International Women's Day

Hello everyone,

Last Friday on 8th of March was International Women's Day. On the 8th of March 1975, the UN (United Nations) officially declared the 8th of March as a day of women's rights and world peace. This year this day is under the flag of "Time for Action to End Violence Against Women".

Glance at history of this celebration: On 8 March 1857, women working in clothing and textile factories (called 'garment workers') in New York City, in the United States, staged a protest. They were fighting against inhumane working conditions and low wages. The police attacked the protestors and dispersed them. Two years later, again in March, these women formed their first labour union to try and protect themselves and gain some basic rights in the workplace. On 8 March 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights and an end to child labour. They adopted the slogan "Bread and Roses", with bread symbolizing economic security and roses a better quality of life. In May, the Socialist Party of America designated the last Sunday in February for the observance of National Women's Day.

As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters. With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February 1917 to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway.

The day is an official holiday in Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macedonia (for women only), Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nepal (for women only), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.

In some countries, such as Cameroon, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Chile, the day is not a public holiday, but is widely observed nonetheless. On this day it is customary for men to give the women in their lives – mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, colleagues, etc. – flowers and small gifts. In some countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother's Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

In Finland this day is not official holiday, however women are actively discussing their rights and positions in the society.

News of February

Hello everybody,

Some of you have had a skiing holiday last week, some of you on skiing holiday and some of you including me will go for skiing holiday next week. So, have a nice skiing holiday!!! I used to be very addicted to skiing some 12-15 years ago during junior age, when I was doing about 2000-2500 km in a season. Nowadays it is about 150-400 km in last years per season.

But let’s come back to the news of February. From CBU Forestry and Environmental Engineering the official call for Master programme has finished on 15^th of February. On 18th February 2013 the official call for applications for CBU FEE at the University of Eastern Finland was now over. All applicants will be informed about the selection results by the end of April 2013. This year as previous year there are 5 scholarship in amount 500€ per student available for 2 years period. Good to all of you, who have applied to the study period 2013-2015.

On 5^th of February it was 209 year birthday of Finnish national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. Many of his poems deal with life in rural Finland. The best known of these is Bonden Paavo, (Farmer Paavo, Saarijärven Paavo in Finnish), about a smallholding peasant farmer in the poor parish of Saarijärvi and his determination, "sisu" (guts) and unwavering faith in providence in the face of a harsh climate and years of bad harvests. Three times, a frosty night destroys his crops. Every time, he mixes double the amount of bark into his bread to stave off starvation and works ever harder to dry off marsh into dryer land that would not be as exposed to the night frost. After the fourth year, Paavo finally gets a rich crop. As his wife exults, thanks God and tells Paavo to enjoy full bread made entirely out of grain, Paavo instructs his wife to mix bark into grain once more, because their neighbour's crop has been lost in a frost and he gives half of his crop to the needy neighbour. So it was a little bit about Reneberg’s poetry!!!

And finally coming back to Forestry topics!!! Today Mr. Markku Ropo who is International Student Advisor and also teacher of forest pathology at School of Forest Sciences posted the news about “Day of Torsti”. So today the table in the lobby of School of Forest Sciences was full of tea, coffee and blueberry pies. It is exactly connected to the fact that today  27^th of February is in calendar the name day of Torsti. It is also the term of first year forestry students here in Joensuu and the tradition is that these freshmen celebrate this day with appropriate offerings to staff and older students.

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.