Studying what eugenics was and other subjects that could be tied to this is nothing new. However, there are still gaps in the research field that need to be filled. One of these concerns critical debates, for example using person-based names on lecture-halls and buildings. The purpose of this study was to investigate what themes and lines of conflict could be identified in the debate around the historical heritage after Anders and Gustaf Retzius, two previous researchers. The study analyzed the overall society’s debate within the Swedish daily press. The study used argument analysis as its method and included a total of 15 articles. The theoretical framework of this study included descriptions of how memory can be used in various ways such as organizing one’s history and what part it could play in for example debates concerning changes like removing memorials. The results of the present study for example showed that one theme and line of conflict in the debate concerned how involved Anders and Gustaf Retzius were in the Swedish eugenics, since this according to various parts of the chosen works could be viewed in different ways. The study concludes that the debate is multi-layered and could be viewed from many different perspectives.

No description available.

In 1882, Sydney Ringer, a professor of medicine at University College in London, experimented with the frog ventricle to better understand how each constituent of blood influences contraction. The ultimate goal was to create an artificial circulating fluid to use for the perfusion of isolated organs, in this case, a frog heart. Today, Ringer’s solution is still used in research for physiological studies requiring the survival and maintenance of specimens outside of their host bodies. One such example is the use of medicinal leech ganglia for electrophysiological measurements. In this thesis, I am comparing two Ringer’s solutions, original versus added glucose, and their impact on the longevity of the ganglia. By stimulating cells in the dissected ganglia submerged in Ringer’s solution with a micropipette, action potential responses can be recorded and used to compare longevity of the cells in each solution. By providing the dissected ganglia with an additional source of fuel, I hypothesized that cells in the glucose-enriched Ringer’s solution would live longer, and thus provide action potentials longer, than cells in regular Ringer’s solution with a minimum increase in longevity of thirty minutes. Data analysis showed that glucose Ringer’s solution did not keep the cells alive longer than regular Ringer’s solution when the difference of means was set to 30 minutes. However, data did show a significant difference in the average longevity of the Retzius cell in glucose Ringer’s solution versus regular Ringer’s solution when the difference of means was set to zero.

No / In an earlier study, stress lines in primate teeth were found to occur on a recurrent basis, probably corresponding to seasonal fluctuations in environmental parameters, such as food availability (Macho et al., J. Hum. Evol. 30 (1996) 57¿70). In the present study this approach was extended to the study of teeth of extant and extinct mammals, with the specific aim to determine the pattern of seasonality at the Australopithecus anamensis-bearing site at Allia Bay, Kenya. It was found that extant and extinct species, who share similar dietary/ecological adaptations, are comparable in their patterns of stress. Typical browsers/mixed feeders were found to exhibit three recurrent disturbances per year, whereas grazers usually only exhibit two. The average spacing between lines is also comparable between extant and extinct species. Hence, while the severity and predictability of the seasons probably fluctuated during crucial periods of hominin evolution, there is little doubt that all hominins lived in a seasonal environment. At Allia Bay, the pattern of stress lines found in mammals suggests that the environmental conditions in which A. anamensis lived may have been comparable to those found in the Masai Mara today.

No description available.

Modification of Hodgkin and Huxley’s experimentally derived set of nonlinear differential equations was implemented to accurately simulate the action potential of the Hirudo Medicinalis’s Retzius cell in MATLAB under analogous conditions to those found in the Retzius cell environment. The voltage-gated sodium and potassium channel responses to changes in membrane potential, as experimentally determined by Hodgkin and Huxley, were manipulated to suit simulation parameters established by electrophysiological Retzius cell recordings. Application of this methodology permitted additional accurate simulation of the Hirudo Medicinalis’s P cell under analogous conditions to those found in the P cell environment. Further refinement of this technique should allow for the voltage-gated behavioral based simulation of action potential waveforms found in variety of neurons under simulation conditions analogous to the nerve cell environment.

Stina Aronson (1892–1956) is a celebrated Swedish modernist who published twenty-five works during the first part of the 20th century. Her writings are considered to be progressive and ethical due to extensive feminist and eco-critical research. Aronson’s novel Hitom himlen(This Side of Heaven, 1946) captures the life in upper Northern Sweden, in the Torne Valley, during the beginning of 20th century. In this thesis, I examine the narrative by placing it in relation to the racial hierarchies permeating society during the initial decades of the 20th century. The Finnish-speaking minority living in the Torne Valley came to be considered racially different from the national majority, due to national and international race science – today understood as scientific racism– and anthropology. My analysis shows how the characters are racialized using such ideas as the Mongolian theory and the cephalic index. It is further made evident that the novel captures a perception claiming the so-called ‘Finns’ were of an inferior race. And further, the belief that a mixture of Swedish, Finnish and Sami blood had weakened the group genetically. The mixture of races was defined as a serious threat to the Swedish population, who was regarded as the whitest and purest population on earth. Aronson captures this belief of a future extinction by depicting the death and illness of the youngest generation in the novel. Furthermore, the main character, Emma Niskanpää, believes that she meets God during the church service at the yearly holiday Marie bebådelsedag. I argue though, that the man she encounters is a fictitious Herman Lundborg (1868–1943), the most prominent of the Swedish race biologists, who, in reality, repeatedly performed skull measurement during this celebration. Directly following on this encounter, the ”deaf-and-dumb” daughter of the family Renström is buried along with several others and Emma Niskanpää’s son falls ill with tuberculosis. In this way, the novel captures the racial surveys carried out on minority groups– surveys which are today considered a national trauma. In This Side of Heaven, Stina Aronson turns into literature a specific form of racism and a forgotten part of Swedish history as a pioneering country in the formulation of race hierarchies.

Dans le néocortex murin, la division des cellules précurseurs a lieu dès le stade E11 et donne naissance aux premiers neurones pionniers dont les cellules de Cajal-Retzius. L'activité électrique spontanée, portée par les canaux ioniques, joue un rôle prépondérant dans le développement du système nerveux central. Comprendre la place des canaux ioniques et de la signalisation calcique dans les phases précoces de le neurogenèse était l'objectif principal de mon projet. Nous avons montré l'apparition précoce de canaux sodiques dépendants du voltage dans 55% des cellules neuronales à E13, dont les cellules de Cajal-Retzius. En parallèle, nous avons observé des activités calciques spontanées dans les cellules proliférantes et neuronales au même stade. La conception d'un logiciel d'imagerie nous a permis d'analyser statistiquement ces activités et d'identifier les canaux ioniques impliqués. Alors que les synapses ne sont pas encore formées, nous avons observé la mise en place d'activités synchrones au sein du néocortex et démontré l'existence de communications paracrines entre les cellules. De plus, nous avons identifié l'existence d'une cascade de signalisation où la dépolarisation des récepteurs glycinergiques active les canaux sodiques présents sur les neurones pionniers. Dans ces neurones, l'influx sodique entraîne une augmentation de calcium cytoplasmique via un échangeur Na+/Ca2+ puis une exocytose glutamatergique dont le libération paracrine induit l'activation d'autres cellules néocorticales. L'utilisation de la culture organotypique de cerveau nous a laissé entrevoir une implication physiologique majeure de cette cascade de signalisation dans la corticogenèse.