| 1. |
- Andersson, Peter
(författare)
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Modalitet och förändring : En studie av må och kunna i fornsvenska
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the development of root and non-root meanings of modal verbs through an empirical study of the verbs må and kunna in Old Swedish. Modality is taken to refer domains in which possibility contrasts with necessity. In Old Swedish, må (magha) and kunna 'may' and kunna 'can' have the potential to express most of the meanings relating to possibility and necessity, as well as lexical meanings.The two verbs are investigated in an Old Swedish corpus consisting of legal and religious texts. Certain default correlations between type of modal and semantic and syntatic enviroments, which have been proposed in the litterature, are investigated.The result shows that må frequently expresses participant-internal possibility, 'ability' and deonic possibility, 'permission', whereas kunna is mainly associated with participant-internal and general external possibility. Of particular interest is the use of må in conditions, which provides evidence that this construction type may have played a bridging role in the development on non-root modality.Using the framework of force dynamics, the development of modal meaning is analysed as a metamorphical transfer of one consistent image-schema between different conceptual domains. the schematic components are described in terms of forces and barriers. The proposed transfer from a physical to a social domain and further on to a mental and a conversional domain provides a good account of the diachronic development.
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| 2. |
- Bergh, Ingrid, 1956-
(författare)
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Pain in the elderly : rating scales, prevalence and verbal expression of pain and pain relief
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Aims: The overall purpose of the studies was to examine the prevalence of pain in elderly people and to evaluate the applicability of pain scales in assessing pain and pain relief in elderly patients.Methods: In Paper I, 167 geriatric patients (M=81 years) rated their current experience of pain twice with a 5-minute interval in between on the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), the Graphic Rating Scale (GRS) and the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), and were then asked if they experienced pain, ache or hurt or other symptoms. In Paper II, 53 geriatric patients (M=82 years) rated their pain on the VAS, GRS and NRS in connection with the administration of analgesics. This was repeated after 1.5-2 hours and a direct question was asked about whether the analgesic medication given in connection with the initial assessment had had any pain-alleviation effect. The patients also rated pain relief on the Pain Relief Scale (PRS). The study in paper III, was conducted within the framework of the Gerontological and Geriatric Population Studies in Göteborg, Sweden (H70), 241 70-year-old men and women were assessed regarding pain experience, cognitive function and depressive symptoms. In Paper IV, 38 patients who have undergone hip replacement surgery due to Cox arthritis (M=75 years) and 22 patients with a surgically repaired hip fracture (M=81 years) were interviewed on the second day after the operation. This was divided into two parts, one tape-recorded and semi-structured in character and a structured interview.Results: In Paper I, 71% of the patients verbally reported pain when at rest and/or when moving. High and significant correlations were obtained both between the ratings on the VAS, GRS and NRS (p<0.001) and between the test and retesting (p<0.001). The probability of accomplishing a rating on the pain scales decreased with advancing age of the patient. The probability of agreement between the patients ratings of pain and the verbal report of pain tended to decrease with advancing age. Those patients who verbally denied having pain but reported pain on the scales, rated it significantly lower (p<0.001) than those who verbally reported pain and rated the pain as well. The results in Paper II show that the probability of accomplishing a rating on the VAS, GRS, NRS and PRS decreased with advancing age of the patient. The correlations between the ratings on the VAS, GRS and NRS were strong and significant (p<0.001) both at the initial assessments and at the re-assessments. The verbally reported effects of the analgesics were often directly contrary to the changes in rated pain. The results in Paper III show that pain is common in 70-year-old people and especially in women. However, associations between depressive symptoms and pain experience were more evident in men. In Paper IV, the majority of the elderly patients who participated in this study verbally reported pain and spontaneously used a large number of the words listed in the Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) and Pain-O-Meter (POM). The patients also used a number of additional words that are not found in the SF-MPQ or the POM. Conclusions: The results suggest pain is common in 70-year-old people and in elderly patients as well. Pain scales such as the VAS, GRS, NRS and PRS can be used to assess elderly patients' experience of pain and pain relief in combination with alternative expressions of pain, pain relief, discomfort and distress. The words of the SF-MPQ and POM are to be found in elderly patients descriptions of pain in everyday language.
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| 3. |
- Gustavsson, Susanne, 1966-
(författare)
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Motstånd och mening
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Both historically and in our own time the teacher education has been discussed and changed to match current traditions and intentions. There is an ongoing debate about the scientifi c basis of teacher education and the relation to professional basis. The aim with this study is to develop understanding for student teachers’ introduction to education and profession. The study is carried out against the background of the provisions and assumptions that characterise an academic professional education, and in particular teacher education, such as the relationship between education and the profession, the scientifi c basis and professional basis, the fi eld-based and college-based educational practice. The point of departure is that teacher education cannot be dissociated from the practice and theory of the profession, and in addition that the expression of education must be understood through the student’s experience and interpretation. The overall aim of the study, starting out from the nature and objectives of the academic professional education, is to understand the field of tension expressed in this experience.During the study, dialogues with students were observed at an early stage in their education. These dialogues consisted of four authentic seminars and twenty-three subsequent stimulated recall-inspired interviews with individual students. Content of the dialogues and seminars are student teachers’ experiences from fi eld-based and college-based education. The method of the studyis based on critical hermeneutics with reference to Paul Ricoeur.The result shows the two roles of the student, as participant and as observer. The students also consider themselves as students and at the same time as future teachers. Fields of tension are identifi ed between what is recognisable and a talk of changes; between position and investigation; and between progression and process. Professional teachers do not seem as masters, they are instead objects for criticism. The early experience of the profession does not harmonise with the content of the education. Furthermore, the student appears to lack the tools to examine critically and understand both the content offered in the education and the theory and practice of the profession.
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| 4. |
- Holm, Louise, 1976-
(författare)
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A Non-Stationary perspective on the European and Swedish Business Cycle
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Business cycles, the ups and downs observed somewhat simultaneously in numerous macroeconomic variables in an economy and often measured using real GDP, are important and, despite much economic research, still incom- pletely understood. Dating the business cycle has always been of interest in macroeconomic research. The dating might help to find the causes of a recession and this understanding could help to prevent or limit the duration of recessions in the future. A non-stationary, non-parametric smoothing- technique is proposed here to make business cycles simpler to analyse and interpret. The method is applied to the Euro area and to the Swedish econ- omy. For the Euro area the method finds two deeper and two milder reces- sions and one stagnation period since 1970. The dating is close to that of the CEPR. The same method is then used to date recessions in Sweden for the period 1969-2006. Four recessions were found. One research area of interest related to the dating of business cycles is forecasting of an upcoming recession. If an upcoming recession is detected, monetary policy could respond and avoid an output gap or a fall in inflation. We use a probit model to examine the in-sample performance of various financial variables as a predictor of Swedish recessions. The results show that the slope of the yield curve appears to perform better than other variables, but also that the spread is not a reliable indicator for detecting recessions in Sweden since there are many false warnings.
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| 5. |
- Jakobsson, Eva
(författare)
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End-of-life care in a Swedish county : patterns of demographic and social conditions, clinical problems and health care use
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- There is broad consensus in both international and national policy statements that care provided at end-of-life should be different from care provided during other periods of life. There is a need for comprehensive knowledge about the broad population of individuals who access the public health care system during the last period of life. The purpose of this thesis therefore, is to make a contribution to a broader understanding of the nature of end of-life and end-of-life care for these individuals. The study was undertaken through retrospective examinations of death certificates, medical records and nursing records in a randomly selected sample of adults who accessed the public health care system, and who died in the County of Västra Götaland, Sweden, during 2001. The sample consisted of 229 persons. The majority of individuals in this study were aged eighty or more at time of death. Men died four years younger, and were significantly more likely to live apart from their partners at time of death, whereas women were significantly more likely to live alone. There were also significant differences in residential environment at time of death, with one-half residing in private homes and the other half in residential care facilities, and this environment was significantly associated with many of the variables analyzed in this study. The group in residential care facilities was, on average, nearly 10 years older than those in private homes. The most common places of death were acute care hospitals and residential care facilities. The less old persons more often died at acute care hospitals whereas the oldest group more commonly died at residential care facilities. The likelihood of inpatient care during last three months of life, including the expected number of hospital admissions, was significantly higher among residents of private homes than among individuals in residential care facilities. However, the presence of mental disorder(s), mainly dementia, was associated with less utilization of both inpatient and hospital-based outpatient care, regardless of residence. Conversely, the likelihood of using outpatient primary care services was significantly higher among residents of residential care facilities than among those in private homes. Factors such as advancing age, ADL-dependency, and living alone increased the likelihood of receiving care at residential care facilities, whereas presence of neoplasm(s) and musculoskeletal disease(s) increased the likelihood of care in a private home. The mean number of all health care services used was 2.67. A wide range of highly prevalent symptoms and problems was identified in the study group, especially among persons who were ADL-dependent. A specific turning point, reflecting onset of the dying process and reorientation of care, was documented in almost three-quarters of the medical or nursing records. Two thirds of these turning points were documented within the last week of life. Findings from this study provide policymakers, health care providers, and professional caregivers with both a reminder and a framework which may contribute to a more mindful and comprehensive understanding of commonplace end-of-life concerns. It is, in fact, suggested that the public health care system as a whole take greater note of the present situation and that it proactively focus on the development of standards for end-of-life care. Its content should be formulated and based on systematic and detailed insights into the identities of the individuals who utilize the health care system at the end of life, where and from whom they receive care, and most importantly, the nature of their problems and needs. Moreover, steps must be taken to continually audit end-of-life care provided by the public health care system, with an objective to constantly improve the scope, quality, and trustworthiness of its services
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| 6. |
- Johannesson, Krister, 1970-
(författare)
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I främsta rummet
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- The purpose of the thesis is to investigate planning processes for academic library buildings and the outcomes of such processes. This is accomplished through a case study utilising discourse analysis. The main question is: How is a vision of an academic library implemented in and through a building? The case study is retrospective and focused on the building of a new library at Kalmar University, Sweden, at the end of the 1990s. During this period, technological and educational developments and general societal change transformed the context of library planning and made way for renegotiations of the librarian profession. A critical realist approach characterises the study of visions, processes and the analysis of the various functions of the building. Results reveal the proactive nature of the activities of the library director in Kalmar. Early in the process he formulated a vision in which he presents the library as an information resource, a meeting place between different user groups and a workplace intended to promote learning and knowledge. From a professional point of view, the vision implied a dehierarchisation of relations both within the library staff and between library staff and visitors. The vision was based on an interpretation of Swedish national educational policy, and architecturally manifested by an ambition to reduce the physical and psychological boundaries between library staff and visitors. The early formulation of the vision together with the clients’ use of architectural expertise facilitated the choice of architects. However during the process a need arose to anchor the decision in the library field. Efforts were made to address library expertise and to collect user comments from a broader academic field. Discourses concerning the university library as a workplace and a meeting place were especially evident in the strategies of the leading agents. The discourses uncovered in the study correspond to more general discourses which became prominent in society and higher education during the period in question. The library itself has met growing appreciation by users both from within and outside the university. The proactive leadership demonstrated by the library director in Kalmar was based on hegemony rather than coercion. This corresponds to contemporary tendencies. Hegemonic consent may persist even after changes in leadership. In Kalmar however, architectural solutions with insufficient support from the library staff have been reconstructed after changes in leadership. Future research on architectural planning processes may pay further attention to different discursive resources, social fields and the positions within them.
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| 7. |
- Johansson, Monica
(författare)
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Anpassning och motstånd
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Nearly all pupils in Sweden continue their studies at upper secondary school. A central point of departure in this thesis is therefore to examine how the upper secondary school deals with its now both complex and difficult to interpret task of ”one school for all” and to describe and analyse the creation of identity for pupils within this institution. How the creation of identity occurs in different programmes during the pupils’ period of education is specifically studied with a theoretical starting point in Anthony Gidden’s structuration theory complemented with theories that concern pupil adaption and resistance.The study was conducted at a municipal upper secondary school and used critical ethnographic research and document analysis. The programmes that were included in the study are the individual programme, the health care programme and the technical programme. Five pupil groups were followed for three school years.The results show that the differentiation of pupils within the education system is strengthened in the everyday activities of the upper secondary school. At a general school level, an explicit pupil identity is sought after, but in the different programmes different possibilities for the pupils to achieve this are discerned. The pupils are faced with different demands and expectations depending on which upper secondary school programme they are studying at. This applies to both their performances and the social relations of the positioning processes involved in being a pupil. The creation of pupils' identities is formed and developed in different ways and can also be related to the prevalence of special support, as well as to gender, social background and ethnicity.During their education most pupils strive towards adapting to the pupil identity that the school, at a general level, seeks. But they do so with varying degrees of resistance. In the thesis, the results are discussed in relation to the increased marketisation of the education system where individual performance, control and the evaluation of pupils are becoming more and more central. There is a need to critically examine these questions since they have such significant consequences for the future of young people.
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| 8. |
- Karlsson, Sandra
(författare)
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Gene Expression Patterns in a Rat Model of Human Endometrial Adenocarcinoma
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Endometrial cancer develops from the endometrium of the uterus and is the most common pelvic malignancy diagnosed in women in the western society. Similar to all cancer diseases, endometrial cancer is a disorder that results from complex patterns of genetic and epigenetic alterations involved in the malignant transformation. The BDII/Han rat model is unique for spontaneous hormonal carcinogenesis since more than 90% of the female virgins spontaneously develop endometrial cancer. The possibility to perform global gene expression profiling of tumor cells would likely provide important information of the genes and pathways that are aberrant in endometrial adenocarcinoma (EAC). The works in the present thesis have been focused on investigating the expression patterns in endometrial tumors. The findings in this thesis involve the identification of a novel candidate tumor suppressor region of rat chromosome 10. This genomic segment contains 18 potential tumor suppressor genes. Preliminary microarray data analysis confirmed that this region might contain relevant candidate genes as the EACs on average had 3.8 times lower expression of Crk in comparison to the normal/premalignant endometrial tissue cultures. Furthermore, an expression analysis using qPCR, revealed a significant down-regulation of Myo1c and Hic. We were also able to identify a group of genes associated with the TGF-Beta pathway that were differentially expressed between endometrial tumors and normal/pre-malignant endometrium. These results suggest that the TGF-Beta signaling pathway is disrupted in EAC. This has previously been demonstrated in human EAC, although this is the first report on aberrant expression of TGF-Beta downstream target genes. Evaluation of Gpx3 down-regulation in the rat EAC cell lines revealed an almost complete loss of expression in a majority of the endometrial tumors. From methylation studies, we could conclude that the loss of expression of Gpx3 is correlated with biallelic hypermethylation in the Gpx3 promoter region. This result was confirmed with a demethylation study of EAC cell lines, where the Gpx3 mRNA expression was restored after treatment with a demethylation agent and a deacetylation inhibitor. We also showed that mRNA expression of the well-known oncogene, Met, was slightly higher in endometrial tumors with loss of Gpx3 expression. A likely consequence of loss of Gpx3 function is a higher amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the cancer cell environment. Since it has been proposed that overproduction of ROS is required for the hypoxic activation of HIF-1, we suggest that loss of Gpx3 expression activates transcription of Met through induction of the transcription factor HIF-1. The loss of the protective properties of GPX3 most likely makes the endometrial cells more vulnerable to ROS damage and genome instability. We extended the results obtained from the rat endometrial tumors to human material, and conducted expression analysis of GPX3 in 30 endometrial human tumors using qPCR. The results showed a uniformly down-regulation of GPX3 in 29 of the tumors, independent of tumor grade. We thus concluded that the down-regulation of GPX3 probably occurs at an early stage of EAC and therefore contributes to the EAC carcinogenesis. These results suggest that there are important clinical implications of GPX3 expression in EAC, both as a biomarker for EAC and as a potential target for therapeutics.
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| 9. |
- Lindlöf, Angelica, 1972-
(författare)
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In the quest for a cold tolerant variety
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Cold acclimation is a process which increases the freezing tolerance of an organism, after exposure to low, non-freezing temperatures. The acclimation ensures that cold tolerant species can endure harsh winter conditions, by preparing them to sub-zero temperatures. Cold-sensitive plants such as oat and rice have limited abilities to cold acclimate and are therefore easily damaged during winter time. The development of more tolerant varieties by using biotechnological methods is desirable, since the yields are expected to improve due to a prolonged vegetation period. However, in order to apply such methods, more knowledge about the underlying mechanisms regulating the cold tolerance and acclimation is required. One step in this direction is to analyze gene expression data generated from cold stressed oat (Part I) and rice plants (Part II). The focus of this thesis is, consequently, analysis of expression profiling data, which was generated using the EST sequencing and cDNA microarray technologies. The results show that both oat and rice are cold responsive,with many of the previously identified cold regulated genes having a counterpart in these species. In rice, however, the response is less dynamic than in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana and this may explain its inability to fully cold acclimate. Additionally, the work in this thesis focuses on evaluating if small-scale EST sets can be used for ‘digital-Northern’, in order to identify genes that are involved in the regulation of the cold stress response. The results show that small-scaled EST sets are not optimal for such an analysis, since the method detected only a portion of cold responsive genes represented in the sets. This has to due with the inherent properties of EST data and limitations in the analysis steps of the sequences. The work also concerns the identification of cis-elements coupled to transcription factors prominent in the regulation of the response. Since cold acclimation is a quantitative trait the response and regulation of cold stress is under combinatorial control of several transcription factors and the results show that this should be taken into account when identifying binding sites.
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| 10. |
- Mattsson, Anita
(författare)
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Flexibel utbildning i praktiken
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to examine the pedagogical processes that evolve in an "open" design for online learning realized in relation to a specific setting. The study describes and analyzes pedagogical activities in a distance education course in higher education that uses an asynchronous conference system for communication and interaction.The study's theoretical framework is based on the CSCL field, and a socio-cultural perspective, where the aim of the research is to create artefacts and environments that support meaning making in practice. The study was conducted in an authentic environment and can be described as an ethnographic exploratory case study. The analysis focuses on how the practice is established and constituted over time. The unit of analysis is ongoing interaction between nine groups of students and their teacher.Some overall patterns has been analysed and three models of division of labour emerged in the study. The produced assignments mirror the negotiations the groups’ members have in understanding how and when they will be working with the assignments. The course had a weak educational framing and the participants were responsible for their own learning. The teacher's instructions were intentionally broad and vague, an open design, which allowed the students to use their creativity in the work. Even if the teacher was responsible for monitoring the students' discussions, she did not participate because she thought it was too difficult to understand when her active participation supported the students and when it did not.The relations between and within the structuring resources were used in learning communities and the students acted in relation to them. To understand how to divide and allocate tasks, and how to solve problems, is not only done in relationships and people's thinking, but also implicit in learning communities. This means that teachers have to design courses in new ways. The requirements for participation, interaction, and communication, must be determined. The way in which an assignment is formulated structured the students' way to solve the assignments.
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