| 1. |
- Johansson, Helena, 1981, et al.
(författare)
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High serum adiponectin predicts incident fractures in elderly men: Osteoporotic fractures in men (MrOS) Sweden
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. - : Wiley. - 1523-4681 .- 0884-0431. ; 27:6, s. 1390-1396
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adipocytes and osteoblasts share a common progenitor, and there is, therefore, potential for both autocrine and endocrine effects of adiponectin on skeletal metabolism. The aim of the present study was to determine whether high serum adiponectin was associated with an increased risk of fracture in elderly men. We studied the relationship between serum adiponectin and the risk of fracture in 999 elderly men drawn from the general population and recruited to the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) study in Gothenburg, Sweden. Baseline data included general health questionnaires, lifestyle questionnaires, body mass index (BMI), bone mineral density (BMD), serum adiponectin, osteocalcin, and leptin. Men were followed for up to 7.4 years (average, 5.2 years). Poisson regression was used to investigate the relationship between serum adiponectin, other risk variables and the time-to-event hazard function of fracture. Median levels of serum adiponectin at baseline were 10.4 mu g/mL (interquartile range, 7.714.3). During follow-up, 150 men sustained one or more fractures. The risk of fracture increased in parallel with increasing serum adiponectin (hazard ratio [HR]/SD, 1.46; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.231.72) and persisted after multivariate-adjusted analysis (HR/SD, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.091.55). Serum adiponectin shows graded stepwise association with a significant excess risk of fracture in elderly men that was independent of several other risk factors for fracture. Its measurement holds promise as a risk factor for fracture in men. (C) 2012 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
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| 2. |
- Lewerin, Catharina, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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High plasma osteocalcin is associated with low blood haemoglobin in elderly men: the MrOS Sweden Study
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Internal Medicine. - : Wiley. - 0954-6820 .- 1365-2796. ; 280:4, s. 398-406
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that osteoblasts are involved in the regulation of haematopoietic stem cells. Whether osteocalcin, which is derived from osteoblasts and is metabolically active, influences blood haemoglobin (Hb) levels is not known. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether plasma osteocalcin is a determinant of Hb in elderly men. METHODS: A total of 993 men (mean age 75.3 +/- 3.2 years) participated in the population-based MrOS (osteoporotic fractures in men) study. Plasma osteocalcin concentration was evaluated in relation to Hb and adjustments were made for potential confounders (i.e. age, body mass index, erythropoietin, total oestradiol, fasting insulin, adiponectin, ferritin and cystatin C). RESULTS: Hb correlated (age adjusted) negatively with osteocalcin in the total study group (r = -0.12, P < 0.001) as well as in the subgroup of nondiabetic men (r = -0.16, P < 0.001). In nondiabetic men with higher osteocalcin levels, it was more likely that Hb would be in the lowest quartile (odds ratio per SD decrease in osteocalcin 1.32, 95% confidence interval 1.13-1.53). Quartiles of Hb were negatively associated (age adjusted) with osteocalcin (P < 0.001). Anaemic men (47/812) (Hb <130 g L-1 ) had significantly higher mean osteocalcin levels than nonanaemic men (33.9 vs. 27.1 mug L-1 , P < 0.001). In multiple stepwise linear regression analyses (adjusted for age, body mass index, total oestradiol, adiponectin, erythropoietin, fasting insulin, cystatin C, leptin, ferritin and holotranscobalamin), osteocalcin was an independent predictor of Hb concentration in nondiabetic men (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: These data add further support to the evidence indicating that the bone-specific protein osteocalcin has several endocrine functions targeting the pancreas, testes, adipocytes, brain. An additional novel finding is that osteocalcin may also have a paracrine function as a regulator of haematopoiesis.
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| 3. |
- Lewerin, Catharina, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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High serum adiponectin is associated with low blood haemoglobin in elderly men: the Swedish MrOS study
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Internal Medicine. - : Wiley. - 1365-2796 .- 0954-6820. ; 278:1, s. 68-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objectives: Blood haemoglobin (Hb) concentration declines in elderly men, whilst the level of the adipocyte-derived protein adiponectin increases with age. The association between erythropoiesis and adiponectin in elderly men is unclear. The aim of this study was to determine whether adipokines such as adiponectin and leptin are associated with anaemia and Hb concentration in elderly community-dwelling men. Design and setting: The Gothenburg part of the population-based Swedish Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) cohort (n=1010; median age 75.3years, range 69-81). Main outcome measures: We investigated the associations between levels of adiponectin and Hb before and after adjusting for potential confounders [i.e. age, body composition, erythropoietin (EPO), total oestradiol, leptin, cystatin C and iron and B vitamin status]. Results: In these elderly men, age was negatively associated with Hb (r=-0.12, P<0.001) and positively associated with adiponectin level (r=0.13, P<0.001). In age-adjusted partial correlations, Hb and adiponectin levels were negatively correlated (r=-0.20, P<0.001); this association remained significant after multivariable adjustment for age, body composition, EPO, fasting insulin, sex hormones, leptin and ferritin. Age-adjusted mean adiponectin concentrations were significantly higher in anaemic men (66/1005; Hb <130gL(-1)) compared to nonanaemic men (14.0 vs. 11.7 gmL(-1), P<0.05). In multivariate analysis, adiponectin together with EPO, total oestradiol, insulin, albumin, transferrin saturation, HDL cholesterol, cystatin C, total body fat mass and free thyroxine, but not leptin, explained 35% of the variation in Hb level. These results remained essentially unchanged after exclusion of men with diabetes. Conclusions: Serum adiponectin, but not leptin, was negatively and independently associated with Hb. This finding suggests a possible role of adiponectin in the age-related decline in Hb level observed in apparently healthy elderly men.
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| 4. |
- Andersson, Hans, 1974-
(författare)
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Spelets regler : raggning och flirt på krogen
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on sexualized behaviour in nightclubs and pubs. It describes the patterns of interaction and the rituals characterizing nightlife “clubbing” and “pubbing” environments, and relates these to gender specific norms and ideals. Special focus is on men’s and women’s experiences of, and strategies in, nightlife clubbing environments, as well as on how they regard such behaviours as picking up potential sexual partners (“going on the pull”) and flirting.The study is based on fieldwork conducted in the nightclubs and pubs of Umeå. The fieldwork consisted of fifty nights out, during which data was collected through observations and participant observation. Ten women and nine men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-two were interviewed individually or in groups.The analysis starts with a description of those behaviours that distinguish the club and pub environment as compared with everyday life. The suspension of everyday norms, allows for the relaxed behaviour associated with “partying”, and not least allowing for strangers to have sexualized encounters.Picking up sexual partners and flirting is analysed at different levels and from different perspectives. The meaning of flirting behaviour is related to discussions of sexual morals. Flirting is seen as a harmless and playful form of behaviour seeped through with notions of love, romance and coupledom. Picking up sexual partners is, on the other hand, behaviour associated with sexual urges, and is thus talked of as a sordid, low-life form of action.The study includes descriptions of mutually appreciated situations of picking-up and flirting behaviour and also its opposite - rejection behaviours, that seek to deflect and break off attempts at sexualized contact. The observations indicate that men and women use different strategies when participating in such events. Women’s behavioural strategies are premised on a rejecting attitude vis-à-vis men, which reflect ideals of respectability and a more restrictive sexual morale for women. Women’s ability to exert discretion and care in her choice of a man, and to reject unsuitable men, is interpreted as an indication of self-control and self-respect.Amongst men, “going on the pull” appears to be associated with notions of “conquering”, which in turn is seen as a form of manly performance. “Going on the pull” gives men an opportunity to prove themselves, but is also a source of a feeling of powerlessness and lack of control – as “pulling” needs to be conducted on women’s terms and conditions.Observations from pubs and clubs in the field, suggest that pretending to reject (token resistance) is a normalized part of women’s strategies. The existence of token resistance reinforces the notion of “a woman’s no means yes” and contributes to the unclear boundaries between rejection and consent. This is evident in situations where women experience unwished-for attentions from men and have difficulty rejecting them.
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| 5. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Cyborgs and entanglements of technology, masculinity, and (automated) vehicles
- 2019
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Ingår i: Feministische Studien. - Berlin : Walter de Gruyter. - 0723-5186 .- 2365-9920. ; 37:2, s. 320-334
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we will discuss different entanglements of technology and masculinity with a special focus on (automated) vehicles. Starting from a cyborg- epistemology formulated as 'thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, prosthesis' (Gray 2001: 189), we will, in three sections, entangle and disentangle different discourses and practices around how masculinity has been constructed around intimacy, technology, and cyborgisation. Historically, this points in both destructive directions and emancipatory hopes of transcendence through cyborgisation. Cyborgs are thus political technologies, and we argue that a history of masculinity as well as the future of masculinity, in a western context and beyond, can be understood in relation to cyborgisation and intimacy with technological artefacts. It is argued that cyborgs are possibly the tricksters of the future posthuman masculinity but they are also a tool to understand the 'leitmotif' of male transcendence in the history of masculinity. To illustrate our point, we will use different forms of technologies of movement and other man-machine relations as our "objects-to-think-with", considering gendered power relations and emancipatory potentials (Haraway 2004: 321).In the first section we will discuss cyborgs and masculine entanglements in a historical perspective to suggest a cyborg-epistemology. Such approach is apt for understanding masculine desires of transcendence invested in and nurtured through automatons, golems, robots, etcetera. A characteristic feature of these ‘Man plus’ (Gray 2001) artefacts and creatures have been their prosthetic capacity with an inherent destructive/emancipatory Janus face. In the second section, we will apply the cyborg-epistemology to contemporary imaginaries and driving practices of cars. Cars and car driving is one of the arenas where masculinity is clearly constructed around intimacy, technology and cyborgisation, as exemplified in numerous cases of popular culture, and daily practices in and around cars. This section exemplifies emancipatory and destructive aspects of cars and car driving in dominant automobility systems. In the third section we will be more future oriented and speculative, looking at autonomous transport futures. While the interpellative experience of cars and its emotional and gendered dimensions have been discussed in the second section, the third section turns to the question how autonomous vehicles can be imagined and ‘felt’, and perhaps also changing gendered relations with, in and around cars (Berscheid 2016).
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| 6. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Gender and Transport : Affective structures and practices
- 2023
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Ingår i: The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect. - London and New York : Routledge. - 9780367492014 - 9781003045007 - 9781000737936 - 9781032350844 ; , s. 111-120
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this chapter, we introduce how gender and affect can be co-thought in studies of mobilities and transport, and in particular masculinity and transport practices as this is our main field of expertise. From our perspective, affect in this context implies how people feel and act as a consequence of aroused emotion experienced within an affective economy such as the mobility and transport system (Ahmed 2004; Sheller 2004; Balkmar and Mellström 2020). The affective economy of transport and mobility regulates and channels how travel and mobility patterns organize and include individual, group and societal structures with human and non-human elements. We argue that it is analytically vital to separate affect and emotions with regard to the mobility and transport system in order to outline the systemic dimensions of many ecological and societal challenges of our present time. In the larger land- scape of contemporary challenges, the transport and mobility system is key to halt planetary warming, the endemic traffic congestion of major metropolises and decrease carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale, to mention a few. Our present transport and mobility systems are pressing the planet to a core boundary (Steffen et al. 2011) where the passing of such a limit would drive the planet into a less sustainable level of human life.
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| 7. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Masculinity and Autonomous Vehicles : A Degendered or Resegregated Future System of Automobility?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Transfers. - New York : Berghahn Books. - 2045-4813 .- 2045-4821. ; 8:1, s. 44-63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article addresses the anthropomorphization and interpellative experience of cars and trucks, in order to meet future mobility challenges. Autonomous vehicles offer an emancipatory opportunity within a wider movement of degendering and regendering motor vehicles. We argue that autonomous vehicles can challenge the foundations of a gendered economy founded on masculinity, speed, pleasure, and embodiment. Rather than thinking in terms of a process of demasculinization, this article anticipates a regendering and resegregation through which certain forms of masculine gendered economies of pleasure will lose ground and others will gain. A core question in this article asks who will be in the driver’s seat of future systems of automobility as the control of the vehicle is gradually being transferred from the driver to digital control systems and intelligent roads.
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| 8. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Men, Movements and Automation : Imagining (un)sustainable transport futures
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This presentation addresses sustainability in relation to intersections of men, movements and transport futures. As an unsustainable system, transport not only support and enacts the predominant global form of ‘quasi-private’ mobility that subordinates other less resource intense means of movement, it also cause damaging effects on the environment locally and globally (Urry 2004). Central actors are to an overwhelmingly degree men of power, men that dominate and control its interlinked centres, such as the auto-, oil- and road industry. To critically consider how these institutions not only are gendered, but also changing, is therefore important.The relations between men, movements and transport put focus on the complexity of power and power resources in relation to technology and technical institutions more generally. While the automobile managed to change the world, self-driving vehicles are imagined as the next major transportation technology revolution. This technology is imagined to ‘solve’ many gendered problems associated with the current automobility system, such as congestions, pollution and ‘man-made’ risk taking. Against this background, the phenomenon of autonomous cars is here thought upon as challenging the foundations of a gendered car culture. Even though the automobilic system may be thought of as connecting many transnational centres of power, while also distributing power to individual men as car users, the ‘new’ technology is about to repudiate the power over the vehicles gradually and reassign it to the designers and engineers. In the context of transport, the balance between power enforcements by state bodies, the auto-industry and power enactments by individual men, are likely to change. Scenarios of “re-gendering and re-segregation” (see Balkmar & Mellström forthcoming) are discussed where certain institutions and forms of men’s power will lose ground and others will become more foregrounded.References:Balkmar, Dag & Mellström, Ulf (forthcoming), Re-gendering the relation between men, masculinity and cars? On autonomous vehicles and emancipatory challenges, forthcoming in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies.Urry, John (2004) The ‘System’ of Automobility, Theory, Culture & Society,Vol. 21(4/5): 25–39.
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| 9. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Re-gendering the relation between men, masculinity and cars? On autonomous vehicles and emancipatory challenges
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- As the Nordic regions move into an era in need of sustainable mobility, there are many pressing concerns to be addressed. One of these is the strong connection between masculinity, power and car cultures. In this paper we take our point of departure in the anthromorphization of cars and trucks, and how this emotional and gendered relation needs to be questioned in order to meet future challenges. The phenomenon of autonomous ‘driverless’ cars can here be thought of as one possible emancipatory opportunity in relation to a wider movement of de-gendering and re-gendering motor vehicles. Based on various materials, including the project Trucks for all-developing norm-critical innovation at Volvo, we argue that autonomous vehicles can challenge the foundations of a gendered economy founded on masculinity, speed, pleasure, and embodiment. The advent of ‘driverless’ cars may point in a direction where the traditional imaginary of the active “male” driver may loose ground, even pointing towards a ‘de-masculinization’ of future transport vehicles. However, rather than thinking in terms of a process of a de-masculinization it seems more appropriate to anticipate a development of re-gendering and re-segregation where certain forms of masculine gendered economies of pleasure will lose ground and others will become more foregrounded.
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| 10. |
- Balkmar, Dag, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Towards an anthropology of transport affect : The place of emotions, gender and power in smart mobilities
- 2020
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Ingår i: Gendering Smart Mobilities. - Abingdon/New York : Routledge. - 9781138608276 - 9780429466601 ; , s. 57-74
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we argue for an anthropology of transport affect as a serious scholarly undertaking within mobility and transport studies. This implies how people feel and act as a consequence of aroused emotions experienced within an affective economy (Ahmed 2004), such as the mobility and transport system. From an anthropology of transport affect perspective, we reflect upon historical as well as contemporary cases related to the transport system more generally and in particular future smart mobilities. In the first part of the chapter we map the theoretical background and in the second part we use historical as well as contemporary cases to think through the place of emotions, gender and power in transport and mobility systems, including how future smart mobilities may challenge what Landström (2006) calls “a gendered economy of pleasure”, that to large extent is associated with the current dominant mobility paradigm. Core values in such a gendered economy of pleasure are escapism, risk taking, masculine prowess, and technical dexterity (Balkmar and Mellström 2018).
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