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This book combines theoretical and practical knowledge about key actors and driving forces that help to initiate and advance open data governance. Using Finland and Sweden as case studies, it sheds light on the roles of key actors in the open data movement, enabling researchers to understand the key operational elements of data-driven governance. It also examines the most salient manifestations of related networking activities, the motivations of stakeholders, and the political and socioeconomic readiness of the public, private and civic sectors to advance such policies. The book will appeal to e-government experts, policymakers and political scientists, as well as academics and students of public administration, public policy, and open data governance. Maxat Kassen is a political scientist and e-government scholar. He is a former Fulbright Scholar at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA. His research focuses on e-government and open data.

Fertility rates are known to be higher in city suburbs. One interpretation is that the suburban ‘context’ influences the behaviour of individuals who reside there while an alternative is that the ‘composition’ of the suburban population explains the higher fertility levels. Furthermore, suburban in-migrants who intend to have children may have a significant influence on suburban fertility rates. Using Finnish longitudinal register data we show that fertility rates are higher in the suburbs and rural areas and lower in the cities. Fertility variation across these residential contexts decreases significantly after controlling for women’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics. However, it does not disappear entirely suggesting that the local context may have some influence on fertility. While movers to suburbs do display higher fertility levels than non-migrant residents, their overall impact is not great because they form a small share of the suburban population.

Brown-water dystrophic lakes have several limnological characteristics that clearly separate them from clear-water oligotrophic and murky eutrophic lakes. In this study, I examined the sedimentary midge (Nematocera) assemblages from 30 shallow boreal lakes of varying humic status to test the influence of dystrophy on community composition. The results indicate differing community assemblages between oligohumic and humic lakes. Several taxa were restricted to clear-water lakes, whereas dystrophic lakes also had their characteristic taxa, which were rare or absent in the clear-water lakes. The most common and abundant nematocerans having statistically significant indicator values for dystrophy were chironomids Zalutschia zalutschicola-type, Tanytarsus mendax-type, and Cladotanytarsus mancus-type, together with the phantom midge Chaoborus flavicans. These results indicate that the level of dystrophy plays a significant role in determining midge distribution in boreal lakes. Therefore, consideration of differences in humic conditions is crucial to contemporary midgebased environmental assessments and long-term paleolimnological investigations, because temporal changes in the humic state may have occurred.

(1) Models of peat accumulation are developed that include constant, linear and quadratic decay of dry mass remaining. Profiles of dry bulk density of 795 peatlands distributed over Finland are used to infer cumulative carbon for each site. These values and basal ages are themselves used to infer rates of growth and decay of the peat. (2) A method, 'function parameter fitting' (FPF), is devised to estimate parameter values in non-linear functions when there are uncertainties in both variables, as there are in cumulative carbon and age. Where the data are highly variable then results with FPF are substantially different from those used hitherto that assume uncertainty in only the dependent variable. (3) For five regions in Finland and in Boreal Canada the inferred rate of addition, p* [ M L-2 T-1], is related to degree-days above zero, and decay, a* [ T-1] is related logarithmically to mean annual temperature. The present day rate of accumulation of carbon in northern peatlands is about 5.6 Tmol yr-1 or, as dry mass, 0.07 Gt yr-1. (4) There are difficulties in the interpretation of LARCA (= LORCA = long term average rate of carbon accumulation). Understanding of peatland dynamics may result from the use of intrinsic models allowing decay: it is unlikely to emerge from the exotic models in common use.

Management actions against invasive species are usually most efficient during early stages of invasion. Monitoring for early detection is therefore part of many management plans. However, if monitoring efforts do not match suitable habitat areas, detecting the initial stages of an invasion may fail. We highlight this mismatch by assessing which areas have suitable habitats for an invasion of the cyanobacterium Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii in the Baltic Sea, and compare these with the areas that are currently monitored for algal blooms. Establishment of this potential toxin-producer in the Baltic Sea could have serious socio-economic consequences for tourism and recreation, as well as fisheries and aquaculture in the coastal regions.Weestimate the coastal areas of the eastern Gulf of Finland as the most suitable area for establishment because of low salinity and high summer seawater surface temperatures. The species is not yet reported in the Baltic Sea, but in the suitable-habitat areas indicated by our assessment, very little monitoring is currently being done. We suggest several lines of research and monitoring to increase the probability of early detection and better predictions for the future distribution of the species.

We studied the effect of forest fragmentation on the insect community inhabiting an old-growth forest specialist bracket fungus, Fomitopsis rosea, in eastern Finland. Samples of the fungus from large non-isolated control areas were compared with samples from forest fragments in two isolation time classes; 2-7 yr and 12-32 yr since isolation. Fomitopsis rosea hosted a species-rich community with relatively many specialized old-growth forest insects. The numerically dominant food chain consisted of F. rosea, the tineid moth Agnathosia mendicella and the tachinid fly Elfia cingulata, a specialist parasitoid of A. mendicella. The frequency of F. rosea on suitable fallen spruce logs and the frequency of A. mendicella in fruiting bodies were significantly lower in the forest fragments than in the control areas. The median number of trophic levels decreased from three in the control areas to one in the fragments that had been isolated for the longest period of time. The parasitoid was completely missing from the fragments isolated for 12-32 yr. Our results show that in boreal forests habitat loss and fragmentation truncate food chains of specialized species in the course of time since isolation.

This is a sharp analysis of the unique Nordic welfare system with urgent lessons for governments and societies across the globe. Welfare programs and institutions tend to be analyzed as instrumental arrangements, overlooking the fact that welfare programs are essentially expressions of moral conceptions and values. This book recognises this distinction and offers analyses, perspectives and interpretations of the normative foundation of the 'Nordic welfare state model'. These authors examine the main normative principles in this model, exploring their origins and the relationship between them. Paying particular attention to the principles of 'universalism', 'public responsibility for welfare', and 'work for all', they consider their significance for current welfare policy and question whether external economic and ideological pressures are threatening these principles. The book is divided into three clear parts: *Part I considers the historical trajectories behind the Nordic welfare model *Part II looks more specifically on normative tensions and dilemmas in current welfare policies with a focus on women friendly welfare, attitudes to basic income and alcohol and drug misuse *Part III focuses on the possible change in the normative foundation of the Nordic welfare states This book will be essential reading for researchers and students of the welfare state and also to those in the fields of social policy, comparative politics and political economy. 'This is an important book as a valuable resource for policy makers who want to study and maybe appropriate the Nordic welfare model. Its in-depth material transmits the message that such a transformation is not straightforward. But it does provide the information to assess such a process.' - Yitzhak Berman, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research 'The collection as a whole will be an invalueable resource for Scandinavianists and comparative welfare state researchers, especially the editors own introductory essay on The Nordic Welfare Model and the Idea of Universalism, which is quite simply the best chapter-length treatment of that topic I know. - Political Studies Review Nanna Kildal is a Researcher at Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen. Her current research interests are normative studies of welfare policies and studies of policy transfer. She has written a number of articles on the 1990s welfare reforms in Europe and USA. Stein Kuhnle is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. Among his recent publications in English are (ed.) Survival of the European Welfare State (Routledge, 2000); The Nordic welfare state in a European context: dealing with new economic and ideological challenges in the 1990s , European Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 379-398 (2000); and Democracy and Productive Welfare: European and Korean Welfare Policy Development in Perspective , and The Journal of the Korean Economy , Vol. 3, No. 1, 59-83 (Spring 2002).

When Finland gained its independence from Russia in 1917, the country had not had a military for almost two decades. The ensuing creation of a new national conscript army aroused intense but conflicting emotions among the Finns. This book examines how a modern conscript army, born out of a civil war, had to struggle through social, cultural and political minefields to find popular acceptance. Exploring the ways that images of manhood were used in the controversies, it reveals the conflicts surrounding compulsory military service in a democratic society and the compromises made as the new nation had to develop the will and skill to defend itself. Through the lens of masculinity, another picture of conscription emerges, offering new understandings of why military service was resisted and supported, dreaded and celebrated in Finnish society. Intertwined with the story of the making of the military runs the story of how manhood was made and remade through the idealized images and real-life experiences of conscripted soldiers. Placing interwar Finland within a broad European context, the book traces the origins of competing military traditions and ideological visions of modern male citizenship back to their continental origins. It contributes to the need for studies on the impact of the Great War on masculinities and constructions of gender among military cultures in the peacetime period between the two world wars.

Background. Dietary plant sterols, especially sitostanol, reduce serum cholesterol by inhibiting cholesterol absorption. Soluble sitostanol may be more effective than a less soluble preparation. We tested the tolerability and cholesterol-lowering effect of margarine containing sitostanol ester in a population with mild hypercholesterolemia. Methods. We conducted a one-year, randomized, double-blind study in 153 randomly selected subjects with mild hypercholesterolemia. Fifty-one consumed margarine without sitostanol ester (the control group), and 102 consumed margarine containing sitostanol ester (1.8 or 2.6 g of sitostanol per day). Results. The margarine containing sitostanol ester was well tolerated. The mean one-year reduction in serum cholesterol was 10.2 percent in the sitostanol group, as compared with an increase of 0.1 percent in the control group. The difference in the change in serum cholesterol concentration between the two groups was -24 mg per deciliter (95 percent confidence interval, -17 to -32; P0.001). The respective reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol were 14.1 percent in the sitostanol group and 1.1 percent in the control group. The difference in the change in LDL cholesterol concentration between the two groups was -21 mg per deciliter (95 percent confidence interval, -14 to -29; P0.001). Neither serum triglyceride nor high-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations were affected by sitostanol. Serum campesterol, a dietary plant sterol whose levels reflect cholesterol absorption, was decreased by 36 percent in the sitostanol group, and the reduction was directly correlated with the reduction in total cholesterol (r

The main objective of this study was to analyze between-winter stability of bird communities along latitudinal (950 km) and urban gradients (from small village to towns) in Finland. Birds were surveyed at the same 30-ha study plots using the same methods in 31 villages and town centres in the winters of 1991–1992 and 1999–2000. Species richness did not differ between the 2 study winters, but variation in total abundance of birds increased with increasing urbanization. However, urbanization reduced variation in wintering bird community structure. Species richness, density of wintering birds, and dissimilarity of wintering bird communities did not vary with latitude. According to our results, the level of urbanization was a more important factor than latitude in explaining the structure of the bird community in winter. We assume that the presence of a continuous, rich, and diverse supply of food offered by humans with increasing urbanization may explain variation in species abundances and stability in urbanized ecosystems.