Sojdmyr is a small wetland located 3 km east of Lina mire in eastern Gotland, Sweden, in an area highly affected by shoreline displacement. Archaeologists believe Lina mire was once part of a major inland water system used for commerce, and signs from several cultures around the Baltic Sea have been found in the area. This study aims to investigate the vegetational changes in the Sojdmyr area from about 4000 cal BP to the present, as well as discussing the human impacts that have contributed to these changes. Methods used have been pollen analysis, charcoal fragment counting and interpretation of the stratigraphy. The core was dated by correlation the results with other studies from Gotland. From the start of the Bronze Age, ca 4000–3000 cal BP, Sojdmyr was a freshwater lake. The vegetation in the landscape was open, with high presence of thermophilous taxa such as oak and elm and indications of pastoral land use. From the late Bronze Age to the Roman Iron Age (ca 3000–2000 cal BP) the mire Sojdmyr was characterized by fen peat. The thermophilous taxadropped quickly in abundance, whilst taxa more tolerate to cold conditions increased and the area became less open. From the Roman Iron Age (2000–1550 cal BP) to the present, Sojdmyr has changed intermittently between shallow freshwater lake and wetland conditions. According to the pollen analysis the first sign of cultivation in the area appeared with the introduction of rye during the Roman Iron Age, soon followed by barley at approximately ca 1500 cal BP. From the Iron Age to modern times the vegetation in the area became more open with signs of both agriculture and pastoral lands. The pollen record from Sojdmyr suggests that the land use in the area has been affected by shifts in climate during the Migration and Vendel Periods and the Little Ice Age.

No description available.

No description available.

The fishing industry is a very important source of food and will be also used in the future. Therefore it is essential to study the impact of fishery on marine mammals. Whales (cetaceans) interact with fishing vessels because the catch is easy prey for them. Cetaceans are caught everyday as bycatch and often get entangled in fishing gear. The result could be starvation, drowning or infection of the cetacean. This study focused on injuries on dorsal fins on orcas occurring in Norwegian waters. In Norway, Tiu Similä, Sanna Kuningas and Norwegian Orca Survey have taken pictures and matched these to an ID-catalogue of orcas. This ID-catalogue was used in this study. 842 pictures of individuals were categorized by the size of the injury on the dorsal fin and the location of the nicks. Percent of total amount of injured males and females/subadults was estimated. Females and subadults were grouped together because of the difficulties of distinguishing the subadults from the females. 34% of the females/subadults and 54% of the males had nicks on their dorsal fins. The amount of damaged fins was 2% in females/subadults and 4% in males. This result was expected as my theory was that orca males swim closer to fishing boats, than females/subadults do. The most common location of the nicks was the upper hind part. It might be because that is the thinnest part of the dorsal fin.

Introduktion: Det är viktigt att risk för undernäring identifieras och att åtgärder sätts in så tidigt som möjligt då det är svårt att åtgärda konsekvenserna. Studier tyder på att screening för undernäring inte utförs i tillräcklig utsträckning och kunskapsbrist hos vårdpersonal lyfts som ett hinder för god nutritionsvård. Syfte: Att undersöka kunskapsnivån hos vårdpersonal på äldreboenden med avseende på undernäring och äldres energi- och näringsbehov samt om nutritionsvård utförs. Material & metod: En tvärsnittsstudie genomfördes med en enkät som delvis baserades på den validerade enkäten Knowledge of Malnutrition-Geriatric questionnaire. Tio äldreboenden i Uppsala kommun deltog. Totalt 141 sjuksköterskor, undersköterskor och vårdbiträden besvarade enkäten. Resultat: Den totala procentuella andelen kunskapspoäng var 51,3 procent av maxpoängen för samtliga deltagare tillsammans. Det fanns kunskapsluckor, gällande bl.a äldres näringsbehov, möjliga riskfaktorer för undernäring och vad som anses vara ett hälsosamt BMI för äldre (>70 år). Sjuksköterskor hade signifikant högre kunskapsnivå än både undersköterskor och vårdbiträden. Nutritionsvård verkade utföras av en stor andel av respondenterna. Slutsats: Kunskapsluckor identifierades, främst hos undersköterskor och vårdbiträden. Nutritionsvård verkade utföras av en stor andel av respondenterna. För att förbättra kunskapsnivån och därmed minimera kunskapsluckorna, kan eventuellt en skräddarsydd utbildning vara nödvändig, för att lämpligare nutritionsvård ska kunna ges.

No description available.

No description available.

Allergic rhinitis is a highly common disease prevalent worldwide. The symptoms include rhinorrhea, itchy eyes and swelling. It is driven by Immunoglobulin E and a type 2 T cell response resulting in inflammation in the upper airways. Allergic rhinitis is often under diagnosed and has no cure, only treatments with varying efficiency. The role of the peripheral nervous system has classically not been thought of as part of the immune system. Recent studies have however, been successful in demonstrating its involvement. One of its most studied mediators, substance P (SP), seems to have a role in priming the innate immune system for incoming dangers. SP and Toll-like Receptors (TLRs) have been shown to regulate one another’s expression in healthy individuals. This project aimed to compare this cross-talk in healthy and allergic subjects. Analysis was made for additional receptors CD10, NK1R and VIPR2 and will also involve the cytokine interleukin 6 (IL-6) which is an important pro-inflammatory cytokine expressed following TLR ligand binding. Healthy and allergic individuals volunteered to leave nasal epithelial cells for culturing. These samples were stimulated with either SP or with R837, the synthetic ligand for TLR7. The project included three major methods; Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Realtime quantitative PCR and fluorescent activated cell sorting (FACS). Stimulation with R837 did not give any significant differences in the transcription of genes coding for SP, tac1, and its receptor of choice, tacr1, between 7 healthy and 9 allergic subjects. Real-time qPCR for genes tlr4 and tlr9 showed that transcription of tlr4 was significantly elevated in allergic subjects and that the same was true for transcription of tlr9 but in healthy individuals, following SP exposure. Competitive-ELISA for SP proved that allergic individuals have a slower response to R837 stimulation, secreting significantly less of SP after 15 minutes compared to healthy individuals. The FACS results were hard to interpret and are unusable due to heavily split cells and persistent infections that resulted in a too small patient group for the allergic subjects (n=1). Future projects could include more patients for FACS, more extensive analysis for CD10, incorporating it in the qPCR analysis and to perform an ELISA measuring the antiinflammatory neuropeptide Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) as it has antagonistic properties towards SP.

Livsmedelsburna sjukdomar är ett globalt problem som orsakar fleramiljoner dödsfall varje år, ändå tros den rapporterande siffran vara enbråkdel av hur många som drabbas. En anledning till svårigheten att vetaden verkliga summan av problemet är bristerna gällande rapportering avlivsmedelsbura sjukdomar. Även om Europa ligger i framkant medstrikta krav gällande säkerhet för mat uppkommer ständigt skandalersom visar på ett bristande system. Syftet med studien var att ta fram enberedskapsplan för matförgiftning och andra livsmedelsrelaterade utbrott.Målet var att ta fram en tydlig beredskapsplan som är lätt att användaoch som lämpar sig för mindre kommuner i Sverige. Litteraturundersökninggjordes för att samla information till bakgrund samt för att fåen övergripande blick över de olika livsmedelsburna sjukdomarna. Däreftergenomfördes en enkätundersökning gällande hur en beredskapsplanför livsmedelsrelaterade utbrott ser ut i Sveriges mindre kommuner. Resultatet visar att inte alla kommuner har en färdig beredskapsplan atttillgå vid större utbrott. Det som anses användbart i en sådan plan ärframförallt mallar för rutiner som exempelvis frågeformulär till densmittade vid en matförgiftning. En anledning till bristen på beredskapsplaneri mindre kommuner tros främst bero på bristande resurser, ökadpersonaltäthet hade enligt resultatet bidragit till ökad tillgång av beredskapsplaner.Utifrån de inkommande enkätsvaren har ett förslag på enberedskapsplan som är enkel att använda utformats.

In this thesis, first-principles calculations within density functional theory are presented, with a principal goal to investigate the phase stability of so called Mn+1AXn (MAX) phases. MAX phases are a group of nanolaminated materials comprised of a transition metal (M), a group 12-16 element (A), and carbon or nitrogen (X). They combine ceramic and metallic characteristics, and phase stability studies are motivated by a search for new phases with novel properties, such as magnetism, and for the results to be used as guidance in attempted materials synthesis in the lab. To investigate phase stability of a hypothetical material, a theoretical approach has been developed, where the essential part is to identify the set of most competing phases relative to the material of interest. This approach advance beyond more traditional evaluation of stability, where the energy of formation of the material is generally calculated relative to its single elements, or to a set of ad hoc chosen competing phases. For phase stability predictions to be reliable, validation of previous experimental work is a requirement prior to investigations of new, still hypothetical, materials. It is found that the predictions from the developed theoretical approach are consistent with experimental observations for a large set of MAX phases. The predictive power is thereafter demonstrated for the new phases Nb2GeC and Mn2GaC, which subsequently have been synthesized as thin films. It should be noted that Mn is used for the first time as sole M-element in a MAX phase. Hence, the theory is successfully used to find new candidates, and to guide experimentalists in their work on novel promising materials. Phase stability is also evaluated for MAX phase alloys. Incorporation of oxygen in different M2AlC phases are studied, and the results show that oxygen prefer different sites depending on M-element, through the number of available non-bonding M d-electrons. The theory also predicts that oxygen substituting for carbon in Ti2AlC stabilizes the material, which explains the  experimentally observed 12.5 at% oxygen (x = 0.5) in Ti2Al(C1-xOx). Magnetism is a recently attained property of MAX phase materials, and a direct result of this Thesis work. We have demonstrated the importance of choice of magnetic spin configuration and electron correlations approximations for theoretical evaluation of the magnetic ground state of Cr2AC (A = Al, Ga, Ge). Furthermore, alloying Cr2AlC with Mn to obtain the first magnetic MAX phase have been theoretically predicted and experimentally verified. Using Mn2GaC as model system, Heisenberg Monte Carlo simulations have been used to explore also noncollinear magnetism, suggesting a large set of possible spin configurations (spin waves and spin spirals) to be further investigated in future theoretical and experimental work.