Lack of male teachers: a problem for students or teachers?

This article explores young people's perspectives on males and females as teachers, contrasting these with teachers' perceptions. It builds on 90 interviews of school students aged 13-14 and 60 follow-up interviews 4 years later. The first interviews were conducted in ethnographic context in two secondary schools in the mid-1990s in Helsinki, Finland. Whilst lack of male teachers is a recurrent theme in educational discussion, widely agreed among teachers, gender did not appear to be relevant when young persons talked about teachers. They appreciate teachers, irrespective of gender, who can teach and are friendly and relaxed, but who nevertheless keep order and make sure that students work. Male teachers who teach popular, non-academic subjects were often favoured by boys, but so were female teachers of academic subjects and increasingly as time went on. The interviews suggest that students do not need male teachers to act as 'male models'. They also suggest that male teachers should be sensitive in relationships with female students. When questioned explicitly, most of the interviewees did not regard lack of male teachers as a major problem     

Reactive Oxygen Species and Long Non-Coding RNAs,an Unexpected Crossroad in Cancer Cells

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) have recently been identified as key regulators of oxidative stress in several malignancies. The level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) must be constantly regulated to maintain cancer cell proliferation and chemoresistance and to prevent apoptosis. This review will discuss how lncRNAs alter the ROS level in cancer cells. We will first describe the role of lncRNAs in the nuclear factor like 2 (Nrf-2) coordinated antioxidant response of cancer cells. Secondly, we show how lncRNAs can promote the Warburg effect in cancer cells, thus shifting the cancer cell’s “building blocks” towards molecules important in oxidative stress regulation. Lastly, we explain the role that lncRNAs play in ROS-induced cancer cell apoptosis and proliferation.     

Insectivorous Birds Are Attracted by Plant Traits Induced by Insect Egg Deposition

Insectivorous birds feed upon all developmental stages of herbivorous insects, including insect eggs if larvae and adults are unavailable. Insect egg deposition on plants can induce plant traits that are subsequently exploited by egg parasitoids searching for hosts. However, it is unknown whether avian predators can also use egg-induced plant changes for prey localization. Here, we studied whether great tits (Parus major) and blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) are attracted by traits of the Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) induced by pine sawfly (Diprion pini) egg deposition. We chose this plant – insect system because sawfly egg deposition on pine needles is known to locally and systemically induce a change in pine volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and tits are known to prey upon sawfly eggs. In dual choice laboratory experiments, we simultaneously offered the birds an egg-free control branch and a systemically egg-induced branch. Significantly more birds visited the egg-induced branch first. We confirmed by GC-MS analyses that systemically egg-induced branches released more (E)-β-farnesene compared to control branches. Spectrophotometric analyses showed that control branches reflected more light than egg-induced branches throughout the avian visual range. Although a discrimination threshold model for blue tits suggests that the birds are poor at discriminating this visual difference, the role of visual stimuli in attracting the birds to egg-induced pines cannot be discounted. Our study shows, for the first time, that egg-induced odorous and/or visual plant traits can help birds to locate insect eggs without smelling or seeing those eggs.     

Housing Pathways of Skilled Migrants: Indian Professionals in Helsinki,Finland

Abstract

Although relatively understudied, the role of affordable and acceptable housing in the accelerating global competition for talent is of utmost importance, especially if highly skilled migrants are to be absorbed into the permanent labour force. This paper concerns the housing of skilled Indian migrants in the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland, and contributes to the literature on international migration and the housing of ethnic minorities. It presents a case study on how to analyse migrants’ housing pathways, examining the meaning of housing in the transnational lives of this relatively affluent migrant group. The results show that homeownership is a not a simple indicator of commitment to the host society, and that those responsible for national housing policy need to ensure the supply, quality and reasonable price of accommodation in order to fulfil the housing needs of skilled migrants.     

Distributed job scheduling based on Swarm Intelligence: A survey

Scientists and engineers need computational power to satisfy the increasing resource intensive nature of their simulations. For example, running Parameter Sweep Experiments (PSE) involve processing many independent jobs, given by multiple initial configurations (input parameter values) against the same program code. Hence, paradigms like Grid Computing and Cloud Computing are employed for gaining scalability. However, job scheduling in Grid and Cloud environments represents a difficult issue since it is basically NP-complete. Thus, many variants based on approximation techniques, specially those from Swarm Intelligence (SI), have been proposed. These techniques have the ability of searching for problem solutions in a very efficient way. This paper surveys SI-based job scheduling algorithms for bag-of-tasks applications (such as PSEs) on distributed computing environments, and uniformly compares them based on a derived comparison framework. We also discuss open problems and future research in the area.     

R&D vs. Other Factor Inputs in a High-Tech Industry

According to knowledge-based growth theories, catch-up with the global technology frontier calls for a shift from physical investment to innovation. This prevailing premise in Finland is tested with an unbalanced panel of firms in Finnish information and communications technology (ICT) manufacturing, over a period of rapid growth, 1990–2003. Stochastic frontier model estimation results are overwhelmed by scale elasticity associated productivity growth. Contrary to beliefs, R&D productivity was relatively low, regardless if measured by efficiency impacts of R&D intensity, technical change or R&D elasticity of output. Results are consistent with industry outcomes and reveal internal causes to the subsequent downfall of ICT manufacturing in Finland.     

Quality-oriented optimization of wave soldering process by using self-organizing maps

In this paper, the optimal process parameters of a wave soldering process were defined. The optimization was performed in respect to soldering quality by minimizing a cost function describing the total repairing cost of a wave-soldered printed circuit board (PCB). The data analysis stages were as follows. First, the process data were coded into inputs for a self-organizing map (SOM). Next, a function for the repairing cost was constructed and used to find the optimal map neurons. At the last phase, the optimal parameters were approximated on the basis of the reference vectors of the optimal neurons. The results showed clearly potential in the optimization of the wave soldering process, especially in the visualization of the optimal process conditions. Therefore, it would be useful to exploit the method more widely in the electronics industry.     

Effect of 2-propanol and water contents on the crystallization and particle size of titanium dioxide synthesized at low-temperature

Two series of titanium dioxide, TiO₂, powder were prepared at a temperature of 50 °C without any catalyst. The effects of 2-propanol and water contents on the formation of crystalline powder mixture of anatase and brookite were systematically studied. The characteristics of produced powder were determined by employing X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, nitrogen adsorption test and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.     

Leaf Volatile Emissions of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Betula pendula</Emphasis> during Autumn Coloration and Leaf Fall

Deciduous trees remobilize the nitrogen in leaves during the process of autumn coloration, thus providing a high quality food source for aphids preparing to lay over-wintering eggs. It has been suggested that aphids may use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to: (a) select leaves where nutrient remobilization has started and induced defenses are reduced; and (b) detect the time of leaf abscission. We analyzed VOCs emitted by the foliage of Betula pendula Roth. during autumn coloration and from leaf litter just after leaf fall. We tested the hypothesis that costly, photosynthesis-related terpenes and other herbivore-induced VOCs related to attraction of aphid parasitoids and predators are reduced during the coloration process. We also investigated if the VOC emission profile of abscising leaves is different from that of early stage yellowing leaves. Enemy-luring compounds (E)-β-ocimene, linalool, and (E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene (DMNT) were emitted only from the green foliage. Methyl salicylate (MeSa), known to recruit predatory bugs and attract migrant aphids, was emitted until the first stage of color change. Cis-3-hexenol, an indicator of cellular disintegration, became dominant in the emissions from abscising leaves and from fresh leaf litter. We discuss the ecological significance of the observed changes in birch leaf VOC profiles during the process of autumn senescence.