| 1. |
- Aaboen, Lise, 1978
(author)
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Incubators and incubation -Resources and activities in relation to different actors
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- ABSTRACTIncubators prepare new technology-based firms (NTBFs) for the obstacles ahead, they complement and develop the entrepreneurial ability of the firm founder, advise regarding financing, as well as providing structure and credibility to the firm. Incubators accelerate the development of the firms towards growth, create an entrepreneurial and innovative climate in the region, and contribute to the commercialization of research results from the university. There are many descriptions but still there remains the difficulty of understanding what an incubator is, and what it does. There is a great difference between incubators due to them having been formed in relation to different actors who have varying histories. Based on the appended papers the principal actors in relation to incubators are: the incubator, the NTBFs, the university, the policy actors and the financial actors. Moreover, the part played by the incubator differs depending on the roles in relation to the different actors, and they often have more than one role in relation to the same actor. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to explore incubation in relation to different actors. The exploration includes five appended papers. Three of the papers focus on the role of the incubators when helping the NTBFs find and utilize resources. The three types of resources are knowledge, financing and relationships. The two remaining papers focus on the incubator as an organization with particular interest in value creation and efficiency. All five appended papers are written using the resource-based view. In the cover paper the findings in the appended papers are reflected upon using the industrial network approach in order to provide another perspective, focusing on relationships as opportunities leading to an understanding of incubators and incubation. In the cover paper principal actors, activities and resources are explored. The NTBFs are developed through the incubation with the help of resources contributed by the other actors. Additional to the development, the cover paper discussed other activities included in the incubation, i.e. mediation, innovation and acceleration. These activities enable actors to access and combine resources, within and across firm boundaries, that they would otherwise have difficulties combining at that point in time, as quickly or in that way. The relationships of the incubator enable mediation of contacts between actors who are otherwise reluctant to collaborate. Through these collaborations new resource combinations may be found. Resource combinations in already existing relationship can be found using experience from other relationships. In other words, the relationships of the incubator contribute to innovation among the actors. Furthermore, the relationships of the incubator contribute to the acceleration of the NTBFs’ development by being a trusted third party actor, and by contributing to the coordination of actors aiming at improving the innovative climate. Hence, relationships are a special kind of resource for the incubators. The importance of the relationships for the incubators implies that the critical issues might not be to pick NTBFs based on criteria for growth potential, but rather on the ability to form and develop relationships for themselves, as well as the NTBF, in order to develop the firm. Furthermore, arguments regarding the increasing homogeneity among Swedish incubators are based on the rather formalized relationships with the policy actors where incubators tend to play rather similar roles. The heterogeneity is likely to be perceived as larger from the perspective of relationships that are more context specific. Moreover, the relationships, activities and combination of resources cross-fertilize each other without a natural or manageable direction that cannot be controlled by one or a few of the actors involved. After the concluding discussion there is a retrospection of the development of the thesis and the empirical material, which is based on qualitative and quantitative data that has been gathered within the Swedish incubator program mainly during 1999, 2005 and 2006.
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| 2. |
- Aagaard, Sunniva Margrethe Due
(author)
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Reticulate Evolution in Diphasiastrum (Lycopodiaceae)
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this thesis relationships and the occurrence of reticulate evolutionary events in the club moss genus Diphasiastrum are investigated. Diphasiastrum is initially established as a monophyletic group within Lycopodiaceae using non recombinant chloroplast sequence data. Support is obtained for eight distinct parental lineages in Diphasiastrum, and relationships among the putative parent taxa in the hypothesized hybrid complexes; D. alpinum, D. complanatum, D. digitatum, D. multispicatum, D. sitchense, D. tristachyum and D. veitchii are presented. Feulgen DNA image densitometry data and sequence data obtained from three nuclear regions, RPB2, LEAFY and LAMB4, were used to infer the origins of three different taxa confirmed to be allopolyploid; D. zanclophyllum from South Africa, D. wightianum from Malaysia and an undescribed taxon from China. The two Asian polyploids have originated from two different hybrid combinations, D. multispicatum x D. veitchii and D. tristachyum x D. veitchii. Diphasiastrum zanclophyllum originates from a cross between D. digitatum and an unidentified diploid taxon. The occurrence of three homoploid hybrid combinations commonly recognized in Europe, D. alpinum x D. complanatum, D. alpinum x D. tristachyum and D. complanatum x D. tristachyum, are verified using the same three nuclear regions. Two of the three hybrid combinations are also shown to have originated from reciprocal crosses. Admixture analyses performed on an extended, dataset similarly identified predominately F1 hybrids and backcrosses. The observations and common recognition of hybrid species in the included populations are hence most likely due to frequent observations of neohybrids in hybrid zones. Reticulate patterns are, however, prominent in the presented dataset. Hence future studies addressing evolutionary and ecological questions in Diphasiastrum should emphasize the impact of gene flow between parent lineages rather than speciation as the result of hybridization.
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| 3. |
- Aaltonen, Emil
(author)
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Prokaryotic Arsenic Resistance - Studies in Bacillus subtilis
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Arsenic is a toxic metalloid which is found all over the globe. Due to its toxicity and wide abundance, all living organisms have evolved intrinsic arsenic resistance systems. In this study, three proteins that provide arsenic resistance in the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis have been investigated. Acr3 is a trans-membrane protein that extrudes arsenite to the cell exterior. It belongs to the ACR family of arsenite transporters. Experimental data on the topology of Acr3, the first ever for a member of the ACR family, is provided and show that Acr3 has 10 trans-membrane helices. Both the N- and C-terminal ends of Acr3 are located to the cytoplasm and the protein has unusually short loops connecting its helices. ArsR is an arsenite sensitive transcription regulator that controls the expression of genes encoding arsenic resistance proteins. Experiments show that the operator site for ArsR from B. subtilis consists of a 6-6-6 inverted repeat and that DNA binding by ArsR involves formation of higher order multimers of the protein. The ArsK (former YqcK) protein has an unknown function. The present study shows that the arsK gene contributes to resistance towards both arsenite and arsenate. The results indicate that the function of ArsK is important in an aerobic environment and that it decreases the inhibitory effect that arsenite has on the sporulation efficiency of B. subtilis. A function of ArsK that involves an enzymatic addition of low molecular weight thiols to arsenic is proposed.
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| 4. |
- Aaltonen, Kristina
(author)
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Mating system evolution and self-incompatibility in the wild plant species Brassica cretica
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Compared to animals like ourselves, plants have a very flexible sexual life. Most plants are, for example, hermaphrodites with the potential capacity for reproduction by self-fertilization (or selfing). While selfing can provide several definite advantages for the individual plant, there is a downside; mainly the severe reduction in fitness due to inbreeding depression. To avoid the negative consequences of selfing, many hermaphrodite plant species have evolved an intricate self-recognition – or self-incompatibility (SI) – system that prevents fertilization by cognate pollen. SI is in the majority of cases genetically controlled by a narrowly delimited region of the genome, called the S locus. The S locus contains several tightly linked genes, two of which – SRK and SCR – determine the pistil (female) and pollen (male) SI recognition type. One of the best-characterized SI systems is found in the Brassicaceae family, which includes the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and a number of economically important crop species of the Brassica genus, e.g. rape seed, cabbage, and turnip. For evolutionary biologists, SI have long been a prominent and fascinating example of Darwinian natural selection acting in a frequency-dependent manner, i.e. the rarer a genetic variant becomes, the more favoured by natural selection it is. For the S locus, this means that a very large number of variants – or haplotypes – are expected to be maintained in a population and that the DNA sequences of different haplotypes will be very divergent. However, until recently there has been a shortage of empirical studies from natural plant populations to test these, and other, theoretical predictions of S locus evolutionary dynamics. In this thesis, I have produced the largest SRK and SCR DNA sequence data set from a wild Brassica species available to date. These data have allowed me to explore, in more detail than previously possible, the population genetic properties and the evolutionary history of the Brassica S locus. Moreover, accompanying studies of the pattern of inheritance of S locus variants and the occurrence of self-fertilization in natural B. cretica population have added novel information of great value to the understanding of how plants produce offspring in nature.
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| 5. |
- Aarsand, Pål André, 1970-
(author)
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Around the Screen : Computer activities in children’s everyday lives
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present ethnography documents computer activities in everyday life. The data consist of video recordings, interviews and field notes, documenting (i) 16 students in a seventh grade class in a computer room and other school settings and (ii) 22 children, interacting with siblings, friends and parents in home settings. The thesis is inspired by discourse analytical as well as ethnographic approaches, including notions from Goffman (1974, 1981), e.g. those of activity frame and participation framework, which are applied and discussed.The thesis consists of four empirical studies. The first study focuses on students’ illegitimate use, from the school’s point of view, of online chatting in a classroom situation. It is shown that the distinction offline/online is not a static one, rather it is made relevant as part of switches between activity frames, indicating the problems of applying Goffman’s (1981) notions of sideplay, byplay and crossplay to analyses of interactions in which several activity frames are present, rather than one main activity. Moreover, it is shown that online identities, in terms of what is here called tags, that is, visual-textual nicknames, are related to offline phenomena, including local identities as well as contemporary aesthetics. The second study focuses on placement of game consoles as part of family life politics. It is shown that game consoles were mainly located in communal places in the homes. The distinction private/communal was also actualized in the participants’ negotiations about access to game consoles as well as negotiations about what to play, when, and for how long. It is shown that two strategies were used, inclusion and exclusion, for appropriating communal places for computer game activities. The third study focuses on a digital divide in terms of a generational divide with respect to ascribed computer competence, documenting how the children and adults positioned each other as people ‘in the know’ (the children) versus people in apprentice-like positions (the adults). It is shown that this generation gap was deployed as a resource in social interaction by both the children and the adults. The forth study focuses on gaming in family life, showing that gaming was recurrently marked by response cries (Goffman, 1981) and other forms of blurted talk. These forms of communication worked as parts of the architecture of intersubjectivity in gaming (cf. Heritage, 1984), indexing the distinction virtual/‘real’. It is shown how response cries, sound making, singing along and animated talk extended the virtual in that elements of the game became parts of the children’s social interaction around the screen, forming something of an action aesthetic, a type of performative action for securing and displaying joint involvement and collaboration. As a whole, the present studies show how the distinctions master/apprentice, public/private, virtual/real and subject/object are indexicalized and negotiated in computer activities.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Aasa, Ulrika
(author)
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Ambulance Work : Relationships between occupational demands, individual characteristics and health-related outcomes
- 2005
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Although musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and other health complaints are an occupational problem for ambulance personnel, there is a lack of knowledge regarding work-related factors associated with MSDs and other health complaints. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationships between occupational demands, individual characteristics and health-related outcomes among ambulance personnel. A random sample of 234 female and 953 male ambulance personnel participated in a national questionnaire survey on work-related factors, and musculoskeletal and other health complaints. Physical demands was associated with activity limitation due to neck-shoulder and low-back complaints among the female personnel. Among the male personnel, physical demands was associated with low-back complaints and activity limitation due to low-back complaints. Psychological demands was significantly associated with neck-shoulder complaints, sleeping problems, headache and stomach symptoms among both female and male ambulance personnel. Worry about work conditions was associated with musculoskeletal disorders and sleeping problems, headache and stomach symptoms. A local sample of 26 ambulance personnel was followed during a 24-hour work shift and for the next two work-free days. Subjective stress- and energy levels, and cortisol levels were measured at regular intervals, and heart rate was registered continuously by electrocardiogram (ECG). Autonomic reactivity to standardized tests before (pre-work) and at the end of the work shift (post-work) was also investigated. For the whole group, baseline values of heart rate were higher pre-work than post-work, but autonomic reactivity did not differ. Increased reactivity to the mental test, modest deviation in heart rate variability (HRV) pattern during the late night hours at work and higher morning cortisol values during work than during leisure time were observed in personnel with many health complaints, but not among their co-workers without or with few complaints. Ambulance personnel with many health complaints also reported higher psychological demands and tended to be more worried about work conditions. Heart rate (HR), lactate level (LL) and perceived exertion (RPE) were investigated in 17 female and 48 male ambulance personnel during a simulated standardized work task “carry a loaded stretcher”. The ambulance personnel had to carry the loaded stretcher (920 N) up and down three flights of stairs twice. The high physiological strain (HR, LL, RPE) for the male, and near or at maximal strain for the female ambulance personnel, implied the importance to identify what kind of physical capacity is most important for ambulance personnel. Therefore, the explained variance of developed fatigue by tests of cardiorespiratory capacity, muscular strength and endurance, and coordination was investigated. The results showed that VO2max and isometric back endurance were important predictors for development of fatigue when carrying a loaded stretcher. The influence of body size on the relationships between maximal strength and functional performance was investigated in a methodological study. The results confirm that the assessment of physical performance could be confounded by the body weight. Therefore, the models for explaining development of fatigue when carrying the loaded stretcher were adjusted for height and weight. Including height in the models significantly increased the explained variance of accumulated lactate among female, but not among male personnel. Lactate levels were higher among short compared to tall female personnel. Weight had no effect on any of the models. In conclusion, the national survey showed that self-reported physical demands was a risk factor of having MSDs, and that self-reported psychological demands and worry about work were important risk factors of having MSDs and other health complaints. Stress monitoring of ambulance personnel during work and leisure time showed that physiological and subjective stress markers did not show any differences between the 24-hour ambulance work shift and leisure time afterwards. However, ambulance personnel with many health complaints had certain physiological changes during the work shift in comparison with the next two work-free days. The physiological and subjective responses during carrying a loaded stretcher, especially among the female ambulance personnel, showed that female and male ambulance personnel could be exposed to internal exposures at different levels when performing the same work task. A better understanding of the relationships between occupational demands and health-related outcomes require further studies on age- and gender matched groups in long-term perspective studies.
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| 8. |
- Abaravicius, Juozas
(author)
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Demand Side Activities for Electric Load Reduction
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The research described in this thesis, focuses on some activities on the demand side that could reduce peak load in electricity system by using consumer flexibility i.e. by increasing the demand side response to signals coming from the energy market. The major objective is to test and analyse different strategies to reduce peak load at the demand side considering their techno-economic, environmental and behavioural aspects. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used, including the detailed energy use data evaluation, direct and indirect load control experiments and interviews with residential and commercial consumers and utilities. One general conclusion of this research process is that there's a lack of knowledge and information on load demand variation and its consequences both on the consumer side and the utility side. New automated interval metering technologies enable 'visibility' of electricity use, however this potentially valuable information is rarely analysed and used. Modern metering and communication systems enable utilities to perform direct load control measures and to automate demand response. As the experiments with direct load control at residential consumers show, these measures could be implemented without significant comfort losses for the consumers. However, the value of this kind of demand side actions needs to be clearly expressed or quantified both for consumers and the supplier. Indirect load control with the help of various types of pricing is possible, but needs to have more significant financial motivation for the consumers than the present offers give. The results of the analysed examples of a tariff with a load demand component indicate that consumers' electrical expenses have to be more considerably reduced if they are to significantly 'improve' the consumption patterns. Utilities, for example one of those analysed in our case studies, may not assess indirect load control as a reliable resource. Therefore the integration of direct and indirect load control measures could be an attractive solution for them. Load reduction strategies at the demand side could influence the environmental performance of an energy system by decreasing emissions and preventing the distortion of territories. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the environmental effects depend on the prevalent generation and transmission system and could be different on different levels - regional, national and local - as the analysis example of the Swedish case, described in this thesis, shows. Load management and demand response could be considered as a socially responsible behaviour rather than only a solution to techno-economic problems of an energy market. The results of this research showed interesting examples proving that certain residential and commercial consumers are willing to participate in demand response programs from a corporate social responsibility point of view.
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| 9. |
- Abbasi, Alireza, 1973-
(author)
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Structural and Spectroscopic Studies of Solvated Metal Ions
- 2005
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Crystallographic and spectroscopic studies have been performed of structures, coordination and chemical bonding for series of trivalent metal ions solvated by two oxygen-coordinating solvents, water and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). The hydrated scandium(III) and lanthanoid(III) ions, La to Lu, are surrounded by tricapped trigonal prisms of aqua ligands in the isomorphous series of trifluoromethanesulfonates, [M(H2O)n](CF3SO3)3. For the smallest ions, M = Er, Tm, Yb, Lu, Sc, the hydration numbers decrease, n = 8.96(5), 8.8(1), 8.7(1), 8.5(1), 8.0(1), respectively, with decreasing size of the ion. The crystal structures at ambient temperature indicate randomly distributed vacancies of the capping oxygen atoms, and 2H solid-state NMR of the diamagnetic [M(H2O)n](CF3SO3)3, M = Sc, Lu, Y and La compounds revealed increasing mobility of the water ligands in the coordination sphere with increasing temperature, also for the fully nonahydrated LaIII and YIII ions. The stretching force constants of the Ln-O bonds, evaluated from vibrational spectroscopy, increased from 0.81 to 1.16 N cm-1 for the Ln-6O trigonal prism in a smooth correlation with the bond distances from La to Lu. For the capping Ln-3O bonds the increase from 0.49 to 0.65 N cm-1 reflects the increased ligand-ligand repulsion with decreasing ion size. This is also the reason for the water deficiency of the Er, Tm, Yb, Lu and Sc salts, and for [Sc(H2O)8.0](CF3SO3)3 the repulsion induced a phase transition at about 185 K that, by low temperature crystallography, was found to distort the coordination of water molecules toward a monocapped trigonal prism around the scandium(III) ion.All crystal structures of the octakis(dimethyl sulfoxide)lanthanoid(III) iodides comprise discrete [Ln(dmso)8]3+ complexes surrounded by iodide ions. The lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) compounds crystallize in the orthorhombic space group Pbca with more efficient packing than for the heavier and smaller ions in the lanthanoid series, which crystallize in the monoclinic space group P21/n. The group 13 metal ions, aluminium(III), gallium(III), indium(III), thallium(III), and also scandium(III) of group 3, form crystalline hexakis(dimethyl sulfoxide) solvates in the space group R 3, with octahedral MO6 coordination entities, which are increasingly compressed along one threefold axis for increasing ionic size. EXAFS measurements on the solvated ions display similar M-O bond distances in dimethyl sulfoxide solution as in the solid solvates. For all the solid dimethyl sulfoxide solvates the strength and nature of the metal-oxygen bond has been evaluated by normal coordinate analysis of vibrational spectra, and correlated with the S-O stretching vibrational mode.Distortions from regular octahedral six coordination are discussed for the hydrated isoelectronic soft mercury(II) and thallium(III) ions in the solid bisaquamercury(II) and trisaquatallium(III) trifluoromethanesulfonates, in terms of pseudo Jahn-Teller effects (PJTE). Mercury(II), generally more strongly influenced by PJTE distortions, displays a 2 + 4 Hg-O coordination forming chains that are held together in sheets by hydrogen bonds and in layers by van der Waals interactions, which explain the fragile structure of the crystals.
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| 10. |
- Abbasinejad Enger, Shirin, 1975-
(author)
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Dosimetry Studies of Different Radiotherapy Applications using Monte Carlo Radiation Transport Calculations
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Developing radiation delivery systems for optimisation of absorbed dose to the target without normal tissue toxicity requires advanced calculations for transport of radiation. In this thesis absorbed dose and fluence in different radiotherapy applications were calculated by using Monte Carlo (MC) simulations.In paper I-III external neutron activation of gadolinium (Gd) for intravascular brachytherapy (GdNCB) and tumour therapy (GdNCT) was investigated. MC codes MCNP and GEANT4 were compared. MCNP was chosen for neutron capture reaction calculations. Gd neutron capture reaction includes both very short range (Auger electrons) and long range (IC electrons and gamma) products. In GdNCB the high-energetic gamma gives an almost flat absorbed dose delivery pattern, up to 4 mm around the stent. Dose distribution at the edges and inside the stent may prevent stent edge and in-stent restenosis. For GdNCT the absorbed dose from prompt gamma will dominate over the dose from IC and Auger electrons in an in vivo situation. The absorbed dose from IC electrons will enhance the total absorbed dose in the tumours and contribute to the cell killing.In paper IV a model for calculation of inter-cluster cross-fire radiation dose from β-emitting radionuclides in a breast cancer model was developed. GEANT4 was used for obtaining absorbed dose. The dose internally in cells binding the isotope (self-dose) increased with decreasing β-energy except for the radionuclides with substantial amounts of conversion electrons and Auger electrons. An effective therapy approach may be a combination of radionuclides where the high self-dose from nuclides with low β-energy should be combined with the inter-cell cluster cross-fire dose from high energy β-particles.In paper V MC simulations using correlated sampling together with importance sampling were used to calculate spectra perturbations in detector volumes caused by the detector silicon chip and its encapsulation. Penelope and EGSnrc were used and yielded similar results. The low energy part of the electron spectrum increased but to a less extent if the silicon detector was encapsulated in low z-materials.
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