Soil and water acidification was internationally recognised as a severe environmental problem in the late 1960s. The interest in establishing “critical loads” led to a peak in weathering research in the 1980s and 1990s, since base cation weathering is the long-term counterbalance to acidification pressure. Assessments of weathering rates and associated uncertainties have recently become an area of

Population ageing is making it increasingly diffcult for countries to sustain their current levels social welfare transfers from the economically active population to the dependent elderly. To meet this challenge, the Swedish government has implemented various reforms since the 1990s aimed at reducing incentives to take early retirement. However, a critical question has emerged in response to thes

This paper presents a pilot study of the collaborative interaction between industrial design and engineering design in a significant productdevelopment project at a major Swedish vehicle manufacturer. Since industrial and engineering design have different approaches to productdevelopment, they require careful integration to reach their full potential, to reach project goals, and to ensure the inno

When corporations are faced with accusations of crime, they usually find it necessary to justify their actions to the public, the media and their shareholders. Corporate self-defense, aimed at protecting a corporation’s image and legitimacy, belongs to a broader category of offenders’ denials and neutralizations. The objective of this article is to compile and discuss literature that is of value fWhen corporations are faced with accusations of crime, they usually find it necessary to justify their actions to the public, the media and their shareholders. Corporate self-defense, aimed at protecting a corporation’s image and legitimacy, belongs to a broader category of offenders’ denials and neutralizations. The objective of this article is to compile and discuss literature that is of value f

Background: Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125) is currently the best available ovarian cancer screening biomarker. However, CA125 has been limited by low sensitivity and specificity in part due to normal variation between individuals. Personal characteristics that influence CA125 could be used to improve its performance as screening biomarker. Methods: We developed and validated linear and dichotomous (≥3

Background: Chronic musculoskeletal pain is common in adolescents, and it has been shown that adolescents with pain may become young adults with pain. Pain often coincides with psychosomatic symptoms in adults, but little is known about longitudinal associations and predictors of pain in adolescents. The aim was to investigate chronic musculoskeletal pain and its associations with health status, s

Background: A healthy lifestyle has been shown to reduce the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). The extent to which lifestyle influences the risk of CAD for people with pre-existing non-modifiable risk factors is less studied. We therefore examined the associations between a favorable lifestyle and incidence of CAD in population subgroups based on gender, age, educational level, and parental h

Background: Sepsis is a leading cause of death worldwide and a major challenge for physicians to predict and manage. Proenkephalin A 119-159 (penKid) is a reliable surrogate marker for the more unstable endogenous opioid peptide enkephalin, which has previously been shown to predict both acute and chronic kidney disease. The aim of this prospective observational study was to assess penKid as a pre

Introduction: Immune complexes are of importance in systemic lupus erythematosus pathogenesis, and autoantibodies are believed to participate in immune complex formation. Quantification of autoantibody levels in circulating IC might be of prognostic value. Methods: A C1q-binding-eluting technique was applied to purify immune complexes from 55 belimumab-treated systemic lupus erythematosus patients

This book on Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman contains 18 new essays, representing parts of modern scholarship on the director’s work, mainly in the cinema. Most of the contributors to the book, some of them Swedish, others American or British, have written lavishly on Bergman previously, some even for decades. Bergman is one of the most written about artists in film history and his fame still li

Ecdysteroids are critically important for formation of the insect exoskeleton. Cholesterol is a precursor of ecdysone and its active form 20-hydroxyecdysone, but some steps in the ecdysteroid biosynthesis pathway remain unknown. An essential requirement of glutathione transferase GSTE14 in ecdysteroid biosynthesis has been established in Drosophila melanogaster, but its function is entirely unknow

Human communication can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic, depending on whether it combines ensembles of representations from one or more semiotic systems such as language, gesture and depiction. Each semiotic system has its unique storytelling potentials, which makes intersemiotic translation from one system to another challenging. We investigated the influence of the source semiotic system,

Peptide self-assembly is a spontaneous process, ubiquitous in nature for the creation of highly ordered and complex biological structures, making it a sought after technique in the development of novel biocompatible materials. The process is also strongly associated with various neurodegenerative diseases in the formation of amyloid plaques in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, where fu

Levodopa is a precursor to dopamine that has been shown to improve functional recovery following stroke partly achieved through mechanisms of brain plasticity. This study investigates if dopamine might affect plasticity by having a direct effect on synaptic plasticity through alterations in neurotransmitter release and re-uptake. Synaptogyrin is a synaptic vesicle protein that has been suggested t