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The aim of this study was to examine how travel to and repeat visits at a horse - based tourism event create the foundation of identity and community development as well as feelings of solidarity and belonging among visitors. In addition, the purpose was also to highlight specific features in the process and to discuss how and why such events may form the basis of further community and  identity development. Five interviews were conducted with repeat visitors to Stockholm International Horse Show and were analysed through the theoretical perspectives of identity and experiences. Findings suggest that the main attraction of the event lies with the love the visitors have for horses, but also within the opportunity to experience a sense of belonging and community based on a belief of something shared to gather around. Though, the notion of community among the visitors is somewhat fragile and can easily break in changing situations. This results in group formations and social positioning. Other conclusions are that the people interviewed travel to reexperience nostalgic memories and to enhance their knowlegde of horses and to evolve as riders and horse(wo)men through the inspiration that comes from the admiration of role models.  Further, the memories of the event form important parts in the story that shaped them.

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Before the days of cable television it was almost impossible to watch Scottish Football in Sweden. As such, my father would listen to all important Celtic games on the radio. He would go into his bedroom, close the door and listen intently to the crackling, yet passionate voices which tried vigorously to transmit scenes of green grass, screaming crowds, twenty-two men, and a ball, to all the people who lacked the good fortune of being at the stadium. I remember one occasion especially well: it was a Saturday in May, 1998; I was twelve years old and stood in the hall. As I peered through my parents bedroom door, I caught my father kissing the radio as it announced Celtic’s winning goal; the goal which stopped their opponents, Rangers, from winning ten Scottish leagues in a row. He was crying, laughing and yelling, all at once. And after the game had finished, he came down stairs, and we celebrated by putting on our favourite Celtic CD. Dancing, while singing classic Celtic songs, we revelled in ‘our’ victory. The memory of this day is dear to me, along with many other recollections I have of amazing afternoons which were spent singing (and sometimes crying), first with my father and, later also with his friends. Because when cable TV finally did come to my hometown Malmö in 1999, we formed a network. We joined forces with other people, (though mainly white, heterosexual men of working-class backgrounds), who, like us, loved Celtic, and thus wanted to watch them as often as they could. And together we sang the same songs which my father and I had danced to on that aforementioned day: the 9th of May 1998. In fact, he and I still sing many of those songs on a weekly basis, as do hundreds of thousands of other fans. Yet, some of these songs, as well as others performed by various Scottish clubs, have become increasingly criticised, and in some cases banned, for containing discriminatory, or bigoted ideas and language; an example of this critical shift can be gauged by e.g. the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament on the 14th of December, 2011, and enacted on the 1st of March of the following year. The bill introduces new legislation which criminalizes offensive or threatening behaviour “likely to incite public disorder at certain football matches, and [which] provides for a criminal offence concerning the sending of communications which contain threats of serious violence or which contain threats intended to incite religious hatred” (The Scottish Parliament, 2011; My italics). This law is quite unique for a number of reasons. First, because it is specific to Scotland. Secondly, because it is a national law introduced to tackle the problem of mainly one city: Glasgow, and its famous rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, known as the ‘Old Firm’. Obviously bigoted rivalries exist all over Scotland - all over the world for that matter - but the ‘Old Firm’ is considered one of the most exaggerated rivalries in Europe. What is more, the law was passed soon after the 2011 Scottish cup final, in which two players were sent off, 13 players were given yellow cards, and Celtic’s manager, Neil Lennon pushed Rangers’ assistant manager Ally McCoist. The BBC reports that “Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond held a summit in Edinburgh with representatives from Celtic, Rangers, Scottish football authorities and Strathclyde Police to discuss ways to combat disorder associated with the fixture between Glasgow's main two rival clubs” (BBC, 2011). Scotland’s justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, claims that “the majority of Scots - 91% - support tougher action to tackle the problem [of sectarianism1]” (STV, 2013). However, the law has been met with resistance from different groups of football fans, who argue that the laws infringe on free expression.

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Immunotherapies for cancer are widely studied at present. We are currently studying a specific form of “Vγ9Vδ2 T cells” found in the peripheral blood of healthy donors that can be used for the killing of HT-29 colon cancer cells. In order to determine the cytotoxicity of effectors, Vγ9Vδ2 T cells towards target cells, HT-29, it is important to first evaluate the absolute number of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells in a mixed cell population, and next to determine the phenotypic characterization, their activity and cytotoxicity in the presence of target cells. A flow cytometry and bead based assay was developed to evaluate the absolute number of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells in a mixed cell population. Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) were surface stained with monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) conjugated to fluorochromes that are cross reactive to cell surface markers such as CD3 (T Lymphocytes), γδ2 and were mixed with fluorophore beads. In these assays, no washes and centrifugation steps were performed after the cell surface staining and bead addition. The absolute cell counts were evaluated based on referencing a known concentration of beads. In addition, quantification assays were also performed to measure the cell and bead loss on surface staining that included washes and centrifugation steps and thus found a higher percentage loss of cells than beads. Immunophenotyping assays with four color staining were performed to monitor the phenotypic differentiation of effector cells based on cell surface markers CD27 and CD45RA. Only the naïve (CD27+CDRA+) and terminally differentiated effector memory (CD27-CD45RA+) were identified on the assays performed using Vγ9Vδ2 T cells of different donors. A flow cytometry based cytotoxicity (FCC) assay was completed to monitor the effector cell activity (CD69+) in the presence and absence of target cells and also the cytotoxicity was measured based on % specific lysis of target cells at four different effector to target (E:T) cell ratios. Only preliminary data were obtained for the FCC assay and the development is still in progress.

This thesis addresses two research gaps: the gap of how to operationalize resilience in an urban context, and the gap on empirical studies of the relationship between resilience and sustainable development. I have approached these gaps by entering the emerging field of interdisciplinary research linking planning and resilience in a study of the process of preparing a resilience assessment for the semi-urban municipality of Eskilstuna in Sweden (2012–13). In order to capture in-depth data, I have conducted participant observation of the resilience assessment process, semi-structured interviews with the organizers at the municipality, as well as key participants from other departments, a review of the official municipal documents and a survey to the workshop participants. My findings show that resilience thinking helped frame the previously overlooked threats of a future triple crises, and bridge the short-term crisis management and the longer-term planning for sustainable development at the municipality. The idea of complex adaptive systems introduced a new perspective for sustainable development in the municipality, which practitioners thought was useful for providing new arguments to hinder slowly degrading trends, as well as clarifying the picture of a sustainable society.

Nowadays there is a great deal of concern for global warming. Researchers and politicians all over the world are urgently trying to find solutions to it. However, most of the solutions which consider sustainable development have a technical perspective to environmental problems. The alarm of global warming might open up for new ways of solving problems. Indigenous peoples live close to nature and their specific ecosystems which give them a unique understanding for the complexity of nature. However, indigenous people and their knowledge are rarely integrated in international regimes, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment is the most inclusive regime. Integration of Indigenous Knowledge have been successful in Western environmental management, such as in EIA’s. This ignorance to indigenous knowledge as a source to knowledge illustrates a Eurocentrism in environmental management (McGregor, 2004; Tsuji & Ho, 2002; Berkes, 1999; Smith & Sharp, 2012; Battiste & Henderson, 2000). This study has several aims. Firstly I will compare what has been interpreted as a holistic worldview with the atomistic one. Secondly, I will compare the organic view of nature to the technocratic view of nature. Thirdly, a comparison of the positivist-reductionist approach to the term “Indigenous Knowledge” as McGregor (2004) describes it will be done. Furthermore, the aim of this study is to understand if and if so how IK challenges the positivist-reductionist approach and whether these knowledge systems are compatible with each other. At last, a new analytical framework will be developed to support my theories and clarify them. This study concludes that while there are fundamental differences between the worldviews, views of nature and knowledge systems. This study stress that indigenous knowledge is compatible with the positivist-reductionist approach. Furthermore it is desirable to include IK in Western society further because Western society can make benefits from indigenous peoples view on nature and their view on knowledge from an environmental management perspective.

This review is a dissertation and contains a summary of the following publications: I. J.-O Jeppsson and J. Sjöquist: Separation of Normal Human Transferrin into Two Fractions. Biochim. Biophys. Actay 78 (1963) 658 II. J.-O. Jeppsson: Isolation and Partial Characterization of Three Human Transferrin Variants. Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 1967, in press III. J.-O. Jeppsson: Subunits of Human Transferrin. Acta Chem. Scand.1967, in press IV. J.-O. Jeppsson and J. Sjöquist: Thin-layer Chromatography of PTH Amino Acids. Analyt. Biochem. 18 (1967) 264 V. J.-O. Jeppsson: Structural Studies of Fragments Resulting from Cyanogen Bromide Degradation of Human Transferrin. Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 1967, in press. In addition the dissertation contains some hitherto unpublished results. In the text the above mentioned papers will be referred to by the Roman figures I — V, other references are indicated by Arabic figures. / digitalisering@umu.se

Tendons heal through three different overlapping phases; the inflammatory, proliferative and remodeling phase. Many studies have investigated what factors influence healing of tendons. However, little was known about inflammation and the immune cells present during Achilles tendon healing by the time this thesis started. We developed a flow cytometry method for our rat model of tendon healing, which enabled us to study different leukocyte subpopulations during Achilles tendon healing. The general aim of this thesis was to understand more about inflammation and the immune cell populations present during tendon healing and how the immune cell composition changes during normal tendon healing. Moreover, we investigated how different factors that are known to influence tendon healing affected the composition of the immune cell population. First, we described the immune cells during the time course of tendon healing focusing on different subpopulations of macrophages and T cells. Then, we studied how these cells were influenced by reduced mechanical loading. Mechanical loading prolonged the presence of M1 macrophages and delayed the switch to regulatory T cells and M2 macrophages compared to reduced mechanical loading. Next, the effect of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on the leukocyte composition revealed that, even though NSAIDs influence the mechanical properties of healing tendon, this effect was not mediated via changes in the leukocyte sub-populations during early and mid-time tendon healing. Further, the effect of corticosteroids during the inflammatory and remodeling phases of tendon healing was an improved healing of tendons and a reduction of CD8a T cells when corticosteroid was administered after the inflammatory phase. Lastly, we investigated if impairment of tendon healing by NSAIDs was related to mechanotransduction or microdamage during mechanical loading and showed that NSAIDs impair tendon healing by reducing the response to microdamage. In conclusion, these studies show that inflammation plays an important role during Achilles tendon healing, and factors that influence healing can also alter the presence or polarization of immune cell populations.