Epidemiologic data on pleural mesothelioma are scarce on regional and occupational time trends, which would monitor the effects of changes in exposure to asbestos. We aim to characterize time trends, regional, socioeconomic, and occupational risk factors for pleural mesothelioma in Sweden in the years from 1961 to 1998. The Swedish Family-Cancer Database was used to identify patients with pleural

We used the Swedish Family-Cancer Database to examine the time trends of lung cancer in Sweden by histological type, with special reference to gender. A total of 45,297 lung cancer cases were analysed. The overall age-adjusted incidence rates of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in men peaked in the 1980s and then slightly decreased, while corresponding rates in women increased steadily. The incidence

Whole blood is rich in information about the physical state of an individual and is routinely used in a variety of clinical and research applications. In this thesis, the use of a microfluidic technique called acoustophoresis for separation of different blood components is explored. Acoustophoresis uses an ultrasonic standing wave field to manipulate cells in a microfluidic device. Cells within th

This work presented the working scheme developed and used in order to conduct multiple daylight simulations for distinct rooms in a wide range of apartment buildings within the urban grid. The objective was to generate 3D models of the rooms under study and their urban surroundings, and to obtain the corresponding illuminance files and geometry information in a time-efficient, automated manner. Th

Konsten att flyga har uppstått fyra gånger under evolutionens gång: hos fåglarna, fladdermössen, insekterna och de nu utdöda flygödlorna. En av dessa grupper – insekterna – har varit otroligt framgångsrik: insekter står för ungefär 80% av världens arter. Troligtvis har förmågan att flyga bidragit till deras framgång. Men trots att det finns många fördelar med att kunna flyga – man kan till exempel fly frAerodynamic theory states that the power required to fly is related to flight speed with a ∪-shaped curve. This has been shown in vertebrates, but insects have been proposed to have a flat, or J-shaped power curve. This means that hovering – flying at zero speed – is energy-efficient, which would explain why it is a relatively common flight mode in insects. In this thesis I show that some insects do, in

The 24-hour rhythms of the circadian clock [1] allow an organism to anticipate daily environmental cycles, giving it a competitive advantage [2, 3]. Although clock components show little protein sequence homology across phyla, multiple feedback loops and light inputs are universal features of clock networks [4, 5]. Why have circadian systems evolved such a complex structure? All biological clocks

This article examines six multilingual students’ composing processes and language use while writing in L2 English. Four participants have two L1s: Swedish and either Bosnian (N = 2) or Macedonian (N = 2). The remaining two participants have Swedish as their L1. Building on an L2 composing model (Wang and Wen, 2002) and the theory of Language Mode (Grosjean, 2008), the study uses think-aloud data t

A direct, low-cost method to determine the concentration of lactose is an important goal with possible impact in various types of industry. In this study, a biosensor is reported that exploits the specific interaction between lactose and the enzyme β-galactosidase (β-Gal) normally employed to process lactose into glucose and galactose for lactose-intolerant people. The biosensor was made with β-Ga

A stomatal-based method of palaeo-CO2 estimation has been applied to a temporally detailed sequence of leaves from a high-latitude lake (68°N) in northern Sweden spanning the last 9000 years. The resulting atmospheric CO2 reconstruction documents the onset of a gradual increase c. 5000 years before present indicating that the carbon cycle has not been in steady state over this time. Stable carbon

The strong coupling from ALEPH tau decays. We use the publically available non-strange spectral function from ALEPH tau decays to critically analyze the different determinations of αs(mτ2) that can be found in the literature and the numerical impact of their possible weaknesses. We also introduce some novel approaches. We find that perturbative uncertainties dominate. Our results with different ap

Background: It is of great clinical importance to exclude myocardial infarction in patients with suspected coronary artery disease who do not have stress-induced ischemia. The diagnostic use of myocardial perfusion single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in this situation is sometimes complicated by attenuation artifacts that mimic myocardial infarction. Imaging in the prone position ha

We consider hadron production in deep inelastic scattering of electrons on photons. 1. (i)Exploiting the leading order QCD corrections due to gluon bremsstrahlung we find that the photon structure functions rapidly approach their asymptotic form which can be calculated in QCD. 2. (ii)Replacing QCD by a theory with a fixed quark-gluon coupling constant (scalar or abelian gluons) gives dramatic chan

The origin of the observed scaling violations in inclusive e+e- annihilation is investigated. Perturbative jet evolution is not necessarily the only reason for scale breaking in the hadron spectra at present energies. Remnants of finite-transverse-momentum and mass effects are still important in nonperturbative, cascade-type, jet formation in the 10 GeV range. Heavy-quark fragmentation has a stron

A neural network algorithm for finding tracks in high energy physics experiments is presented. The performance of the algorithm is explored on modest size samples with encouraging results. It is inherently parallel and thus suitable for execution on a conventional SIMD architecture. More important, it naturally lends itself to direct implementations in custom made hardware, which would permit real

I DEN DIVERSIFIERADE STADEN, hur kan vi planera och bygga platser för gemenskap som inte är beroende av social och kulturell likhet? I en tid då offentliga samtal förs kring segregation och utan-förskapsområden, aktualiseras frågor kring den fysiska miljöns betydelse för människors lika livsvillkor. I avsaknad av mer genomgripande lösningar kring boendesegregation har de offen-tliga rummen hamnat HOW CAN WE PLAN AND DESIGN FOR community in diverse urban situations? In response to segregation and social fragmentation, public space is increasingly being conceived of as a vehicle for fostering openness towards differences, both in planning practice and theory. Drawing on two recent public space projects – Superkilen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Jubileumsparken in Gothenburg, Sweden – this thes