| 51. |
- Adriaenssens, Bart, 1979
(författare)
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Individual variation in behaviour: personality and performance of brown trout in the wild
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Individuals from the same population often show very different behaviour. These differences, when consistent across time, are referred to as animal personality or behavioural syndromes. Explaining the occurrence of animal personality from an evolutionary perspective has however proven a difficult issue to tackle. This thesis studies aspects of individual behavioural variation and personality in brown trout (Salmo trutta). More specifically, I investigate (1) to what extent variation in behaviour is consistent within and across contexts, (2) environmental and genetic effects on behaviour, (3) how this affects performance in the wild, and (4) whether this understanding can be used to improve rearing methods of supplementary hatcheries. I found brown trout to express a wide variation of behaviours and provide evidence that much of this behavioural variation is associated in bigger behavioural syndromes. As a result, separate behaviours of brown trout cannot be considered as isolated units, but combine into clusters that sometimes are associated with non-behavioural measures such as body size or growth rate. Variation was further influenced by both inherited and environmental effects. First, individuals from different maternal and paternal origin differed in size, aggressiveness and response to novel prey or novel food. These results suggest that maternal and/or genetic effects influence behaviour and growth in brown trout (I). Second, reduced rearing densities in a hatchery increased the response to novel prey, food search ability in a maze and predator response (II). And third, hatchery trout were more successful foragers than wild conspecifics, yet showed less repeatable explorative behaviour across time (III). Personality traits were generally poor predictors of growth and survival upon release, suggesting that several behavioural strategies can be successful in nature. Nevertheless, in paper IV, slow exploring individuals grew faster than more bold trout. Furthermore, parr reared at reduced densities were twice as likely to survive in the stream as trout reared at high densities. In conclusion, my results contradict simple associations between risk taking behaviour and growth-mortality tradeoffs under natural conditions. This challenges the recent view that individual differences in growth strategies can explain variation in behaviour and suggests more heterogeneous links between personality and life-history in nature (V). In addition, I show that reduced rearing hatchery densities facilitate the development of adaptive behaviour in brown trout, a finding that may have implications for current rearing methods in supplementary hatcheries.
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| 52. |
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| 53. |
- af Burén, Ann
(författare)
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Living Simultaneity: On religion among semi-secular Swedes
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims at contributing to a critical discussion on the supposedly far-reaching secularity of Sweden on the one hand, and on the incongruence and inconsistency of lived religion on the other. At the center are people referred to as semi-secular Swedes – a group that is often neglected in the study of religion. These people do not go to church or get involved in any other alternative organized spiritual activities, neither are they actively opposed to religion or entirely indifferent to it. Most of them describe the ways they are – or are not – religious as in line with the majority patterns in Swedish society. The study is qualitative in method and the material has been gathered through interviews and a questionnaire. It offers a close reading of 28 semi-secular Swedes’ ways of talking about and relating to religion, particularly in reference to their everyday lives and their own experiences, and it analyzes the material with a focus on incongruences. By exploring how the term religion is employed vernacularly by the respondents, the study pinpoints one particular feature in the material, namely simultaneity. The concept of simultaneity is descriptive and puts emphasis on a ‘both and’ approach in (1) the way the respondents ascribe meaning to the term religion, (2) how they talk about themselves in relation to different religious designations, and (3) how they interpret experiences that they single out as ‘out-of-the-ordinary’. These simultaneities are explained and theorized through analyses focusing on intersubjective and discursive processes. In relation to theorizing on religion and religious people this study offers empirical material that nuance a dichotomous understanding of ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. In relation to methodology it is argued that the salience of simultaneity in the material shows that when patterns of religiosity among semi-secular Swedes are studied there is a need to be attentive to expressions of complexity, contradiction and incongruity. The study is qualitative in method and the material has been gathered through interviews and a questionnaire. It offers a close reading of 28 semi-secular Swedes’ ways of talking about and relating to religion, particularly in reference to their everyday lives and their own experiences, and it analyzes the material with a focus on incongruences. By exploring how the term religion is employed vernacularly by the respondents, the study pinpoints one particular feature in the material, namely simultaneity. The concept of simultaneity is descriptive and puts emphasis on a ‘both and’ approach in (1) the way the respondents ascribe meaning to the term religion, (2) how they talk about themselves in relation to different religious designations, and (3) how they interpret experiences that they single out as ‘out-of-the-ordinary’. These simultaneities are explained and theorized through analyses focusing on intersubjective and discursive processes. In relation to theorizing on religion and religious people this study offers empirical material that nuance a dichotomous understanding of ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. In relation to methodology it is argued that the salience of simultaneity in the material shows that when patterns of religiosity among semi-secular Swedes are studied there is a need to be attentive to expressions of complexity, contradiction and incongruity.
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| 54. |
- Afghahi, Henri, 1966
(författare)
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Epidemiological Aspects of Renal Impairment in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Diabetes is a leading cause of renal impairment (RI) and indication of the need for renal replacement therapy in many parts of the world. Albuminuria and RI are the two main forms of diabetic kidney disease. The overall aims of this thesis were to explore risk factors and consequences associated with albuminuria and RI in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), as well as to assess the relationship between blood pressure variables, cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality. The studies were based on data from the Swedish National Diabetes Register (NDR). Study I followed 3,367 patients with T2D who did not exhibit signs of albuminuria or RI from 2002 to 2007 in order to evaluate the risk of developing them. A total of 20% of patients developed albuminuria and 11% developed RI. Among those with one of the two conditions, 62% had normoalbuminuric RI. Development of albuminuria or RI was independently associated with advanced older age, high systolic blood pressure and elevated triglycerides. The independent risk factors were obesity, poor glycemic control, smoking, low HDL- cholesterol and male gender for developing albuminuria, as opposed to elevated plasma creatinine at baseline and female gender for developing RI. Different sets of risk factors were associated with development of the two conditionsRI and albuminuria. High body mass index (BMI) was an independent risk factor for RI when renal function was calculated with the MDRD equation, while low BMI was a risk factor with when the Cockcroft-Gault equation was used. In other words, the equation chosen to estimate renal function is important in when interpreting data. Thus, patients with T2D face have distinct risk factors for albuminuria and RI. Study II included 94,446 patients with T2D, including 19,330 with RI. The majority with T2D and RI were normoalbuminuric. Normoalbuminuric RI may be partly due to treatment with RAAS blockade. Given, however, that only 25% of the patients with normoalbuminuric renal impairment had received RAAS blockade, the possibility that other underlying pathophysiological mechanisms play a role should be further evaluated. Study III followed 33,356, and Study IV 27,732, patients with T2D and RI in 2005-2011 in order to evaluate correlations associations between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and all-cause mortality. We observed U-shaped relationships between various aspects of SBP and the risk of all-cause mortality. The greatest risks for Cardiovascular events (CVEs) and all-cause mortality were at the highest and lowest blood pressure intervals. SBP of 135-139 and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) of 72-74 mmHg showed the lowest risks of CVEs and all-cause mortality. Adjusting for presence of albuminuria or chronic heart failure did not significantly alter the results. A reduction in SBP during follow-up is was associated with a greater risk of all-cause mortality. In summary, this thesis shows that obesity and other traditional cardiovascular risk factors are associated with development of albuminuria and RI in patients with T2D. We also found that normoalbuminuric RI is common in patientsly associated with T2D. Finally, both the highest and lowest blood pressure intervals are associated with greater risks of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality.
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| 55. |
- Afshari, Maryam K.
(författare)
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Transcriptomic and functional studies of fusion oncogene-driven salivary gland tumors
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fusion genes are potent oncogenic drivers resulting from exchange of regulatory/coding sequences between two genes. They were originally identified in leukemias but are now recognized as key oncogenic events also in many solid tumors, including salivary gland tumors (SGTs). Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a highly malignant SGT with no effective treatment for patients with recurrent and/or metastatic disease. The MYB-NFIB fusion is the main genomic hallmark of ACC and a po- tential therapeutic target. Here, oncogenic signaling pathways as well as the molecular consequences and regulation of MYB-NFIB were assessed in cultured ACC cells and in ACC surgical samples. A combination of molecular and functional assays was used including RNAi, qPCR, western blot, phospho-receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) arrays, proliferation/apoptosis/sphere assays, and gene expression microarrays. ACC patient- derived xenografts (PDX) were used to study the effects of RTK-inhibition on tumor growth. MYB-NFIB was shown to promote proliferation and spherogenesis of ACC cells. The fusion regulated expression of genes involved in DNA replication/repair, cell cycle, and RNA processing, and induced an MYC-like transcriptional program. MYB-NFIB was shown to be regulated by IGF1R through IGF2-activated AKT-signaling and phar- macological inhibition of IGF1R partially reversed the transcriptional program induced by MYB-NFIB. Moreover, IGF1R, EGFR, and MET were co-activated in ACC cells. Combined inhibition of these receptors in ACC cells and PDX-models induced differentiation and synergistic growth inhibition. The results provide new insights about the function and regulation of MYB-NFIB and are the first to show that a druggable cell surface receptor can regulate a fusion oncogene encoding a transcription factor. Importantly, the results also highlight novel potential treatment strategies for ACC patients. Pleomorphic adenoma (PA) is the most common SGT. Although it is a benign tumor, treatment may be complicated by recurrence and/or malignant transformation. Previous studies of PA have revealed recurrent chromosomal rearrangements that activate the key oncogenes PLAG1 and HMGA2 by gene fusion events. Here, detailed studies of previously uncharacterized subsets of PAs with 8;9- or 9;12-rearrangements revealed breakpoints within or in the proximity of either PLAG1 or HMGA2, and NFIB. Further analyses using RNA- seq, RT-PCR, qPCR, and arrayCGH revealed a novel NFIB-PLAG1 fusion in a PA with an ins(9;8) and HMGA2-NFIB fusions in cases with t(9;12). These findings highlight the role of NFIB as a fusion partner gene in both benign and malignant SGTs and indicate that NFIB can activate both PLAG1 and HMGA2 by gene fusion/enhancer hijacking events in PA. Furthermore, RNA-seq based transcriptomic analysis of PAs revealed a high frequency of PLAG1 and HMGA2 fusions (≈80% of the cases) and multiple novel fusion partner genes. The findings indicate that gene fusions are more common in PA than previously documented. Global gene expression and pathway analyses revealed several activated oncogenic signaling pathways and showed that the expression profile reflects certain morphological features typical of PA. Finally, the results showed that PLAG1 and HMGA2 drive tumorigenesis via shared signaling pathways. The results provide further insights into the pathogenesis of PA and reveal new potential therapeutic targets.
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| 56. |
- Agebjörn, Anders, 1984
(författare)
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Learning of Definiteness by Belarusian Students of Swedish as a Foreign Language : Inlärning av bestämdhet hos svenskstuderande i Belarus
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Through a series of studies, this thesis investigates the learning of definiteness in Russian-speaking students of Swedish. A communicative, oral-production task elicited modified and non-modified noun phrases in indefinite and definite contexts. Study I describes the development of the morphosyntactic structure through which Swedish encodes definiteness, the association between this structure and its meaning, and the relationship between those two tasks over time. Using an English version of the elicitation task and a test of metalinguistic knowledge, Study II examines the relationship between the learners’ explicit knowledge of article semantics and their actual use of English articles. Adding a test of language-learning aptitude, Study III then explores both the influence of second-language English and that of aptitude on the development of Swedish. Finally, Study IV discusses the role of complexity and input frequency. The main findings include that, at the onset of Swedish study, the learners had minimal knowledge of the morphosyntactic structure but were generally sensitive to the meaning of definiteness. However, knowledge of form developed over time while knowledge of meaning did not, and the two learning tasks did not appear to be directly related to each other. In addition, the learners were seldom aware that choosing between indefinite and definite articles require the speaker to take the hearer’s perspective, but this lack of metalinguistic understanding did not seem to affect their use of articles. Further, previous knowledge of English appeared to facilitate the development of a Swedish morpheme that is structurally similar to its English counterpart, while aptitude was associated with the development of a morpheme whose English counterpart is structurally different. Finally, the learners used high-frequency morphemes more consistently than low-frequency ones, and morphemes were more likely to be supplied in frequent constructions than in infrequent ones. These findings are discussed in relation to a modular, cognitive framework for language learning and use.
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| 57. |
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| 58. |
- Agerskov, Simon
(författare)
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Radiological and Clinical Changes in Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus: MRI, Vascular factors and Clinical Symptoms as Markers of Pathophysiology and Prognosis
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) is a treatable, neurological disorder affecting the elderly population causing gait, balance, cognitive and micturition impairments. Treatment results in a clinical improvement in up to 80% of patients. Unfortunately, the pathophysiology is still incompletely understood, the clinical picture needs to be clarified, and no reliable, predictive biomarkers exist. The overall aim of this thesis was to elucidate on the development and pathophysiology of iNPH by describing the clinical and radiological phenotype as well as the involvement of known vascular risk factors in the disease, and by investigating the specific role of the brainstem in iNPH. A further aim was to explore the predictive potential of several clinical and radiological biomarkers. In Study I, radiological and clinical signs of iNPH were associated with vascular risk factors and white matter lesions in a large, population-based sample. Study II showed that a majority of patients have symptoms from at least three of four symptom groups at the time of diagnosis, but the severity is greatly varied. In addition, paratonia, a less well-recognized symptom is seen in most patients and should be considered a core finding of iNPH. Further, the postoperative improvement seen in the majority of patients involve all symptom groups. Study III showed that while all patients have ventriculomegaly, several other morphological MRI findings are seen only in a subgroup of patients and should not be required for the diagnosis. In addition, no morphological MRI marker had any predictive value, and, as such, they should not be used to exclude patients from shunt surgery. In Study IV, diffusion changes in the mesencephalon and pons were evident pre- and postoperatively in all patients, and responders showed a significant relative cerebral blood flow increase postoperatively, correlating to the degree of clinical improvement. In conclusion, vascular changes are probably involved in the development of iNPH. While several clinical and radiological findings are characteristic of the disease, the severity is profoundly varied among patients and cannot be used for prediction. The brainstem seems to be involved in the core symptom generation in iNPH and further studies focusing on this area are warranted.
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| 59. |
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| 60. |
- Agnesdotter, Carina, 1969
(författare)
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Dikt i rörelse. Ingrid Sjöstrand och poesins retorik i kvinnornas fredsrörelse 1979–1982
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Poetry has held a significant position in the argumentation employed by the social movements of Sweden ever since their growth during the later decades of the nineteenth century. This tradition lived on in the new social movements that from the late 1970’s opposed atomic energy and nuclear weapons. Using a number of poems by the writer Ingrid Sjöstrand (born 1922) as a point of departure, this thesis investigates rhetorical actions performed with the aid of poetry in situations involving the organisation Kvinnokamp för fred (Women’s Struggle for Peace) from its inception in 1979 through 1982. The central questions addressed are the following: What characterizes the rhetorical situations to which the poems relate and how do the poems relate to them? What are the purposes of the poems? How, i.e. with what rhetorical and literary approaches and strategies, do the poems present their arguments? To what degree and in what ways do rhetorical and aesthetic functions interact? What information do the poems present about the pertinent movements? How do the poems contribute to the movements’ production of knowledge? In the first chapter, Kvinnokamp för fred and the rhetorical position of the poems are considered from the perspective of the women’s movement. Kvinnokamp för fred dealt with the broad issues of human survival with specific emphasis on the ideologies of radical feminism and the feminist cultural movement. Three poems on sisterhood are analyzed in the second chapter. The relationship of these poems to the women’s movement is focused, as are their contributions to the production of knowledge concerning the concept sister and to the construction of collective identity within the movement. Chapter three describes the rhetorical situation from the perspective of alternative movements. In Sjöstrand’s socially critical texts the causes of society's problems are linked to the short-sighted rationality directed at economic results that governs modern society. The fourth chapter deals with two poems against nuclear power specifically directed toward readers and listeners with roots in the workers' movement. The emphasis here is on how the poems are adapted to the situation and constructed to appeal to this specific audience. Three poems against nuclear armament are discussed in chapter five. The poems’ methods of persuasion are spotlighted as is the relationship between aesthetics and rhetorics. The most important results of the thesis are summarized in the concluding chapter. Sjöstrand’s poems of use are characterized by their implementation of compressed forms of classical rhetorical concepts in their argumentation. Through this technique, Sjöstrand weaves together rhetorical and esthetic functions in the poems. The complexity and the limited concretization of the poems' arguments allows for a collaborative audience, thus contributing to the poems' rhetorical effectiveness and cognitive functions. The analyses reveal how these poems contribute to the creation of awareness, readiness to act and collective identity, and in so doing provide a platform for a concluding discussion on the nature and characteristics of the literary genre poetry of use.
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