<p>Essay 1: Hurst and Lusardi (2004) use higher-order polynomials in wealth in estimating the relationship with entrepreneurship. They find evidence conflicting with the existence of extensive liquidity constraints in the United States. In this paper, their approach is replicated on Swedish data. A positive relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship is found, which supports the liquidity constraints hypothesis. Alternative methods attempting to handle the endogeneity problem and distinguish between absolute decreasing risk aversion and liquidity constraints give further support to the hypothesis. The paper suggests that there exist liquidity constraints in Sweden, which are possibly more extensive than in the United States.</p><p>Essay 2: Displacement is expected to decrease the reservation wage of self-employment by decreasing earnings in paid employment and increasing the probability of unemployment. This paper examines whether displacement increases the probability of self-employment using propensity score matching on Swedish register-based data. The data include all individuals displaced due to plant closures in 1987 and 1988, and a random sample of 200,000 employed individuals. The results suggest that displacement almost doubles the probability of entering self-employment the year after displacement. A sub-sample analysis indicates that individuals with a potentially worse position on the labor market react more strongly to displacement in terms of entering self-employment.</p><p>Essay 3: A large literature has studied the effect of displacement on labor market outcomes in general, but no one has evaluated how the displaced succeed as self-employed. This paper studies how the survival of the business is affected by displacement in connection to entry, using a discrete-time proportional hazard model on a matched sample of displaced and non-displaced individuals. The main result of the paper is that, as a consequence of previous displacement, the probability of switching from self-employment to paid employment decreases and the probability of switching to unemployment is unaffected.</p>

In this thesis we examine singularities of surfaces and affine Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$ of type $A^{(1)}$, by considering the action of a particular torus $widehat{T}$ on $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$. Let $Sigma$ be an irreducible $widehat{T}$-stable surface in $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$ and let $u$ be an attractive $widehat{T}$-fixed point with $widehat{T}$-stable affine neighborhood $Sigma_u$. We give a description of the $widehat{T}$-weights of the tangent space $T_u(Sigma)$ of $Sigma$ at $u$, give some conditions under which $Sigma$ is nonsingular at $u$, and provide some explicit criteria for $Sigma_u$ to be normal in terms of the weights of $T_u(Sigma)$. We will also prove a conjecture regarding the singular locus of an affine Schubert variety in $mathcal{G}/mathcal{P}$. / Mathematics

Continuous longitudinal and transverse U-bar joint connections between flanges of the decked bulb-Ts (DBTs) or between precast panels for accelerated bridge construction are investigated. The procedure for selecting durable closure pour (CP) materials for the connections is discussed firstly. The accelerated construction is quantified as two categories: overnight cure and 7-day cure of CP materials. Candidate materials are selected first based on literature review as well as tests of compressive strength and flow and workability. Then, performance criteria for selecting durable CP materials for both categories are developed based on durability tests of selected candidate materials. These durability tests include freezing-and-thawing durability, shrinkage, bond, and permeability tests. To investigate the longitudinal U-bar joint details, four pairs of full-scale slabs connected by a U-bar detail with one of the selected CP materials, overnight cure and 7-day cure, were tested. The loading demand necessary in the slab testing is determined based on the maximum forces in the longitudinal joint from an analytical parametric study. Static and fatigue tests under four-point flexural loading and three-point flexural-shear loading were conducted. Test results were evaluated based on flexural capacity, curvature behavior, cracking, deflection and steel strain. The transverse U-bar joint details are investigated to provide negative moment continuity in the multi-span bridges. Four full-scale specimens connected by a U-bar detail with one of the selected CP materials, overnight cure and 7-day cure, were tested. Static and fatigue tests under tension loading were conducted. The loading demand necessary in the beam testing is determined based on the maximum forces in the transverse joint from an analytical study. Test results were evaluated based on tension capacity, cracking, displacement and steel strain. Based on the test results, the developed longitudinal and transverse U-bar joint details are viable connection systems.

Klimpfjäll is a mountain village in the south of Lappland. In the middle of the 1970's a mine was set up in Stekenjokk about 20 km west of Klimpfjäll. A new housing estate was built, as an extension of Klimpfjäll, to accommodate the miners (about 170 people) and their families. This new part of Klimpfjäll was named, by the local inhabitants, Nybyn (The New Village), and the original village became known as Gammelbyn (The Old Village). For many of the people, the move to Nybyn was not just a case of being provided with the opportunity to earn a living. It was part of a life-objective. However, this way of life had an obstacle; the mine had a limited lifespan. A number of Nybyn's inhabitants could possibly remain in the village, even after the closing of the mine, but for the majority this was an impossibility. Nevertheless, the people still believed in the possibility of "saving" Nybyn as a whole, despite the unreasonableness of that belief. This was also the belief held by the local council, the state and the mining company. I have named this phenomenon "mystification". The future of Klimpfjäll became a mystery. The people would rather not discuss the future of Klimpfjäll because they know that it does not exist, they, nevertheless, want to believe in it. It is this mystification that made the establishment of the mine possible, and which holds Nybyn together socially. The Social Welfare Service in Vilhelmina had, for a long time, regarded Klimpfjäll as a social problem. The problem was defined as being traditional social problems, due partly to addiction and partly to loneliness. For this reason an action research project was started. But the real problem for the people of Nybyn was the uncertainty of the future. The project was doomed to fail. Why should the people of Nybyn "go to evening classes" when their village was being threatened with closure? The project became just one element in the continuing mystification. It was not possible to redefine the project as a "survival project", since everyone wanted to believe in a continue future for the mine. In this study I have attempted to understand why it was impossible for the action research project to succeed. In understanding its failure I believe that we can also understand the people of Klimpfjäll. / digitalisering@umu

Essay 1: Hurst and Lusardi (2004) use higher-order polynomials in wealth in estimating the relationship with entrepreneurship. They find evidence conflicting with the existence of extensive liquidity constraints in the United States. In this paper, their approach is replicated on Swedish data. A positive relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship is found, which supports the liquidity constraints hypothesis. Alternative methods attempting to handle the endogeneity problem and distinguish between absolute decreasing risk aversion and liquidity constraints give further support to the hypothesis. The paper suggests that there exist liquidity constraints in Sweden, which are possibly more extensive than in the United States. Essay 2: Displacement is expected to decrease the reservation wage of self-employment by decreasing earnings in paid employment and increasing the probability of unemployment. This paper examines whether displacement increases the probability of self-employment using propensity score matching on Swedish register-based data. The data include all individuals displaced due to plant closures in 1987 and 1988, and a random sample of 200,000 employed individuals. The results suggest that displacement almost doubles the probability of entering self-employment the year after displacement. A sub-sample analysis indicates that individuals with a potentially worse position on the labor market react more strongly to displacement in terms of entering self-employment. Essay 3: A large literature has studied the effect of displacement on labor market outcomes in general, but no one has evaluated how the displaced succeed as self-employed. This paper studies how the survival of the business is affected by displacement in connection to entry, using a discrete-time proportional hazard model on a matched sample of displaced and non-displaced individuals. The main result of the paper is that, as a consequence of previous displacement, the probability of switching from self-employment to paid employment decreases and the probability of switching to unemployment is unaffected.

Background: Vacuum assisted closure, VAC, is a method which can benefit wound closure. There are not many reliable studies about the effects of VAC in different types of wounds. Previous studies have shown that patients have experienced pain during dressing changes. Aim: The aim of the study was to survey in what kind of wounds the vascular surgery ward have been using VAC, to study the treatment process of VAC and how it has been documented and also to investigate if patients with VAC experienced pain during dressing changes. Method: The patients were chosen from a ledger, which contained 77 patients that had been treated with VAC on the vascular surgery ward. Data were collected with a journal survey protocol. Results: The result is based on 67 patients with a total of 79 wounds. VAC was shown to have a good effect on wound healing and infected surgical wounds were the most commonly wound category undergoing treatment with VAC. There was a lack of documentation concerning VAC and the number of wounds, which were not being measured or photographed, before, during and after VAC was 41, 44 and 56. The complications that occurred was bleeding, the suction cup came off or that the patient experienced great pain. The number of days the wound was treated with VAC differed from one to 70 days. The average of numbers of days treated with VAC was 18,5 days. The dressings were changed most commonly two to three times a week. In 18 wounds (23 %), the patients reported pain during dressing changes. Due to lack of documentation, it was impossible, in 45 cases (57 %) to see if the patient had experienced pain during dressing change. Conclusion: Despite the lack in the documentation about the VAC treatment the study shows good results in the majority of the wounds treated with VAC. Some patients experienced pain during dressing changes and therefore it is important to recognize, treat, evaluate and document this. / Bakgrund: Vacuumassisterad sårbehandling, VAC, är en metod vilken kan underlätta sårläkning. Det har utförts alldeles för få studier med hög kvalitet som har studerat effekterna av behandlingen på olika typer av sår. Tidigare studier har visat att patienter upplever smärta vid omläggning av VAC-svamp. Syfte: Studiens syften var att kartlägga vilka typer av sår den kärlkirurgiska avdelningen behandlar med VAC, studera behandlingsprocessen vid VAC och hur den dokumenteras samt undersöka om patienter upplever smärta i samband med byte av VAC-svamp. Metod: Patienterna valdes ut från en liggare på den kärlkirurgiska avdelningen vilken innehöll 77 patienter. Data samlades in med hjälp av ett journalgranskningsprotokoll. Resultat: Resultatet baseras på 67 patienter vilket innefattar 79 sår. VAC som behandlingsmetod visade sig ha bra effekt på sårläkning av de flesta sår och infekterade operationssår var den sårkategori som genomgick flest behandlingar med VAC. Dokumentationen om VAC var sparsam och de antal sår som varken var mätta eller fotograferade innan, under och efter behandling med VAC upp gick till 41 respektive 44 och 56 sår. De komplikationer som uppstod var blödning, att sugproppen lossnade eller att patienten upplevde stor smärta. Omläggning skedde vanligen två till tre gånger per vecka. Medelvärdet på antalet dagar såret behandlades med VAC uppgick till 18,5 dagar. Antalet dagar såret behandlades med VAC varierade från en till 70 dagar. I 18 fall (23 %) har patienten rapporterat smärta vid omläggning av VAC. I 45 fall (57 %) gick det inte att se om patienten hade känt någon smärta vid omläggning. Slutsats: Trots att dokumentationen om behandlingen var bristfällig på flera plan visar studien ett gott resultat av VAC-behandlingen i majoriteten av de sår som behandlades. Vissa patienter upplevde smärta vid omläggning och därför är det viktigt att uppmärksamma, behandla, utvärdera och dokumentera denna.

Societies in the developed world are becoming increasingly diverse as they experience growth in the number and size of minority groups, including visible minorities, immigrants, and, in some countries, Indigenous peoples. Societys institutions, including the health care system and its professional groups, are increasingly challenged to enhance their understanding of and respect for such societal diversity in providing services, and to work to reflect this diversity in the makeup of their membership. While many of the health care professions, including nursing, have acknowledged the importance of inclusion of individuals from diverse groups, their successes in meeting targeted increases have been limited. The purpose of this research was to elicit stories of nursing leadership that successfully promoted diversity and enhanced inclusiveness within the profession. The research problem was stated as follows: What were the experiences and stories of nurse leaders who successfully provided leadership to increase diversity and inclusion within the profession? The study used modified narrative inquiry research methods. The research was built on a conceptual framework consisting of three major concepts: diversity, critical leadership, and professional closure. The study focused on the stories of five Canadian nurse leaders who described and explained through their stories their leadership characteristics and challenges. Their stories of promoting diversity and inclusion were explored from a critical perspective, using literature found primarily in the fields of nursing and education to guide the exploration.<p> These leaders stories revealed their understanding that the nursing profession currently expected its members to represent the norm-- white middle class females. The stories showed that the participating nurse leaders generally had views of diversity that were broader than culture, ethnicity and race, the views that were most commonly addressed in the mainstream nursing literature. Their broad views of diversity included difference based on gender, sexual orientation, and ability. These views often arose from personal experiences of difference related to ethnicity, language, country of origin, gender, presence of an accent, or family circumstances. The leaders interviewed indicated that they saw a lack of tolerance for difference within the profession, but not simply in relation to cultural or physical difference. They described a lack of acceptance within the profession of different ways of thinking and beingreferred to in the study as diversity of thought. They reported that the profession expected and reinforced conformist thinking and tended to support the status quo.<p> The study findings contributed to an expanded understanding of the conceptual approach of critical leadership as a process to support diversity and promote inclusion in the profession. A conceptual framework for critical leadership, based on the work of Foster (1986; 1989) and Ryan (2006a; 2006b) was enhanced and expanded as a result of the study findings. Critical leadership involved critique, transformation, education, ethics, and inclusion. The study findings supported the view that the profession of nursing, perhaps inadvertently, limited access to the profession by marginalized groups. This process was called professional closure, and occurred as a result of increasing entrance requirements, inconsistent language requirements, and segmenting minority groups in lower paid practical nurse and front line positions, with little opportunity for advancement.<p> These findings about diversity and leadership, and about leadership for diversity, challenged the nursing profession to look beyond its day-to-day busyness, and to move beyond its current locked-down, controlled, risk-averse practices. The study findings challenged the profession to embrace the possibilities of increasing its diversity and inclusiveness, with the ultimate goal of building a better, stronger, more just profession and a better, stronger, more just society.<p> The study has significant implications for theory, practice, research and policy in the profession. From a theoretical perspective, the study pointed to the need for the nursing profession to contemplate its social obligations with respect to promoting social justice in society. The study findings suggest that the profession might engage in national level policy discussions committed to increasing the diversity of the profession in order to reflect the community it serves. This study suggests the need for additional qualitative and quantitative studies on critical leadership to further develop the conceptualizations that evolved in this study. Policy discussions are implicated to address approaches to difference, inclusion, culture, cultural competence, cultural safety, affirmative action and inclusive policy in nursing, nursing education and health care institutions.

Furopyranones and furopyrrolones are furan-fused bicyclic heterocycles containing pyranone and pyrrolone framework respectively. Many natural products and pharmaceutical agents include these core structures. In this study, new synthetic methodologies were developed for the synthesis of furopyranone and furopyrrolone derivatives. In the first section of this thesis, methyl 2-(2-methoxy-2-oxoethyl)-3-furoate was hydrolyzed forming 2-(carboxymethyl)-3-furoic acid which underwent intramolecular cyclization reaction using two different methodologies forming furopyranone derivatives. In the second part of the study, 2-(carboxymethyl)-3-furoic acid was regioselectively converted to acyl azide, which was accomplished by utilizing the reactivity differences between the two acid functionalities within the molecule. This acyl azide was then transformed into urea derivative to perform cyclization reaction yielding a new furan-fused heterocycle, furopyrrolone. In both parts of this study, ring closure reactions were achieved benefiting from the reactivities of different carbonyl groups within the molecules.

Autoignition of non-premixed methane-air mixtures is investigated using first-order Conditional Moment closure (CMC). In CMC, scalar quantities are conditionally averaged with respect to a conserved scalar, usually the mixture fraction. The conditional fluctuations are often of small order, allowing the chemical source term to be modeled as a function of the conditional species concentrations and the conditional enthalpy (temperature). The first-order CMC derivation leaves many terms unclosed such as the conditional scalar dissipation rate, velocity and turbulent fluxes, and the probability density function. Submodels for these quantities are discussed and validated against Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). The CMC and the turbulent velocity and mixing fields calculations are decoupled based on the frozen mixing assumption, and the CMC equations are cross-stream averaged across the flow following the shear flow approximation. Finite differences are used to discretize the equations, and a two-step fractional method is implemented to treat separately the stiff chemical source term. The stiff ODE solver LSODE is used to solve the resulting system of equations. The recently developed detailed chemical kinetics mechanism UBC-Mech 1.0 is employed throughout this study, and preexisting mechanisms are visited. Several ignition criteria are also investigated. Homogeneous and inhomogeneous CMC calculations are performed in order to investigate the role of physical transport in autoignition. Furthermore, the results of the perfectly homogeneous reactor calculations are presented and the critical value of the scalar dissipation rate for ignition is determined. The results are compared to the shock tube experimental data of Sullivan et al. The current results show good agreement with the experiments in terms of both ignition delay and ignition kernel location, and the trends obtained in the experiments are successfully reproduced. The results were shown to be sensitive to the scalar dissipation model, the chemical kinetics, and the ignition criterion.

Autoignition of non-premixed methane-air mixtures is investigated using first-order Conditional Moment closure (CMC). In CMC, scalar quantities are conditionally averaged with respect to a conserved scalar, usually the mixture fraction. The conditional fluctuations are often of small order, allowing the chemical source term to be modeled as a function of the conditional species concentrations and the conditional enthalpy (temperature). The first-order CMC derivation leaves many terms unclosed such as the conditional scalar dissipation rate, velocity and turbulent fluxes, and the probability density function. Submodels for these quantities are discussed and validated against Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). The CMC and the turbulent velocity and mixing fields calculations are decoupled based on the frozen mixing assumption, and the CMC equations are cross-stream averaged across the flow following the shear flow approximation. Finite differences are used to discretize the equations, and a two-step fractional method is implemented to treat separately the stiff chemical source term. The stiff ODE solver LSODE is used to solve the resulting system of equations. The recently developed detailed chemical kinetics mechanism UBC-Mech 1.0 is employed throughout this study, and preexisting mechanisms are visited. Several ignition criteria are also investigated. Homogeneous and inhomogeneous CMC calculations are performed in order to investigate the role of physical transport in autoignition. Furthermore, the results of the perfectly homogeneous reactor calculations are presented and the critical value of the scalar dissipation rate for ignition is determined. The results are compared to the shock tube experimental data of Sullivan et al. The current results show good agreement with the experiments in terms of both ignition delay and ignition kernel location, and the trends obtained in the experiments are successfully reproduced. The results were shown to be sensitive to the scalar dissipation model, the chemical kinetics, and the ignition criterion.