The Vexing Case of Igor Shafarevich, a Russian Political Thinker

The Russian mathematician, academician and former dissident Igor Shafarevich (b. 1923) is commonly mentioned in Western scholarly studies on perestroika and post-perestroika-era Russian politics as one of the most notable anti-Semites and extreme nationalists of the country. This notoriety owes to Shafarevich’s old samizdat article Russophobia, which was published in 1988. The scandal surrounding Russophobia came to a head when the president of The National Academy of Sciences in the United States asked Shafarevich, its honorary member, to resign. Nothing like this had ever happened in the academy’s history. The present dissertation discusses Shafarevich’s political activities, his texts and ideas as well as their reception. Particular attention is given to Russophobia, whose detailed examination proves very clearly that its reputation as an anti-Semitic text is groundless. The reasons for Russophobia’s hasty but fierce condemnation were many, but only one was that when the Soviet system began to tumble, it was commonly assumed that a vigorous rise in anti-Semitism and extreme nationalism in the Soviet Union/Russia would be just a matter of time. Many observers were highly sensitised to detecting its signs and symptoms. The dissertation also shows that most of those to write the first criticisms of Russophobia and to liken Shafarevich to the ideologues of Nazi Germany were the same people he had criticised in Russophobia for their deterministic view of history and irrational manner of connecting things for the purpose of fanning the flames of distrust between Russia’s Jews and Russians. In retrospect, it is fairly evident that Shafarevich actually managed to effectively “neutralise” the message of many of those obsessed with the Jews among his Russian contemporaries and contributed to the fact that anti-Jewish sentiments have been a great deal less popular in post-communist Russia than so many had feared and expected. The thesis also thoroughly discusses Shafarevich’s other texts and activities before Russophobia’s appearance and after it. In the 1970s, Shafarevich was one of the best-known dissidents in the Soviet Union. He worked together with academician Andrei Sakharov in a dissidents’ unofficial human rights committee and co-operated closely with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn before Solzhenitsyn’s exile. Then, during the chaotic years of perestroika, Shafarevich defended the basic rights of ordinary citizens and warned that the hype concerning democracy could become counterproductive if the most palpable result of the reforms was the disappearance of citizens’ basic security and elementary social justice. One of the conclusions of the thesis is that even if the world around Shafarevich has changed considerably, his views have remained essentially the same since the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Bioavailability and toxicity of chemicals in inland waters : the importance of prevailing water chemistry and implications for risk assessment

Physicochemical characterization of freshwater samples from Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain revealed that water hardness and pH decreased and the quantity and quality of humic substances changed considerably in this geographical series from south to north. Since the ambient water chemistry may affect the availability of chemicals, the total aqueous concentration of a chemical may be insufficient to predict the bioconcentration, subsequent biological response, and thus risk. In addition, organisms could be affected directly by water quality characteristics. In this context the main objective of this thesis was to investigate the bioavailability of selected ecotoxicologically relevant chemicals (cadmium, benzo(a)pyrene, and pyrene) in various European surface waters and to show the importance of certain water chemistry characteristics in interpreting the bioavailability and toxicity results. The bioavailability of cadmium to Daphnia magna was examined in very soft humic lake water. Humic substances as natural ligands decreased the free and bioavailable proportion of cadmium in soft lake water. As a consequence the uptake rate and the acute toxicity decreased compared with the humic-free reference. When the hardness of humic lake water was artificially elevated, the acute toxicity of cadmium decreased, although the proportion of free cadmium increased. The decreased bioavailability of cadmium in hard water was a result of effective competition for uptake by the hardness cations, especially calcium ions. The protective role of humic substances and water hardness against cadmium toxicity was also observed in Lumbriculus variegatus, although D. magna was more sensitive to cadmium. The bioavailability of two polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene, was studied in European surface waters of varying water chemistry. Humic substances acted as complexing ligands with both PAHs, but the bioavailability of the more lipophilic benzo(a)pyrene to D. magna was affected more by humic substances than that of pyrene. In addition, not only the quantity of humic substances, but also their quality affected the bioavailability of benzo(a)pyrene. Nevertheless, the humic substances played a protective role in the photo-enhanced toxicity of pyrene under UV-B radiation. Water hardness had no effect on pyrene toxicity. Results indicate that the typical physicochemical characteristics of boreal freshwaters should be considered carefully in local and regional risk assessment of chemicals concerning the Fennoscandian region.

Microbial communities in Pb contaminated boreal forest soil

Lead contamination in the environment is of particular concern, as it is a known toxin. Until recently, however, much less attention has been given to the local contamination caused by activities at shooting ranges compared to large-scale industrial contamination. In Finland, more than 500 tons of Pb is produced each year for shotgun ammunition. The contaminant threatens various organisms, ground water and the health of human populations. However, the forest at shooting ranges usually shows no visible sign of stress compared to nearby clean environments. The aboveground biota normally reflects the belowground ecosystem. Thus, the soil microbial communities appear to bear strong resistance to contamination, despite the influence of lead. The studies forming this thesis investigated a shooting range site at Hälvälä in Southern Finland, which is heavily contaminated by lead pellets. Previously it was experimentally shown that the growth of grasses and degradation of litter are retarded. Measurements of acute toxicity of the contaminated soil or soil extracts gave conflicting results, as enchytraeid worms used as toxicity reporters were strongly affected, while reporter bacteria showed no or very minor decreases in viability. Measurements using sensitive inducible luminescent reporter bacteria suggested that the bioavailability of lead in the soil is indeed low, and this notion was supported by the very low water extractability of the lead. Nevertheless, the frequency of lead-resistant cultivable bacteria was elevated based on the isolation of cultivable strains. The bacterial and fungal diversity in heavily lead contaminated shooting sectors were compared with those of pristine sections of the shooting range area. The bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal ITS rRNA gene were amplified, cloned and sequenced using total DNA extracted from the soil humus layer as the template. Altogether, 917 sequenced bacterial clones and 649 sequenced fungal clones revealed a high soil microbial diversity. No effect of lead contamination was found on bacterial richness or diversity, while fungal richness and diversity significantly differed between lead contaminated and clean control areas. However, even in the case of fungi, genera that were deemed sensitive were not totally absent from the contaminated area: only their relative frequency was significantly reduced. Some operational taxonomic units (OTUs) assigned to Basidiomycota were clearly affected, and were much rarer in the lead contaminated areas. The studies of this thesis surveyed EcM sporocarps, analyzed morphotyped EcM root tips by direct sequencing, and 454-pyrosequenced fungal communities in in-growth bags. A total of 32 EcM fungi that formed conspicuous sporocarps, 27 EcM fungal OTUs from 294 root tips, and 116 EcM fungal OTUs from a total of 8 194 ITS2 454 sequences were recorded. The ordination analyses by non-parametric multidimensional scaling (NMS) indicated that Pb enrichment induced a shift in the EcM community composition. This was visible as indicative trends in the sporocarp and root tip datasets, but explicitly clear in the communities observed in the in-growth bags. The compositional shift in the EcM community was mainly attributable to an increase in the frequencies of OTUs assigned to the genus Thelephora, and to a decrease in the OTUs assigned to Pseudotomentella, Suillus and Tylospora in Pb-contaminated areas when compared to the control. The enrichment of Thelephora in contaminated areas was also observed when examining the total fungal communities in soil using DNA cloning and sequencing technology. While the compositional shifts are clear, their functional consequences for the dominant trees or soil ecosystem remain undetermined. The results indicate that at the Hälvälä shooting range, lead influences the fungal communities but not the bacterial communities. The forest ecosystem shows apparent functional redundancy, since no significant effects were seen on forest trees. Recently, by means of 454 pyrosequencing , the amount of sequences in a single analysis run can be up to one million. It has been applied in microbial ecology studies to characterize microbial communities. The handling of sequence data with traditional programs is becoming difficult and exceedingly time consuming, and novel tools are needed to handle the vast amounts of data being generated. The field of microbial ecology has recently benefited from the availability of a number of tools for describing and comparing microbial communities using robust statistical methods. However, although these programs provide methods for rapid calculation, it has become necessary to make them more amenable to larger datasets and numbers of samples from pyrosequencing. As part of this thesis, a new program was developed, MuSSA (Multi-Sample Sequence Analyser), to handle sequence data from novel high-throughput sequencing approaches in microbial community analyses. The greatest advantage of the program is that large volumes of sequence data can be manipulated, and general OTU series with a frequency value can be calculated among a large number of samples.

Microsphere Bouquets of Bismuth Telluride Nanoplates: Room-Temperature Synthesis and Thermoelectric Properties

We report the synthesis and properties of sphere-shaped microscale aggregates of bismuth telluride nanoplates. We obtain porous microspheres by reducing bismuth chloride and orthotelluric acid with hydrazine in the presence of thioglycolic acid-which serves as the shape-and size-directing agent-followed by room-temperature aging-which promotes nanoplate aggregation. Thin film assemblies of the nanoplate microspheres exhibit n-type behavior due to sulfur doping and a Seebeck coefficient higher than that reported for assemblies of chalcogenide nanostructures. Adaptation of our scalable approach to synthesize and hierarchically assemble nanostructures with controlled doping could be attractive for tailoring novel thermoelectric materials for applications in high-efficiency refrigeration and harvesting electricity from heat.

Molecular line and continuum studies of the early stages of star formation

New stars form in dense interstellar clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. The actual sites where the process of star formation takes place are the dense clumps and cores deeply embedded in molecular clouds. The details of the star formation process are complex and not completely understood. Thus, determining the physical and chemical properties of molecular cloud cores is necessary for a better understanding of how stars are formed. Some of the main features of the origin of low-mass stars, like the Sun, are already relatively well-known, though many details of the process are still under debate. The mechanism through which high-mass stars form, on the other hand, is poorly understood. Although it is likely that the formation of high-mass stars shares many properties similar to those of low-mass stars, the very first steps of the evolutionary sequence are unclear. Observational studies of star formation are carried out particularly at infrared, submillimetre, millimetre, and radio wavelengths. Much of our knowledge about the early stages of star formation in our Milky Way galaxy is obtained through molecular spectral line and dust continuum observations. The continuum emission of cold dust is one of the best tracers of the column density of molecular hydrogen, the main constituent of molecular clouds. Consequently, dust continuum observations provide a powerful tool to map large portions across molecular clouds, and to identify the dense star-forming sites within them. Molecular line observations, on the other hand, provide information on the gas kinematics and temperature. Together, these two observational tools provide an efficient way to study the dense interstellar gas and the associated dust that form new stars. The properties of highly obscured young stars can be further examined through radio continuum observations at centimetre wavelengths. For example, radio continuum emission carries useful information on conditions in the protostar+disk interaction region where protostellar jets are launched. In this PhD thesis, we study the physical and chemical properties of dense clumps and cores in both low- and high-mass star-forming regions. The sources are mainly studied in a statistical sense, but also in more detail. In this way, we are able to examine the general characteristics of the early stages of star formation, cloud properties on large scales (such as fragmentation), and some of the initial conditions of the collapse process that leads to the formation of a star. The studies presented in this thesis are mainly based on molecular line and dust continuum observations. These are combined with archival observations at infrared wavelengths in order to study the protostellar content of the cloud cores. In addition, centimetre radio continuum emission from young stellar objects (YSOs; i.e., protostars and pre-main sequence stars) is studied in this thesis to determine their evolutionary stages. The main results of this thesis are as follows: i) filamentary and sheet-like molecular cloud structures, such as infrared dark clouds (IRDCs), are likely to be caused by supersonic turbulence but their fragmentation at the scale of cores could be due to gravo-thermal instability; ii) the core evolution in the Orion B9 star-forming region appears to be dynamic and the role played by slow ambipolar diffusion in the formation and collapse of the cores may not be significant; iii) the study of the R CrA star-forming region suggests that the centimetre radio emission properties of a YSO are likely to change with its evolutionary stage; iv) the IRDC G304.74+01.32 contains candidate high-mass starless cores which may represent the very first steps of high-mass star and star cluster formation; v) SiO outflow signatures are seen in several high-mass star-forming regions which suggest that high-mass stars form in a similar way as their low-mass counterparts, i.e., via disk accretion. The results presented in this thesis provide constraints on the initial conditions and early stages of both low- and high-mass star formation. In particular, this thesis presents several observational results on the early stages of clustered star formation, which is the dominant mode of star formation in our Galaxy.

Characterization of non-imaging semiconductor X-ray solar monitors

The first observations of solar X-rays date back to late 1940 s. In order to observe solar X-rays the instruments have to be lifted above the Earth s atmosphere, since all high energy radiation from the space is almost totally attenuated by it. This is a good thing for all living creatures, but bad for X-ray astronomers. Detectors observing X-ray emission from space must be placed on-board satellites, which makes this particular discipline of astronomy technologically and operationally demanding, as well as very expensive. In this thesis, I have focused on detectors dedicated to observing solar X-rays in the energy range 1-20 keV. The purpose of these detectors was to measure solar X-rays simultaneously with another X-ray spectrometer measuring fluorescence X-ray emission from the Moon surface. The X-ray fluorescence emission is induced by the primary solar X-rays. If the elemental abundances on the Moon were to be determined with fluorescence analysis methods, the shape and intensity of the simultaneous solar X-ray spectrum must be known. The aim of this thesis is to describe the characterization and operation of our X-ray instruments on-board two Moon missions, SMART-1 and Chandrayaan-1. Also the independent solar science performance of these two almost similar X-ray spectrometers is described. These detectors have the following two features in common. Firstly, the primary detection element is made of a single crystal silicon diode. Secondly, the field of view is circular and very large. The data obtained from these detectors are spectra with a 16 second time resolution. Before launching an instrument into space, its performance must be characterized by ground calibrations. The basic operation of these detectors and their ground calibrations are described in detail. Two C-flares are analyzed as examples for introducing the spectral fitting process. The first flare analysis shows the fit of a single spectrum of the C1-flare obtained during the peak phase. The other analysis example shows how to derive the time evolution of fluxes, emission measures (EM) and temperatures through the whole single C4 flare with the time resolution of 16 s. The preparatory data analysis procedures are also introduced in detail. These are required in spectral fittings of the data. A new solar monitor design equipped with a concentrator optics and a moderate size of field of view is also introduced.

Fra jungledyr og cykelmyg til frysepunkt og længsel efter kærlighed Et strejftog gennem dansk litteratur på finsk efter 1945

Abstract (A journey through Danish literature translated into Finnish after 1945): Nearly 80 per cent of all literary translations from Danish into Finnish are done after the Second World War. These translations are obviously only a small selection of the Danish national literature, but nevertheless capture important trends and currents in it. Based on a selection of translated works, the article allows a broad introduction to Danish literature available in Finnish. It focuses on children's and youth literature, feminist literature and realistic, magic and civilization critical novels.

Vem vänder vindarna? – Vem tänder stjärnorna? Några metodiska grepp i analysen av Eva Dahlgrens rocktexter

Abstract (Vem vänder vindarna ? – Vem tänder stjärnorna? Methodological choices in the analysis of Eva Dahlgren’s rock lyrics): This article deals with some methods I have found useful in analyzing the lyrics in rock music, particularly the lyrics by the Swedish singer songwriter Eva Dahlgren (born 1960). The article is based on my doctoral thesis in progress, dealing with the relationship between the lyrics (in particular the “I” of the lyrics), and the public persona of Eva Dahlgren, as well as the process of "doing Eva Dahlgren" (the constructing of her artist persona). I take my starting point in the lyrics of Dahlgren’s big hit "Vem tänder stjärnorna" (Dahlgren 1991). First, I discuss the themes of the lyrics, mostly the spiritual or religious themes. Second, I present and discuss the methods in my own work. The first method is inspired by conversational analysis, and is based on a transcription of the performed lyrics, with the aim of grasping the dialogues between the words and the music, more specifically Dahlgren’s use of voice. My other methods are related to my aim to describe Dahlgren’s public persona, and the construction of “Eva Dahlgren”. I have used concepts and models developed by the musicologist Laura Ahonen and literary scholar Karin Strand, in an effort to describe the many levels in Dahlgren’s (performed) “I” as well as the different actors in the process of shaping and reshaping images of Eva Dahlgren.

Why study translation universals?

Abstract: Research on translation universals has its roots in the need to make generalizations about the features that distinguish translations from non-translations. They go back to the old tradition of negative comments about the failings of typical translations. These comments concern the relations between translations and the target language, and between translations and their source texts. With the rise of descriptive studies, and the use of corpus research methods borrowed from linguistics, the search for the typical features of translations became more systematic. A number of hypotheses about potential universals have been proposed, and tested on different languages and language pairs. Some of them are evidently false; on others, the jury is still out. If some hypotheses continue to be supported by empirical evidence, the question then arises of how they might best be explained. There has been fierce criticism of some of the assumptions underlying the search for universals, including the use of the term 'universal'itself, but the approach has also brought clear methodological benefits.

Sångöversättning – någonstans mellan respekt och slagkraft

Abstract (Song translation. Balancing between respect and hit capacity): The article discusses song translation by posing questions relevant to the study, practice, and assessment of translating/translated song: Is song translation really translation? Do non-singable translations count? Can we distinguish between free and faithful song translation? Are there untranslatable (aspects of) songs? etc. Three song translations between Finnish and Swedish are analyzed in the discussion: one made for a booklet to a recording, which in spite of the evident documentary purpose is fairly singable, one that is a national transplantation, which moves the sung story to the target country but even so is fairly faithful, and one that is considered respectful to its source, became a target culture hit, but perhaps because of the subtle changes in content. Changes can be seen as caused by a particular translation brief, as manipulations negotiating a cultural difference, or as examples of how (liberally) the craft of song translation is exercised. An amateur translation of the same song, made by the article’s author, is deemed dysfunctional for having put emphasis merely on semantic accuracy and rhymes, neglecting other aspects of the craft. The article suggests that singability is a relative concept, that stylistic/intertextual values matter a great deal in song and exert significant influence on song translation, and that source and target attentions in this area can be discussed as a much variable vacillation between a stance of respect and an aim for hit capacity.

Översättningsforskning och framtidsskapande proaktivitet

Abstract (Translation studies and the possibility of future-creating proactivity): Translation researchers often and quite eagerly emphasise the practice-orientedness and usefulness of their field of knowledge as well as the proactive impact which their findings have or will have on modern translation practice. This article adopts, however, a critical view of that kind of a goal for proactive action within translation studies, and advocates a different conception and facet of proactivity. Hence, the question of future-orientedness of translation research is approached and explored from two vantage points: first, from the three Peircean modalities, namely possibility (may-be), (f)actuality (actually-is), and tendenciality (must-be or shouldbe)and second, from a futures semiotic view, according to which a future can be invented, made, or discovered.