of Nordic welfare state, the scope for agency was, however, limited by social structures. Public institutions and law tended to categorize people according to their life circumstances ascribing them a predefined role. In the 1980s and 1990s this collectivist social order began to mature and it became subject to political renegotiation. Signs of a new social order in the Nordic countries have included the liberation of the financial markets, the privatizing of public functions and redefining the role of the public sector. It is now possible to reassess the ideological foundations of this new order. As a contrast to widely used political rhetoric, the foundation of the new order has not been the ideas of individual freedom or choice. Instead, the most important aim appears to have been to control and direct people to act in accordance with the rules of the market. The various levels of government and the social security system have been redirected to serve this goal. Instead of being a mechanism for redistributing income, the Nordic social security system has been geared towards creating new hierarchies on the Nordic labour markets. During the past decades, conditions for receiving income support and unemployment benefit have been tightened in all Nordic countries. As a consequence, people have been forced to accept deteriorating terms and conditions on the labour market. Country-specific variations exist, however: in sum Sweden has been most conservative, Denmark most innovative and Finland most radical in reforming labour market policy. The new hierarchies on the labour market have co-incided with slow or non-existent growth of real wages and with a strong growth of the share of capital income. Slow growth of real wages has kept inflation low and thus secured the value of capital. Societal development has thus progressed from equality of opportunity during the age of the welfare states towards a hierarchical social order where the majority of people face increasing constraints and where a fortunate minority enjoys prosperity and security.

Kalman Filter Algorithm for Rating and Prediction in Basketball

The Thesis presents a state-space model for a basketball league and a Kalman filter algorithm for the estimation of the state of the league. In the state-space model, each of the basketball teams is associated with a rating that represents its strength compared to the other teams. The ratings are assumed to evolve in time following a stochastic process with independent Gaussian increments. The estimation of the team ratings is based on the observed game scores that are assumed to depend linearly on the true strengths of the teams and independent Gaussian noise. The team ratings are estimated using a recursive Kalman filter algorithm that produces least squares optimal estimates for the team strengths and predictions for the scores of the future games. Additionally, if the Gaussianity assumption holds, the predictions given by the Kalman filter maximize the likelihood of the observed scores. The team ratings allow probabilistic inference about the ranking of the teams and their relative strengths as well as about the teams’ winning probabilities in future games. The predictions about the winners of the games are correct 65-70% of the time. The team ratings explain 16% of the random variation observed in the game scores. Furthermore, the winning probabilities given by the model are concurrent with the observed scores. The state-space model includes four independent parameters that involve the variances of noise terms and the home court advantage observed in the scores. The Thesis presents the estimation of these parameters using the maximum likelihood method as well as using other techniques. The Thesis also gives various example analyses related to the American professional basketball league, i.e., National Basketball Association (NBA), and regular seasons played in year 2005 through 2010. Additionally, the season 2009-2010 is discussed in full detail, including the playoffs.

Functional expression and subcellular localization of the Cl- cotransporters KCC2 and NKCC1 in rodent hippocampal and neocortical neurons

The work presented here has focused on the role of cation-chloride cotransporters (CCCs) in (1) the regulation of intracellular chloride concentration within postsynaptic neurons and (2) on the consequent effects on the actions of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) mediated by GABAA receptors (GABAARs) during development and in pathophysiological conditions such as epilepsy. In addition, (3) we found that a member of the CCC family, the K-Cl cotransporter isoform 2 (KCC2), has a structural role in the development of dendritic spines during the differentiation of pyramidal neurons. Despite the large number of publications dedicated to regulation of intracellular Cl-, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms is not complete. Experiments on GABA actions under resting steady-state have shown that the effect of GABA shifts from depolarizing to hyperpolarizing during maturation of cortical neurons. However, it remains unclear, whether conclusions from these steady-state measurements can be extrapolated to the highly dynamic situation within an intact and active neuronal network. Indeed, GABAergic signaling in active neuronal networks results in a continuous Cl- load, which must be constantly removed by efficient Cl- extrusion mechanisms. Therefore, it seems plausible to suggest that key parameters are the efficacy and subcellular distribution of Cl- transporters rather than the polarity of steady-state GABA actions. A further related question is: what are the mechanisms of Cl- regulation and homeostasis during pathophysiological conditions such as epilepsy in adults and neonates? Here I present results that were obtained by means of a newly developed method of measurements of the efficacy of a K-Cl cotransport. In Study I, the developmental profile of KCC2 functionality during development was analyzed both in dissociated neuronal cultures and in acute hippocampal slices. A novel method of photolysis of caged GABA in combination with Cl- loading to the somata was used in this study to assess the extrusion efficacy of KCC2. We demonstrated that these two preparations exhibit a different temporal profile of functional KCC2 upregulation. In Study II, we reported an observation of highly distorted dendritic spines in neurons cultured from KCC2-/- embryos. During their development in the culture dish, KCC2-lacking neurons failed to develop mature, mushroom-shaped dendritic spines but instead maintained an immature phenotype of long, branching and extremely motile protrusions. It was shown that the role of KCC2 in spine maturation is not based on its transport activity, but is mediated by interactions with cytoskeletal proteins. Another important player in Cl- regulation, NKCC1 and its role in the induction and maintenance of native Cl- gradients between the axon initial segment (AIS) and soma was the subject of Study III. There we demonstrated that this transporter mediates accumulation of Cl- in the axon initial segment of neocortical and hippocampal principal neurons. The results suggest that the reversal potential of the GABAA response triggered by distinct populations of interneurons show large subcellular variations. Finally, a novel mechanism of fast post-translational upregulation of the membrane-inserted, functionally active KCC2 pool during in-vivo neonatal seizures and epileptiform-like activity in vitro was identified and characterized in Study IV. The seizure-induced KCC2 upregulation may act as an intrinsic antiepileptogenic mechanism.

From ‘Afflicted’ to Activists: Structural Violence and Climate Change Discourse in the States of Pernambuco and Paraíba in Northeast Brazil

This study approaches the problem of poverty in the hinterlands of Northeast Brazil through the concept of structural violence, linking the environmental threats posed by climate change, especially those related to droughts, to the broader social struggles in the region. When discussions about potentials and rights are incorporated into the problematic of poverty, a deeper insight is obtained regarding the various factors behind the phenomenon. It is generally believed that climate change is affecting the already marginalized and poor more than those of higher social standing, and will increasingly do so in the future. The data for this study was collected during a three month field work in the states of Pernambuco and Paraíba in Northeast Brazil. The main methods used were semi-structured interviews and participant observation, including attending seminars concerning climate change on the field. The focus of the work is to compare both layman and expert perceptions on what climate change is about, and question the assumptions about its effects in the future, mainly that of increased numbers of ‘climate refugees’ or people forced to migrate due to changes in climate. The focus on droughts, as opposed to other manifestations of climate change, arises from the fact that droughts are not only phenomena that develop over a longer time span than floods or hurricanes, but is also due to the historical persistence of droughts in the region, and both the institutional and cultural linkages that have evolved around it. The instances of structural violence that are highlighted in this study; the drought industry, land use, and the social and power relations present in the region, including those between the civil society, the state and the private agribusiness sector, all work against a backdrop of symbolic and moral realms of value production, where relations between the different actors are being negotiated anew with the rise of the climate change discourse. The main theoretical framework of the study consists of Johan Galtung’s and Paul Farmer’s theory of structural violence, Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society, and James Scott’s theory of everyday peasant resistance.