Potential economic effects of climate change on Finnish agriculture

Selostus: Ilmastonmuutoksen taloudelliset vaikutukset suomalaiseen maatalouteen

Pressure to change and resistance against it: consumer perceptions and acceptance of nutritionally modified foods

Selostus: Muutospaineet ja muutosvastarinta: kuluttajien suhtautuminen ravitsemuksellisesti muunnettuihin elintarvikkeisiin

Photosynthesis and Rubisco kinetics in spring wheat and meadow fescue under conditions of simulated climate change with elevated CO[sub 2] and increased temperatures

Selostus: Kevätvehnän ja nurminadan fotosynteesi ja Rubisco-kinetiikka simuloidun ilmastonmuutoksen eli kohotetun hiilidioksidipitoisuuden ja kohotetun lämpötilan oloissa

U.S. landowner behavior, land use and land cover changes, and climate change mitigation

Abstract

Change detection in boreal forests using bi-temporal aerial photographs

[Abstract]

National oral history - Time of change project

Reviews

Timing of Capacity Change: Models for Capital Intensive Industry

The suitable timing of capacity investments is a remarkable issue especially in capital intensive industries. Despite its importance, fairly few studies have been published on the topic. In the present study models for the timing of capacity change in capital intensive industry are developed. The study considers mainly the optimal timing of single capacity changes. The review of earlier research describes connections between cost, capacity and timing literature, and empirical examples are used to describe the starting point of the study and to test the developed models. The study includes four models, which describe the timing question from different perspectives. The first model, which minimizes unit costs, has been built for capacity expansion and replacement situations. It is shown that the optimal timing of an investment can be presented with the capacity and cost advantage ratios. After the unit cost minimization model the view is extended to the direction of profit maximization. The second model states that early investments are preferable if the change of fixed costs is small compared to the change of the contribution margin. The third model is a numerical discounted cash flow model, which emphasizes the roles of start-up time, capacity utilization rate and value of waiting as drivers of the profitable timing of a project. The last model expands the view from project level to company level and connects the flexibility of assets and cost structures to the timing problem. The main results of the research are the solutions of the models and analysis or simulations done with the models. The relevance and applicability of the results are verified by evaluating the logic of the models and by numerical cases.

Managing Human Factor in Accounting Change - Introducing Activity Based Costing System to Organization

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on identifioida yleisimmät toimintolaskennan implementointiin liittyvät ongelmat ja muutosprojektin onnistumiseen vaikuttavat tekijät. Tavoitteena on myös saada kokonaisvaltainen kuva siitä, miksi laskentatoimen muutokset ovat vaikeita implementoida ja miten ihmisten käyttäytyminen vaikuttaa muutosprosessin onnistumiseen. Sekä laskentatoimen että muutosjohtamisen teorioita tarkastellaan laaja-alaisen kuvan saamiseksi siitä, miten ihmisiin ja heidän käyttäytymiseensä liittyvät tekijät vaikuttavat muutosprojektin onnistumiseen tai epäonnistumiseen. Tutkielma käyttää empiirisiä tutkimustuloksia pohjana aiheen tarkastelulle. Tutkielma tarjoaa ehdotuksia tulevaisuuden tutkimukselle liittyen laskentatoimen muutoksen kriittisiin tekijöihin. Kiinnostavimpia alueita tulevaisuuden tutkimukselle on pohtia tarkemmin, miten työntekijöiden oletukset johtajien motiiveista muutoksen takana vaikuttavat muutosvastarintaan sekä miten organisaation rakenne ja muutosvastarintavaikuttavat muutoksen institutionaalistamiseen.

Exploring the strategic impact of technological change - Studies on the role of Internet in magazine publishing

Over the past few decades, turbulent change has characterized the situation in the media industry. It has been noted that digitalization and new media are strongly influencing the industry: it is changing the existing market dynamics and requires new strategies. Prior research on the impact of digitalization and the Internet has emphasized news-focused media such as newspaper publishing and broadcasting, yet magazine publishing is very seldom the focus of the research. This study examines how the Internetimpacts magazine publishing. The work presents a multi-level analysis on the role and impact of the Internet on magazine products, companies and industry. The study is founded on strategic management, technology management and media economics literature. This study consists of two parts. The first part introduces the research topic and discusses the overall results of the study. The second part comprises five research publications. Qualitative research methods are used throughout. The results of the study indicate that the Internet has not had a disruptive effect on magazine publishing, and that its strategic implications could rather be considered complementary to the print magazine and the business as a whole. It seems that the co-specialized assets, together with market-related competencies and unchanged core competence have protected established firms from the disruptive effect of the new technology in magazine publishing. In addition, it seems that the Internet offers a valuable possibility to build and nourish customer relationships. The study contributes tomedia management and economics research by moving from product- or industry-level investigations towards a strategic-management perspective.

Isentropic Exergy and Pressure of the Shock Wave Caused by the Explosion of a Pressure Vessel

An accidental burst of a pressure vessel is an uncontrollable and explosion-like batch process. In this study it is called an explosion. The destructive effectof a pressure vessel explosion is relative to the amount of energy released in it. However, in the field of pressure vessel safety, a mutual understanding concerning the definition of explosion energy has not yet been achieved. In this study the definition of isentropic exergy is presented. Isentropic exergy is the greatest possible destructive energy which can be obtained from a pressure vessel explosion when its state changes in an isentropic way from the initial to the final state. Finally, after the change process, the gas has similar pressure and flow velocity as the environment. Isentropic exergy differs from common exergy inthat the process is assumed to be isentropic and the final gas temperature usually differs from the ambient temperature. The explosion process is so fast that there is no time for the significant heat exchange needed for the common exergy.Therefore an explosion is better characterized by isentropic exergy. Isentropicexergy is a characteristic of a pressure vessel and it is simple to calculate. Isentropic exergy can be defined also for any thermodynamic system, such as the shock wave system developing around an exploding pressure vessel. At the beginning of the explosion process the shock wave system has the same isentropic exergyas the pressure vessel. When the system expands to the environment, its isentropic exergy decreases because of the increase of entropy in the shock wave. The shock wave system contains the pressure vessel gas and a growing amount of ambient gas. The destructive effect of the shock wave on the ambient structures decreases when its distance from the starting point increases. This arises firstly from the fact that the shock wave system is distributed to a larger space. Secondly, the increase of entropy in the shock waves reduces the amount of isentropic exergy. Equations concerning the change of isentropic exergy in shock waves are derived. By means of isentropic exergy and the known flow theories, equations illustrating the pressure of the shock wave as a function of distance are derived. Amethod is proposed as an application of the equations. The method is applicablefor all shapes of pressure vessels in general use, such as spheres, cylinders and tubes. The results of this method are compared to measurements made by various researchers and to accident reports on pressure vessel explosions. The test measurements are found to be analogous with the proposed method and the findings in the accident reports are not controversial to it.

Patents in the Information and Communications Technology Sector - Development Trends, Problem Areas and Pressures for Change

The patent system was created for the purpose of promoting innovation by granting the inventors a legally defined right to exclude others in return for public disclosure. Today, patents are being applied and granted in greater numbers than ever, particularly in new areas such as biotechnology and information andcommunications technology (ICT), in which research and development (R&D) investments are also high. At the same time, the patent system has been heavily criticized. It has been claimed that it discourages rather than encourages the introduction of new products and processes, particularly in areas that develop quickly, lack one-product-one-patent correlation, and in which theemergence of patent thickets is characteristic. A further concern, which is particularly acute in the U.S., is the granting of so-called 'bad patents', i.e. patents that do not factually fulfil the patentability criteria. From the perspective of technology-intensive companies, patents could,irrespective of the above, be described as the most significant intellectual property right (IPR), having the potential of being used to protect products and processes from imitation, to limit competitors' freedom-to-operate, to provide such freedom to the company in question, and to exchange ideas with others. In fact, patents define the boundaries of ownership in relation to certain technologies. They may be sold or licensed on their ownor they may be components of all sorts of technology acquisition and licensing arrangements. Moreover, with the possibility of patenting business-method inventions in the U.S., patents are becoming increasingly important for companies basing their businesses on services. The value of patents is dependent on the value of the invention it claims, and how it is commercialized. Thus, most of them are worth very little, and most inventions are not worth patenting: it may be possible to protect them in other ways, and the costs of protection may exceed the benefits. Moreover, instead of making all inventions proprietary and seeking to appropriate as highreturns on investments as possible through patent enforcement, it is sometimes better to allow some of them to be disseminated freely in order to maximize market penetration. In fact, the ideology of openness is well established in the software sector, which has been the breeding ground for the open-source movement, for instance. Furthermore, industries, such as ICT, that benefit from network effects do not shun the idea of setting open standards or opening up their proprietary interfaces to allow everyone todesign products and services that are interoperable with theirs. The problem is that even though patents do not, strictly speaking, prevent access to protected technologies, they have the potential of doing so, and conflicts of interest are not rare. The primary aim of this dissertation is to increase understanding of the dynamics and controversies of the U.S. and European patent systems, with the focus on the ICT sector. The study consists of three parts. The first part introduces the research topic and the overall results of the dissertation. The second part comprises a publication in which academic, political, legal and business developments that concern software and business-method patents are investigated, and contentiousareas are identified. The third part examines the problems with patents and open standards both of which carry significant economic weight inthe ICT sector. Here, the focus is on so-called submarine patents, i.e. patentsthat remain unnoticed during the standardization process and then emerge after the standard has been set. The factors that contribute to the problems are documented and the practical and juridical options for alleviating them are assessed. In total, the dissertation provides a good overview of the challenges and pressures for change the patent system is facing,and of how these challenges are reflected in standard setting.