For decades non-Nordic countries have consistently reported high rates of somatic health problems among children placed in care by the authorities. This study examined the unmet health and dental care needs of Swedish children in foster and residential care.

This thesis consists of three essays discussing institutional change and its effects. It distinguishes between economic and political institutions, and highlights the need for broader empirical efforts that consider interactions among different types of institutions. The first essay titled Effect of Trade and Political Institutions on Economic Institutions explores the relationship between trade a

l-DOPA is the most commonly used treatment for symptomatic control in patients with Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately, most patients develop severe side-effects, such as dyskinesia, upon chronic l-DOPA treatment. The patophysiology of dyskinesia is unclear; however, involvement of serotonergic nerve fibers in converting l-DOPA to dopamine has been suggested. Therefore, potassium-evoked dopamine r

The hydrological sensitivities to long-term climate change of a watershed in Eastern Canada were analysed using a deterministic watershed runoff model developed to simulate watershed acidification. This model was modified to study atmospheric change effects in the watershed. Water balance modelling techniques, modified for assessing climate effects, were developed and tested for a watershed using

Activation of the beta-receptor for platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) by its ligand leads to autophosphorylation on a number of tyrosine residues. Here we show that Tyr763 in the kinase insert region is a novel autophosphorylation site, which after phosphorylation binds the protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2. SHP-2 has also previously been shown to bind to phosphorylated Tyr1009 in the PDGF be

Background. Allergy nurses are exposed to allergens and respiratory irritants, and there are no national guidelines addressing personnel safety when working with these agents. Objective. To investigate the prevalence of allergies, asthma, and hypersensitivity symptoms among allergy nurses and the use of protective equipment and measures when working with allergen concentrates and respiratory irrit

Objective: The etiology of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) includes atherosclerotic, inflammatory, immunological and coagulatory mechanisms. The aim of this study was to evaluate associations between markers for some of these mechanisms and AAA-size, in order to identify markers which might later be evaluated in relation to aneurysm growth. Material and methods: Prospectively 360 AAA-patients and

We present a new duplex scheme, called Zipper, for discrete multitone (DMT)-based very high bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) systems on copper wires. This scheme divides the available bandwidth by assigning different subcarriers for the upstream and downstream directions. It has high flexibility to divide the capacity between the up and downstream, as well as good coexistence possibilities

We consider a two-level inventory system with one central warehouse and N retailers. All installations apply different continuous review installation stock (R, Q) policies. The retailers face independent compound Poisson demand processes. Transportation times are constant. We present a method for exact evaluation of control policies that provides the complete probability distributions of the retai

Using a novel experimental approach based on near-infrared femtosecond absorption spectroscopy, we have determined the energy of the S-1 state of the carotenoid spheroidene. The energy of this state is 13 400 +/- 90 cm(-1) at both 293 and 186 K, showing that there is no temperature-induced shift of the S-1 level. A discrepancy of about 800 cm(-1) between the S-1 energy determined here and that obt

With more advanced manufacturing technologies, small and medium sized enterprises can compete with low-wage labor by providing customized and high quality products. For small production series, robotic systems can provide a cost-effective solution. However, for robots to be able to perform on par with human workers in manufacturing industries, they have to become flexible and autonomous in their t