| 1. |
- Franzén, Karin, 1958-
(author)
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Interventions for urinary incontinence in women : survey and effects on population and patient level
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Urinary Incontinence is a common health problem that can cause both severe medical and social problems, resulting in negative impact on different aspects of Quality of Life. In 2000, the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment (SBU) published a systematic review, “Treatment of Urinary Incontinence” where multiple knowledge gaps in the field of UI, all of considerable clinical importance, were pointed out.Several of these knowledge gaps have been the starting points for the projects in this thesis. The overall aim has been to study the impact of different interventions for urinary incontinence in women on the population level but also on the patient group level, for assessessing the significance of UI on general living conditions and to validate instruments to measure quality of life to be used as part of the evaluation of treatment effectiveness.Paper I: A population-based study where UI amongst women was found to be commonly associated with different psychosocial problems and an expressed feeling of vulnerability.Paper II: A population-based study where informative material on UI to the general public in order to increase knowledge and encourage self management was found promising for meeting increasing demands and optimizing healthcare resources.Paper III: A randomized controlled trial where both electrical stimulation and drug therapy reduced the number of micturitions and improved QoL in women with urge or urge incontinence, but electrical stimulation was not found to be superior to drug therapy.Paper IV: A prospective cohort study where the international questionnaires UDI-6 and IIQ-7 after translation and validation, showed good responsiveness and were easy to administer and to fill out. The UDI-6 scale did not accomplish the same solid result in the psychometrical analysis as the IIQ-7 scale but both scales showed good responsiveness and can thereby be recommended for clinical use.
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| 2. |
- Hultin, Kim, 1976-
(author)
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Primary Marine Aerosol Production : Studies using bubble-bursting experiments
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Aerosol particles affect the Earth’s climate, although their impact is associated with large uncertainties. Primary marine aerosol represents a significant fraction of the global aerosol budget considering the Earth’s 70-percentage coverage by oceans. They are produced when bubbles burst at the ocean surface and can consist of sea salt, organic matter and bacteria. An experimental approach was here used to investigate the primary marine aerosol production from the bubble-bursting mechanism using water from four different geographical locations. The main findings include: Similar and stable aerosol number size distributions at all locations, centered close to 0.2 μm. Largely varying aerosol organic fractions, both with size and location. Clear tendency for increased water temperature to negatively influence the aerosol production. No covariance between surface water chlorophyll α and aerosol production on a 10-minute time scale, although decreased aerosol production was observed at times of elevated phytoplankton activity on longer time scales. Mainly external mixtures of sea salt and organics was observed. A high tendency for colony-forming marine bacteria to use bubble-bursting to reach the atmosphere. A clear diurnal cycle in aerosol production was found for both laboratory produced aerosol and in-situ aerosol fluxes, probably biologically driven. The first near coastal sea spray fluxes with limited fetch and low salinity. While the primary marine aerosol spectral shape is stable, emission concentration varies with environmental parameters. Above that, the organic fraction of the aerosol varies largely between locations. This shows that observations of primary marine aerosol emissions not necessarily can be applied to large time- or spatial scales.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson, Erik, 1978-
(author)
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Conserving the American Dream : Faith and Politics in the U.S. Heartland
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Recent decades have seen substantial changes in the U.S. political landscape. One particularly significant development has been the growing influence of a conservative coalition encompassing evangelical Christianity, interventionist foreign policy and neoliberal reform. This study explores the force and internal dynamics of this political assemblage. Based on fieldwork among conservative voters, volunteers and candidates in a small city in northwestern Ohio during a midterm election year, it probes the energy of conservative politics, its modes of attachment and influence, and the organizational forms through which it circulates. Contemporary conservative politics are shown to be centered on a particular epistemological intuition: that to be able to act, one must believe in something. This intuition implies an actively affirmative stance toward “beliefs” and “values.” The study also addresses methodological and analytical challenges that conservative politics pose for anthropological inquiry. It develops a “conversational” analytical attitude, arguing that in order to understand the lasting influence conservatism one has to take seriously the problems that it is oriented toward.
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