Objectives:The overall aim of the dissertation is to examine antibody response to immunization with pneumococcal vaccine in patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease (IRD), in relation to disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) treatments, and in postsplenectomy patients.Methods:(I) Splenectomized patients without previous pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) immunization were invited to r

In order to tap the energy saving and climate mitigation potential of buildings, transaction costs of implementing energy efficient technologies need to be better understood and ultimately reduced. The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the nature and scale of transaction costs resulting from the application of the passive house concept in energy efficient renovations. Related conc

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) results from amyloid accumulation within arteries of the cerebral cortex and leptomeninges. This condition is age-related, especially prevalent in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and the main feature of certain hereditary disorders (i.e., HCHWA-I). The vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) appear to play a vital role in the development of CAA, which makes them well suite

This study highlights the need to increase our understanding of the interplay between sensor drift and the performance of the automatic control system. The impact from biased sensors on the automatic control systems is rarely considered when different control strategies are assessed in water resource recovery facilities. Still, the harsh measurement environment with negative effects on sensor data

Catalysts are materials that accelerate the rate of a desired chemical reaction. As such, they constitute an integral part in many applications ranging from the production of fine chemicals in chemical industry to exhaust gas treatment in vehicles. Accordingly, it is of utmost economic interest to improve catalyst efficiency and performance, which requires an understanding of the interplay between

The aim of this paper is to analyse the type of mobilities and subjects that are being promoted and constituted through bike-sharing systems. This is done through an analysis of the bike-sharing system in the city of Lund in Sweden. The analysis utilises Bacchi’s What is the Problem Represented to be? framework and develops it through adding a spatial perspective. Departing from a critical velomobThe aim of this paper is to analyse the type of mobilities and subjects that are being promoted and constituted through bike-sharing systems. This is done through an analysis of the bike-sharing system in the city of Lund in Sweden. The analysis utilises Bacchi's What is the Problem Represented to be? framework and develops it through adding a spatial perspective. Departing from a critical velomob

Background COVID-19 is a rapidly spreading disease that has caused extensive burden to individuals, families, countries, and the world. Effective treatments of COVID-19 are urgently needed. This is the second edition of a living systematic review of randomized clinical trials assessing the effects of all treatment interventions for participants in all age groups with COVID-19. Methods and findings

Focal non-convulsive status epilepticus (fNCSE) is a neurological condition characterized by a prolonged seizure that may lead to the development of epilepsy. Emerging experimental evidence implicates neuronal death, microglial activation and alterations in the excitatory and inhibitory synaptic balance as key features in the pathophysiology following fNCSE. We have previously reported alterations

The yield of charged particles opposite to a Z boson with large transverse momentum (pT) is measured in 260 pb-1 of pp and 1.7 nb-1 of Pb+Pb collision data at 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The Z boson tag is used to select hard-scattered partons with specific kinematics, and to observe how their showers are modified as they propagate throu

How global gridded crop models (GGCMs) differ in their simulation of potential yield and reasons for those differences have never been assessed. The GGCM Intercomparison (GGCMI) offers a good framework for this assessment. Here, we built an emulator (called SMM for simple mechanistic model) of GGCMs based on generic and simplified formalism. The SMM equations describe crop phenology by a sum of gr

Optical and laser diagnostics is a field where optical techniques are developed that offer remote, non-intrusive measurements in order to characterise a system. Imaging is a big part of this field and the versatility it offers makes it a great tool in the hands of researchers and in practical applications. In this thesis, multiple applications of imaging are presented, together with possible data

Autonomous vehicles hold promise for increased vehicle and traffic safety, and there are several developments in the field where one example is an avoidance maneuver. There it is dangerous for the vehicle to be in the opposing lane, but it is safe to drive in the original lane again after the obstacle. To capture this basic observation, a lane-deviation penalty (LDP) objective function is devised.

Fires in road tunnels constitute complex scenarios with interactions between the fire, tunnel users and safety measures. More and more methodologies for risk analysis quantify the consequences of these scenarios with complex models. Examples for complex models are the computational fluid dynamics model Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and the microscopic evacuation model FDS+Evac. However, the high c

Extracting relevant features from data sets where the number of observations n is much smaller then the number of predictors p is a major challenge in modern statistics. Sorted L-One Penalized Estimation (SLOPE)—a generalization of the lasso---is a promising method within this setting. Current numerical procedures for SLOPE, however, lack the efficiency that respective tools for the lasso enjoy, p

This report aims at identifying common causes, patterns, and effects of changing foreign investments across the countries of Central Asia. Experience of neighboring countries in Central Asia as a distinct region of the world attracting foreign investment is particularly relevant for each country in the area. Therefore, the comparative analysis of the Central Asian countries presented in this repor

Objective: The clinical phenotype of the rare behavioural variant of Alzheimer's disease (bvAD) is insufficiently understood. Given the strong clinico-anatomical correlations of tau pathology in AD, we investigated the distribution of tau deposits in bvAD, in-vivo and ex-vivo, using positron emission tomography (PET) and postmortem examination. Methods: For the tau PET study, seven amyloid-β posit

The science of decision making is studied in many areas of science and engineering, for example within, computer science, automatic control theory, mathematics and neurophysiology. The aim of this text is to provide a very brief overview of some of the models and tools used within mathematical decision making. These models can be studied in terms of an agent that observes the world and takes decisThe science of decision making is studied in many areas of science and engineering, for example within, computer science, automatic control theory, mathematics and neurophysiology. The aim of this text is to provide a very brief overview of some of the models and tools used within mathematical decision making. These models can be studied in terms of an agent that observes the world and takes decis