The purpose of this thesis is to identify a general model to forecast GDP growth for the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. If the model provides reliable results for these states, then the model should be able to forecast GDP growth for other countries of interest. Forecasts are made by using a reduced vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The VAR models make use of past values of Gross Domestic Product-Inflation-Unemployment as explanatory variables. The performed forecasts have provided good results for horizons up to t+8. The forecasts for 2009 (t+12) are in line with those of several other actors. It is reasonable to assume that some of the forecasts for t+16 have reliable results. The Lithuanian forecast show a fall in GDP with 12.51 per cent in 2009 and a GDP growth of 4.23 per cent in 2010. The forecast for Estonia show that the GDP will decrease with 1.49 per cent in 2009 and 12.72 per cent in 2010. Finally the forecast for Latvia show a fall in GDP of 3.1 per cent in 2009 and 18 per cent in 2010. From the findings it is possible to conclude that the model provided reliable estimates of future levels of GDP for the Baltic States and the benchmark countries. This indicates that the model should be applicable on other countries of interest.

Uppsatsen syftar till att ge en bild av hur den ryska Östersjömarinen har förändrats sen Kalla krigets slut. För att skapa en överskådlig och konkret bild för läsaren har tre parametrar belysts dessa är uppgifter, resurser och materiel. En avgränsning i tid har gjorts då jag avser rikta in min analys på tre årtal, 1992, 2000 och 2007 dock har en mindre historisk invisning gjorts. Uppsatsens frågeställningar är: Hur har Östersjömarinens uppgifter, resurser och uppgifter förändrats sen Kalla krigets slut?     Östersjömarinen var som störst i slutet på Kalla kriget. Under 1990-talet då Ryssland befann sig i en ekonomisk kris drabbades hela den ryska krigsmakten och inte minst Östersjömarinen av neddragningar och minskat manöverutrymme. Antalet fartyg minskade och tillfälle till övningar försvann. Efter millennieskiftet stabiliserades Rysslands ekonomi och Östersjömarinens styrka växte, samarbetet med väst utökades och Ryssland deltar t.ex. i övningar med Nato. Under 2000-talet har Ryssland stärkts ytterligare och Östersjömarinen spelar allt en större roll i Rysslands vilja att försvara sina ekonomiska intressen. De militära utgifterna har ökat och nyproduktion av fartyg både till ryska flottan och för export har börjat byggas under 2000-talet. / Russia has since the fall of the Soviet Union faced some severe economic issues. During the 1990s the economy was rebuilt from a planned economy towards a more liberalized economy, and therefore a crisis was at hand. This unbalanced economy turned after the millennium, since a new president with a strong will strengthened Russia’s economy. This development after the Cold War also affected the Russian armed forces. The purpose of this essay is to describe the change in the Russian Baltic Fleet since the end of the Cold War. The study intends to answer the following questions: How have the economic recourses, the material situation and finally how the tasks changed in the Russian Baltic Fleet since the Cold War ended? To answer these questions I have analyzed a wealth of published materials covering this subject. The essay is built on three parameters: tasks, resources and material. With these three dimensions in mind I have built a total picture of the alterations that have been made in the Russian Baltic Fleet over the passed years.  The study has been carried out with the help of a comparative descriptive method.     The result of this essay shows that the purpose and tasks for the Baltic Fleet have changed since the end of the Cold War. During the 1980s the goals in the Baltic were more aggressive and apparent. The strategic goals changed after the Cold War and the Baltic Fleet became more defensive. The tasks today concentrate upon Russia’s maritime interests, international cooperation and intervention.     The Russian Fleet suffered from severe economic reductions during the 1990s. Since the new millennium the Russian economy has been strengthened and so have the Baltic Fleet. The result of how the material situation has changed since the Cold war ended is substantial. During the 1990s the number of ships became fewer and fewer.  Since 1998 the reduction of ships has stabilized and has since then been the same. The ships that serve in the Baltic Fleet are very old and few new ships have been added to the fleet.

The aim of the thesis is to analyse the preconditions for increasedsalmon angling in the remaining wild salmon rivers in Upper Norrland in northernSweden, as well as to evaluate the present and possible future impacts on the localeconomy. It includes the identification of the internal and external conditions, in what ishere called the Salmon Utilisation Landscape, that influence the present use as well asfuture development of the Baltic salmon as a resource in angling. The empirical materialsderive from two mail surveys, 1) a survey of anglers in the River Byske and 2) a jointNordic survey on the economic value of recreational fishing.Interest in recreational fishing is widespread in Sweden. About 35 % of adultSwedes fish for recreation. Recreational fishery and angling can be seen as one expressionof the urbanised society's need for contact with nature and outdoor recreation. Salmonangling is one part of recreational fishery. Salmon are considered by many to be the 'biggame' of angling. Salmon anglers are often the most devoted kind of anglers, investingconsiderable resources into this leisure activity. The subgroup of Swedish salmon anglingspecialists is estimated at 10-30,000 persons. The wider category of Active River anglersconsists of approximately 170,000 persons.Salmon fishing in the River Byske has turned out to be representative of salmonangling in Upper Norrland, comparable with other high-class Scandinavian salmon rivers.The growing proportion of remote anglers in the 1990s indicates that the Byske hasbecome a rather specialised angling water. The groups of Fishing tourists and Home fishersmake up two distinctive categories. Fishing tourists fish more intensively, have higher dailyexpenditures and show higher consumer surplus. They fish the river almost entirely forsalmon in. On the other hand, Home fishers to a large extent claim the right to fish fordecent prices and without any particular restrictions. During the 1990s, the average annualincome to the local economy of Byske river valley derived from salmon angling fishingtourism was about 850,000 SEK.Many river habitats have been depleted during the 20th century and many salmonstocks were exterminated by severe degeneration factors linked to industrialisation. To thisis added the over-fishing on wild stocks of salmon and the mortality syndrome, M74. Theavailable estimates of the potential production of wild salmon smolt in Upper Norrlandaggregates close to 1.2 million. This can be converted to an angling activity of some250,000 fishing days.On the basis of the prevailing cost level, the potential angling activity in UpperNorrland would amount to a direct annual turnover of 75 million SEK, however theimpact caused by fishing tourism is likely to remain within the interval of 10 - 30 millionSEK. The Active River anglers' average willingness to pay for annual access to a salmon andsea trout scenario was 1,100 SEK per capita. There is a widespread attitude among manyanglers that fishing should be accessible for all and prices should be kept low. In theNordic context such opinions are especially evident among Swedish anglers in general, butless frequent among devoted salmon anglers. / digitalisering@umu

The last century, humans have been altering almost all natural environments at an accelerating rate, including the Baltic Sea that has highly eutrophicated areas and many coastal industries such as Pulp-mills. For animals living in a habitat that changes there are basically two alternatives, either to cope with the change or become locally extinct. This thesis aims to investigate if recent anthropogenic disturbance in the Baltic Sea can affect natural populations on a genetic level through natural selection. First, we found a fine-scale genetic structure in three-spine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) populations along the Swedish coast (paper I), indicating limited gene-flow between populations in geographic proximity. Different genetic markers, specifically Amplified Fragment Lenght Polymorpism (AFLP, and microsatellites,  gave different results, highlighting the heterogeneous character of genomes which demonstrates that it is important to choose a genetic marker that is relevant for the question at hand. With a population genomic approach, and a multilocus genetic marker (AFLP), we detected convergent evolution in genotype composition in stickleback populations living in environments affected by pulp-mill effluent (paper II) and in highly eutrophicated environments (paper III), compared to adjacent reference populations. We found loci, in both studies (paper II, III), that were different from a neutral distribution and thus probably under divergent selection for the habitat differences investigated. The selective effect from pulp-mill effluents were more pronounced, but the two different habitats had mutual characters (AFLP loci). In paper IV, we converted five anonymous AFLP loci to sequenced markers and aligned them to the stickleback genome. Four out of five loci aligned within, or close to, coding regions on chromosome I, chromosome VIII, chromosome XIX and chromosome XX. One of the loci, located on chromosome VIII and identified as under divergent selection in both paper II and III, has been identified in other studies as to be under selection for fresh water adaptation, including Baltic Sea stickleback populations. In conclusion, anthropogenic alterations of natural environments can have evolutionary consequences, probably adaptive, for the animals living there and the evolutionary response exhibited by natural populations can be very fast. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

The river lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) was previously caught in large numbers in Europe when migrating up in the rivers during autumn for spawning the next spring. It was used as food and was also used as bait in cod fishing in the North Sea. Today the river lamprey has decreased in numbers over much of it’s distribution range, but in the Baltic Sea area, the population is still at a fairly good level, and fishing for lampreys as food (a tradition going back to at least the fifteenth century) is still going on in northern Swedish and Finnish rivers, as well as in coastal rivers in the southern Baltic Sea area. In this article the current situation as regards river lamprey fishing in Sweden, Finland, Latvia and, to some extent, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland is presented.

Seawater and wastewater all around the world contain toxins and pollutants, not the least drug residues, including hormoneswhich disturb the ecosystems and antibiotics with growing multi-drug resistance of bacteria as a result. The effects onecosystems and mankind can be severe and with this general fact the need for proper analysis devices increases. This haspromoted further studies to establish devices for detection of analytes with high selectivity and high sensitivity. In this thesis Ipresent a unique device exploiting capture of antigen on antibody conjugated actin filaments and subsequent transportationof the antigen in Baltic Sea water using heavy meromyosin (HMM) motor fragments from muscle myosin. The model-antibody,anti-rIgG, used in the study, was covalently attached to the actin filaments, capturing a model-analyte, rIgG that was dissolvedin the Sea water. Furthermore, the effect of Baltic Sea water on HMM propelled actin filament transportation in the in vitromotility assay was studied. An effect was observed with Baltic Sea water, supplemented with standard adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) and oxygen scavenger systems, reducing the sliding velocity by approximately 80%. However the effect wasreversible which is of great advantage in relation to the development of a future biosensor device incorporating actomyosindriven transports. Additionally, evidence was found that the substance A slightly enhanced the function of the proteins whenstored on a motility assay surface at 4-8 °C for up to ten days, of value for practical applications of a potential biosensordevice. The results demonstrate the potential that antigen from sea water could be captured and transported by actomyosinto certain detector areas and eventually become concentrated which would increase the sensitivity of the device.

The global silicon (Si) cycle is of fundamental importance for the global carbon cycle. Diatom growth in the oceans is a major sequestration pathway for carbon on a global scale (often referred to as the biological pump). Patterns of diatoms preserved in marine sediment records can reveal both natural and anthropogenic driven environmental change, which can be used to understand silicon dynamics and climate change. Si isotopes have been shown to have great potential in order to understand the Si cycle by revealing both past and present patterns of dissolved Si (DSi) utilization, primarily when diatoms form their siliceous frustules (noted as biogenic silica, BSi). However, studies using Si isotopes are still scarce and only a few studies exist where stable Si isotopes are used to investigate the biogeochemical Si cycle in aquatic systems. Therefore, this thesis focuses on developing analytical methods for studying BSi and DSi and also provides tools to understand the observed Si isotope distribution, which may help to understand impacts of climate change and human perturbations on marine ecosystems. The Baltic Sea, one of the biggest estuarine systems in the world, was chosen as the study site. BSi samples from a sediment core in Bothnian Bay, the most northern tip of the Baltic Sea, and diatom samples from the Oder River, draining into the southern Baltic Sea were measured and reported in Paper II and III, after establishing a method for Si isotope measurements (Paper I). Si isotope fractionation during diatom production and dissolution was also investigated in a laboratory-controlled experiment (Paper IV) to validate the observations from the field. The major result is that Si isotope signatures in BSi can be used as an historical archive for diatom growth and also related to changes in climate variables. There is isotopic evidence that the Si cycle has been significantly altered in the Baltic Sea catchment by human activities. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Understanding the interaction of multiple drivers and their compounded effects on ecosystem dynamics is a key challenge for marine resource management. The Baltic Sea is one of the world’s seas most strongly impacted by effects from both human activities and climate. In the late 1980’s changes in climate in combination with intensive fishing initiated a reorganization of the Central Baltic Sea (CBS) food web resulting in the current sprat-dominated state. In the future, climate change is projected to cause drastic changes in hydrodynamic conditions of the world oceans in general, and the Baltic Sea in particular.   In this thesis, CBS food web responses to the combined effects of fishing, nutrient loads and climate were tested for the past (1974-2006) and projected into the future (2010-2098). A new food web model for the CBS (BaltProWeb) was developed using extensive monitoring data across trophic levels. This model described the past food web dynamics well, and was hence also used for future (2010-2098) projections. Different ensemble modeling approaches were employed when testing the food web response to future scenarios. The results show that regardless the climate change, the management of nutrient loads and cod fishing are likely to determine the food web dynamics and trophic control mechanisms in the future Baltic Sea. Consequently, the variation in the food web projections was large, ranging from a strongly eutrophied and sprat-dominated to a cod-dominated CBS with eutrophication levels close to today’s values. The results also suggest a potential risk of abrupt ecosystem changes in the future CBS, particularly if the nutrient loads are not reduced. Finally, the studies illustrate the usefulness of the ensemble modeling approach, both from the perspective of ecosystem-based management as well as for studying the importance of different mechanisms in the ecosystem response. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: In press. Paper 5: Submitted.</p>

Den planerade gasledningen Nord Stream, eller ”den ryska gasledningen”, har varit föremål för enintensiv debatt sedan hösten 2006 i såväl pressen som i riksdagen. Debatten har spänt över ett brettfält där miljöhänsyn och säkerhetspolitiska aspekter har avlösts av inlägg rörande Sverigeshandlingsfrihet inom ramen för internationella havsrättsliga avtal och hur Nord Stream skahandläggas för att denna handlingsfrihet inte ska begränsas inom ramen för svenskförvaltningslagstiftning.Föreliggande arbete analyserar debatten runt Nord Stream från det att projektet presenterades påvåren 2005 och fram till den särskilda debatt som hölls i riksdagen samma dag som Nord StreamAG inlämnade sig ansökan om miljöprövning till regeringen. Källmaterialet har hämtats fråndebattsidorna i Sveriges två största morgontidningar samt från riksdagens kammare och därefteranalyserats med en argumentationsanalytisk modell enligt Arne Næss. / The planed gas pipeline Nord Stream, or “the Russian gas pipeline”, has been subject of an intensedebate since the fall off 2006 in both media and in the Swedish parliament. The debate havecovered a wide area of subjects where environmental issues and security policy have beenfollowed by arguments concerning Swedish freedom of action within the framework of the UNLaw of the sea and with Swedish administrative law.The purpose of this work is to analyse the debate concerning Nord Stream from the time when theproject was first presented and up until the Special debate in the Swedish parliament on the sameday as the request from Nord Stream AG to go on with the project was received by the Swedishgovernment. The source materials are debate articles in the two leading Swedish newspapers andfrom the Swedish parliament, the riksdag. The material has then been analysed from an argumentanalysis model according to Arne Næss. / Avdelning: ALB - Slutet Mag 3 C-upps. Hylla: Upps. ChP 06-08

Syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera Grebzdes novellsamling Bergen enligt Michail Bachtins kronotopteori. Jag baserar min kronotopmodell, som uppstår i Bergen, enligt de modeller som utvecklats av litteraturvetaren Juris Rozītis. Romanerna, vilka undersöks av Rozītis behandlar tiden efter andra världskriget i flyktingläger och hur flyktingarna upplever de första åren utanför sitt gamla hemland Lettland samt hur de bosätter sig i det nya landet. I denna uppsats tänker jag gå ett steg längre än Rozītis, eftersom jag ska analysera hur flyktingarna, dvs. novellernas karaktärer, lever i det nya landet. / I have analyzed the collection of Irma Grebzde's short stories "Where the Mountains Meet the Sky", published (in the Latvian language) in 1962 in New York, USA, and found that the times and venues in Grebzde's narratives correspond to the chronotope models developed by literary historian Juris Rozītis for novels written in the immediate post-Second World War years. I have expanded upon the Rozītis' models, and created a new model called "Alone in the New Country". This new model describes and positions Irma Grebzde's short stories in Canada - the new country. It also places the parallel space of Latvia, now occupied by the Soviets - outside the immediate circle of the abstract external chronotope, since in Grebzde's short stories, the old homeland no longer has such a dominating function.