In this study of Lev Shestov, the biographical method is used to explain his philosophy. The grave crisis or nervous breakdown Shestov went through caused a total transformation of his - convictions and values. It was probably this drama that led to his repudiation of the common life and traditional philosophy with its emphasis on reason, knowledge, and ethics in favour of an extreme individualism and religious transcendence. The aim of the dissertation is to examine, amongst the great number of philosophers and writers Shestov analysed, mainly those in his view “marginal thinkers”, who were of the greatest interest to him – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther, and Søren Kierkegaard. On the basis of this analysis the character of Shestov’s philosophy is defined. According to Shestov, like his own crisis, the crises that these thinkers experienced occasioned a total transformation of their convictions and values. Šestov does not let his life find complete expression in his philosophy. Instead he projects his crisis into the five thinkers’ crises and philosophy. To characterize the previous and new modes of thinking, the concepts of alienation (degeneration, degradation, depravity) and authenticity (deliverance from alienation) are used. Shestov’s judgment of the consistency of the five thinkers’ new attitudes is presented, i.e. deliverance from the common life with its emphasis on rational eternal truths and moralism. Authentic life is in Shestov’s opinion the from the individual’s everyday life concealed experience of despair in extreme situations. This constitutes a grave crisis that leads to the repudiation of all hitherto held convictions and cherished hopes. The contrast between the Russian philosopher’s personal, (after his crisis) mainly tranquil, harmonious life and his philosophy is glaring. Analyzing the five thinkers, Shestov finds that they did not persevere with their new convictions, instead they complied with the by everybody accepted and everywhere valid truths. Shestov’s “theoretical”, uncompromising and consistent stance on one side and the lack of these characteristics with the aforementioned thinkers on the other side, to a great extent places Shestov in another category than these. In Shestov’s view freedom is in the region of tragedy, which nobody enters on his own will and in the incomprehensible trust in a capricious, “inhuman” God. According to Shestov, only the philosopher, who derives his thinking from a situation, where he experiences extreme despair and hopelessness, can claim to be a true philosopher. / <p>Examinator: docent Julie Hansen; Uppsala universitet</p>

This thesis focuses on the development and utilization of a virtual reality bicycle simulator for the purposes of traffic safety research. The bicycle simulator is developed using a virtual reality head mounted display (HMD) and commercially available hardware and software in the Unity framework. An experiment was conducted by exposing 24 participants to select scenarios in a virtual environment that were constructed to imitate a real-world location in Lund, Sweden. Observing the effects in term of immersion and cybersickness in relation to development. Recordings from drones were used to capture real life traffic from the location that were tracked and implemented into Unity for increased realism. The participants answered questionnaires incorporating VRSQ: Virtual reality sickness questionnaire and SPES: The spatial presence experience scale. The results indicate that the induced cybersickness is similar to, but slightly lower than that of average mean simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) results. SPES showed generally positive results, average answer being 3.6 on a scale from 1-5.

Bakgrund: Sjukfrånvaro, sjukskrivningar och ohälsa är något som kostar både samhället och företagen mycket pengar. En medarbetares personliga hälsa spelar en stor roll när det kommer till både lönsamhet och produktivitet på arbetsplatsen. Motion leder till att en individ blir bättre på att planera arbetsuppgifter, får bättre koncentration och initiativtagande. Många företag investerar i sin personal i form av friskvård, men den förbättrade prestationen varken redovisas eller mäts på ett specifikt konto i redovisningen.  Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om och hur företag använder sig av nyckeltal som mäter den ekonomiska resultateffekten av friskvård och andra hälsofrämjande insatser.  Metod: Vi kommer i det här arbetet använda oss av en kvalitativ metod tillsammans med en deduktiv ansats. Datainsamling sker genom semistrukturerade intervjuer eftersom vi då har möjlighet att anpassa våra frågor och följdfrågor. Totalt har 14 respondenter från 13 olika företag intervjuats.  Slutsats: Studien har visat att företag vanligtvis inte mäter den ekonomiska effektiviteten av friskvård och hälsofrämjande insatser, varken generellt eller med hjälp av bestämda nyckeltal. Flertalet upplever att det saknas ett enkelt tillvägagångssätt och många upplever inte sjukfrånvaron som ett problemområde. Samtidigt visade studien att sjukfrånvaron kan vara missvisande eftersom anställda underpresterar på grund av sjuknärvaro. / Background: Absence due to illness, sick leave and ill health is something that costs both society and companies a lot of money. An employee's personal health plays a big role when it comes to both profitability and productivity in the workplace. Exercise leads to an individual becoming better at planning tasks, gaining better concentration and initiative. Many companies invest in their staff in the form of wellness, but the improved performance is neither reported nor measured in a specific account in the accounting. Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to investigate whether and how companies use key performance indicators that measure the financial performance effect of employee welfare benefits and other health-promoting efforts. Method: In this essay we will mainly use a qualitative method together with a deductive approach. Data collection is conducted through semi-structured interviews, since we then have the opportunity to both adapt our questions and follow-up questions. A total of 14 respondents from 13 different companies were interviewed. Conclusion: The study has shown that companies usually do not measure the financial effectiveness of employee welfare benefits and health promotion efforts, neither generally nor with the help of specific key performance indicators. The majority feel that there is no simple approach and many do not experience sickness absence as a problem. At the same time, the study showed that sickness absence can be misleading because employees underperform due to presenteeism.

Previous studies show that hybrid work is now a big and important part of the society, both for employees and organizations. Hybrid work can be described as one of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced a lot of companies to implement extensive changes to reduce the spread of the virus. A big part of previous studies in this area has focused on hybrid work from an employees’ perspective. This purpose of this study is to examine how middle managers view the hybrid work model and how it affects different parts of the organization. The most central concept in the study is hybrid work, which allows employees to combine traditional office work with remote work. To answer the purpose of the study, a qualitative interview method has been used with four different companies participating. The analysis is conducted based on the presented empirical data in relation to the theoretical framework. Based on the results of the study, the conclusionis that hybrid work has become an important part at many companies after the pandemic. Hybrid work creates competitiveness and flexibility, but requires clear communication and individualized solutions to succeed. Challenges that exist are security, technology, lack of interaction, and the balance between work and private life. / Tidigare studier visar på att hybridarbete är en stor och viktig del av dagens samhälle, både för medarbetare och organisationer. Hybridarbete kan beskrivas som en av konsekvenserna av Covid-19-pandemin, vilket tvingade många företag att genomföra omfattande omställningar för att minska smittspridningen. En stor del av tidigare forskning inom detta område har berört hybridarbete ur ett medarbetarperspektiv. Den här studien syftar till att undersöka hur mellanchefer ser på den hybrida arbetsmodellen och hur den påverkar olika delar av organisationen. Det mest centrala begreppet i studien är hybridarbete, som innebär att medarbetare har möjlighet att kombinera kontorsarbete med arbete på distans. För att svara på studiens syfte har en kvalitativ intervjumetod använts där fyra olika företag har deltagit. Analysen är genomförd utifrån presenterad empiri i relation till den teoretiska referensramen. Utifrån studiens resultat är slutsatsen att hybridarbete blivit en central del på många arbetsplatser efter pandemin. Hybridarbetet skapar konkurrenskraft och flexibilitet, men behöver tydlig kommunikation och individanpassade lösningar för att lyckas. Utmaningar som finns är säkerhet, teknik, bristen på interaktion och balansen mellan arbetsliv och privatliv.

No / In the present study, we investigated the effect of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and 5-HT receptor agonists and antagonists on motion sickness in Suncus murinus, and the possibility that the emetic stimulus of 5-HT can alter the sensitivity of the animals to the different emetic stimulus of motion sickness. 5-HT (1.0, 2.0, 4.0 and 8.0 mg/kg ip) induced emesis and that was antagonised by methysergide (1.0 mg/kg ip), the 5-HT4receptor antagonist sulphamate[1-[2-[(methylsulphonyl)amino]ethyl]-4-piperidinyl]methyl-5-fluoro-2-methoxy-1H-indole-3-carboxylate (GR125487D; 1.0 mg/kg ip) and granisetron (0.5 mg/kg ip). Pretreatment with 5-HT caused a dose-related attenuation of the emetic response induced by a subsequent motion stimulus, which was not significantly modified by methysergide, granisetron or GR125487D pretreatment. (+)-1-(2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-2-amino-propane (DOI; 0.5 and 1.0 mg/kg ip), 8-hydroxy-2(di-n-propylamino)tetralin (8-OH-DPAT; 0.1 mg/kg ip) but not methysergide, GR125487D or granisetron, attenuated motion-induced emesis, and that was not affected by pretreatment with ketanserin (2.0 mg/kg, ip) or N-{2-[4-(2-methoxyphenyl)-1-piperazinyl]ethyl}-N-(2-pyridinyl)cyclohexanecarboxamide trihydrocholoride (WAY-100635; 1.0 mg/kg ip), respectively. Indeed, ketanserin alone (0.1, 0.3, 1.0 and 2.0 mg/kg ip) attenuated motion sickness. These data indicate that 5-HT1/2, 5-HT3 and 5-HT4 receptors are involved in the induction of 5-HT-induced emesis. However, agonist action at the 5-HT1A/7 and 5-HT2 receptors, and antagonist action at the 5-HT2A receptors can attenuate motion sickness in S. murinus.

Ambient temperature is an important abiotic factor shaping the process of pathogen transmission because of its effects on hosts, pathogens, and interactions between them. However, most experimental studies demonstrating the effects of temperature on transmission remain correlative and often exclude endothermic taxa, which modify behavior and energy allocation strategies in colder environments in ways that could increase pathogen spread. Additionally, because many endotherms serve as important reservoirs for zoonotic diseases and are facing conservation threats due to disease, understanding how temperature influences transmission in these systems has downstream relevance to human and wildlife health. In this dissertation, I use three laboratory experiments to determine how temperature affects several mechanisms of transmission in a naturally occurring songbird-pathogen system. House finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) are small songbirds that rely on bird feeders to meet thermoregulatory demands during winter. However, interactions with other birds at the feeder and contact with contaminated feeder surfaces are important sources of transmission of the bacterial pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG). These interactions likely contribute to the fall and winter outbreaks of mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, a disease characterized by severe conjunctival swelling and changes in behavior in house finches. In my first experiment, I simulated infection in house finches to determine how temperature (warm versus cold) affected contact-relevant sickness behaviors, and in turn, the potential for transmission. I found that ambient temperature had a complex effect on some but not all contact-relevant sickness behaviors in this system, which could have key implications for downstream pathogen spread. Next, I investigated how ambient temperatures influenced another mechanism of transmission, the viability and pathogenicity of MG harbored on bird feeder surfaces. I found that MG remained viable and pathogenic to birds significantly longer when incubated on feeder surfaces at colder versus warmer temperatures. In my final chapter, I determined how temperature influenced the pairwise-transmission of MG from an experimentally-inoculated "donor" bird to its susceptible "receiver" bird cagemate. Here I examined how temperature influenced host infectiousness and estimated exposure dose, as well as the behaviors of both sick and healthy birds. I found that donor birds in colder temperatures were slower to recover from infection, and thus remained infectious for longer, compared to donor birds in warmer temperatures. I also found that receiver birds had more contacts with bird feeders and higher estimated doses of MG in colder temperatures. Despite evidence suggesting that MG transmission could be more successful in colder versus warmer temperatures, overall transmission success did not differ by temperature treatment. My work highlights the complex and non-uniform effects of temperature on aspects of the MG transmission process and suggests ways that temperature could have major implications for seasonal disease dynamics in this system. More broadly, my dissertation provides a framework for testing how different abiotic factors could influence the spread of other directly-transmitted diseases, which will be needed now more than ever in the face of global climate change. / Doctor of Philosophy / Temperature can alter disease spread by changing how organisms interact with each other and their environment. Most scientific studies on this topic have focused on diseases in plants and cold-blooded animals, even though temperature can influence disease spread in warm-blooded animals as well. Warm-blooded animals must use large amounts of energy to stay warm in colder temperatures and will often change their behavior or how they spend their energy to save on energetic costs. In some cases, the way that warm-blooded animals respond to colder temperatures can also increase the risk of disease spread. Understanding how warm-blooded animals spread disease is important because many warm-blooded animals carry human diseases, and because climate change brings both conservation and disease threats. In this dissertation, I test how temperature influences factors that cause disease spread in a wild songbird. House finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) are social backyard birds that eat from bird feeders, particularly in winter months when ample food is needed to keep their bodies warm. However, busy bird feeders can cause sick and healthy birds to interact more frequently, and bird feeders themselves often carry the bacterium Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG), which causes contagious pink-eye like symptoms in birds. Like many animals, house finches that are sick with MG save energy during infection by spending less time being active. Colder temperatures can be problematic for sick birds because they must spend energy to stay warm but save enough energy for fighting infection. In my first experiment, I examined this conflict between temperature and infection in birds, and in turn, how this conflict could shape disease spread. I found that temperature affected some but not all sickness-related behaviors in house finches, which could mean more disease spread at some temperatures, and less at others. My next experiment studied the bacterium itself, and how well it can survive outside of birds in winter versus summer temperatures. I found that not only was MG better at surviving on a bird feeder in colder temperatures, but it also caused worse disease symptoms in birds over time. In my last experiment, I infected one bird with MG and determined if disease was more likely to spread to its healthy cagemate in warmer or colder temperatures. This was important for studying the effects of temperature on two other factors related to disease spread: the ability of sick hosts to remain contagious to others and the approximate number of pathogens eventually picked up by healthy individuals. I found that in colder temperatures, sick hosts had a harder time recovering, remaining contagious for longer. I also found that healthy bird partners were more likely to spend time at bird feeders in colder temperatures, where they encountered more pathogens on feeder surfaces. Despite these findings, overall MG spread was not higher in colder temperatures. This study provided some of the first evidence showing the complicated relationship between temperature and MG spread in house finches and suggests how temperature could play a role in the seasonal outbreaks of MG seen in nature. My study also provides a blueprint for studying how other environmental factors, such as humidity and rainfall, could shape the spread of other infectious diseases, which will be more important now than ever in a rapidly changing climate.

No description available.

<p>When users begin to experience virtual reality (VR) for the first time, they can be met with some degree of motion sickness and nausea, especially if continuous joystick locomotion is used. The symptoms that are induced during these VR experiences fall under the umbrella term cybersickness, and due to these uncomfortable experiences, these users can get a bad first impression and abandon the innovative technology, not able to fully appreciate the convenience and fascinating adventures VR has to offer. As such, this project compares the effects of two cybersickness mitigation methods (Dynamic Field of View (FOV) and Virtual Reference Frame), both against each other and combined, on user-reported cybersickness symptoms to determine the best combination to implement in commercial applications to help create more user-friendly VR experiences. The hypothesis is that combining the FOV reduction and the resting frame methods can mitigate VR cybersickness more effectively without hindering the user’s experience and the virtual nose method is more potent at mitigating cybersickness compared to dynamic FOV. To test these hypotheses, an experimental game was developed for the Meta Quest 2 with five levels: a tutorial level and four maze levels (one for each scenario). The participants were asked to complete the tutorial level until they got used to the virtual reality controls, and then they were instructed to complete the maze level twice with one of the following conditions for each run: no method, dynamic field of view only, virtual nose only, and dynamic field of view and virtual nose combined. After completing each maze trial, the participants were asked to complete a simulator sickness questionnaire to get their thoughts on how much sickness they felt during the test. Upon concluding the testing phase with 36 participants and compiling the data, the results showed that while the subjects preferred the dynamic FOV method even though they were able to complete the trials significantly faster with the virtual nose method, it is inconclusive regarding which method is truly more effective. Furthermore, the results showed that it is also inconclusive if the scenario with both methods enabled is significantly better or worse than either method used separately.</p>

Examensarbetet utgår ifrån en kommun vars sjukfrånvarostatistik är bland de högsta i landet. Vi har fått möjlighet att undersöka i vilken grad kommunens chefer känner till och arbetar efter uppsatt policy i rehabiliteringsärenden, deras attityd gentemot denna samt om och i förekommande fall, vad de anses saknas i policyn. Vi har även att undersökt vilka faktorer som har en positiv inverkan på rehabiliteringsprocessen. Teorin utgår från faktorer som enligt forskning visat sig ha en positiv inverkan på långtidssjukskrivna, exempelvis arbetsanpassning, tidig återgång i arbete samt social kontakt mellan arbetsgivare och sjukskriven. Metoden har främst utgått från ett kvantitativt förhållningssätt, då vi använt enkäter för att samla in material till undersökningen. Samtidigt finns kvalitativa drag då materialet både analyserats kvantitativt samt kvalitativt. Resultatet visar att cheferna till stor del känner till och arbetar efter kommunens policy. Cheferna visar en positiv attityd till att erbjuda medarbetare förändringar som innebär en snabbare återgång i arbete men inser även att det kan finnas begränsningar både i arbetets karaktär samt kommunens resurser. Slutsatserna visar att kommunen har flera möjligheter att förbättra sitt rehabiliteringsarbete för att möjliggöra till att medarbetaren snabbare kan återgå i arbete. De behöver bland annat utbilda sina chefer i presenterade faktorer som har positiv inverkan på rehabilitering samt samverkan. / The master thesis is based on a municipality whose sickness absence statistics are among the highest in the country. We have had the opportunity to investigate whether the municipality's managers work according to established policy in rehabilitation cases, as well as the attitude towards this and what they consider missing. We have also studied which factors have a positive impact on the rehabilitation process. The theory is based on factors that, according to research, have shown a positive impact on long-term sick leave, such as job adaptation, early return in work and social contact between employers and employee on sick leave. The method has primarily been based on a quantitative approach, we used surveys to collect material. At the same time there are qualitative features when the material is analysed both qualitative and quantitative. The results show that managers largely know and work according to the municipality´s policy. The managers also show a positive attitude to offer employees changes that mean a faster return to work, but also realize that there may be limitations in both the work´s nature and the municipality's resources. The conclusion shows that the municipality has several possibilities for change in order to improve their rehabilitation efforts to improve the opportunities for employees to return to work faster. One suggestion is to train their managers in presented factors that have a positive impact on rehabilitation.

Essay 1 (with Oskar Nordström Skans): This paper provides field evidence on the causal impact of past successes on future performances. Since persistence in success or failure is likely to be linked through, potentially time-varying, ability it is intrinsically difficult to identify the causal effect of succeeding on the probability of performing well in the future. We therefore employ a regression discontinuity design on data from professional golf tournaments exploiting that almost equally skilled players are separated into successes and failures half-way into the tournaments (the “cut”). We show that players who (marginally) succeeded in making the cut substantially increased their performance in subsequent tournaments relative to players who (marginally) failed to make the cut. This success-effect is substantially larger when the subsequent (outcome) tournament involves more prize money. The results therefore suggest that past successes provide an important prerequisite when performing high-stakes tasks. Essay 2: Recent experimental evidence suggests that women in general are more discouraged than men by failures which potentially can explain why women, on average, are less likely than men to reach top-positions in firms. This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence from the field on this issue using data from all-female and all-male professional golf tournaments to see if this result can be replicated among competitive men and women. These top-performing men and women are active in an environment with multiple rounds of competition and the institutional set-up of the tournaments makes it possible to causally estimate the effect of the result in one tournament on the performance in the next. The results show that both male and female golfers respond negatively to a failure and that their responses are virtually identical. This finding suggests that women’s difficulties in reaching top-positions in firms are caused by external rather than internal barriers. Essay 3: Voting is a fundamental human right. Yet, individuals that are younger than 18 do typically not have this right since they are considered uninformed. However, recent evidence tentatively suggests that the political knowledge of youths is endogenous to the voting age. I test for the existence of such dynamic adjustments utilizing voting age discontinuities caused by Swedish laws. I employ a regression discontinuity strategy on Swedish register data to estimate the causal effect of early age voting right on political knowledge around age 18. The results do not support the existence of positive causal effects of early age voting right on political knowledge. Thus, we should not expect that 16-year-olds respond by acquiring more political knowledge if they are given the right to vote. This finding weakens the case for a lowering of the voting age from 18 to 16. Essay 4 (with Lena Hensvik): We postulate that firms’ production losses  from absence depend on the employees’ internal substitutability, incentivizing firms to keep absence low in positions with few substitutes. Using Swedish employer-employee data we show that absence is substantially lower in such positions even conditional on establishment and occupation fixed effects. The result reflects sorting on both entry and exit margins, with stronger separations responses when it was difficult to predict the absence of the employees beforehand. These findings highlight that internal substitution insures firms against production disruptions caused by absence and that absence costs are important aspects of firms’ hiring and separations decisions.