Browsing by Title

This research studies the environmental aesthetics of boredom in the light of post-soviet neighborhoods. While belonging to the grey zone in aesthetics, boredom is an integral part of mundane life that challenges us to notice the uniqueness of our everydayness. Even though mass housing provided an economically feasible solution for sheltering millions of people, it lacks the qualities that meet contemporary living and energy standards. Soviet mass housing architecture and microdistrict designs were led by the economic conditions in the first place. Mass housing was not meant to speak, whereas the residents should not be silenced because of it. We tend to preserve what we find aesthetically pleasing (Nassauer, 1997), yet, what is aesthetically pleasing and what about other values? In this project, preservation is essential for building a contemporary-oriented mindset that could lead to more sustainable and inclusive neighborhoods. The project aims to tackle the issue of Soviet districts through the eyes of its residents, contrasting the more often used top-down approach. Here I challenge the residents' perception of their neighborhood and create a moment for reflection. By offering this space, I amplify the voices of the real experts, the ones knowing their microdistrict inside out. Environmental aesthetics is a relatively new concept within the contemporary urban planning scholarship, giving a fresh take on subjective experiences of urban settings that unveil profoundly rooted and often disguised problems. The interdisciplinarity in the research is met by merging disciplines such as sociology, urban aesthetics, urban history, and philosophy. The term boredom belonging to positive or negative aesthetic values is questioned the same as the legacy of Soviet mass housing later in the research. The ideology behind Soviet blocks is discussed, creating a common ground for diverse readers. Inclusivity is brought with resident participation through the visual research method - photovoice. To avoid biased data, the resident experiences are supported with the city planner's point of view and secondary quantitative data. The findings include Laumas microdistrict resident photovoice analysis, putting the Laumas microdistrict residents as the primary information providers. Taking pictures of their everyday surroundings, residents are given space to show how they see their microdistrict, outlining the values they are proud of or giving perspective of what needs to be changed. Instead of one-sided creation, the curation is inclusive and more reflective of the urban environment's already existing residents' values of their neighborhood. Resident aesthetic preferences open broader discussion on the maintenance issues of microdistricts facing nowadays. Topics are various, but the primary outcomes discussed built environment aesthetics, renovation, communication, identity, resident initiative, automobile domination, and natural environment aesthetics. In the final part of the study, some possible directions for changing microdistrict are pointed out, and further research questions are presented. The project is incomplete until it reaches a broader audience and provides knowledge to politicians, city planners, and other residents.

A measurement for how similar (or distant) two computer programs are has a wide range of possible applications. For example, they can be applied to malware analysis or analysis of university students' programming exercises. However, as programs may be arbitrarily structured, capturing the similarity of two non-trivial programs is a complex task. By extracting call graphs (graphs of caller-callee relationships of the program's functions, where nodes denote functions and directed edges denote function calls) from the programs, the similarity measurement can be changed into a graph problem. Previously, static call graph distance measures have been largely based on graph matching techniques, e.g. graph edit distance or maximum common subgraph, which are known to be costly. We propose a call graph distance measure based on features that preserve some structural information from the call graph without explicitly matching user defined functions together. We define basic properties of the features, several ways to compute the feature values, and give a basic algorithm for generating the features. We evaluate our features using two small datasets: a dataset of malware variants, and a dataset of university students' programming exercises, focusing especially on the former. For our evaluation we use experiments in information retrieval and clustering. We compare our results for both datasets to a baseline, and additionally for the malware dataset to the results obtained with a graph edit distance approximation. In our preliminary results we show that even though the feature generation approach is simpler than the graph edit distance approximation, the generated features can perform on a similar level as the graph edit distance approximation. However, experiments on larger datasets are still required to verify the results.

One of the most tangled fields of research is the field of defining and modeling affective concepts, i. e. concepts regarding emotions and feelings. The subject can be approached from many disciplines. The main problem is lack of generally approved definitions. However, e.g. linguists have recently started to check the consistency of their theories with the help of computer simulations. Definitions of affective concepts are needed for performing similar simulations in behavioral sciences. In this thesis, preliminary computational definitions of affects for a simple utility-maximizing agent are given. The definitions have been produced by synthetizing ideas from theories from several fields of research. The class of affects is defined as a superclass of emotions and feelings. Affect is defined as a process, in which a change in an agent's expected utility causes a bodily change. If the process is currently under the attention of the agent (i.e. the agent is conscious of it), the process is a feeling. If it is not, but can in principle be taken into attention (i.e. it is preconscious), the process is an emotion. Thus, affects do not presuppose consciousness, but emotions and affects do. Affects directed at unexpected materialized (i.e. past) events are delight and fright. Delight is the consequence of an unexpected positive event and fright is the consequence of an unexpected negative event. Affects directed at expected materialized (i.e. past) events are happiness (expected positive event materialized), disappointment (expected positive event did not materialize), sadness (expected negative event materialized) and relief (expected negative event did not materialize). Affects directed at expected unrealized (i.e. future) events are fear and hope. Some other affects can be defined as directed towards originators of the events. The affect classification has also been implemented as a computer program, the purpose of which is to ensure the coherence of the definitions and also to illustrate the capabilities of the model. The exact content of bodily changes associated with specific affects is not considered relevant from the point of view of the logical structure of affective phenomena. The utility function need also not be defined, since the target of examination is only its dynamics.

The literature part of this thesis contains the review of affinity chromatography using monolithic stationary supports in the separation and isolation of biomacromolecules, a technique known as affinity monolith chromatography (AMC). Affinity chromatography is a liquid separation technique operating on the principle of reversible binding of affinity ligands and target analytes. Experimentally, affinity chromatography involves the attachment of affinity ligands to the stationary support. By selecting appropriate ligands having high affinity and specificity towards the target, selective captures of analytes of interest are made possible, allowing their isolation from complex sample matrices. Subsequently, bound analyte species are released from the ligands by employing suitable elution solutions. In addition to the specificity, monolithic stationary phases offer a number of other benefits over conventional particulate supports, i.e., improved mass transfer characteristics, allowing convective rather than diffusional transport of analytes; and high permeability, permitting operations at high flow rates without suffering from backpressure. These benefits result in substantially reduced time requirements for isolation and separation while maintaining satisfactory separation efficiency. Different types of monolithic materials, including organic polymer-based monoliths (e.g., cryogels), inorganic monoliths (e.g., silica monoliths), and hybrid monoliths have been prepared and employed in AMC. A large range of affinity ligands, e.g., proteins, antibodies, immobilized metal ions, dye ligands, have been used with monolithic supports in different formats, and in different applications. The mentioned material-related topics, as well as recent applications of AMC, are discussed in detail in this review. The experimental part of this thesis deals with the isolation of lipoproteins, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in particular, from human blood plasma using a newly developed AMC technique. LDL, a globular and major lipid carrier in blood, is diagnostically a highly relevant subclass of lipoproteins due to its involvement in the genesis of atherosclerosis. The currently most frequently employed method for lipoprotein isolation from blood plasma is ultracentrifugation. However, this method suffers from drawbacks, such as being time-consuming, requiring expensive equipment, and the possible exchange of lipids and lipoprotein subclasses during sample processing. Therefore, the first goal was to develop a faster LDL isolation protocol, capable of yielding LDL with good functionality and purity. Thus, the first section reports on the isolation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) from human blood plasma by employing affinity monolith chromatography method using Convective Interaction Media (CIM) monolithic disk columns as stationary supports. Specifically, anti-apoB100-monoclonal antibody (mAb) was immobilized onto a CIM monolithic disk, providing a suitable capture medium for LDL through its major apolipoprotein, apolipoprotein B100 (apoB100). Other lipoprotein classes, namely very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL), also carry apoB100 and thus may be captured. To discriminate against these lipoproteins, and to obtain LDL with satisfactory purity, an additional CIM monolithic column was immobilized with a glycosaminoglycan, namely chondroitin-6-sulfate (C6S), which also binds lipoproteins, albeit with different specificity and interactions. Both of these affinity media were evaluated for LDL binding either individually or in combination. The quality of the isolated LDL was confirmed with different characterization techniques, such as size exclusion chromatography, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), enzymatic cholesterol and triglyceride assays, and enzymatic-linked immunoassays (ELISAs) specific to apolipoprotein B100 and apolipoprotein E. The results from these multi-method characterizations confirmed the successful LDL isolation with good activity. The second section of the thesis was devoted to quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) biosensor studies of LDL samples isolated from different individuals by different methods (affinity chromatography and conventional ultracentrifugation). A QCM sensor chip immobilized with anti-apoB100 mAb was used and challenged series of different LDL concentrations. The resulting sensorgrams were analyzed with a new numerical algorithm, namely Adaptive Interaction Distribution Algorithm (AIDA), permitting the determination of the number of analyte-receptor binding sites and the underlying kinetics. It was found that the obtained rate constant distributions, and clustering of antibody-LDL complexes were almost identical for all LDL samples, irrespective of sources or isolation techniques. For all samples, a total of five major complex clusters were identified. The major contributions of the two dominating clusters may arise from specific, yet heterogeneous LDL interactions at the antibody binding sites, while the other three clusters observed reflect most likely nonspecific low-affinity interactions from various sources, such as mass transfer effects, and the use of a non-orienting ligand immobilization chemistry.

We present a new framework to evaluate the security of voting schemes. We utilize the framework to compare a wide range of voting schemes, including practical schemes in realworld use and academic schemes with interesting theoretical properties. In the end we present our results in a neat comparison table. We strive to be unambiguous: we specify our threat model, assumptions and scope, we give definitions to the terms that we use, we explain every conclusion that we draw, and we make an effort to describe complex ideas in as simple terms as possible. We attempt to consolidate all important security properties from literature into a coherent framework. These properties are intended to curtail vote-buying and coercion, promote verifiability and dispute resolution, and prevent denial-of-service attacks. Our framework may be considered novel in that trust assumptions are an output of the framework, not an input. This means that our framework answers questions such as ”how many authorities have to collude in order to violate ballot secrecy in the Finnish paper voting scheme?”

In Estonia and Gotland, Sweden Ordovician and Silurian rocks can be found in exposed outcrops, they have been studied for the past years to create a better understanding of the biological and geological events that transpire during the Ordovician and Silurian. Finland is not known to have sedimentary fossiliferous limestones, but the Åland Islands is one of the places where Ordovician and Silurian erratic limestones can be found. The limestones were glacially transported from the Bothnia Sea area. The erratic limestones found in the Åland Islands have not been studied and have not been dated. The goal of this research is to reconstruct the depositional age of the erratic crinoidal limestone from the Åland Islands through 13C, 87Sr/86Sr, and identification of microfossil proxies. We used in situ strontium isotope analysis by MC-ICP-MS and 13C analysis in different materials of the sample, the materials analyzed were cement, sediment matrix, and skeletal material (crinoid stem). The samples were sent to experts for microfossil identification. The Åland samples were compared with known samples from Estonia and Gotland. The samples from Niibi Estonia showed the most petrographical similarities and were also analyzed for strontium and carbon isotopes. The strontium analysis showed that the material had a different strontium signal, which then contributed to diagenetic alteration due to rubidium-87. It was observed that the sediment matrix was the most susceptible to any diagenetic alteration followed by the skeletal material and then the cement. There were conodonts found in the Åland samples that indicated that the erratic limestone is from the lower Haljala Regional Stage, Sandbian, Late Ordovician.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract With rising income inequalities and increasing immigration in many European cities, residential segregation remains a key focus for city planners and policy makers. As changes in the socio-spatial configuration of cities result from the residential mobility of its residents, the basis on which this mobility occurs is an important factor in segregation dynamics. There are many macro conditions which can constrain residential choice and facilitate segregation, such as the structure and supply of housing, competition in real estate markets and legal and institutional forms of housing discrimination. However, segregation has also been shown to occur from the bottom-up, through the self-organisation of individual households who make decisions about where to live. Using simple theoretical models, Thomas Schelling demonstrated how individual residential choices can lead to unanticipated and unexpected segregation in a city, even when this is not explicitly desired by any households. Schelling’s models are based upon theories of social homophily, or social distance dynamics, whereby individuals are thought to cluster in social and physical space on the basis of shared social traits. Understanding this process poses challenges for traditional research methods as segregation dynamics exhibit many complex behaviours including interdependency, emergence and nonlinearity. In recent years, simulation has been turned to as one possible method of analysis. Despite this increased interest in simulation as a tool for segregation research, there have been few attempts to operationalise a geospatial model, using empirical data for a real urban area. This thesis contributes to research on the simulation of social phenomena by developing a geospatial agent-based model (ABM) of residential segregation from empirical population data for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA). The urban structure, population composition, density and socio-spatial distribution of the HMA is represented within the modelling environment. Whilst the operational parameters of the model remain highly simplified in order to make processes more transparent, it permits exploration of possible system behaviour by placing it in a manipulative form. Specifically, this study uses simulation to test whether individual preferences, based on social homophily, are capable of producing segregation in a theoretical system which is absent of discrimination and other factors which may constrain residential choice. Three different scenarios were conducted, corresponding to different preference structures and demands for co-group neighbours. Each scenario was simulated for three different potential sorting variables derived from the literature; socio-economic status (income), cultural capital (education level) and language groups (mother tongue). Segregation increases in all of the simulations, however there are considerable behavioural differences between the different scenarios and grouping variables. The results broadly support the idea that individual residential choices by households are capable of producing and maintaining segregation under the right theoretical conditions. As a relatively novel approach to segregation research, the components, processes, and parameters of the developed model are described in detail for transparency. Limitations of such an approach are addressed at length, and attention is given to methods of measuring and reporting on the evolution and results of the simulations. The potential and limitations of using simulation in segregation research is highlighted through this work.

Expected benefits from agile methodologies to project success have encouraged organizations to extend agile approaches to areas they were not originally intended to such as large scale information systems projects. Research regarding agile methods in large scale software development projects have existed for few years and it is considered as its own research area. This study investigates agile methods on the large scale software development and information systems projects and its goal is to produce more understanding of agile methods suitability and the conditions under which they would most likely contribute to project success. The goal is specified with three research questions; I) what are the characteristics specific to large scale software engineering projects or large scale Information Systems project, II) what are the challenges caused by these characteristics and III) how agile methodologies mitigate these challenges? In this study resent research papers related to the subject are investigated and characteristics of large scale projects and challenges associated to them are recognized. Material of the topic was searched starting from the conference publications and distributions sites related to the subject. Collected information is supplemented with the analysis of project characteristics against SWEBOK knowledge areas. Resulting challenge categories are mapped against agile practises promoted by Agile Alliance to conclude the impact of practises to the challenges. Study is not a systematics literature review. As a result 6 characteristics specific to large scale software development and IS projects and 10 challenge categories associated to these characteristics are recognized. The analysis reveals that agile practises enhance the team level performance and provide direct practises to manage challenges associated to high amount of changes and unpredictability of software process both characteristic to a large scale IS project but challenges still remain on the cross team and overall project level. As a conclusion it is stated that when seeking the process model with agile approach which would respond to all the characteristics of large scale project thus adding the likelihood of project success adaptations of current practises and development of additional practises are needed. To contribute this four areas for adaptations and additional practises are suggested when scaling agile methodologies over large scale project contexts; 1) adaptation of practises related to distribution, assignment and follow up of tasks, 2) alignment of practises related to software development process, ways of working and common principles over all teams, 3) developing additional practises to facilitate collaboration between teams, to ensure interactions with the cross functional project dimensions and to strengthen the dependency management and decision making between all project dimensions and 4) possibly developing and aligning practises to facilitate teams' external communication. Results of the study are expected to be useful for software development and IS project practitioners when considering agile method adoptions or adaptations in a large scale project context. ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) 2012: - Social and professional topics~Management of computing and information systems - Software and its engineering~Software creation and management

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are compact, luminous objects found in the central region of many galaxies. In the standard paradigm, the AGN is fueled by accretion of matter into a supermassive black hole (SMBH). In fact, the properties of many galaxies and their respective SMBHs are linked, which hints at the importance of AGN as factors in galaxy formation and evolution. The bulk of the matter in the Universe is some form of dark matter, which is still poorly understood. AGN are biased tracers of the underlying dark matter distribution. By comparing the clustering of AGN with that of the dark matter, the bias may be quantified and further, the bias can be linked to a characteristic mass of the dark matter halo hosting the AGN. The advent of high-resolution X-ray telescopes, namely Chandra and XMM-Newton, has made unprecedently large samples available for study. With detailed spectroscopic follow-up programs, the study of X-ray selected AGN clustering has received a major boost. The clustering measurements tell of the typical environments that are likely to host AGN and thus shed light on what actually triggers the AGN. In this thesis, the clustering of ∼ 600 X-ray selected AGN with z < 2.5 (z = 1.19) in the COS- MOS (Cosmic evolution survey) field surveyed with XMM-Newton (XMM-COSMOS) is studied. The full sample is split into subsamples based on the host galaxy stellar mass M∗ and the ratio between the X-ray luminosity and the stellar mass LX/M∗ which is a proxy for the Eddington ratio. For the full sample the bias is 3.61+0.37−0.40, which corresponds to a characteristic halo mass of log M halo /h−1 M⊙ = 13.52+0.12−0.16 , consistent with the overall picture of X-ray selected AGN residing in massive haloes with 12.5 < logMhalo/h−1M⊙ < 13.5. The low M∗ and high M∗ samples have biases 3.53+0.58−0.70 and 4.13+0.85−1.07, respectively and the data do not support a difference in the typical masses of the hosting haloes. For the LX/M∗ subsamples, there is marginal evidence that low L X /M∗ AGN (logM halo /h−1M⊙ = 13.52+0.22−0.37) reside in more massive haloes than high L X /M∗ AGN (logM halo /h−1M⊙ = 13.29+0.28−0.58). One possible explanation would be that the environment of the low LX /M∗ AGN reduces the amount of gas available for accretion and thus results in lower accretion rates.

Tutkielmassa käsitellään avaruuden $\cc^n$ aitoja holomorfisia kuvauksia. Niiden määritelmät perustuvat aidon kuvauksen lauseeseen ja kuvausten holomorfisuuteen. Olkoon $\Omega,D\subset\cc^n$, ja olkoon $n>1$. Kuvaus $F:\Omega\to D$ on aito kuvaus, jos $F^{-1}(K)$ on kompakti $\Omega$:n osajoukko jokaiselle kompaktille joukolle $K\subset D$. Holomorfisuus tarkoittaa kuvauksen kompleksista analyyttisyyttä, kompleksista differentioituvuutta sekä sitä, että kuvaus toteuttaa Cauchy-Riemannin yhtälöt. Funktio $f$ on holomorfinen avaruuden $\cc^n$ avoimessa joukossa $\Omega$, jos sille pätee $f:\Omega\to\cc$, $f\in C^1(\Omega)$, ja jos se toteuttaa Cauchy-Riemannin yhtälöt $\overline{\partial}_jf=\frac{\partial f}{\partial\overline{z_j}}=0$ jokaiselle $j=1,\ldots,n$. Kuvaus $F=(f_1,\ldots,f_m):\Omega\to\cc^m$ on holomorfinen joukossa $\Omega$, jos funktiot $f_k$ ovat holomorfisia jokaisella $k=1,\ldots,m$. Jos $\Omega$ ja $D$ ovat kompleksisia joukkoja, ja jos $F:\Omega\to D$ on aito holomorfinen kuvaus, tällöin $F^{-1}(y_0)$ on joukon $\Omega$ kompakti analyyttinen alivaristo jokaiselle pisteelle $y_0\in D$. Aito kuvaus voidaan määritellä myös seuraavasti: Kuvaus $F:\Omega\to D$ on aito jos ja vain jos $F$ kuvaa reunan $\partial\Omega$ reunalle $\partial D$ seuraavalla tavalla: \[\text{jos}\,\{z_j\}\subset\Omega\quad\text{on jono, jolle}\,\lim_{j\to\infty}d(z_j,\partial\Omega)=0,\,\text{niin}\,\lim_{j\to\infty}d(F(z_j),\partial D)=0.\] Tämän määritelmän perusteella kuvausten $F:\Omega\to D$ tutkiminen johtaa geometriseen funktioteoriaan kuvauksista, jotka kuvaavat joukon $\partial\Omega$ joukolle $\partial D.$ Käy ilmi, että aidot holomorfiset kuvaukset laajenevat jatkuvasti määrittelyalueittensa reunoille. Holomorfisten kuvausten tutkiminen liittyy osaltaan Dirichlet-ongelmien ratkaisemiseen. Klassisessa Dirichlet-ongelmassa etsitään joukon $\partial\Omega\subset\mathbf{R}^m$ jatkuvalle funktiolle $f$ reaaliarvoista funktiota, joka on joukossa $\Omega$ harmoninen ja joukon $\Omega$ sulkeumassa $\overline{\Omega}$ jatkuva ja jonka rajoittuma joukon reunalle $\partial\Omega$ on kyseinen funktio $f$. Tutkielmassa käydään läpi määritelmiä ja käsitteitä, joista aidot holomorfiset kuvaukset muodostuvat, sekä avataan matemaattista struktuuria, joka on näiden käsitteiden taustalla. Tutkielmassa todistetaan aidolle holommorfiselle kuvaukselle $F:\Omega\to\Omega'$ ominaisuudet: $F$ on suljettu kuvaus, $F$ on avoin kuvaus, $F^{-1}(w)$ on äärellinen jokaiselle $w\in\Omega'$, on olemassa kokonaisluku $m$, jolle joukon $F^{-1}(w)$ pisetiden lukumäärä on $m$ jokaiselle $F$:n normaalille arvolle, joukon $F^{-1}(w)$ pisteiden lukumäärä on penempi kuin $m$ jokaiselle $F$:n kriittiselle arvolle, $F$:n kriittinen joukko on $\Omega'$:n nollavaristo, $F(V)$ on $\Omega'$:n alivaristo aina, kun $V$ on $\Omega$:n alivaristo, $F$ laajenee jatkuvaksi kuvaukseksi aidosti pseudokonveksien määrittelyjoukkojensa reunoille, $F$ kuvaa aidosti pseudokonveksin lähtöjoukkonsa jonon, joka suppenee epätangentiaalisesti kohti joukon reunaa, jonoksi joka suppenee hyväksyttävästi kohti kuvauksen maalijoukon reunaa, kuvaus $F$ avaruuden $\cc^n$ yksikköpallolta itselleen on automorfismi.