Background: Androgens are important in prostate cancer development but how circulating levels of androgens affect risk of prostate cancer of different aggressiveness is not clear. Being childless has been associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer, but it is not clear if this association is causal or a result of residual confounding. Fathering of dizygotic twins, a marker of high fertility, has not been studied in relation to risk of prostate cancer. Another marker of life-long hormonal exposure is height, which has been associated with increased risk of cancer and cancer death. However, the association to separate cancer sites has not been consistent. The aims of this thesis were to study hormonal factors (paper I), and proxies of hormonal factors (paper II and III), and risk of prostate cancer; as well as height and risk of cancer and cancer death by separate sites (paper IV). Methods: Study designs were i) case-control studies, nested within the Västerbotten Intervention Project (paper I), and in Prostate Cancer database Sweden 2.0 (PCBaSe 2.0) (paper II and III), and ii) cohort study, in the Metabolic Syndrome and Cancer project (Me-Can) (paper IV). Results, prostate cancer: In paper I, increasing levels of serum androgens were not associated with risk of prostate cancer overall or in tumor risk categories. In paper II, childless men had a lower risk of prostate cancer, overall and in all risk categories, compared to fathers, an association which was in part explained by differences in marital status and educational level.  In paper III, fathers of dizygotic twins did not have an increased risk of prostate cancer, either overall or in risk categories, when compared to fathers of singletons. Results, cancer overall: In paper IV, height was associated with an increased risk of cancer and cancer death overall in both women and men. The strongest association for cancer was to malignant melanoma in both women and men, and for cancer death to post-menopausal breast cancer in women and renal cell carcinoma in men. Conclusions: These studies indicate that hormonal factors, when studied as serum levels or when studied using proxies of fertility, do not have a major impact on the risk of prostate cancer. The association between height and an increased risk of cancer appears robust for total cancer and cancer death, as well as for several separate cancer sites.

Vertical mixing is an important process that relates surface fluxes to concentrations of pollutants and other chemical species in the atmosphere. Errors in vertical mixing have been identified as a major source of uncertainties in various atmospheric modeling efforts including tracer transport, weather forecasting, and regional climate simulation. This thesis aims to quantify uncertainties in model-derived mixed layer heights (zi) over North America through direct comparisons between radiosonde observations and four models at different months of the year 2004 through the bulk Richardson number method. Results of this study suggest that considerable errors in zi exist throughout the region with the spatial and temporal variations of the errors differ significantly among the selected models. Over all, errors in zi were larger in global models than in the limited area mesoscale models, and the magnitude of the random error was two times larger than the bias. Notably, spatial regions of with extremely large positive biases correspond to those with especially large random errors. The biases and random errors, however, were not correlated linearly nor can be easily used to predict each other. Uncertainties in model-derived zi were attributed, through errors in the bulk Richardson number, to temperature and horizontal winds. Errors in both horizontal winds and temperatures were found contributing more or less the same to uncertainties in zi, with relative errors in both variables being the greatest in the lowest part of the troposphere. Lastly, independent observations from the cooperative profiler network suggest that data assimilation did not add qualitative advantages for the comparisons presented in this study. The mixed layer height uncertainties demonstrated in this study may provide a guide for selecting a model to simulate regional scale atmospheric transport and for interpreting flux estimation and inversions studies.

No description available.

A pulse height tally response expansion (PHRE) method is developed for detectors. By expanding the incident flux at the detector window/surface, a set of response functions is constructed via Monte Carlo estimators for pulse height tallies. B-spline functions are selected to perform the expansion of the response functions as well as for the expansion of the incident flux in photon energy. The method is verified for several incident flux spectra on a CsI(Na) detector. Results are compared to the solutions generated using direct Monte Carlo calculations. It is found that the method is several orders faster than MCNP5 while maintaining paralleled accuracy.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第23676号 / 理博第4766号 / 新制||理||1683(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科数学・数理解析専攻 / (主査)教授 森脇 淳, 教授 雪江 明彦, 教授 吉川 謙一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2005. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning). Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2003. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Univ., 2003. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2007. / S. 1-131: sammanfattning, s. 133-191: 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.