Perspectives for the production and usage of wood chips as a source of energy in the North-West of Russia

The development of bioenergy on the basis of wood fuels has received considerable attention in the last decades. The combination of large forest resources and reliance on fossil fuels makes the issue of wood chips usage in Russia an actual topic for the analysis. The main objective of this study is to disclose the current state and perspectives for the production of wood chips and their usage as a source of energy in the North-West of Russia. The study utilizes an integrated approach to explore the market of wood chips on the basis of comprehensive analysis of documentation and expert opinions. The analysis of wood chips market was performed for eight regions of the North-West district of Russia within two major dimensions: its current state and perspectives in the nearest five years. The results of the study show a comprehensive picture of the wood chips market, including the potential for wood chips production, the specific features of production and consumption and the perspectives for the market development within the regions of the North-West district of Russia. The study demonstrated that the market of wood chips is underdeveloped in the North-West of Russia. The findings of the work may be used by forest companies for the strategic planning.

Cyanobacteria from the Baltic Sea and Finnish lakes as an energy source and modulators of bioenergetic pathways

Cyanobacteria are a diverse group of oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria that inhabit in a wide range of environments. They are versatile and multifaceted organisms with great possibilities for different biotechnological applications. For example, cyanobacteria produce molecular hydrogen (H2), which is one of the most important alternatives for clean and sustainable energy. Apart from being beneficial, cyanobacteria also possess harmful characteristics and may become a source of threat to human health and other living organisms, as they are able to form surface blooms that are producing a variety of toxic or bioactive compounds. The University of Helsinki Culture Collection (UHCC) maintains around 1,000 cyanobacterial strains representing a large number of genera and species isolated from the Baltic Sea and Finnish lakes. The culture collection covers different life forms such as unicellular and filamentous, N2-fixing and non-N2-fixing strains, and planktonic and benthic cyanobacteria. In this thesis, the UHCC has been screened to identify potential strains for sustainable biohydrogen production and also for strains that produce compounds modifying the bioenergetic pathways of other cyanobacteria or terrestrial plants. Among the 400 cyanobacterial strains screened so far, ten were identified as high H2-producing strains. The enzyme systems involved in H2 metabolism of cyanobacteria were analyzed using the Southern hybridization approach. This revealed the presence of the enzyme nitrogenase in all strains tested, while none of them are likely to have contained alternative nitrogenases. All the strains tested, except for two Calothrix strains, XSPORK 36C and XSPORK 11A, were suggested to contain both uptake and bidirectional hydrogenases. Moreover, 55 methanol extracts of various cyanobacterial strains were screened to identify potent bioactive compounds affecting the photosynthetic apparatus of the model cyanobacterium, Synechocystis PCC 6803. The extract from Nostoc XPORK 14A was the only one that modified the photosynthetic machinery and dark respiration. The compound responsible for this effect was identified, purified, and named M22. M22 demonstrated a dual-action mechanism: production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) under illumination and an unknown mechanism that also prevailed in the dark. During summer, the Baltic Sea is occupied by toxic blooms of Nodularia spumigena (hereafter referred to as N. spumigena), which produces a hepatotoxin called nodularin. Long-term exposure of the terrestrial plant spinach to nodularin was studied. Such treatment resulted in inhibition of growth and chlorosis of the leaves. Moreover, the activity and amount of mitochondrial electron transfer complexes increased in the leaves exposed to nodularin-containing extract, indicating upregulation of respiratory reactions, whereas no marked changes were detected in the structure or function of the photosynthetic machinery. Nodularin-exposed plants suffered from oxidative stress, evidenced by oxidative modifications of various proteins. Plants initiated strategies to combat the stress by increasing the levels of alpha-tocopherol, mitochondrial alternative oxidase (AOX), and mitochondrial ascorbate peroxidase (mAPX).

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Oil and Gas Industry: Environmental Management Systems as a Source of Sustainable Development

The environmental aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expressed through the process of the EMS implementation in the oil and gas companies is identified as the main subject of this research. In the theoretical part, the basic attention is paid to justification of a link between CSR and environmental management. The achievement of sustainable competitive advantage as a result of environmental capital growth and inclusion of the socially responsible activities in the corporate strategy is another issue that is of special significance here. Besides, two basic forms of environmental management systems (environmental decision support systems and environmental information management systems) are explored and their role in effective stakeholder interaction is tackled. The most crucial benefits of EMS are also analyzed to underline its importance as a source of sustainable development. Further research is based on the survey of 51 sampled oil and gas companies (both publicly owned and state owned ones) originated from different countries all over the world and providing reports on sustainability issues in the open access. To analyze their approach to sustainable development, a specifically designed evaluation matrix with 37 indicators developed in accordance with the General Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines for non-financial reporting was prepared. Additionally, the quality of environmental information disclosure was measured on the basis of a quality – quantity matrix. According to results of research, oil and gas companies prefer implementing reactive measures to the costly and knowledge-intensive proactive techniques for elimination of the negative environmental impacts. Besides, it was identified that the environmental performance disclosure is mostly rather limited, so that the quality of non-financial reporting can be judged as quite insufficient. In spite of the fact that most of the oil and gas companies in the sample claim the EMS to be embedded currently in their structure, they often do not provide any details for the process of their implementation. As a potential for the further development of EMS, author mentions possible integration of their different forms in a single entity, extension of existing structure on the basis of consolidation of the structural and strategic precautions as well as development of a unified certification standard instead of several ones that exist today in order to enhance control on the EMS implementation.

A Case Study of Agile Software Engineering Methods and Practices in the MeeGo Harmattan Open Source and Product Context

The aim of this master’s thesis is to study how Agile method (Scrum) and open source software are utilized to produce software for a flagship product in a complex production environment. The empirical case and the used artefacts are taken from the Nokia MeeGo N9 product program, and from the related software program, called as the Harmattan. The single research case is analysed by using a qualitative method. The Grounded Theory principles are utilized, first, to find out all the related concepts from artefacts. Second, these concepts are analysed, and finally categorized to a core category and six supported categories. The result is formulated as the operation of software practices conceivable in circumstances, where the accountable software development teams and related context accepts a open source software nature as a part of business vision and the whole organization supports the Agile methods.

Success factors of commercial open source software projects

Open source and open source software development have been interesting phenomena during the past decade. Traditional business models do not apply with open source, where the actual product is free. However, it is possible to make business with open source, even successfully, but the question is: how? The aim of this study is to find the key factors of successfully making business out of commercial open source software development. The task is achieved by finding the factors that influence open source projects, finding the relation between those factors, and find out why some factors explain the success more than others. The literature review concentrates first on background of open innovation, open source and open source software. Then business models, critical success factors and success measures are examined. Based on existing literature a framework was created. The framework contains categorized success factors that influence software projects in general as well as open source software projects. The main categories of success factors in software business are divided into community management, technology management, project management and market management. In order to find out which of the factors based on the existing literature are the most critical, empirical research was done by conducting unstructured personal interviews. The main finding based on the interviews is that the critical success factors in open source software business do not differ from those in traditional software business or in fact from those in any other business. Some factors in the framework came out in the interviews that can be considered as key factors: establishing and communicating hierarchy (community management), localization (technology management), good license know-how and IPR management (project management), and effective market management (market management). The critical success factors according to the interviewees are not listed in the framework: low price, good product and good business model development.

An Open Source, DDI-based Curation System for Social Science Data

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Multi-source ingestion of publisher articles - The SCOAP3 repository experience

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Sustaining your Open Source project through training: a Hydra case study

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Kramerius - Fedora based open source system for a digital library

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Usability comparison of open source content management systems

The purpose of this thesis is to study, investigate and compare usability of open source cms. The thesis examines and compares usability aspect of some open source cms. The research is divided into two complementary parts –theoretical part and analytical part. The theoretical part mainly describes open source web content management systems, usability and the evaluation methods. The analytical part is to compare and analyze the results found from the empirical research. Heuristic evaluation method was used to measure usability problems in the interfaces. The study is fairly limited in scope; six tasks were designed and implemented in each interface for discovering defects in the interfaces. Usability problems were rated according to their level of severity. Time it took by each task, level of problem’s severity and type of heuristics violated will be recorded, analyzed and compared. The results of this study indicate that the comparing systems provide usable interfaces, and WordPress is recognized as the most usable system.

Paimionjoen säännöstelyn kehittäminen : Paimionjoen vesistön yläosan hydraulinen mallinnus HEC-RAS ohjelmistolla

Paimionjoen järviketjulla vedenpinnan ja virtaaman vaihteluiden on koettu aiheuttavan haittaa vesistön käytölle ja tilalle. Kevätkuopan alhaisuus ja takaisinvirtaus Painiojärveen ovat suurimmat ongelmat. Turun kaupungin vesiliikelaitoksen Halisten vesilaitoksen tuotantotoiminnan loppuminen antaa uusia mahdollisuuksia Paimionjoen järviketjun säännöstelyyn, koska järvien rooli Turun seudun raakaveden varastona muuttuu. Tässä raportissa tarkastellaan Paimionjoen yläosasta tehtyä hydraulista mallinnusta, jossa on testattu erilaisia pato- ja juoksutusvaihtoehtoja Paimionjoen järviketjulla sekä niiden vaikutuksia vedenkorkeuksiin ja virtaamiin. Myös ruoppausta Karjakosken ja Hovirinnankosken väliselle osuudelle on käsitelty lyhyesti. Erilaisista skenaarioista on tehty alustavat vaikutusarviot. Mallinnusten perusteella suurempi tai aikaistettu juoksutus pienentää takai-sin-virtausta, muttei estä sitä kokonaan. Juoksutusta ei kuitenkaan välttämättä pysty lisäämään miten haluaa, koska juoksutuksen suuruus riippuu Hovirinnankoskenpadon alapuolisesta vedenpinnankorkeudesta. Ruoppaamalla Hovirinnankosken ja Karjakosken välistä osuutta Hovirinnankosken alapuolista vedenpintaa voisi saada alennettua ja osuuden vetokykyä parannettua sekä tulvimisherkkyyttä pienennettyä. Kevätkuopan pienennys vähentää takaisinvirtausta ja on myös järvien ekosysteemeille hyväksi. Tulvariskin kasvu tulee kuitenkin ottaa huomioon. Painionjärvi toimii tulvatilanteissa paisumisaltaana. Kaikenlainen takaisinvirtaaman estäminen tai pienentäminen johtaa suurempiin juoksutuksiin Hovirinnankoskella tai/ja järviketjun kasvaneisiin vedenkorkeuksiin ja mahdollisesti tulviin. Erilaisten tulvakorkeuksien mahdolliset riskirajat ja vahingot tulee selvittää, jos tulvariskiä kasvatetaan.