Bakgrund: Kronisk hjärtsvikt drabbar främst den äldre (≥65 år) befolkningen och påverkar hela personens livssituation. Tidigare forskning påvisar att personer med hjärtsvikt upplevde bristande information och kommunikation från vården. Sjuksköterskans uppgift är att identifiera dessa brister för att förbättra den personcentrerade omvårdnaden samt upprätthålla hälsa hos personer med hjärtsvikt. Syfte: Att beskriva äldre personers upplevelser av att leva med kronisk hjärtsvikt utifrån KASAM. Metod: Litteraturöversikten har genomförts utifrån kvalitativ metod och deduktiv ansats. Den teoretiska referensramen som använts är Antonovskys (2005) teori om Känsla av Sammanhang (KASAM). Fribergs (2012a) femstegsmodell för kvalitativa studier har använt i analysprocessen där 11 vetenskapliga artiklar har tolkats. Resultat: Information och kommunikation från sjukvården upplevdes brista, vilket resulterade i sämre hantering av sjukdomen. Hjärtsvikten medförde begränsningar i det dagliga livet och personerna hittade strategier genom att prioritera annorlunda samt utföra aktiviteter som gav dem tillfredsställelse. Meningsfulla aktiviteter, självständighet i vardagen samt socialt stöd ansågs betydelsefullt.  Slutsats: Personernas hälsa, vardag och välbefinnande påverkades av att leva med hjärtsvikt. Sjuksköterskan kan utifrån litteraturöversikten förbättra den personcentrerade omvårdnaden, vilket förväntas generera förbättrad hälsa och välbefinnande för personer med hjärtsvikt. / Background:  Chronic heart failure affects mainly the elderly (≥65 years) and affects the entire person's life situation. Previous research shows that people with heart failure experienced lack of information and communication from health care. Nurses role is to identify these shortcomings to improve person-centered care to maintain health of people with heart failure. Purpose: To describe older peoples experiences of living with chronic heart failure based on KASAM. Method: The literature review has been conducted using qualitative method and deductive approach. The theoretical framework used was Antonovsky's (2005) theory of Sense of Coherence (SOC). Friberg (2012a) five-step model for qualitative studies were used in the analys process and 11 scientific articles where interpreted. Results: Lack of information and communication from health care were experienced, resulting poor management of the disease. Heart failure resulted in limitations in daily life and people found strategies by prioritizing differently and perform activities that gave satisfaction. Meaningful activities, independence and social support was considered significant. Conclusion: Health, living and well-being were affected by living with heart failure. Nurses can based on this literature review improve person-centered care, health and well-being for people with heart failure.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains the second deadliest cancer in the United States, despite steady reduction in mortality rate over the last three decades. Colonoscopy is the gold-standard screening modality with high sensitivity and specificity to mature polyps. However, the miss rate for small (<5 mm) lesions is estimated to be as high as 26%. Because the five-year survival rate for CRC detected at the local stage is 90%, there is a clear need for a screening procedure that is sensitive to these small lesions. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become a major biomedical imaging modality since its invention in 1991. As the optical analog to ultrasound, OCT provides information in both lateral and depth dimensions with resolution < 10 µm and an imaging depth of about 1.5 mm in scattering tissue. In this dissertation, I describe my efforts to develop new uses of OCT for improved early detection of adenoma in the azoxymethane mouse model of CRC. In recent years, commercial OCT systems have reached imaging speeds sufficiently high for in vivo volumeric imaging while laterally sampling the tissue at the Nyquist limit. First, I describe the design of a miniature endoscope and the integration of this probe with a commercial OCT system. Then I describe the development of two OCT imaging methods, one structural and one functional, that could be used for future work in diagnostic or therapeutic studies. The structural method produces en face images of the colon surface showing the colonic crypts, the first such demonstration of crypt visualization in the mouse. Changes in the crypt pattern are correlated with adenoma and are one of the earliest morphological changes. The functional method uses a Doppler OCT algorithm and image processing to detect the colon microvasculature. This technique can be used for vessel counting and blood flow measurements. Angiogenesis occurs at the beginning of tumorigenesis, and the tumor-originated arterioles are incapable of regular vasodilation. This Doppler OCT technique could potentially detect tumors at the earliest stages by measuring the change in local blood flow velocity in response to vasodilatory stimuli.

Background: Several factors have been identified as related to mental health in adolescence, such as competences, behavioural/emotional problems, self-esteem, and sense of coherence. Studies also emphasise the importance of family functioning and cultural factors. Objectives: This study investigates and compares the mental health of adolescents in relation to family functioning and socio-cultural variables in Sweden and Greece. Furthermore, Swedish and Greek adolescents' attitudes about life issues are studied. For Greek youths, mental health and gender variations in attitudes were studied as well. Populations and Methods: The study included 583 Swedish and 238 Greek school-aged adolescents aged 13 through 18 years. The Swedish sample was recruited from students at a Junior High and a High School in the town of Lycksele close to the University town of Umeå and the Greek sample was selected from three High schools and three Lyceums in Patras. The two samples were selected to represent the socio-demographic strata in the study areas. Achenbach's Youth Self Report (YSR), Rosenberg's Self-Esteem, Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence (SOC), and Beavers (SFI) scales were used. Out of the large sample, adolescents who reported either high or low on Achenbach's Youth Self Report–47 Greeks and 47 Swedes–were selected for semi-structured interviews. An interview guide with semi-structured questions was created to gather information about life attitudes. The questions addressed a broad spectrum of everyday life issues to understand how youths orient themselves to life–the central themes of an adolescent life and the basic codes of behaviour related to mental health, family, and culture. Results and discussion: Results revealed significant differences and some simi-larities between Swedish and Greek adolescents. According to YSR, the Swedish adolescents had fewer mental health problems than the Greek adolescents. Although this difference was most evident for internalized problems, it was also evident for externalized problems. These differences were seen for both sexes in most problem areas identified by YSR. In both countries, girls had higher prob-lem scores than boys. Age group comparisons followed the same national differences mostly obvious for the two oldest age groups. As for sense of coherence, all of the Greek groups had higher scores. For self-esteem, no differences were found in the comparison between total group scoring, but Greek girls and Swedish boys had better self-esteem compared to their counterparts. Greek adolescents scored their families higher on family health competence. With respect to attitudes about life issues, Greek youths reported more problems related to self, more fears of social dangers, losses, and illness. In addition, they turned more often to their family for support during difficult times. More Greek youths believed in God than their Swedish counterparts. The two groups identified similar family problems. The Swedes reported more fear about their future and tended to trust public authorities more during times of difficulty. Greek adolescents revealed social concerns, fears about the future and social dangers, and using own coping and family support to face these issues. Mental-health and gender patterns influenced some attitudes. Greek adolescents' attitudes about education, and messages sent to their parents are also presented. Both groups' attitudes about faith and homosexuality are shown. They both emphasised the importance of social and career position. Swedes, however, more often expressed a desire to have a family within five years. We recommend that counselling be offered in schools to provide students with life skills and to improve communication with their parents. This support should help parents and children face relational and behavioural issues of children. In addition, we recommend educational support be provided to Greek youths.

This thesis investigated the effect of visuomotor and working memory 1) task difficulty and 2) multitasking on dynamic functional connectivity in the brain. Studies have only recently begun to investigate functional connectivity within the scope of concurrent dual task or varying task difficulty conditions (Cocchi, Zalesky, et al. 2011; Rietschel et al. 2012). A series of EEG recordings were conducted during execution of visuomotor or working memory tasks within a novel paradigm using BCI2VR custom MATLAB toolbox. Functional connectivity was correlated with task-related coherence (TRCoh) analysis between two task conditions involving either variation in task difficulty or concurrent execution during multitasking within the delta (0 – 4 Hz), theta (4 – 8 Hz), alpha (8 – 12 Hz), beta1 (12-16 Hz), beta2 (16 – 20 Hz) and beta3 (20 – 24 Hz) frequency bands. An increase in coherence was observed with increased cognitive load, during both increased task difficulty and multitasking, in all frequency bands except beta1 and beta2. This may suggest that the psychomotor efficiency hypothesis also applies to multitasking as well as task difficulty. Decreases in beta coherence were observed with increased performance error, indicating that interregional beta coherence may not follow the PEH trend. The increased coherence between brain regions in the alpha, delta and theta bands contributes to the growing volume of research on quantifying cognitive workload and may serve as a future basis on increasing multitasking efficiency during high stress environments. Further research recording multitasking effects on individuals over regular intervals during an extended period of time (months or years) will be required to better understand changes in functional connectivity within the brain.

The optical design for a dual modality endoscope based on piezo scanning fiber technology is presented including a novel technique to combine forward-viewing navigation and side viewing OCT. Potential applications include navigating body lumens such as the fallopian tube, biliary ducts and cardiovascular system. A custom cover plate provides a rotationally symmetric double reflection of the OCT beam to deviate and focus the OCT beam out the side of the endoscope for cross-sectional imaging of the tubal lumen. Considerations in the choice of the scanning fiber are explored and a new technique to increase the divergence angle of the scanning fiber to improve system performance is presented. Resolution and the necessary scanning density requirements to achieve Nyquist sampling of the full image are considered. The novel optical design lays the groundwork for a new approach integrating side-viewing OCT into multimodality endoscopes for small lumen imaging.

The thesis deals with inferences and their function in text understanding. The theoretical part involve a survey of various definitions of inference, a setting of notions which are related to inferences and at last classification of inferences based on linguistic and psychological literature. The empirical part is based on analysis of cook recipes (and technical instruction partially). We have set five means of language which indicate a necessity of making inference (pronouns, ellipsis, hyponyms-hypernyms relation, pronoun vše and adjectivizated participles) - in all cases these inferences are necessary for comprehension. We confronted these inferences with classification described in the theoretical part. Another inferences we make as the text is read are infereces which are not associated with a concrete means of language: bridging inferences and instrumental inferences. Knowledge of the language, general knowledges and experiences take part in inferencing.

in English This thesis deals with the means that French and Czech use to express the text coherence and cohesion. It pays special attention to functional sentence perspective which is expressed in different ways in these two languages. It focuses on the category of French determinants and its important role in the expression of functional sentence perspective. The empirical part of the thesis explores the possibilities the translator has to express lexically the presence of various determinants that appear in original texts, and it tries to prove the theory that a higher occurrence of determinants in French affects Czech translations. This hypothesis will be proven by comparing the frequency of prounous that occur in Czech translations and Czech original texts.

This work is devoted to the investigation of a spin polarization in ferromagnetic semiconductor Ga1-xMnxAs with a broad nominal concentration of manganese ions using one method of the ultrafast laser spectroscopy - the time-resolved Kerr rotation. At first, the experimental setup was optimized for the investigation of the dynamics of spin polarized charge carriers in semiconductors which were photo-generated by circularly polarized laser pulses. It was observed that the measured signal is induced by spin-polarized electrons. Due to a small thickness of the investigated ferromagnetic films the measured signal probably monitored the dynamics of fotogenerated electrons in GaAs substrate. Nevertheless, the measured data show that the electron spin dynamics in the substrate is significantly influenced by proximity effect due to the deposited ferromagnetic layer.

This thesis deals with the topic of 3D image processing for digital holographic microscopy - numerical refocusing. This method allows to perform mathematically accurate defocus correction on image of a sample captured away from the sample plane and it was applicable only for images that were made made using coherent illumination source. It has been generalized to a form in which it is also applicable to devices that use incoherent (non-monochromatic or extended) illumination sources. Another presented achievement concerns hologram processing. The advanced hologram processing method enables obtaining more data mainly concerning precision of quantities from one hologram — normally, one would have to capture multiple holograms to get those. Both methods have been verified experimentally.

On a football field games are played between two teams, and the players of these teams get almost all of the attention. But there is another team on the field, the team of referees. The referees get mostly negative criticism, and are almost never mentioned in a positive way. This study is all about the teams’ captain, the main referee. Who is he? What does he have to go through? What makes him continue in his career?   Earlier studies have shown that the work you do as a referee can be very stressful, with a lot of stressing factors coming from the players, the coaches, and at a higher level supporters and media (Nyberg, 2000, 2002). Because of all this, this study shows opinions from active referees in Allsvenskan in Sweden, and from some which are active on an international basis as well. Interviews have been made and a survey to compare the referees experiences with their sense of coherence, from Aaron Antonovskys theory SoC (Sense of Coherence).   The results are showing that yes, there are connections between a successful career as a referee and a high level of sense of coherence, and that the interviewed referees’ spend a huge amount of time to be able to perform. Even though they try their hardest, they have to deal with threats in their daily work. Therefore, you can find the conclusion that you need to have a certain type of personality to be able to make it as a referee.