Finland In November Research Articles

Structural evil or individual deficiency? The construction of poverty in the Finnish Parliament

This article examines the political standpoints and arguments related to poverty by asking how Finnish politicians understand poverty as a social problem, how they construct the poor as a group, and what policy recommendations they propose to fight poverty. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine minutiae from the interpellation debate on the increasing inequality in Finland in November 2017. Despite an increase in austerity policies and a right-wing government, the poverty discourse remained in alignment with a predominantly structural nature, showcasing the strength of ideological and contextual continuity in terms of poverty policy development.

Insights into Preservation of Blood Biomarkers in Biobank Samples.

Insights into Preservation of Blood Biomarkers in Biobank Samples.

Maps, space and body: connecting mental representations of space to the production of space

This exposition investigates the relationship between maps, space and body. It looks at mental maps — images of the environment that we hold in our memory. It argues that a map we store in our minds is not merely a functional device for navigation, but a system of signs, values and meanings that allow us to re-imagine the space, appropriate it and develop new social practices. The study places mental images inside Lefebvre's triad of social space (Lefebvre, 1991). It suggests that mental images are a manifestation of the third component of the triad, the lived space, which includes alternative imaginations, symbolic values and appropriations of space. The exposition explores this claim via a dataset of 37 mental maps created by Masters-level students at Aalto University in Finland in November 2018. By qualitatively analysing the contents and the morphology of the hand-drawn maps, it traces how the lived space is both passively perceived and actively re-imagined. The main contribution of the exposition is bringing the imagined space to the attention of urban planning professionals. It suggests that the distorted, inconsistent and idiosyncratic mental images are more than a reduced schema of a physical environment. They support alternative re-imagining and catalyse the process of creative appropriation, enabling bottom-up urban transformation.

Nurses' self-assessments of adherence to guidelines on safe medication preparation and administration in long-term elderly care.

Medication-related errors are common in elderly care. Most are detected during the preparation and administration stages of the medication process. Nursing staff have a key role in preventing errors, and it is based on adherence to guidelines. The aim was to determine nursing staff's self-assessments of how they adherence to guidelines on safe medication preparation, administration and asepsis in the medication process in long-term elderly care and to identify factors affecting this adherence. Cross-sectional study was conducted by total sampling at the communal long-term elderly care wards of one healthcare district in Finland in November 2016. Data were collected from nursing staff by using a previously developed web-based questionnaire. The response rate was 39.4% (n=492). One-third of the nurses stated that they do not always follow guidelines when preparing medication, and around a half deviate from them occasionally, when administering medication. The most serious deviation on preparation stage was crushing of sustained release and enteric-coated tablets and mixing of crushed tablets together. On administration stage, the deviation of guidelines of giving medicine in recommended time or in relation to food was common. Associations were detected between the adherence to guidelines and the nurses' experience about the adequacy of their knowledge of pharmacology and infection control, and their skill at performing medication calculations. Deviation from guidelines often causes an error. There is a need to review the teaching of pharmacology, infection control and medication calculations during undergraduate and continuing education. In addition, nursing staff must be reminded about the ethical aspects of safe medication processes and the appropriate attitudes to these processes. Nurses must understand why it is important to follow guidelines when preparing and administering medications, in order to avoid errors.

Enhancing the Resilience of Electricity Networks by Multi-stakeholder Risk Assessment: The Case Study of Adverse Winter Weather in Finland

Electricity networks in Finland are subject to adverse winter weather, particularly a combination of heavy snowfall with strong winds, causing electricity outages especially in the rural areas. The severe consequences of such events require that electricity distributors and the entire network of stakeholders establish a proactive risk management for achieving enhanced situational awareness during adverse weather events, efficient and effective recovering after electricity outage as well as improved preparedness against future events. This paper shows how a risk assessment performed with an Action Error Analysis (AEA) were conducted in order to enhance the resilience of electricity networks against adverse winter weather. This also encompassed an assessment of co-operation and communication structures about such risks. Adverse winter weather that took place in Pirkanmaa, in South-West Finland in November 2015, serves as a case study and laboratory for the assessments. The results of the AEA underscore the importance of co-operation and communication-related challenges that electricity distributors, rescue authorities and municipalities face in maintaining and obtaining a high level of resilience of electricity networks during and after heavy snowfalls. Against this background, novel ways and measures related to co-operation and communication of stakeholders to improve the resilience of electricity networks against future events are discussed.

Does public criticism Erode trust in the police? The case of Jari Aarnio in the Finnish news media and its effects on the public’s attitudes towards the police

A significant part of the general public’s observations and image concerning the police comes through the mass media. It has been assumed that one factor affecting the level of trust is the way the media handles the police. This article describes the media uproar that arose in Finland in November 2013 about police misconduct, and its effects on the public trust in the police. Two hypotheses were tested in the study: (a) negative publicity always decreases trust, and so, too, in this case; and (b) a change in trust is affected by the public’s independent interpretation of the publicity battle, in which case criticism might also increase trust. The study materials comprise the news coverage concerning the uproar and four opinion surveys collected after it occurred. The first survey was conducted immediately after the press conference of the case in week 48/2013 and the other ones in three-week intervals. The results show that following the uproar, compared to the earlier results of the European Social Survey, trust in the police did not decrease—on the contrary, it increased slightly. Our results suggest that in this case a large part of the audience has taken, to use the term of Stuart Hall, the oppositional position when interpreting negative news about the police.

Defining a Good Death: A deliberative democratic view.

Many attempts to define a good death have been recorded in the academic literature. In most of these attempts, the methods used have been surveys, interviews, and focus groups. These methods have yielded important information, but they have failed to provide an opportunity for public deliberation, whereby people engage collectively with an issue, consider it from all sides, and struggle to understand it. We believe that a well-orchestrated public deliberation could contribute to defining a good death. We gathered data from four deliberative forums implemented in Finland in November 2013. The results paint a picture that differs from those painted by the previous research, which focused mainly on individual and idealized views of a good death. Our findings have brought to light the messy reality of a good death. Deliberation elicited the concern that society could not provide a good death for all and in the process highlighted the lack of proper palliative care and the dominant role of healthcare professionals in defining a good death. Participants also came to terms with the inherent complexity of dying well and gained a better understanding of the challenges related to providing a good death via euthanasia. Their perspectives broadened, proving that defining a good death is a dynamic process rather than a static one.

Accelerating the public’s learning curve on wicked policy issues: results from deliberative forums on euthanasia

The concept of wicked problems has been increasingly recognized in policy studies over the last decade. However, 40 years after the concept was introduced, the bulk of the available research still seems to follow the same approach: Issues are identified as being wicked problems, and rather similar models are theorized to address them. We argue that the research on wicked problems would benefit from a stronger empirical slant; the current research adopts just such an empirical approach in focusing on the role of citizens in tackling wicked policy issues. More specifically, the mechanisms of deliberative democracy are analyzed. This is important because wicked policy issues are commonly associated with fragmentation and incoherence. Deliberative mechanisms are then thought to lead toward public judgment, a form of shared understanding where citizens strive to understand the complexity of the issue and, working together in deliberation, seek the best ways to address it. Drawing on the outcomes of four deliberative forums on euthanasia conducted in Finland in November 2013, the current research analyzes whether the deliberation process helped the participants to progress on the public’s learning curve and whether it was ultimately likely to foster authentic public judgment on a particular wicked policy issue.

Impact of Temporality and Identifiability in Online Deliberations on Discussion Quality: An Experimental Study

There is a perception that citizen deliberation brings about higher-quality discussions than discussions where deliberative norms are not used. Often, deliberations are realised in mini-publics in which certain contextual features ensure, a priori, that the discussions are likely to be of a high quality. However, few studies have as yet explored the boundaries of deliberation; that is, contemplated what happens to discussion quality if the ideal-speech situation is strayed away from. To address this point, this article reports on an online experiment in which the discursive setting of citizen deliberations is manipulated. The experiment (n = 50 participants) was carried out online in Finland in November 2013 in order to test the impact on discussion quality related to two factors: the temporality (asynchronous or synchronous discussions) and identifiability of participants (known or anonymous) in an online deliberation. The findings clearly indicate that asynchronous discussions have the most positive influence on discussion quality. Moreover, the identifiability factor only had a small weak influence on discussion quality, and there was only one weak interaction effect between the two factors.

1663 – Alcohol and tobacco usage and depressive symptoms among university students

Substance abuse and mental health problems have been increasing among young population. To find out the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco usage and their association with depressive symptoms among university students. Web-based questionnaire was sent to all 13397 university students of Oulu University, Finland in November 2011. 2167 (16,2%) replied, 31,5% were males and 68,5% females. The questionnaire included Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-C), questions concerning tobacco, and Symptom Check List-90 (SCL-90). We analyzed the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco usage and their association with depressive symptoms by gender. Among males 46,0% had hazardous drinking habits (AUDIT-C score 4-7) and 21,3% had very hazardous drinking habits (AUDIT-C score 8-12). Among females 63,2% had hazardous drinking habits (AUDIT-C score 3-7) and 4,8% had very hazardous drinking habits (AUDIT-C score 8-12). 14,8% of males and 12,1% of females were smoking tobacco irregularly and 4,8% of males and 4,4% of females smoked regularly. There was no statistically significant association between usage of alcohol and symptoms of depression among males or females. Among males, but not among females, there was statistically significant positive association between tobacco smoking and depressive symptoms (p=0,001). The prevalence of hazardous drinking habits in our sample was very high compared to earlier studies conducted among university students. Contrary to earlier studies there was no association between hazardous drinking habits and depressive symptoms. In the future factors associating to hazardous drinking and the prevention of this phenomenon should be studied in more detail.

Antimicrobial prescribing in European nursing homes

The aim of this study was to investigate antimicrobial prescribing in nursing homes in countries across Europe. Point prevalence studies were completed in April and November 2009 in 85 nursing homes in 15 European countries and two UK administrations. A total of 10,388 and 9430 residents participated in April and November 2009, respectively. The mean prevalence of antimicrobial prescribing in the nursing homes was 6.5% in April and 5.0% in November. The most commonly prescribed antimicrobials were methenamine (17.5%), trimethoprim (11.4%) and co-amoxiclav (11.1%) in April and co-amoxiclav (12.2%), nitrofurantoin (12.2%) and methenamine (11.5%) in November. There was large variation in the overall mean antimicrobial prescribing in the selected nursing homes from each of the contributing countries, ranging from 1.4% in Germany and Latvia to 19.4% in Northern Ireland in April and 1.2% in Latvia to 13.4% in Finland in November. Furthermore, differences in prescribing were apparent within countries with the largest variation evident in nursing homes in Northern Ireland (21.5%) in April and Finland in November (30.1%). This is the first study to investigate antimicrobial prescribing in nursing homes in a large number of European countries. The findings suggest that there is considerable variation in antimicrobial prescribing in nursing homes across and within European countries. Nursing homes provide a significant service to the European community and must be supported in order to optimize antimicrobial use and limit the development of antimicrobial resistance.

Toward War with Russia: British Naval and Air Planning for Conflict in the Near East, 1939-40

Anglo-French planning to bomb Russian oilfields, and to insert a naval task force into the Black Sea for operations against Russian commerce, fleet units and installations, has often been noted but seldom in such a manner as to answer more questions than are raised by the discussion. What follows is an attempt to place such planning within the general scope of Allied policy on the brink of the precipice, and to explain why operations that once seemed possible, perhaps even probable, were never undertaken. Historically, Turkey and the Straits occupied a central position in British planning for war against Russia. The simple reason for this was that Turkey, as custodian of the Straits, could open the door into the Black Sea to the Royal Navy and, conversely, could close the Straits to Russian commerce. In 1939, such planning, from the viewpoint of London and Paris, seemed politically possible as, soon after the outbreak of war, Turkey had bound itself to Britain and France in a Tripartite Alliance, at least partly predicated upon Turkey's traditional fears of Russia fears greatly strengthened by the debacle of the Sara9oglu-Molotov talks in October. While these conceptions remained part of renewed naval planning in the event of war with Russia after September 1939, they were pushed into second place by other considerations as the Western Allies began to move towards a more aggressive posture following the Russian attack on Finland in November 1939: chiefly, the possibility of using Turkey as an air base for aerial attack on the Caucasian oil fields, and as a barrier to possible Russian counteraction. By the winter of 1939-40, such planning quickly progressed beyond the point where it was defensive and contingent and became increasingly offensive and driven by operational considerations. Throughout, the moving spirit

Effect of weather and climatological background on snow damage of forests in Southern Finland in November 1991.

Effect of weather and climatological background on snow damage of forests in Southern Finland in November 1991.

Opponentindlæg: Outi Turpeinen - Recombining ideas from art and cultural history museums in theory and practice

Outi Turpeinen M.A. defended her doctoral dissertation, entitled “A Meaningful Museum Object. Critical visuality in cultural history museum exhibitions”, in public at the University of Arts and Design in Helsinki, Finland in November 2005. Her thesis examines the relationship between a cultural history museum exhibition and the objects on display. Specifically, it aims at shedding light on the formation of the meaning behind the exhibition. The main research questions are: How are meanings constructed for cultural history museums’ exhibition design? How are meanings represented as visual signs by the exhibition design? How does the relationship between exhibition design and museum objects, especially their visuality, affect interpretation?