Asthma is a common airway inflammatory disease, associated with a variable degree of airway obstruction. It is a heterogeneous condition with large variations in severity and clinical presentation. Moreover, disease activity can vary from time to time. Taken together, these factors make the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of asthma challenging. Peripheral airway inflammation has been shown to

It is vital to extend the service life of existing bridges as far as possible as a means for improved sustainability leading to reduced economic cost and resource consumption. This requirement is especially valid for bridges which are critical components of highly vulnerable infrastructure systems. Achieving this aim requires enhanced methods involving various actions and methods influencing diffe

The overall purpose of this thesis is to improve our understanding of how disaster risk management (DRM) systems function. Specifically, it aims to increase our knowledge about effective communication in a multi-stakeholder, multi-level DRM system, with a particular focus on the exchange of risk-related information for risk assessment. The Swedish DRM system is taken as a study case to examine how

The detection of reactive oxygen species (ROS) after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is based on indirect methods due to the high reactivity and short half-life of ROS in biological tissue. The commonly used salicylate trapping method has several disadvantages making it unsuitable for human use. We have evaluated 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (4-HBA) together with microdialysis (MD) in the rat as an alternat

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) is currently emerging as a theoretical alternative to the Modern Synthesis (MS) in which to frame evolutionary observations and interpretations. These alternative frameworks differ fundamentally in their understanding of the relative roles of the genotype, phenotype, development and environment in evolutionary processes and patterns. While the MS represent

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) techniques are increasingly being used in the healthcare sector for assessing the value of interventions. The objective of this study was to estimate WTP and its predictors in a randomized controlled trial of a lifestyle intervention exclusively targeting Middle Eastern immigrants living in Malmö, Sweden, who are at high risk of type 2 diabetes. We used the contingent valu

BACKGROUND: For most Afro-Palearctic migrants, particularly small songbirds, spatiotemporal migration schedules and migratory connectivity remain poorly understood. We mapped migration from breeding through winter of one of the smallest Afro-Palearctic migrants, the willow warbler Phylloscopus trochilus, using geolocators (n = 15).RESULTS: Birds migrated from North European breeding grounds to Wes

Background: Knowledge of spatiotemporal migration patterns is important for our understanding of migration ecology and ultimately conservation of migratory species. We studied the annual migration schedules of European nightjar, a large nocturnal insectivore and compared it with two other larger migratory insectivores, common swift and common cuckoo. All species breed in North Europe and winter in

Modern wind turbines are designed to withstand approximately for a lifetime of 20 years [1]. However, a very long design life of 100 years or more can be expected for high-quality concrete foundations. Thus there is a big difference in lifetime between wind turbines and foundations. There is a significant economic benefit of replacing the out-of-date wind turbine with a new turbine of better power

Monte Carlo simulations have been performed for two simple models of a titrating polyelectrolyte: (i) a rigid rod and (ii) a freely jointed chain. Both models have fixed bond lengths, and the polyelectrolyte charges interact through a screened Coulomb potential. Chains consisting of 80-1000 monomeric units have been studied at three salt concentrations: 0.001, 0.01, and 0.1 M. Conformational prope

Deciphering the assembly history of the Milky Way is a formidable task, which becomes possible only if one can produce high-resolution chrono-chemo-kinematical maps of the Galaxy. Data from large-scale astrometric and spectroscopic surveys will soon provide us with a well-defined view of the current chemo-kinematical structure of the Milky Way, but it will only enable a blurred view on the tempora