Common past, divided memories: historical memory of the Polish minority members in Lithuania

The Master’s thesis examines historical memory of the Polish minority members in Lithuania with regard to how their interpretation of the common Polish-Lithuanian history reiterates or differs from the official Polish and Lithuanian narratives conveyed by the school textbooks. History teaching in high schools carries a crucial state-supported role of “identity building policies” – it maintains a national narrative of memory, which might be exclusive to minorities and their peculiar understanding of history. Lithuanians Poles, in this regard, represent a national minority, which is exposed to two conflicting national narratives of the common past – Polish and Lithuanian. As members of the Polish nation, their understanding of the common Polish-Lithuanian history is conditioned by the Polish historical narrative, acquired as part of the collective memory of the family and/or different minority organizations. On the other hand, they encounter Lithuanian historical narrative of the Polish-Lithuanian past throughout the secondary school history education, where the curriculum, even if taught in Polish, largely represents the Lithuanian point of view. The concept of collective memory is utilized to refer to collective representations of national memory (i.e. publicly articulated narratives and images of collective past in history textbooks) as well as to socially framed individual memories (i.e. historical memory of minority members, where individual remembering is framed by the social context of their identity). The thesis compares the official national historical narratives in Lithuania and Poland, as conveyed by the Polish and Lithuanian history textbooks. The consequent analysis of qualitative interviews with the Polish minority members in Lithuania offers insights into historical memory of Lithuanian Poles and its relation to the official Polish and Lithuanian national narratives of the common past. Qualitative content analysis is applied in both parts of the analysis. The narratives which emerge from the interview data could be broadly grouped into two segments. First, a more pronounced view on the past combines the following elements: i) emphasis on the value of multicultural and diverse past of Lithuania, ii) contestation of “Lithuanocentricity” of the Lithuanian narrative and iii) rejection of the term “occupation”, based on the cultural presuppositions – the dominant position of Polish culture and language in the Vilnius region, symbolic belonging and “Lithuanianness” of the local Poles. While the opposition to the term of “occupation” is in accord with the official Polish narrative conveyed by the textbooks, the former two elements do not neatly adhere to either Polish or Lithuanian textbook narratives. They should rather be considered as an expression of claims for inclusion of plural pasts into Lithuanian collective memory and hence as claims for symbolic enfranchisement into the Lithuanian “imagined community”. The second strand of views, on the other hand, does not exclude assertions about the historically dominant position of Polish culture in Lithuania, but at the same time places more emphasis on the political and historical continuity of the Lithuanian state and highlights a long-standing symbolic connectedness of Vilnius and Lithuania, thus, striking a middle way between the Polish and Lithuanian interpretations of the past.

Lojalitet i licensavtal

Loyalty in Licensing Agreements The purpose of the dissertation is to analyse the impact of the principle of loyalty on licensing agreements from the viewpoint of Finnish law using the traditional legal method (Rechtsdogmatik) combined with empirical data in the form of licensing agreements. The need for good licensing agreements is crucial. One should avoid mechanical and stereotyped agreements in favour of more conscious and goal-oriented ones. When the parties' will and goals have been made clear, the drafting technique should be chosen accordingly. The importance of the principle of loyalty in the interpretation of licensing agreements varies according to their degree of relationality. This is a concept originating in the relational contract theory, more precisely Ian Macneil's spectrum of contracts, where contracts can be placed on an axis according to their degree of relationality. In the dissertation different factors are used to conclude whether the licensing agreement at hand is to be placed on the axis closer to the transactional pole or closer to the relational pole. A conclusion of the dissertation is that few licensing agreements can be placed so close to the transactional pole, that the principle of loyalty lacks importance altogether. The impact of the principle of loyalty the main focus of which is on fostering the contracting parties to behave in accordance with best practices, not for example on altering contract terms is analysed in different situations where the parties' interests typically collide. These situations are discussed from the point of view of three patent and knowhow licensing agreements that differ as to their degree of relationality. A balance needs to be struck between freedom of contract and relational needs. Especially when interpreting more modern licensing agreements, one should not focus on the written document alone, as is often recommended in the literature on Nordic intellectual property law. Neither is the principle of caveat emptor a proper starting point. Moreover, where the parties are of equal bargaining power, one should not assume that the grants in licensing agreements are to be interpreted narrowly. Focus in the interpretation should instead be on the entirety of the circumstances.

The condensed nearest neighbor rule using the concept of mutual nearest neighborhood (Corresp.)

A two-stage iterative algorithm for selecting a subset of a training set of samples for use in a condensed nearest neighbor (CNN) decision rule is introduced. The proposed method uses the concept of mutual nearest neighborhood for selecting samples close to the decision line. The efficacy of the algorithm is brought out by means of an example.

Conformational analysis of the right-hand twisted antiparallel β-Structure

The conformational analysis of a pair of two-linked peptide units in the anti-parallel arrangement is reported here with a view to study the effect of association of one chain with the other. The pair of two-linked peptide units were fixed in space through the hydrogen bonds between them, in accordance with certain hydrogen bond criteria. Model building was undertaken to ascertain whether the proximity of the side-chains could be used to eliminate any one of the right-hand twisted, left-hand twisted or regular β-structures. Stereochemically, it was found possible with all of them. The preference for a right-hand twisted β-structure, however, was indicated by the classical energy calculations. The relevance of the results thus obtained is discussed in the context of the preferential right-hand twist of the β-pleated sheets present in globular proteins. The agreement between the minimum energy conformations obtained for the pair of two-linked peptide units and the globular protein data is also indicated.

Kädestä suuhun : Makro- ja mikrotaloudellinen tarkastelu suomalaisten kotitalouksien säästämisestä ja sen mittaamisesta 1950-luvulla

This study is divided into two parts: a methodological part and a part which focuses on the saving of households. In the 1950 s both the concepts as well as the household surveys themselves went through a rapid change. The development of national accounts was motivated by the Keynesian theory and the 1940 s and 1950 s were an important time for the development of the national accounts. Before this, saving was understood as cash money or money deposited in bank accounts but the changes in this era led to the establishment of the modern saving concept. Separate from the development of national accounts, household surveys were established. Household surveys have been conducted in Finland from the beginning of the 20th century. At that time surveys were conducted in order to observe the working class living standard and as a result, these were based on the tradition of welfare studies. Also a motivation for undertaking the studies was to estimate weights for the consumer price index. A final reason underpinning the government s interest in observing this data regarded whether there were any reasons for the working class to become radicalised and therefore adopt revolutionary ideas. As the need for the economic analysis increased and the data requirements underlying the political decision making process also expanded, the two traditions and thus, the two data sources started to integrate. In the 1950s the household surveys were compiled distinctly from the national accounts and they were virtually unaffected by economic theory. The 1966 survey was the first study that was clearly motivated by national accounts and saving analysis. This study also covered the whole population rather than it being limited to just part of it. It is essential to note that the integration of these two traditions is still continuing. This recently took a big step forward as the Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi Committee Report was introduced and thus, the criticism of the current measure of welfare was taken seriously. The Stiglitz report emphasises that the focus in the measurement of welfare should be on the households and the macro as well as micro perspective should be included in the analysis. In this study the national accounts are applied to the household survey data from the years 1950-51, 1955-56 and 1959-60. The first two studies cover the working population of towns and market towns and the last survey covers the population of rural areas. The analysis is performed at three levels: macro economic level, meso level, i.e. at the level of different types of households, and micro level, i.e. at the level of individual households. As a result it analyses how the different households saved and consumed and how that changed during the 1950 s.

Profitable Customer Management: A Study in Retail Banking

The increasing focus of relationship marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) studies on issues of customer profitability has led to the emergence of an area of research on profitable customer management. Nevertheless, there is a notable lack of empirical research examining the current practices of firms specifically with regard to the profitable management of customer relationships according to the approaches suggested in theory. This thesis fills this research gap by exploring profitable customer management in the retail banking sector. Several topics are covered, including marketing metrics and accountability; challenges in the implementation of profitable customer management approaches in practice; analytic versus heuristic (‘rule of thumb’) decision making; and the modification of costly customer behavior in order to increase customer profitability, customer lifetime value (CLV), and customer equity, i.e. the financial value of the customer base. The thesis critically reviews the concept of customer equity and proposes a Customer Equity Scorecard, providing a starting point for a constructive dialog between marketing and finance concerning the development of appropriate metrics to measure marketing outcomes. Since customer management and measurement issues go hand in hand, profitable customer management is contingent on both marketing management skills and financial measurement skills. A clear gap between marketing theory and practice regarding profitable customer management is also identified. The findings show that key customer management aspects that have been proposed within the literature on profitable customer management for many years, are not being actively applied by the banks included in the research. Instead, several areas of customer management decision making are found to be influenced by heuristics. This dilemma for marketing accountability is addressed by emphasizing that CLV and customer equity, which are aggregate metrics, only provide certain indications regarding the relative value of customers and the approximate value of the customer base (or groups of customers), respectively. The value created by marketing manifests itself in the effect of marketing actions on customer perceptions, behavior, and ultimately the components of CLV, namely revenues, costs, risk, and retention, as well as additional components of customer equity, such as customer acquisition. The thesis also points out that although costs are a crucial component of CLV, they have largely been neglected in prior CRM research. Cost-cutting has often been viewed negatively in customer-focused marketing literature on service quality and customer profitability, but the case studies in this thesis demonstrate that reduced costs do not necessarily have to lead to lower service quality, customer retention, and customer-related revenues. Consequently, this thesis provides an expanded foundation upon which marketers can stake their claim for accountability. By focusing on the range of drivers and all of the components of CLV and customer equity, marketing has the potential to provide specific evidence concerning how various activities have affected the drivers and components of CLV within different groups of customers, and the implications for customer equity on a customer base level.

Systems between information and knowledge : In a memory management model of an extended enterprise

The research question of this thesis was how knowledge can be managed with information systems. Information systems can support but not replace knowledge management. Systems can mainly store epistemic organisational knowledge included in content, and process data and information. Certain value can be achieved by adding communication technology to systems. All communication, however, can not be managed. A new layer between communication and manageable information was named as knowformation. Knowledge management literature was surveyed, together with information species from philosophy, physics, communication theory, and information system science. Positivism, post-positivism, and critical theory were studied, but knowformation in extended organisational memory seemed to be socially constructed. A memory management model of an extended enterprise (M3.exe) and knowformation concept were findings from iterative case studies, covering data, information and knowledge management systems. The cases varied from groups towards extended organisation. Systems were investigated, and administrators, users (knowledge workers) and managers interviewed. The model building required alternative sets of data, information and knowledge, instead of using the traditional pyramid. Also the explicit-tacit dichotomy was reconsidered. As human knowledge is the final aim of all data and information in the systems, the distinction between management of information vs. management of people was harmonised. Information systems were classified as the core of organisational memory. The content of the systems is in practice between communication and presentation. Firstly, the epistemic criterion of knowledge is not required neither in the knowledge management literature, nor from the content of the systems. Secondly, systems deal mostly with containers, and the knowledge management literature with applied knowledge. Also the construction of reality based on the system content and communication supports the knowformation concept. Knowformation belongs to memory management model of an extended enterprise (M3.exe) that is divided into horizontal and vertical key dimensions. Vertically, processes deal with content that can be managed, whereas communication can be supported, mainly by infrastructure. Horizontally, the right hand side of the model contains systems, and the left hand side content, which should be independent from each other. A strategy based on the model was defined.

Agglomerative clustering using the concept of mutual nearest neighbourhood

A method for determining the mutual nearest neighbours (MNN) and mutual neighbourhood value (mnv) of a sample point, using the conventional nearest neighbours, is suggested. A nonparametric, hierarchical, agglomerative clustering algorithm is developed using the above concepts. The algorithm is simple, deterministic, noniterative, requires low storage and is able to discern spherical and nonspherical clusters. The method is applicable to a wide class of data of arbitrary shape, large size and high dimensionality. The algorithm can discern mutually homogenous clusters. Strong or weak patterns can be discerned by properly choosing the neighbourhood width.

Disaggregative Clustering Using the Concept of Mutual Nearest Neighborhood

A nonparametric, hierarchical, disaggregative clustering algorithm is developed using a novel similarity measure, called the mutual neighborhood value (MNV), which takes into account the conventional nearest neighbor ranks of two samples with respect to each other. The algorithm is simple, noniterative, requires low storage, and needs no specification of the expected number of clusters. The algorithm appears very versatile as it is capable of discerning spherical and nonspherical clusters, linearly nonseparable clusters, clusters with unequal populations, and clusters with lowdensity bridges. Changing of the neighborhood size enables discernment of strong or weak patterns.

Karnaugh map synthesis of multigate threshold networks

It has been shown in an earlier paper that I-realizability of a unate function F of up to six variables corresponds to ' compactness ' of the plot of F on a Karnaugh map. Here, an algorithm has been presented to synthesize on a Karnaugh map a non-threahold function of up to Bix variables with the minimum number of threshold gates connected in cascade. Incompletely specified functions can also be treated. No resort to inequalities is made and no pre-processing (such as positivizing and ordering) of the given switching function is required.

Ordered Ports – a Language Concept for High-level Distributed Programming

A new language concept for high-level distributed programming is proposed. Programs are organised as a collection of concurrently executing processes. Some of these processes, referred to as liaison processes, have a monitor-like structure and contain ports which may be invoked by other processes for the purposes of synchronisation and communication. Synchronisation is achieved by conditional activation of ports and also through port control constructs which may directly specify the execution ordering of ports. These constructs implement a path-expression-like mechanism for synchronisation and are also equipped with options to provide conditional, non-deterministic and priority ordering of ports. The usefulness and expressive power of the proposed concepts are illustrated through solutions of several representative programming problems. Some implementation issues are also considered.

Predicting the Timing of Spikes Evoked by Tactile Stimulation of the Hand

Kim SS, Sripati AP, Bensmaia SJ. Predicting the timing of spikes evoked by tactile stimulation of the hand. J Neurophysiol 104: 1484-1496, 2010. First published July 7, 2010; doi: 10.1152/jn.00187.2010. What does the hand tell the brain? Tactile stimulation of the hand evokes remarkably precise patterns of neural activity, suggesting that the timing of individual spikes may convey information. However, many aspects of the transformation of mechanical deformations of the skin into spike trains remain unknown. Here we describe an integrate-and-fire model that accurately predicts the timing of individual spikes evoked by arbitrary mechanical vibrations in three types of mechanoreceptive afferent fibers that innervate the hand. The model accounts for most known properties of the three fiber types, including rectification, frequency-sensitivity, and patterns of spike entrainment as a function of stimulus frequency. These results not only shed light on the mechanisms of mechanotransduction but can be used to provide realistic tactile feedback in upper-limb neuroprostheses.

Helsingin metropolialueen maisemaekologiset muutokset vuosina 1955-2009

Landscape is shaped by natural environment and increasingly by human activity. In landscape ecology, the concept of landscape can be defined as a kilometre-scale mosaic formed by different land-use types. In Helsinki Metropolitan Region, the landscape change caused by urbanization has accelerated after the 1950s. Prior to that, the landscape of the region was mainly only shaped by agriculture. The goal of this study was in addition to describing the landscape change to discuss the factors impacting the landscape change and evaluate thelandscape ecological impacts of the change. Three study areas at different distances from Helsinki city centre were chosen in order to look at the landscape change. Study areas were Malmi, Espoo and Mäntsälä regions representing different parts of the urban-to-rural gradient in 1955, 1975, 1990 and 2009. Land-use of the maps was then digitized into five classes: agricultural lands, semi-natural grasslands, built areas, waters and others using GIS methods. First, landscape change was studied using landscape ecological indices. Indices used were PLAND i.e. the proportions of the different land-use types in the landscape; MPS, SHEI and SHDI which describe fragmentation and heterogeneity of the landscape; and MSI and ED which are measures of patch shape. Second, landscape change was studied statistically in relation to topography, soil and urban structure of the study areas. Indicators used concerning urban structure were number of residents, car ownership and travel-related zones of urban form which indicate the degree of urban sprawl within the study areas. For the statistical analyses, each of the 9.25 x 9.25 km sized study areas was further divided into grids with resolution of 0.25 x 0.25 kilometres. Third, the changes in the green structure of the study areas were evaluated. The landscape change reflected by the proportions of the land-use types was the most notable in Malmi area where a large amount of agricultural land was developed from 1955 to 2009. The proportion of semi-natural grasslands also showed an interesting pattern in relation to urbanization. When urbanization started, a great number of agricultural lands were abandoned and turned into semi-natural grasslands but as the urbanization accelerated, the number of semi-natural grasslands started to decline because of urban densification. Landscape fragmentation and heterogeneity were the most widespread in Espoo study area which is not only because of the great differences in relative heights within the region but also its location in the rural-urban fringe. According to the results, urbanization induced agricultural lands to be more regular in shape both spatially and temporally whereas for built areas and semi-natural grasslands the impact of urbanization was reverse. Changes in landscape were the most insignificant in the most rural study area Mäntsälä. In Mäntsälä, built area per resident showed the greatest values indicating a widespread urban sprawl. The values were the smallest in highly urbanized Malmi study area. Unlike other study areas, in Mäntsälä the proportion of developing land in the ecologically disadvantageous cardependent zone was on the increase. On the other hand, the green structure of the Mäntsälä study area was the most advantageous whereas Malmi study area showed the most ecologically disadvantageous structure. Considering all the landscape ecological criteria used, the landscape structure of Espoo study area proved to be the best not least because of the great heterogeneity of its landscape. Thus the study confirmed the previous results according to which landscape heterogeneity is the most significant in areas exposed to a moderate human impact.