Read this news report on Finland from Abby G.

Voter turnout in county elections is a bleak sign for democracy

Finland held its first county election on January 23, 2022, landing them with 47.5% voter turnout. County elections are different than traditional elections as they vote in who will take over responsibility of organizing social, healthcare, and rescue services within their territory, so it is hard to compare to previous elections especially due to the nature of the pandemic. Several spokesperson noted that the low voter turnout was not a good sign raises questions about the legitimacy of the body being elected. 

Liiga in full swing, Omicron shuffles the schedule

Liiga is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. It is one of six founding leagues of the UEFA Champions League. Liiga was created in 1975 to replace SM-Sarja, which was an amateur league. The 2021-2022 season will be the 47th season of Liiga, which started last autumn and will continue till March or April. A new ice rink called Tampere Deck Arena was opened last December for the use of Ilves and Tappara. Betting in Liiga is very common among spectators by using sites that allow the participant to view information on teams and compare the odds. While the vast majority of clubs are Finns, players come from all nationalities including Swedish, USA, Russia, Slovakia, France, Slovenia, and Norway. Omicron has complicated the schedule of Liiga with games being postponed due to exposure to COVID-19 and even some having to be quarantined. 

Study shows the larger the image, the better we remember it

A new study shows that in natural vision, our visual memory is affected by the size of the image. The study was conducted by Dr Sharon Gilaie-Dotan, and she was determined to find out if the size of an image had any real affect on our sense of memory. These findings can have many implications, such as the use of different electronic screens and the quality of information processing when look at large versus small screens. Shaimaa Masarwa and Olga Kreichman, PhD students in Dr Gilaie-Dotan's class examined what would happen to our visual memory if we were asked to look at an image without knowing about a memory task after. Each participant was shown different images in varying sizes, and each time the experiment was done it was proven that the larger image was more likely remembered compared to the smaller one. Additional factors may have had an affect on memorization such as different eye movements and more attention or interest that the larger image provides. Gilaie-Dotan said that more studies will need to be conducted to fully understand this concept and its further affects on processing.

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