A year after Crimea: continuity and change of Finnish-Russian relations reflected in the views of the government officials of Finland and Russia

This thesis discusses the dynamism of bilateral relations between Finland and Russia and their interconnection with wider EU-Russia relations in the sight of the recent conflict in Ukraine. In particular, incorporation of Crimea in the territory of Russia in March 2014 is believed to have triggered a series of disputes between the European Union and Russia and thus, have impacted the course of the bilateral Finnish-Russian relations. The study leans on a premise that there are some historical traditions and regularities in the Finnish foreign policy course towards Russia which make the bilateral Finnish-Russian relations special. These traditions are distinguished and described in the book “Russia Forever? Towards Pragmatism in Finnish/Russian relations” (2008) edited by H. Rytövuori-Apunen. Assuming that the featured traditions take place in modern relations between Finland and Russia, the aim of the thesis is to find out how these traditions reappear during the year shaped by the events in Ukraine. In order to do that, author follows the timeline of happenings around the Ukraine crisis starting with Crimea’s referendum on independence, and exams the way these events were commented on and evaluated by the key government officials and political institutions of Finland and Russia. The main focus is given to the Finnish official discourse on Russia during the study period. The data collection, consisting of mostly primary sources (ministerial press releases and comments, statements, speeches and blog posts of individual policy makers) is processed using the thematic analysis supported by the content analysis. The study reveals that the consequences of the Ukraine crisis have brought, among others, complications to the economic cooperation between Finland and Russia, and have stimulated the increased attention of the Finnish decision makers to the country’s security questions. As a result, the character and importance of some historical regularities of the Finnish foreign policies on Russia, like the Continental Dilemma, have taken new shape.

Commercial blog communication and brand image

The aim of this thesis was to examine whether company initiated commercial communication in personal blogs has an effect on consumers’ brand image. A detailed picture of the main topics was built based on the previous academic literature. The study explores how sponsored and company-initiated blog postings influence consumers’ brand image with a qualitative research. A framework defines the link between the main concepts of commercial blog communication and how this can be used in order to reach positive results in relation to consumers’ brand image. The findings of this study demonstrate that if the tech-savvy consumers consider that the commercial blog communication is genuine and the blogger stands behind the recommendation of the blog posting, it will result on a more positive brand image. However, if the consumers consider the content of the blog posting to be too controlled by the company, it is automatically seen as an advertisement instead of a recommendation by someone trustworthy. The company-controlled commercial blog communication without presenting the personality of the blogger has negative effects on brand image.

Detection of Epilepsy with a Commercial EEG Headband

Epilepsy is a chronic brain disorder, characterized by reoccurring seizures. Automatic sei-zure detector, incorporated into a mobile closed-loop system, can improve the quality of life for the people with epilepsy. Commercial EEG headbands, such as Emotiv Epoc, have a potential to be used as the data acquisition devices for such a system. In order to estimate that potential, epileptic EEG signals from the commercial devices were emulated in this work based on the EEG data from a clinical dataset. The emulated characteristics include the referencing scheme, the set of electrodes used, the sampling rate, the sample resolution and the noise level. Performance of the existing algorithm for detection of epileptic seizures, developed in the context of clinical data, has been evaluated on the emulated commercial data. The results show, that after the transformation of the data towards the characteristics of Emotiv Epoc, the detection capabilities of the algorithm are mostly preserved. The ranges of acceptable changes in the signal parameters are also estimated.

Le Petit Hyérois : Littéraire, artistique, mondain, agricole, commercial, industriel et sportif, organe hebdomadaire illustré ["puis" Liste officielle des étrangers, hebdomadaire illustré à grand tirage]...

1910.

Americ Vespuce : 1451-1512 : sa biographie, sa vie, ses voyages, ses découvertes, l'attribution de son nom à l'Amérique, ses relations authentiques et contestées / par Henry Vignaud,...

Collection : Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la géographie depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIe siècle ; 23

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1870/01/15 (A15,N324)-1870/01/17.

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1935/04/05 (N2055).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1870/08/04 (A15,N344).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1936/12/05 (N2115).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1870/08/25 (A15,N347).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1937/06/15 (N2134).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1934/03/25 (N2018).

Le Canal de Suez : journal maritime et commercial

1939/03/15 (N2197).