Towards a healthier Gulf of Finland - results of the International Gulf of Finland Year 2014

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Myrberg, Kai; Lips, Urmas; Orlova, Marina

2017-07-01

The international collaboration to protect the marine environment of the Gulf of Finland (GoF) dates back to 1968. Since then, Finland and the Soviet Union, and later on, Estonia, Finland, and Russia have collaborated trilaterally in the environmental front with a vision of a healthier GoF. The first Gulf of Finland Year organized in 1996 was a major step forward in trilateral cooperation and GoF research. It produced comprehensive scientific reports on different aspects of the GoF environment (Sarkkula, 1997), including an updated review of the physical oceanography of the Gulf (Alenius et al., 1998; Soomere et al., 2008) and recognition of the internal nutrient fluxes as a factor counteracting the decrease in external load (Pitkänen et al., 2001).

Comprehensive optimization process of paranasal sinus radiography.

PubMed

Saarakkala, S; Nironen, K; Hermunen, H; Aarnio, J; Heikkinen, J O

2009-04-01

The optimization of radiological examinations is important in order to reduce unnecessary patient radiation exposure. To perform a comprehensive optimization process for paranasal sinus radiography at Mikkeli Central Hospital, Finland. Patients with suspicion of acute sinusitis were imaged with a Kodak computed radiography (CR) system (n=20) and with a Philips digital radiography (DR) system (n=30) using focus-detector distances (FDDs) of 110 cm, 150 cm, or 200 cm. Patients' radiation exposure was determined in terms of entrance surface dose and dose-area product. Furthermore, an anatomical phantom was used for the estimation of point doses inside the head. Clinical image quality was evaluated by an experienced radiologist, and physical image quality was evaluated from the digital radiography phantom. Patient doses were significantly lower and image quality better with the DR system compared to the CR system. The differences in patient dose and physical image quality were small with varying FDD. Clinical image quality of the DR system was lowest with FDD of 200 cm. Further, imaging with FDD of 150 cm was technically easier for the technologist to perform than with FDD of 110 cm. After optimization, it was recommended that the DR system with FDD of 150 cm should always be used at Mikkeli Central Hospital. We recommend this kind of comprehensive approach in all optimization processes of radiological examinations.

Diet-derived changes by sourdough-fermented rye bread in exhaled breath aspiration ion mobility spectrometry profiles in individuals with mild gastrointestinal symptoms.

PubMed

Raninen, Kaisa; Lappi, Jenni; Kolehmainen, Mikko; Kolehmainen, Marjukka; Mykkänen, Hannu; Poutanen, Kaisa; Raatikainen, Olavi

2017-12-01

The potential of utilising exhaled breath volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles in studying diet-derived metabolic changes was examined. After a four-week initial diet period with white wheat bread (WW), seven participants received in randomised order high-fibre diets containing sourdough whole grain rye bread (WGR) or white wheat bread enriched with bioprocessed rye bran (WW + BRB), both for 4 weeks. Alveolar exhaled breath samples were analysed with ChemPro ® 100i analyser (Environics OY, Mikkeli, Finland) at the end of each diet period in fasting state and after a standardised meal. The AIMS signal intensities in fasting state were different after the WGR diet as compared to other diets. The result suggests that WGR has metabolic effects not completely explained by the rye fibre content of the diet. This study encourages to utilise the exhaled breath VOC profile analysis as an early screening tool in studying physiological functionality of foods.

Modelling environmentally friendly fairways using Lagrangian trajectories: a case study for the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soomere, Tarmo; Berezovski, Mihhail; Quak, Ewald; Viikmäe, Bert

2011-10-01

We address possibilities of minimising environmental risks using statistical features of current-driven propagation of adverse impacts to the coast. The recently introduced method for finding the optimum locations of potentially dangerous activities (Soomere et al. in Proc Estonian Acad Sci 59:156-165, 2010) is expanded towards accounting for the spatial distributions of probabilities and times for reaching the coast for passively advecting particles released in different sea areas. These distributions are calculated using large sets of Lagrangian trajectories found from Eulerian velocity fields provided by the Rossby Centre Ocean Model with a horizontal resolution of 2 nautical miles for 1987-1991. The test area is the Gulf of Finland in the northeastern Baltic Sea. The potential gain using the optimum fairways from the Baltic Proper to the eastern part of the gulf is an up to 44% decrease in the probability of coastal pollution and a similar increase in the average time for reaching the coast. The optimum fairways are mostly located to the north of the gulf axis (by 2-8 km on average) and meander substantially in some sections. The robustness of this approach is quantified as the typical root mean square deviation (6-16 km) between the optimum fairways specified from different criteria. Drastic variations in the width of the `corridors' for almost optimal fairways (2-30 km for the average width of 15 km) signifies that the sensitivity of the results with respect to small changes in the environmental criteria largely varies in different parts of the gulf.

Initial-value problem for the Gardner equation applied to nonlinear internal waves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rouvinskaya, Ekaterina; Kurkina, Oxana; Kurkin, Andrey; Talipova, Tatiana; Pelinovsky, Efim

2017-04-01

solitons (family with positive polarity, and family with negative polarity bounded below by the amplitude of 2) and two-parametric family of breathers (oscillatory wave packets). In this case varying amplitude and width of bell-shaped initial impulse leads to plenty of different evolutionary scenarios with the generation of solitary waves, breathers, solibores and nonlinear Airy wave in their various combinations. Statistical analysis of the wave field in time shows almost permanent substantial exceedance of the level of the significant wave height in some position in spatial coordinate. Evolution of Fourier spectrum of the wave field is also analyzed, and its behavior after a long time of initial wave evolution demonstrates the power asymptotic for small wave numbers and exponential asymptotic for large wave numbers. The presented results of research are obtained with the support of the grant of the President of the Russian Federation for state support of the young Russian scientists - Candidates of Sciences (MK-5208.2016.5) and Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant 16-05-00049. References: Grimshaw R., Pelinovsky D., Pelinovsky E and Slunyaev A. Generation of large-amplitude solitons in the extended Korteweg-de Vries equation // Chaos, 2002. - V.12. - No 4. - 1070-1076. Grimshaw, R., Slunyaev, A., and Pelinovsky, E. Generation of solitons and breathers in the extended Korteweg-de Vries equation with positive cubic nonlinearity //Chaos, 2010. - vol. 20.-013102. Kurkina O.E., Kurkin A.A., Soomere T., Pelinovsky E.N., Rouvinskaya E.A. Higher-order (2+4) Korteweg-de Vries - like equation for interfacial waves in a symmetric three-layer fluid // Physics of Fluids, 2011. - Volume 23. - Issue 11. - p.116602--1--13. Kurkina O., Rouvinskaya E., Talipova T., Kurkin A., Pelinovsky E. Nonlinear disintegration of sine wave in the framework of the Gardner equation // Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 2015. - doi:10.1016/j.physd.2015.12.007. Pelinovsky E., Polukhina O., Slunyaev A