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Biodiversity loss and ecosystem service degradation and the related economic costs are increasingly recognized as sources of financial risks. The risks are arising through physical and transition sources of risks caused by dependencies and impacts upon biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, it has become increasingly important for both individual financial institutions as well as central banks and financial supervisors to better understand and manage these risks. However, biodiversity loss is associated with unique complexity and uncertainty, making it a challenging task. The purpose of this thesis was to study the linkages between biodiversity loss and financial stability in Finland. This was done by assessing the financial exposure of Finnish credit institutions to sectors dependent on ecosystem services for their production processes. A quantitative analysis was conducted in order to combine loan data obtained from the Bank of Finland and ecosystem service data obtained from the ENCORE database. The results showed that 23% of loans provided by Finnish credit institutions are exposed to high or very high biodiversity-related financial risks. The sectors associated with most value at risks were real estate and agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors. Disruptions of ecosystem services providing surface water and climate regulation were posing the highest financial risks. The findings represent a first step towards assessing the exposure of the Finnish financial system to biodiversity-related financial risks. The results and previous literature indicate that physical biodiversity-related financial risk exposures are significant for individual financial institutions and for the whole financial system, despite the prevailing methodological challenges and gaps in knowledge. In order to complete a comprehensive biodiversity-related financial risk assessment, further research is needed.

Food literacy is a noteworthy topic to be studied due to food’s considerable environmental and health effects. When food literacy and its characteristics are known, food literacy can be used as a tool to improve people’s health and the condition of the environment. Thus, this thesis aims to reveal the extent of food literacy among Finnish upper secondary school students. In this context, food literacy emphasises food-related environmental and health knowledge. Environmental knowledge is understanding of the global environmental impact of food. Health knowledge, on the other hand, is the familiarity with the relationship between excessive meat consumption and Finnish common diseases along with beliefs regarding diets and food products as a source of protein. This thesis also aims to identify to what extent does the food literacy differ based on gender, study year and living area. This study was performed as a quantitative sample survey and the data was collected using an online Typeform -questionnaire. The questionnaire reached respondents from many different Finnish localities, mainly from cities. The final data consisted of 1320 individuals and it was analysed using IMB SPSS Statistics 24 software. The following methods were used to analyse data: frequency analysis, an Independent Samples t Test, a One-way ANOVA, and a Post-hoc LSD test. Gender, study year and living area were used as grouping variables to examine the differences between groups. The results show that the students named school as the main source of food literacy. Moreover, the results indicate that awareness regarding food production, dietary health and proteins increase significantly from the first to the third study year. The students acknowledged food production causing environmental problems and that the share of food in the consumer’s climatic impact is considerable. Nevertheless, the students underestimated the climatic impact of cheese and they were unaware of the more specific characteristics of food’s environmental impacts. They also had food-related environmental misconceptions considering packaging, transportation and meat consumption. Moreover, approximately half or more of the students were aware of the connection between excessive meat consumption and the increased risk of distinct common diseases. Most of the students acknowledged a versatile vegetarian diet as being a healthy choice. The study also reveals that female students had notably higher dietary health knowledge than male students. This Master’s thesis study mainly supports the findings of previous studies on food-related knowledge. The results elucidate the extent, characteristics, gaps and misconceptions of students’ food literacy. These findings may be utilized to improve school education on food literacy, alter misconceptions and fill the gaps of knowledge in pursuit of improving the health of people and the condition of the environment.

In this study, the goal was to determine which nutrient, phosphorus or nitrogen, limits the phytoplankton growth at the Vanajavesi freshwater site. The aims were to detect spatial and temporal changes and find out if the wastewater treatment plant (hereafter, WWTP) located by the study site affects the nutrient concentrations and the limiting nutrient. The reliability of determining limiting nutrient by bioassays and measuring the phytoplankton response to different treatments as fluorescence was also evaluated. The study was conducted because knowledge of nutrient limitation is essential when allocating resources to reduce nutrient loading and planning other remediation practices in eutrophicated waterbodies. According to the EU Water Framework Directive, all waterbodies in the EU must be in a good ecological status by the year 2027. This goal is yet to be achieved in Vanajavesi; the ecological status of the river Vanajanreitti is poor and that of lake Vanajanselkä is moderate. The samples for bioassays were taken from five different locations. Three sampling sites were in the river and two by the lake. Based on the direction which the water flows, one of the sampling sites was before the outlet from the WWTP and the rest after it. The bioassays were carried out with the water and natural phytoplankton community taken from the study site. The experiment was conducted five times: in November, March, May, July and August. The temperature and light conditions in the incubation room were set to mimic those in Vanajavesi at each given time. Part of the preparations was to filter out the zooplankton using 50 μm plankton net. There were four different treatments: control without nutrient additions, nitrogen addition, phosphorus addition and nitrogen and phosphorus additions. Fluorescence from the 2 litre incubation bottles was measured every 1-3 days during each experiment. Chlorophyll a was determined in laboratory before and after the experiments. Nutrient concentrations were also determined before each experiment. Small seasonal and temporal changes were observed in the nutrient concentrations and the limiting nutrient. These changes were most likely due to changing seasons, effluent from the WWTP and denitrification at lake Vanajanselkä. Phosphorus limited phytoplankton growth year around at all places. At the end of the summer also nitrogen was limiting. In July co-limitation was detected in all sampling sites. In situations of co-limitation there was either no secondary limiting nutrient, or it was phosphorus. Only once, in August at the sampling point before the outlet from the WWTP, was the secondary limiting nutrient nitrogen. On average the nutrient concentrations were higher in the river than in the lake. Chlorophyll a concentrations and some nutrient concentrations were higher after the WWTP. However, no significant negative impact due to WWTP could be detected, especially at lake Vanajanselkä and the WWTP did not result in a change from phosphorus limitation to nitrogen limitation. Bioassays and the phytoplankton yield measured with a fluorometer was a reliable way of determining the limiting nutrient. Chlorophyll a concentrations verified the fluorescence results. The probe used in this study measured only the fluorescence of chlorophyll a. Even more accurate result of the phytoplankton biomass would have been obtained with a probe that measures also the fluorescence of phycocyanin, the photosynthetic pigment in cyanobacteria, because cyanobacteria has less chlorophyll a than other phytoplankton groups. As Vanajavesi is phosphorus limited or co-limited by phosphorus and nitrogen year around, reductions in phosphorus loading will likely improve the water quality. The main source of phosphorus to Vanajavesi is the nutrient loading from agricultural practises on the drainage basin. Efficient management of this diffuse loading will cause the phytoplankton biomass, especially the biomass of harmful cyanobacteria, to decrease. Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria is not dependent on the nitrogen concentrations in the water column, but the concentration of phosphorus. Significantly reducing the phosphorus loading is a prerequisite for the Vanajanreitti and Vanajavesi to be in a good ecological status by the year 2027.

The topic of forest fires has gathered a lot of media attention in recent years as it relates closely to climate change and other sustainability issues. The media has an important role in communicating these issues as it affects, how the public percieves them, how different sustainability problems are defined and what kind of solutions are seen plausible. I became interested in how the media represents the issue of forest fires. My aim in this thesis is to find out, how the Colombian news media has framed the Amazon rainforest fires. As my material I used the news articles from the Colombian news media El Tiempo. I definined my timeframe from July 2019 to september 2019 because at that time the news subject was of high interest. After the initial search I went through the articles and left out any irrelevant ones. I was left with 24 news articles. As an analytic tool I utilized qualitative frame analysis guided by Robert Entman´s definition of frames and used ATLAS.ti to make an initial thematic coding. After that I mapped out all the actors that were cited in the news articles and divided them into groups. Using these actor groups, I searched for the frames. There were eight actor groups, politicians and political organizations being the most prominent one. Looking at how these actors talked about the forest fires, two main frames came out: populist and scientific. The populist frame concentrated mainly on Jair Bolsonaro. In this frame there was a lot of nationalist and economic arguments and responsability was directed away from him. There seemed to be a lot of enemies also. The second frame concentrated in deforestation, climate change and the forest fires being a global issue. In this frame international actors used economic and political pressure in order to affect Bolsonaro´s policy solutions. The research showed, how difficult it can be to solve shared global problem and made visible a historical political division between authoritarianism and democracy. An other important notion is the lack of marginalized groups in the news media.

Parasitoid host interactions are intimately associated with food web dynamics as well as with evolutionary change. The parasitoid s possibility to expand its host range or switch to different hosts is affected by parasitic strategy. Strong specialization to a narrow host repertoire can arise e.g. if the larva spends considerable time in close contact with an active, developing host (koinobiosis). In contrast, an ectoparasitic larva, growing rapidly on a sessile host, does not have to be equally tightly adapted to host physiology. This may permit a wider host range. However, there are other restricting factors, such as egg production capacity. Extant parasitoids show a staggering species diversity, most notably among the Hymenoptera. Theories concerning speciation in association with host range have been developed, but draw from knowledge of merely a small part of this diversity. This study adds information by showing a number of radical host shifts in the evolutionary history of the ichneumonid wasp genus Gelis. Species of this genus exploit either insect prepupae or spider eggs. These are similar in being rather defenceless, aside from a protective silk covering. Nonetheless, differences are large enough to restrict Gelis species to each utilise only one of the two groups. In order to trace ancient host group shifts, host data was mapped onto a phylogeny constructed through bayesian analysis of sequence data. Sequences from the COI (mitochondrial) and ITS2 (nuclear, noncoding) regions were used. The results suggested at least four host group shifts within the genus. In addition, wing reduction was found to have occurred in two different lineages. Through COI barcode sequence clustering supported by morphological traits, a previously undescribed species from the G. bicolor-species complex was detected. The phylogenetic analyses also indicated the existence of further cryptic species, and the genus Thaumatogelis Schwarz was found to be nested within Gelis.

Human umbilical vein endothelial cells are responsible for maintaining and forming new vessels from existing ones, in a biological process called sprouting angiogenesis. Sprouting angiogenesis is a crucial mechanism for the resolution of hypoxia and normal development of tissues. It also plays a key role in internal plague hemorrhages, which can lead to embolisms and other cardiovascular complications. Angiogenesis is also crucial for cancer development. Sprouting angiogenesis is initiated by hypoxic tissue excreted vascular endothelial growth factor gradient, which induces normal endothelial cells into either a proliferative stalk cell or a signal sensing tip cell phenotype. Both of these cell types depend on the rapid flow of lipids to their plasma membrane, either to form plasma membrane protrusions in tip cells or as new plasma membrane material in dividing stalk cells. This flow is envisioned to involve both vesicle-mediated and non-vesicular mechanisms. A major non-vesicular route of lipid transfer occurs at membrane contact sites via lipid transport proteins. Furthermore, lipids can be transported to the plasma membrane by the direct fusion of vesicles or endosomes with the plasma membrane This thesis set out to explore the role of two membrane contact site proteins, oxysterol-binding protein- related protein 2 and protrudin, in angiogenesis and lipid transfer. Their role was examined by RNA-sequencing transient knock-down samples of these proteins in HUVECs. The RNA-sequencing data was examined by differential expression, gene ontology overrepresentation and gene set enrichment analyses. Gene expression analysis provided almost 10 000 significantly changed transcripts (adjusted p-values < 0.05), in each silenced cell type. The distribution of differentially expressed genes in oxysterol-binding protein- related protein 2 silenced cells, is skewed toward negative fold changes, whereas the distribution of differentially expressed genes in protrudin silenced samples is normally distributed. The results also show significant changes in gene ontologies related to proliferation, cell cycle, angiogenesis as well as hypoxia in both sample types. Gene set enrichment analysis showed upregulation in angiogenesis related pathways, such as the PI3K-Akt and MAPK pathways, in both samples. Significant downregulation was present in cell cycle related pathways and cholesterol biosynthesis pathway in both ORP2 and protrudin silenced samples.

Tree shoot architecture research is important due to its significance in fields such as timber production, fruit and nut production and aesthetics of common areas. Also, research on genetic factors that regulate shoot and root system architecture might provide novel methods to store more carbon in forests and, hence, mitigate global warming in the future. LAZY1 is one of the major genes that affects branch and tiller angle in herbaceous and woody species such as Arabidopsis, rice and peach tree. LAZY1 has been under scrutiny over a decade but its molecular function remains unknown. However, it is known that lazy1 mutation affects polar auxin transport. Here it is studied how LAZY1 affects initial branch angle, fiber length and reaction wood development in silver birch (Betula pendula). Also, transcript levels of few shoot architecture related genes were analyzed. LAZY phylogenetic analysis provided evidence of a duplication of LAZY1 in three studied tree species (Betula pendula, Prunus persica, Populus trichocarpa), duplicated genes are here named LAZY1a and LAZY1b. Plant material employed in this study was a segregating population (50:50) of back-cross 1 of weeping birch (B. pendula ´Youngii´) which has a truncated lazy1a. Histological samples of branches were prepared by cryo-sectioning, stained with carbohydrate binding Alcian Blue and lignin binding Safranin dyes to reveal patterns of tension wood development. Due to the large size of branch sections, samples were imaged with a microscope and the images were merged together in a Photoshop application. Branch angles were measured manually with a protractor (angle) tool from stem to the middle of a branch. The data was analyzed using mixed linear models due to the nature of used plant material. We could not use clones because of major issues in in vitro propagation. Branch samples were macerated, fibers imaged and measured by ImageJ software. LAZY1a gene expression levels were analyzed by RT-qPCR method. RNA-sequence analysis indicated that the expression pattern of LAZY1a and LAZY1b is similar in B. pendula. However, one should construct a promoter-reporter line to study with better resolution if their expression is spatially analogous. Initial branch angle was significantly different in wild type compared to lazy1a mutant. For future, one could generate single and double knock out lines of lazy1a/b to study if they have cumulative effect on the branch angle, an important factor in timber quality. Tension wood formation was difficult to quantify with the employed method, due to issues in segregating G-layered tension wood from thick-walled reaction wood. A chemical analysis of cellulose content might provide a more objective method to observe tension wood in branches. RT-qPCR method indicated that LAZY1a transcript levels are higher in wild type compared to mutant. A complementation or knock down experiment would provide sound evidence that lazy1a induces the weeping phenotype. X-ray diffraction method could be employed to study the orientation of cellulose microfibril angle in branches of the wild type vs. mutant. Generation of effective tensional stress requires a cellulose microfibril angle less than 10 and this angle is affected by auxin concentration. It is possible, that this angle is larger in lazy1a due to defect in polar auxin transport.

Women have exhibited higher levels of math anxiety (MA) compared to men. Despite the relationship between MA and sex differences being topic of interest for over twenty years, the focal point has mostly been on the psychological causes. This review investigates the biological underpinnings of the social phobia and identifies numerous possible correlates which could inform future efforts to support students experiencing math anxiety and encourage more females to pursue STEM related careers. Articles that investigated sex differences in the context of MA were selected for the study using PRISMA guidelines. Females were found to experience higher levels of math anxiety compared to males. Age was shown to influence the prevalence of MA between sexes, with sex differences in MA being more infrequent in children and increasing towards adulthood. The findings suggest that a diverse set of biological sex differences related to to brain function, cognition and sex hormones can, in part, explain the higher prevalence of MA among females and age-related deviations. By shedding light on possible biological factors contributing to sex differences in MA, this review represents a valuable step toward a more comprehensive understanding of this complex issue.

Nuclear receptor subfamily 5 group A member 1 (NR5A1) is a master regulator of both steroidogenesis and gonadal development. Disruptions of NR5A1 can result in differences in sexual development (DSD). With proven interspecies differences in NR5A1 functioning and human material not being available, human stem cells are one of the most achievable, ethical, and accurate models to study the earliest developmental stages of foetal life. However, in currently existing human stem cell-derived gonadal models the expression of NR5A1 has been insufficient without artificial induction due to the lack of knowledge of its distinct biological mechanisms, endogenous ligands, and co-factors. A functional reporter cell line would enable high throughput microscope screening of differentiation protocols with expressed NR5A1. The aim of this thesis was to generate a functional monoclonal human embryonic stem cell (hESC) reporter line for the gene NR5A1 with Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex. Firstly, an efficient guide RNA was determined for NR5A1 by T7 assay, and a homology-directed repair (HDR) donor plasmid was designed based on it. Secondly, monoclonal hESC lines were generated with the Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 RNP complex knock-in method and HDR donor plasmid via electroporation and single-cell sorting. Finally, monoclonal hESC reporter lines were screened with Touchdown PCR and a functionality analysis based on fluorescence and mRNA expression was performed. Two monoclonal hESC reporter lines H9-NR5A1-eGFP cl. 1 and dual-inducible H9-NR5A1-DDdCas9VP192-eGFP cl. 28 were established by using Alt-R CRISPR-Cas9 RNP complex. However, a functional validation performed on H9-NR5A1-DDdCas9VP192-eGFP cl. 28 cells showed the cell line to be non-functional upon NR5A1 upregulation regardless of the expressed eGFP mRNA detected with RT-qPCR.