Nano-cellulose fibers/suspension has very high viscosity, its viscosity has to be lower before it can be applied in the paper coating recipe. For this purpose the adsorption behaviour of polyvinyl alcohol on nano-cellulose fibers were investigated using method developed by Zwick in 1960, based on the formation of PVA-iodide blue complex in the presence of boric acid. The experiments showed that the maximum adsorbed amount i.e. 0.13 g PVA/g NFC was obtained in a dispersion with 0.2 % PVA concentration. It should be possible to further increase the PVA adsorption as the adsorbed amount didn’t reach a saturation point where the PVA adsorption attained a constant value. It was also found that adsorption of PVA on NFC is time dependent. The absorbance measurement after four days of mixing PVA/NFC suspension showed only partially adsorption of PVA on nano-cellulose surface.  An equilibrium time of 10-13 days was needed for PVA to fully adsorb on nano-cellulose fibers surface. Another important observation was that PVA adsorption also depends on the concentration of nano-cellulose fibers. A lower concentration of NFC easily allows PVA to adsorb on its surface, as compared to higher NFC concentration. An important finding during the methodology development was the method to get rid of formation of flocs in the blue iodide complex solution; by slowly addition of reactants, especially the KI/I2 solution under continuous stirring around 60oC the tendency to flocs formation was suppressed.

In this thesis I estimate a monetary value of the risk attached to living near a hazardous waste site in the town of Teckomatorp. This site is the result of hundreds of rusty leaking barrels of toxins being buried in the ground by the company BT Kemi in the 1970’s. Ever since then the site has been remediated in several steps and is still contaminated today. For estimating the perceived risk of living near this site I use a hedonic price model (HP) which is a form of a revealed preference approach. In a HP model the price of a market good is a function of different utility-bearing characteristics and the estimated parameters can be used to calculate the implicit prices of these characteristics. In this case I use a data set from the National Swedish Institute for Building Research (IBF) and regress property price on a number of housing characteristics. I compare an estimated town-effect for Teckomatorp with the estimates for two control towns: Billeberga and Anderslöv. I can confirm my hypothesis that, after controlling for housing characteristics, there is a negative effect on prices of property in Teckomatorp. I find that property prices are on average 46878 SEK lower in Teckomatorp than in the two control towns.

Electrochemical deposition finds applications in the electronics- and protective coating industries. The technique is a versatile tool for the synthesis of alloys and thin films. Knowledge of the fundamental aspects of the electrode processes enables the design of nanostructured materials. In this thesis, electrodeposition processes in solutions containing metal ion complexes were studied and new methods for the preparation of metal/metal-oxide coatings were developed and evaluated. Metal/metal oxide coatings were electrodeposited from aqueous solutions containing metal complexes of hydroxycarboxylic acids under reducing conditions. The mass changes of the working electrode were monitored in-situ with the electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) technique and ellipsometry was used to detect the formation of Cu2O. The coatings were further characterized with XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, and Raman spectroscopy. Electrochemical methods, including reduction of Sb/Sb2O3 in an organic electrolyte, were also used to study the properties of the deposited materials. Nanostructured coatings of Cu/Cu2O were obtained during spontaneous potential or current oscillations in alkaline Cu(II)-citrate solutions. The oscillations were due to local pH variations induced by a subsequent chemical step and comproportionation between Cu and Cu2+. Well-defined layers of Cu and Cu2O could be prepared by a galvanostatic pulsing technique, allowing independently controlled thickness of several hundred nanometers. Coatings, containing Sb and co-deposited, nanograins of Sb2O3, with a thickness of up to 200 nm were prepared from poorly buffered Sb(III)-tartrate solutions. Galvanostatic cycling showed that the latter material could be reversibly charged and discharged in a Li-ion battery for more than 50 cycles with a capacity of 660 mAh/g. The results show that precipitations of metal oxides can occur due to local pH increases during electrochemical deposition from metal complexes with ligands containing hydroxyl groups. The ability to deposit metal oxides using cathodic deposition relies on a sufficiently slow reduction of the oxide.

This thesis describes the synthesis and biological evaluation of highly substituted, ring-fused 2-pyridones. The utility of the bicyclic 2-pyridones to gain fundamental insights into the disease processes of bacterial infections and Alzheimer’s disease has been investigated. The 2-pyridones have mainly been studied as a new class of anti-infective agents termed pilicides. The function of the pilicides has been explored using uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) as a prototype pathogen and urinary tract infection as a model disease. The pilicides target the infectious ability of UPEC by inhibiting key proteins (chaperones) in the so-called chaperone-usher pathway, thus preventing the assembly of bacterial surface organelles (pili/fimbriae). Synthetic pathways to aminomethylate the 2-pyridones have been developed in order to increase their aqueous solubility while retaining biological activity. Also, the importance of a carboxylic acid has been demonstrated in studies with various carboxylate derivatives and by bioisosteric replacement. Moreover, synthetic procedures to extend the backbone of the rigid, dipeptide-mimicking 2-pyridones have been established. This rendered peptidomimetic building blocks and structures that alongside their potential use as pilicides are of more general interest in peptidomimetic-related research. The potential pilicides have been screened for chaperone affinity using relaxation-edited 1H-NMR spectroscopy. In addition, their ability to inhibit pilus biogenesis in E. coli has been demonstrated by assays of hemagglutination, biofilm formation and attachment to bladder cells, as well as with electron and atomic force microscopy. Moreover, it has been confirmed that pilicides regulate the expression of pili without affecting the biofunctional properties of the pilus rod. This was verified by measurements of individual P pili, on living bacteria, using force measuring optical tweezers. The pilicide binding site was investigated using NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography of a pilicide-chaperone complex. Based on the results obtained, a mechanism whereby the pilicides may inhibit pilus assembly was proposed, which was subsequently experimentally supported by surface plasmon resonance assays and genetic analysis. Finally, based on the generic 2-pyridone scaffold, a new collection of substituted compounds has been synthesized and validated as inhibitors of Amyloid β (Aβ)-peptide aggregation, which has been suggested to be involved in Alzheimer’s disease.

Analysis of M-components is an important part of the diagnosis of monoclonal gammopathies and for the evaluation of disease response during treatment. In this project, two widely used electrophoresis methods and their corresponding immunotyping method were compared to evaluate the sensitivity of each method for the detection of small M-components. The project included 30 plasma samples from patients with identified M-components; 10 samples containing each IgG, IgA and IgM, respectively. All samples were diluted with normal EDTA plasma to achieve M-components of 5,00g/L. The samples were then serially diluted to achieve M-component concentrations of; 5,00, 2,50, 1,25, 0,63, 0,31 and 0,16g/L. All 180 samples were analysed with agarose gel electrophoresis and capillary electrophoresis. The dilutions above and below the detection level of each method were then analysed with immunofixation and immunosubtraction. The results showed good agreement between agarose gel electrophoresis and capillary electrophoresis in the highest concentrations of IgG and IgM. With agarose gel electrophoresis, IgA was detected in the same location as transferrin and the lowest concentration detected were therefore 1,25g/L. Besides the samples containing IgG, immunofixation was the most sensitive method.

Haematology instruments using optical and fluorescence techniques have improved the platelet count in domestic animals. There are still some difficulties present, especially when counting cat thrombocytes due to their ability to aggregate and the occurrence of large platelets. The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the platelet count, mean platelet volume and platelet crit in dogs, horses and cats on Advia 2120 and Sysmex XT-2000iV. Fresh blood samples from 64 dogs, 40 horses and 39 cats with various medical conditions were analysed on both instruments. Manual blood smears of all feline samples were scrutiniously analysed to evaluate the aggregation warning flag from Advia. There was good agreement between the instruments for the optical platelet count in dogs and cats. Slightly higher values were reported from Advia. Samples from horses presented poor correlations for all studied parameters. Platelet clumps appeared in 70% of the 37 scrutinized feline blood smears, while 46% of the samples generated aggregation warning flags from the Advia instrument. Advia and Sysmex showed good agreement for platelet counts in blood from dogs and cats. Mean platelet volume and platelet crit need further evaluation before conclusions can be made concerning their clinical relevance. The sensitivity of the platelet aggregation warning flag from the Advia instument needs further elevation.

Undersökningen syftar till att granska och jämföra elevkunskaper i de naturvetenskapliga ämnena biologi, fysik och kemi i årskurserna 5 och 9.  Kunskapstestet som använts i undersökningen har baserats på uppnåendemålen för årskurs 5 enligt gällande styrdokument, samt kunskapsmål upprättade av No nätverket i den för undersökningen aktuella kommunen. Jämförelser görs också mellan elever med bakgrund i samma skolor, men som nu går i olika årskurser, samt mellan kön. Ytterligare ett syfte är att undersöka om skolstorlek har någon betydelse för elevers resultat. Undersökningen visar att båda årskurserna har bäst testresultat i biologi. Likaså framkommer det att pojkarna i undersökningen inte har utvecklats lika mycket resultatmässigt som flickorna mellan årskurserna. I undersökningen framkom det också att skolstorlek inte har någon betydelse för elevernas resultat.

Type III secretion is a virulence system utilized by several clinically important Gram-negative pathogens. Computational methods have been used to develop two classes of type III secretion inhibitors, the salicylidene acylhydrazides and the acetylated salicylanilides. For these classes of compounds, quantitative structure-activity relationship models have been constructed with data from focused libraries obtained by statistical molecular design. The models have been validated and shown to provide useful predictions of untested compounds belonging to these classes. Scaffold hopping of the salicylidene acylhydrazides have resulted in a number of synthetic targets that might mimic the scaffold of the compounds. The synthesis of two libraries of analogs to two of these scaffolds and the biological evaluation of them is presented.

This thesis is based on nine research publications (I – IX) on structure and reactivity of RNA vis-à-vis DNA. The DNA and RNA are made of flexible pentose sugar units, polyelectrolytic phosphodiester backbone, and heterocyclic nucleobases. DNA stores our genetic code, whereas RNA is involved both in protein biosynthesis and catalysis. Various ligand-binding and recognition properties of DNA/RNA are mediated through inter- and intra-molecular H-bonding and stacking interactions, beside hydration, van der Waal and London dispersion forces. In this work the pH dependant chemical shift, pKa values of 2'-OH group as well as those the nucleobases in different sequence context, alkaline hydrolysis of the internucleotidic phosphodiester bonds and analysis of NOESY footprints along with NMR constrained molecular dynamics simulation were used as tools to explore and understand the physico-chemical behavior of various nucleic acid sequences, and the forces involved in their self-assembly process. Papers I – II showed that the ionization of 2'-OH group is nucleobase-dependant. Paper III showed that the chemical characters of internucleotidic phosphate are non-identical in RNA compared to that of DNA. Papers IV – VI show that variable intramolecular electrostatic interactions between electronically coupled nearest neighbor nucleobases in a ssRNA can modulate their respective pseudoaromatic character, and result in creation of a unique set of aglycons with unique properties depending on propensity and geometry of nearest neighbor interaction. Paper VII showed that the cross-modulation of the pseudoaromatic character of nucleobases by the nearest neighbor is sequence-dependant in nature in oligonucleotides. Paper VIII showed that the purine-rich hexameric ssDNA and ssRNA retain the right-handed helical structure (B-type in ssDNA and A-type in ssRNA) in the single-stranded form even in absence of intermolecular hydrogen bonding. The directionality of stacking geometry however differs in ssDNA compared to ssRNA. In ssDNA the relatively electron-rich imidazole stacks above the electron-deficient pyrimidine in the 5' to 3' direction, in contradistinction, the pyrimidine stacks above the imidazole in the 5' to 3' direction in ssRNA. Paper IX showed that the pKa values of the nucleobases in monomeric nucleotides can be used to show that a RNA-RNA duplex is more stable than a DNA-DNA duplex. The dissection of the relative strength of base-pairing and stacking showed that the relative contribution of former compared to that of the latter in an RNA-RNA over the corresponding DNA-DNA duplexes decreases with the increasing content of A-T/U base pairs in a sequence.

In discussions of heterogeneous catalysis and other surface-related phenomena, the dynamical properties of the catalytic material are often neglected, even at elevated temperatures. An example is the three-way catalyst (TWC), used for treatment of exhaust gases from combustion engines operating at several hundred degrees Celsius. In the TWC, reduced ceria (CeO2-x) is one of the key components, where it functions as an oxygen buffer, storing and releasing oxygen to provide optimal conditions for the catalytic conversion of the pollutants. In this process it is evident that dynamics plays a crucial role, not only ionic vibrations, but also oxygen diffusion. In this thesis, the structure and dynamics of several ionic crystalline compounds and their surfaces have been studied by means of Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and Lattice dynamics (LD) calculations. The main focus lies on CeO2-x, but also CeO2, MgO and CaF2 have been investigated. The presence of oxygen vacancies in ceria is found to lead to significant distortions of the oxygen framework around the defect (but not of the cerium framework). As a consequence, a new O-O distance emerges, as well as a significantly broadened Ce-O distance distribution. The presence of oxygen vacancies in ceria also leads to increased dynamics. The oxygen self-diffusion in reduced ceria was calculated from MD simulations in the temperature range 800-2000 K, and was found to follow an Arrhenius behaviour with a vacancy mechanism along the crystallographic <100> directions only. The cation and anion vibrational surface dynamics were investigated for MgO (001) using DFT-LD and for CaF2 (111) in a combined LEED and MD study. Specific surface modes were found for MgO and increased surface dynamics was found both experimentally and theoretically for CaF2, which is isostructural with CeO2. Many methodological aspects of modeling dynamics in ionic solids are also covered in this thesis. In many cases, the representation of the model system (slab thickness, simulation box-size and the choice of ensemble) was found to have a significant influence on the results.