A great deal of attention has been paid to the performance of international joint ventures (IJVs) and trust has been suggested as a key determinant of it. However, limited empirical evidence exists to substantiate a positive relationship between trust and performance of IJVs. Also, there is a limited understanding of the antecedents of trust. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents of trust and to examine the trust–performance relationship in IJVs.

The conceptual framework of the study is drawn from social exchange theory (SET) and transaction cost theory (TCT). The framework consists of five social factors from SET (i.e. prior alliance experience with partner, partner’s cultural sensitivity and reputation, quality of inter-partner communication, and expected longevity of IJVs) and two structural factors from TCT (i.e. interdependence, and ownership share) that are considered as potential antecedents of trust. Further, the framework proposes a positive linkage between inter-partner trust and IJV performance and it is suggested that inter-partner resource complementary moderates the trust-performance relationship. The developed framework is tested by using a sample of 89 IJVs established by Nordic firms during 2000–2011 in Asia, Europe, and America. A web-based questionnaire is used to collect data from the Nordic managers of the IJVs. The collected data is analyzed by using the structural modeling approach with PLS estimation technique.

The results of the study suggest that trust has a positive effect on the performance of the IJVs. The findings also indicate that partner’s cultural sensitivity and reputation, quality of inter-partner communication, and expected longevity of IJVs enhances, while partner’s opportunistic behavior reduces trust. Surprisingly, equivalent ownership share and symmetric interdependence are found to be unrelated to trust, and further equivalent ownership share increases the partner’s opportunistic behavior in IJVs. Findings also indicate that partner’s cultural sensitivity and reputation, quality of inter-partner communication, and symmetric interdependence are the factors which attenuate opportunism. Contrary to expectations, the moderation effect of inter-partner resource complementary on trust-performance relationship is not significant. These findings have important implications for managers planning to form and manage IJVs in foreign markets.

Background: Health Care is of great value but despite increased efforts to improve patient safety, many patients still suffer harm caused by healthcare, and even more patients have encountered incidents that could have caused harm. Adverse events can be detected by using retrospective record review. The Harvard Medical Practice Study and the Global Trigger Tool are such methods. Retrospective record review has shown better coverage than the commonly used clinical incident reporting system to identify patient safety information.

Aims: The general aim of the thesis was to evaluate, compare and expand retrospective record review methods for clinical use in health care. The specific aims were;

• To evaluate the agreement in judgments of adverse events between well-trained Global Trigger Tool teams from different hospitals.
• To describe strengths and weaknesses, from team members perspectives of working with the Global Trigger Tool method of retrospective record review to identify adverse events causing patient harm.
• To evaluate the feasibility and capability of two common retrospective record review methods, the "Harvard Medical Practice Study" method and the "Global Trigger Tool" in detecting adverse events in adult orthopedic inpatients.
• To evaluate retrospective record review for the detection and characterization of no-harm incidents and compare findings with conventional incident reporting systems.

Methods: A random sample of fifty patient records was reviewed by a team from each of five hospitals according to the Global Trigger Tool method (I). The teams were interviewed in focus groups concerning their experiences of the Global Trigger Tool method (II). In papers III and IV, a random sample of 350 orthopaedic admissions was examined. The outcomes from the Harvard Medical Practice Study and the Global Trigger Tool methods were compared (III). In paper IV the Harvard Medical Practice Study method was also used for identifying no harm incidents.

Results: The number of identified adverse events differed between the teams, corresponding to a level of adverse events ranging from 27.2 to 99.7 per 1000 hospital days. Differences were also found in the assessment of level of harm and judgment of preventability. Four of the teams made similar assessments while the fifth identified three times as many adverse events compared to the other teams (I).

Eight categories with their strengths and weaknesses emerged from the focus group interviews. The team members were constant in their generally positive experiences of the Global Trigger Tool method, even if the teams over time altered the application of the method (II).

With the Harvard Medical Practice Study and the Global Trigger Tool methods combined, 160 adverse events were identified in 105 (30%) of the 350 records. The Harvard Medical Practice Study method identified 155 (97%) adverse events in 104 of 350 records compared with 137 (86%) adverse events in 98 records using the Global Trigger Tool method. The adverse events causing the greatest differences were the ones causing minimal or moderate impairment (III).

In paper IV, results showed that 118 no harm incidents were detected in 91 (26%) of the 350 patient records. Ninety-four of the 118 (80%) no-harm incidents were classified as preventable. Sixteen no-harm incidents were identified by the five conventional incident reporting systems. Of these, ten no-harm incidents were also found by the Harvard Medical Practice Study method.

Conclusions: Retrospective record review enabled detection of adverse events as well as identification of no harm incidents. It is considered a useful method. There were differences both in agreement between reviewer teams and between review methods. Joint preparations and discussions seemed to increase the level of agreement in judgment between reviewers. By adding retrospective record review for findings of no-harm incidents to conventional incident reporting, healthcare providers can gain new important information about commonly occurring, no-harm incidents in order to improve patient safety.

For organizations, emphasizing investments in security technology has become the norm. Trending security technologies are important for an organization’s information security strategy. Organizations commonly use such technologies to enforce information security policy (ISP) compliance on the part of their employees, to ensure the security of their information resources. Yet, it seems that employees frequently establish rules of their own for complying with the ISP. Questioning this concern, the present dissertation addresses employees’ violation of information security rules and regulations. The motivation is based on the concern that information security policy noncompliance is largely influenced by escalation of commitment. Escalation is a phenomenon that explains how employees in organizations often get involved in nonperforming tasks, commonly reflecting the tendency of persistence, when investments of resources have been initiated. This dissertation develops an integrated model based on Self-Justification theory, Prospect theory, and Approach Avoidance theory, that centres on two main factors of noncompliance, namely self-justification and sunk costs. These factors act as mediating mechanisms to explain the dependent factor of the willingness to engage in noncompliant behaviour. The theoretical model is empirically tested with a data set that represents responses from 639 respondents across 27 organizations using the scenario-based survey approach. The results of this dissertation present a dual outcome. For theory, our theoretical framework not only enriches the literature on information security by proving that escalation behaviour is an antecedent of noncompliance, but also generates new insights about the escalation of commitment literature. The findings suggest that employees’ cognitive traits are escalation’s main antecedents that present the necessary stimulation to violate an ISP, while employees’ emotional traits do not influence such stimulation when overpowered by cognitive traits. Our results also suggest that employees engaged in nonperforming tasks often become noncompliant, even though they were complying before. In principle, the findings show that employees prioritize the completion of their tasks, rather than their commitment to comply with the ISP, and thus become noncompliant. In practice, our results show that employees’ willingness to engage in noncompliant behaviour is largely influenced by self-justification and sunk costs. The main results suggest that (a) self-justification is largely driven by the benefits of noncompliance outweighing the costs of compliance; (b) sunk costs are largely driven by the completion effect; (c) the benefit of noncompliance is a significant factor in self-justification, partially mediated by its influence on the willingness to engage in noncompliance; and (d) the completion effect is a significant factor in the sunk costs, fully mediated by its influence on the willingness to engage in noncompliance. This dissertation advocates that further research is needed to account for and explain noncompliant behaviour by utilizing escalation theories in more depth, and that such an account requires an innovative and empirically driven effort.

Aim: The overall aim of the thesis was to describe the experiences of awake patients during surgery under regional anesthesia. In addition, the aim was to develop a model for intraoperative care that can support and enhance patients’ well-being during the intraoperative period.

Methods: Study I was a patient interview study guided by a reflective lifeworld approach. In study II a philosophical reflection of the findings from study I was carried out. In study III a hermeneutic approach inspired by Ricoeur and Gadamer was used in order to interpret video recorded material. In study IV a hermeneutic approach inspired by Gadamer was used to synthesize the findings in studies I-III transformed into an intraoperative caring model. 

Overall main findings: The analysis shows that being awake during surgery can be compared with walking a tightrope because of ambiguous feelings. The proximity and presence of the nurse anesthetist (NA) anchors the patient in the present and strengthens the patient’s feeling of trust. The temporary disruption in the relationship between the body and the world due to regional anesthesia means that the patient’s being in the world is exposed to revolutionary experiences. Gaps between the patient’s experiences and the situation can be bridged over when the NA acts as the patient’s bodily extension and links the patient as a subject to the world in the intraoperative situation. From the patient’s perspective this calls for the NA’s proximity and genuine presence in the ‘intraoperative caring space’. When the NA’s performance of his/her professional duties clashes with the patient’s existential being in the intraoperative situation the need of present presence from the NA is crucial.

Conclusions: The findings contribute to knowledge development about intraoperative care and raise awareness that care for the awake patient cannot be performed on formal routines that might disregard the uniqueness of each patient’s situation. The model can be used as a tool to encounter awake patients’ existential needs in the intraoperative situation and to further enlighten NAs about the possible impact of their proximity, interaction and communication behavior in the delivery of intraoperative nursing care.

Points-to analysis is a static program analysis that, simply put, computes which objects created at certain points of a given program might show up at which other points of the same program. In particular, it computes possible targets of a call and possible objects referenced by a field. Such information is essential input to many client applications in optimizing compilers and software engineering tools.

Comparing experimental results with respect to accuracy and performance is required in order to distinguish the promising from the less promising approaches to points-to analysis. Unfortunately, comparing the accuracy of two different points-to analysis implementations is difficult, as there are many pitfalls in the details. In particular, there are no standardized means to perform such a comparison, i.e, no benchmark suite - a set of programs with well-defined rules of how to compare different points-to analysis results - exists. Therefore, different researchers use their own means to evaluate their approaches to points-to analysis. To complicate matters, even the same researchers do not stick to the same evaluation methods, which often makes it impossible to take two research publications and reliably tell which one describes the more accurate points-to analysis.

In this thesis, we define a methodology on how to benchmark points-to analysis. We create a benchmark suite, compare three different points-to analysis implementations with each other based on this methodology, and explain differences in analysis accuracy.

We also argue for the need of a Gold Standard, i.e., a set of benchmark programs with exact analysis results. Such a Gold Standard is often required to compare points-to analysis results, and it also allows to assess the exact accuracy of points-to analysis results. Since such a Gold Standard cannot be computed automatically, it needs to be created semi-automatically by the research community. We propose a process for creating a Gold Standard based on under-approximating it through optimistic (dynamic) analysis and over-approximating it through conservative (static) analysis. With the help of improved static and dynamic points-to analysis and expert knowledge about benchmark programs, we present a first attempt towards a Gold Standard.

We also provide a Web-based benchmarking platform, through which researchers can compare their own experimental results with those of other researchers, and can contribute towards the creation of a Gold Standard.

In this thesis, I used the color polymorphic pygmy grasshopper, Tetrix subulata, as a model system in order to investigate the degree of niche differentiation between alternative color morphs that are present within a single population. First, I hypothesized that individuals belonging to different color morphs differ in their innate food preference due to somewhat dissimilar physiology, and in their actual food consumption due in part to differential habitat use. I found that alternative morphs differ in their preferred food (multiple-choice experiment in the lab), and in long-term consumption of food in the wild (stable isotopes analysis). Next, I investigated what kind of ecological constraints may result in differential habitat use? Firstly, by painting grasshoppers either black or white in order to influence their thermal properties, I demonstrated that thermoregulatory behavior results in differential microhabitat use in a way that may increase fitness. Secondly, in computer based experiments in which human ‘predators’ were asked to detect images of grasshoppers implemented in images of various environments, I further demonstrated that the degree to which a specific body coloration supply protection, changes across backgrounds, and that no single color pattern provides superior protection against all visual backgrounds. Thus, predator avoidance behavior may result in differential habitat use as well. Can these findings translate into an advantage of polymorphic relative to monomorphic populations?  I then evaluated one prediction from theory that posits that more variable founder groups will be more successful in establishing population in new environments. Indeed, I found higher number of individuals the following year in more variable founder groups in semi-natural conditions in field experiment. This thesis demonstrates, niche differentiation along several dimensions between alternative color morph in a generalist invertebrate. It provides experimental evidence supporting the notion that visual predation may be driving force behind evolutionary change in morph frequencies, and points to a possible advantage for color polymorphic relative to monomorphic groups in terms of a higher establishment success.

Biomass gasification is a thermochemical conversion by partial oxidation at elevated temperature of solid biomass into a gaseous energy carrier. The product gas contains the major components CO, H₂, CO₂, CH₄, as well as some tar and inorganic impurities and solid particles such as ash, bed material, soot and char. The aim of this work is to develop an aerosol-based method to investigate on-line the reactivity of the suspended biomass char particles at high temperatures, and to apply aerosol measurement systems for sampling and characterizing particulate matter in the hot product gas from gasifiers.

An aerosol-based method including the steps for generating, transporting, and oxidizing suspended char particles (0.5–10 µm) was proposed and developed for investigation of char reactivity at high temperatures. An aerodynamic particle sizer (APS) spectrometer was used to measure the particle size distributions. A tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM) was used to measure the change of mass concentrations of particles in the carrier gas, before and after conversion. The intrinsic kinetics of various biomass (wood, straw, miscanthus) char particles have been experimentally established in a wide temperature range for both combustion (in air/oxygen) and gasification (in 33 vol% CO₂ or 33 vol% steam), up to 800°C and 1300°C, respectively, by combining the aerosol method with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The general CO₂ or steam gasification reactivity of chars from different biomass could be ranked as wood > miscanthus > straw. In CO₂ or steam gasification, the reactivity of char samples measured by the aerosol method at 1300°C would vary by a factor of 4-9 comparing with the extrapolated estimation from the TGA results at the low temperatures. This indicates that high-temperature reactivity estimation by extrapolation should be used with care. Variations of the morphology and the effective density of char particles during conversion indicated that in the initial stage of char conversion (either combustion or gasification), pore growth was dominant up to a certain conversion, and shrinkage or fusing would occur in the later stage. The aerosol-based method presents a set of benefits which are advantageous compared to previously established techniques: no mass transfer limitation at high temperatures; the flexibility to switch to different gas agent combined with continuous feeding of char sample; and the on-line measurement of particle mass and size. The aerosol method is not applicable under the conditions where the reaction rate is slow, since longer residence time will increase the probability of particle losses. In addition to laboratory applications, the aerosol method has potentials for on-line investigation of concentration and reactivity of suspended char fragments sampled directly from the product gas in different types of gasifiers.

Particulate matter (10 nm–10 µm) in the product gas was characterized for the size distribution, morphology and elemental composition by both on-line and off-line techniques. An aerosol particle measurement system including a dilution probe connected in series with a packed activated carbon bed was applied to extract aerosol from the hot product gas produced in the gasifiers using wood as feedstock: an indirect bubbling fluidized bed gasifier and a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) gasifier. The fine and coarse particles from the CFB gasifier contained calcium and magnesium, indicating the contributions from the ash and the magnesite bed material. From the indirect gasifier, the fine-mode (<0.5 µm) particles were dominated by potassium and chlorine whereas the coarse-mode (>0.5 µm) particles were dominated by calcium and silicon, probably from the ash and the bed material. Char fragments were identified in the hot product gas and contribute to the coarse-mode particles in both gasifiers.

Myosin II is the molecular motor responsible for muscle contraction. It transforms the chemical energy in ATP into mechanical work while interacting with actin filaments in so called cross-bridge cycles. Myosin II or its proteolytic fragments e.g., heavy meromyosin (HMM) can be adsorbed to moderately hydrophobic surfaces in vitro, while maintaining their ability to translocate actin filaments. This enables observation of myosin-induced actin filament sliding in a microscope. This “in vitro motility assay” (IVMA) is readily used in fundamental studies of actomyosin, including studies of muscle contraction. The degree of correlation of the myosin II function in the IVMA with its function in muscle depends on how the myosin molecules are arranged on the surface. Therefore a multi-technique approach, including total internal reflection spectroscopy, fluorescence interference contrast microscopy and quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation, was applied to characterize the HMM surface configurations. Several configurations with varying distributions were identified depending on the surface property. The most favorable HMM configurations for actin binding were observed on moderately hydrophobic surfaces.

The effects on actomyosin function of different cargo sizes and amount of cargo loaded on an actin filament were also investigated. No difference in sliding velocities could be observed, independent of cargo size indicating that diffusional processive runs of myosin II along an actin filament are not crucial for actomyosin function in muscle. Furthermore, a tool for accurate velocity measurements appropriate for IVMAs at low [MgATP] was developed by utilizing the actin filament capping protein CapZ. These improvements allowed an investigation of the [MgATP]-velocity relationship to study possible processivity in fast skeletal muscle myosin II.  It is shown that the [MgATP]–velocity relationship is well described by a Michaelis-Menten hyperbola.  In addition, statistical cross-bridge modeling showed that the experimental results are in good agreement with recent findings of actomyosin cross-bridge properties, e.g., non-linear cross-bridge elasticity. However, no effect of inter-head cooperativity could be observed.

In conclusion, the described results have contributed to in-depth understanding of the actomyosin cross-bridge cycle in muscle contraction.

Colour and appearance of hardwood are of great importance for the interiorand furniture industry. The widespread use of transparent surface treatmentand a fashion that prescribe light colour on many species, means that deviationfrom the ideal have considerable impact on the industrial operations. Kilndrying is generally regarded as the process that has the greatest impact on thecolour of Nordic hardwood species. The lack of satisfactory explanation modelsfor many types of discoloration, however, complicates the control of the dryingprocess.This thesis is an attempt to increase the knowledge of which factors thatcontrol the appearance of some commonly found discolorations associated withdrying of beech, birch and oak. The main focus is on convection drying but alsothe influence of timber storage, pre-steaming and press drying has beeninvestigated for individual species. The studies have been conducted ascomparative studies based on design of experiments in which the colour wasdetermined using a colorimeter.Results show that reddish and dark discoloration of beech and birch duringconvective drying is mainly dependent on the temperature and time of exposurewhen the local moisture content exceeds the fibre saturation point. Theconversion of naturally occurring substances in birch into coloured compoundsis not due to active precursors created at high moisture content levels duringthe subsequent drying at low moisture content levels. Interior grey stain inbeech is caused by slow initial drying at low temperatures. Log storage in coldwinter and spring climate does not cause discoloration in beech. Birch becomeslighter when press-dried at high temperatures, resulting in a colour comparableto that of traditionally kiln dried wood. Steaming of oak before kiln dryingreduce the presence of brown discoloration, a general darkening of the woodoccurs at temperatures above 50°C.

In aquatic environments the availability of nitrogen (N) generally limits primary production. N₂-fixing prokaryotes (diazotrophs) can convert N₂ gas into ammonium and provide significant input of N into the oceans. Cyanobacteria are thought to be the main N₂-fixers but diazotrophs also include a wide range of heterotrophic bacteria. However, their activity and regulation in the water column is largely unknown.

In this thesis the distribution, diversity, abundance, and activity of marine and estuarine heterotrophic diazotrophs was investigated. With molecular methods targeting the nifH gene, encoding the nitrogenase enzyme for N₂ fixation, it was shown that diverse nifH genes affiliating with heterotrophic bacteria were ubiquitous in surface waters from ten marine locations world-wide and the estuarine Baltic Sea. Through enrichment cultures of Baltic Sea surface water in anaerobic N-free medium, heterotrophic N₂ fixation was induced showing that there was a functional N₂-fixing community present and isolates of heterotrophic diazotrophs were obtained. In Sargasso Sea surface waters, transcripts of nifH related to heterotrophic bacteria were detected indicating heterotrophic N₂-fixing activity.

Nitrogenase expression is thought to be highly regulated by the availability of inorganic N and the presence of oxygen. Low oxygen zones within the water column can be found in association with plankton. The presence of diazotrophs as symbionts of heterotrophic dinoflagellates was investigated and nifH genes related to heterotrophic diazotrophs rather than the cyanobacterial symbionts were found, suggesting that a symbiotic co-existence prevailed. Oxic-anoxic interfaces could also be potential sites for heterotrophic N₂ fixation. The Baltic Sea contains large areas of anoxic bottom water. At the chemocline and in anoxic deep water heterotrophic diazotrophs were diverse, abundant and active. These findings extend the currently known regime of N₂ fixation to also include ammonium-rich anaerobic waters.

The results of this thesis suggest that heterotrophic diazotrophs are diverse and widely distributed in marine and estuarine waters and that they can also be active. However, limits in the knowledge on their physiology and factors which regulate their N₂ fixation activity currently prevent an evaluation of their importance in the global marine N budget.

The ocean covers more than 70 % of the Earth surface and represents the largest ecosystem on Earth. Bacteria are an important part of the marine food web not only in remineralisation but also since they utilize dissolved organic matter (DOM) and make the energy available to higher trophic levels. Despite their small size, the total bacterial biomass exceeds the combined mass of zooplankton and fishes.

Bacterial communities are often sensitive to disturbance and the composition changes in response to variations in environmental factors. The diversity of microorganisms is high and the biodiversity is composed of a few abundant and a long tail of rare taxa. The rare taxa contribute most to the diversity, but form a seed bank that is not growing or growing extremely slow. Experimental manipulations showed that the change in community composition in response to disturbance was, at least to some respect, accomplished by rare species becoming abundant. Changes in community composition and diversity did not have an affect on broad scale functions, e.g. utilization of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), indicating that bacterial communities are functionally redundant.

Microorganisms are generally believed to be easily dispersed globally because of their small size, high abundance and short generation time. However, changes in community composition have been shown both on temporal and spatial scales but there is limited information about which factors are most important for distribution of bacterial taxa. A study of in situ samples from the Sargasso Sea showed that a large extent of the variation in the abundance of broad bacterial taxa could be explained by environmental factors, whereas abundances generally did not differ between water masses. In addition, an investigation of the phylogenetic structure of bacterial communities from the Baltic Sea and Skagerrak showed that bacterial communities in specific environments usually are more phylogenetic related to each other than expected by chance. Together these results indicate that the environment is an important factor forming the community and that phylogenetically related bacteria are functionally related, sharing similar traits.

Avhandlingen behandlar införande av varsin dator till elever och lärare, här kallat en-till-en. Syftet är att bidra med kunskap om hur en-till-en påverkar lärande. Särskilt fokus ligger på kunskapsproduktionens karaktär och kvalitet och på förhållanden i den svenska skolan. En ytterligare ambition är att väcka reflektioner kring och bilda kunskap om hur en-till-en, som en produkt av kunskapssamhället, påverkar såväl kunskapssynen som kunskapsbildningens kvalitet och villkor. Därtill är också ambitionen också att, mot bakgrund av kunskapssamhällets särskilda villkor, bidra till nya insikter kring kunskapsbegreppets utvecklingsmöjligheter i relation till en-till-en.Utgångspunkten tas i kunskapssamhället och villkoren för kunskapsproduktion och i hur Sverige har valt att fokusera på behovet av att ge eleverna digital kompetens. Den teoretiska ansatsen ligger i fenomenologi som ontologiskt ställningstagande och i fenomenografi gällande perspektiv på lärande. Avhandlingen bygger på fyra studier: en narrativ forskningsöversikt med fokus på vad forskning berättar om elever respektive lärare i en-till-en projekt. Vidare ingår en teoretisk artikel med fokus på att utveckla en alternativ förståelse för villkoren för kunskapsbildning på den sociala webben med utgångspunkt från Martin Heideggers fenomenologi. En intervjustudie kring elevers upplevelser av sitt lärande i en-till en ingår också samt en fenomenografisk analys av inlämnade kunskapsuppgifter med fokus på kritiska dimensioner och kunskapsdjup. Resultaten diskuterar huruvida det starka färdighetsfokus som uppstår vid kunskapsbildning i en-till-en är samstämmigt med den performativa kunskap som i kunskapssamhället antas vara av vikt och hur det påverkar kvalitet och karaktär på bildad kunskap. Avhandlingen diskuterar också hur en-till-en påverkar elevers sätt att uppleva sitt lärande i en situation som präglas av flexibilitet och ständigt nya förutsättningar för lärande. Slutligen diskuteras också ett möjligt sätt att utveckla kunskapsbegreppet mot bakgrund av de resultat som framträtt i avhandlingens fyra studier genom att formulera begreppet 'stretchad kunskap'.

Berggren, Jan (2013). Engelskundervisning i gymnasieskolan för mobilisering av ungdomars livschanser. (English teaching in upper secondary school and mobilization of young people's life chances). Linnaeus University Dissertations No 156/2013, ISBN: 978-91-87427-64-0. Written in Swedish with a summary in English.

English is a school subject which every Swedish upper secondary student is required to take. The selection and dissemination of knowledge among students attending upper secondary programmes carries the intention of social integration as well as specialization. The aim of this dissertation is then to show how perspectives on education in English elicited from teachers’ and students’ responses in interviews as well as Swedish education policy (SOU, directives, propositions) contribute to the conditions for the selection of knowledge and teaching, on and between programmes.

Inspired by Basil Bernstein’s theories of educational sociology (1990, 2000) and Fairclough och Chouliaraki’s critical discourse analysis, CDA (1999), albeit adjusted to the aim of this study in pedagogics, the focus is on teachers’ and students’ views on teaching and knowledge in English classes on four vocational and academic programmes, establishing varying discourse practices on the different programmes. Moreover, perspectives on upper secondary teaching in Swedish education policy texts are analysed following the same methodology.

Results indicate that education policy texts at the time of the interviews strive for adjustment of course content in English teaching to the programme (termed ‘infärgning’ in Swedish). Reflecting this trend in education policy, teachers and students on programmes speak of aspirations for English teaching as being either adapted for mainly academic purposes, or vocational and everyday-life purposes. On the basis of these aspirations it is argued that teachers and students establish either academically oriented discourse or vocational and everyday-life oriented discourse as the dominant pedagogical discourse on the individual programme. Thus, education policy as well as teachers and students reflect each other in striving for knowledge to be adapted for the programme. The two discourses contribute to a movement in favour of differences between programmes, though some of the vocational students complain on not being offered possibilities to analyse and discuss current problems in society. This is to say they complain that they do not receive an education in line with the academically oriented discourse, which is offered to students on academic programmes. At the same time, vocational students are dissatisfied in not gaining adequate knowledge in vocational English.

Finally, these perspectives indicate discursive conditions for the selection of knowledge and the organization of teaching in English classes on different programmes. In the last chapter of the dissertation these varying perspectives on programmes concerning the selection of knowledge are analysed but now with a focus on the relationship between programmes. Consequences of the varying dominant pedagogical discourses on the programmes are discussed with regard to how they can be understood to mobilize life chances of young people differently, creating conditions for social integration and differentiation.

Keywords: Selection of knowledge, upper secondary education, English, education policy, critical discourse analysis, sociology of education, social integration, social differentiation

The purpose of the present thesis is to create an understanding of entrepreneurship interpreted as communicative action. This is done through reflections on an interactive study that was planned and conducted together with members of a civic network-organization called Societal Change in Practice (SIP). According to Habermas, civic organizations are ideally characterized by a communicative rationality that enables them to organize informal public spheres; that is, arenas in social life where individuals can come together to discuss and act upon societal problems or opportunities that they have experienced in their private life-spheres.

I have actively participated in three ventures with members from SIP. The first venture revolves around my own and members from SIP’s respective practices as education coordinators. Based on our common interest in education and learning in relation to entrepreneurship, we planned and conducted a series of joint activities that also involved our respective student groups. The activities are interpreted based on my own personal experiences as a researcher participating in a project that requires commitment and responsibility. The second venture involves the creation of a local community magazine that highlights examples of civic initiatives in two municipalities. The production of the magazine is interpreted as an example of how SIP creates public opinion in the local community. The third event relates to the organization of a conference on the subject of youth and digital media. The main message of the conference is interpreted in terms of a manifestation of what the public sphere can accomplish, or as a reaction in defense of a well-functioning public sphere in society.

The methodological contribution of the thesis is its definition of three interactive research roles based on my own interaction as a researcher in different kinds of ventures. Based on a theatrical metaphor, I argue that the researcher can participate as one of the directors of a venture, as a member of the ensemble that performs a venture, or as a member of the audience that observes an event.

The theoretical contribution of the study is that it shows how Habermas’ theory of communicative action can be modified and made useful as a theoretical frame of reference for studying entrepreneurship in civil society. Entrepreneurship is understood as a way to vitalize the informal public sphere, thereby influencing society as a whole and not just its economy.

Environmental fate models are used to evaluate the fate and effects of chemicals for risk assessment. Fate models may be effective and low-cost substitutes for field measurements and are helpful to project future scenarios. Environmental models describe processes for chemical fate largely determined by environmental and chemical-specific parameters. There is uncertainty in such input parameters arising from lack of knowledge and inherent variability in environmental processes.

     The objectives of this thesis are to demonstrate and evaluate ways to quantify, implement, and reduce uncertainty in chemical-specific input parameters and  in the process to improve the overall treatment of uncertainty in environmental modeling. The methods to treat uncertainty were combinations of multimedia environmental modeling, the use of testing and non-testing information in risk assessment, and probabilistic and non-probabilistic measures of uncertainty.

    This thesis contains six case studies related to chemical safety assessment which illustrate different aspects of treatment of uncertainty in a regulatory context. Dependent on nature of uncertainty and the available information, the approaches to treat uncertainty were probabilistic, non-probabilistic or combinations of these. Some case studies were put into the perspective to support chemical regulation under REACH. In three studies, the contribution of uncertainty in input parameters was evaluated on characteristics of uncertainty in assessed persistence, long-range transport potential and comparative toxicity potentials of chemicals in the environment. In other studies, the focus was on decision making such as prioritization of chemicals for risk assessment and the need for further testing to reduce input uncertainty.

     The main contributions are useful applications of a broader treatment of uncertainty in environmental modeling that address gaps and quality in available background knowledge.  Epistemic uncertainty is treated by filling knowledge gaps using non-testing information from QSARs. Uncertainty in non-testing information is given a probabilistic treatment based on statistical principles of inference. Poor quality of background knowledge, such as sparse data or low confidence in individual QSAR predictions, is treated by non-probabilistic measures. Finally, the suggested treatments of uncertainty are implemented and evaluated in the context of chemical risk assessment. 

Emissions of carbon dioxide, dioxins, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter as well as use of non-renewable resources and energy are some important sustainability challenges for the Swedish steel industry. Much effort has been made, mainly by technical solutions, which to a high degree have decreased the emissions during the last 30 years.

Technical solutions however will not be sufficient to reach sustainable development, stakeholder involvement is also necessary. Stakeholder theory states that stake­holder involvement must include a dialog between the stakeholders involved and the operation. The first step in this process is to identify which key issues the stakeholders find most important and then the organisation needs to start interact with its stakeholders. This thesis deals with such issues.

Stakeholder preferences for environmental issues were assessed with conjoint analysis, Q-methodology and focus group discussions. The theory of planned behaviour was used to assess how attitudes were connected to background factors and a potential pro-environmental behaviour.

Five studies have been carried out in the framework of this thesis. The studies include: a literature review, method evaluation, evaluation of environ­mental objectives in stakeholder groups, screening of relevant factors, evaluation of steel environmental characteristics, identification of barriers to the introduction of new materials and the im­pact of worry and risk perception on strategic environmental decisions.

It can be concluded that the methods applied in the studies work well in eliciting preferences. It has been possible to show how different stakeholder groups as well as individuals prioritise environmental objectives and sustaina­bility issues. Since individuals within a stakeholder group vary considerably in preferences, the results from this thesis show the importance of illustrating results on an individual level instead of the traditional group level. Also, a method has been tested where the results were brought back to the respondents in order to stimulate discussions between different stakeholder groups.

This thesis studies fire history over the last 11 000 years (Holocene) in central Småland, southern Sweden, on the basis of palaeoecological analyses of peat sequences from three small bogs (Notteryd, Stavsåkra and Storasjö). The main objective is to gain insights into the long-term relationships between fire, climate, human-impact, other environmental factors and the history of biodiversity in the study region. The following hypotheses are tested: 1) there are no between-site differences in i) Holocene fire history, ii) abundance of deciduous trees versus pine and forest openness over the Holocene, and iii) landscape history over the last three centuries, and 2) there are no within-site differences in the Holocene charcoal records.

Hypothesis 1 (i-iii) is tested using all charcoal records (three sites) and pollen-based Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) estimates of past percentage cover of plant taxa and land-use/vegetation units over the last three centuries (test of the LRA using historical maps), and the entire Holocene. Hypothesis 2 is tested using two parallel charcoal records from the same core at Notteryd. The charcoal data comprise continuous records of macroscopic charcoal (macro-C), microscopic charcoal records from pollen slides, and identification of charcoal fragments to plant taxa. Chronologies are based on series of ¹⁴C dates from terrestrial plant remains and age-depth models achieved using Bayesian statistics.

Accumulation rates (AR) of the area of macro-C was found to be better to use than AR of the number of macro-C for interpretation of the results. Within-site differences in charcoal records exist and have to be considered. Besides climate, forest tree-composition (related to geomorphological settings) was shown to play a primordial role in Early and Mid-Holocene fire history, while land-use was a major factor in the Late Holocene. Three different histories of forest development and land-use changes within the same region are revealed, implying a multitude of landscape types over time and space. These long-term landscape histories were at the origin of the high biodiversity still existing in the 18^th century. Major landscape transformations due to agrarian reforms since the 18^th century resulted in a dramatic loss of landscape and species biodiversity over the last two centuries.

Bacteria in the sea are constantly exposed to environmental challenges (e.g. variations in nutrient concentrations, temperature and light conditions), and therefore appropriate gene expression response strategies to cope with them efficiently are evolved. This thesis investigates some interconnected questions regarding such adaptive strategies employed by marine bacteria.

The recently discovered ability of bacteria to use the membrane protein proteorhodopsin (PR) to harvest light energy for cell metabolism were investigated in Vibrio sp. AND4 and Dokdonia sp. MED134. PR phototrophy in AND4 promoted survival during starvation, the molecular basis for which were the upregulation of the PR gene by nutrient limitation rather than light. MED134, in contrast, uses PR phototrophy to grow better, and we discovered that the light-stimulated growth was stronger in seawater with the single carbon compound alanine compared to a mixture of complex organic matter. Thus, differences between bacteria in PR gene expression regulation in response to light, nutrients or organic matter quality critically determine the ecological role of PR phototrophy in the sea.

Current observations that membrane transporters (including PR) are highly expressed in seawater inspired a comparative analysis of transporter distributions in marine bacteria. Totally, 192 transporter families were found in 290 genome-sequenced strains. Consistent differences, but also similarities, in the number of transporters were found between major bacterial groups. Interestingly, sodium transporters were found to be more abundant in PR-containing SAR11. These findings suggest that bacteria have inherently distinctive potentials to adapt to resource variations in the sea.

To examine links between transcriptional responses and growth of bacteria under controlled environmental settings, a mesocosm phytoplankton bloom experiment was performed. Transcriptional analysis of the microbial community (i.e. metatranscriptomics) revealed 2800 categories of functional genes (SEED functions), of which around 10% were overrepresented in either the bloom mesocosms or the controls. Importantly, these functions indicated potential metabolic mechanisms (e.g. TonB mediated nutrient transport) by which bacteria took advantage of the bloom conditions.

This thesis combines analyses of model organisms with community analysis and highlights the possibilities to identify important mechanisms that underlie the ecological success of different bacteria in the marine environment. 

This thesis explores the social construction of birth by analyzing the interaction between the participants present in the delivery room. The data is drawn from 79 video recordings of birth. Six are unedited research recordings and the remaining 73 were edited for pedagogical, documentary and entertaining purposes. The theoretical and analytical perspective is Conversation Analysis. With this microanalytic method, a detailed insight is given to the interaction in the delivery room which should be of linguistic, anthropologic and midwifery interest.

The thesis demonstrates how different situations are shaped during labor and the first 15 minutes after birth. It reveals how the identities child, girl, boy, mother, father, woman and man are constructed and negotiated in the unfolding interaction between the participants. In this sense, the thesis uncovers the construction of family roles in the delivery room during a delicate interaction between the private persons and the institutional representatives. The latter are charged with the complex task of safeguarding the physical wellbeing of mother and child while also promoting the development of parental identities. The thesis highlights the existence of a social birth work; the institutional interactants make use of a range of linguistic resources to demarcate the progression from second stage labor to birth and to position the newborn as an endeared social creature. Birth is an important liminal situation and is therefore forcefully spoken forth, and, as the thesis shows, enhanced with more or less ritual utterances and actions. Birth is also a matter of bodies, the body in labor, the supporting body of the partner and the appearance of the body of the newborn. The thesis gives insight into how these bodies are managed and stylized in interaction. Further the thesis makes visible the midwife’s use of interactional resources to instill strength into the body of the woman in labor. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural circumstances for hospital birth in Sweden.

This thesis explores the social construction of birth by analyzing the interaction between the participants present in the delivery room. The data is drawn from 79 video recordings of birth. Six are unedited research recordings and the remaining 73 were edited for pedagogical, documentary and entertaining purposes. The theoretical and analytical perspective is Conversation Analysis. With this microanalytic method, a detailed insight is given to the interaction in the delivery room which should be of linguistic, anthropologic and midwifery interest.

The thesis demonstrates how different situations are shaped during labor and the first 15 minutes after birth. It reveals how the identities child, girl, boy, mother, father, woman and man are constructed and negotiated in the unfolding interaction between the participants. In this sense, the thesis uncovers the construction of family roles in the delivery room during a delicate interaction between the private persons and the institutional representatives. The latter are charged with the complex task of safeguarding the physical wellbeing of mother and child while also promoting the development of parental identities. The thesis highlights the existence of a social birth work; the institutional interactants make use of a range of linguistic resources to demarcate the progression from second stage labor to birth and to position the newborn as an endeared social creature. Birth is an important liminal situation and is therefore forcefully spoken forth, and, as the thesis shows, enhanced with more or less ritual utterances and actions. Birth is also a matter of bodies, the body in labor, the supporting body of the partner and the appearance of the body of the newborn. The thesis gives insight into how these bodies are managed and stylized in interaction. Further the thesis makes visible the midwife’s use of interactional resources to instill strength into the body of the woman in labor. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural circumstances for hospital birth in Sweden.

Cyanobacteria are the oldest oxygen-producing organisms on Earth and can be found in almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat. Their long evolutionary history has enabled them to develop diverse adaptations in order to increase their survival in environments subjected to natural and anthropogenic changes. The frequency and intensity of cyanobacterial blooms in the Baltic Sea have increased during the last century. Summer blooms consisting of the filamentous cyanobacterial genera Nodularia, Aphanizomenon and Anabaena may cover up to 50 % of the Baltic Sea surface, which are the largest cyanobacterial blooms in the world. Simultaneously, recruitment of spring spawning fish such as perch (Perca fluviatilis) and pike (Esox Lucius) have decreased along the Baltic Sea coast. Temporal variations in adult fish abundance have been linked to recruitment success, which is dependent on growth of juvenile fish. Generally, low growth rates affect survival of juvenile fish by causing an increase in the time spent in stages prone to predation and by increasing winter mortality which is negatively size selective. Since growth is a crucial factor determining fish recruitment, all parameters that have the potential to influence fish growth could affect fish recruitment dynamics. Cyanobacteria negatively influence fish growth directly (toxicity, turbidity and changes in water quality) and indirectly (toxin transfer, changes in zooplankton community structure). Cyanobacterial toxins i.e. nodularin accumulate in common coastal fish species (flounders, perch and roach) resulting in an energetic cost associated with detoxification. Cyanobacteria, toxic or non-toxic, also affect the behavior of fish (prey capture) further increasing energetic costs. In nature, spatial variations of both cyanobacteria and salinity are a deadly combination for juvenile fish leading to increased detrimental effects of cyanobacteria on juvenile fish in brackish waters compared to freshwater. However, different fish populations react differently to cyanobacteria i.e. a marine population had higher tolerance to cyanobacteria compared to an oligotrophic population. At the coastal ecosystem level, cyanobacteria cannot explain the decline of juvenile fish. Nevertheless, at the local scale cyanobacteria certainly influence the recruitment of juvenile fish.  

This thesis focus on the influence of human-induced environmental changes on the physiology of Ostreopsis ovata; a toxic, benthic dinoflagellate, which form blooms in tropical and temperate marine waters. O. ovata produces palytoxin and ovatoxins and copious amount of mucilage, all of which have significant negative ecological impacts on the benthic ecosystems where they occur. Understanding the factors affecting O. ovata growth and toxin production is therefore of great importance if we are to understand how this species form such successful blooms. To accomplish this, growth, toxicity, carbohydrate accumulation and related physiological traits of two strains of O. ovata (one from Japanese waters and the other from Mediterranean waters) were studied in laboratory experiments. The cells were grown under the conditions simulating climate-induced changes (higher temperatures and acidification of marine waters) and eutrophication (increase of nitrogen and phosphorus in coastal ecosystems).

O. ovata showed strain-specific responses to the tested environmental changes. Higher temperatures increased growth and reduced the cell toxin quota of the Mediterranean strain while it decreased the growth and toxicity of the Japanese strain. Nutrient (nitrogen-N and phosphorus-P) sufficiency significantly increased O. ovata biomass accumulation. N deficiency markedly decreased the growth while it increased cell toxicity. Lower temperatures (20 - 25 °C) increased the particulate carbohydrate accumulation in both strains. Cell volumes, C (carbon), N and P cell quotas and atomic ratios of O. ovata were significantly higher when grown at 20 °C, than those grown at 30 °C. Acidification did not significantly affect growth and cell toxicity, but increased particulate carbohydrate accumulation. The combined effect of higher temperature and acidification delayed the onset of the blooms by 3 - 5 days, in relation to present temperature and pH conditions.

When extrapolating these results to natural marine ecosystems, it can be inferred that O. ovata occurring in lower-latitudes are growing optimally in the present climate conditions. On the other hand, the strains of O. ovata in higher-latitudes seem to have higher temperature optima than they have now at present conditions. Therefore, further expansion of O. ovata blooms is most likely possible in the warm, eutrophic coastal waters in higher-latitudes.

The overall aim of this thesis was to explore informal caregivers’ daily life with particular focus on those living with a spouse who has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in different grades, mild to severe, based on the ill person’s main concern.

The study design was explorative, comparative and descriptive. The thesis included a literature review of 45 scientific articles and semi-structured interviews with 23 patients suffering from COPD, and 21 women and 19 men living with a spouse suffering from COPD. Data were analysed using content analysis, grounded theory, and phenomenography.

Main findings: Men and women living with a spouse suffering from mild COPD did not experience changes in their daily life, and were not in need of support. It was when the COPD gradually escalated that their daily life was affected and they needed support. The caregiving women conceived that their daily life was socially restricted, they had changed roles, changes in health and changes in the couple’s relationship. The caregiving men’s daily life was conceived as burdened, restricted and the partner relationship was affected. The men’s attitude was to continue with their own life and own activities, and their approach to their caregiving situation was to view themselves as “Me and my spouse”. The main concern for people suffering from COPD was feelings of guilt due to self-inflicted disease associated with smoking habits. The thesis shows that there are differences in informal caregiving between males and females.

Conclusion: This thesis shows that there are differences in male and female caregiving for a spouse suffering from COPD. The caregivers conceive and handle the caregiving situation in different ways. It is central that health professionals and municipality consider this along with the individual needs that are related to the development of the COPD. There is a need to identify the person who suffers from COPD and their spouses from the first contact onwards, to regularly follow the development of their situation and need of support.

Fragment-based drug discovery is an emerging process that has gained popularity in recent years. The process starts from small molecules called fragments. One major step in fragment-based drug discovery is fragment screening, which is a strategy to screen libraries of small molecules to find hits. The strategy in theory is more efficient than traditional high-throughput screening that works with larger molecules. As fragments intrinsically possess weak affinity to a target, detection techniques of high sensitivity to affinity are required for fragment screening. Furthermore, the use of different screening methods is necessary to improve the likelihood of success in finding suitable fragments. Since no single method can work for all types of screening, there is a demand for new techniques. The aim of this thesis is to introduce weak affinity chromatography (WAC) as a novel technique for fragment screening.

WAC is, as the name suggests, an affinity-based liquid chromatographic technique that separates compounds based on their different weak affinities to an immobilized target. The higher affinity a compound has towards the target, the longer it remains in the separation unit, and this will be expressed as a longer retention time. The affinity measure and ranking of affinity can be achieved by processing the obtained retention times of analyzed compounds.

In this thesis, WAC is studied for fragment screening on two platforms. The first system comprised a 24-channel affinity cartridge that works in cooperation with an eight-needle autosampler and 24 parallel UV detector units. The second system was a standard analytical LC-MS platform that is connected to an affinity column, generally called WAC-MS or affinity LC-MS. The evaluation criteria in studying WAC for fragment screening using these platforms were throughput, affinity determination and ranking, specificity, operational platform characteristics and consumption of target protein and sample. The model target proteins were bovine serum albumin for the first platform, thrombin and trypsin for the latter. Screened fragments were either small molecule drugs, a thrombin-directed collection of compounds, or a general-purpose fragment library. To evaluate WAC for early stages of fragment elaboration, diastereomeric mixtures from a thrombin-directed synthesis project were screened.

Although both analytical platforms can be used for fragment screening, WAC-MS shows more useful features due to easy access to the screening platform, higher throughput and ability to analyze mixtures. Affinity data from WAC are in good correlation with IC₅₀ values from enzyme assay experiments. The possibility to distinguish specific from non- specific interactions plays an important role in the interpretation of WAC results. In this thesis, this was achieved by inhibiting the active site of the target protein to measure off-site interactions. WAC proves to be a sensitive, robust, moderate in cost and easy to access technique for fragment screening, and can also be useful in the early stages of fragment evolution.

In conclusion, this thesis has demonstrated the proof of principle of using WAC as a new tool to monitor affinity and to select hits in fragment-based drug discovery. This thesis has indicated the primary possibilities, advantages as well as the limitations of WAC in fragment screening procedures.  In the future, WAC should be evaluated on other targets and fragment libraries in order to realize more fully the potential of the technology.

This dissertation aims to find further understanding of how people with special interest in a certain artist utilise music and the fact that they are fans in their everyday lives. I have opted to study two fans included in each group selected for this study: Kiss, Status Quo and Lasse Stefanz, one male and one female fan belonging to each respective group. I have worked according to grounded theory as a method, and through an analysis of their musical life stories, I have attempted to identify why they became fans and how them being fans has affected them in their lives.

Four categories, fandom as: a marker of identity, socialisation, a form of self therapy and a pseudo religion and the core category authenticity usage show the results of the study. The categories show that to a large extent it all comes down to the musical identity of these people, i.e. the identity of being a fan, and their experiences of being fans. They have been socialised into a specific genre, which has meant increased interest in a specific artist. Family, media and friends have all played a part in this socialisation. The informants have developed cultural competence as concerns their idols, although they have also gained the subcultural capital resources required in order to come across as credible fans. Various kinds of experiences offer meaning and nourish the fans. Security and stability in everyday lives are also contributing factors to them being fans and the music offers them something that they are unable to acquire from elsewhere. They have established different strategies in order to be able to be fans, one of these being legitimacy. A vital part of this legitimacy consists in them viewing the bands as authentic, i.e. important.

In a society where the labour market is becoming increasingly knowledge intensive and more differentiated, education has assumed greater importance for the capitalist states integrative functions as for the competitiveness in the global economy. As a consequence, the educational system has become a key governing resource for the state to meet and manage different kinds of social changes and problems. Against this background the thesis raises the main question - “what kind of societal problems are the educational reforms studied here considered to be the solution of?” The aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of the changes of the formation of knowledge in Swedish upper secondary curriculum between the 1960s and 2010s. In what way attained these changes in view of knowledge legitimacy in relation to the socioeconomic context? And what do these changes mean in terms of the attribution of the positioning of upper secondary school pupils and teachers?

This thesis draws on a “classical” theoretical framework of curriculum theory (i.e. the frame-factor theory) this means that the analytical focus is directed at the relationship between the content of the curriculum and the social context. With theoretical and methodological inspiration from critical realism and critical discourse analysis (CDA) the thesis argue for an alternative way to theoretical and empirical examined this relationship. Three historical reform periods are used to explore the discursive changes in the formation of knowledge in the Swedish upper secondary education reforms.

The results show how changes in socioeconomic conditions, such as economic crisis, over time have acted as important triggers for governing mechanisms embedded in the control of the educational system. These changes and mechanisms, in turn, have resulted in some major discursive knowledge shifts between the reforms studied, from the 1960s combination of an economic-rational and an objective-subject knowledge discourse, through the deregulated goal-rational and socio-cultural oriented knowledge discourse of the 1990s towards the 2010s knowledge discourses that are characterized by an increased focus on learning outcomes and measurability. Against the background of these discursive shifts, the analysis also points to some underlying continuities in terms of a general “reform imperative”, based on a number of overarching values ​​such as efficiency and rationality. The result show how this imperative was embedded in all three educational reforms and has ruled the order of discourses about what was deemed to be legitimate curriculum knowledge, a professional teacher and a desirable pupil.

The aim of this dissertation is to observe how Swedish learners of French monitor their speech output when confronted with a linguistic problem. The study is based on empirical data consisting of recorded interviews and tasks made with first year university students.

L1 speech production is often interrupted by hesitations revealed through a variety of phenomena ranging from silent pauses to comments. Most of these interruptions are caused by the action of a control system, a “monitor” which checks our speech internally while it is produced or after the production has reached the articulation level. Speech is checked against an internal model of lexical and grammatical correctness. If the demands of the monitor are not met, a reparation may take place so that the speaker’s production eventually reaches the expected level of correctness.

In the same way, the speech of L2 learners is controlled during and after production. The pattern of work of the monitor is much the same as for the L1, but the reparation is not necessarily conducted in a similar way because the learner’s internal grammar and lexicon are not complete and cannot be consulted as quickly as the L1 lexicon and grammar. L2 learners rely on a certain amount of acquired knowledge but they also need to be given time to refer to learned rules and patterns since the retrieval of these has not yet been made automatic.

In this study, we observe the speech production of Swedish students learning French during the first semester of their academic studies. The recasts students make when trying to reach a correct solution to a linguistic problem are in focus. We can see a step-by-step process through which the speakers elaborates their production by putting forward hypotheses, each one usually containing a small modification, and try to reach an acceptable solution. In some cases we can see that the speaker might choose to focus on the communicative aspects instead of focusing on the formal correctness of the speech. On the background of L1 and L2 acquisition theories, this study focuses on two areas of difficulty for the Swedish learner: the production of –ment adverbs and the production of conjugated verbs.

This thesis unravels the pizza trade through a sociological inquiry into its history, its businesses, and its people. In Sweden, the typical pizza place is a small independent business, owned and operated by one or a few people with immigrant backgrounds. Hence, the trade is an immigrant small business niche. The analysis is concerned with how the trade ‘works’; how its structural properties are established, maintained and challenged.

Two questions serve as point of departure: how is the trade populated, and what does everyday life in the pizzeria look like? These ‘simple questions’ serve to uncover the diachronic and synchronic life nexus of the restaurant keeper, and how this is embedded in and shaped by the trade as a ‘social world’.

Thirty-four life stories form the basis of the analysis of life courses as they lead up to, and continue in, the trade. The resulting life-course pattern is visible as three types of insertion sequences, distributing people to the trade in different ways. They differ in the extent to which they are smooth or fraught with friction. Some insertion sequences make life as a restaurant keeper appear acceptable, if not desirable, while others make it into a forced and awkward choice for the individual. The analysis of the life stories accounts for how people are installed in the social world, which is the precondition for its existence. Equally important is the way in which the social world is maintained on a day-to-day basis, thus directing attention to the workings of the pizzeria and the synchronic life nexus of the restaurant keeper. The inquiry details the everyday challenges which the restaurant keeper in the pizza trade must deal with. Operating a pizzeria entails working in an industry with sharp competition and low status. At the same time, it means working independently, being part of a life mode that both presupposes and enables a life pattern within the bounds of what some people regard as a ‘normal’ or ‘good life’.

As more and more data is created each day, researchers from different science domains are trying to make sense of it. A lot of this data, for example our connections to friends on different social networking websites, can be modeled as graphs, where the nodes are actors and the edges are relationships between them. Researchers analyze this data to find new forms of communication, to explore different social groups or subgroups, to detect illegal activities or to seek for different communication patterns that could help companies in their marketing campaigns. Another example are huge networks in system biology. Their visualization is crucial for the understanding of living beings. The topological structure of a network on its own could give insight into the existence or distribution of interesting actors in the network. However, this is often not enough to understand complex network systems in real-world applications. The reason for this is that all the network elements (nodes or edges) are not simple one-dimensional data. For instance in biology, experiments can be performed on biological networks. These experiments and network analysis approaches produce additional data that are often important to be analyzed with respect to the underlying network structure. Therefore, it is crucial to visualize the additional attributes of the network while preserving the network structure as much as possible. The problem is not trivial as these so-called multivariate networks could have a high number of attributes that are related to their nodes, edges, different groups, or clusters of nodes and/or edges.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the development of different visualization and interaction techniques for the visual analysis of multivariate networks. Two research goals are defined in this thesis: first, a deeper understanding of existing approaches for visualizing multivariate networks should be acquired in order to classify them into categories and to identify disadvantages or unsolved visualization challenges. The second goal is to develop visualization and interaction techniques that will overcome various issues of these approaches.

Initially, a brief survey on techniques to visualize multivariate networks is presented in this thesis. Afterwards, a small task-based user study investigating the usefulness of two main approaches for multivariate network visualization is discussed. Then, various visualization and interaction techniques for multivariate network visualization are presented. Three different software tools were implemented to demonstrate our research efforts. All features of our systems are highlighted, including a description of visualization and interaction techniques as well as disadvantages and scalability issues if present.

Sandstedt, Thomas (2013) – On Recruitment in Academia in the Cases of Department Heads and Research Students  

This thesis study how academic and scientific culture act and handle the balance between different interests, demands and preferences and what is considered central and valuable in the leading and managing within universities in Sweden. These are set against each other whenever department heads and research students are to be recruited.  Questions are asked whether procedures come into play when recruiting heads of department, and whether the final choice is determined by regulations and/or academic norms.

There has only been marginal research in the field. The recruitment of department heads has not been statutory since 1993, while admission to research studies is regulated in detail.  The study was implemented before the autonomy reform of 2011. Central and local regulatory systems between 1993 and 2011 form the juridical framework of the study.

      My frame of reference is a New Institutional Theory approach together with studies of the environment, history and traditions of academia. 

The basis of the studied context is the scholarly community of academics.  Demands from government and parliament as expressed in regulatory systems, general guidelines, funding, policies and letters of regulation have also been taken into account within the reference frame.  The empirical material consists of interviews with professors including associate professors conducted in seven universities and eight departments between 2007 and 2009.

The results show that there are certain rules of the game that are applied when department heads and research students are being recruited, which give an indication of what is considered valuable for internal management within Swedish universities. The recruitment processes are informal, collegial and institutionalized. When department heads are recruited all colleagues have the possibility to participate, whereas when research students are recruited the group involved is more limited.  In the latter case it is financing as well as the role of the supervisor that seem to play the crucial role in finding the most suitable doctoral student. Internal criteria are reformulated into rules of the game by colleagues and the process is situation-bound. These rules are based on collegial and scholarly interests, demands, norms, traditions and values.

Informal criteria offer the opportunity for flexibility and situational adaptation when departments choose their head. These criteria contribute to limiting the number of candidates, which may make it difficult to find the right person. The students admitted to research education are expected to be able to profit by such education and to possess a scientific attitude. These requirements may vary from one admission to another, and the impression is that the circle of potential research students is limited.

This thesis has explored the context of police interviews with suspects of serious crimes. Focus group studies, a case study and additional interviews have shown several aspects of information flow, decision making, interviewing tactics, human rights and tacit knowledge as these interviews are planned, performed and evaluated.

The informants, homicide investigators, describe their work as an information generating and information evaluating process. They apply a series of methods, e. g. different forms of tactics in the use of investigative information during the police interviews. Based on the informants’ description and the case study, their methods seem to have research evidence in general, where such is available. The informants specifically stress the important role of planning and evaluation.

The investigative process generates a vast amount of situations where decision making is needed. In these, the bases for the decisions are mainly the information flow of the investigation, which tends to be obscure and in constant change. The investigators’ decision making is thereby exposed to the risk of confirmation bias. The informants express an ambition to work objectively and to presume the suspects’ innocence. However, this generates a psychological conflict, which might affect the human rights of the suspect in negative ways. The informants describe several ways to handle this conflict.

The informants describe that they have several concerns when making decisions. These can be categorized as legal, organizational and tactical concerns. Taken together, legal rule conflicts and the organizational ambition to lead the investigators in a target oriented way using quantitative measures, result in strong incitements for investigations to be finalized when they are good enough, rather than when they are good.

The informants describe their profession as one where it is possible to develop expertise and where tacit knowledge plays an important role. When previous research on tacit knowledge is combined with the interview results, there seems to be a level between the tacit and the explicit knowledge. I have called this low-key knowledge. This low-key knowledge can be verbalized in the proper context in communication among those initiated in the subject at hand. The low-key knowledge also seems to risk being over-voiced in certain contexts.

Theory of dynamical systems in fields of p-adic numbers is  an important part of algebraic and arithmetic dynamics. The study of p-adic dynamical systems is motivated by their applications in various areas of mathematics, e.g., in physics, genetics, biology, cognitive science, neurophysiology, computer science, cryptology, etc.

In particular, p-adic dynamical systems found applications in cryptography, which stimulated the interest to nonsmooth dynamical maps. An important class of (in general) nonsmooth maps is given by 1-Lipschitz functions.

In this thesis we restrict our study to the class of 1-Lipschitz functions and describe measure-preserving (for the Haar measure on the ring of p-adic integers) and ergodic functions.

The main mathematical tool used in this work is the representation of the function by the van der Put series which is actively used in p-adic analysis. The van der Put basis differs fundamentally from previously used ones (for example, the monomial and Mahler basis)  which are related to the algebraic structure of p-adic fields. The basic point in the construction of van der Put basis is the continuity of the characteristic function of a p-adic ball.

Also we use an algebraic structure (permutations) induced by coordinate functions with partially frozen variables.

In this thesis, we present a description of 1-Lipschitz measure-preserving and ergodic functions for arbitrary prime p.

Patients have increased demands for information and involvement in decision-making including drug selection.  At the same time, society needs to limit costs, e.g. for subsidized drugs, thus entailing a challenge to in particular primary care. The overall aim of this thesis was to describe different factors influencing drug prescription in primary care and perceived health.

In a register study, the actual costs of prescribed subsidized drugs at five health care centers (HCCs) in areas of varying socioeconomic status (SES) were compared to the assigned drug budget. It revealed that HCCs with many citizens in the catchment area with low SES showed a deficit at year’s end. HCCs in areas with citizens with a higher SES showed a surplus.

In another register study, the prescription of drugs at lower or higher price levels for the diagnoses of chronic obstructive bronchitis, depression, diabetes and osteoporosis was studied. Drug prescription was then compared with individual factors for age, sex, education, income and country of birth, and whether the care provider was private or public. It was found that certain individual and provider factors appear to influence the prescribing of drugs of different price levels.

To investigate patient involvement in the decision to start long-term drug treatment, respondents who had recently begun taking medication were interviewed. The study showed that patient participation was important, but that participation implied different things to different patients. One view was that participation could be achieved without sharing the decision-making process, whereas another view was that participation was more or less willingness to become involved in decision-making. Prerequisites for patient participation were knowledge in the relevant area and trust in the physician.

A fourth study examined how individuals aged 65-80 years rated their health. The study showed that health was assessed much lower in respondents with depressive symptoms compared to those without corresponding symptoms. Health was also assessed as worse for people with hypertension and in those treated with drugs for depression and hypertension. Health was perceived as better in the younger age groups, in individuals with higher educational levels, and for men. 

Drug prescription in primary care is controlled, in addition to medical necessity, by economic constraints, and that patients need an opportunity to influence decisions about their care and treatment. However, economic constraints make it difficult for physicians to support patients in their choice of medication. This may influence patient adherence to medication.

Pharmacovigilance in healthcare is essential for safe drug treatment. Spontaneous reporting is the most common source of information in the context of implementing label changes and taking a drug off the market. However, underreporting is found to be very prevalent. One way to decrease underreporting is to include different categories of healthcare professionals in such reporting and to investigate attitudes towards and incentives for reporting adverse drug reaction (ADR)s.

As nurses form the largest group of health professionals, a sample of nurses were allowed and encouraged to report ADR during a 12 month period after they had received training in pharmacovigilance. A questionnaire posted to physicians and nurses investigated their knowledge and attitudes towards reporting. Spontaneous reports of torsade de pointes (TdP) and erectile dysfunction (ED) were scrutinized with respect to the reported drugs, risk factors and if the reaction was listed in the summary of product characteristics (SPC).

After training, the nurses produced relevant reports and three years after the introduction of nurses in the reporting scheme, more than half of the responding nurses were aware of their role as reporters. Both nurses and physicians stated that the most important factor for reporting a suspected ADR was the severity of the ADR and an ADR arising in response to a newly approved drug. A web-based reporting system was deemed to facilitate the reporting. In spontaneous reports of TdP, citalopram was reported as a suspected drug. However, neither QT prolongations, nor TdP, were labelled in the SPC. ED was reported for all antihypertensive drugs including angiotensin II type I blockers. A positive information component (IC), assessing the disproportionality between the observed and the expected number of reports, was found indicating that ED was reported more often in association with antihypertensive drug classes, except for angiotensinconverting enzyme inhibitors.

This thesis demonstrates the importance of pharmacoviglilance in healthcare in terms of capturing new signals. By including nurses as reporters, the overall safety of drugs might improve. Information and education are needed to secure safe treatment when applying drugs.

Weak Affinity Chromatography (WAC) is a technology that was developed to analyse weak (K_D > 10^-5 M) although selective interactions between biomolecules. The focus of this thesis was to develop this method for various applications in the drug development process.

Fragment Based Drug Discovery is a new approach in finding new small molecular drugs. Here, relatively small libraries (a few hundreds to a few thousands of compounds) of fragments (150 – 300 Da) are screened against the target. Fragment hits are then developed into lead molecules by linking, growing or merging fragments binding to different locations of the protein’s active site. However, due to the weakly binding nature of fragments, methods that are able to detect very weak binding events are needed. In this thesis, WAC is presented as a new robust and highly reproducible technology for fragment screening. The technology is demonstrated against a number of different protein targets – proteases, kinases, chaperones and protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets. Comparison of data from fragment screening of 111 fragments by WAC and other more established technologies for fragment screening, such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), validates WAC as a screening technology. It also points at the importance of performing fragment screening by multiple methods as they complement each other.

Other applications of WAC in drug development are also presented. The method can be used for chiral separations of racemic mixtures during fragment screening, which enables affinity measurements of individual enantiomers binding to the target of interest. Further, analysis of crude reaction mixtures is shown. By these procedures, the affinity of the product can be assessed directly after synthesis without any time-consuming purification steps. In addition, a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system for highly efficient drug partition studies was developed by stable immobilization of lipid bilayer disks – lipodisks – on a high performance silica support material. These lipodisks are recognized model membranes for drug partition studies. A WAC system with incorporated membrane proteins into immobilized lipodisks has also been produced and evaluated with the ultimate objective to study affinity interactions between ligands and membrane proteins.

The research of this Ph. D. thesis is in the field of Quantum Computation and Quantum

Information. A key problem in this field is the fragile nature of quantum states. This

becomes increasingly acute when the number of quantum bits (qubits) grows in order to

perform large quantum computations. It has been proposed that geometric (Berry) phases

may be a useful tool to overcome this problem, because of the inherent robustness of such

phases to random noise. In the thesis we investigate geometric phases and quantum

holonomies (matrix-valued geometric phases) in many-body quantum systems, and elucidate

the relationship between these phases and the quantum correlations present in the systems.

An overall goal of the project is to assess the feasibility of using geometric phases and

quantum holonomies to build robust quantum gates, and investigate their behavior when the

size of a quantum system grows, thereby gaining insights into large-scale quantum

computation.

In a first project we study the Uhlmann holonomy of quantum states for hydrogen-like

atoms. We try to get into a physical interpretation of this geometric concept by analyzing its

relation with quantum correlations in the system, as well as by comparing it with different

types of geometric phases such as the standard pure state geometric phase, Wilczek-Zee

holonomy, Lévay geometric phase and mixed-state geometric phases. In a second project we

establish a unifying connection between the geometric phase and the geometric measure of

entanglement in a generic many-body system, which provides a universal approach to the

study of quantum critical phenomena. This approach can be tested experimentally in an

interferometry setup, where the geometric measure of entanglement yields the visibility of

the interference fringes, whereas the geometric phase describes the phase shifts. In a third

project we propose a scheme to implement universal non-adiabatic holonomic quantum

gates, which can be realized in novel nano-engineered systems such as quantum dots,

molecular magnets, optical lattices and topological insulators. In a fourth project we propose

an experimentally feasible approach based on “orange slice” shaped paths to realize non-

Abelian geometric phases, which can be used particularly for geometric manipulation of

qubits. Finally, we provide a physical setting for realizing non-Abelian off-diagonal

geometric phases. The proposed setting can be implemented in a cyclic chain of four qubits

with controllable nearest-neighbor interactions. Our proposal seems to be within reach in

various nano-engineered systems and therefore opens up for first experimental test of the

non-Abelian off-diagonal geometric phase.

In the era of urbanization, industrialization and population growth, groundwater and drinking water sources are getting adversely polluted due to the addition of different toxic contaminants including inorganic anionic pollutants. The inorganic anions are of serious concern due to their adverse health effects on humans, even when present at very low concentrations in water. Adsorption process is an attractive method for the removal of anions as compared to other water treatment technologies in terms of cost, simplicity of design and operation. In this study, granular ferric hydroxide (GFH) and nano-Al₂O₃ were tested for the removal of fluoride, perchlorate and nitrate anions from aqueous solutions. Different experimental parameters (viz. pH, agitation time, adsorbate concentration, temperature, competing anions) have been studied to optimize the adsorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity of 7.0 mg g^-1 (at pH 6.0-7.0) and 20.0 mg g^-1 (at pH 6.0-6.5) for fluoride and perchlorate, respectively was achieved using GFH at 25 ^oC. Adsorption kinetics of fluoride by GFH was favorably explained with pseudo-first-order, while perchlorate adsorption kinetics followed pseudo-second-order model. The Langmuir model explained the adsorption isotherms of fluoride and perchlorate by GFH. The Raman spectroscopy results revealed that perchlorate was adsorbed through electrostatic attraction between perchlorate and positively charged GFH surface sites. The adsorption efficiencies achieved by nano-Al₂O₃ for nitrate and fluoride were 4.0 mg g^-1 (at pH ~4.4) and 14.0 mg g^-1 (at pH ~6.15), respectively at 25 ^oC. Kinetics and isotherms of fluoride and nitrate by nano-Al₂O₃ were well-explained by pseudo-second-order model and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. The FTIR and EDX results reveal that aluminum-fluoro complexes are formed due to the interaction between fluoride and nano-Al₂O₃ moieties. In all the cases, the most influencing anions were the ones that compete for similar binding sites on the adsorbent surface. Results from this study will be helpful in demonstrating potential utility of the tested adsorbents for the removal of different anions from water and provide an insight into the adsorbent-adsorbate (anions) interactions in the aqueous media.

The publication of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) brought the Jewish–comics connection to popular attention. The novel illuminated the fact that many of the pioneers of American mainstream comics were Jewish. Owing to this history, and to the fact that there today exists a large and growing library of self-consciously Jewish comic books and graphic novels, much has been written about the meaning of the connection. Engaging in a critical dialogue with extant writing on the subject, this thesis argues that much of the popular and scholarly writing on the subject of Jews and comics is historical in the sense that it is a product of its own time, rather than in the sense that it critically investigates the past. Rethinking the Jewish¬–Comics Connection presents three studies of commonly cited mainstream comics texts written by Jewish Americans: the character Superman from his first appearance in June 1938 until America’s entry in the Second World War in December 1941; comics writer, artist, and advocate Will Eisner’s The Spirit (1940–1952) and long-form comics (1978–2005); and the first and second series of X-Men comic books (1963–1970 and 1975–1991). Situating these texts in their respective contexts and offering alternative interpretations, the thesis suggests that the historical Jewish–comics connection most clearly emerges as an expression of what it meant, for the writers, to be Jewish Americans in relation to their own time.

This study is concerned with a well-known festival in Sweden; how a group of music loving young people, through widespread social networking, created extensive musical activities in the small municipal community of Hultsfred. Out of the locally based independent music association, Rockparty, grew one of Sweden’s biggest festivals. The thesis examine how both association and festival grew in symbios with the local community, how Rockparty together with other actors created the phenomenon known as the Hultsfred festival. The aim is to study the shaping of social community and how the social composition and material condition of a place coordinates with youth and their music activities at this particular place. To analyze the significance of community the concepts of social capital and place have been important. The author analyzes the balancing act of being an alternative and rebellious rock association and a general youth association (or societal association) that bring different youth groupings and generations together. The more musically inclined, caring about taste and credibility, in the association met with those of a more business oriented mind, emphasizing development and growth. This tension broadened the activities and brought them forward. And, this was the fundament for making the rebellious rock’n’roll attitude join in with business-mindedness and a subcultural entrepreneurship. Punk attitude transformed into corporational activity, which generated necessary knowledge for music and festival arrangements and conditions for building important social networks. However, maneuvering between being rock rebels and ”common” rural youth; cultural innovators and commercial entrepreneurs; between broad folkyness and alternative exclusivity; between carnivalisticlawlessness and orderly commerciality, wasn’t always easy. Rockparty managed to construe a social capital that was strong locally and externally, with extensions in a number of directions, but it also led to difficulties and social tensions. The study is based on several years of fieldwork and a wide-ranging empirical material of participant observations, field diaries, conversations, interviews, internal and external documentation etcetera.

This thesis analyses self-employment from a gender perspective. The data used combines survey data with register data. The survey covers various dimensions such as motivation, job satisfaction and time allocations. These are aspects that typically cannot be assessed by register data. A detailed description of the survey is given in the introductory chapter.

The literature on self-employment is large and varied. Among other things, studies have evaluated whether the decision to opt for self-employment was related to pull or push motives by assessing the predicted earnings differential between self-employed workers and wage earners. But few attempts have been made to determine systematically, using large-scale data, the relationship   between reported motivation for choosing self-employment and personal characteristics. Only a limited number of studies have investigated the correlation between motives and economic performance. We examine these issues in more detail in Chapter 1. The results indicate that women and men report similar motivations for self-employment. But women put more emphasis on work-family related factors, while men consider higher income as more important. We find some evidence that the economic performance among push entrepreneurs is lower than pull entrepreneurs.

Another well-documented fact is that self-employed workers report higher levels of job satisfaction than wage earners. Relatively little empirical work has been done to examine the causes for this differential, however. This is investigated in the second chapter. Similar to previous studies we find that self-employed are on average more satisfied with their jobs than wage earners. The results show that the observed job satisfaction differential can be ascribed to the fact that self-employed workers have higher control and autonomy over their working days.

Self-employed workers typically work longer hours than wage earners, but relatively little is known about how the self-employed allocate their time across different social activities. This issue is addressed in Chapter 3. The empirical analysis indicates that self-employed work significantly longer hours, exhibit a larger dispersion of working time, as well as a higher tendency to work atypical hours compared to wage earners. In addition, female self-employed typically devote less time to housework than female wage earners.

The topic of this study is to generate knowledge about children’s understanding

of graphical symbols. These forms of knowledge are prevalent in contemporary

societies, for example, in the form of letters, numbers, road signs, maps, and

computer icons. More specifically, in this thesis is scrutinized in detail how

children develop symbolic skills and how this can be supported through

educational activities. The theoretical basis of the study is variation theory

(Marton & Tsui, 2004). This theory conceptualizes learning in terms of

differentiation and integration. Two empirical studies are reported. The first is

about two children, Olle and Lasse, who both are in the age span four to five

years. How these children handle graphical symbols in the form of producing

signs that they put up in their homes are followed over time. Hence, the

children’s own make and use of symbols in their everyday life are studied. In the

second empirical study, the findings from the first study and theoretical insight

from variation theory are orchestrated in a preschool center with two teachers

and twelve children, to see if these principles can be functional in supporting

children’s development of symbolic understanding. Both studies are based on

video data. The findings are that a particular pattern of variation entitled,

‘contrast’ is functional in developing such insight, while another pattern of

variation entitled, ‘induction’ is not. In addition, meta-communication is argued

to be important not only for the researcher to gain access to the child’s

understanding but also to the child’s development as such. The theoretical

distinction made by Vygotsky between ‘pseudo concepts’ and ‘concepts (proper)’

is used to discuss the findings.

Sport has often been understood as a set of formalised physical contests, and moreover as something inherently modern. New conceptions of the term implicates that sport ought to comprise all physical activity. However, the studies and approaches that describe the range and tension between those positions are lacking. The thesis addresses this lacuna and suggests that the aforementioned conceptions could be inquired as the narrow (physical contest) and the broad (physical activity) understanding of sport. The work presented in this thesis sets out to outline a theoretical and methodological framework that could comprise the different conceptions of sport. This framework is laid out with inspiration from Bruno Latour’s symmetrical anthropology. The empirical material was collected from an array of sources with a broad range of ethnographical methods. Four sporting practices (break time football, parkour, eSport, and company table tennis) that embody the tension between the broad and the narrow are inquired into in the articles. The comprehensive framework that the thesis seeks to outline takes form in shape of the different concepts (“dromography,” “minor sport,” and “the art of tracing”) constructed within the articles. It is concluded that the broad understanding of sport threatens to hollow the term. However, the narrow understanding of sport tends to downplay the material dimension of modernity. It is argued that the connection between the material and the social dimension of sport, with regards to categories such as age and gender, mustn’t be neglected in the study of sport. Furthermore, it is argued that the competitive element of modern sport is related to modern science in an unexpected way that adds new understanding to the ontology of modernity in general.

This doctoral thesis concerns flanking transmission in light weight, wooden multi-storey buildings within the low frequency, primarily 20-120 Hz. The overall aim is to investigate how the finite element method can contribute in the design phase to evaluate different junctions regarding flanking transmission.

Two field measurements of accelerations in light weight wooden buildings have been evaluated. In these, two sources; a stepping machine, and an electrodynamic shaker, were used. The shaker was shown to give more detailed information. However, since a light weight structure in field exhibit energy losses to surrounding building parts, reliable damping estimates were difficult to obtain.

In addition, two laboratory measurements were made. These were evaluated using experimental modal analysis, giving the eigenmodes and the damping of the structures. The damping for these particular structures varies significantly with frequency, especially when an elastomer is used in the floor-wall junction. The overall damping is also higher when elastomers are used in the floor-wall junction in comparison to a screwed junction. By analysing the eigenmodes, using the modal assurance criterion, of the same structure with two types of junctions it was concluded that the modes become significantly different. Thereby the overall behavior differs.

Several finite element models representing both the field and laboratory test setups have been made. The junctions between the building blocks in the models have been modeled using tie or springs and dashpots. Visual observation and the modal assurance criterion show that there is more rotational stiffness in the test structures than in the models.

The findings in this doctoral thesis add understanding to how modern joints in wooden constructions can be represented by FE modelling. They will contribute in developing FE models that can be used to see the acoustic effects prior to building an entire house. However, further research is still needed.

The research concerns presented in this dissertation addresses aspects of students’ interaction with commonly occurring graphical artefacts in teaching and learning environments. In particular, focus is on how the students make sense of these artefacts in relation to subject specific tools and forms of expression.

The dissertation comprises of four studies guided by a semiotics cultural- historical perspective to cognition. The first study which is largely quantitative, analyses the percentage scores from students’ responses to selected items from OECD PISA surveys for items containing graphical elements. The second and the third studies in keeping with a more sociocultural perspective to learning as point of departure, examine the students’ collaborative interaction around tasks containing graphical elements. The fourth study explores the nature of students’ solutions from the Swedish national test in mathematics based on a tools and forms of expression sensitive empirically derived construct of Identification contra Critical-analytical approach to graphicacy.

The main outcomes of these studies can be summarised as follows: first there is justification for re-examining the predominant characterisation of students’ interaction with graphical artefacts. Secondly, while it is not uncommon for students to take a more visual-perceptive and intuitive approach to graphicacy, results from task items interactions indicate that a Critical-analytical approach seems to be more reliable and capable of yielding desirable outcomes. The outcomes of these studies call for vigilance on the type of tasks used in relation to graphicacy and how these can be used to foster students’ Critical-analytical disposition.