Open image viewerThe Finnish Defence Forces will adapt sniper training based on lessons learned from Russia's invasion of Ukraine 12:29The Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) are making plans to modernise sniper training drawing insights from the ongoing war in Ukraine shooting practice is also being revamped to include more diverse and realistic scenarios emphasised the critical role of snipers in modern warfare "Effective sniper operations require training at long distances While training can begin at shorter ranges a 600-metre range is necessary for efficient and impactful performance," Skyttä said a new 600-metre rifle range will be constructed this year at the Hälvälä shooting sports centre in Hollola the Finnish Defence Forces have limited access to long-distance shooting ranges which has created a bottleneck in sniper training The Armoured Brigade, which manages the Hälvälä area, lacks a suitable long-range facility. The new range will also benefit snipers from other organisations as well as reservists in their training. Funding for the construction was provided through Parliament's so-called "Christmas gift funds." Future training will increasingly include "dynamic shooting," where participants move and shoot at moving targets This new style of training demands updates to existing ranges as shooting distances will vary from a few metres to 150 metres "This type of training provides the foundation for weapon handling and builds confidence in one's ability to react in different situations and at various distances even in high-pressure scenarios," explained Skyttä One challenge of dynamic shooting is the need for safety backstops behind targets to prevent stray bullets from leaving the range and posing risks to bystanders The dense Hälvälä range has limited space for additional safety structures such as electronic targets that register hits Use of the Hälvälä shooting range has surged with over half a million shots fired annually in recent years — a one-third increase compared to previous years While civilian hobbyists account for most of the activity training by the FDF and volunteers for national defence courses has also grown The increased demand has driven the FDF to develop the range including measures to protect groundwater and reduce noise pollution "Protective structures have reduced environmental impacts without compromising shooting activities use of the largest calibre rifles has been restricted due to noise concerns," noted Captain Pasi Suvitie training area officer for the Armoured Brigade The Finnish-made Sako sniper rifle at a shooting range Image: Ville Välimäki / YleTackling environmental challengesThe FDF recently completed a significant project to bring all shooting ranges in line with environmental regulations investing 25 million euros over seven years Key improvements included groundwater protection and noise reduction the number of properties exposed to shooting noise has been reduced to a fraction of earlier levels The lessons learned during this project are now being applied to maintain existing ranges and construct new ones With stricter groundwater protection regulations on the horizon the FDF are well-prepared to address future challenges "The most important thing is ensuring that shooting and training activities can continue through environmental measures we could have faced the closure of some ranges," said Teemu Pasanen environmental specialist at the FDF's Logistics Command Lilli Lehtonen at First Saturday Arts Market (submitted photo) Pendant by Lilli Lehtonen (submitted photo) Silver pendant by Lilli Lehtonen with natural window druzy agate stone and pearl Size- 2.5" hight x 1 1/4" width (submitted photo) Jewelry by Lilli Lehotonen (submitted photo) Lilli Lehotonen will bring her art jewelry to the Heights Saturday Just ask her at her booth Saturday at First Saturday Arts Market Lehtonen will be there with other artisans eager to greet the public with their smiles and art not too far to travel to the Heights when you realize Lehtonen’s accent originated in Finland and her specialty is creating filigree jewelry laborious process of lengthening metal into thin strands and twisting them into intricate designs Lehtonen has an unusual skill for a jeweler That's where the stories I mentioned come in She combines all of her skills into creating images of things she’s seen and loves nature has always been a great inspiration for Lehtonen's artwork Examples of her art jewelry include sailboats a pair of birds gazing at a star-filled sky “I’m a certified bench jeweler and attended the American School of Jewelry in 2017,”  Lehtonen said “At the time I was ready to turn my hobby into a profession There is no retirement from this profession.” “I saw a video on YouTube on how to make a simple pendant,” Lehtonen said “I got excited and signed up as a student at the Craft Guild in Dallas I was Marilyn O’Hara’s student for about two years I wanted to learn to cut and make my own cabochons (stones) so I joined the Arlington Gem and Mineral Club the Club’s silversmithing department leader was Emie Stewart She opened my eyes to a completely different world of jewelry art that I had never even been aware of.” “It was clear to me from the beginning that I wanted to make art jewelry,” Lehtonen said I find when customers find their own piece of jewelry that pleases them This past summer she published an instructional book on filigree titled “The Filigree Jewelry With The Modern Twist,” available on Amazon Find Lilli Lehtonen at many of the fine art festivals in Houston and statewide in addition to First Saturday Arts Market. Follow her on Facebook to keep up https://www.facebook.com/lillilehtonenjewelry Cohen is an artist and founder of the First Saturday Arts Market and The Market at Sawyer Yards. Find him at ArtValet.com Email notifications are only sent once a day there are no recent results for popular images there are no recent results for popular videos there are no recent results for popular commented articles Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: A new genetic study carried out at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku demonstrates that Finland was inhabited by separate and differing populations all of them influencing the gene pool of modern Finns The study is so far the most extensive investigation of the ancient DNA of people inhabiting the region of Finland genes were investigated from archaeological bone samples of more than one hundred individuals who lived between the 4th and 19th centuries AD Most of the samples originated in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages which is passed down by mothers to all of their offspring thus uncovering the population history of women the people who inhabited Finland in the Iron Age (approximately 300–1300 AD) and the Middle Ages (approximately 1200–1500 AD) shared mitochondrial lineages with today’s Finns significant differences were seen in the genome of individuals buried in different burial sites in the Iron Age in particular mtDNA lineages typical of Stone Age hunter-gatherers were common among those buried in Luistari the most common findings were lineages characteristic of ancient European farmer populations The fifth Iron Age burial site included in the study is located in Levänluhta Many of the individuals buried there represented mtDNA lineages associated with the modern Sámi “All of the above originally independent lineages remain common in Finland to this day This indicates that the studied Iron Age populations have had an impact on the gene pool of contemporary Finns,” says doctoral student Sanni Översti from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences The researchers posit that the differences found in the Iron Age populations of western and eastern Finland are opposite to those found in today’s Finns: the lineages associated with ancient farmers were more common in the east while the lineages inherited from hunter-gatherers were more prevalent in the west Farmer populations arriving in Finland not only from the west and south but also from the east provides a potential explanation for this Republished courtesy of University of Helsinki. Photo: The Iron Age and the medieval burial sites investigated in the study include Levänluhta in Isokyrö and Tuukkala in Mikkeli (marked in the map with dark grey colouri Concrete has been used in construction for thousands of years, it's everywhere. But its production is a major contributor to global carbon emissions, and we've seen much research aimed at reducing its environmental impact One such project spun out of VTT Finland is looking to make concrete manufacture carbon negative The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has been looking into the negative effects of carbonation – the slow process where carbon dioxide gets reabsorbed by concrete over time and can lead to the corrosion of steel reinforcements – for decades researchers started to focus on turning these problems into an advantage "We decided to develop carbon negative concrete without knowing exactly how to do it," said VTT senior scientist Tapio Vehmas "We started experimenting in order to find out how carbon dioxide functions in concrete and how this process replaces cement and lowers the carbon footprint." The search began for suitable low-carbon binders Those experiments revealed that blast furnace slags from the steel industry could be carbonated and worked well as an effective binder to replace normal cement in concrete but we had to develop the material concept and look for appropriate activators," added Vehmas "The binder’s final material combination consisted of slags The project then turned its collective eyes to commercialization building an automated carbonation pilot system that binds CO2 into precast concrete at atmospheric pressure and installing it inside a container that was positioned next to a concrete plant in Hollola in southern Finland subsequently used the technology to create carbon-negative yard paving for installation at a Skanska construction site "We have demonstrated in the pilot unit that our technology is capable of reducing the CO2 emissions of conventional concrete by 45%," said Vehmas, now CEO of VTT spin-out company Carbonaide we demonstrated lowering our products’ carbon footprint to -60 kg/m3 by replacing Portland cement with slag." The carbon footprint of conventional concrete is reported to be about 250-300 kg per cubic meter Carbonaide now intends to construct the world's first industrial pilot production line for the manufacture of carbon-negative concrete and has secured seed funding of €1.8 million (about US$1.95 million) to get things started The factory-sized unit in Hollola combined with a fully operational value chain are expected to "mineralize up to five tons of CO2 per day and increase production by 100-fold of its carbon-negative concrete products." The company is aiming to scale up production and have 10 units in operation throughout the region by 2026 which are expected to bind around 500 megatons of CO2 each year by 2050 The current pilot can be seen in operation in the video below "Our goal at Carbonaide is to create a more sustainable future with cutting-edge tech that doesn’t just reduce the carbon emissions of construction materials like concrete but that traps more CO2 than they emit throughout their lifetime," said Vehmas "It is very natural that the constructed environment becomes a CO2 sink as it is the largest volume of man-made material." Thousands of Finns have answered a desperate call from farmers to save the summer’s berry harvest as coronavirus restrictions have kept many of the usual foreign pickers away we have Finnish workers on the strawberry fields again it’s a very unusual situation,” said Vesa Koivistoinen owner of Finland’s largest strawberry farm in the southern village of Hollola When reporters visited Koivistoinen’s 100 hectare farm two weeks into the strawberry harvest the large field was dotted with hundreds of people crouching down to pick strawberries then putting them in crates to be weighed and loaded in a truck Finland normally needs about 16,000 seasonal workers a year “who mainly come from abroad,” said Kati Kuula of the agricultural union MTK when COVID-19 travel restrictions were imposed in the spring agricultural associations and the government feared a labor shortage and launched a number of recruitment programs the government-backed #Seasonwork social media campaign blonde couple standing proud in a wheat field and calls for “every available pair of hands” to “secure domestic food on Finnish dinner tables.” only a third of the usual workers have arrived from abroad with the rest of the shortfall recruited from within Finland Of the 350 Finns employed on Vesa Koivistoinen’s strawberry farm but many others are those made jobless by the coronavirus replied to the job advertisement after her own business dried up during the spring “I’m the daughter of a farmer and I was working in strawberry fields when I was young,” she said who has worked in a number of seasonal jobs said he intended to stay until the strawberry season ends late next month Filling one 7kg crate takes “a bit more than an hour,” Erola said Koivistoinen said that as the Finns are not able to pick as fast as the experienced Ukrainian workers he has offered them a 10-percent bonus to make it worth their while The recruitment efforts and higher salaries have pushed up costs but Koivistoinen said that he would gladly employ home-grown workers in future “We wanted to be able to employ Finns because lots of other firms can’t offer summer jobs this year,” Koivistoinen said Yet the demanding physical work in the changeable Finnish weather does not appeal to everyone and it’s quite far from my home,” said 17-year-old Laura who signed up along with her schoolfriends Senni and Mohammed All three are sitting by the side of the field having a break “I actually had a job offer earlier this summer but then they said they couldn’t take me because of corona,” Mohammed said Yet while domestic labor has come to the rescue of Finland’s strawberry harvest the fate of this year’s crop of bilberries Finnish industries from food to cosmetics require 20 million kilos of bilberries — a small which is not cultivated in fields but grows abundantly in Finland’s vast forests The berries are usually picked by Thai workers brought over for the harvest season in late summer but the pandemic restrictions mean none will be admitted this year Finland’s social media is awash with posts imploring “every working-age Finn to collect a bucket’s worth of bilberries” to stop the berries going to waste Some of the companies which rely on berries have not been assuaged by the potential reach of social media and have said they would import their bilberries from Poland or Russia this year warning this could lead to higher prices on the shelves Metrics details Human ancient DNA studies have revealed high mobility in Europe’s past and have helped to decode the human history on the Eurasian continent remains less well understood largely due to the lack of preserved human remains with a divergent population history from most of Europe offers a unique perspective to hunter-gatherer way of life but thus far genetic information on prehistoric human groups in Finland is nearly absent Here we report 103 complete ancient mitochondrial genomes from human remains dated to AD 300–1800 and explore mtDNA diversity associated with hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers The results indicate largely unadmixed mtDNA pools of differing ancestries from Iron-Age on suggesting a rather late genetic shift from hunter-gatherers towards farmers in North-East Europe the data suggest eastern introduction of farmer-related haplogroups into Finland contradicting contemporary genetic patterns in Finns Genomic data from these samples show a Siberian ancestry component still prominently present today particularly in the indigenous Saami people Although these data suggest a widespread presence of genetically Saami-like people around eastern Fennoscandia during the Iron Age more wide-spread sampling in space and time is necessary for understanding the past population dynamics and emerging of the contemporary genetic diversity in Finland The expanse of agriculture north-east of this border was probably limited by environmental factors especially the length of the growing season this border has most likely acted in demarcating the spread of western and eastern political and cultural impacts influencing the placement of first political border between Sweden and Novgorod through the middle of Finland (Treaty of Noteborg 1323 AD) Considering the climatic conditions in Finland and the relatively young age especially for the post-medieval samples 3′ and 5′ damage values below 5% are plausible No samples were therefore omitted from the study based on these criteria the majority call supported the previously assigned haplogroup As the subsequent statistical methods assume that samples derive from unrelated individuals five samples - one of each identical haplotype pairs within sites (TU666 TU645 and TU588) - were removed from the subsequent analyses due to their possible maternal relatedness The mean number of pairwise differences, calculated from complete mitochondrial genomes, was highest within Porvoo (MNPD = 33.7 ± 16.8) and lowest within Renko (MNPD = 21.8 ± 10.8) (Supplementary Table S4) Due to the small number of individuals per site and utilization of unique complete mtDNA sequences haplotype diversities (H) were relatively high (with mean 1.0 and standard deviation ranking from 0.0202 to 0.1768) This inter-site variability of the haplogroup U/H ratio had a clear spatial pattern also among the IAM samples The western cluster (IAM south-west: Levänluhta Luistari and Hollola) had average U and H frequencies of 58.3% and 27.8% whereas the corresponding values in the eastern cluster (IAM east: Hiitola In IAM east the highest frequency for an individual subhaplogroup was 30.0% obtained for H1 this U/H ratio is the opposite compared to contemporary eastern and western Finns The Levänluhta site clearly showed a unique composition which resulted in significant genetic distances to all other ancient sites at sequence level Haplotypes belonging to different subhaplogroups of hg H were more common in Hollola than in Levänluhta Haplogroups K and T were absent in the Hollola sample The overall haplogroup distribution in Luistari was more similar to the modern European populations dominated by agriculture-associated Neolithic haplogroups H and occurrences of T2 and W1 (see Introduction) The eastern sites also comprise rare subhaplogroups U1 (hg U1b2 in Hiitola) and U8 (hg U8b1a2b in Tuukkala) additional autosomal data is needed to confirm the genetic background of the individual JK1954 When contrasted with haplogroup frequencies observed in contemporary Finns, our simulations (Supplementary Fig. S2) showed that the ancient sites are significantly different and that these differences cannot be explained by sampling effects This applied especially to haplogroup U5 in total and to subhaplogroup U5b in Levänluhta hg U4 in both Luistari and Hollola as well as hg H1 in the Hiitola dataset Clustering the IAM sites further roughly according to their geographical location to IAM south-west (hg U more prevalent) and IAM east (hg H more prevalent) further demonstrated the pattern opposite to modern mtDNA diversity distribution (Fig. 3b) IAM south-west differed statistically significantly from contemporary SW (ΦST = 0.01670 p = 0.00098) but not from contemporary NE (ΦST = 0.00036 EMM and contemporary SW differed from each other (ΦST = 0.01140 IAM east differed from the contemporary NE (ΦST = 0.00849) more than from contemporary SW (ΦST = 0.00514) Haplotype level median-joining network (Supplementary Fig. S3) demonstrates that ancient and contemporary Finns exhibit in principle same main haplogroups whereas the most notable differences are within the haplogroup frequencies between the ancient populations Individuals from IAM eastern sites are more prevalent in the haplogroup H cluster while individuals from IAM southwestern sites are more concentrated on the haplogroup U cluster indicating possible mixture of IAM southwestern and IAM eastern populations Here we report 103 human mitochondrial DNA genomes from approx which represents thus far the largest collection of individuals with ancient human DNA analyzed from Finland Analysis of the prehistoric samples from Iron-Age and medieval sites from western and eastern Finland revealed a high overall prevalence of haplogroup U in southwestern sites in stark contrast with a high frequency of haplogroup H in the east which is opposite to what is observed in modern day Finland there is relatively high differentiation between the ancient sites would have vanished from present day Saami we might be observing ancestries belonging to an earlier layer of ancient inhabitants of the region Taking these different distributions of mtDNA haplogroups from the Iron-Age and medieval sites into consideration our results suggest three different streams of mitochondrial ancestry: Saami-like haplogroups (U5b1b1a non-Saami-like hunter-gatherer related haplogroups (especially U4) and haplogroups associated with Neolithic farmers (H In this context we use ‘Saami-like’ as a term that shows genetic continuity with modern-day Saami groups Different proportions of these ancestries could be observed both in later EMM sites and also modern-day southwestern and northeastern Finns This suggests a fluctuation of each of these mitochondrial ancestry proportions over space and time The ancient mitochondrial genomes analyzed here show a notable pattern opposite to the modern variation: mtDNA types usually associated with the hunter-gatherer communities were significantly more common in the ancient western cluster (Levänluhta Luistari and Hollola) than in the east (Hiitola with the haplogroup U frequency as high as 58.3% the farming-related lineages were observed in particular in the ancient eastern cluster This pattern of division between the ancient sites and the contradictions with their respective local modern population frequencies emerged also in formal testing of pairwise ΦST values: the western cluster was closer to the modern NE subpopulation than to the modern SW subpopulation whereas the eastern cluster showed closer affinity with the modern mtDNA variation in southwestern Finland The multinomial logistic regression analysis lent support to the eastern introduction of agriculturally related maternal ancestry The likely migration routes for the observed ancestral elements were investigated through different combinations of factor dependencies as the multinomial logistic regression The test revealed the distance from Lahdenpohja on the eastern border of Finland as the only statistically significant variable explaining the differences in the haplogroup composition nor distance from the southwestern locations (i.e Hanko and Uusikaupunki) were supported by the best-fit model It thus seems likely that the major spread of haplogroup H can be explained by presuming its introduction via the eastern landroute population genetic studies of many organisms in Finland as well as in all Fennoscandia have suggested bidirectional colonization of the current habitats The reasons behind this are largely geographical: the Baltic Sea acts The Neolithic farmer-related signal in the mtDNA diversity in the Iron-Age samples is mainly found in the southeast whereas in contemporary population it predominates in the southwest The reasons for this discrepancy are likely diverse and could be affected by such recent events as the evacuation of nearly 0.5 M inhabitants of Karelia during the World War II and their resettling into the area of current Finland these evacuees were resettled rather evenly across southern Finland and should not create the observed pattern It rather suggests that the division between SW and NE Finland had still been more substantial in the early 1900s more fundamental explanation for the genetic subdivision comes from the environmental demands of sedentary farming In southwestern Finland the soil is more amenable to field-farming and due to the warming Atlantic effect that gradually shades into more arid continental climate the growing season in Finland is the longest in the southwestern coast These environmental differences follow the NW-SW border similarly to the genetic distances As the country has been sparsely inhabited until modern times it is plausible that farming oriented populations have over the centuries concentrated into the SW parts of the country The mitochondrial DNA genomes from Iron-Age Finland show variation that can be linked to either hunter-gatherer or agricultural human groups These elements are still present in the mitochondrial gene pool of contemporary Finns but relatively evenly distributed throughout the country the Iron-Age mtDNA variation show significant differences between sampling sites with hunter-gatherer and farmer-associated elements dominating in different regions than today the agricultural population signal has been stronger in eastern Finland in the past which might reflect a bidirectional arrival of farming-associated populations into Finland The five historical sites include the cemetery of the Church of St and the Ryazan regimental church cemetery in Hamina Samples were obtained from the archaeological collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency Department of Archaeology in the University of Turku Department of Anatomy in the University of Helsinki and the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) A dentist’s drill together with cooled-down drill heads for minimal heat exposure were used at the University of Tübingen facility and a “field kit” with Dremel or dentist’s drill were used at the Helsinki University Department of Forensic Medicine The original molecular copy number in the DNA library as well as the subsequent indexing efficiency The molecular copy numbers in pre-indexed libraries varied and the indexed libraries from ~1–100 × 1011 copies/μl indicating a successful library composition and admissible indexing efficiency The indexed libraries were amplified using PCR with heating cycles chosen individually per library according to the copy number after indexing Amplified libraries were purified using MinElute spin columns with the standard protocol provided by the manufacturer (Qiagen) A qPCR together with Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 device and a DNA1000LabChip were subsequently used on the amplified libraries to measure the concentration of DNA A positive control extracted from a cave bear bone to confirm the success of extraction and library preparation as well as two negative laboratory controls to measure the levels of contamination were carried along for every batch of 10–16 samples Mitochondrial genomes were achieved using a mitochondrial in-solution capture as described in Maricic et al.56 Complete human mitochondrial DNA sequence was used to produce in-house made baits The bait DNA was then purified and denatured to the single stranded form and attached to streptavidin-coated magnetic beads combined in equal mass ratios for altogether 2 μg of DNA were captured with the above mentioned beads and sequenced on the Illumina platforms: for samples from sites Turku along with four samples from the Luistari site (TU619 single-end sequencing data was produced on HiSeq4000 run for 75 + 8 + 8 cycles including the rest of the samples from Luistari paired-end data was produced with NextSeq500 for 2 × 150 + 8 + 8 cycles at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History The untrimmed mitochondrial reads from the Eager pipeline were then extracted from BAM files into fastQ files and mapped back to the assembly ContamMix then evaluates whether the reads assign more probably to their respective consensus or one of the worldwide mitochondrial genomes The ContamMix was run with trimming of seven bases of each side of the read to remove the accumulated damage typical for ancient DNA The mitochondrial genome sequences with highest ContamMix estimates were further visually inspected in Geneious 11.0.3 (www.geneious.com) the majority call support for relevant diagnostic mutations against the rCRS reference genome was compared to the PhyloTree version 17 We applied the automated variant caller in Geneious to the alignments with minimum support of 3x coverage and variant frequency of 66.6% for diagnostic SNPs to confirm the authenticity of the haplogroup assignments Timescale discussed throughout the text is defined as calendar years A summary of statistical analyses performed in this study for different sets of populations and dataset (i.e., complete sequence, HVR1 + HVR2, haplogroup frequencies) is presented in Table 2 Positions bearing more than 5% of missing data were masked for the network analysis Analyses were performed with IBM SPSS version 25 (IBM Corp Complete mitochondrial sequences will be deposited in GenBank under accession numbers MN540463-MN540565 Pleistocene mitochondrial genomes suggest a single major dispersal of non-Africans and a Late Glacial population turnover in Europe An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor Genetic discontinuity between local hunter-gatherers and central Europe’s first farmers Ancient DNA from the first European farmers in 7500-year-old Neolithic sites Ancient DNA from European early neolithic farmers reveals their near eastern affinities Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe A mosaic genetic structure of the human population living in the South Baltic region during the Iron Age Ancient DNA from mastics solidifies connection between material culture and genetics of mesolithic hunter–gatherers in Scandinavia Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation Ancient DNA reveals prehistoric gene-flow from Siberia in the complex human population history of North East Europe The Neolithic transition in the Baltic was not driven by admixture with early European farmers Extensive farming in Estonia started through a sex-biased migration from the Steppe The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region Almost Gone: Human Skeletal Material from Finnish Stone Age Earth Graves Käännekohtia Suomen esihistoriassa aikavälillä 5100–1000 eKr Pohjan poluilla.Suomalaisten juuret nykytutkimuksen mukaan.Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk 153 Prehistoric population history in eastern Fennoscandia Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene Early Subneolithic ceramic sequences in eastern Fennoscandia—a Bayesian approach In Muinaisuutemme jäljet: Suomen esi-ja varhaishistoria kivikaudelta keskiajalle (Gaudeamus The advance of cultivation at its northern European limit: Process or event Correlation between genetic and geographic structure in Europe Genome-wide analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms uncovers population structure in Northern Europe Paternal and maternal DNA lineages reveal a bottleneck in the founding of the Finnish population Regional differences among the finns: A Y-chromosomal perspective Genetic markers and population history: Finland revisited Vestiges of an Ancient Border in the Contemporary Genetic Diversity of North-Eastern Europe Complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a Middle Pleistocene cave bear reconstructed from ultrashort DNA fragments Temporal patterns of nucleotide misincorporations and DNA fragmentation in ancient DNA A new model for ancient DNA decay based on paleogenomic meta-analysis Schmutzi: estimation of contamination and endogenous mitochondrial consensus calling for ancient DNA A revised timescale for human evolution based on ancient mitochondrial genomes The western and eastern roots of the Saami—the story of genetic “outliers” told by mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes Identification and analysis of mtDNA genomes attributed to Finns reveal long-stagnant demographic trends obscured in the total diversity Diversity of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in ethnic populations of the Volga-Ural region of Russia A recent genetic link between Sami and the Volga-Ural region of Russia Ancient DNA reveals lack of continuity between neolithic hunter-gatherers and contemporary Scandinavians Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans Ancient mitochondrial DNA from the northern fringe of the Neolithic farming expansion in Europe sheds light on the dispersion process Genomic diversity and admixture differs for Stone-Age Scandinavian foragers and farmers The genomic history of southeastern Europe Early Farming in the Northern Boreal Zone: Reassessing the History of Land Use in Southeastern Finland through High‐Resolution Pollen Analysis cultivation and cultural transformations in the boreal zone of north‐eastern Europe Neolithic dairy farming at the extreme of agriculture in northern Europe Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281 Early farming in Finland: was there cultivation before the Iron Age (500 BC) Transition from hunting to animal husbandry in Southern Western and Eastern Finland: new dated osteological evidence Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Genomic and Strontium Isotope Variation Reveal Immigration Patterns in a Viking Age Town Optimal ancient DNA yields from the inner ear part of the human petrous bone Illumina sequencing library preparation for highly multiplexed target capture and sequencing Multiplexed DNA sequence capture of mitochondrial genomes using PCR products EAGER: efficient ancient genome reconstruction Reanalysis and revision of the Cambridge reference sequence for human mitochondrial DNA mapDamage: testing for damage patterns in ancient DNA sequences HaploGrep 2: mitochondrial haplogroup classification in the era of high-throughput sequencing Updated comprehensive phylogenetic tree of global human mitochondrial DNA variation MAFFT multiple sequence alignment software version 7: improvements in performance and usability MAFFT: a novel method for rapid multiple sequence alignment based on fast Fourier transform New method of collagen extraction for radiocarbon dating Paleobiological implications of the isotopic sigNatures (13 C 15 N) of fossil mammal collagen in Scladina Cave (Sclayn Selection and treatment of data for radiocarbon calibration: an update to the International Calibration (IntCal) criteria MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput Arlequin suite ver 3.5: a new series of programs to perform population genetics analyses under Linux and Windows Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies PopART: Full-feature software for haplotype network construction Finnish Literature Society; English edition Download references We are grateful for the Levänluhta project and Elämän historiat hampaissa project for providing us samples from Levänluhta and Luistari For the Julin’s site samples we would like to thank Benito Casagrande professor Helena Ranta and University of Helsinki are acknowledged We would also like to thank Markku Niskanen for providing us the 14C dating for one Renko individual (Renko H29 Ella Reiter and Shweta Venkatakrishnan are thanked for technical assistance This work was funded by Finnish Cultural Foundation (S.Ö.) Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation (E.S.) Finnish Foundations’ Professor Pool Grant (Paulo Foundation the University of Zurich’s University Research Priority Program “Evolution in Action: From Genomes to Ecosystems” (V.J.S.) and the Mäxi Foundation Zurich (V.J.S.) decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript Sanni Översti and Kerttu Majander contributed equally Palo and Päivi Onkamo jointly supervised this work Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Peter the Great Museum of World Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) Jussi-Pekka Taavitsainen & Anna Wessman provided archaeological material and related information processed the sequence reads and generated the mtDNA genotypes wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors The authors declare no competing interests Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51045-8 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article International Journal of Legal Medicine (2024) International Journal of Legal Medicine (2023) Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2022) Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science the project featuring NIGHTWISH mainman/keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen and his wife has entered the studio to begin recording its third album for a 2025 release Laying down the drums on the effort at the Petrax facility in Hollola best known as the drummer of NIGHTWISH and WINTERSUN January 8),AURI shared a short video from the studio in which Holopainen said: "Good evening and greetings from the legendary Petrax studios in Hollola where we just finished recording drums and percussion for the third AURI album by the legend himself who will also join us for the tour later this year." I'm really thrilled to be part of the live shows and hope to see you all there." The effort was the follow-up to AURI's self-titled debut LP which came out in March 2018 via Nuclear Blast united through their shared need to hear a kind of a music which can't be described by words alone while Holopainen and English composer and multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley (also of NIGHTWISH) cast their spells with various other instruments Now complemented by the dynamic percussive talents of Kai Hahto (NIGHTWISH),the threesome carves fantastical worlds entirely their own Johanna Kurkela: Voices, violaTuomas Holopainen: Keys, backing voicesTroy Donockley: Acoustic and electric guitars, bouzouki, uilleann pipes, low whistles, aerophone, bodhran, keys, voices Holopainen and Kurkela have been married since October 2015. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Auri (@auri.band) a Finnish company serving the concrete industry so does the demand for technologies that can reduce CO2 emissions and/or efficiently remove CO2 from the atmosphere Proposed solutions for sequestering CO2 are plentiful but there are serious issues around how to verify the claims made by the promoters of these innovations Accurately measuring the veracity of claims has become a key issue in the private sector’s Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) which is increasingly emphasising the need to monitor and report the amount of CO2 that is actually captured and stored Carbonaide has a clear answer to this challenge – and it’s market-ready Carbonaide’s technology utilises CO2 to produce a carbonate mineral With support and cooperation from the measurement technology company Vaisala Carbonaide’s solution is practical and straightforward Carbonaide’s expertise is in the transformation of concrete from a large emission source into a carbon storage sink an analytical chemist by training with more than 20 years of experience in the concrete sector He is one of the co-founders of Carbonaide “Our goal is quite focused – to create a more sustainable future with cutting-edge tech that doesn’t just reduce the carbon emissions of concrete but also stores more CO2 than it emits throughout its lifetime.” “As experts in both carbon curing and sustainable carbon dioxide value chains we offer an effective and robust decarbonisation technology for pre-cast concrete manufacturers a concrete manufacturer can reduce cement consumption in daily production and also decrease the carbon footprint of its products by mineralising CO2 into concrete.” Carbonation is traditionally considered as a degradation mechanism of hardened concrete carbonation is reversed into beneficial mineral formation during the concrete hardening process Carbonate mineral formation enables the utilisation of CO2 as a supplementary cementitious material and provides permanent storage of gaseous CO2 Carbonaide COO Jonne Hirvonen is eager to talk about the advantages of their production-ready innovation and the ways his team has benefitted from Vaisala’s advanced measurement tools “Our unique advantage is that we accurately measure and control the carbon-curing process we have pushed our product to be as easy as possible to install and start using The majority of our measurements are CO2 levels – and the quality of online measurement data is a top priority for us.” our carbonation can be efficiently and accurately verified by process measurements without the need to constantly sample the concrete products One early challenge we faced was that CO2 is usually measured in either ppm levels or for workplace safety purposes – but our range requirement is very wide we needed new solutions that did not impose risks on the quality of our measurements At this point it became clear that Vaisala could play an important role in our solution.” Carbonaide’s initial requirements were quite simple they understood that significant measurement needs would arise so they were eager to go with a partner who really understood this Hirvonen is also keen to emphasise that partnering with Vaisala was not only useful in the initial development stages you should only work with partners that are able to help at both the early stages As Vaisala’s Product Manager Antti Viitanen states “Sustainability is less about grand claims reliable measurement data is an absolute must.” Regarding Carbonaide’s own plans for the future “Our goal is to sequester 500 megatons of carbon dioxide by 2050 and we don’t see any major obstacles preventing that from happening We now have industrial scale processing capabilities and there is a clear demand for our product if the world’s entire cement production were to use our production process 1.5 Gigatons of carbon dioxide could be captured This is hugely significant because global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022 were just over 36.8 Gigatons.” your new go-to podcast to spice up your weekday mornings with relevant news and behind-the-scenes from Brussels and beyond From the economy to the climate and the EU's role in world affairs this talk show sheds light on European affairs and the issues that impact on our daily lives as Europeans Tune in to understand the ins and outs of European politics Dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries Deep dive conversations with business leaders Euronews Tech Talks goes beyond discussions to explore the impact of new technologies on our lives the podcast provides valuable insights into the intersection of technology and society Europe's water is under increasing pressure floods are taking their toll on our drinking water Join us on a journey around Europe to see why protecting ecosystems matters and to discover some of the best water solutions an animated explainer series and live debate - find out why Water Matters We give you the latest climate facts from the world’s leading source analyse the trends and explain how our planet is changing We meet the experts on the front line of climate change who explore new strategies to mitigate and adapt It’s usual to see the strawberry fields of Finland dotted with labourers in the first weeks of July What’s unusual the village of Hollola is that "We've only had foreign workers for the last 22 years But because of the exceptional coronavirus situation we couldn't get enough pickers from Ukraine – so as soon as coronavirus came to Finland we started to recruit Finnish workers," said Vesa Koivistoinen owner of Finland's largest strawberry farm in the southern village of Hollola Kati Kuula of the agricultural union MTK told AFP news agency When travel restrictions were imposed in the spring farmer representatives and authorities feared a labour shortage and launched a recruitment drive and calls for "every available pair of hands" to "secure domestic food on Finnish dinner tables" Many of those answering the call were otherwise facing financial hardship because of the pandemic – like Sari a 52-year-old self-employed masseuse whose own business dried up "I'm the daughter of a farmer and I've been working in strawberry fields when I was young so this is the first time after a long Struggling to find work these days is 29-year-old Janne Erola who also turned to fruit-picking: "I've got a lot of work on my CV I've got a full two-sided paper after a ten-year work history Farmers have had to raise their piecework rates to make up for the fact the new recruits are much slower than professional migrant workers And while Finns are coming to the rescue of the country’s strawberry harvest a small European variety of wild blueberries The berries are usually picked from Finnish forests by workers flown in from Thailand but pandemic travel restrictions mean none will be admitted this year Tokmanni     Press release     11 October 2019 at 12:35 p.m Tokmanni will open refurbished and expanded stores in Hollola and the Skanssi shopping centre in Turku on Thursday The Hollola store will open at 8 am and the Skanssi store at 9 am These refurbished and expanded stores will offer significantly wider selections and improved shopping experiences the store openings will feature special offers and free buckets filled with product gifts Tokmanni will offer a wider assortment of home and decoration products The Tokmanni store in Hollola will also offer a wider range of clothing products while the Skanssi store has expanded its assortment of tools both stores will offer a comprehensive assortment of non-perishable foods the Hollola and Skanssi stores will serve as collection points for items purchased from the online store the Hollola store will have a recycling point for small waste electrical and electronic equipment Both stores will also serve as points of sale for Veikkaus games In line with the newest Tokmanni store concept pleasant and modern shopping experiences will be supported by spacious aisles and clear and informative signage the new shelf layout enables products and product categories to be displayed better than before the store has been made more accessible: shoppers can now also enter the store directly from the escalator from the first floor The energy efficiency of the Skanssi store has been improved by replacing traditional store lighting with LED technology Tokmanni’s solar power plant consists of 504 solar panels The Hollola store uses solar energy for ventilation A solar power plant consisting of 504 solar panels was recently installed on its roof and is expected to generate about 114 MWh of electricity per year This corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of about 57 small apartments or about 568,000 kilometres driven with an electric car.* The electricity generated by the solar power plant is expected to cover about 10–15% of the store’s total annual electricity consumption The expansion will significantly increase the stores’ retail selling space from about 3,100 to 4,400 square metres in Hollola and from 1,000 to 1,800 square metres in Skanssi the separate garden department of the Hollola store will expand from about 150 to 700 square metres “The Tokmanni stores in Hollola and Skanssi are delightfully spacious and they’ll have even more diverse selections than before Most of the improvements are based on customers’ wishes and we are certain that the shopping experience will now be better in all respects,” says Mathias Kivikoski The renewed stores will have plenty of special offers from Thursday free buckets filled with product gifts will be handed out A total of 700 surprise buckets will be given to the first customers on the opening morning in Hollola and 500 in Skanssi in Turku Store Manager Veeruska Salmela will be in charge of some 20 employees customers will be served by a team of about ten employees The stores are open during the renovation period and will continue to have long opening hours. The Hollola store will be open from 8 am to 9 pm on weekdays The Skanssi store in Turku will be open from 9 am to 9 pm on weekdays The Hollola store is located at Keskikankaantie 4 The Skanssi store is located at Skanssinkatu 10 Two more new Tokmanni stores to be opened this year  Tokmanni’s target is to expand its store network to include more than 200 stores and to increase its new retail selling space by approximately 12,000 square metres in net terms every year, which means around five new or relocated stores. Currently, Tokmanni has 189 stores throughout Finland.  This has been a very busy year for Tokmanni Tokmanni opened eight Ale-Makasiini chain stores two TEX chain stores and one Säästökuoppa store under the Tokmanni brand name along with new stores in Loppi and in Tesoma Tokmanni relocated to new premises in Hanko and Juuka and reopened a refurbished store on Kehräämötie in Kajaani and a refurbished and expanded store in Turenki Tokmanni centralised all its store operations into the Tokmanni store that has been in operation in the town for many years by closing the Ale-Makasiini located in other premises nearby.  Tokmanni will expand its store network to two new locations: Vääksy and Virrat.¹)  ¹) https://ir.tokmanni.fi/en/investors/tokmanni-as-an-investment/new_stores * The calculations use the figure of 2,000 kWh as the annual electricity consumption of an apartment and the figure of 20 kWh as the electricity consumption of an electric car for every 100 kilometres driven Mathias Kivikoski Sales and Marketing Director  Tel +358 20 728 6045 mathias.kivikoski(at)tokmanni.fi  Harri Koponen Store Network and Concept Director   Tel. +358 20 728 6030 harri.koponen(at)tokmanni.fi  Maarit Mikkonen Investor Relations and Communications Manager  +358 40 562 2282 maarit.mikkonen(at)tokmanni.fi  Tokmanni is Finland’s leading discount retailer chain Some 3,600 Tokmanni employees make customers’ everyday life and special occasions easier by offering a versatile and up-to-date assortment of Finnish and international brand-name products and other high-quality products at prices that are always affordable With nearly 200 stores around Finland and an online store Tokmanni’s revenue in 2018 amounted to EUR 870.4 million Tokmanni shares are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.   HELSINKI FINLAND JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 58 People waiting for a tram in Helsinki on 24 February 2021 THE OUTLOOK for Finnish producers of face masks is fairly dim despite the demand stemming from the coronavirus epidemic Iltalehti on Sunday wrote that at least two producers will be forced to wind down production unless they manage to find new clients Over a half of the jobs are located at the manufacturing facility of Finntack in Hollola a municipality located some 10 kilometres west of Lahti told the tabloid daily that the company has temporarily laid off some personnel and asked others to work minimum hours due to the sluggish demand “We’re now knocking on doors both domestically and internationally to be able to utilise our production capacity we’ll have to put the machines up for sale,” he said The situation is interesting as the demand for face masks should be unprecedentedly high given their use not only by health and social care professionals but also by ordinary citizens A domestically produced face mask costs about five times as much as one produced in China “Producing masks isn’t so much fun that we’d do it at a loss This is business after all,” said Peter Nordlund Both the companies viewed that the public administration seems not to appreciate domestic producer despite the spike in demand for personal protective equipment witnessed during the first wave of the epidemic The arrivals of equipment shipments were followed closely by members of the media while politicians stressed the importance of domestic production we should’ve made sure that public entities can buy [the products] also once the supply has normalised It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that domestic small-scale production can’t compete in prices against masks imported from Asia,” stated Jukka Kuosmanen the development director at Varkaus-based Lumi Dental “It’s surprising that we aren’t building preparedness on domestic production,” echoed Nevanlinna The National Emergency Supply Agency (HVK) has spent roughly a fifth of its appropriations for personal protective equipment procurements on domestically made products HVK last autumn moved from direct to tendered procurements last autumn but its procurement costs have varied primarily as a result of fluctuations in equipment prices during the pandemic “Face masks now cost about a tenth of what they did a year ago,” Mikko Matikkala Advertisement inquiries and other after-sales issues: info@helsinkitimes.fi Helsinki Times is the first and only English language newspaper providing news about Finland in English A weekly print edition of Helsinki Times was published from March 2007 up until Feb Helsinki Times is an online-only publication and other groups and individuals interested in Finland from all around the world © Helsinki Times All rights reserved.  Terms of Use | Privacy Policy Finland: Thousands of Finns have answered a desperate call from farmers to save the summer’s berry harvest it’s a very unusual situation,“ Vesa Koivistoinen When AFP visited Koivistoinen’s 100-hectare farm two weeks into the strawberry harvest crouching down to pick strawberries then putting them in crates to be weighed and loaded in a lorry “who mainly come from abroad,“ Kati Kuula of the agricultural union MTK told AFP But when coronavirus travel restrictions were imposed in the spring agricultural associations and the government feared a labour shortage and launched a number of recruitment programmes and calls for “every available pair of hands” to “secure domestic food on Finnish dinner tables” replied to the job advert after her own business dried up during the spring “I’m the daughter of a farmer and I was working in strawberry fields when I was young,“ she told AFP who has worked in a number of seasonal jobs but never before in fruit-picking said he intended to stay until the strawberry season ends in late August Filling one seven-kilogramme (15.5-pound) crate takes “a bit more than an hour” earning him 1.2 euros ($1.36) per kilogramme Koivistoinen said that as the Finns aren’t able to pick as fast as the experienced Ukrainian workers but Koivistoinen says he will gladly employ home-grown workers in future “We wanted to be able to employ Finns because lots of other firms can’t offer summer jobs this year,“ Koivistoinen said and it’s quite far from my home,“ said 17-year-old Laura but then they said they couldn’t take me because of corona,“ Mohammed added Yet while domestic labour has come to the rescue of Finland’s strawberry harvest Finnish industries from food to cosmetics require 20 million kilogrammes of bilberries -- a small European variety of the blueberry which is not cultivated in fields but grows abundantly in Finland’s vast forests and have said they will import their bilberries from Poland or Russia this year Tel: +603-7784 6688      Fax: +603-7785 2625 Open image viewerSome of the pickers have worked on berry farms in Päijät-Häme but some also collected wild berries in Kainuu and North Karelia Image: Juha Kivioja / YleYle News13.10.2023 11:28•Updated 13.10.2023 11:36Police say that dozens of Thai nationals who came to Finland to pick berries for commercial operators were subjected to conditions comparable to forced labour It is suspected that the Thai berry pickers were recruited to work in Finland but after deductions by employers they were without earnings There are currently 20–30 individuals thought to be victims The incidents allegedly occurred in Päijät-Häme they have been in a situation similar to forced labour," Hannu Kortelainen of the Helsinki Police's national Human Trafficking Unit told Yle Kortelainen said that there are several suspects and the matter is still being investigated Four people have been arrested and are being held Some of the pickers have worked on berry farms in Päijät-Häme The Arctic Group is based in Hollola but has operations in different locations around Finland Open image viewerArctic Group CEO Janne Naapanki photographed at the edge of a strawberry field in Hollola in July 2023 Image: Juha Kivioja / YleFour in custodyOn Sunday the District Court of North Savo ordered Naapanki and one other person to be held on suspicion of human trafficking Two others were ordered to be held on the same charge by the Päijät-Häme District Court on Tuesday These four are not the only suspects in the police investigation police have reason to believe that similar exploitation of workers took place in pervious years came to the attention of police in interviews with arriving workers Possible victims were referred to the human trafficking assistance system and some of them are still in Finland Deputy Director of the Joutseno reception centre who leads the operations of the assistance system for victims of human trafficking declined to comment directly on the Arctic Group case saying only that workers in berry picking operations are one risk group In a typical case of criminal labour exploitation in Finland a foreign worker comes to the country for seasonal work or the employer pays travel costs which are then deducted from the worker's pay "Working days can be long and work becomes all there is to life and may not know how to ask anyone other than the employer about employment conditions," Lyijynen explained Users with an Yle ID can leave comments on our news stories. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our guidelines on commenting and moderation are explained in this article You can comment on this article until 23:00 on 14 October.