Air pollution has a negative impact on people that can lead to serious respiratory problems, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. These issues can result in a shortened lifespan and premature death. In Sweden there are approximately 7600 deaths each year due to air pollution and approximately four million deaths have been estimated to occur worldwide but this number is increasing every year. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the Swedish municipalities worked and what needs they had to achieve the environmental quality goal of ”fresh air”. A questionnaire was made which was sent out as a web survey to all 290 municipalities in Sweden. The result of this study showed that medium-sized and large municipalities worked in a greater extent with the environmental quality goal than small municipalities. It was more common to involve traffic planning in the work with air quality questions in large municipalities than the other municipalities. Traffic regulation efforts and public transports are main factors mentioned to improve air quality. A majority of small and large municipalities felt that there are limitations in the work to achieving the goal where mainly resources and traffic are mentioned. About half of small and large municipalities and a third of small municipalities considered themselves to need more support in the form of resources, different guidance and information. This study indicates that it may be difficult to reach the environmental quality goal within some municipalities and more work will probably be required before the goal is achieved.

Organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) are likely to become the low-cost andeco-friendly alternatives to organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) if it is possible to enhancetheir efficiency. In OLED devices losses due to poor light-outcoupling could be reduced bytransferring nanopatterns to the different layers of the device. Applying the experience madewith OLEDs to the similar structured LECs, Nikolai Kaihovirta and co-workers were able toimprove the light-outcoupling efficiency of LECs by adding patterned surface structures tothe devices [3]. Since patterning the surface of an LEC was successful, the next step wouldbe transferring patterns to the internal layers of an LEC and investigate their impact on thedevice efficiency. However, before it must be investigated if it is possible to imprint the activematerial of an LEC containing a conjugated polymer (Super Yellow), a salt (KCF3SO3) andan ion-transporter (TMPE-OH).This thesis shows that wet imprinting can be used as a cheap and fast technique to transfernanopatterns to the active material of LECs. In the wet imprinting setup a stamp is low-ered down onto a wet film and afterwards pressed down by a 3 kg weight. To obtain a wetfilm which then can be imprinted, the active material is spin coated onto a substrate. Thebest patterns were obtained when using a spin coating speed of 1000 rpm, an acceleration of1000 rpm/s and a spinning duration of 30 s.From the successfully imprinted samples, LEC devices were fabricated and characterised.AFM and SEM images show that a pattern with a depth of 24.5 nm could be transferred toan approximately 150 nm thick active material film. The results of the optoelectronic char-acterisation of the imprinted devices were compared to identically fabricated non-imprintedreference devices. During operation, the imprinted devices exhibit a star shaped emissiondue to their hexagonal pattern. Two imprinted devices showed a higher luminance than theirrespective reference devices. The highest luminance measured for an imprinted device was524 cd/m2 compared to 373 cd/m2 for the reference device. At this point further investigationis needed to confirm if the efficiency improvement is repeatable. However, these results showthat it is possible to imprint the active material of an LEC and imply that patterning theactive material could improve their efficiency.

The semi-conductor zinc oxide (ZnO), a representative of group II-VI has gained substantial interest in the research community due to its novel properties and characteristics. ZnO a direct band gap (3.4eV) semi-conductor has a stable wurtzite structure. Recently ZnO have attracted much interest because of its unique piezoelectric, semiconducting, catalytic properties and being biosafe and biocompatible morphology combined with the easiness of growth. This implies that ZnO has a wide range of applications in optoelectronics, sensors, transducers, energy conversion and medical sciences. This thesis relates specifically to biosensor technology and pertains more particularly to novel biosensors based on multifunctional ZnO nanorods for biological, biochemical and chemical applications. The nanoscale science and engineering have found great promise in the fabrication of novel nano-biosensors with faster response and higher sensitivity than of planar sensor configurations. This thesis aims to highlight recent developments in materials and techniques for electrochemical biosensing, design, operation and fabrication. Rapid research growths in biomaterials, especially the availability and applications of a vast range of polymers and copolymers associated with new sensing techniques have led to remarkable innovation in the design and fabrication of biosensors. Specially nanowires/nanorods and due to their small dimensions combined with dramatically increased contact surface and strong binding with biological and chemical reagents will have important applications in biological and biochemical research. The diameter of these nanostructures is usually comparable to the size of the biological and chemical species being sensed, which intuitively makes them represent excellent primary transducers for producing electrical signals. ZnO nanostructures have unique advantages including high surface to volume ratio, nontoxicity, chemical stability, electrochemical activity, and high electron communication features. In addition, ZnO can be grown as vertical nanorods and has high ionic bonding (60%), and they are not very soluble at biological pH-values. All these facts open up for possible sensitive extra/intracellular ion measurements. New developments in biosensor design are appearing at a high rate as these devices play increasingly important roles in daily life. In this thesis we have studied calcium ion selectivity of ZnO nanorods sensors using ionophore membrane coatings in two research directions: first, we have adjusted the sensor with sufficient selectivity especially for Ca2+, and the second is to have enough sensitivity for measuring Ca2+ concentrations in extra and intracellular media. The sensor in this study was used to detect and monitor real changes of Ca2+ across human fat cells and frog cells using changes in the electrochemical potential at the interface in the intracellular microenvironment. The first part of the thesis presents extracellular studies on calcium ions selectively by using ZnO nanorods grown on the surface of a silver wire (250 μm in diameter) with the aim to produce proto-type electrochemical biosensors. The ZnO nanorods exhibited a Ca2+-dependent electrochemical potentiometric behavior in an aqueous solution. The potential difference was found to be linear over a large logarithmic concentration range (1μM to 0.1M) using Ag/AgCl as a reference electrode. To make the sensors selective for calcium ions with sufficient selectivity and stability, plastic membrane coatings containing ionophores were applied. These functionalized ZnO nanorods sensors showed a high sensitivity (26.55 mV/decade) and good stability. In the second part, the intracellular determination of Ca2+ was performed in two types of cells. For that we have reported functionalized ZnO nanorods grown on the tip of a borosilicate glass capillary (0.7 μm in diameter) used to selectively measure the intracellular free Ca2+ concentration in single human adipocytes and frog oocytes. The sensor exhibited a Ca2+ linear electrochemical potential over a wide Ca2+ concentration range (100 nM to 10 mM). The measurement of the Ca2+ concentration using our ZnO nanorods based sensor in living cells were consistent with values of Ca2+ concentration reported in the literature. The third and final part, presents the calcium ion detection functionalized ZnO nanorods coupled as an extended gate metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET). The electrochemical response from the interaction between the ZnO nanorods and Ca2+ in an aqueous solution was coupled directly to the gate of a MOSFET. The sensor exhibited a linear response within the range of interest from 1 μM to 1 mM. Here we demonstrated that ZnO nanorods grown on a silver wire can be combined with conventional electronic component to produce a sensitive and selective biosensor.

Bakgrund: Åldersgruppen 18–30 år har ett genomsnittligt intag på 35 g/dag och är den grupp med lägst fullkornsintag. En potentiell lösning för att öka intaget av fullkorn är att modifiera produkter med raffinerat spannmål till att inkludera spannmålsfullkorn. Syfte: Huvudsyftet är att undersöka 18–30 åringars preferens och grad av acceptans för chokladkaka bakad med fullkornsmjöl respektive chokladkaka bakad med siktat mjöl. Syftet är också att undersöka hur konsumenter ställer sig till att konsumera ett mer hälsosamt fika med fokus på intag av fullkorn. Metod: Kvantitativ tvärsnittsstudie. Konsumenttest av chokladkaka utfördes på Biomedicinskt Centrum, Uppsala universitet. Chokladkakorna som testades innehöll 100 % fullkornsmjöl respektive 100 % siktat mjöl. Till testet konstruerades en digital enkät och totalt samlades 135 fullständiga svar in och analyserades. I enkäten fick deltagarna ange acceptans och preferens till proverna, samt rapportera grad av instämmande till påståenden med en Likert-skala. Resultat: Resultatet för acceptans- och preferenstestet visar på statistiskt signifikanta skillnader mellan proverna. Medianen från acceptanstestet för chokladkakan bakad med 100 % siktat mjöl blev 6,0 jämfört med 5,0 för chokladkakan med 100 % fullkornsmjöl. Majoriteten av konsumenterna (61,5 %) föredrog chokladkakan bakad med 100 % siktat mjöl. Övervägande del av konsumenterna (80,0 %) angav att de under det senaste året konsumerat fikabröd minst en gång i veckan. Slutsats: Då majoriteten av deltagarna uppgav att de konsumerar fika minst en gång i veckan, lever den väletablerade fika-traditionen vidare. För att kunna möta Livsmedelsverkets råd kring att välja fika och andra söta livsmedel med omsorg, kan modifiering av befintliga livsmedel vara ett förslag. Aktuell studie tyder på att chokladkaka berikat med fullkorn har en hög grad av acceptans bland konsumenterna, trots en lägre preferens.

ABSTRACT The contribution of genetics to sexual differentiation, aside from those involved in sex determination and gonadal differentiation, is poorly understood, even though the effects of sex hormones on sexual differentiation have been extensively researched. Although the human central nervous system remains highly similar irrespective of sex in terms of the general morphological and physiological characteristics, specific features still appear dimorphic. In this research, the relative expression rate of 18 selected candidate genes, was compared using quantitative real-time PCR. These candidate genes were sexually differentially expressed at early as well as late stages of the differentiation via RNAseq in 7 embryonic stem cell lines (4 females and 3 males). Samples were acquired from a neural differentiation experiment of the stem cells that lasted 37 days. This study intends to evaluate RNA sequencing results from a previous study carried out on the selected genes. The result of the study indicated several significant sexual dimorphisms between male and female human embryonic stem cells such as the higher expression of 10 of the assayed genes in the male stem cells and 4 genes in the female stem cells. Four of the 18 selected genes showed no significant sex differences between the male and female stem cells. These results support the significance of the outcome of the previous RNA sequencing results as both showed a similar pattern of sexual dimorphism in selected genes across different time points.

No description available.

Food fraud is deceptive and intentional manipulation of products or ingredients either to increase their economic value or to reduce production costs. It has both short and long-term negative health effects on consumers. The purpose of the study was to investigate how food fraud affects consumer confidence and to identify strategies to improve consumers' knowledge and safety when purchasing food. Data was collected through a survey among students (n=51) at Umeå University, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that a large proportion of consumers have been victims of food fraud, and consumers believe that meat products, fish products, and fruits and vegetables are the most affected food groups. Of all those who have been victims of food fraud, only 30% of those affected acted on their suspicions, and of these, only 32% contacted relevant authorities. The results also show that consumers do not have much confidence in the information from the relevant authorities about their preventive measures against food fraud. The majority of consumers think that food fraud is a serious problem. The fact that 91% of consumers believe it is a serious problem with food fraud and that only 6% have experienced negative consequences of food fraud indicates that consumers are generally aware of the problem and can avoid fraudulent food, which is good. Although they are aware of food fraud, they do not cooperate enough with the authorities to reduce this problem.

Wood density, a key ecological trait, exerts a profound influence on plant characteristics andbehaviours, shaping their adaptive strategies and survival mechanisms. The purpose of this study isto investigate the complex relationship between wood density and the composition of fibres, vessels,and total parenchyma within the wood structure of eleven tree species in the wet tropical forests ofPuerto Rico. I aimed to discern the primary anatomical traits that underlie variation in wood densityacross and within the study species. Furthermore, we sought to elucidate the distribution of tissuefractions and wood density both at the interspecies and intraspecies levels.We first quantified the proportions of fibres, vessels, and parenchyma (ray, axial, and total),and then used correlation analysis to relate tissue fractions with wood density. There was a significantdifference between species in the density of wood, ranging from 0.37 to 0.64 g cm-3. Diverse tissuefraction proportions were also observed among species. There was a positive correlation betweenwood density and total parenchyma fraction. In our variance partitioning analysis, we found that mosttraits vary between species, rather than within species.Overall, our study revealed a relationshipbetween wood density and tissue fractions in tropical trees, revealing complex interactions that drivewood density variation.

No description available.

No description available.