Saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) is a male-sterile, triploid flower crop, and source of the spice and colorant saffron. For over three millennia, it was cultivated across the Mediterranean, including ancient Greece, Persia, and other cultures, later spreading all over the world. Despite saffron crocus’ early omnipresence, its origin has been the matter of a century-old debate, in terms of area and time as well as parental species contribution. While remnants of the ancient arts, crafts, and texts still provide hints on its origin, modern genetics has the potential to efficiently follow these leads, thus shedding light on new possible lines of descent. In this review, we follow ancient arts and recent genetics to trace the evolutionary origin of saffron crocus. We focus on the place and time of saffron domestication and cultivation, and address its presumed autopolyploid origin involving cytotypes of wild Crocus cartwrightianus. Both ancient arts from Greece, Iran, and Mesopotamia as well as recent cytogenetic and comparative next-generation sequencing approaches point to saffron’s emergence and domestication in ancient Greece, showing how both disciplines converge in tracing its origin.

This thesis aims to create a gamified board game that archives can use as an educational tool that can help them promote archival outreach while at the same time providing its players with archival knowledge. The board game - Archeion - was made from scratch using the Research through Design method, which was further backed up by the observations and focus group interviews conducted before, during, and after each playtest. The theories of gamification, engagement, and archival pedagogy were used in this thesis to strengthen the educational aspects of the board game and also to provide it with engaging and pedagogical elements to make it more enjoyable. Acquaintances with no prior knowledge of archives, archival science students, and library and information science students were chosen for the playtests as they were able to provide the thesis with feedback that could improve the educational and pedagogical aspects of the board game. The playtests revealed that the players had learned new things about archives and that they had gotten a deeper understanding of archival concepts and practices. They expressed emotions such as curiosity, excitement, and fear throughout the gameplay sessions as the game mechanics and player choices changed the narrative of the game for either better or worse. The game mechanics were made to inform the players with archival knowledge at a slow pace to not overwhelm them with information. This made it easier for the players to understand what happened in the game while learning bits and pieces of archival science that they found interesting. When the game ended, most players kept talking about archives and wanted to know more about the archival concepts and practices mentioned in the components of the game. The results have shown that board games can and should be used as educational tools as they can transform a boring assignment into an enjoyable pastime. / Uppsatsen syftar till att skapa ett spelifierat brädspel som arkiv kan använda som ett pedagogiskt verktyg för att främja arkivmedvetenhet samtidigt som det ger spelarna arkivkunskap. Brädspelet - Archeion - skapades från grunden med hjälp av metoden forskning genom design, vilken ytterligare stöddes av observationer och fokusgruppsintervjuer genomförda före, under och efter varje speltest. Teorierna spelifiering, engagemang och arkivpedagogik användes i uppsatsen för att stärka brädspelets pedagogiska aspekter och även för att förse det med engagerande och pedagogiska element för att göra det mer underhållande. Nära bekanta som inte hade någon tidigare kunskap om arkiv, samt studenter i arkivvetenskap och studenter i biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap valdes som speltestare eftersom de kunde ge en återkoppling som kunde främja och förbättra de pedagogiska aspekterna av brädspelet. Speltesterna avslöjade att spelarna hade lärt sig nya saker om arkiv och att de hade fått en djupare förståelse för arkivkoncept och -praxis. De uttryckte känslor som nyfikenhet, spänning och rädsla under spelsessionerna eftersom spelmekaniken och spelarnas val förändrade spelets handling till antingen det bättre eller sämre. Spelmekaniken är utformad för att informera spelarna om arkivkunskap på ett långsamt sätt för att inte överväldiga dem med information. Detta gjorde det lättare för spelarna att förstå vad som hände i spelet samtidigt som de lärde sig delar av arkivvetenskap som de fann intressanta. När spelet tog slut fortsatte de flesta spelarna att prata om arkiv och ville veta mer om de arkivkoncept och -praxis som nämndes i spelets komponenter. Resultaten har visat att brädspel kan och bör användas som pedagogiska verktyg då de kan förvandla en tråkig uppgift till en underhållande sysselsättning.

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The creation of sustainable and safe environments nowadays moves more and more into focus for urban planners and architects. Cities should be designed in a way to contribute to social cohesion, shaping an inclusive environment and focusing on the wellbeing of its citizens. Nevertheless, these processes can be undermined by public crime and the fear of crime, which is not only affecting aspects of personal safety but also affecting the people’s behaviour. Reasons why criminality occurs are manifold, impacted by a dynamic set of socioeconomic, demographic, personal but also environmental aspects. In recent years especially the impact of factors related to urban and environmental design respectively planning received rising attention in the field of crime prevention. However, the implementation of strategies regarding ‘crime prevention through environmental design’ or ‘designing out crime’ is still in its early stage in Sweden.   This study aims to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of public crime for the case of Umeå in order to identify potential risk areas, which could receive particular attention regarding crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). In this sense a GIS based spatial analysis had the aim to detect statistically significant hotspots of crime and furthermore to assess the development of these hotspots over time. In order to understand the nature of public crime and criminal behaviour in Umeå in a more holistic way, also temporal aspects regarding the occurrence of crime were analysed. One particularly vulnerable neighbourhood was examined with a qualitative field observation regarding the principles of crime prevention through environmental design in order to assess in which way the built environment is designed and suited to prevent and deter criminality.   Umeå displays rather clear patterns of higher crime activity, assigned to seasonal, weakly and daily periods, which are connected to higher activity in the public space. Also from a spatial perspective certain patterns are detectable with a higher vulnerability for crime at spots which generate higher activity such as shopping areas or neighbourhoods with nightlife and transport hub functions, and in general neighbourhoods with a higher building density. The neighbourhood of Ålidhem displayed thereby a high concentration of criminality, marked as a constant or even intensifying hotspot for the entire period of investigation. The results of the field observation regarding principles of CPTED are especially indicating a lack of maintenance and furthermore the street and building layout is contributing to disorientation. On the other hand, the area is in most cases well equipped for natural surveillance and provides a high amount of locations for leisure and recreation in order strengthen social cohesion.

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The purpose of the study was to investigate what the personnel considers about transactional and transformational leadership regarding the leader's use of contingent reward, management by exception, charisma/inspirational leadership, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration leadership. For this qualitative study, a semi- structured interview guide was used to investigate six employee perceptions of the leadership styles on a company in central Sweden. The result was analyzed by deductive thematic methodology to identify keywords linked to respective theme and subcategory based on the Bass Factor Model (1985) (Avolio, Bass & Jung, 1999) division of leadership. The result presents the personnel’s perspective and adds to the knowledge of the employees view on meaning and implication of leadership. The result gives a picture of both transactional and transformational leadership as oriented to satisfying the needs of the employees in a workplace. The findings can give the organization greater understanding of how leadership can be applied to the workplace according to employee interests. / Syftet med studien var att undersöka vad personalen anser om transaktionellt och transformativt ledarskap avseende ledarens användande av villkorad belöning, leda genom avvikelser, karismatiskt/inspirerande, intellektualiserande och individualiserande ledarskap. För denna kvalitativa studie användes en semistrukturerad intervjuguide för att undersöka sex medarbetares uppfattningar av ledarskapsstilarna på ett företag i mellersta Sverige. Materialet analyserades genom deduktiv tematisk metod för att identifiera nyckelord kopplade till respektive tema och underkategori baserade på Bass faktormodell (1985) (Avolio, Bass & Jung, 1999). Resultatet presenterar personalens perspektiv på ledarskap och bidrar med kunskap om hur medarbetarna ser på betydelsen och tillämpningen av ledarskap. Det framkom en bild av både transaktionellt och transformativt ledararskap som inriktat på att tillfredsställa medarbetares behov i arbetslivet. Resultatet kan ge organisationen ökad förståelse för hur ledarskap kan tillämpas på arbetsplatsen enligt medarbetarnas intressen.

This work is part of a project focused on the study of the variability of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) among clinical isolates with the aim to map the geographical distribution of HCMV genotypes, reveal the relationships between genotypes and the severity of HCMV-associated diseases, and identify regions in the HCMV genome with a potential for use as diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Attention was paid to the development of the methodology for the preparation of the material for next-generation sequencing (NGS) from HCMV clinical isolates and evaluation of the obtained sequencing data. Blood and urine samples collected from hematopoietic stem cell transplantat recipients and congenitally infected children were analyzed. Samples suitable for NGS were sequenced by the Illumina platform and sequences were created by de novo assembly followed by mapping assembly. Urine samples in comparison to blood samples had higher yield of material for NGS. Of the samples positive for HCMV DNA (7 of 50) after amplification in the cell cultures, only one sample had high purity of the viral DNA (98%) while six samples had purity of less than 7%. The sample containing 98% of the viral DNA was fully sequenced and the sequence was compared to the sequences of other clinical isolates from Belgium in 11 polymorphic...

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Utifrån Canvas analysmodell, hur ser Fantastic Franks E-business ut? Hur är synen på E-business hos en liten nischad fastighetsbyrå? Syftet med denna studie är att analysera Fantastic Franks E-business genom Canvas analysmodell och analysera hur differentiering genom E-business påverkar företagets framgång. Genom intervju med ledningsgruppsrepresentant från Fantastic Frank samt med fastighetsmäklare på Fantastic Frank applicerades företagets affärsmodell på modellen Källor till värdeskapande i E-business företag. Denna metod användes för att undersökningens syfte att se hur Fantastic Frank differentierar sig genom E-business skulle kunna undersökas. Nyckelresurser, nyckelpartnerskap och nyckelaktiviteter är de viktigaste blocken inom Canvas analysmodell för Fantastic Frank, för att de ska kunna erbjuda en värdeproposition och differentiera sig. Andra fastighetsbyråer börjar erbjuda liknande tjänster med bostadsstyling och Fantastic Frank bör vidareutveckla sin tjänst. För att skapa värde bör Fantastic Frank utveckla relationer med kunder som köpt eller sålt bostad genom gemensamma intressen inom inredning/design. Fantastic Frank ser möjligheter att använda sig utav E-business för att etablera sig i storstäder runt om i världen. Om de lyckas, kommer antagligen deras nuvarande partners att se möjligheter att växa med Fantastic Frank. Företaget differentierar sig genom att inte använda sig av tidningsannonser eller andra störningsmoment på sin hemsida utan skapar hellre inspiration. Genom att arbeta med målgruppsanpassad bostadsstyling ser ingen bostad ut som den andra vilket leder till att målgruppen återkommer för att söka efter bostad eller inspireras av bostäder. Fantastic Frank har spridit sina risker eftersom de satsar på flera olika medier. / How does the E-business of Fantastic Frank look like according to Business Model Canvas? How does a small and niched real estate agency perceive E-business? The purpose with this study is to analyse the E-business of Fantastic Frank real estate agency by applying it to the Business Canvas framework and analyse how differentiation through E-business affects the success of the company. By conducting an interview with representative from Fantastic Frank management as well as founder of Fantastic Frank real estate agency, and furthermore conducting an interview with one of the real estate brokers at Fantastic Frank, the business model of the company could be applied to the Value creation model by Amit and Zott (2001). The Value creation model was used in order to analyse how Fantastic Frank differentiates by their E-business. Key resources, key partnership and key activities are the most important parts within Business Model Canvas for Fantastic Frank, for the company to be able offer its value proposition and differentiate itself. Other real estate agencies have started to offer similar kinds of home styling services, and Fantastic Frank should have to consider how to further develop its service. To create value Fantastic Frank should develop relationships with customers who have used the company’s services by relating to common interests in interior/design. Fantastic Frank sees opportunities to make use of E-business to establish itself in major cities around the world. Their present partners will most likely appreciate the possibility to expand with Fantastic Frank. The company differentiates itself by not using ads and other kinds of disturbing elements on its homepage, and would rather be inspirational. With their target audience in mind during the styling session home stylings differ from each other with the result that people return to search for new homes or to get inspiration. Fantastic Frank also spreads its risks since the company can be found on many kinds of social media.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2008