Tohtoriksi tulemisen tarina

The study examines the dissertation process. The thesis is based on twenty-three autobiographical stories. They were collected from PhDs who had taken their doctoral degrees at the University of Helsinki. The purpose is to investigate the experiences of these PhD recipients and find out what they recall of the events, traditions, and meanings associated with their PhD studies. An anthology collected from PhDs in the historical sciences, which was published in 1998, was used as reference material. This study begins with a general presentation of the history and values of the university and the traditions of the academic community in Finland. Thereafter, the data and the methodological framework of the study are presented. Attention is paid to the discipline background, sex and age of these PhDs, which may have affected their storytelling. The former studies concerning the academic life together with the experiences of the writers revealed that the process of becoming a PhD graduate is generally considered as an academic rite of passage. The change from student status to becoming a fully accepted professional member of one’s field is real, transforming and at certain points, ritualized. The finding of an inner logic to the doctoral process, which included meaningful turning points, was central to the narrative analysis approach. During the process there were different kinds of struggles and highlights. The family background, university studies and time in employment had directed the doctoral studies of some PhD students enormously. But generally the most memorable and value laden were the phases of actually writing the dissertation, the public examination, and the celebration party in the evening called “karonkka”. The picture that emerged from these various life-stories demonstrated that there was no ivory tower where doctoral candidates live an isolated existence. Everyday cares in ordinary life and tasks in academic life are both demanding and rewarding at the same time. The main point is that the academic community in general and PhD supervisors in particular should concentrate not only on the thesis-writing process their students but also on the doctoral students´ wider life situation. Doctoral students need scientific, financial, and mental support. Somebody must be available to inspire and offer encouragement otherwise the process will be disturbed. The successful completion of the PhD ritual gives the PhD graduate self-confidence and respect but its’ influence on the doctors’ subsequent academic career is diverse. The dissertation process is a personal and unique experience. The aim of the PhD graduation is that this traditional ritual leads to a successful completion and ensures a positive reward for the PhD graduate and the academic community. Keywords: autobiography, narratives, academic traditions, PhD graduates.

Sensory auditory processing and intuitive sound detection : an investigation of musical experts and nonexperts

The auditory system can detect occasional changes (deviants) in acoustic regularities without the need for subjects to focus their attention on the sound material. Deviant detection is reflected in the elicitation of the mismatch negativity component (MMN) of the event-related potentials. In the studies presented in this thesis, the MMN is used to investigate the auditory abilities for detecting similarities and regularities in sound streams. To investigate the limits of these processes, professional musicians have been tested in some of the studies. The results show that auditory grouping is already more advanced in musicians than in nonmusicians and that the auditory system of musicians can, unlike that of nonmusicians, detect a numerical regularity of always four tones in a series. These results suggest that sensory auditory processing in musicians is not only a fine tuning of universal abilities, but is also qualitatively more advanced than in nonmusicians. In addition, the relationship between the auditory change-detection function and perception is examined. It is shown that, contrary to the generally accepted view, MMN elicitation does not necessarily correlate with perception. The outcome of the auditory change-detection function can be implicit and the implicit knowledge of the sound structure can, after training, be utilized for behaviorally correct intuitive sound detection. These results illustrate the automatic character of the sensory change detection function.

The regional differences between countries in traffic safety: A cross-cultural study and Turkish Case

Road traffic accidents are a large problem everywhere in the world. However, regional differences in traffic safety between countries are considerable. For example, traffic safety records are much worse in Southern Europe and the Middle East than in Northern and Western Europe. Despite the large regional differences in traffic safety, factors contributing to different accident risk figures in different countries and regions have remained largely unstudied. The general aim of this study was to investigate regional differences in traffic safety between Southern European/Middle Eastern (i.e., Greece, Iran, Turkey) and Northern/Western European (i.e., Finland, Great Britain, The Netherlands) countries and to identify factors related to these differences. We conducted seven sub-studies in which I applied a traffic culture framework, including a multi-level approach, to traffic safety. We used aggregated level data (national statistics), surveys among drivers, and data on traffic accidents and fatalities in the analyses. In the first study, we investigated the influence of macro level factors (i.e., economic, societal, and cultural) on traffic safety across countries. The results showed that a high GNP per capita and conservatism correlated with a low number of traffic fatalities, whereas a high degree of uncertainty avoidance, neuroticism, and egalitarianism correlated with a high number of traffic fatalities. In the second, third, and fourth studies, we examined whether the conceptualisation of road user characteristics (i.e., driver behaviour and performance) varied across traffic cultures and how these factors determined overall safety, and the differences between countries in traffic safety. The results showed that the factorial agreement for driver behaviour (i.e., aggressive driving) and performance (i.e., safety skills) was unsatisfactory in Greece, Iran, and Turkey, where the lack of social tolerance and interpersonal aggressive violations seem to be important characteristics of driving. In addition, we found that driver behaviour (i.e., aggressive violations and errors) mediated the relationship between culture/country and accidents. Besides, drivers from "dangerous" Southern European countries and Iran scored higher on aggressive violations and errors than did drivers from "safe" Northern European countries. However, "speeding" appeared to be a "pan-cultural" problem in traffic. Similarly, aggressive driving seems largely depend on road users' interactions and drivers' interpretation (i.e., cognitive biases) of the behaviour of others in every country involved in the study. Moreover, in all countries, a risky general driving style was mostly related to being young and male. The results of the fifth and sixth studies showed that among young Turkish drivers, gender stereotypes (i.e., masculinity and femininity) greatly influence driver behaviour and performance. Feminine drivers were safety-oriented whereas masculine drivers were skill-oriented and risky drivers. Since everyday driving tasks involve not only erroneous (i.e., risky or dangerous driving) or correct performance (i.e., normal habitual driving), but also "positive" driver behaviours, we developed a reliable scale for measuring "positive" driver behaviours among Turkish drivers in the seventh study. Consequently, I revised Reason's model [Reason, J. T., 1990. Human error. Cambridge University Press: New York] of aberrant driver behaviour to represent a general driving style, including all possible intentional behaviours in traffic while evaluating the differences between countries in traffic safety. The results emphasise the importance of economic, societal and cultural factors, general driving style and skills, which are related to exposure, cognitive biases as well as age, sex, and gender, in differences between countries in traffic safety.

Kaveriporukasta liiketoiminnaksi : Tuotannon häiriöt ja organisaation oppiminen nopeasti muuttuvassa yrityksessä

In the 1990 s the companies utilizing and producing new information technology, especially so-called new media, were also expected to be forerunners in new forms of work and organization. Researchers anticipated that new, more creative forms of work and the changing content of working life were about to replace old industrial and standardized ways of working. However, research on actual companies in the IT sector revealed a situation where only minor changes to existing organizational forms were seen .Many of the independent companies faced great difficulties trying to survive the rapid changes in the products and production forms in the emerging field. Most of the research on the new media field has been conducted as surveys, and an understanding of the actual everyday work process has remained thin. My research is a longitudinal study of the early phases of one new media company in Finland. The study is an analysis of the challenges the company faced in a rapidly changing business field and the attempts to overcome these challenges. The two main analyses in the study focus on the developmental phases of the company and the disturbances in the production process. Based on these analyses, I study changes and learning at work using the methodological framework of developmental work research. Developmental work research is a Finnish variant of the cultural-historical activity theory applied to the study of learning and transformations at work. The data was gathered over a three-year period of ethnographic fieldwork. I documented the production processes and everyday life in the company as a participant observer. I interviewed key persons, video and audio-taped meetings, followed e-mail correspondence and collected various documents, such as agreements and memos. I developed a systematic method for analyzing the disturbances in the production process by combining the various data sources. The systematic analysis of the disturbances depicted a very complex and only partly managed production process. The production process had a long duration, and no single actor had an understanding of it as a whole. Most of the disturbances had to do with the customer relationships. The nature of the disturbances was latent; they were recognized but not addressed. In the particular production processes that I analyzed, the ending life span of a particular product, a CD-ROM, became obvious. This finding can be interpreted in relation to the developmental phase of the production and the transformation of the field as a whole. Based on the analysis of the developmental phases and the disturbances, I formulate a hypothesis of the contradictions and developmental potentials of the activity studied. The conclusions of the study challenge the existing understanding of how to conceptualize and study organizational learning in production work. Most theories of organizational learning do not address qualitative changes in production nor historical challenges of organizational learning itself. My study opens up a new horizon in understanding organizational learning in a rapidly changing field where a learning culture based on craft or mass production work is insufficient. There is a need for anticipatory and proactive organizational learning. Proactive learning is needed to anticipate the changes in production type, and the life cycles of products.

Transcending “the Impossible” : From Dead End to Expansive Learning

This dissertation investigates changes in bank work and the experience of impossibility attached to these by workers at the local level from the viewpoint of work-related well-being and collective learning. A special challenge in my work is to conceptualize the experience of impossibility as related to change, and as a starting point and tool for development work. The subject of the dissertation, solving the impossible as a collective learning process, came up as a central theme in an earlier project: Work Units between the Old and the New (1997 – 1999). Its aim was to investigate how change is constructed as a long-term process, starting from the planning of the change until its final realization in everyday banking work. I studied changes taking place in the former Postipankki (Postal Bank), later called Leonia. The three-year study involved the Branch Office of Martinlaakso, and was conducted from the perspective of well-being in a change process. The sense of impossibility involved in changes turned out to be one of the most crucial factors impairing the sense of well-being. The work community that was the target of my study did not have the available tools to construct the change locally, or to deal with the change-related impossibility by solving it through a mutual process among themselves. During the last year of the project, I carried out an intervention for development in the Branch Office, as collaboration between the researchers and the workers. The purpose of the intervention was to resolve such perceived change-related impossibility as experienced repeatedly and considered by the work community as relevant to work-related well-being. The documentation of the intervention – audio records from development sessions, written assignments by workers and assessment or evaluation interviews – constitute the essential data for my dissertation. The earlier data, collected and analysed during the first two years, provides a historical perspective on the process, all the way from construction of the impossibility towards resolving and transcending it. The aim of my dissertation is to understand the progress of developmental intervention as a shared, possibly expansive learning process within a work community and thus to provide tools for perceiving and constructing local change. I chose the change-related impossibility as a starting point for development work in the work community and as a target of conceptualization. This, I feel, is the most important contribution of my dissertation. While the intervention was in progress, the concept of impossibility started emerging as a stimulating tool for development work. An understanding of such a process can be applied to development work outside banking work as well. According to my results, it is pivotal that a concept stimulating development is strongly connected with everyday experiences of and speech about changes in work activity, as well as with the theoretical framework of work development. During this process, development work on a local level became of utmost interest as a case study for managing change. Theoretically, this was conceptualized as so-called second-order work and this concept accompanies us all the way through the research process. Learning second-order work and constructing tools based on this work have proved crucial for promoting well-being in the change circumstances in a local work unit. The lack of second-order work has led to non-well-being and inability to transcend the change-related sense of impossibility in the work community. Solving the impossible, either individually or situationally, did not orient the workers towards solving problems of impossibility together as a work community. Because the experience of the impossibility and coming to terms with transcending it are the starting point and the target of conceptualization in this dissertation, the research provides a fresh viewpoint on the theoretical framework of change and developmental work. My dissertation can facilitate construction of local changes necessitated by the recent financial crisis, and thus promote fluency and well-being in work units. It can also support change-related well-being in other areas of working life.

Boundaries in Action : An Activity-theoretical Study of Development, Learning, and Change in Health Care Organization for Patients with Multiple and Chronic Illnesses

This study examines boundaries in health care organizations. Boundaries are sometimes considered things to be avoided in everyday living. This study suggests that boundaries can be important temporally and spatially emerging locations of development, learning, and change in inter-organizational activity. Boundaries can act as mediators of cultural and social formations and practices. The data of the study was gathered in an intervention project during the years 2000-2002 in Helsinki in which the care of 26 patients with multiple and chronic illnesses was improved. The project used the Change Laboratory method that represents a research assisted method for developing work. The research questions of the study are: (1) What are the boundary dynamics of development, learning, and change in health care for patients with multiple and chronic illnesses? (2) How do individual patients experience boundaries in their health care? (3) How are the boundaries of health care constructed and reconstructed in social interaction? (4) What are the dynamics of boundary crossing in the experimentation with the new tools and new practice? The methodology of the study, the ethnography of the multi-organizational field of activity, draws on cultural-historical activity theory and anthropological methods. The ethnographic fieldwork involves multiple research techniques and a collaborative strategy for raising research data. The data of this study consists of observations, interviews, transcribed intervention sessions, and patients' health documents. According to the findings, the care of patients with multiple and chronic illnesses emerges as fragmented by divisions of a patient and professionals, specialties of medicine and levels of health care organization. These boundaries have a historical origin in the Finnish health care system. As an implication of these boundaries, patients frequently experience uncertainty and neglect in their care. However, the boundaries of a single patient were transformed in the Change Laboratory discussions among patients, professionals and researchers. In these discussions, the questioning of the prevailing boundaries was triggered by the observation of gaps in inter-organizational care. Transformation of the prevailing boundaries was achieved in implementation of the collaborative care agreement tool and the practice of negotiated care. However, the new tool and practice did not expand into general use during the project. The study identifies two complementary models for the development of health care organization in Finland. The 'care package model', which is based on productivity and process models adopted from engineering and the 'model of negotiated care', which is based on co-configuration and the public good.

Feature integration in human vision

The earliest stages of human cortical visual processing can be conceived as extraction of local stimulus features. However, more complex visual functions, such as object recognition, require integration of multiple features. Recently, neural processes underlying feature integration in the visual system have been under intensive study. A specialized mid-level stage preceding the object recognition stage has been proposed to account for the processing of contours, surfaces and shapes as well as configuration. This thesis consists of four experimental, psychophysical studies on human visual feature integration. In two studies, classification image a recently developed psychophysical reverse correlation method was used. In this method visual noise is added to near-threshold stimuli. By investigating the relationship between random features in the noise and observer s perceptual decision in each trial, it is possible to estimate what features of the stimuli are critical for the task. The method allows visualizing the critical features that are used in a psychophysical task directly as a spatial correlation map, yielding an effective "behavioral receptive field". Visual context is known to modulate the perception of stimulus features. Some of these interactions are quite complex, and it is not known whether they reflect early or late stages of perceptual processing. The first study investigated the mechanisms of collinear facilitation, where nearby collinear Gabor flankers increase the detectability of a central Gabor. The behavioral receptive field of the mechanism mediating the detection of the central Gabor stimulus was measured by the classification image method. The results show that collinear flankers increase the extent of the behavioral receptive field for the central Gabor, in the direction of the flankers. The increased sensitivity at the ends of the receptive field suggests a low-level explanation for the facilitation. The second study investigated how visual features are integrated into percepts of surface brightness. A novel variant of the classification image method with brightness matching task was used. Many theories assume that perceived brightness is based on the analysis of luminance border features. Here, for the first time this assumption was directly tested. The classification images show that the perceived brightness of both an illusory Craik-O Brien-Cornsweet stimulus and a real uniform step stimulus depends solely on the border. Moreover, the spatial tuning of the features remains almost constant when the stimulus size is changed, suggesting that brightness perception is based on the output of a single spatial frequency channel. The third and fourth studies investigated global form integration in random-dot Glass patterns. In these patterns, a global form can be immediately perceived, if even a small proportion of random dots are paired to dipoles according to a geometrical rule. In the third study the discrimination of orientation structure in highly coherent concentric and Cartesian (straight) Glass patterns was measured. The results showed that the global form was more efficiently discriminated in concentric patterns. The fourth study investigated how form detectability depends on the global regularity of the Glass pattern. The local structure was either Cartesian or curved. It was shown that randomizing the local orientation deteriorated the performance only with the curved pattern. The results give support for the idea that curved and Cartesian patterns are processed in at least partially separate neural systems.

Ohjaukselliset käytännöt yliopisto-opintojen alkuvaiheessa : Maatalous-metsätieteellisen tiedekunnan opiskelijoiden merkitykselliset kokemukset ensimmäisen opiskeluvuoden ohjauksesta

In this Master's Thesis I study guidance practises, which facilitate first year students' integration into the university. Besides formal guidance, for example tutoring and peer tutoring, general student advising and introduction courses, I address my research to informal everyday guidance practices. I aim to highlight existing supportive practices, which are meaningful from the university students' perspective. My aim is to study what kind of guidance practises exists in university and how these practises support first year student. The aim of the guidance practises is to facilitate new university student to integrate into the academic community. I study the implementation of this aim as a development of an academic identity, which requires that students have an opportunity for guided participation in academic practises. The research is based on phenomenological-hermeneutic research tradition, and my aim is to produce information of students' everyday experiences and meanings. My informants were students of agriculture and forestry at University of Helsinki. I gathered research material utilizing the critical incident technique in 11 theme interviews, which I carried out with individuals, pairs or small groups. During interviews I asked the students to describe and evaluate their first year guidance experiences, especially those that were extreme positive or negative. Based on my research I specified four meaningful guidance practices: care of students, transparency of the practises of the learning community, presence of guidance in everyday activities of a student and communal reflection to studies. I represent the character and components of the guidance practises, and I also describe the meaning of those practises to university students. Keywords: Guidance practices, guidance, first year studies, academic community, integration, academic identity,critical incidents

Resonances, scattering theory, and rigged Hilbert spaces

The problem of decaying states and resonances is examined within the framework of scattering theory in a rigged Hilbert space formalism. The stationary free,''in,'' and ''out'' eigenvectors of formal scattering theory, which have a rigorous setting in rigged Hilbert space, are considered to be analytic functions of the energy eigenvalue. The value of these analytic functions at any point of regularity, real or complex, is an eigenvector with eigenvalue equal to the position of the point. The poles of the eigenvector families give origin to other eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian: the singularities of the ''out'' eigenvector family are the same as those of the continued S matrix, so that resonances are seen as eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian with eigenvalue equal to their location in the complex energy plane. Cauchy theorem then provides for expansions in terms of ''complete'' sets of eigenvectors with complex eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. Applying such expansions to the survival amplitude of a decaying state, one finds that resonances give discrete contributions with purely exponential time behavior; the background is of course present, but explicitly separated. The resolvent of the Hamiltonian, restricted to the nuclear space appearing in the rigged Hilbert space, can be continued across the absolutely continuous spectrum; the singularities of the continuation are the same as those of the ''out'' eigenvectors. The free, ''in'' and ''out'' eigenvectors with complex eigenvalues and those corresponding to resonances can be approximated by physical vectors in the Hilbert space, as plane waves can. The need for having some further physical information in addition to the specification of the total Hamiltonian is apparent in the proposed framework. The formalism is applied to the Lee–Friedrichs model and to the scattering of a spinless particle by a local central potential. Journal of Mathematical Physics is copyrighted by The American Institute of Physics.

Pull factors attracting residents to Finnish senior houses

Most elderly Finnish residents prefer to age in place, but some relocate because of push factors that create stress in their current homes and pull factors that attract them to a new dwelling. This survey examines the important pull factors that attract seniors to senior houses. Grocery nearby is the strongest pull factor followed by hospital or medical center and public transportation. A factor analysis reveals that attributes can be grouped into three factors: onsite services that allow the residents to maintain an active lifestyle with some luxury, everyday services and facilities that would enable aging in place, and physical activity facilities. Residents have chosen the type of senior housing that supports their lifestyle. Meanwhile, socioeconomic characteristics do not explain the differences in the types of features that attract residents.

I konstens namn - scenen som arbetsmiljö : Arbetsplatsmobbning ur skådespelarperspektiv

Workplace bullying is a topic of current interest in Finland. Workplace bullying is found in all professions, including the artistic ones. This thesis aims to explore workplace bullying from the view of the Finland-Swedish actors as a phenomenon that within dramatic art is difficult to define due to the fact that the body and emotions of an actor constitute his or her working tools. The research aims to deepen the understanding of the actors’ working situation, and particularly of the difficulties and problems actors face when exercising their job. The research problems are: What forms of bullying are the actors exposed to? Who is bullying? How is the bullying received by the actors, and what are the possible consequences? The theoretical orientation of this thesis is based upon dialogical philosophy where phenomenology, hermeneutics and dialog meet in an orientation where the unseen is emphasized and made visible. Artistic leadership should be based upon a pedagogic understanding that by an open and equal dialog with the Other recognizes human diversity. The narrative research was undertaken by using an interview guide for the interviews with eleven actors, six women and five men with the voice of a sixth man represented by an article. The interviews, each on average 118 minutes, were recorded and transcribed. The method of discursive analysis was initiated by numerous reflective readings based on analytic induction. The inductive part of the analysis consisted of mapping out the individual experiences of bullying where after the process of finding connecting common features in the extensive material took place. The coded data was then deductively grouped together according to the research problems, and subgroups were formed for deeper description. The research findings show that workplace bullying is an everyday occurrence within the field of dramatic art. Actors are bullied by theatre managers and directors as well as by colleagues and other personnel. The main areas of bullying is depreciation of one’s professional skills, the existing jargon, sexual harassment, collective bullying and bullying because of personal qualities. A significant finding concerning this problem was the existing culture of silence. Even if actually seeing and hearing a colleague being bullied, few stood up to defend the person being bullied because of fear of retaliation. Even the person actually being the object for bullying found it difficult to take any actions.

"Valehtelu ei auta, mutta kaikkea ei kannata kertoa." : Kertomatta jättäminen parisuhteen vuorovaikutuskontekstissa

Topic avoidance in romantic relationships has not been researched before in Finnish speech communication research, and this study was expected to increase the understanding of a phenomenon that acquires relatively dramatic attributes in everyday conversation. The aim of this study was to describe topic avoidance based on what was told in the interviews, and to describe the beliefs concerning functional or dysfunctional relational communication that can be interpreted from the interviewees' speech when they talk about topic avoidance. The theoretical reference frame of this study consists of the Communication Privacy Management Theory, relational dialectics, and earlier, mostly American research on topic avoidance. Ten Finnish people aged 22-31, who all had previous experience on one or more marital or common-law relationships were interviewed for this study. Additional material for the study was gathered from the interviewees by using the role playing method to describe interactional events where something essential is left unsaid in the context of romantic relationship. The following values were attributed to functional communication in romantic relationships: openness, equality, honesty, trust and positivity. The dialectical nature of the phenomenon being researched is evident in the way that along with openness, the interviewees talked about excessive openness that should occasionally be avoided in the context of relational communication by leaving things unsaid. Topic avoidance was seen both as a conscious strategic communication for managing privacy, and as an uncontrollable force of nature that at its worst destroys the relationship. When topic avoidance is seen as strategic communication, the choice concerning what is left unsaid is made by weighing the following dimensions asgainst each other: risks/ benefits (for self, relationship), protects/ does not protect (self, partner, relationship), burdens/ does not burden (self, partner, relationship), honesty/ dishonesty, responsibility lies with self/ responsibility does not lie with self. Topic avoidance was acceptable if it was used in order to preserve the relationship, as opposed to gaining power in the relationship or causing insecurity for the partner. The acceptability of topic avoidance varied according to whether it differed from lying or not. When the interviewees talk about topic avoidance, their speech can be interpreted to mean that in spite of uncontrollability, communicative choices can be made in relational communication and that skills concerning communication in romantic relationships can be learned.

Sovelletun rentoutuksen vaikutus psyykkiseen työhyvinvointiin ja sykevaihteluun

Research reveals that more than every fourth Finn experiences work-related exhaustion to some degree. Stress and exhaustion have psychological and physical expressions. The main physical factor in stress is the overloading of the autonomic nervous system, which can be measured for instance by variations of heart rate. Studies show that the work field, management and authority of the work, skill developmental possibilities, and social support inhibit stress overload. The practising of self-relaxation techniques possible inhibits working stress and exhaustion. In this study of preventive rehabilitation, the focus was on the effects of the training of applied relaxation on psychological and physiological variables of stress and empowerment of resources. Participants (n=73) were basically healthy and capable of working, 25-40 of age, workers from the field of mental work. They practised applied relaxation under group conduction for seven weeks. The aim was to learn to relax easily even in everyday occasions. The subjects were tested thirdly. After the first measurement, they were grouped into two groups, of which the first group started the relaxation training. The second group began practising half a year after the second measurement. The third measurement was done one year after the beginning of the study. It was hypothesised that the training of applied relaxation would significantly reduce stress on both psychological and physiological variables and that these variables would correlate positively. Results revealed that the training of applied relaxation reduced psychological stress symptoms rather modestly. The changes were more significant in women, who experienced a slight increase in self-directivity. Physical changes were slight decreases of the sympathetic activation. The correlations of psychological and physiological variables were modest. Some changes were reduced after the active training. There was a positive interrelation between experienced work-related demands of efficiency, insufficient social support and exhaustion. There was a tendency to significance between skill developmental possibilities and psychological stress symptoms. Further implications of the results were discussed.

Kotitaloustaidon ulottuvuuksia : Analyysi kotitaloustaidosta eksistentialistis-hermeneuttisen fenomenologian valossa

DOMESTIC SKILLS AS THE ART OF EVERYDAY LIFE. An inquiry about domestic skills as a way of being-in-the-world in the light of existentialist-hermeneutics phenomenology. This study focuses on analyzing domestic skills in a phenomenological manner. The description phenomenological emerges from the interpretation process, which originates from the ontological question of domestic skills. The ontological question of how domestic skills are directs one s phenomenological gaze to the experiencing of domestic skills, rather than merely viewing their action or technical aspects. Along with the ontological question, the axiological question of what the meaning of domestic skills is drives the analysis. This study is both theoretical and philosophical. Phenomenology is the guiding philosophy, theory and methodology of the inquiry. Existentialist-hermeneutics is the emphasis which most appropriately describes the phenomenological attitude adopted within the analysis. Martin Heidegger s philosophy of being and Maurice Merleau-Ponty s philosophy of the lived body essentially form the theoretical base for the inquiry. The analysis reveals domestic skills within a core of Care and the Other. Care and the Other are anchored both in Heidegger s analysis of Dasein and in Merleau-Ponty s analysis of the reversible being-in-the-world. The social nature of being and the action-oriented intentionality of the lived body are embodied in Care and the Other. This ontological base of domestic skills enables us to see the extensions that inhabit in it. These extensions are redoing, emotional experiencing, adapting and emancipating. The analysis connects ability and action, which is why domestic skills and household activity must be seen as a united whole. This united whole is not the matter of the two components of the phenomenon, but is rather the matter of domestic skills as a way of being-in-the-world. Domestic skills are a channel for the phenomenon Home Economics to manifest in our lives. This is the gaze that presents domestic skills as to be like the poetry of everyday life. The main result of the study is the elucidation of the ontology of domestic skills and the naming of its extensions. This growth of philosophical understanding makes it possible to strengthen the science of home economics.

The development of a component to improve the loading safety of bone-anchored prostheses

Use of socket prostheses Currently, for individuals with limb loss, the conventional method of attaching a prosthetic limb relies on a socket that fits over the residual limb. However, there are a number of issues concerning the use of a socket (e.g., blisters, irritation, and discomfort) that result in dissatisfaction with socket prostheses, and these lead ultimately a significant decrease in quality of life. Bone-anchored prosthesis Alternatively, the concept of attaching artificial limbs directly to the skeletal system has been developed (bone anchored prostheses), as it alleviates many of the issues surrounding the conventional socket interface.Bone anchored prostheses rely on two critical components: the implant, and the percutaneous abutment or adapter, which forms the connection for the external prosthetic system (Figure 1). To date, an implant that screws into the long bone of the residual limb has been the most common intervention. However, more recently, press-fit implants have been introduced and their use is increasing. Several other devices are currently at various stages of development, particularly in Europe and the United States. Benefits of bone-anchored prostheses Several key studies have demonstrated that bone-anchored prostheses have major clinical benefits when compared to socket prostheses (e.g., quality of life, prosthetic use, body image, hip range of motion, sitting comfort, ease of donning and doffing, osseoperception (proprioception), walking ability) and acceptable safety, in terms of implant stability and infection. Additionally, this method of attachment allows amputees to participate in a wide range of daily activities for a substantially longer duration. Overall, the system has demonstrated a significant enhancement to quality of life. Challenges of direct skeletal attachment However, due to the direct skeletal attachment, serious injury and damage can occur through excessive loading events such as during a fall (e.g., component damage, peri-prosthetic fracture, hip dislocation, and femoral head fracture). These incidents are costly (e.g., replacement of components) and could require further surgical interventions. Currently, these risks are limiting the acceptance of bone-anchored technology and the substantial improvement to quality of life that this treatment offers. An in-depth investigation into these risks highlighted a clear need to re-design and improve the componentry in the system (Figure 2), to improve the overall safety during excessive loading events. Aim and purposes The ultimate aim of this doctoral research is to improve the loading safety of bone-anchored prostheses, to reduce the incidence of injury and damage through the design of load restricting components, enabling individuals fitted with the system to partake in everyday activities, with increased security and self-assurance. The safety component will be designed to release or ‘fail’ external to the limb, in a way that protects the internal bone-implant interface, thus removing the need for restorative surgery and potential damage to the bone. This requires detailed knowledge of the loads typically experienced by the limb and an understanding of potential overload situations that might occur. Hence, a comprehensive review of the loading literature surrounding bone anchored prostheses will be conducted as part of this project, with the potential for additional experimental studies of the loads during normal activities to fill in gaps in the literature. This information will be pivotal in determining the specifications for the properties of the safety component, and the bone-implant system. The project will follow the Stanford Biodesign process for the development of the safety component.