…and how the thesis is celebrated in Finland!

A continuum for a previous post titled “How thesis is defended in Finland” So, after the public defense it is time to have the post-defense party called Karonkka, which is usually held in the evening of the defense day. Officially Karonkka is organized in the honor of the Opponent, but in reality it is a party…

Happy 101st Independence Day, Finland!

Today, December 6th, we are celebrating Finland’s 101st Independence Day. Did you know that Finland was the second country in the world, and first in Europe, to give women the right to vote? New Zealand was the first one. OK…Australia kind of was the second one, but they only gave the right to a certain…

How thesis is defended in Finland

If you follow us on Instagram or Twitter (as you should), you know that Mariana defended her thesis three weeks ago (12.10.2018). Hurrayy! Inspired by that really exciting day and the super fun evening party, we decided to write a post about how a thesis is defended and celebrated in Finland. Here is the first part…

Mutation taking a bloody color

There’s no evolution without mutations. Mutations happen in nature (in people, too) all the time. Usually you cannot really see it with your bare eyes if a mutation has taken place, but sometimes the outcomes of mutations are clearly visible. A fine example of a visible mutation is the red-leaved downy birch (Betula pubescens f….

Ni hao from China

Dear reader, it’s me, Annika. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now, but today I actually found some time to do it (needed a small break from R). So. I started as a postdoc in China in May. What a change in surroundings, culture, climate, and all! Wow… But I’ve managed…

Funny thing about teaching is that it makes you realize how little you actually know about the things you thought you knew

I got the opportunity to teach at a field course named “Akvaattisten tieteiden kenttäkurssi” a.k.a “Field course of aquatic sciences” organized by the University of Helsinki. First part of it was held in the mid August at the Lammi Biological Station located in the lake district of southern Finland. During the course my responsibility was…

SIL2018, we made it!

SIL2018 is now over! What a fun week it was! For those of you who might not know, SIL stands for International Society of Limnology (Capital Letters in weird order, yes). So this time the SIL congress was in Nanjing, China. We (i.e. Annika, and my fellow congress mates) enjoyed some great hospitality shown by our Chinese host…

Saturday = sauna day

You may have heard of a thing called sauna. And you may have heard that Finns enjoy sauna very much. You also may have heard that there is nudity involved. Yep. All is true. We love it (as our almost-Finn Brazilian Mariana does after spending four years in Finland) and we usually do it naked….

Some words about the importance of biodiversity

Biodiversity is defined as ‘the variability among living organisms from all sources, including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems’. This description has been formulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2018) and it is nowadays a…

Introducing Mariana

Here I am!! The last one to be introduced to the World 😉 It took me a while..but I had a good excuse. I was finishing my dissertation and after that I was just recovering from this very though moment in all PhD’s lives. Apparently, I survived. I made it!! 😀 Let’s cut to the…