Along the northern coast of the Bothnian Gulf between Umeå and Luleå live 65 percent of northern Norrland's population, yet there is no coastal railway that connects these cities with each other. In 2010, Botniabanan was completed, partially a new coastal railway between the cities of Sundsvall and Umeå. This was the first railway construction in Norrland in 80 years. Now it's time again, 2018 started the first construction phase of the Norrbotniabanan from Umeå in direction towards the city of Luleå. When the railway is completed, the line will pass through places that have not previously had a railway connection, including the small town Robertsfors. Robertsfors, with its strategic location between Umeå and Skellefteå, has a unique opportunity to expand its local labor market and increase its population when the railway arrives and shortens the time distance to Umeå and Skellefteå. This essay addresses how Robertsfors may change and develop with the establishment of a train station inside Robertsfors' central town. The result is based on assumptions by politicians and officials in the municipality and addresses issues such as work commuting and what makes Robertsfors attractive. The results show that the establishment of the railway raises hopes for an increase in population and has much to do with the increased freedom of movement and proximity to a larger labor market. However, there are also major challenges such as investment opportunities and accessibility to labor resources. Changes in Skellefteå and Umeå with increased housing prices and a shortage of housing and building land also open up opportunities for Robertsfors municipality as people can be expected to apply for housing in Robertsfors but work in Umeå or Skellefteå and commute to work by train.

Göteborgs stad står inför en av sina största infrastrukturinvesteringar i modern tid - en åtta kilometer lång järnvägstunnel under staden i form av Västlänken. Västlänken presenteras i sammanhanget som den hållbara lösningen för att uppnå ambitionen om regionförstoring. Målet med studien har därför varit att undersöka hur hållbarhetsbegreppet används i relation till Västlänken av projektets förespråkare Göteborgs stad, Trafikverket och Västa Götalandsregionen. Med hjälp av Carol Bacchis diskursanalytiska WPR-metod synliggörs i denna uppsats hur ’problemen’ som ligger till grund för Västlänken konstruerats i planerings- och policydokument, vilket medfört att utvecklingen styrts i en specifik riktning. Studien har haft en socialkonstruktivistisk utgångspunkt, vilket bygger på tesen att språkbruket bidrar till att konstruera en bild av ’verkligheten’, inom vilken begrepp ges innebörd efter kontext. De som äger rätten att forma diskursen, är också de som har möjlighet att genom diskursen styra utvecklingen i en önskvärd riktning. Denna studie synliggör några av de problem som kan uppstå när normativa och värdeladdade begrepp används som argument för att legitimera specifika åtgärder. / The city of Gothenburg (Göteborgs stad) is facing one of its largest infrastructural investments in modern times - an eight-kilometer long railway tunnel under the city in the form of Västlänken. Västlänken is presented as the sustainable solution for achieving the ambition of regional enlargement. The aim of the study has therefore been to examine how the concept of sustainability is used in relation to Västlänken by the project promoters Göteborgs stad, Trafikverket and Västra Götalandsregionen. With Carol Bacchi's discourse analytical WPR approach, this study shows how the ’problems’ that form the basis of Västlänken were constructed in planning and policy documents, which led to the development being driven in a specific direction. The study has had a social constructivist viewpoint, which is based on the thesis that language use contributes to constructing an image of ’reality’, in which concepts are given meaning by context. Those who own the right to form the discourse are also those who have the opportunity to steer the development in a desirable direction through the discourse. This study highlights some of the problems that may arise when normative and value-added concepts are used to legitimize specific measures.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第20004号 / 農博第2188号 / 新制||農||1044(附属図書館) / 学位論文||H28||N5013(農学部図書室) / 33100 / 京都大学大学院農学研究科生物資源経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 福井 清一, 教授 伊藤 順一, 教授 水野 広祐 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

<p>Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a common urologic condition among older men, affecting approximately half of men by age 50 and nearly 80% by age 80. Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) associated with BPH may significantly impact quality of life for many of these men. Inflammation has been associated with the development and progression of BPH however, the precise impact and role(s) of immune cells in these conditions remains unclear. Many previous studies over the decades have explored the roles of immune cells in prostate disease in animal models and prostate tissues from human patients, and, more recently, through transcriptomic analyses of bulk cell populations and of single cells. These and other emerging technologies continue to add to the body of knowledge related to this area.</p> <p>The prostate is a complex organ composed of multiple epithelial and mesenchymal cell types and subtypes. The growth, morphology, and function of these cells is influenced by autocrine and paracrine cell-cell interactions in ways that are largely not yet understood. A better understanding of the composition, heterogeneity, morphology, interactions, and functional features of various prostate cell types, particularly involving immune cells in the context of inflammatory processes, is expected to improve our understanding of the impact of altered cellular composition and communication on prostate homeostasis and disease.</p> <p>Inflammation has been shown to impact the growth, morphology, and function of various prostate cell types. It is hypothesized that inflammation promotes epithelial cell proliferation and differentiation in BPH despite androgen-targeted therapy. It is hypothesized that communications between and within various immune cell populations perpetuate the non-resolving inflammatory microenvironment that promotes prostate cell expansion. In this research, the POET-3 mouse model of inducible autoimmune inflammation is used to evaluate the impact of autoimmune-type inflammation on basal epithelial cell progenitor growth and differentiation in the absence of androgens mimicking the conditions of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), and to demonstrate the enhanced growth and differentiation potential conferred on basal progenitors by inflammation. </p> <p>Additionally, this research evaluates the morphology, gene expression, and cell-cell interaction predictions of BPH prostate immune cells to explore the role of immune cells and their interactions in driving BPH inflammation. </p> <p>Overall, inflammation induced epithelial and stromal expansion and basal progenitor cell proliferation in vivo and promoted basal progenitor cell growth and differentiation in vitro under androgen-deficient conditions mimicking androgen-targeted therapy. Histologic evaluation of BPH specimens reveals the composition and distribution of immune cells, including organizing lymphoid structures resembling tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS). Also, analyses of single cell RNA sequencing data of gene expression patterns and signaling pathways reveal a mixed inflammatory microenvironment in BPH. Furthermore, predicted ligand-receptor interactions indicate mixed inflammatory signaling between and among immune cell populations, including T cells, macrophages, and mast cells, that likely to the unresolving nature of BPH inflammation.</p> <p>In all, the results of these studies demonstrate inflammation-induced epithelial and stromal expansion in a mouse model of resolving prostatitis and indicate potential roles for multiple immune cell populations and their interactions in driving the ongoing inflammation of BPH, suggesting that this ongoing inflammation may impact the progressive stromal and epithelial expansion characteristic of BPH. </p>

This paper argues that the EU’s enlargement discourse can be understood as a form of political myth wherein a subject must align itself with an fantasmatic ideal type ofEuropean state. It works through positing a past from which the subject must advance, and a mythical horizon towards which the subject strives. The stage in between these temporal phases is understood as liminality, an ontological limbo of sorts. To illustrate how the political myth works, a discourse analysis is conducted by investigating reports by the UN and EU on the status of Kosovo’s alignment with ‘European standards’ and evaluations of the political situation. By applying the political discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, it was found that the image of the past in Kosovo was filled with symbols of ethnic conflict, clan affiliation andlingering communism, while the mythical horizon of European integration promised a utopian idea of multi-ethnicity, rule of law and freedom of movement. Kosovo in the process of integration is then stuck in a liminal phase between these temporal points, while the EU through a set of categorical measurements constructs not only Kosovo’s identity but also the ideal image of a European state and how to become one.

Modern machine and deep learning methods require large datasets to achieve reliable and robust results. This requirement is often difficult to meet in the medical field, due to data sharing limitations imposed by privacy regulations or the presence of a small number of patients (e.g., rare diseases). To address this data scarcity and to improve the situation, novel generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been widely used to generate synthetic data that mimic real data by representing features that reflect health-related information without reference to real patients. In this paper, we consider several GAN models to generate synthetic data used for training binary (malignant/benign) classifiers, and compare their performances in terms of classification accuracy with cases where only real data are considered. We aim to investigate how synthetic data can improve classification accuracy, especially when a small amount of data is available. To this end, we have developed and implemented an evaluation framework where binary classifiers are trained on extended datasets containing both real and synthetic data. The results show improved accuracy for classifiers trained with generated data from more advanced GAN models, even when limited amounts of original data are available.

Bosnia and Herzegovina as a European country committed to the so-called European path decided to submit a request for a candidacy back in 2016 and start fulfilling the conditions that the EU sets for future members. The European Union accepted the request and, as part of its enlargement and integration policy, set out the requirements of the EU towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had to fulfill in order to be a full member of the EU. Among those conditions, gender equality was found as one of the pillars of the EU and Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to that demand. However, even though Bosnia and Herzegovina's response existed both at the legislative and institutional level, the EU did not evaluate it as adequate. Therefore, the aim of the research and the main question is to try to understand how and to what extent the state of gender equality in Bosnia and Herzegovina affects its admission to the EU?  It can be said that Bosnia and Herzegovina will have to fulfill the conditions related to gender equality and women's rights that the EU has put before it, but it seems that they will not be decisive for its admission to the EU.

No / The Atlantic burden-sharing debate during the early part of the twenty-first century is shaping up to be very different from those of NATO's first fifty years. The resources needed for direct defence of western Europe have fallen sharply, and further cuts are possible. The gradual strengthening of European cooperation means that the EU is becoming an actor in its own right in many international regimes. Debates about which countries are pulling their weight internationally are also taking into account contributions to non-military international public goods¿financing EU enlargement, aiding the Third World, reducing emissions of climate-damaging pollutants. In this new multidimensional debate, it becomes more apparent that states that contribute more to one regime often do less than most in another. Germany, for example, is concerned about its excessive contribution to the costs of EU enlargement, but it spends considerably less than France and the UK on defence. European countries contribute three times as much as the United States to Third World aid, and will soon pay almost twice as much into the UN budget. Yet they were dependent on the US to provide most of the military forces in the 1999 Kosovo conflict, and would be even more dependent in the event of a future Gulf war. This widening of the burden-sharing debate contains both dangers and opportunities. It could lead to a fragmentation of the Atlantic dialogue, with each side talking past the other on an increasing number of issues, ranging from global warming to Balkan peacekeeping. In order to avoid such a dangerous situation, the US and European states should maintain the principle that all must make a contribution to efforts to tackle common problems, whether it be through troops in Kosovo or commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet there should also be some flexibility in defining who does how much. The preparedness of some countries to lead, by doing more, will be essential if international cooperation is to have a chance to work.

This thesis consists of an introduction and five articles in the field of financial mathematics. The main topics of the papers comprise credit risk modelling, optimal stopping theory, and Dynkin games. An underlying theme in all of the articles is valuation of various financial instruments. Namely, Paper I deals with valuation of a game version of a perpetual American option where the parties disagree about the distributional properties of the underlying process, Papers II and III investigate pricing of default-sensitive contingent claims, Paper IV treats CVA (credit value adjustment) modelling for a portfolio consisting of American options, and Paper V studies a problem motivated by model calibration in pricing of corporate bonds. In each of the articles, we deal with an underlying stochastic process that is continuous in time and defined on some probability space. Namely, Papers I-IV treat stochastic processes with continuous paths, whereas Paper V assumes that the underlying process is a jump-diffusion with finite jump intensity. The information level in Paper I is the filtration generated by the stock value. In articles III and IV, we consider investors whose information flow is designed as a progressive enlargement with default time of the filtration generated by the stock price, whereas in Paper II the information flow is an initial enlargement. Paper V assumes that the default is a hitting time of the firm's value and thus the underlying filtration is the one generated by the process modelling this value. Moreover, in all of the papers the risk-free bonds are assumed for simplicity to have deterministic prices so that the focus is on the uncertainty coming from the stock price and default risk.

In October 1999 the European Commission published the second progress report on the state of convergence of the Central- and Eastern European candidate countries (CEECs). The report encompasses an assessment, which is based on the three Copenhagen criteria. From an economic point of view, a country must have a functioning market economy and be able to withstand the competition on the European single market. In this paper we present a synthetic performance measure which helps to assess the economic preparedness of the ten Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) to become members of the European Union (EU). With the aid of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) we construct a best practice frontier, which is supported by the best performing EU-countries and which serves as a benchmark for the candidate countries. The preparedness of any CEEC is measured as the relative distance to this frontier. The results confirm that the macroeconomic performance of most of the CEECs lies far behind the EU standards, in foreign trade some of the CEECs already perform better than some EU countries. Interestingly, we find out that some CEECs are already better prepared for the EMU than many EU member states. (authors' abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut