What’s in it for me? Incentivizing the use of institutional repositories

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Towards multi bibliographic format support in Invenio

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

DSpace REST API: an Interface for Reusing DSpace Content, and Practical Applications

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Estrutura foliar de Aechmea Ruiz & Pav. subgênero Lamprococcus (Beer) Baker e espécies relacionadas (Bromeliaceae)

Com o objetivo de colaborar na delimitação taxonômica de Aechmea, subgênero Lamprococcus, foram estudadas as folhas de 25 táxons morfologicamente relacionados entre si (13 de Aechmea, três de Ronnbergia E. Morren & André, quatro de Araeococcus Brongn. e cinco de Lymania Read). Apesar das folhas serem todas hipoestomáticas e possuírem mesofilo dorsiventral portador de hipoderme, elas exibem características que podem ser utilizadas na delimitação de cada representante. Essas características incluem: posição dos estômatos na superfície foliar, presença ou não de oclusão nas câmaras subestomáticas, ocorrência ou não de grupos de fibras dispersos no mesofilo, natureza da parede das células que compõem as bainhas e extensões dos feixes vasculares e morfologia das células dos diafragmas, que interrompem os canais de aeração. A distribuição desses caracteres, nos diferentes táxons, permitiu elaborar uma chave de identificação, com base apenas na estrutura foliar.

Työnantajan oikeus lukea työntekijän sähköposteja

Sähköpostin käyttö suomalaisilla työpaikoilla on kasvanut merkittävästi 2000 -luvun alusta lähtien. Tänä päivänä suuri osa työntekijöistä käyttää työpaikoillaan sähköpostia päivittäin. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tutkia työnantajan oikeutta lukea työntekijän sähköposteja. Edellisen lisäksi huomio kiinnittyi työntekijän yksityisyyden suojaan sekä työnantajan oikeuksiin ja velvollisuuksiin. Tutkimukseni on toteutettu kvalitatiivisena tutkimuksena. Tutkimusaineistoon valittiin kaikki tutkimusaihetta koskevat kirjoitukset. Aineisto kerättiin pääasiallisesti suomalaisista lakiteksteistä sekä tutkielmani empiirinen osio koostui neljästä suomalaisesta oikeustapauksesta. Tutkimuksen perusteella voidaan todeta, että Suomessa työnantajat osaavat kunnioittaa työntekijän yksityisyyttä ja sähköpostin käytöstä työpaikoilla ei ole usein syntynyt ongelmia.

Serial blood pressure measurements

The objective of the present investigation was to study the effects of a 60-s interval of venous congestion between two noninvasive measurements of arterial blood pressure (ABP) on the fluctuation of ABP, assessed by the standard deviation of the differences between two readings. ABP was measured in 345 successive patients, at rest, four times each. For 269 participants, one pair of readings was obtained with a 60-s interval and the other pair without an interval. For 76 patients, the first pair was read at the same interval, and the second pair had venous congestion interposed and there was no waiting interval. There was no increased ABP oscillation, either when there was no interval between ABP readings, or when venous congestion was interposed compared to pairs of ABP measurements performed with a 60-s interval. There was no increase in ABP oscillations when successive ABP readings were taken without an interval or even with venous congestion interposed. Contrary to the present belief, there seems to be no loss of reliability when blood pressure recordings are taken immediately one after another, in the clinical setting.

Trilling race : the political economy of racialised visual-aural encounters

This thesis investigates the matter of race in the context of Finnish language acquisition among adult migrants in Finland. Here matter denotes both the materiality of race and how race comes to matter. Drawing primarily on an auto/ethno/graphic account of learning the Finnish language as a participant in the Finnish for foreigners classes, this thesis problematises the ontology and epistemology of race, i.e., what race is, how it is known, and what an engagement with race entails. Taking cues from the bodily practices of learning the Finnish trill or the rolling r, this study proposes a notion of “trilling race” and argues for an onto-epistemological dis/continuity that marks race’s arrival. The notion of dis/continuity reworks the distinction between continuity and discontinuity, and asks about the how of the arrival of any identity, the where, and the when. In so doing, an analysis of “trilling race” engages with one of the major problematics that has exercised much critical attention, namely: how to read race differently. That is, to rethink the conundrum of the need to counter “representational weight” (Puar 2007, 191) of race on the one hand, and to account for the racialised lived realities on the other. The link between a study of the phenomenon of host country language acquisition and an examination of the question of race is not as obvious as it might seem. For example, what does the argument that the process of language learning is racialised actually imply? Does it mean that race, as a process of racialisation or an ongoing configuration of sets of power relations, exerts force from an outside on the otherwise neutral process of learning the host country language? Or does it mean that race, as an identity category, presents as among the analytical perspectives, along with gender and class for instance, of the phenomenon of host country language acquisition? With these questions in mind, and to foreground the examination of the question of race in the context of Finnish language acquisition among adult migrants, this thesis opens with a discussion of the art installation Finnexia by Lisa Erdman. Finnexia is a fictitious drug said to facilitate Finnish language learning through accelerating the cognitive learning process and reducing the anxiety of speaking the Finnish language. Not only does the Finnexia installation make visible the ways in which the lack of skill in Finnish is fgured as the threshold – a border that separates the inside from the outside – to integration, but also, and importantly, it raises questions about the nature of difference, and the process of differentiation that separates the individual from the social, fact from fiction, nature from culture. These puzzles animate much of the analysis in this dissertation. These concerns continue to be addressed in the rest of part one. Whereas chapter two offers a reconsideration of the ambiguities of ethnisme/ethnicity and race, chapter three dilates on the methodological implications of a conception of the dis/continuity of race. Part two focuses on the matter of race and examines the political economy of visual-aural encounters, whereas part three shifts the focus and rethinks the possibilities and limitations of transforming racialised and normative constraints. Taking up these particular problematics, this thesis as a whole argues that race trills itself: its identity/difference is simultaneously made possible and impossible.

Taloushallinnon raportoinnin kehittäminen - case Trust Accounts

Taloushallinnon raportoinnilla on merkittävä tehtävä yritysten liiketoiminnan johtamisessa. Se antaa tietoa paitsi yrityksen menneisyydestä ja tämän hetkisestä tilanteesta, sen avulla on myös mahdollista ennustaa tulevaisuutta. Taloushallinnon tiedolla on tärkeä rooli, koska sitä hyödynnetään esimerkiksi päätöksenteon tukena. Raporttien sisältämä tieto on oltava paitsi oikeaa ja yritykselle tärkeää, sen on oltava myös helposti luettavissa ja ymmärrettävissä. Raporttien luettavuutta ja lukijoiden raporttien lukutaitoa parantamalla on mahdollista saada yritykset hyödyntämään raportteja entistä enemmän. Jos yritykset eivät osaa lukea raportteja, eivät he niitä tule myöskään hyödyntämään liiketoimintansa johtamisessa. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tavoitteena oli antaa toimeksiantajayritykselle kehitysideoita asiakasyrityksiltä siitä, kuinka he voisivat parantaa taloushallinnon raportointia. Tutkimus on toteutettu laadullisena, eli kvalitatiivisena tutkimuksena. Tutkimusmenetelmänä on käytetty haastattelua, joka sisältää piirteitä sekä strukturoidusta että puolistrukturoidusta haastattelusta. Tutkimuksen tuloksena toimeksiantajayritykselle on koottu taulukkoon (1) asiakasyritysten haastatteluista saadut kehitysideat. Kehitysideoiden avulla toimeksiantajayritys voi kehittää omia raportointivälineitään ja sitä kautta lisätä asiakastyytyväisyyttä heidän tilitoimistoa kohtaan

Jöns Budde och hans skrifter – yngre fornsvenskt textmaterial och mannen bakom det

Tutkielman aiheena on kieli ja tyyli Jöns Budden latinasta muinaisruotsiksi kääntämissä teksteissä. Tarkoituksena on tutkia, millaisia tekstejä Budde käänsi ja missä tarkoituksessa. Lisäksi tutkin kielikontakteja latinaan ja saksaan sekä Buddea henkilönä hänen tuotantonsa valossa. Arvioin myös aiempien Buddeen liittyvien hypoteesien paikkansapitävyyttä. Materiaali käsittää kaikki tekstit, joiden yleisesti oletetaan olevan Budden kääntämiä. Osa on anonyymejä, mutta niiden yhteys Buddeen on erittäin todennäköinen. Aineisto käsittää noin 1350 sivua painetuissa editioissa. Tutkimus on materiaalilähtöistä: tarkan tekstinluvun ja teksti-interpretaation kautta olen kiinnittänyt huomioni erilaisiin etupäässä tyylillisiin seikkoihin, joita kommentoin ottaen huomioon kulttuurihistoriallisen kontekstin. Tutkimus kohdistuu kielenkäyttöön tietyssä konkreettisessa materiaalissa eli tarkastelun kohteina ovat parole ja synkronia ensisijaisemmin kuin diakronia ja langue eli kieli systeeminä ja resurssina. Metodina on siten filologinen teksti-interpretaatio, ja tutkimus on kommentaari Budden teksteihin. Keskeinen tulos on, että Budde on tietoinen stilisti, joka käyttää kieliopin ja stilistiikan keinoja sisällöllisten asioiden painottamiseen ja dramatisointiin. Budden tyyli-ihanteilla on suureksi osaksi esikuvia latinassa, mutta Budde ei noudata niitä orjallisen sokeasti, vaan on itsenäinen alkuteksteihin nähden. Toinen merkittävä tulos liittyy Budden kääntämien Raamatun kirjojen tarkoitukseen. Käsitykseni mukaan niitä ei ole tarkoitettu luettaviksi sellaisenaan, vaan apuvälineiksi luettaessa varsinaista pyhää kirjaa eli Vulgataa latinaksi. Tekstien tekijyyteen liittyvät aiemmat hypoteesit saavat tukea tutkimuksestani, kun taas Budden aristokraattisiin yhteyksiin ja hänen mahdollisiin opintoihinsa Saksassa liittyvät hypoteesit osoittautuvat liian rohkeiksi ottaen huomioon säilyneiden lähteiden niukkuuden.

The Brazilian consumer's understanding and perceptions of organic vegetables: a Focus Group approach

Focus Group is a tool which generates, through interview sessions with a small number of participants, preliminary data to be used in subsequent quantitative stages. Many consumer studies use qualitative research with the aim of obtaining information and opinions on a specific product or situation. The objective of the present study was to obtain knowledge on the opinion, understanding and perception of the Brazilian consumer with respect to vegetables, focusing on organic products, using Focus Group Sessions. Four Focus Group Sessions were held with men and women in different environments, following a previously elaborated interview guide. In this study, it was observed that the consumers demonstrated being interested in having a healthy diet, based on fruit, vegetables and natural products. However, only a few declared consuming organic foods. Some participants did not know what the term organic meant, and most of them think that organic products are still very expensive, are not easily available in the supermarkets, do not have a good appearance, mainly in terms of size and packaging, and their certification is not always trustworthy. Almost all participants stated that they read package labels and among the items most observed were best-before date, nutritional information, production system and price. This study has identified important vegetable attributes perceived by the consumer, favouring the planning of a subsequent quantitative research. The results suggest that more information on the benefits of organic agriculture has to be passed on to consumers in order to contribute to a higher consumption of such products.

A novel procedure to measure the antioxidant capacity of Yerba maté extracts

Yerba maté extracts have in vitro antioxidant capacity attributed to the presence of polyphenolic compounds, mainly chlorogenic acids and dicaffeoylquinic acid derivatives. DPPH is one of the most used assays to measure the antioxidant capacity of pure compounds and plant extracts. It is difficult to compare the results between studies because this assay is applied in too many different conditions by the different research groups. Thus, in order to assess the antioxidant capacity of yerba maté extracts, the following procedure is proposed: 100 µL of an aqueous dilution of the extracts is mixed in duplicate with 3.0 mL of a DPPH 'work solution in absolute methanol (100 µM.L-1), with an incubation time of 120 minutes in darkness at 37 ± 1 °C, and then absorbance is read at 517 nm against absolute methanol. The results should be expressed as ascorbic acid equivalents or Trolox equivalents in mass percentage (g% dm, dry matter) in order to facilitate comparisons. The AOC of the ethanolic extracts ranged between 12.8 and 23.1 g TE % dm and from 9.1 to 16.4 g AAE % dm. The AOC determined by the DPPH assay proposed in the present study can be related to the total polyphenolic content determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu assay.

Language-specific aspects of reading acquisition: the case of Russian

We have investigated Russian children’s reading acquisition during an intermediate period in their development: after literacy onset, but before they have acquired well-developed decoding skills. The results of our study suggest that Russian first graders rely primarily on phonemes and syllables as reading grain-size units. Phonemic awareness seems to have reached the metalinguistic level more rapidly than syllabic awareness after the onset of reading instruction, the reversal which is typical for the initial stages of formal reading instruction creating external demand for phonemic awareness. Another reason might be the inherent instability of syllabic boundaries in Russian. We have shown that body-coda is a more natural representation of subsyllabic structure in Russian than onset-rime. We also found that Russian children displayed variability of syllable onset and offset decisions which can be attributed to the lack of congruence between syllabic and morphemic word division in Russian. We suggest that fuzziness of syllable boundary decisions is a sign of the transitional nature of this stage in the reading development and it indicates progress towards an awareness of morphologically determined closed syllables. Our study also showed that orthographic complexity exerts an influence on reading in Russian from the very start of reading acquisition. Besides, we found that Russian first graders experience fluency difficulties in reading orthographically simple words and nonwords of two and more syllables. The transition from monosyllabic to bisyllabic lexical items constitutes a certain threshold, for which the syllabic structure seemed to be of no difference. When we compared the outcomes of the Russian children with the ones produced by speakers of other languages, we discovered that in the tasks which could be performed with the help of alphabetic recoding Russian children’s accuracy was comparable to that of children learning to read in relatively shallow orthographies. In tasks where this approach works only partially, Russian children demonstrated accuracy results similar to those in deeper orthographies. This pattern of moderate results in accuracy and excellent performance in terms of reaction times is an indication that children apply phonological recoding as their dominant strategy to various reading tasks and are only beginning to develop suitable multiple strategies in dealing with orthographically complex material. The development of these strategies is not completed during Grade 1 and the shift towards diversification of strategies apparently continues in Grade 2.

Grammatikdidaktik: Svensk grammatik och språklig medvetenhet i några läromedel för grundskolans första årskurser

Mitt övergripande forskningsintresse är grammatikdidaktik, medan det explicita syftet med denna licentiatavhandling är att erhålla ny kunskap om grammatikdidaktik så som den synliggörs i nutida läromedel för grundskolans första årskurser. Den empiriska undersökningen är gjord i tre nutida läromedelspaket avsedda för undervisning i skolämnet modersmål och litteratur i årskurs ett och två, läromedlen som undersöks är de finlandssvenska serierna Läseboken och Litteraturboken samt den sverigesvenska serien Kom och läs! Bland resultaten kan nämnas att det finns ett brett spektrum av nivåer av extern grammatik i alla de undersökta läromedelspaketen. Den fonologiska och syntaktiska medvetenheten, vilka bägge är viktiga för läs- och skrivutvecklingen i de diskuterade årskurserna, satsas på i alla tre läromedelspaket. Det jag dock också märkt i läromedlen som kan påverka läs- och skrivutvecklingen är att andelen belägg för grafonomi är större i årskurs två än i årskurs ett. Härigenom får eleverna på detta sätt småningom växa in i en skriftkultur. Det finns betydligt fler muntliga uppgifter i lärarhandledningarna till serierna Litteraturboken och Kom och läs! än i Läseboken. Det exakta ”hur” står inte alltid utskrivet i lärarhandledningarna, men de flesta gånger verkar tanken vara att det rör sig om diskussioner eller andra muntliga genrer. I många fall känns de muntliga uppgifterna mer funktionella än skriftliga uppgifter som inte verkar vara helt genomtänkta. Att mitt material innehåller fler funktionella uppgifter i lärarhandledningar och fler formalistiska eller delvis funktionella uppgifter i arbetsböcker överensstämmer med att lärarhandledningar kan vara en bättre väg för att öka elevernas kunskapssökande och minska förmedlingspedagogiken.

University students’ regulation of learning and text processing – examples from medical and teacher education

The general aim of the thesis was to study university students’ learning from the perspective of regulation of learning and text processing. The data were collected from the two academic disciplines of medical and teacher education, which share the features of highly scheduled study, a multidisciplinary character, a complex relationship between theory and practice and a professional nature. Contemporary information society poses new challenges for learning, as it is not possible to learn all the information needed in a profession during a study programme. Therefore, it is increasingly important to learn how to think and learn independently, how to recognise gaps in and update one’s knowledge and how to deal with the huge amount of constantly changing information. In other words, it is critical to regulate one’s learning and to process text effectively. The thesis comprises five sub-studies that employed cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs and multiple methods, from surveys to eye tracking. Study I examined the connections between students’ study orientations and the ways they regulate their learning. In total, 410 second-, fourth- and sixth-year medical students from two Finnish medical schools participated in the study by completing a questionnaire measuring both general study orientations and regulation strategies. The students were generally deeply oriented towards their studies. However, they regulated their studying externally. Several interesting and theoretically reasonable connections between the variables were found. For instance, self-regulation was positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation and was negatively correlated with non-commitment. However, external regulation was likewise positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation but also with surface orientation and systematic orientation. It is argued that external regulation might function as an effective coping strategy in the cognitively loaded medical curriculum. Study II focused on medical students’ regulation of learning and their conceptions of the learning environment in an innovative medical course where traditional lectures were combined wth problem-based learning (PBL) group work. First-year medical and dental students (N = 153) completed a questionnaire assessing their regulation strategies of learning and views about the PBL group work. The results indicated that external regulation and self-regulation of the learning content were the most typical regulation strategies among the participants. In line with previous studies, self-regulation wasconnected with study success. Strictly organised PBL sessions were not considered as useful as lectures, although the students’ views of the teacher/tutor and the group were mainly positive. Therefore, developers of teaching methods are challenged to think of new solutions that facilitate reflection of one’s learning and that improve the development of self-regulation. In Study III, a person-centred approach to studying regulation strategies was employed, in contrast to the traditional variable-centred approach used in Study I and Study II. The aim of Study III was to identify different regulation strategy profiles among medical students (N = 162) across time and to examine to what extent these profiles predict study success in preclinical studies. Four regulation strategy profiles were identified, and connections with study success were found. Students with the lowest self-regulation and with an increasing lack of regulation performed worse than the other groups. As the person-centred approach enables us to individualise students with diverse regulation patterns, it could be used in supporting student learning and in facilitating the early diagnosis of learning difficulties. In Study IV, 91 student teachers participated in a pre-test/post-test design where they answered open-ended questions about a complex science concept both before and after reading either a traditional, expository science text or a refutational text that prompted the reader to change his/her beliefs according to scientific beliefs about the phenomenon. The student teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their regulation and processing strategies. The results showed that the students’ understanding improved after text reading intervention and that refutational text promoted understanding better than the traditional text. Additionally, regulation and processing strategies were found to be connected with understanding the science phenomenon. A weak trend showed that weaker learners would benefit more from the refutational text. It seems that learners with effective learning strategies are able to pick out the relevant content regardless of the text type, whereas weaker learners might benefit from refutational parts that contrast the most typical misconceptions with scientific views. The purpose of Study V was to use eye tracking to determine how third-year medical studets (n = 39) and internal medicine residents (n = 13) read and solve patient case texts. The results revealed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts; compared to the students, the residents were more accurate in their diagnoses and processed the texts significantly faster and with a lower number of fixations. Different reading patterns were also found. The observed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts could be used in medical education to model expert reasoning and to teach how a good medical text should be constructed. The main findings of the thesis indicate that even among very selected student populations, such as high-achieving medical students or student teachers, there seems to be a lot of variation in regulation strategies of learning and text processing. As these learning strategies are related to successful studying, students enter educational programmes with rather different chances of managing and achieving success. Further, the ways of engaging in learning seldom centre on a single strategy or approach; rather, students seem to combine several strategies to a certain degree. Sometimes, it can be a matter of perspective of which way of learning can be considered best; therefore, the reality of studying in higher education is often more complicated than the simplistic view of self-regulation as a good quality and external regulation as a harmful quality. The beginning of university studies may be stressful for many, as the gap between high school and university studies is huge and those strategies that were adequate during high school might not work as well in higher education. Therefore, it is important to map students’ learning strategies and to encourage them to engage in using high-quality learning strategies from the beginning. Instead of separate courses on learning skills, the integration of these skills into course contents should be considered. Furthermore, learning complex scientific phenomena could be facilitated by paying attention to high-quality learning materials and texts and other support from the learning environment also in the university. Eye tracking seems to have great potential in evaluating performance and growing diagnostic expertise in text processing, although more research using texts as stimulus is needed. Both medical and teacher education programmes and the professions themselves are challenging in terms of their multidisciplinary nature and increasing amounts of information and therefore require good lifelong learning skills during the study period and later in work life.

Utstillingens retorikk : et bidrag til en retorisk didaktikk for kunst og håndverk

The topic of this dissertation is the didactic exhibition in the Arts and Crafts subject. Exhibiting student work and art and form culture is part of a long professional tradition in the field. Yet, exhibition as form and as a way of learning are inadequately explored and debated. The didactic problem area of the thesis, where studies of formative practices are central, place it within the research field of Educational Slojd. The didactic standpoint and main theoretical perspective relate the project to the Arts didactics research field at the University College of Bergen where the aim is to develop an alternative didactics thinking for the arts; a rhetoric arts didactics. Didactic focus is shifted from the relationship between teacher – pupil – teaching materials, to studies of how knowledge is formulated in specific practices. The thesis has a premise that every exhibition has its own rhetoric and that didactics is inscribed in this rhetoric in the broadest and cultural sense. Through impulses from classical rhetoric and recent text theory, the thesis challenges the Arts and Crafts’s own idiom, its theoretical foundation and didactic grasp such as shown in the discourse established by the discipline and its specific exhibitive practices, as well as studying the relationship between verbal language and the discipline’s own register. The overall objective is to develop knowledge about exhibition rhetoric and its potential as a knowledge and learning arena in this field, and thereby contribute to developing a rhetoric didactics for the Arts and Crafts subject. This raises questions such as: How is an exhibition considered to be used and understood in the subject’s didactics texts and texts about didactics? How do different exhibition spaces inscribe conditions for exhibition work? How can a rhetoric perspective of didactics make aspects of an exhibition’s form register visible and contribute to knowledge of the creative processes in an exhibition? How do some selected exhibitions inscribe creativity and learning? What can a rhetoric perspective bring to the Arts and Crafts? A rhetoric didactics perspective includes knowledge of the tradition. A historical-ideological overview traces how exhibition, of both pupil/student work and of art and form culture, are used and considered as used in the discipline over time. This part can be read separately, but in this thesis, is primarily conceived as a backdrop for the development of the dissertation’s main rhetoric perspective. The empirical data are collected from my teacher training institution and consist of specific exhibition spaces and practices, of which my own production of two exhibitions can link the research to artistic development work. A rhetoric didactics is concrete, specific and contextual. The rhetoric readings are descriptive and show how culture and nature, temporality, materiality and technology are inscribed in the exhibition’s form. Didactic reflection develops from, and close to, the rhetoric readings of the exhibition’s form and content to finally arrive at a rhetorical concept for creativity and learning.