Forest fires are an important disturbance factor of boreal forests, annually burning about 0.5% of the forested area in Canada. Wildfire regimes are influenced by climate and a number of studies project an increase in wildfire activity with climate change. Another factor influencing wildfires is human intervention (fire suppression), and one factor that has rarely been assessed is fuel fragmentati

Trabecular bone samples are traditionally embedded and polished for scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM). The effect of sample processing, including dehydration, on the acoustic impedance of bone is unknown. In this study, acoustic impedance of human trabecular bone samples (n = 8) was experimentally assessed before (fresh) and after embedding using SAM and two-dimensional (2-D) finite-difference ti

Abnormalities of tau protein are central to the pathogenesis of progressive supranuclear palsy, whereas haplotype variation of the tau gene MAPT influences the risk of Parkinson disease and Parkinson's disease dementia. We assessed whether regional MAPT expression might be associated with selective vulnerability of global brain networks to neurodegenerative pathology. Using task-free functional ma

Background: Sierra Leone is a low income country in West Africa that has a history of conflict. Sierra Leone have signed and ratified the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Aim: To evaluate persons with disability that use prosthetic and orthotic assistive devices access to human rights. The addressed areas were; right to health, right to a standard of living adequate for health, ri

This thesis makes a contribution to network theory and how it applies to economics. It consists of three self-contained papers. It predominantly considers how connections between economic entities can affect economic outcomes. In particular, the first two papers examine social learning, in the one case by applying it to portfolio choice, and in the other by conducting an experiment to determine ho

A recurrent large genomic rearrangement (LGR) encompassing exons 23 and 24 of the BRCA1 gene has been identified in breast-ovarian cancer families of Greek origin. Its breakpoints have been determined as c.5406+664_*8273del11052 (RefSeq: NM_007294.3) and a diagnostic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been set up for rapid screening. In a series of 2,092 high-risk families completely screened for

Using focus group interviews, this paper studies the way young people in Sweden employed social media to discuss and mobilise during the on-going European refugee crisis, with a special focus on peer pressure, social interaction and connective action.In 2015, an unprecedented influx of refugees, predominantly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, entered Europe on foot and in dinghies. The refugee cr

An updated analysis regarding the expected nuclear PDF constraints from the future Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) experiment is presented. The new study is based on a more flexible small-x parametrization which provides less biased uncertainty estimates in the region where there are currently no data constraints. The effect of the LHeC is quantified by directly including a sample of pseudod

Poly-3-d-hydroxybutyrate (or PHB) is a polyester which can be used in the production of biodegradable plastics from renewable resources. It is naturally produced by several bacteria as a response to nutrient starvation in the excess of a carbon source. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae could be an alternative production host as it offers good inhibitor tolerance towards weak acids and phenolic co

Relapse after successful initial correction of idiopathic clubfoot with the Ponseti method is often related to poor compliance with the foot abduction orthosis (FAO). The aim of this study was to evaluate treatment with custom-made dynamic orthoses. Twenty children with idiopathic clubfoot (30 feet) who had been treated with dynamic orthoses after the correction phase according to the Ponseti cast

It was estimated that about 0.5% of the world’s population is in need of assistive devices; in 2013, the number of people who required such aid was estimated at 25 million in Africa and Asia. The majority of these people could have increased their participation within society by receiving an assistive device to facilitate mobilisation, recognised as a step in accessing basic human rights such as f

To investigate the spectrum of common mitochondrial mutations in Tunisia during the years of 2002-2012, 226 patients with mitochondrial disorders were clinically diagnosed with hearing loss, Leigh syndrome (LS), diabetes, cardiomyopathy, Kearns-Sayre syndrome (KSS), Pearson syndrome (PS), myopathy, mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes syndrome (MELAS) a

Vertical InAs nanowire transistors are fabricated on Si using a gate-last method, allowing for lithography-based control of the vertical gate length. The best devices combine good ON- and OFF-performance, exhibiting an ON-current of 0.14 mA/μm, and a sub-threshold swing of 90 mV/dec at 190 nm LG. The device with the highest transconductance shows a peak value of 1.6 mS/μm. From RF measurements, th

In the past decades, numeracy has taken an increasingly important place in the study of human capital formation, as well as in literacy studies and studies on formal education and book production. In order to understand levels of education, scholars have recently tried to develop new ways to measure the level of education, particularly because it has since become apparent that the measures of lite