Central auditory processing and the acquisition of phonology in 2-year-old children with recurrent acute otitis media

Middle ear infections (acute otitis media, AOM) are among the most common infectious diseases in childhood, their incidence being greatest at the age of 6–12 months. Approximately 10–30% of children undergo repetitive periods of AOM, referred to as recurrent acute otitis media (RAOM). Middle ear fluid during an AOM episode causes, on average, 20–30 dB of hearing loss lasting from a few days to as much as a couple of months. It is well known that even a mild permanent hearing loss has an effect on language development but so far there is no consensus regarding the consequences of RAOM on childhood language acquisition. The results of studies on middle ear infections and language development have been partly discrepant and the exact effects of RAOM on the developing central auditory nervous system are as yet unknown. This thesis aims to examine central auditory processing and speech production among 2-year-old children with RAOM. Event-related potentials (ERPs) extracted from electroencephalography can be used to objectively investigate the functioning of the central auditory nervous system. For the first time this thesis has utilized auditory ERPs to study sound encoding and preattentive auditory discrimination of speech stimuli, and neural mechanisms of involuntary auditory attention in children with RAOM. Furthermore, the level of phonological development was studied by investigating the number and the quality of consonants produced by these children. Acquisition of consonant phonemes, which are harder to hear than vowels, is a good indicator of the ability to form accurate memory representations of ambient language and has not been studied previously in Finnish-speaking children with RAOM. The results showed that the cortical sound encoding was intact but the preattentive auditory discrimination of multiple speech sound features was atypical in those children with RAOM. Furthermore, their neural mechanisms of auditory attention differed from those of their peers, thus indicating that children with RAOM are atypically sensitive to novel but meaningless sounds. The children with RAOM also produced fewer consonants than their controls. Noticeably, they had a delay in the acquisition of word-medial consonants and the Finnish phoneme /s/, which is acoustically challenging to perceive compared to the other Finnish phonemes. The findings indicate the immaturity of central auditory processing in the children with RAOM, and this might also emerge in speech production. This thesis also showed that the effects of RAOM on central auditory processing are long-lasting because the children had healthy ears at the time of the study. An effective neural network for speech sound processing is a basic requisite of language acquisition, and RAOM in early childhood should be considered as a risk factor for language development.

International comparison of Russian food processing industry -Finnish perspective

Työn päätavoitteena on kartoittaa Venäjän elintarviketeollisuutta ulkomaisen investoijan näkökulmasta. Tutkimus arvioi liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia ja kilpailutilannetta Venäjän elintarviketeollisuudessa ja auttaa ulkomaisia yrityksiä toteuttamaan liiketoimintastrategioitaan Venäjällä. Venäjän ja muiden siirtymätalousmaiden markkinatilannevertailujen lisäksi Venäjän alueita verrataan keskenään. Myös mahdollisen WTO jäsenyyden vaikutuksia arvioidaan. Kommunismin perintö vaikuttaa edelleen Venäjän elintarviketeollisuuteen ja maatalouteen. Maatalouden tuottavuus on kaukana länsimaisesta tasosta ja maatiloilta puuttuu rahoitusta. Etenkin maidon- ja lihanjalostajat kärsivät raaka-ainepulasta. Venäjän kriisi vuonna 1998 vahvisti paikallista teollisuustuotantoa mutta aiheutti ongelmia ulkomaisille investoijille ja yrityksille, jotka vievät tuotteitaan Venäjälle. Edut, joita mahdollinen maailmankauppajärjestö WTO:n jäsenyys tuo, ovat merkittävämpiä Venäjälle kuin sen kauppakumppaneille. Venäjän alueet eivät ole yhtäläisesti kehittyneitä ja kuluttajien ostovoima vaihtelee paljon. Itsestään selvin ja houkuttelevin vaihtoehto menestyvien elintarvikeyritysten laajentumiselle löytyy alueilta, joilla ostovoima on suurin. Tähän asti kansainväliset elintarvikeyritykset ovat olleet enemmän kiinnostuneita Itä- ja Keski-Euroopan maista. Käytettävissä olevat tulot ovat Itä- ja Keski-Euroopan maissa suurempia kuin Venäjällä, joten tuottajat pystyvät myymään myös kalliimpia tuotteita. Työvoimakustannukset Venäjällä tulevat olemaan suotuisia vielä muutaman vuosikymmenen ja markkinoiden koko on merkittävä. Siksi kansainvälisillä elintarvikeyrityksillä riittää kiinnostusta tulevaisuudessa investoida myös Venäjälle.

Paper Surface Image Processing for Roughness Quality Measurement

Diplomityössä on käsitelty paperin pinnankarkeuden mittausta, joka on keskeisimpiä ongelmia paperimateriaalien tutkimuksessa. Paperiteollisuudessa käytettävät mittausmenetelmät sisältävät monia haittapuolia kuten esimerkiksi epätarkkuus ja yhteensopimattomuus sileiden papereiden mittauksissa, sekä suuret vaatimukset laboratorio-olosuhteille ja menetelmien hitaus. Työssä on tutkittu optiseen sirontaan perustuvia menetelmiä pinnankarkeuden määrittämisessä. Konenäköä ja kuvan-käsittelytekniikoita tutkittiin karkeilla paperipinnoilla. Tutkimuksessa käytetyt algoritmit on tehty Matlab® ohjelmalle. Saadut tulokset osoittavat mahdollisuuden pinnankarkeuden mittaamiseen kuvauksen avulla. Parhaimman tuloksen perinteisen ja kuvausmenetelmän välillä antoi fraktaaliulottuvuuteen perustuva menetelmä.

Reflexive model of research-based theatre – processing innovation at the crossroads of theatre, reflection and practice-based innovation activities

Contemporary organisations have to embrace the notion of doing ‘more with less’. This challenges knowledge production within companies and public organisations, forcing them to reorganise their structures and rethink what knowledge production actually means in the context of innovation and how knowledge is actually produced among various professional groups within the organisation in their everyday actions. Innovations are vital for organisational survival, and ‘ordinary’ employees and customers are central but too-often ignored producers of knowledge for contemporary organisations. Broader levels of participation and reflexive practices are needed. This dissertation discusses the missing links between innovation research conducted in the context of industrial management, arts, and culture; applied drama and theatre practices (specifically post-Boalian approaches); and learning – especially organising reflection – in organisational settings. This dissertation (1) explores and extends the role of research-based theatre to organising reflection and reflexive practices in the context of practice-based innovation, (2) develops a reflexive model of RBT for investigating and developing practice-based organisational process innovations in order to contribute to the development of a tool for innovation management and analysis, and (3) operationalises this model within private- and publicsector organisations. The proposed novel reflexive model of research-based theatre for investigating and developing practice-based organisational process innovations extends existing methods and offers a different way of organising reflection and reflexive practices in the context of general innovation management. The model was developed through five participatory action research processes conducted in four different organisations. The results provide learning steps – a reflection path – for understanding complex organisational life, people, and relations amid renewal and change actions. The proposed model provides a new approach to organising and cultivating reflexivity in practice-based innovation activities via research-based theatre. The results can be utilised as a guideline when processing practice-based innovation within private or public organisations. The model helps innovation managers to construct, together with their employees, temporary communities where they can learn together through reflecting on their own and each others’ experiences and to break down assumptions related to their own perspectives. The results include recommendations for practical development steps applicable in various organisations with regard to (i) application of research-based theatre and (ii) related general innovation management. The dissertation thus contributes to the development of novel learning approaches in knowledge production. Keywords: practice-based innovation, research-based theatre, learning, reflection, mode 2b knowledge production