In temperate and boreal climates, trees synchronise their annual growth cycles with seasonal changes in daylength and temperature. Understanding how environmental cues regulate tree phenology is important to our ability to capture the potential responses of trees to climate change, with implications for forest productivity.In this thesis, we demonstrated that different research methods can be appl

Background: Despite EU regulatory standards, many workers suffer injury as a result of working with hand-held vibrating tools. Our aim of this study was to confirm whether carpenters, a highly exposed group, suffer more injuries to their hands than painters, a group assumed to be less exposed to vibration. Methods: 193 carpenters (participation rate 100%) and 72 painters (participation rate 67%),

Background: The mechanisms underlying the obesity-cancer relationship are incompletely understood. This study aimed to characterise metabolic signatures of greater body size and to investigate their association with two obesity-related malignancies, endometrial and colorectal cancers, and with weight loss within the context of an intervention study. Methods: Targeted mass spectrometry metabolomics

Most macromolecular antimicrobials are ionic and thus lack miscibility/compatibility with nonionic substrate materials. In this context, nonionic hyperbranched polyesters (HBPs) with indole or isatin functionality were rationally designed, synthesized, and characterized. Antimicrobial disk diffusion assay indicated that these HBPs showed significant antibacterial activity against 8 human pathogeni

The structures of glycoside hydrolase family 17 (GH17) catalytic modules from modular proteins in the ndvB loci in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Glt1), P. putida (Glt3) and Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens (previously B. japonicum) (Glt20) were modeled to shed light on reported differences between these homologous transglycosylases concerning substrate size, preferred cleavage site (from reducing end (Glt2

Default is as old as sovereign debt. Since 1820, countries that issued sovereign debt have spent 18% of time in a state of default. Despite the scale of the problem, the causes and consequences of defaults are still imperfectly understood. In this paper we quantify the aggregate cost of defaults, based on a large panel of 50 sovereigns between 1870 and 2010. Since defaults are endogenous to the bu

This paper tests if a strong labor movement leads to fewer industrial conflicts. The focus is on Sweden between the first general election in 1919 and the famous Saltsjöbaden Agreement in 1938, a formative period when the country transitioned from fierce labor conflicts to a state of industrial peace. Using panel data techniques to analyze more than 2,000 strikes in 103 Swedish towns, we find that

Introduction: Although figure skating attracts several hundred thousand participants worldwide, there is little knowledge about physical health and sports injuries among young skaters. The present study aimed to describe the health status of a geographically defined Swedish population of licensed competitive figure skaters and to examine injury determinants. Methods: All licensed competitive skat

To examine prevalence of verbal, physical and sexual abuses in young elite athletes, a cross sectional questionnaire-based survey was conducted during the World Athletics under 20 World Championships. This questionnaire aimed at distinguishing between abuses perpetrated in the context of Athletics from those which were unrelated to Athletics. Four hundred and eighty athletes (52.3%, male) from Nor

This study contributes to the extant research on foreclosure by focusing on the relevance of lender-borrower relations. Donald Black’s theory of the behaviour of law is assessed by examining the association between revocation of compulsory sale by the lender and four different variables, proxying variations in the scope, history, and frequency of contact between the lender and the borrower. This a

The Advanced Normalizations Tools ecosystem, known as ANTsX, consists of multiple open-source software libraries which house top-performing algorithms used worldwide by scientific and research communities for processing and analyzing biological and medical imaging data. The base software library, ANTs, is built upon, and contributes to, the NIH-sponsored Insight Toolkit. Founded in 2008 with the h

LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey focuses on the impact of European Union promotion of LGBTI rights in Turkey and Ukraine, offering a re-evaluation of the mechanisms used by the EU and the domestic and external conditions that result in different outcomes. With the protection of LGBTI rights becoming one of the core principles of the EU, the last two decades have seen a consist

Platelets have recently emerged as important immune modulators in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), in addition to their role in thrombosis and cardiovascular disease. However, studies investigating mean platelet volume (MPV) in SLE are often scarce, conflicting and cross-sectional. In this study, MPV was measured in clinical routine throughout a defined time-period to quantify both individual M

There is a strong association across countries between proxies of transparency, such as absence of corruption, freedom of the press, or information disclosure by public bodies, and standard measures of economic development. This says little about whether more transparency actually leads to better economic outcomes - first, because transparency is difficult to fully disentangle from other broad cha