Aim of the Thesis: To investigate from a company’s perspective if the pressure for companies to produce quarterly reports has turned away their attention from working towards long-term value creation. The companies investigated are listed on the large-cap section on the Swedish stock exchange (OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm AB). Methodology: A quantitative approach has been used and empirical data has been collected through questionnaires. The data has been analyzed and presented with descriptive statistics. Theoretical Perspectives: A literature review has been conducted and resulted in a theoretical framework illustrating the concepts of quarterly reporting, long-term value creating, short-termism and forecasting. Empirical data: The empirical data was collected by distributing questionnaires to the companies listed on the large-cap section of the OMX. Conclusion: Companies listed on the large cap section of the OMX do not perceive that the pressure to produce quarterly reports affects them in a negative way. The study also showed that many companies lack awareness of the risks associated with short-termism.

In 1995 and 2000 a total of 29 886 non surgical ED visits at Uppsala University Hospital were registered. Presenting complaint, admittance to a ward, length of stay, in-hospital mortality, discharge diagnoses, 30-day and long-term mortality were registered. The presenting complaints were sorted into 33 presenting complaint groups (PCGs). For different PCGs there was different in-hospital fatality rate. Compared to the largest PCG, chest pain, the gender and age adjusted OR was 2.12 (95% CI 1.01 – 4.44) for the miscellaneous complaint group and 2.04 (95 % CI 1.35 – 3.08) for the stroke–like symptom group. Within a given PCG the in-hospital mortality could vary depending on discharge diagnoses. By relating PCG and long term mortality to the expected mortality in the population, the Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR) could be calculated. The SMR was found to be highest in seizure 2.62 (95 % CI 2.13 – 3.22), intoxication 2.51 (95% CI 2.11-2.98) and symptoms of asthma 1.8 (1.65 – 2.06). For the same discharge diagnoses the long term mortality could differ considerably depending on PCG at ED arrival (p<0.001). Between 1995 and 2000 there was a 30 % increase in ED visits at the non surgical ED. PCGs representing lesser severe conditions had increased. Demographic changes could account for 45 % of the increment and the remaining increase could be ascribed to change in visiting pattern. In the 2000 cohort 41.0 % of all visits were performed by re-visitors. The number of revisits and five-year mortality had an inversed u-shaped relationship were patients with three re-visits within the same year had an increased mortality compared to patients with more or less visits. Conclusion: It is possible to define presenting complaint groups (PCGs) that are robust and consistent over time and useful as a tool for epidemiological studies in the ED.

This research examined notions of belonging and sense of community through a set of layered lenses that integrated a social model of aging with phenomenology to gain a better understanding of the lived experiences of individuals residing in a long-term care (LTC) home. Conducted in a for-profit LTC home in Ontario, this study analyzed messaging in marketing materials supplied to potential residents and their families in anticipation of a move to a LTC home and in the staff policies and procedures manuals using document and narrative analysis. Themes emerging from this phase were then compared with the first-hand experiences of living in a LTC home as told by residents through the use of a focus group (n=6) and individual interviews (n=6) and experiences of working in a LTC home as described by interviews with staff (n=6). Analysis of marketing documents revealed the theme of let us be your caring community. As messaged in these documents, the LTC home supported residents by caring, embodying the ideals of home through natural living spaces, and supporting meaningful personal connections. This contrasted with messages found in the staff policy manuals. Divided discourses highlighted the tangible complexities of implementing a person-centered philosophy within a business model by describing the industry of care, prescribed customer service, fabricating normalcy and, to a much lesser extent, promoting the practice of person-centered care. Residents’ phenomenological stories illustrated variable un/belonging within a LTC home. Personal experiences of the institutional erosion of belonging, congregate nature of living in a LTC home, changing nature of personal relationships and the prescriptive living environment routinized day-to-day experiences and provided a stark contrast between belonging in community and un/belonging in a LTC home. Weaving belonging into daily tasks described how staff members laboured daily at working to personalize LTC home living, and how they were helpless to prevent losses in community and belonging. After completing the research and analysis of the promotional materials, policy and procedures manuals, and resident and staff transcripts I conducted a broader level analysis of all four sets of themes in order to get a sense of the whole. I concluded there were five tensions of: constructing home from the outside; person-centered care within a biomedical, business model; promoting individuality in a congregate structure; synthetic connections at the expense of long-standing relationships; and fostering living in a death-indifferent culture which justified society’s need to divide and regulate. Incorporating a range of data including promotional materials, policy and procedures manuals, and the voices of both residents and staff, these tensions are not only implicit in the culture of Manor House but within the overarching structure of LTC homes in general and have deep implications on the standing and status bestowed upon older adults in Canadian culture. My intention was to bring to light the contextualized lived experiences of individuals living at Manor House and highlight the structural and social barriers that continue to produce discrimination by “problematizing” aging and subsequently fostering notions of presumably acceptable dividing practices (Foucault, 1982) within society. By examining meanings and experiences of community in a LTC home, and also recognizing the systemic, structural and cultural factors that may shape those experiences, I sought to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the lifeworlds of individuals living within a LTC home.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between word reading and white matter (WM) integrity in the reading system and test a theory-based moderated mediation model such that relationship of WM integrity with word reading is mediated by processing speed and indirect effect is moderated by group. Thirty-seven adult survivors of childhood brain tumor and typically developing adults participated (mean age=24.19(4.51) years, 62% female). Tractography identified the WM tract for three reading system connections. Fractional anisotropy of the IFOF and PT-OT tracts were significantly correlated with word reading in survivors (r=.55, .46, respectively; p

The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) depends on three enzymes called E1, E2, and E3 to ubiquitinate proteins and several isopeptidases to de-ubiquitinate them. Ubiquitination serves as a post-translational modification that either tags proteins for degradation by the proteasome or serves to modulate their function. This dynamic system plays a role in synaptic plasticity and dysfunction of the UPS is associated a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, three inhibitors the UPS, ziram, clasto-lactacystin β-lactone (lactacystin) and G5 were employed to illuminate involvement of the UPS in long-term and short term plasticity in area CA1 of rat hippocampal slices. Ziram, lactacystin and G5 inhibits the E1 ubiquitin-activating enzyme, the proteasome and isopeptidases, respectively. It was found that UPS inhibition enhanced long-term plasticity, by specifically increasing the magnitude of long-term depression (LTD) and altered short term plasticity, measured with paired pulse facilitation (PPF), to varying degrees. These findings establish that the UPS may play a regulatory role in LTD and PPF, and the changes in PPF further indicate that the UPS may be acting presynaptically. Overall, the results suggest ubiquitination and proteasome-mediated proteolysis are important in both long-term and short-term plasticity.

Authors: Sjöberg, Amelie 880410 Wallgren, Christopher 890131   Background: Due to the current competitive climate, it is of major importance for firms to distinguish and differentiate their products compared to the competitors. To achieve that, the firms need to offer a product that the customers want. Firms can integrate with external sources and receive valuable information regarding references and needs. Customer relationship management (CRM) have become a tool firm commonly use in order to receive this information. CRM is a much discussed topic among researchers, and the researchers argue that it is of major importance to identify CRM activities that generates profitability and successful performance to the firm   Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of customer relationship management (CRM) on product innovation in Scandinavian firms.   Method: The survey generated 61 responses from service and manufacturing firms operating on the Scandinavian market (Sweden, Norway and Denmark). The surveys were accessible through Keysruvey.com in April 2013 and generated a response rate of 14% Conclusion: The major conclusion of this research is that all Hypotheses were supported, which indicates that customer involvement, information sharing and long-term partnership has a positive impact on product innovation.

Syftet med denna studie är att förstå äldre långtidsarbetslösas situation utifrån deras upplevelser av arbetslöshet och hur detta påverkar hur de konstruerar sin identitet. Studien fokuserar på personer i åldersgruppen 50-64 år som har varit arbetslösa i sex månader eller längre och som är lågutbildade. En kvalitativ metod har använts och datamaterialet för studien samlades in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med sju individer. Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av Pierre Bourdieus teoretiska begrepp fält, habitus och symboliskt kapital. Studien visar bland annat att arbete är väldigt viktigt för respondenterna och inte främst av ekonomiska aspekter utan av sociala aspekter. Vidare visar resultatet att respondenterna hade olika strategier för att hantera långtidsarbetslöshet. Den mest framträdande strategin var att skapa en liknande struktur i deras vardag som de hade när de arbetade. Respondenterna ser också sig själva i de yrken som de arbetade inom innan de blev arbetslösa och de har svårigheter att söka arbeten i andra fält av arbetsmarknaden. / The aim of this study is to understand elderly long-term unemployed situation by their experiences of unemployment and how this affect how they construct their identity. The study focuses on people in the age group 50-64 which been out of work for sex months or longer and have a low education. A qualitative method was used and the data for the study was collected by semi-structured interviews with seven individuals. The result was analyzed using Pierre Bourdieus theoretical terms field, habitus and symbolic capital. The study shows, among other things, that work is really important for the respondents and it’s not primary because of the economic part but the social part. Furthermore the results showed that the respondents had different strategies to cope with long-term unemployment. The most prominent strategy was to create a similar structure in their weekday as they had when they were working. The respondents also see themselves as their old profession instead of being unemployed and have difficulties to search work in other fields of the labour market.

The Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model is an innovation created in response to the Canadian Sport Policy (Canadian Heritage, 2007). The LTAD is an “athlete centered, coach driven, and administration, sport science, and sponsor supported” (Canadian Sport Centres, 2006, p. 33) athlete-development model. Since little research has been completed focusing on this model (viz., Black & Holt, 2009) this thesis had the purpose to better understand the adoption of the LTAD by cross-country ski (XCS) coaches. Two articles present a case study of three XCS club’s coaches, and a descriptive qualitative analysis of XCS coaches (N=13). Both analyses used Rogers’ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations theoretical framework to structure the narrative-interview guide, coding structure, and thematic analysis. Two key results of the thesis were an understanding of the link between a club’s characteristics and a coach’s perceived attributes of the LTAD, and secondly a proposed classification system for XCS coaches.

Despite the benefits of physical activity for older adults, many residents living in long-term care homes (LTC) are relatively inactive. Previous research has revealed barriers to physical activity at the resident-level, organizational, and environmental level. However, little attention has been paid to other factors influencing physical activity within the broader institutional complex. The goal of this study was to uncover how the work of personal support workers (PSWs) related to the promotion of physical activity was socially organized. Institutional Ethnography (IE), developed by Dorothy Smith, guided this study. Smith proposed that peoples’ everyday experiences in local settings are organized, often unknowingly, by the actions of people located outside of the local setting and that this organization is textually-mediated. Two LTC homes in Ontario participated in this study. I began data collection by observing PSWs as they went about their work. Next, I interviewed PSWs and other people located inside (e.g. nurses, managers) and outside the LTC homes (e.g. representatives from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). Lastly, I collected texts that organized the PSWs’ work, such as Ministry standards. The findings revealed that although the MOHLTC standards were viewed as producing something “good” for the residents, some of the standards disrupted the PSWs’ work, which made it challenging for them to support daily physical activity. The promotion of physical activity was seen as an additional program that happened a few times per week and it was parceled out as a professional activity that was socially organized “out” of the PSW role. The findings suggest that local solutions are needed. A good starting point would be to go and talk to PSWs and residents to determine what type of assignments would permit the incorporation of physical activity into daily care. To embed the promotion of physical activity into daily care, a major rethink and reorganization of PSWs work will be needed, including a greater investment in human and material supports for PSWs.

We have recently established that aberrant alkylacylglycerophosphocholine metabolism results in the increased tissue concentration of platelet activating factors (PAFs) in the temporal cortex of Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients and in TgCRND8 mice over-expressing mutant human amyloid precursor protein. PAF lipids activate a G-protein coupled receptor (PAFR) reported to be expressed by microglia and subsets of neurons in rat. It is not known whether this same expression pattern is recapitulated in mice however, as the expression has only been inferred by use of pharmacological PAFR antagonists, many of which impact on both PAFR-dependent and PAFR-independent signalling pathways. PAFR plays a role in long term potentiation (LTP) induction in rats. PAFR has also been implicated in behavioural indices of spatial learning and memory in rats. Contradictory reports using mice provide ambiguity regarding the role of PAFR in LTP induction in mice. To assess whether PAFR is expressed in murine neurons, I localized PAFR mRNA in wild-type C57BL/6 mice using PAFR KO mice as a negative control. I further showed that the loss of PAFR did not impair learning and memory although this assessment must be considered preliminary as the behavioural test employed was not optimized to detect changes in learning and memory of C57BL/6 mice over time adequately.Finally, I showed that the loss of PAFR in TgCRND8 mouse model of AD had no impact upon Aβ plaque number. My observations suggest that PAFR is restricted to microglial-like cells in mouse hippocampus and as such, it may not play a role in learning and memory.