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This thesis discusses the concept of mycorrhization in the roots of land plants, their reliance on symbiotic fungi and the diversity of these relationships. Specifically, the focus of this study is the mycorrhization of ericaceous plants in boreal forest ecosystems and the role this plays in aiding host survival of harsh conditions. This study presents the first comparison of the colonization patterns of both fungal and bacterial consortia in the roots and mycospheres of different boreal forest ericoid species. Experimentally, the mycorrhizal fungal and bacterial communities of roots of the Ericaceous species Vaccinium myrtillus, Vaccinium vitis-idaea, and Calluna vulgaris were characterized and quantified. To simulate natural conditions, the host species were grown in forest soil microcosms under controlled conditions with mycorrhization occurring naturally. The morphology and intensity of root colonization by ericoid mycorrhizal fungi was determined through light microscopy. Quantification of fungal and bacterial abundances was performed using quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction for the roots and soil of each species. Microscopic analysis revealed differences in both morphology and intensity of ericoid mycorrhization for the species studied. The fungal and bacterial abundances for the roots of each host species were found to be significantly different, while the soil abundances of each species showed considerable variation and were not found to be significantly different. An intriguing connection between the fungal and bacterial abundances colonizing the root systems of the different plant species was indicated by comparison. These findings begin to clarify the unique relationships each ericoid species has with the highly diverse fungi and bacteria of their environment. Further refinement of techniques and more in depth analyses are suggested for confirming the differences indicated by these results. The ecological significance of such work is also discussed in regards to fully understanding forest ecosystems as well as the potential for novel discoveries that may benefit many aspects of humanity.

The behaviour of Greenland's tidewater glaciers is crucial for the understanding of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The retreat of those marine-terminating glaciers has far-reaching implications, impacting not only the regional hydrography but also the diverse fjord ecosystems. Here, this study investigated the rapid retreat of Narsap Sermia (NS), a tidewater glacier located in Southwest Greenland. Between 1987 and 2022, the volume of ice discharged from NS increased by 45%, a rate more than double the Greenlandic mean. This destabilization led to retreat events occurring in three distinct episodes: 2004-2005, 2010-2012, and 2019-2021. The study identified that changes in subglacial hydrology were pivotal in triggering and sustaining these retreats. Drainage of ice-dammed lakes or increased meltwater resulting from heatwaves over the ice sheet suddenly increased subglacial freshwater discharge, subsequently instigating these retreat events. Once initiated, exposure to elevated ocean temperatures or retreat into a glacial trough further sustained ice loss at the terminus, eventually resulting in a collapse of the glacial front. As of the summer of 2023, Narsap Sermia is still retreating, and the study anticipates that further retreat of approximately 3 kilometers is inevitable. Subsequently, should air and ocean temperatures continue to rise, Narsap Sermia is poised to retreat further for 30 km, dramatically transitioning into a land-terminating glacier. This drastic transformation could occur in as little as 30 years, with profound consequences for local eco-hydrology and nearby communities.

The debate over antidepressants, especially SSRIs, has lasted for more than a decade, the controversy revolving mostly around their efficacy over placebo as a treatment of depression. Sure enough, one gets conflicting results depending on which primary outcome measure is chosen as that operationalizing 'treatment effect' and where to delimit its 'clinically significant' size. Moreover, including only published studies in an evidence base assumed wholly unbiased artificially inflates the efficacy claims being made. The stakes are high: depression is estimated as one of the costliest of all illnesses, accounting for as much as 12% of the global burden of disease. However, so far, the debate has been nitpicking in the sense of not seeing the forest for the trees; and the poor forestry may just end up killing more than the weight of the already hefty one eighth. What has not been pointed out prior, then, is that there is something more fundamentally wrong here; something only indirectly reflected in the multiple points of controversy, responsible for this and other debates akin to it resting in a state of stalemate and confusion. I argue that this something is the wrong statistical paradigm we've embraced in clinical guideline development. I make my case by identifying two classes of controversy in the antidepressant debate: those related with patient preference and those with model choice. I hint at how these issues could be resolved, if a better framework was adopted, yet cannot even hope to be resolved within the present paradigm. In terms of the first class of issues, I argue that we haven't been able to agree upon an appropriate operationalization of 'treatment effect', nor its threshold of 'clinically significant', nor 'severity of depression', because we have discounted decision theory and the incorporation of patient preference in treatment choice to go along with it. In terms of establishing the conclusions to a given operationalization of any of the above by the means of valid argument based on premises backed up by trustworthy evidence, there is next to nothing to cling on to in the present guidelines of depression. For valid argument, we require the language of decision theory; for a purposeful evidence base we require utilities and outcome measures so chosen as to be able to establish rational patient centered choice. We need predictions of all important treatment outcomes for a patient exchangeable with some subset of those in the evidence base, not parameter inferences of summary statistics of treatment effect, the size of which is interpreted from a vantage point dependent on arbitrary choices over the primary outcome measure and a cut-off value for clinical significance. In terms of the second class of issues, we haven't taken proper account of uncertainty in deriving the interval estimates for our already ill-founded meta-analytic summary effects either. What full probability model to entertain for one's inferences – how to account for publication bias, between trial heterogeneity, inconsistency, poor quality trials and the like – is a matter of subjective model choice. The seemingly 'objective' protocol having been applied across the board is based on classical fixed and random effects meta-analyses with a tacit assumption of zero bias. Applying such protocol means placing all our eggs in a broken basket. I show that at present the meta-analytic models endeared rest on false assumptions, yielding biased and overconfident interval estimates. Since the evidence statements depend on whether an arbitrarily chosen threshold value for reaching 'clinical significance' is included in the fallacious interval estimate inferred, the evidence statements, that in turn ground the recommendations of the guidelines, are fallacious, too. I show the 'subjectivity' of the allegedly 'objective' evidence statements by conditioning the inferences over meta-analytic summary statistics of treatment effect on a set of plausible candidate models none of which, importantly enough, can be considered 'objective' in the sense of dominating as model choices universally preferred over all the others. I apply the framework to an evidence base used in the leading guideline of depression treatment. I show how the flexibility of the Bayesian framework enables more credible meta-analytic models, and better evidence statements with more intuitive interpretations. The Bayesian paradigm also allows for merging the output from multiple candidate models in a model-averaged posterior predictive better calibrated for rational choice than any classical parameter estimator could ever hope to be. The antidepressant debate is therefore not only a singular case with problems particular to it, but rather one sad example of classical statistics, and the evidence based medicine movement it has hijacked, being unable to deal with decision nor uncertainty. What to measure, how, and where to draw threshold values cannot be answered without accounting for patient preference. Since parameter and model uncertainty are always present, this uncertainty needs to be accounted for one way or the other, the most plausible means so far offered being probability calculus, the coherent application of which requires assigning distributions to unknowns classical statistics treats as fixed. To be able to convincingly deal with both decision and uncertainty is a prerequisite for any viable framework steering the development of clinical guidelines that ultimately cannot help but concern decision under uncertainty, be the application to the treatment of depression, or any other ailment found in DSMIV, or ICD10, for that matter. The wrong paradigm is bankrupting us, placing a serious threat on the credibility of all applied medicine. Something needs to be done.

The gender wage gap is still prevalent despite increases in female educational attainment and employment rates in many countries. Recent research has studied how much of the gender wage gap is due to firm pay policies by estimating the difference in firm pay premiums that men and women receive from their employers. This is called the firm effects gap. This gap can be further decomposed into bargaining and sorting effects which measure how much of this gap in pay premiums is due to women receiving lower pay premiums than men working in the same firm (bargaining) and how much is due to women working in low-paying firms (sorting). The first part of this thesis goes over this recent literature, and based on research from different countries, it is evident that firm pay policies have a non-negligible effect on the gender wage gap. The empirical part of this thesis uses Finnish data from organized firms, which are covered by collective agreements, over the period 2012-2021 and estimates the firm effects gap and its components in the overall sample and in various subgroups. Compared to other studies, the effect of firm pay policies on the gender wage gap is moderate in the overall sample: according to highest (lowest) estimate they explain 24.9% (4.9%) of the overall gender wage gap. Gender wage gaps increase over the life cycle, but this cannot be explained by firm pay policies as the firm effects gap and its components stay roughly at the same level across age groups. Firm effects gaps are smaller among people with a higher education degree and in larger firms, but differences are small. While gender wage gaps are larger for high earners, firm effects gaps are smaller in upper wage deciles. Although collective agreements are a prevalent feature of Finnish labor markets, not all firms are covered by them. Also, the sample is restricted to organized firms, which are not the only firms covered by collective agreements due to general applicability, and many small firms are excluded. Therefore, it is unclear whether these results can be generalized to the whole private sector in Finland.

The immune system recognizes foreign entities in the body and induces protective responses. Sometimes, the immune system does not work optimally, which can lead to different clinical manifestations, one of which is cancer. T cells are a part of the immune system and has the ability to recognize and eliminate the body’s own cells that have transformed into cancer cells. In the field of immuno-oncology, a vast body of research is focusing on understanding the relationship between cancer and the immune system, as well as developing strategies to eliminate cancer by utilizing the immune system. The rise of computational approaches, that can analyze large amounts of data from single-cell sequencing techniques, have enabled the field to conduct research on a new level of complexity. However, this powerful tool has not yet reached its full potential, one major challenge is the lack of functional data of T-cell receptor recognition. In this thesis, we are focusing on the T-cell receptor mediated therapies against cancer, and work toward setting up a screen that assesses T-cell receptor specificity and functionality, which is a powerful tool to acquire knowledge of T-cell biology and improve immunotherapies. One can postulate that the functional data produced by functional screens could be used to train prediction algorithms to a degree, where we could predict the specificity of a TCR based on raw sequencing data.

Ancient DNA research has become a widely applied method to examine past communities. The acidic soil in Finland has previously complicated archaeogenetic research but advances in the field have opened up new opportunities in recent years. This thesis integrates genetic data and archival research to examine the genetic ancestry and social organisation of Early Medieval communities in Southwest Finland. In this era, the coastal region of Southwest Finland experienced diverse societal changes induced by trade networks, urbanisation and conversion to Christianity. These shifts can be observed in large inhumation burial grounds from the Crusade Period (1025/1050–1150/1200 CE). While the burial grounds contain well-preserved skeletal material, no prior ancient DNA investigations have been undertaken in the area. A total of 30 individuals from three burial grounds, Tuomala, Kansakoulunmäki and Humikkala, were studied. The sites are located in the historical Raisio and Masku parishes close to Raisio river valley. The burial context was reconstructed with archival research, and the genetic data was extracted from skeletal samples. The resulting genome-wide data for 8 individuals from the Kansakoulunmäki burial ground was studied with exploratory population genetic and kinship analyses. The archival research produced a detailed burial context for 14 individuals from Kansakoulunmäki in Raisio and 15 individuals from Humikkala in Masku. The genetic results concluded good molecular preservation at Kansakoulunmäki and poor at Tuomala and Humikkala. The Kansakoulunmäki and Humikkala individuals bore traces of diverse connections to the Baltic Sea region. The integrated results revealed possible evidence of patrilocality and potential female genetic connections to Sigtuna in Central Sweden. These findings may point towards female mobility or exogamous marriage patterns between the two regions. Kinship relations were also detected. The possible sibling relationship could indicate an Early Medieval burial practice where close kin was buried together. The Kansakoulunmäki individuals appeared local and displayed genetic continuity with present-day Finns. This thesis adds to an emerging body of research on the ancient genetic compositions and social practices in coastal Southwest Finland in a period of transformation. The results underline the potential of interdisciplinary strategies combining genetic and archival research, as well as possibilities in the investigation of larger inhumation burial grounds. The study contributes to diverse lines of research with new data and interpretations about the Early Medieval communities, suggesting potential for further analyses both in Finland and across the Baltic Sea region.

This thesis investigates the development of the visibility of slavery in the brochures of four Virginia plantations over a time period of 90 years. The four plantations are Monticello, Mount Vernon, Belle Grove, and Long Branch, all of different sizes but with similar pasts as sites of enslavement prior to the abolishment of slavery in 1865. The goal is to discover how and why the narrative of slavery has changed over the years, and if any larger societal changes may have contributed to this development. As tour brochures have the ability to affect a visitor’s interpretation of a site, it is important to understand what type of discourses and images are directing the visitor’s gaze in the brochures. It is equally vital to attempt to understand the reasoning behind those choices of language and imagery. In this thesis, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to discover what is being said, what is left unsaid, and why those decisions were made. The primary sources for this thesis are the print brochures collected at each plantation and the plantation websites. The material is primarily analyzed using textual analysis although some image analysis is also included to give a more comprehensive understanding of the content of the brochures. In addition, secondary sources are used to support the historical and conceptual framework of the thesis. The main result of this thesis is that the visibility of slavery in plantation brochures has developed from non-existent or minimal to attempted integration. Until the late 1970s the institution of slavery and the experiences of the enslaved, if mentioned, are trivialized, marginalized, and/or segregated. Slow but steady progress in increasing the presence of slavery in the brochures can be witnessed throughout the years as the general opinion in the United States became more accepting, even demanding, of racial equality. No individual event or phenomenon has had a direct impact on the content of the brochures but a clear development into including slavery can be seen. Based on the results, it is the conclusion of this thesis that the main themes of the brochures have not changed very much since the 1920s. Owner families, prestigious guests, architecture, gardens, and the achievements of the wealthy owners have remained the main focus of attention although some new themes can be found in the more recent brochures. It is also evident that these themes persist at the expense of others, such as slavery, bringing about an interesting discussion of remembering and forgetting. In addition, these conclusions raise an important question about the roles of plantation museums as educators, entertainers, and research facilities.

Macquarie Island is a subaerial fraction of oceanic crust where lithology from mantle peridotites to crustal gabbro, dolerite, and extrusive rocks are present, thus providing a unique opportunity to study geochemistry and petrology of the oceanic crust. Macquarie Island represents a mid-ocean crust ophiolite in which the potential geochemical modification of continental crust and effects of subduction initiation are absent. A genetic link between plutonic and extrusive rocks and processes leading to formation of the ophiolite sequence were studied in this thesis. A set of samples representing different rock types of the oceanic crust were studied petrographically as well as for whole-rock major and trace element geochemistry. Selected samples were studied for chromian spinel, silicates, and apatite major and minor component geochemistry. Harzburgites of Macquarie Island are depleted in trace element composition and are not a straightforward residue for the source of the crustal section of the island. Melt infiltration of basaltic melt into potentially former lherzolitic mantle source has been dominating process leading to formation of Macquarie Island oceanic crust. As a consequence to melt infiltration plagioclase-bearing wehrlites recrystallized and these rocks probably acted as a more enriched source for crustal rocks.Major and trace element data show that fractional crystallization has not been significant process forming the island. Extrusive basalts are more primitive in MgO and SiO2 contents and more enriched in REE contents compared to gabbroic rocks of the island. This could be explained by porous fluids migrating through oceanic crust modifying both major and trace element compositions of the samples or extrusive and gabbroic rocks forming from different mantle sources. This study shows that formation of oceanic crust is much more complex than often assumed simple model of fractional crystallization from mantle melt leading to formation of the oceanic crust, or a hypothesized gabbro-dolerite-basalt plumbing system forming the genetically linked crustal rocks.

The dissertation examines aspects of asymmetrical warfare in the war-making of the German military entrepreneur Ernst von Mansfeld during his involvement in the Thirty Years War. Due to the nature of the inquiry, which combines history with military-political theory, the methodological approach of the dissertation is interdisciplinary. The theoretical framework used is that of asymmetrical warfare. The primary sources used in the dissertation are mostly political pamphlets and newsletters. Other sources include letters, documents, and contemporaneous chronicles. The secondary sources are divided into two categories, literature on the history of the Thirty Years War and textbooks covering the theory of asymmetrical warfare. The first category includes biographical works on Ernst von Mansfeld, as well as general histories of the Thirty Years War and seventeenth-century warfare. The second category combines military theory and political science. The structure of the dissertation consists of eight lead chapters, including an introduction and conclusion. The introduction covers the theoretical approach and aims of the dissertation, and provides a brief overlook of the sources and previous research on Ernst von Mansfeld and asymmetrical warfare in the Thirty Years War. The second chapter covers aspects of Mansfeld s asymmetrical warfare from the perspective of operational art. The third chapter investigates the illegal and immoral aspects of Mansfeld s war-making. The fourth chapter compares the differing methods by which Mansfeld and his enemies raised and financed their armies. The fifth chapter investigates Mansfeld s involvement in indirect warfare. The sixth chapter presents Mansfeld as an object and an agent of image and information war. The seventh chapter looks into the counter-reactions, which Mansfeld s asymmetrical warfare provoked from his enemies. The eighth chapter offers a conclusion of the findings. The dissertation argues that asymmetrical warfare presented itself in all the aforementioned areas of Mansfeld s conduct during the Thirty Years War. The operational asymmetry arose from the freedom of movement that Mansfeld enjoyed, while his enemies were constrained by the limits of positional warfare. As a non-state operator Mansfeld was also free to flout the rules of seventeenth-century warfare, which his enemies could not do with equal ease. The raising and financing of military forces was another source of asymmetry, because the nature of early seventeenth-century warfare favoured private military entrepreneurs rather than embryonic fiscal-military states. The dissertation also argues that other powers fought their own asymmetrical and indirect wars against the Habsburgs through Mansfeld s agency. Image and information were asymmetrical weapons, which were both aimed against Mansfeld and utilized by him. Finally, Mansfeld s asymmetrical threat forced the Habsburgs to adapt to his methods, which ultimately lead to the formation of a subcontracted Imperial Army under the management and leadership of Albrecht von Wallenstein. Therefore Mansfeld s asymmetrical warfare ultimately paved way for the kind of state-monopolized, organised, and symmetrical warfare that has prevailed from 1648 onwards. The conclusion is that Mansfeld s conduct in the Thirty Years War matched the criteria for asymmetrical warfare. While traditional historiography treated Mansfeld as an anomaly in the age of European state formation, his asymmetrical warfare has begun to bear resemblance to the contemporary conflicts, where nation states no longer hold the monopoly of violence.

In my thesis I examined a pseudepigraphal gospel called the Gospel of Barnabas (GOB). This so called gospel has been an important part of the Muslim polemics against Christianity since the beginning of the 20th century. Many Muslim scholars claim that it is the only true Gospel written by Jesus’ close disciple and apostle Barnabas. However, the majority of the Western scholars claim that it is really a medieval Islamic writing. My approach to the study of the GOB was quite theoretical; I used two different theories through which I tried to get new information on the GOB. The first theory is the counter-history theory developed by Amos Funkenstein and David Biale. Through this theory I examined the GOB itself and tried to analyse if it can be seen as a counter-history. With this theory I answered to the research question “what kind of text is the GOB?” The other theory is the power relations theory by James C. Scott. Through this theory I examined the historical situation of Moriscos in Spain and tried to see if it is reasonable to locate the origins of the GOB there. With power relations theory my aim was to answer to the research question “where and why was the GOB written?” Through the counter-history theory I found out that the author of the GOB has used mainly Christian sources to produce a different depiction of Jesus’ life. With the thematic analysis I discovered that the GOB redacts many important Christian dogmas with Islamic ideas and so produces an Islamic counter-history of the narratives of the canonical gospels. Hence, as an answer to the research question of what kind of text the GOB is, I would say that the GOB is an (polemical?) Islamic counter-history of the Christian idea of Jesus. Through the power relations theory I found out that the power relations between dominant Christians and subordinate Moriscos was a very fruitful context for a writing such as the GOB to emerge. The GOB can be seen as a disguised intellectual resistance, where the message and the messenger are hidden. It was probably written to influence the Christian majority. To the research question of where and why the GOB was written, I answer that it was probably written in Morisco Spain as an intellectual resistance.