Winter activities

Hello everybody,

The first month of spring semester has passed. For those who just arrived to Finland you probably have noticed what a huge amount of snow in here. Eastern Finland is considered to be the region with most of the snow in the country, except Northern Finland and Lapland. So winter season is rather long and is about 5 months, it creates a lot of opportunities for winter activities. Traditionally skiing (cross-country and downhill), lake skating, hockey, biathlon and other types of sports well-presented here. As a matter of fact Finland has a good level of infrastructure development.

Joensuu has lot facilities for winter activities, I am not aware of statistics in terms of kilometers, however if you are doing cross-country skier you can actually start almost in every direction from city center. In addition to that there are at leasttwo downhill centers in Eastern Finland, Koli National Park which is 70 km to north from Joensuu, and Mustavaara, which is about 30 km away from Joensuu.

During winter many hockey grounds are iced in different districts of Joensuu, and central ice hall where local hockey club Joki Pojat are playing on a regular base. When it comes to lake skating you have to find a special places where ice surface is cleaned by special service.        

There are still almost three months of snow cover in Joensuu region, so use the opportunities to explore the winter activities!!!

CBU participated in International Educational Exhibition in St. Petersburg

So here we are again, CBU continued after International Educational Exhibition in Moscow to St. Petersburg. The exhibition their traditionally took place in LENEXPO which is located in Vasiljevskiy island which comprise the most historical part of the city. The main event of 8th Educational exhibition was held on 23-24 of November.

Once again we had a chance to give a live presentation to the audience, likely there were many potential applicants around in the main hall. I was mainly responsible for running around with big pot full of candies and screaming that soon Cross-Border University will start its presentation. Besides that kind lady was announcing our presentation several times before it, however this time compare to Moscow announcement it was a little bit messy.

 

Traditionally presentation started with general overview of CBU history and programmes available for applicants, requirement for potential applicants, and after that continued with some practical matters for students and survival basics. The audience was quite active and presentation was followed by discussion and questions. However this time last part was much shorter compare to Moscow exhibition. 

When we have finnished with everything we made a round among other educational institutions discussing their study programmes, and then continued in another hall with so many good stuff from INDIA!!!

The information about CBU later appeared in internet, the link is here:

http://znanie.info/_publications/KATALOG_Spb_8/#/1/

 It was successful marketing and recruiting event for CBU!!! Have a nice Christmas and Happy New Year!

CBU participated in International Educational Exhibition in Moscow

CBU is aimed at pro-active marketing and has participated again in international educational exhibition in Moscow, in Gostiniy Dvor hall on 11-12 of November. The event has been promoted by www.znanie.info, I just went to the visitors’ counter of the webpage and there were 2 012 862 visits within the year. It is one of the biggest educational and carrier portals in Russia.

The international section of webpage accounts for more than 35 countries with the tips and conditions for potential applicants, however not many of those educational institutions were presented on a exhibition, some of the flags below must be familiar for you.

CBU had a chance to give a live presentation to the audience, likely there were many potential applicants around in the main hall. Kind lady was announcing our presentation several times before it, and we have gathered a good group of the target audience.

Presentation started with general overview of CBU history and programmes available for applicants, requirement for potential applicants, and after that continued with some practical matters for students and survival basics. The audience was quite active and presentation was followed by discussion and questions.

I have participating and telling about educational programme for a first time, but it was really nice experience and I really enjoyed it. Besides that I really liked the breakfast part in the hotel partly because the view to the Kremlin was just amazing.

13-15 of November CBU was invited to take part in a big event in Rebublic of Tatarstan together with other 20 companies representing different fields of Finnish industry. Link below tells shortly about the event, unfortunately only in Russian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fbrzHzcjLs&feature=youtu.be

First joint CBU/BCBU summer school in Rovaniemi (2)

Hi there,

Here I continue story about CBU-BCBU summer school.

The programme on Monday 27^th of August was started by Prof. Petri Pulli from University of Oulu opened keynote session with lecture “Smart Living Environment for Senior Citizen”. Continuing the topic of “technology for senior citizen” Prof. Goshiro Yamamoto took over with presentation “PiTaSu: Universal touch interface” who is originally from Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He presented two main products which called PiTaSu and Re-PiTaSu. The outline of the presentation has been aimed at finding solutions from IT support living of senior citizens. He presented the same trend that share of elderly people increasing and it will require more costs in social services. Then Arja Kilpelainen presented lecture under the title “Evolving welfare services by using IT”, where she raised attention to the future outlook of welfare, technology and its combination. After that researcher Prof. Monica Tenneberg presented the lecture “Politics of Development in the Barents Region” where she brought up the sustainable development in the Barents region, explained the mission of “Nordforsk” research network, gave some references to the development of politics in Barents Region and explained the future research needs for cooperation between the countries in the region.

 In afternoon the session continued with oral presentations by students, Denard Veshi with “Ethical and Legal Consequence of these Medical Discoveries”. Karol Waga continued with “Reccomendation system”. Zeeshan Asghar presented “Augmented Reality Teleprecence System for Senior Citizen”. Then Hana Vrzakova made a impressive presentation about eye-tracking in usability. Then day ended with 4 poster session which was devoted to the services which could be provided to elderly people from student experts from University of Oulu.

On Tuesday the session started with the lecture of Prof. Mikko Kolehmainen under the title “Introduction to environmental informatics and its research in UEF” where he described the concept of “environmental informatics” and about computational methods related to that. Then Prof. Evgeny Veremey from St. Petersburg continued with “Digital systems and environmental”. Klaus Känsälä from VTT continued with “Wireless environmental measurements”, where he presented the term of wireless measurements and provided a cases of different applications such as structures and compounds monitoring. Ass. Professor Margarita Sotnikova continued the topic of digital systems with demonstration of digital processing world by means of MATLAB. Then session continued with 2 oral presentation by students. First by Dubatova Anastasia regarding water supply systems in Petrozavodsk and Oulu. Second oral presentation for today was from Paras Pant regarding the Utilization of Remotely Sensed Hyperspectral Information for Forest Analysis. He presented the importance of the method used and provided the evidences why ground true data has to be combined together with remote sensing data. Then the session continued with 4 poster presentations. where me myself (Maxim Trishkin) started with forestry topic regarding the attitudes of forestry companies towards forest certification in Russia. Then Artur Khromov from Saint Petersburg State University continued with "Spectral Images Compression Using PCA and Wavelet Transformations with Information Losses Control". After that Zhengzhe Wu from University of Eastern Finland described the meaning of his poster under the title "Forest Stand Segmentation from LIDAR Data Based on Mean Shift and Spectral Clustering". And day’s session ended by Liliya Rudko from University of Helsinki named "Content Popularity".

On Wednesday session has started with keynote speaker Prof. Suvi Ronkainen from University of Lapland. She explicitly described the topic of "Towards post-disciplinarily? Then Professor Kauko Leiviskä from University of Oulu continued with topic "Methodologies in Modeling and Experimental Studies". Last in the day’s session was Docent Marina Kubyshkina from Northern (Arctic) Federal University presenting the "Quantitative Research Design? The Reason for Choice". She started with definition of research design. She emphasized the importance of object of studies, unit used for analysis, sampling, equipments and the time required.

In afternoon all the participants went to Santa-Claus village which is just outside of Rovaniemi. Surely the summer is not the best season, however I am personally very enjoyed staying there.

On Thursday the session was started by Professor Jussi Kauhonen from University of Eastern Finland gave a presentation under the title “Socio-cultural Environment and Well-being”. Then Prof. Andrey Soloviev from Northern State Medical University continued with “Old Age Alcoholism as a Social Phenomen". He started with introduction of terms of physical and mental health. It was surprisingly for me to know that more than 3% of Russian population have some problems with mental health. Then lecturer Pia Skaffari from University of Lapland presented another phenomenon "Cross-Border Prostitution in the North" with special emphasis on this issue in Northern part of Finland.

Then session continued with oral presentations "Co-design as a Method of Inclusion for Older Adults in Public Social and Health Care Services" where promotion older adults’ wellbeing was presented as part IKÄEHYT project.  Then continued by Paul Pavitra with "Social Determinants of Health in Well-Being" from University of Eastern Finland regarding health issues in Ukraine based on the survey which has been carried out there. After that 2 posters were presented. First by Maria Semenova, from University of Eastern Finland about "Health Care Quality in Sparsely Populated Area: Health Care in Murmansk Region". Second, by Irina Petuchova from Petrozavodsk State University regarding "Social Adaption of Orphans and Children without Paternal Support".

Some of us for evening programme went to Arktikum museum, which is tells a lot about the climate and life in arctic belt and has been very refreshing in summer.

The Friday programme started by Professor Riitta Keiski from University of Oulu with presentation about "Research Ethics in Finland". Then lecturer Lidia Kriulya from Northern (Artic) Federal University continued with Research Ethics in Russia. She emphasized most of the time the importance of theoretical background and provided historical data of appearance such phenomena. Prof. Anna-Maija Pietilä continued with lectures about challenges in Multidisciplinary Health Research. She described the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration related to interdisciplinary research, dialog and sharing understanding and elaborating issues in the future, when building bridges between art and science. It seems to me that integrative approach is a patchwork of the sciences, so it was presented by lecturer.

In afternoon we have been divided into groups to discuss ethical aspects related to the research, discussing the boundaries and its effect. In addition, we provided practical examples of ethical questions in the work. It has been interesting discussion in the group, since we were presenting different countries, backgrounds and experiences.

Thanks  a lot to first joint CBU-BCBU summer school in Rovaniemi, hope to visit this city again.

First joint CBU/BCBU summer school in Rovaniemi (1)

Hei everyone,

The time is flying, it is more than one month has passed since the first CBU/BCBU summer school have successfully finished in Rovaniemi. The school has gathered experts and students from different fields, universities and countries. Our batch has started from Joensuu by bus, we were more than 20 people in there, representing St-Petersburg University and University of Joensuu. Our chief was always with us, Eero Forss has been a good manager during the entire trip and staying in there. The School has been aimed to vanish the borders between neighbouring countries, and it seemed to working fine. Even though officially it was Finnish-Russian Cross-Border Summer School the event has accounted huge number of different nationalities. Totally the school has gathered students from Arctic University in Arkhangelsk, Petrozavodsk State University, St-Petersburg State University, University of Eastern Finland (both Joensuu and Kuopio campuses were presented), University of Helsinki, University of Oulu, and of course University of Lapland. Actually it was the first trip up to the north so far within Finland, I have been on Kola peninsula (Murmansk region) in Khibiny mountains earlier, however I was very excited to see what is up north in Finland. The timing of the event has been chosen perfectly, since it was still the last week of calendar summer and was relatively warm. The distance from Joensuu to Rovaniemi was over 550 km and lasted about 8 hours drive. So we started our jorney at 1 p.m. in order to arrive not too late to our final destination. While traveling to the north you can easily notice the difference in the landscape and vegatation. The most exciting things appeared close to Rovaniemi, the drive had to use emergency breaking in order to prevent the road accidents with northern pedestrian. You can easily guess that I am talking about deers. These animals are semi-free in here, it means that they are freely walking, however each of them has a mark which tells the owner. So we are safely arrive to Rovaniemi and looking forward towards school programme, more in details I will tell you in next blog... see you!!!     

End of summer season

Hei everyone,
Hope everybody had a good summer. The summer was unusually rainy and cold. The effect can be seen on the exceptionally high water level in the river. If you have not noticed that please check it in the district of Rantakylä in Joensuu. The Utra island is a good example, here it could be seen that water level have risen up to half a meter.
    
Such weather has an  impact on berries’ and mushrooms’ yield. Those still can be found in the forest abundantly. Blueberry season is almost over, however lingonberry and cranberry are still coming. Some very successful pickers are able to pick up berries both for own needs and earn some money while giving them to berry collectors’ centers.

On a last week of August Joensuu celebrated “Joen Yö” which is one of the biggest event of the city. This day the museums are free of charge and working hours are much longer than usually. In addition to that the shops in city center also open longer. Most of the activities are concentrated around the marketplace and along the river. The swimming hall is also open longer than usually, however there is an entry fee. Weather forecast was favourable to enjoy the last day of the summer.

Have a nice beginning of semester and good luck on orientation programme for new-comers!

Introductory course for forestry students in August

Hi there,

This year the Introductory course "Forestry in NE Europe with Special Reference to Sustainability" will be held from 13th to 24th of August in University of Eastern Finland, in Joensuu. This course is part of Forestry and Environmental Engineering Masters' Programme. The content covers an overview of forest sector in Finland and Russia, including forest policy, forest legislation, forest technology, ecological aspects of forestry, forest industry and forest resources. As well as fundamentals of Finnish-Russian cross-border co-operation in forest sector. The study mode includes lectures given by both Finnish and Russian experts, excursions to local forestry companies and other forest sector organisations, group assignments, and other assignments specified during the course.

The participants are expected to do a pre-course readings for the four literature seminars, writing one-page reaction paper for each seminar. In addition to that group work and oral presentation and written group work report, individual learning diary and an exam based on the readings, lectures and other course materials.

Teachers giving the lectures during the course represent University of Eastern Finland, University of Helsinki, Finnish Forest Research Institute, St.Petersburg State Forest Technical University, Moscow State Forest University. In addition to that the lecturs are mixed with interesting excursions to forest industry companies in Joensuu and surroundings.There are expected 21 students represent 5 different universities.  

Good luck with the course!