Browsing by Subject "adaptation"

Research has identified the importance of understanding the connection between heat wave risk perception of elderly and their adaptation actions. In addition, developing more tailormade risk communication to elderly has been emphasized. The aim of this study is to understand how elderly citizens in the district of Töölö, Helsinki perceive the risk and adapt to increasing heat waves in a central part of the city and what the role of early warning systems (EWS) could be by collecting information through interviews on heat wave adaptation and risk communication. The qualitative data (N=6) consisted of transcribed interview data collected during February- March 2023. The data was analyzed through a thematic analysis and through using both a deductive and an inductive process, main themes and subthemes were identified within the data. The theory used in the deductive process was the Protection Motivation Theory in order to test if the theory could be used in this context. The results show that the personal risk perception and general risk perception varies for elderly and adaptive actions are in general taken to protect oneself from heat waves. However, Töölö as a high exposure area does not clearly increase the amount of adaptation actions but can rather offer benefits through its geographical position by the sea. The elderly’s interest in improving heat wave risk communication through an early warning system in Finland is noticeable. However, the final role of the system still remains open, and skepticism was expressed about the real need of a system in Finland. The results highlight that the elderly’s personal risk perception is rather independent of their adaptation actions, and they still adapt to heat waves, even when they perceive the threat as low. The results also highlighted that the elderly use multiple information sources to follow updates on heat waves, but the ideal risk communication media needs to be determined to develop an early warning system according to the needs of vulnerable risk groups such as elderly.

Urbanisation threatens species and biodiversity globally. Consequent habitat loss and habitat fragmentation force species upon one another, inevitably also increasing human-wildlife conflicts. Despite the situation growing dire for many organisms, studies also show species from a variety of taxa being able to adapt to urban environments. Most studies of primates’ ability to adapt to urban environments have been done on diurnal species. To my knowledge, the African lesser bushbaby (Galago moholi) is the only nocturnal primate in which this has been studied. To assess urban adaptability in another nocturnal primate, I present transect and recording data on the abundance of the white-tailed small-eared greater galago (Otolemur garnettii lasiotis) in an urban and rural environment in the biodiversity hotspot Taita Hills, Kenya. Sampling was done in Wundanyi town and Ngangao forest and the two locations were then compared by fitting a negative binomial as well as a Poisson model for recording and transect count data. Additionally, preliminary observations are made regarding behavioural and spectral acoustic adaptation, increased sociality, and colouration coupled traits. My results indicate O. g. lasiotis to be significantly more abundant in the town than in the forest. In the town, I observed a two-fold increase in total number of vocalizations and mean vocalization rate, and a seven-fold increase in total number of sightings and mean encounter rate, as indicated by recordings and transects respectively. This discrepancy in estimated abundance differences in location from transect and recording data (two-fold versus seven-fold) suggest that urban individuals vocalize less than rural individuals. The spectral profile of three vocalization types were studied and urban individuals exhibited significantly higher high frequencies in the clustered squawk vocalization. I found town dwelling individuals to be a part of a larger group or pair considerably more often than forest dwelling individuals. A dark morph, as opposed to a light morph, was significantly more frequently encountered in the urban location, whereas both morphs were encountered almost equally often in the rural location. In summary, O. g. lasiotis seems to be capable of adapting to an urban environment, as indicated by its’ greater abundance in the town than in the forest. My data suggest decreased vocalization rate, increased sociality, and colouration coupled traits being possible adaptations affecting O. g. lasiotis’ capability to inhabit an urban environment. Further research is required to draw conclusions on what factors and adaptations might allow for the high abundance of O. g. lasiotis in the town.

Climate migration raises both justice and human rights concerns, yet no existing treaty explicitly addresses it, leaving climate migrants in a legal limbo. This study assesses how the European Union's international protection system can evolve to effectively mitigate the vulnerability of climate migrants. The analysis incorporates the principle of non-refoulement from the European Convention on Human Rights and the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities in climate agreements. Using a legal doctrinal approach, the study analyses existing legal frameworks, uniquely integrating the perspective of vulnerability theory. This ethical framework emphasizes the universal vulnerability of individuals and seeks strategies to reduce vulnerability, rooted in societal structures and legal constructs. The study applies vulnerability theory specifically to the context of climate migration. Vulnerability analysis reveals that both the vulnerabilities driving migration and the uncertain legal status of climate migrants are products of the international community necessitating a collective response. The study centers on the 1951 Refugee Convention and the interpretation of the principle of non-refoulement by the European Court of Human Rights. It examines the right to life in the context of environmental disasters and its application to socio-economic rights. The research investigates the compatibility of the European Union’s international protection residence permit system with the non-refoulement principle and climate agreement burden-sharing principles. Relevant sources include recommendations from the United Nations Refugee Agency, decisions from the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, along with existing scholarly literature. The Qualification Directive (2011/95/EC) mirrors the refugee definition of the Refugee Convention. The study reveals that individuals seeking international protection due to the adverse effects of climate change may have legitimate fears of persecution when addressing climate change's adverse effects in the broader social policy framework. Additionally, the study argues that adopting a vulnerability-based approach, especially under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, can broaden the scope of the non-refoulement principle in the context of climate change and enhance substantive equality, addressing climate migrants' material deprivation in their countries of origin. However, the European Convention on Human Rights does not regulate residence permits; instead, they fall under European Union law. The Court of Justice of the European Union has clarified that subsidiary protection necessitates the deliberate infliction of severe harm by a specific actor and cannot be attributed to general deficiencies in the country of origin. This perspective diverges from the interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights. To bridge the gap in current protections, the European Union should introduce a new category of residence permits for climate migrants, humanitarian protection, recognizing the connection between human rights and the environment. Such humanitarian protection would reflect fair burden-sharing, safeguard against refoulement, and address the vulnerability experienced by climate migrants within the framework of international human rights law.

Climate change have widespread increasing negative health impacts on urban residents. The impacts vary in different temporal and spatial dimensions and include health impacts such as increases in heat related illnesses, respiratory issues, and vector-borne diseases. Vulnerability and exposure to those impacts depend on different interacting factors from city level systems to individual characteristics. Papers that study how cities’ moderating factors impact on different climate change induced health impacts are an important part for setting adaptation policies. Little is known how city systems and system factors (social and physical environment and policy and planning) moderate climate change induced health impacts in cities and their role in different vulnerability and exposure outcomes. With an analytical framework that utilizes systems approach and follows conceptual framework that considers city systems as moderating factors to different vulnerability and exposure outcomes, this thesis answers the questions: How are the city systems and system factors, and climate risk elements (vulnerability, exposure) related? And what are the different types of interactions that lead to vulnerability and exposure outcomes? The main data of this qualitative case study is collected with 18 expert pair-interviews. The experts are selected from four residential areas that represent different municipalities in Helsinki and Turku. The interviews are transcribed and coded with Atlas.ti. The findings of this study emphasize that moderating factors have an impact on different vulnerability and exposure outcomes. The results also show that adaptation measures that would consider cities moderating factors, would have a significant impact on reduced exposure and vulnerability to begin with. Identification of different city system, climate risk and health impact pathway synergies doesn’t promote better adaptation policies as such. Better understanding of efficient adaptation policies require further studies of the consequences resulting from the policy decisions in physical and social environment in the long run.

Brains are capable of processing information with remarkable efficiency under constraints set by the limited supply of physical resources such as the amount of space and the availability of metabolic energy. Natural selection has optimised the structure and function of brain networks using simple design rules similar to those found in man-made electronic and information systems. This study presents findings concerning a number of general principles of brain design governing the evolution and organisation of neural information processing. The rule of minimising wiring in neuronal networks is one such principle operating on multiple levels of brain organisation. Both individual components and larger brain architectural units are seen to feature characteristics of near-optimal wiring. Miniaturisation of neuronal components conserves space but raises problems about noise in signalling. Small-world organisation of anatomical and functional networks is widely employed in the brain, contributing to high global efficiency at low cost. Metabolic costs severely constrain signal traffic in the human brain, necessitating the use of energy-efficient sparse neural representations. Extensive evidence is presented of anatomical and physiological optimisations facilitating efficient information processing in brain networks. Limitations of current experimental techniques are discussed, with a view on possible future avenues of research.

Detta examensarbete behandlar humoristiska element i Vladimir Nabokovs roman Lolita samt hur dessa element återgetts i Stanley Kubricks och Adrian Lynes filmatiseringar. Syftet med studien är att analysera funktionen hos dessa element i Lolita och att understryka vikten av att bevara dem i nytolkningar av romanen. Diskussionen kontextualiseras av tidigare akademisk forskning kring romanen samt av en översikt av den symboliska rollen konceptet “Lolita” fått i populärkultur. Centrala begrepp och relevanta teoretiska frågor inom humor- och adaptionsforskning behandlas även kort. Romanen och filmatiseringarna analyseras enligt närläsningsmetod mot denna teoretiska ram. Studien påvisar att humorn i originalversionen är mångfasetterad och att den inte bara uppfyller en rent estetisk funktion, utan också spelar en viktig roll för tolkningen av berättarrösten. De viktigaste motiven i denna studie är desamma som berättaren använder sig av: det vill säga romantisk litteratur, dubbelgångartematik och diverse bärande idéer i psykoanalysen. Studien visar att humor, ironi och motstridigheter uppfyller en central funktion i och med att dessa element skapar en kritisk undermening som ifrågasätter berättarrösten. Dessa element har också en satirisk nivå som är riktad till läsaren och hens benägenhet att påbörda simplifierade och dikotomiska tolkningsmodeller på litteratur för att förenkla eller rent av sudda bort obekväm tvetydighet. Analysen av filmversionerna av Lolita demonstrerar humorns centrala roll. Kubricks film framhäver de humoristiska elementen och liknar därmed till ton och budskap originalet, medan Lynes film förbiser humorn och skapar en banal och etiskt problematisk version, trots att den är bokstavstrogen i andra avseenden. Examensarbetet påvisar att humorn i Lolita har en funktion utöver formskönhet samt åskådliggör vikten av att bibehålla dessa element i nytolkningar av romanen. Humor i Nabokov’s Lolita utgör en viktig aspekt av romanen som även bidrar till dess status som modern klassiker.

Earlier research has shown that it is important in climate change adaptation to take into account the indirect impacts of climate change. These are impacts resulting from climate change that have their initial direct effects outside Finland but reflect to Finland through for example international markets. For example, climate change could affect Finland indirectly through changing prices in global food markets. In this thesis I study the impacts of increasing hydropower potential in the Nordic electricity markets because of climate change. Nordic aspect is important as most of the hydropower in the Nordic power markets is produced outside Finland. Climate science has shown that climate change can affect the precipitation and hydropower potential in the Nordic countries. Majority of studies give reason to believe that the hydropower potential will increase and change so that the potential increases more in winter and spring months. However, a lot of uncertainty is related to the results, which is crucial to bear in mind. According to a Nordic research report it is nevertheless very plausible that climate change will affect the hydrology and hydropower potential in Nordic countries from place to place. Hydropower is an important technology in the Nordic electricity markets as depending on the year about half of the power is produced by it. As hydropower’s producing costs are low the annual precipitation affects the electricity price levels so that in a wet year the prices decrease and vice versa. Hydropower has also its role in balancing the production and consumption of power as its production is comparably easy to adjust. I use a simulation model of the Nordic electricity markets by Maria Kopsakangas-Savolainen and Rauli Svento in this thesis. In my analysis I increase the hydropower production (+10%) and study how it affects i.a. the price level and capacities of different power production technologies. This sensitivity analysis is made in various scenarios resulting from different climate and energy policies. In the thesis’ simplified setting increasing the amount of hydropower decreased significantly the price of electricity and thus profits of electricity producers and decreased the amount of thermal power production. Thermal and nuclear production are important technologies for Finland and thus the results are interesting from the Finnish point of view. The results are in-line with a previous Norwegian study. Another potentially significant impact of climate change might the decreasing electricity consumption due to warmer winters but is out of the scope of this thesis.

Syftet med denna avhandling är att ta reda på hur språk- och kulturbundna element översätts i skönlitteratur. Mer specifikt tar jag reda på hur idiom, kulturella fenomen och egennamn översätts mellan grannspråken svenska och finska i jämförelse med hur de översätts mellan svenska och katalanska. Jag utreder också hur översättningsresultatet påverkas av de språkliga och kulturella skillnaderna mellan käll- och målspråken. Materialet består av Tove Janssons roman Pappan och havet och dess översättningar till finska och katalanska. Ur materialet excerperas översättningsbelägg av kulturella fenomen, idiom och egennamn. Analysen är i första hand kvalitativ, men kvantitativa beräkningar anges också. Undersökningen bygger på följande forskningsfrågor: Vilka metoder har använts för att översätta idiom, kulturella fenomen och egennamn i den finska och den katalanska översättningen av Pappan och havet? Finns det skillnader i användningen av översättningsmetoder mellan språkparen svenska-finska och svenska-katalanska och hur kan de eventuella skillnaderna förklaras? Materialet analyseras ur en skoposteoretisk synvinkel och utifrån Rune Ingos (1990) samt Lena Segler-Heikkiläs (2009) anpassningsmetoder. Analysen visar att det finns stora skillnader i användning av översättningsmetod mellan den finska och den katalanska översättningen samt att översättningens skopos möjligen påverkar valet av metod. Av analysen framgår att alla kulturella fenomen förutom ett översätts i den finska översättningen med metoden -AD+mot, vilket kan anses vanligt i intrakulturell översättning. Metoden innebär att bibehålla fenomenet eftersom målspråkets läsare kan förstå det. Däremot används en blandning av anpassnings- och icke-anpassningsmetoder i den katalanska översättningen. Vad beträffar översättning av idiom används översättningsmetoderna på ett balanserat sätt i den finska översättningen. I den katalanska översättningen är den mest använda metoden däremot att ett normalt uttryck översätts med ett idiom. Gällande översättning av egennamn visar analysen att de översätts på liknande sätt i båda översättningarna. Analysen tyder i allmänhet på att det förekommer mindre adaptation i intrakulturell översättning än i interkulturell översättning, även om käll- och målspråket i intrakulturell översättning tillhör avlägsna språkfamiljer.

The three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is a model organism for studies of parallel evolution in the wild; marine stickleback populations have repeatedly colonized and successfully adapted to different brackish and freshwater habitats. During Pleistocene glaciations, three-spined stickleback populations inhabiting high-latitude areas of Europe were eradicated, whereas populations residing in (or moving to) the south persisted in refugia. After the retreat of the ice sheets covering northern Europe, the high-latitude areas became recolonized by migration from south, and hence, today’s northern European populations are relatively young. Population genetic studies of European three-spined sticklebacks have usually been conducted at high-latitude areas where freshwater populations are typically less than 10.000 years old. Few studies have focused on southern populations, where more of the ancestral diversity is likely to reside. These studies have utilized a limited number of microsatellite markers and mtDNA sequence fragments, whereas studies of southern populations focusing on genome-wide diversity, in particular from the edge of the southern distribution limit in the Iberian Peninsula, are still missing. Here, I wanted to cover this gap in knowledge by carrying out an empirical and statistical study with RAD-seq data from southern and northern European populations of three-spined stickleback. The main aims of this study were two-fold. First, to investigate whether the southern European freshwater populations of the three-spined stickleback – which currently lack or have limited connection to ancestral marine populations carrying most of the standing genetic variation (SGV) – have lost genetic diversity due to population bottlenecks and inbreeding as compared to their northern European counterparts. Second, to compare the degree of genetic parallelism in southern vs. northern European populations in genomic regions which have been shown to be consistently associated with freshwater colonization in earlier studies. Under the assumption that the lack of continued access to SGV in the ancestral marine population reduces the likelihood of parallel evolution, I hypothesized that the degree of genetic parallelism in genomic regions subject to positive selection in freshwater environments is lower in the southern than in northern European populations. However, if a reduction in genetic diversity and/or cessation of gene flow between southern European freshwater and marine populations occurred following freshwater adaptation, the opposite pattern could be expected. I paid particular attention to chromosomal inversions associated with marine-freshwater adaptations identified in previous studies. The results confirmed my expectation of reduced genetic diversity in southern as compared to northern European stickleback populations. On the other hand, and contrary to what I expected, analysis of clusters of global parallelism involved in freshwater adaptation revealed that southern European populations exhibit a higher degree of genetic parallelism in response to freshwater colonisation than those from northern Europe. This suggests that the loss of genetic diversity in southern populations has occurred after they had adapted to freshwater environments, explaining the high degree of genetic parallelism in spite of the current low levels of genetic diversity. In addition, it could be that selection pressures in south are more homogenous than in north, which would also explain the higher degree of genetic parallelism observed in southern Europe. The findings presented here, challenge the current paradigm that parallel evolution is unlikely in populations with low genetic diversity and that have experienced recent bottlenecks.

Som många studier bevisar är jämställd representation viktig på grund av att sociala grupper kan stereotyperas negativt via kulturella representationer. Det är därför väsentligt att se mångfaldiga och realistiska queera karaktärer i litteratur och massmedia, och i synnerhet är det viktigt att tänka på hur dessa karaktärer förnyar eller raserar queera stereotyper och queerfobiska ideologier som ännu råder i vårt samhälle. I denna pro gradu-avhandling granskar jag hur queera identiteter och maskuliniteter representeras i Cassandra Clares bokserie The Mortal Instruments och dess TV-adaptation Shadowhunters. Jag fokuserar på karaktärernas utveckling, personliga intriger och deras inter-queera interaktioner, och hävdar att TV-adaptationen med dess mångfaldigare och subversivare skildring av queerhet skapar och reproducerar mer positiv representation än bokserien, som skildrar skadliga och problematiska stereotyper. Mitt material består av alla sex The Mortal Instruments-böcker och 41 avsnitt ur de tre första säsongerna av Shadowhunters. I min analys utnyttjar jag genusvetenskaplig maskulinitetsforskning, feministisk litteraturvetenskap, feministisk media- och kommunikationsvetenskap samt adaptionsstudier. Avhandlingen utgår från att mediarepresentationer har en politisk dimension i och med att de utövar inflytande på det sätt som vi i verkligheten ser olika sociala grupper. Detta gäller speciellt för de grupper som historiskt sett har marginaliserats, för de ses ofta som homogena grupper där redan en medlem avgör hur hela gruppen betraktas. Negativa stereotyper har således konsekvenser för de grupper som representeras, och måste därför granskas kritiskt beträffande deras möjligheter för kulturellt inflytande. I analysen framgår det att böckerna förnyar hegemoniska normer av genus och sexualitet på olika sätt. Deras stereotypiska skildring av queera intriger och deras brist på queer fokalisering privilegierar både heterosexuella och vita narrativer och leder till att queera karaktärer definieras av sina sexualiteter. I motsats till detta skildrar TV-serien queerhet och queera maskuliniteter på subversivare sätt. Den bryter ner problematiska stereotyper i stället för att förnya dem, vilket kan ses till exempel i det att den samtidiga förekomsten av karaktärernas maskulinitet och queerhet aldrig ifrågasätts. Dessutom raserar den toxisk maskulinitet genom att skildra queera män som är ömsinta sinsemellan utan att vara stereotypiskt emotionella.