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The results of pollen analyses from ten surface moss samples collected from the different regional vegetation types of northern Finland are presented. The main features distinguishing the pollen assemblages and the trends observable in transecting the series of vegetation types are outlined and compared with the results of similar studies from elsewhere. With the aim of using the modem pollen assemblages to interpret fossil ones, a simple graphical method of classifying the boreal assemblages is given and specific limits for the forest types presented are suggested. The inability of this graph to distinguish 'tundra' assemblages is noted and additional criteria for separating out this regional type are detailed. Emphasis is also placed on the importance of having absolute pollen frequency values to supplement the relative ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether economic inequality intensified the adverse effects of harvest, price, and income shocks during a famine. Using a parish‐level longitudinal dataset from the Finnish famine of the 1860s, it shows that a substantial proportion of the excess mortality experienced during the famine resulted from a decline in agricultural production, a decline in incomes, and a surge in food prices. The findings indicate that the adverse effects of food output fluctuations were intensified by increasing income inequality and decreasing average income, while the market‐transmitted shocks were weakened by a contraction of disposable income. The results are corroborated with multiple alternative estimation techniques, including the introduction of spatial spill‐overs. The results show that even a pre‐industrial famine affecting an impoverished society was meaningfully defined by the distribution of incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Organic aerosols (OA) account for a large fraction of atmospheric fine particulate matter and thus are affecting climate and public health. Elucidation of the chemical composition of OA is the key for addressing the role of ambient fine particles at the atmosphere–biosphere interface and mass spectrometry is the main method to achieve this goal. Methods: High‐resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) is on its way to becoming one of the most prominent analytical techniques, also for the analysis of atmospheric aerosols. The combination of high mass resolution and accurate mass determination allows the elemental compositions of numerous compounds to be easily elucidated. Here a new parameter for the improved classification of OA is introduced – the maximum carbonyl ratio (MCR) – which is directly derived from the molecular composition and is particularly suitable for the identification and characterization of secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Results: The concept is exemplified by the analysis of ambient OA samples from two measurement sites (Hyytiälä, Finland; Beijing, China) and of laboratory‐generated SOA based on ultrahigh‐performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) coupled to Orbitrap MS. To interpret the results, MCR–Van Krevelen (VK) diagrams are generated for the different OA samples and the individual compounds are categorized into specific areas in the diagrams. The results show that the MCR index is a valuable parameter for representing atmospheric SOA components in composition and structure‐dependent visualization tools such as VK diagrams. Conclusions: The MCR index is suggested as a tool for a better characterization of the sources and the processing of atmospheric OA components based on HRMS data. Since the MCR contains information on the concentration of highly electrophilic organic compounds in particulate matter (PM) as well as on the concentration of organic (hydro)peroxides, the MCR could be a promising metric for identifying health‐related particulate matter parameters by HRMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]