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- Jonsson, B. G., et al.
(author)
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Skogspolitiken hotar biologiska mångfalden
- 2008
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In: Dagens Nyheter. ; 14 april
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Ledande svenska forskare varnar för att det nationella naturarvet äventyras: Vi skäms över våra beslutsfattares likgiltighet för miljön. Den svenska skogen har förvandlats till en jättelik odlingsyta. Där förr otaliga arter levde samman i harmoni dominerar numera helt gran, tall och inplanterade främmande trädslag. Denna skogsodling utgör ett hot mot den biologiska mångfalden vilket strider mot riksdagens miljökvalitetsmål. Den svenska skogspolitiken vilar officiellt på att produktion av skogsråvara och miljö är likvärdiga mål. Men i praktiken har produktionen satts i första rummet. Bortåt 2 000 skogslevande arters överlevnad hotas på grund av den förda politiken. Vi är djupt oroade och skäms över att det rika Sverige inte arbetar effektivt för att nå nationella och internationella miljömål. Det skriver 14 ledande forskare i bland annat växtekologi, ekologisk zoologi och botanik.
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| 4. |
- Fryland, Linda, et al.
(author)
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Mapping of T-cell subsets in relation to disease course in experimental Borrelia burgdorferi infection
- 2012
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Resolution of Lyme borreliosis has previously been shown to be associated with a strong initial Th1 response, followed by a subsequent Th2 response, shutting off inflammation. We mapped markers for Th1, Th2, Th17, cytotoxic and T regulatory subsets in a murine model, where the outcome of Borrelia (B.) burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.) infection was altered by immune-deviation towards Th2 by exposure to a subtoxic dose of mercury. Twenty-one B. burgdorferi s.s.-infected (Bb), 21 immune-deviated B. burgdorferi s.s.-infected (BbId), and seven control C3H/HeN mice were sacrificed on days 15, 28 and 43 post-infection (p.i.) with B. burgdorferi s.s. BbId mice had increased joint swelling compared with Bb at the height of the disease (28 p.i.), and also showed a trend for increased spirochaetal load that became significant on day 43 p.i. BbId had an increased histopathology score on day 28 p.i. compared with both earlier and later time points. mRNA expression of IL-4 (p=0.018), IL-10 (p=0.018) and EBI-3 (p=0.009) decreased in Bb mice, but not in BbId, over the course of infection. A trend for higher expression of IL-12p40 mRNA in Bb mice compared with BbId was seen late in the disease course, while BbId showed trends for higher levels of Foxp3 and GM-CSF. At the protein level, BbId showed decreased levels of CXCL9 compared to the Bb group on day 15 p.i (p=0.007). Bb mice showed increases of CXCL9 and CXCL10 at all time points compared with day 0 p.i. (p≤0.014), whereas BbId mice showed an initial decrease in both chemokines at day 15 p.i. compared with day 0 (p≤0.008). In conclusion, both the clinical signs of infection and the trends for increased expression of pro-inflammatory GM-CSF and T-regulatory marker Foxp3 in BbId mice suggested ongoing inflammation. Although our findings support the need for a strong Th1 response followed by anti-inflammatory response for optimal resolution, the anti-inflammatory response seems to be more complex than only dampening the inflammation by a Th1-antagonistic Th2 response.
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- Hedlund, Johanna, 1982-
(author)
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Climate change effects on migratory birds and on the ecology and behaviour of the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus)
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Recent global climate change is influencing the behaviour and ecology of species worldwide. Birds are typical systems to study in this context, as they are often migratory and thus subjected to a variety of environmental effects. This thesis employs the use of long-term ringing records, field observations, historical maps and historical volunteer observations with the aim of describing behavioural and ecological responses of birds to the current environmental change. An investigation into the spring arrival, reproduction and autumn departure in willow warblers (Phylloscopus trochilus) breeding at a southern study site in Sweden (65°N 18°E) showed that all three phenological events had advanced in parallel. Thus birds arrive earlier, start breeding earlier and leave Sweden earlier, with the breeding period staying the same in length. By teasing apart the migratory responses of different individuals, it became clear that particularly early arriving males and early departing juveniles had advanced migration. However, willow warblers migrating past a northern study site in Sweden (65°N 23°E) displayed no change in autumn departure. When migration in the two regionally separate populations were analyzed in relation to climatic variables, the results indicated that foremost a combined effect of growing season onset and the North Atlantic Oscillation influenced migratory timing, and only in individuals that had advanced migration. As growing season onset had advanced at both regions, but only elicited migratory change in southern willow warblers, it is proposed that intra-specific difference between populations prepare them differently to climate change. Willow warblers breeding at northern latitudes were also displaying absence of an otherwise common behaviour of the species: philopatry. It is suggested that the climate induced change in onset of the growing season, coupled with an increase in available territories, could have enabled a southern influx of dispersal-prone birds adopting a less philopatric breeding behaviour. Availability of territories was also studied in southern Sweden, in relation to 100 years of land use change and future climate change effects on forestry. The mass-conversion of grazed forest into coniferous sylvicultures that has occurred in Sweden 1900-2013 was shown to have negatively affected territory availability for willow warblers. The second most common bird species in Sweden, the chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), was however shown to be largely unaffected. In a future scenario where rising temperatures will increase growth rates of trees, harvest rotation will be faster and both sylvicultures and logged areas will increase in coverage, favouring both species. Thus commonness in terms of landscape and species occurrence has altered historically and is dynamically linked. Historic perspectives were also applied to observations of spring arrival of 14 migratory bird species. A relative comparison of two data sets, collected over 140 years, revealed that short-distance migrants have changed their spring arrival more than long-distance migrants in southern Sweden. In conclusion, the results of this thesis provide insights into climate change effects on avian behaviour and ecology, document unique observations and contribute with a great spectrum of knowledge, from exact details on responses by individual birds, through long-term changes in populations to historical perspectives on shifts in entire landscapes
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| 9. |
- Jakobsson, Mattias, 1981-
(author)
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Monte Carlo Studies of Charge Transport Below the Mobility Edge
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Charge transport below the mobility edge, where the charge carriers are hopping between localized electronic states, is the dominant charge transport mechanism in a wide range of disordered materials. This type of incoherent charge transport is fundamentally different from the coherent charge transport in ordered crystalline materials. With the advent of organic electronics, where small organic molecules or polymers replace traditional inorganic semiconductors, the interest for this type of hopping charge transport has increased greatly. The work documented in this thesis has been dedicated to the understanding of this charge transport below the mobility edge.While analytical solutions exist for the transport coefficients in several simplified models of hopping charge transport, no analytical solutions yet exist that can describe these coefficients in most real systems. Due to this, Monte Carlo simulations, sometimes described as ideal experiments performed by computers, have been extensively used in this work.A particularly interesting organic system is deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Besides its overwhelming biological importance, DNA’s recognition and self-assembly properties have made it an interesting candidate as a molecular wire in the field of molecular electronics. In this work, it is shown that incoherent hopping and the Nobel prize-awarded Marcus theory can be used to describe the results of experimental studies on DNA. Furthermore, using this experimentally verified model, predictions of the bottlenecks in DNA conduction are made.The second part of this work concerns charge transport in conjugated polymers, the flagship of organic materials with respect to processability. It is shown that polaronic effects, accounted for by Marcus theory but not by the more commonly used Miller-Abrahams theory, can be very important for the charge transport process. A significant step is also taken in the modeling of the off-diagonal disorder in organic systems. By taking the geometry of the system from large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and calculating the electronic transfer integrals using Mulliken theory, the off-diagonal disorder is for the first time modeled directly from theory without the need for an assumed parametric random distribution.
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| 10. |
- Jakobsson, Niklas, et al.
(author)
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Does immigration affect welfare state generosity? Quasi-experimental evidence
- 2014
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This note studies the impact of immigration on welfare state generosity in 12 Western European countries. In estimations not coping with the possible endogeneity problem, there are indications of a negative relationship between immigration and welfare state generosity. However, when the distance to the Balkan wars are used as a source of exogenous variation in the immigrant share, as to overcome potential endogeneity in mobility across countries, our findings suggest that an increase in the immigrant share does not decrease welfare state generosity.
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