Chinese immigrants to Finland: A qualitative study of housing, employment, access to health care and child care as sociological dimensions in their settlement process

The Master’s thesis is qualitative research based on interviews of 15 Chinese immigrants to Finland in order to provide a sociological perspective of the migration experience through the eyes of Chinese immigrants in the Finnish social welfare context. This research is mainly focused upon four crucial aspects of life in the settlement process: housing, employment, access to health care and child care. Inspired by Allardt’s theoretical framework ‘Having, Loving and Being’, social relationships and individual satisfaction are examined in the case of Chinese interviewees dealing with the four life aspects. Finland was not perceived as an attractive migration destination for most Chinese interviewees in the beginning. However, with longer residence in Finland, the Finnish social welfare system gradually became a crucial appealing factor in their permanent settlement in Finland. And meanwhile, social responsibility of attending their old parents in China, strong feelings of being isolated in Finland, and insufficient integration into the Finnish society were influential factors for their decision of returning to China. Social relationships with personal friends, migration brokers, schools, employers and family relatives had great influences in the four life aspects of Chinese immigrants in Finland. The social relationship with the Finnish social welfare sector is supportive to Chinese immigrants, but Chinese immigrants do not heavily rely on Finnish social protection. The housing conditions were greatly improved over time while the upward mobility in the Finnish labour market was not significant among Chinese immigrants. All Chinese immigrants were satisfied with their current housing by the time I interviewed them while most of them had subjective feelings of being alienated in the Finnish labour market, which seriously prevented them from integrating into the Finnish society. In general, Chinese immigrants were satisfied with the low cost of accessing the Finnish public health care services and affordable Finnish child day care services and financial subsidies for children from the Finnish social welfare sector. This research also suggests that employment is the central basis in well-being. Support from the Finnish social welfare sector can improve the satisfaction levels among immigrants, especially when it mitigates the effects of low-paid employment. As well, my empirical study of Chinese immigrants in Finland shows that Having (needs for materials), Loving (needs for social relations) and Being (needs for social integration) are all involved in the four concrete aspects (housing, employment, access to health care and child care).

Functional outcome and health-related quality of life after traumatic brain injury in the framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects people of all ages and is a cause of long-term disability. In recent years, the epidemiological patterns of TBI have been changing. TBI is a heterogeneous disorder with different forms of presentation and highly individual outcome regarding functioning and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The meaning of disability differs from person to person based on the individual s personality, value system, past experience, and the purpose he or she sees in life. Understanding of all these viewpoints is needed in comprehensive rehabilitation. This study examines the epidemiology of TBI in Finland as well as functioning and HRQoL after TBI, and compares the subjective and objective assessments of outcome. The frame of reference is the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The subjects of Study I represent the population of Finnish TBI patients who experienced their first TBI between 1991 and 2005. The 55 Finnish subjects of Studies II and IV participated in the first wave of the international Quality of life after brain injury (QOLIBRI) validation study. The 795 subjects from six language areas of Study III formed the second wave of the QOLIBRI validation study. The average annual incidence of Finnish hospitalised TBI patients during the years 1991-2005 was 101:100 000 in patients who had TBI as the primary diagnosis and did not have a previous TBI in their medical history. Males (59.2%) were at considerably higher risk of getting a TBI than females. The most common external cause of the injury was falls in all age groups. The number of TBI patients ≥ 70 years of age increased by 59.4% while the number of inhabitants older than 70 years increased by 30.3% in the population of Finland during the same time period. The functioning of a sample of 55 persons with TBI was assessed by extracting information from the patients medical documents using the ICF checklist. The most common problems were found in the ICF components of Body Functions (b) and Activities and Participation (d). HRQoL was assessed with the QOLIBRI which showed the highest level of satisfaction on the Emotions, Physical Problems and Daily Life and Autonomy scales. The highest scores were obtained by the youngest participants and participants living independently without the help of other people, and by people who were working. The relationship between the functional outcome and HRQoL was not straightforward. The procedure of linking the QOLIBRI and the GOSE to the ICF showed that these two outcome measures cover the relevant domains of TBI patients functioning. The QOLIBRI provides the patients subjective view, while the GOSE summarises the objective elements of functioning. Our study indicates that there are certain domains of functioning that are not traditionally sufficiently documented but are important for the HRQoL of persons with TBI. This was the finding especially in the domains of interpersonal relationships, social and leisure activities, self, and the environment. Rehabilitation aims to optimize functioning and to minimize the experience of disability among people with health conditions, and it needs to be based on a comprehensive understanding of human functioning. As an integrative model, the ICF may serve as a frame of reference in achieving such an understanding.

Visuaalisen työmuistin vapaasti jaettavat resurssit : muistiedustusten lukumäärä ja tarkkuus ääriviivakuvioilla

According to the most prevalent view, there are 3-4 fixed "slots" in visual working memory for temporary storage. Recently this view has been challenged with a theory of dynamic resources which are restricted in their totality but can be freely allocated. The aim of this study is to clarify which one of the theories better describes the performance in visual working memory tasks with contour shapes. Thus in this study, the interest is in both the number of recalled stimuli and the precision of the memory representations. Stimuli in the experiments were radial frequency patterns, which were constructed by sinusoidally modulating the radius of a circle. Five observers participated in the experiment and it consisted of two different tasks. In the delayed discrimination task the number of recalled stimuli was measured with 2-interval forced choice task. Observer was shown serially two displays with 1, 5 s ISI (inter stimulus interval). Displays contained 1-6 patterns and they differed from each other with changed amplitude in one pattern. The participant s task was to report whether the changed pattern had higher amplitude in the first or in the second interval. The amount of amplitude change was defined with QUEST-procedure and the 75 % discrimination threshold was measured in the task. In the recall task the precision of the memory representations was measured with subjective adjustment method. First, observer was shown 1-6 patterns and after 1, 5 s ISI one location of the previously shown pattern was cued. Observer s task was to adjust amplitude of a probe pattern to match the amplitude of the pattern in working memory. In the delayed discrimination task the performance of all observes declined smoothly when the number of presented patterns was increased. The result supports the resource theory of working memory as there was no sudden fall in the performance. The amplitude threshold for one item was 0.01 0.05 and as the number of items increased from 1 to 6 there was a 4 15 -fold linear increase in the amplitude threshold (0.14 0.29). In the recall adjustment task the precision of four observers performance declined smoothly as the number of presented patterns was increased. The result also supports the resource theory. The standard deviation for one item was 0.03 0.05 and as the number of items increased from 1 to 6 there was a 2 3 -fold linear increase in the amplitude threshold (0.06 0.11). These findings show that the performance in a visual working memory task is described better according to the theory of freely allocated resources and not to the traditional slot-model. In addition, the allocation of the resources depends on the properties of the individual observer and the visual working memory task.

Social and material deprivation among youth in Finland : causes, consequences, and coping.

Background: Social and material deprivation is associated with poor health, decreased subjective well-being, and limited opportunities for personal development. To date, little is known about the lived experiences of Finnish low-income youths and the general purpose of this study is to fill this gap. Despite the extensive research on socioeconomic income disparities, only a few scholars have addressed the question of how low socioeconomic position is experienced by disadvantaged people themselves. Little is known about the everyday social processes that lead to decreased well-being of economically and socially disadvantaged citizens. Data: The study is based on the data of 65 autobiographical essays written by Finnish low-income youths aged 14-29 (M=23.51, SD=3.95). The research data were originally collected in a Finnish nationwide writing contest “Arkipäivän kokemuksia köyhyydestä” [Everyday Experiences of Poverty] between June and September of 2006. The contest was partaken by 850 Finnish writers. Methods and key concepts: Autobiographical narratives (N=65) of low-income youths were analyzed based on grounded theory methodology (GTM). The analysis was not built on specific pre-conceived categorizations; it was guided by the paradigm model and so-called “sensitizing concepts”. The concepts this study utilized were based on the research literature on socioeconomic inequalities, resilience, and coping. Socioeconomic inequalities refer to unequal distribution of resources, such as income, social status, and health, between social groups. The concept of resilience refers to an individual’s capacity to cope despite existing risk factors and conditions that are harmful to health and well-being. Coping strategies can be understood as ways by which a person tries to cope with psychological stress in a situation where internal or externals demands exceed one’s resources. The ways to cope are cognitive or behavioral efforts by which individual tries to relieve the stress and gain new resources. Lack of material and social resources is associated with increased exposure to health-related stressors during the life-course. Aims: The first aim of this study is to illustrate how youths with low socioeconomic status perceive the causes and consequences of their social and material deprivation. The second aim is to describe what kind of coping strategies youths employ to cope in their everyday life. The third aim is to build an integrative conceptual framework based on the relationships between causes, consequences, and individual coping strategies associated with deprivation. The analysis was carried out through systematic coding and orderly treatment of the data based on the grounded theory methodology. Results: Finnish low-income youths attributed the primary causes of deprivation to their family background, current socioeconomic status, sudden life changes, and contextual factors. Material and social deprivation was associated with various kinds of negative psychological, social, and material consequences. Youths used a variety of coping strategies that were identified as psychological, social, material, and functional-behavioral. Finally, a conceptual framework was formulated to link the findings together. In the discussion, the results were compared and contrasted to the existing research literature. The main references of the study were: Coping: Aldwin (2007); Lazarus & Folkman (1984); Hobfoll (1989, 2001, 2002). Deprivation: Larivaara, Isola, & Mikkonen (2007); Lister (2004); Townsend (1987); Raphael (2007). Health inequalities: Dahlgren & Whitehead (2007); Lynch. et al. (2000); Marmot & Wilkinson (2006); WHO (2008). Methods: Charmaz (2006); Flick (2009); Strauss & Corbin (1990). Resilience: Cutuli & Masten (2009); Luthar (2006).

Quasicrystals:Indian research accomplishments and imperatives

: Within two months of the first report on quasicrystals in PRL in November 1984, Indian research which had a 'premature discovery' in 1978 in this area got under way, In the past nine years these efforts have led to original discoveries relating to new types of quasicrystalline phases as well as extensive investigations involving tiling theory, hyperspace, positron annihilation and electrical properties, These researches have been multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary. Enlightened and generous funding was extended by DST from 1986 by recognizing it as a thrust area in basic research via SERC and US-India Funds. International recognition, subjective though it is, in the form of citation of Indian papers, invited lectures and reviews, books as well as the membership of International Advisory Committee has followed and is among the highest in the fields of condensed matter science covered at the Bangalore meeting, Future directions pertaining to the exploration of mechanical and electronic properties as well as structures beyond the quasicrystalline order will be pointed out.

On Selection of Features for Regional Hydrologic Studies

Feature selection is an important first step in regional hydrologic studies (RHYS). Over the past few decades, advances in data collection facilities have resulted in development of data archives on a variety of hydro-meteorological variables that may be used as features in RHYS. Currently there are no established procedures for selecting features from such archives. Therefore, hydrologists often use subjective methods to arrive at a set of features. This may lead to misleading results. To alleviate this problem, a probabilistic clustering method for regionalization is presented to determine appropriate features from the available dataset. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by application to regionalization of watersheds in conterminous United States for low flow frequency analysis. Plausible homogeneous regions that are formed by using the proposed clustering method are compared with those from conventional methods of regionalization using L-moment based homogeneity tests. Results show that the proposed methodology is promising for RHYS.

Analysis and Synthesis of Reverberation for Parametric Stereo Audio

We propose a parametric stereo coding analysis and synthesis directly in the MDCT domain using an analysis by synthesis parameter estimation. The stereo signal is represented by an equalized sum signal and spatialization parameters. Equalized sum signal and the spatialization parameters are obtained by sub-band analysis in the MDCT domain. The de-correlated signal required for the stereo synthesis is also generated in the MDCT domain. Subjective evaluation test using MUSHRA shows that the synthesized stereo signal is perceptually satisfactory and comparable to the state of the art parametric coders.

Fuzzy Clustering Based Ad Recommendation for TV Programs

Advertisements(Ads) are the main revenue earner for Television (TV) broadcasters. As TV reaches a large audience, it acts as the best media for advertisements of products and services. With the emergence of digital TV, it is important for the broadcasters to provide an intelligent service according to the various dimensions like program features, ad features, viewers’ interest and sponsors’ preference. We present an automatic ad recommendation algorithm that selects a set of ads by considering these dimensions and semantically match them with programs. Features of the ad video are captured interms of annotations and they are grouped into number of predefined semantic categories by using a categorization technique. Fuzzy categorical data clustering technique is applied on categorized data for selecting better suited ads for a particular program. Since the same ad can be recommended for more than one program depending upon multiple parameters, fuzzy clustering acts as the best suited method for ad recommendation. The relative fuzzy score called “degree of membership” calculated for each ad indicates the membership of a particular ad to different program clusters. Subjective evaluation of the algorithm is done by 10 different people and rated with a high success score.

Perceptually motivated Rated Controller for Video coding

Rate control regulates the instantaneous video bit -rate to maximize a picture quality metric while satisfying channel constraints. Typically, a quality metric such as Peak Signalto-Noise ratio (PSNR) or weighted signal -to-noise ratio(WSNR) is chosen out of convenience. However this metric is not always truly representative of perceptual video quality.Attempts to use perceptual metrics in rate control have been limited by the accuracy of the video quality metrics chosen.Recently, new and improved metrics of subjective quality such as the Video quality experts group's (VQEG) NTIA1 General Video Quality Model (VQM) have been proven to have strong correlation with subjective quality. Here, we apply the key principles of the NTIA -VQM model to rate control in order to maximize perceptual video quality. Our experiments demonstrate that applying NTIA -VQM motivated metrics to standard TMN8 rate control in an H.263 encoder results in perceivable quality improvements over a baseline TMN8 / MSE based implementation.

The Future of Computation

The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words may be subjective, yet it is fairly clear that this is what all living organisms--from bacteria to human beings--do in their life time. Indeed, this can be adopted as the information theoretic definition of life. Over billions of years, biological evolution has experimented with a wide range of physical systems for acquiring, processing and communicating information. We are now in a position to make the principles behind these systems mathematically precise, and then extend them as far as laws of physics permit. Therein lies the future of computation, of ourselves, and of life.

On the taxonomic status of Gegeneophis nadkarnii Bhatta & Prashanth, 2004 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae)

Examination of type material and new collections from Goa, southern Maharashtra and northern Karnataka, leads to the conclusion that Gegeneophis nadkarnii Bhatta & Prashanth, 2004 is a subjective junior synonym of Gegeneophis danieli Giri, Wilkinson & Gower, 2003. The purported differences between these species are very minor and attributable to normal individual variation, except for some features of the dentition that are peculiar to the exceptionally abnormal paratype of G. nadkarnii. This taxonomic revision extends the known geographic range of G. danieli and suggests it could be transferred from Data Deficient to Least Concern status in the IUCN Red List.

Revision of the scolopendrid centipede digitipes Attems, 1930, from India (Chilopoda: Scolopendromorpha): reconciling molecular and morphological estimates of species diversity

Recent work on molecular phylogenetics of Scolopendridae from the Western Ghats, Peninsular India, has suggested the presence of six cryptic species of the otostigmine Digitipes Attems, 1930, together with three species described in previous taxonomic work by Jangi and Dass (1984). Digitipes is the correct generic attribution for a monophyletic group of Indian species, these being united with three species from tropical Africa (including the type) that share a distomedial process on the ultimate leg femur of males that is otherwise unknown in Otostigminae. Second maxillary characters previously used in the diagnosis of Digitipes are dismissed because Indian species do not possess the putatively diagnostic character states. Two new species from the Western Ghats that correspond to groupings identified based on monophyly, sequence divergence and coalescent analysis using molecular data are diagnosed based on distinct morphological characters. They are D. jangii and D. periyarensis n. spp. Three species named by Jangi and Dass (Digitipes barnabasi, D. coonoorensis and D. indicus) are revised based on new collections; D. indicus is a junior subjective synonym of Arthrorhabdus jonesii Verhoeff, 1938, the combination becoming Digitipes jonesii (Verhoeff, 1938) n. comb. The presence of Arthrorhabdus in India is accordingly refuted. Three putative species delimited by molecular and ecological data remain cryptic from the perspective of diagnostic morphological characters and are presently retained in D. barnabasi, D. jangii and D. jonesii. A molecularly-delimited species that resolved as sister group to a well-supported clade of Indian Digitipes is identified as Otostigmus ruficeps Pocock, 1890, originally described from a single specimen and revised herein. One Indian species originally assigned to Digitipes, D. gravelyi, deviates from confidently-assigned Digitipes with respect to several characters and is reassigned to Otostigmus, as O. gravelyi (Jangi and Dass, 1984) n. comb.

Music and symbolic dynamics: the science behind an art

Music signals comprise of atomic notes drawn from a musical scale. The creation of musical sequences often involves splicing the notes in a constrained way resulting in aesthetically appealing patterns. We develop an approach for music signal representation based on symbolic dynamics by translating the lexicographic rules over a musical scale to constraints on a Markov chain. This source representation is useful for machine based music synthesis, in a way, similar to a musician producing original music. In order to mathematically quantify user listening experience, we study the correlation between the max-entropic rate of a musical scale and the subjective aesthetic component. We present our analysis with examples from the south Indian classical music system.

Simultaneous feature selection and clustering using particle swarm optimization

Data clustering groups data so that data which are similar to each other are in the same group and data which are dissimilar to each other are in different groups. Since generally clustering is a subjective activity, it is possible to get different clusterings of the same data depending on the need. This paper attempts to find the best clustering of the data by first carrying out feature selection and using only the selected features, for clustering. A PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization)has been used for clustering but feature selection has also been carried out simultaneously. The performance of the above proposed algorithm is evaluated on some benchmark data sets. The experimental results shows the proposed methodology outperforms the previous approaches such as basic PSO and Kmeans for the clustering problem.

CAVVA: Computational Affective Video-in-Video Advertising

Advertising is ubiquitous in the online community and more so in the ever-growing and popular online video delivery websites (e. g., YouTube). Video advertising is becoming increasingly popular on these websites. In addition to the existing pre-roll/post-roll advertising and contextual advertising, this paper proposes an in-stream video advertising strategy-Computational Affective Video-in-Video Advertising (CAVVA). Humans being emotional creatures are driven by emotions as well as rational thought. We believe that emotions play a major role in influencing the buying behavior of users and hence propose a video advertising strategy which takes into account the emotional impact of the videos as well as advertisements. Given a video and a set of advertisements, we identify candidate advertisement insertion points (step 1) and also identify the suitable advertisements (step 2) according to theories from marketing and consumer psychology. We formulate this two part problem as a single optimization function in a non-linear 0-1 integer programming framework and provide a genetic algorithm based solution. We evaluate CAVVA using a subjective user-study and eye-tracking experiment. Through these experiments, we demonstrate that CAVVA achieves a good balance between the following seemingly conflicting goals of (a) minimizing the user disturbance because of advertisement insertion while (b) enhancing the user engagement with the advertising content. We compare our method with existing advertising strategies and show that CAVVA can enhance the user's experience and also help increase the monetization potential of the advertising content.