Rhizodeposition of organic carbon by plants with contrasting traits for resource acquisition: responses to different fertility regimes

Background and aims Rhizodeposition plays an important role in mediating soil nutrient availability in ecosystems. However, owing to methodological difficulties (i.e., narrow zone of soil around roots, rapid assimilation by soil microbes) fertility-induced changes in rhizodeposition remain mostly unknown. Methods We developed a novel long-term continuous 13C labelling method to address the effects of two levels of nitrogen (N) fertilization on rhizodeposited carbon (C) by species with different nutrient acquisition strategies. Results Fertility-induced changes in rhizodeposition were modulated by root responses to N availability rather than by changes in soil microbial biomass. Differences among species were mostly related to plant biomass: species with higher total leaf and root biomass also had higher total rhizodeposited C, whereas species with lower root biomass had higher specific rhizodeposited C (per gram root mass). Experimental controls demonstrated that most of the biases commonly associated with this type of experiment (i.e., long-term steady-state labelling) were avoided using our methodological approach. Conclusions These results suggest that the amount of rhizodeposited C from plants grown under different levels of N were driven mainly by plant biomass and root morphology rather than microbial biomass. They also underline the importance of plant characteristics (i.e., biomass allocation) as opposed to traits associated with plant resource acquisition strategies in predicting total C rhizodeposition.

El proyecto 'Ciutat, territori, paisatge': un recurso innovador para la educación en el paisaje en la enseñanza secundaria = The project 'City, territory, countryside', an innovative resource for educating about the countryside in secondary education

The far-reaching, fast-moving changes –diffuse urbanisation, building infrastructure, moving away from agricultural space, etc.– suffered by the countryside in most European countries makes it important to have education about the countryside in place to help secondary students interpret their environment and assess the importance of managing the territory to achieve a medium ordered at human scale. The project «City, territory, countryside» is a set of materials for secondary level that aim for reflection on the countryside, work on basic competences and educating about civic-minded attitudes in students

Suunnittelukapasiteettien seurantamallin kehittäminen

The first main objective of this study was to develop a planning capacity management model for a chocolate and confectionary company in Finland. The second objective was to analyze how capacity updates would affect cost accounting practices. In addition, a creation of an update and maintenance process of planning capacities was determined as a sub-objective of developing the capacity management model. The thesis was started with analyzing the needs, requirements and constraints of the capacity management model and model’s connection with cost accounting. This was done by interviewing key officials like production planners, managers and controllers. A thorough literature review was also done at an early phase. Furthermore, internal systems and software architecture got to be acquainted with. The model was constructed as an Excel-based platform which will get its input data from Enterprise Resource Planning system and Production Performance Measurement system. The main purpose of the planning capacity management model is to make sure that the production planners can utilize more precise parameters but it also offers tools for the production managers to assess production performance and effectiveness at the product level. In addition to production planning, planning capacities are also tightly involved with cost accounting as many direct and indirect costs are allocated to the products utilizing planning capacities. For this reason, the linkage between product costing and capacity is also diversely examined in the thesis. Development suggestions conclude the report by giving some guidelines for more precise and consistent production planning and cost accounting between the factories.

Success of service-intensive manufacturing firms - resource-based view

The main objective of this study is to examine the relationships between resources, competitive advantage and firm success. The study focuses, on one hand, on the financial performance of service-intensive manufac-turing firms against competitors with a lower service intensity and, on the other hand, on the resources as drivers for competitive advantage and success. The purpose of the theoretical part is to link the study in the field of the strategy research. The empirical part of the study is based on the quantitative analyses of the survey data collected from 50 major suppliers of industrial machinery and transportation equipment in Europe and North America. Results indicate that service-intensive manufacturing firms have performed better and their performance has been more stable vis-à-vis their peers. The main resources that differentiate service-intensive manufacturing firms from their non-service intensive competitors are service strategy and service-oriented top management. The analyses on the VRIO resources produced only a limited amount of information and solely service-centred culture appeared to be a rent generating resource.

Ja vet int va de heter på svenska : interaktion mellan tvåspråkiga elever och deras lärare i en enspråkig klassrumsdiskurs

This is a study about language and learning aspects in the interaction between pupils and teachers in classrooms, where the majority of the pupils are bilingual. The aim of the dissertation is to develop the understanding of interactional learning possibilities and constraints in relation to a bilingual context. Language related learning is used as an overall conception which covers learning related to classroom discourse, language and subject. The empirical study has been made in a Swedish speaking school in a strongly Finnish dominated environment in the south of Finland. In the material, mainly consisting of video recorded lessons in forms one to three, the interaction between the pupils and the teachers is analysed. Building on a social constructionist perspective, where learning is regarded as a social phenomenon, situated and visible in changing participation, sequences where pupils or teachers make the language relevant are emphasised. The sequences are analysed in line with the conversation analytic (CA) approach. A fundamental result is an understanding of a monolingual classroom discourse, jointly constructed by teachers and pupils and visible in the pupils' interactionally problematized code-switching. This means that the pupils are not victims of a top-driven language policy; they are active co-constructors of the monolingual discourse. Through different repair initiations the pupils are doing interactional work in positioning themselves correctly in the monolingual discourse, which they simultaneously maintain. This work has a price in relation to time, knowledge and exactness. The pupils' problematized code-switching is often directly and shortly repaired by the teachers. This kind of repair promotes the pupils' participation and is not, as opposed to the results of research in everyday talk, dispreferred in pupil-teacher talk. When the pupils use the possibility to, in a comparatively easy way, participate and thus express their knowledge through codeswitching, and simultaneously talk a monolingual discourse into being, the teacher can, through direct repair, show an understanding in regard to the content, facilitate language learning and simultaneously confirm the pupils as competent speakers and bilingual individuals. Furthermore, significant results show that the monolingual norm has a function of a contrasting background which gives the pupils and the teachers a possibility to use language alternation as a functional and meaningful activity. The pupils use codeswitching as a way of protesting or expressing non-participation in the classroom talk. By making the pupils' bilingualism relevant, the teachers express understanding and empathy and encourage the pupils' participation in the classroom talk. Bilingualism is a nonpreferred, but functioning, resource in the interaction between pupils and teachers.

Algorithmic Solutions for Combinatorial Problems in Resource Management of Manufacturing Environments

This thesis studies the use of heuristic algorithms in a number of combinatorial problems that occur in various resource constrained environments. Such problems occur, for example, in manufacturing, where a restricted number of resources (tools, machines, feeder slots) are needed to perform some operations. Many of these problems turn out to be computationally intractable, and heuristic algorithms are used to provide efficient, yet sub-optimal solutions. The main goal of the present study is to build upon existing methods to create new heuristics that provide improved solutions for some of these problems. All of these problems occur in practice, and one of the motivations of our study was the request for improvements from industrial sources. We approach three different resource constrained problems. The first is the tool switching and loading problem, and occurs especially in the assembly of printed circuit boards. This problem has to be solved when an efficient, yet small primary storage is used to access resources (tools) from a less efficient (but unlimited) secondary storage area. We study various forms of the problem and provide improved heuristics for its solution. Second, the nozzle assignment problem is concerned with selecting a suitable set of vacuum nozzles for the arms of a robotic assembly machine. It turns out that this is a specialized formulation of the MINMAX resource allocation formulation of the apportionment problem and it can be solved efficiently and optimally. We construct an exact algorithm specialized for the nozzle selection and provide a proof of its optimality. Third, the problem of feeder assignment and component tape construction occurs when electronic components are inserted and certain component types cause tape movement delays that can significantly impact the efficiency of printed circuit board assembly. Here, careful selection of component slots in the feeder improves the tape movement speed. We provide a formal proof that this problem is of the same complexity as the turnpike problem (a well studied geometric optimization problem), and provide a heuristic algorithm for this problem.

Library Services in a New Perspective: Unifying Resource Management

Johan Rademakersin esitys Kirjastoverkkopäivillä 26.10.2011.

Generalized Differential Evolution for Global Multi-Objective Optimization with Constraints

The objective of this thesis work is to develop and study the Differential Evolution Algorithm for multi-objective optimization with constraints. Differential Evolution is an evolutionary algorithm that has gained in popularity because of its simplicity and good observed performance. Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have become popular since they are able to produce a set of compromise solutions during the search process to approximate the Pareto-optimal front. The starting point for this thesis was an idea how Differential Evolution, with simple changes, could be extended for optimization with multiple constraints and objectives. This approach is implemented, experimentally studied, and further developed in the work. Development and study concentrates on the multi-objective optimization aspect. The main outcomes of the work are versions of a method called Generalized Differential Evolution. The versions aim to improve the performance of the method in multi-objective optimization. A diversity preservation technique that is effective and efficient compared to previous diversity preservation techniques is developed. The thesis also studies the influence of control parameters of Differential Evolution in multi-objective optimization. Proposals for initial control parameter value selection are given. Overall, the work contributes to the diversity preservation of solutions in multi-objective optimization.

RDA (Resource Description and Access) – kuvailuohjeiden kansainvälinen ja kansallinen käyttöönotto

Marjatta Autio-Tuulen esitys Kuvailun tiedotuspäivillä Helsingissä 20.3.2013.

The theory of constraints in manufacturing

In this paper, a systematic and quantitative view is presented for the application of the theory of constraints in manufacturing. This is done employing the operational research technique of mathematical programming. The potential of the theory of constraints in automated manufacturing is demonstrated.