Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae on Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian monitieteinen julkaisusarja. Sarjan ensimmäinen numero näki päivänvalon marraskuussa 2022. Jatkossa lehti ilmestyy journal.fi-alustalla avoimena verkkojulkaisuna kaksi kertaa vuodessa. Julkaisu edistää tieteidenvälistä vuoropuhelua ja välittää tietoa ajankohtaisista tieteellisistä kysymyksistä ja uusista haasteista. Sarja suuntautuu laajalle yleisölle: Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian jäsenistön, heidän ulkomaisten kollegoidensa ja eri alojen tutkijoiden ohella kohderyhmänä ovat kaikki tieteestä ja tutkimuksesta kiinnostuneet. Annales on vertaisarvoitu, monitieteinen ja monikielinen. Sarja valottaa tieteen ja sen tekemisen luonnetta maailman ymmärtämisessä. ISSN-tunnukset: ISSN 2953-9048 (print) ISSN 2954-1050 (online)
In search of supporting a Sustainable Development Goal in Sub-Saharan Africa by training people to learn knowledge via reading
Recent advances in new technology (NT) have opened pathways to overcome learning obstacles and to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) via its 4th goal in the Sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing the role of digital tools in literacy development. The need and value of support for literacy is most significant in the poor rural areas of the world. Here we explain how we began providing support in Zambia, specifically highlighting how it helped to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among initially illiterate rural people. Access to the Internet is soon also possible in rural Africa, after big cities, which are already almost entirely covered. Thus, millions in Africa with minimal reading skills and compromised access to knowledge (beyond local village gossip) are now in a new situation. Realistic opportunities are available for both acquiring and obtaining information and elevating the mental capacity of not only individuals but also whole countries. Key Challenge: Enabling Full Literacy and essential knowledge for sustainable development for Rural Populations of Africa Keywords: full literacy, knowledge acquisition, digital learning games, artificial intelligence, Africa, sustainable development goals
Copyright (c) 2026 Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Philosophy is literally the oldest of “academic” subjects. In medieval universities it served as a “maiden of theology”, but in modern research universities it gained an important position as an independent scholarly discipline with its own curriculum, journals, societies, and congresses. But still many critics have claimed that philosophy is merely speculative contemplation of eternally unsolved problems without genuine progress. Today there is a lively discussion of the relevance of rival accounts of scientific progress to the issue about philosophical progress. While skeptics deny that philosophy makes progress or achieve it less than science, optimists claim that philosophers successfully solve big problems despite their mutual disagreements. In my inaugural lecture (author 1984), I defended the view that philosophy makes progress by the Socratic method: problematization, explication, and argumentation. As questions, concepts, and arguments do not have truth values, and many philosophical theories are axiological and normative stances rather than factual claims about the world, philosophy does not typically accumulate knowledge. But this not a reason for pessimism: philosophy is largely different from empirical science yet a progressive discipline.
Sympatric speciation, i.e. the origin of new animal species within the distribution of a parental one is considered doubtful at best. We describe here two populations of the mayfly Leptophlebia marginata at a single locality in Savo, Finland. The males swarm either high up among the trees or low down and the females behave in an analogous fashion. Wind is the agent of selection that keeps the populations separate. We have monitored them for almost 60 years. The populations differ not only in behavior but also in genetics and morphology. Genomics may be applied to study this case of reproductive isolation that may lead to incipient speciation.
Strukturerade katalysatorer och reaktorelement – revolution i kemisk teknologi
Konventionella katalysatorer är fortfarande dominerande i den kemiska, farmaceutiska och livsmedelsindustrin, men strukturella katalysatorer har stora fördelar, eftersom de minimerar mass- och värmeöverföringsmotståndet, vilket resulterar i processintensifiering, i mindre och effektivare anläggningar. Fasta skum och 3D-printade katalysatorer representerar den nyaste utvecklingen av katalysatorstrukturer. Fasta skum har en oregelbunden struktur, som kan styras via prepareringssprocessen av skummet. Med 3D-printade katalysatorer öppnas ett nytt perspektiv: strukturen kan designas a priori på forskarens dator och den önskade strukturen kan printas ut med dagens teknologi; endast fantasin sätter ett tak på oss. Metoden kallas även additiv tillverkning. I denna artikel visar vi hur dessa fascinerade strukturer kan åstadkommas i laboratoriet och illustrerar deras framgång i kemiska processer.
Bioeconomy and Its Role in a Just Transition to Ethical Sustainability
Policymakers in Finland and in the European Union have suggested that bioeconomy could be a major factor in a just transition to sustainability. By sustainability they have meant, in the spirit of the Brundtland Commission, uninterrupted material growth; and by justice, compensations for old industries, subsidies for new innovations, and a trickle-down effect that transforms economic profits into social benefits and environmental protection. Ethical sustainability, in contrast, would mean the equal consideration of industrial, social, and ecological dimensions. Justice in the transition from a detrimental fossil economy to a better arrangement would be achieved by bans and regulations, including ones aimed at restricting harmful bioeconomic activities.
Paikkatiedot ja paikannus digitalisaation avaimina
Paikkatiedon ja tarkan paikantamisen rooli digitalisaation kehityksessä on kasvanut voimakkaasti. Tämä kehitys haastaa julkisen sektorin mukauttamaan paikkatietostrategiaansa varmistaakseen paikkatietojen tarkkuuden, ajantasaisuuden ja jakamisen sekä paikannuksen vastaamaan uusiin tarpeisiin, jotka johtuvat esimerkiksi älyliikenteen ja muiden sijaintiin perustuvien palveluiden kehityksestä, metsätalouden ja maatalouden digitalisaatiosta sekä globaalista finassitaloudesta. Lisäksi digitaaliset kaksoset, jotka mallintavat reaalimaailman prosesseja, kuten ilmastoa tai valtameriä, tarvitsevat reaaliaikaista tarkkaa paikkatietoa. Näitä uusia sovelluksia tehtäessä on tärkeää ymmärtää, kuinka voimme jakaa paikkatietoa tehokkaasti ja mitä vaatimuksia tämä asettaa paikkatietoa kuvaavalle metatiedolle.
Concepts regarding human development have taken shape slowly. Empirical research of it began in the 19th century, inspired by the natural sciences. Childhood, youth, adulthood, and aging became a developmental continuum in the 20th century within life-span development theories. Human development research is a multidisciplinary task, and its results are applicable in practical work with humans. The article considers the use of research information in terms of its appreciation, expertise, supplementation, application, and dissemination. Knowledge of human development would support well-being and promote cooperation and life on our planet of limited resources, taking care of each other.
Copyright (c) 2023 Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Katsomukset ja kulttuuriset työkalut modernin elämän palapelissä
Religion and other views of life are often studied by applying the notions of identity and worldview. My article offers to supplement these perspectives by that of cultural tools. Pluralistic societies afford multiple cultural tools with which individuals and groups can try to adjust their position and enhance their possibilities of action in the midst of the often precarious and rapidly changing situations of modern life. Both scientific and religious, or “spiritual”, tools are available, and they may be flexibly applied and, also, combined in different ways. I reflect on the question of cultural tools drawing from the recent research conducted by my colleagues as well as by myself on the following three subject areas: Esoteric beliefs and practices in the shadow of mainstream religion, transforming rituals of death, and the interest in learning from new kinds of religion and spirituality.
Data-intensive sociolinguistics using social media
This article looks into using large-scale social media data in SSH research and in particular in studies of language variation and change. It presents a study that investigates the role of social networks in linguistic variability. Previous studies have convincingly shown that networks in which people are connected to each other in loose ties tend to contribute positively to language change. Conversely, networks in which people are closely connected to each other inhibit change. This conclusion is, however, based on small datasets from small networks, and this study tests if the difference is diluted when network size is closer to human average. The results from 3,935 networks suggest this to be the case. Towards the end, the article suggests numerous ways in which large-scale social media data and the use of data intensive methodologies could be increased and encouraged in SSH research.
Osuuskuntien sääntely ja osuuskuntaperiaatteet
The purpose of this article is to assess how the Finnish Cooperatives Act should be devel-oped so that it would better reflect the Cooperative Principles laid down by the Internation-al Cooperative Alliance. There is much evidence showing that cooperatives are important (socio)economic actors, hence, cooperative identity needs to be preserved through legisla-tion. It is, for example, argued that the principles of one member one vote and concern for the community should be enhanced through legislation. Furthermore, equity-based financ-ing instruments that promote investor interests should not be developed further. Instead, attention should be paid to such financing methods that are better aligned with the Coop-erative Principles.
Copyright (c) 2024 Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Learning From the Global Experience in Conflict Prevention
This article identifies some of the central blind spots in the Western understanding of conflict prevention. On the one hand, this is achieved by referencing research that contrasts elements of Western conflict prevention approaches with more successful non-Western methods. On the other hand, the article summarizes research indicating which framings and social realities predict conflict onset and escalation, exposing intellectual approaches that are detrimental to conflict prevention. Throughout this exploration, the article also unveils my personal intellectual history and development in the field of peace studies.
Humans are inherently social animals and need the company of others for their well-being. Accumulating evidence suggests that our cognitive system as well as the associated neural networks include domain specific mechanisms specialized for processing information from other people. This information is necessary for efficient and smooth social interaction. This article first describes findings from two main areas of social neuroscience research: processing of visual information from other people’s faces and bodies, and processing of (non-visible) information about other people's minds. After this, the article focuses on the big challenges the researchers on the field are facing: how to move on from the typical laboratory experiments in which participants are often mere spectators looking at pictures of other people. How to design studies which are genuinely social?
This article introduces an ongoing project that examines a key aspect of the transition from war to uneasy peace in the aftermath of WWII in Europe: the ethno-national categorizations of the expellees forcibly transported across inter-state borders as national minorities. It argues that the level of ethno-national homogeneity between incoming expellees and more established population groups in the ‘postwar moment’ has been exaggerated. In fact, this period witnessed a complex process of redefining and renegotiating the bounds of the postwar national community in which ethno-national categories were contested and whose consequences were far-ranging, both immediately and in the longer term.
Urbaani kulttuuriperintö ja fragmentaatioteoria: Esimerkkinä Turun kaupunkiarkeologia
Despite the shift from a monument- or object-centred to a landscape-centred approach in the protection and management of urban cultural heritage, the analysis of cultural heritage as individual objects is still relevant. Theories on material culture do not see objects in the way they were conceived in monument-centred conservation. A case in point is fragmentation theory. The article uses this theory to analyse the relationship between archaeology and the urban landscape in Turku. Although fragmentation theory has its roots in prehistoric archaeology, the article adapts it to the modern, urban setting. Archaeological fragments have a physical connection with the past, but they can also act as agents independent of their original objects. This creative potential of fragments should be further explored in urban heritage management.
Väärin koettu, eli kaukaisten vuosisatojen varoituksia kokemuksen historiasta
Is the history of early modern experience useful to historical research or to modern society? If it is, how? The article uses the concepts of experience and the history of the early modern period to explore the construction of reality and the relationship of individuals and societies. It warns against self-righteousness and encourages slow thinking.
Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae (AASF) on Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian julkaisusarja, jonka pitkä historia ulottuu Tiedeakatemian perustamiseen saakka. Tiedeakatemian yleisten tavoitteiden mukaisesti se haluaa edistää tieteidenvälistä vuoropuhelua ja välittää valistuneelle lukijakunnalle tietoa ajankohtaisista tieteellisen tutkimuksen kysymyksistä ja uusista haasteista. AASF:n myötä Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian julkaisutoiminta palaa juurilleen ja ottaa samalla tähän aikaan sopivan muodon: se on monitieteinen, verkossa ilmestyvä aikakauslehti. AASF:n ensimmäiseen numeroon on koottu artikkeleita vuosina 2020 ja 2021 hyväksytyiltä uusilta Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian jäseniltä. Näitä riittää seuraavaankin numeroon, mutta myös aiemmin valitut jäsenet, tänä vuonna valitut ja muut eturivin tutkijat voivat tarjota julkaisuun tekstejä, joissa he kertovat oman tutkimusalansa ajankohtaisista aiheista ja omista kiinnostuksen kohteistaan.
Constant Software Updates vs. Public Software Acquisition
Software industry has widely adopted agile software development model, where it is accepted that change is constant. Indeed, as the environment in which the software is run changes – be it changes in jurisdiction, language, user expectations, reinterpretation or requirements, or something else – the software needs to be modified to satisfy end-user needs. At the same time, many organizations, especially those that operate in the public sector, rely on tendering and detailed requirements documentation when acquiring software, with an assumption that once deployed, the software would continue to serve the end users unaltered or with minor changes covered by a maintenance contract. In this article, we will consider this fundamental mismatch from the viewpoint of what we know about software evolution in general, and then propose ways forward to design and implement public sector software that can be adapted to new, emergent needs.
Kuvaruudullasi tai käsissäsi on AASF:n vuoden 2023 toinen numero. Sen artikkelit ovat jälleen suomeksi, ruotsiksi tai englanniksi kirjoitettuja ja edustavat laajaa tieteenalojen valikoimaa.
Multimediaalisuus ikkunana työelämän digitalisaatioon
Digitalization has had a profound effect on work practices. However, digital practices have not replaced older practices such as paper documents and face-to-face interactions. Rather, interaction in the workplace is multimedial: different forms of communication are intertwined with each other. In this article, drawing form interaction studies, I describe the effects of multimediality for workplace practices in two ways: how multimediality explains the often unconventional ways digital tools are used in workplaces, and how complex, longitudinal workplace processes are organized through multimedial practices. In the concluding section, I also discuss multimedial competences needed in the 21st century workplace.
Swedish is spoken both in Sweden and Finland, and Finland is a bilingual country with Swedish as a national language alongside Finnish. This makes it possible to explore the same language in two different societies, and two different languages in the same society. However, few comparative studies have been conducted with parallel datasets in both national languages of Finland. The project Communicative patterns in two languages in Finland therefore compares Finnish and Finland Swedish internally and to Sweden Swedish in similar institutional settings. In this article I present the research area of the project by discussing results from two previous pilot studies.
Om att leva under lagen: några anmärkningar
‘The rule of law’ has been described as an essentially contested concept which can be filled with different meanings, while still retaining a position as foundational for thinking about society, communal life, and the conditions for correct governance, including and importantly within legal thought. However, in this article the perspective taken on the topic of the rule of law is not strictly legal. Rather, the article’s aim is to reflect more broadly on what it means to live under the law and treat law as if it mattered, including from a religious perspective. By this, the article also provides insights into the disciplinary field of law and religion and current focuses and challenges in that area of research.
Pääsihteeriltä: Monitieteistä tutkimusta näkyväksi
Uudesti syntynyt ”Tiedeakatemian Annaali”, kuten ensimmäistä vuoden 1908 sarjaa kutsuttiin, toteuttaa tiedeakatemioiden perustehtävää: mielenkiintoisten, korkeatasoisten tutkimusten esittelyä. Annales on vertaisarvoitu, monitieteinen ja monikielinen. Se tullaan julkaisemaan pääosin niin sanottuna näköispainoksena verkossa, aluksi kaksi numeroa vuodessa. Julkaisu tulee saamaan rinnalleen digitaalisen, julkaisutavaltaan ja sisällöltään monimuotoisen, työnimellä AASF+ kulkevan version. AASF+ mahdollistaa perinteistä julkaisurytmiä nopeamman sisällön julkaisemisen esimerkiksi keskusteluina tai blogina. Se myös laajentaa lehden lukijakuntaa. Ajankohtainen tiede- ja tutkimusorientoitunut reagointi maailman tapahtumiin tullee osaksi AASF+ -sisältöjä. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae on osa Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian pyrkimyksiä rakentaa yhteisöllisyyttä, tukea monitieteisyyttä ja edistää tieteen vaikuttavuutta. Annales on vahva panoksemme Suomessa harjoitettavan tieteen näkyväksi tekemiseen ja yhteiskunnalliseen keskusteluun.
Economic Degrowth and the Collapse of Institutional Order: Theory and Propositions
Integrating insights from new institutional economics and studies on the collapse of past empires, we sketch a process model that links economic degrowth to the collapse of institutional orders. Our thought experiment starts from emphasizing the importance of institutions and enforcement mechanisms in maintaining a sufficient level of economic activity to sustain public costs. We flip this established logic and elucidate the negative role of economic degrowth in the weakening of the public sector’s ability to enforce institutional rules. Internal and external shocks further shake the stability of the institutional order and, at some point, individuals’ belief in institutional rules and norms weakens, resulting in system-wide collapse of the institutional order. We use historical literature on the collapse of Roman Empire as an “experimental prototype” (Meyer, Gaba, & Colwell, 2005: 471) to inspire and illustrate our thought experiment.
Femtometreistä valovuosiin: neutronitähdet eksoottisen aineen laboratoriona
The Standard Model of particle physics describes the basic properties and interactions of all known elementary particles at an astonishingly good level, and predictions derived from it have time and again been experimentally verified. One of its parts, namely the theory of the strong nuclear interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), has however proven to be computationally extremely demanding. In particular, the properties of matter described by QCD are at the moment still largely unknown in the limit of high baryon density. Very recently, the study of dense QCD matter has taken important steps forward owing largely to new observational data originating from a distant but very effective laboratory: neutron stars. The cores of these extremely compact stars contain the densest form of matter in our present-day Universe, and the properties of this matter are reflected on the measurable macroscopic properties of the stars themselves. In this review article, I will introduce this active field of research, placing particular emphasis on recent efforts to discover an entirely new phase of matter - cold and dense quark matter - inside the cores of the most massive neutron stars.
Oikeusvaltio ja oikeusvarmuus Euroopan unionissa
In this article the EU concepts of rule of law and legal certainty are studied from the perspective of legal theory and EU law. The rule of law and legal certainty are both underlying principles of Western societies. They are neither defined in any paragraph of national laws nor in international treaties. Both are principles, which comprise various more precise principles from the perspective of their scope of application. The rule of law is both normative and legal cultural principle, which illustrates the legal system of an active civil society in the European context. Legal certainty, in turn, relates especially to the demand of predictability in legal decision-making, which is one of the elements of the rule of law as well. Both the rule of law and the principle of legal certainty have formal and substantive meaning, which can be illustrated by referring to the Article 2 TEU according to which the rule of law requires liberal democracy and the protection of human rights.
Muistijälkien kirjoittaminen aivojen kovalevylle unen aikana takkuilee Alzheimerin taudissa
”Why do we need to sleep?” is still a question with no unambiguous answer. New findings from brain research suggest that one important function of sleep is to enable the transfer of temporary memories from deep brain structures to long-term storage in the cerebral cortex. This article describes from step to step how this process is thought to occur at the level of a single neuron and neural networks. The transfer of episodic memories from the hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe to the cerebral cortex explains a well-known paradox: an elderly person with Alzheimer’s disease can remember even small details of decade-old events but fails to remember what happened only a few hours ago. Transfer of the memory engram particularly during sleep and typical sleep fragmentation at early stages of Alzheimer’s disease can at least partly account for the poor memory of recent events. A better understanding of the underlying factors and mechanisms can help us develop new treatments to strengthen the weak parts in this chain of events and thereby enhance remembering of new events.
Religious institutions and faith communities should recognize and acknowledge the nature of sacred texts as constantly changing and renewing resources, and societies should recognize and acknowledge human ways of committing to sacred texts and their claims. We call for an understanding of the processes by which certain texts became and become to be distinguished as special or sacred and of the consequences of such commitments. This article explores Jewish/Judean manuscript culture at the turn of the era when ideas of sacred texts started to be formed; this offers possibilities of reflection of modern processes. Sacred texts are not only conceptualized as divine speech or divinely inspired writings. Our investigation offers three areas of study needed to analyse the functioning of sacred texts in the past and the present: the material mediation of texts, the role of the community and its ritual life, and changes in content and interpretation.
Analytical chemistry is an interdisciplinary field of science related to many practical applications, such as clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and industrial process analysis. Over the last 50 years, chemical analytics has evolved from centralized laboratory measurements towards on-line and distributed analysis, including wearable chemical sensors for personal health monitoring. In this article I wish to reflect upon these developments in analytical chemistry, illustrated by examples from my own research. The text provides a glimpse of analytical chemistry from my personal perspective.
Preventing Spontaneous Preterm Birth: Insights from Genomics
Mortality and morbidity due to infants being born preterm remains one of the greatest health burdens facing society. Many factors influence the risk for spontaneous preterm birth, both genetic and environmental. To date, generally effective interventions to prevent preterm birth have not been identified. In this paper, we discuss the impact of preterm birth and the challenges that have limited insights so far. New advances in genomics, systems biology, and population/personalized medicine show promise in overcoming previous barriers and leading to new insights and preventive treatments.