DiVA - Academic Archive On-line

Quartz in Swedish iron foundries : exposure and cancer risk

Lena Andersson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:38:00 +0200

The aims of the studies underlying this thesis were to assess the exposure to quartz in Swedish iron foundries and to determine the cancer morbidity for Swedish foundry workers. A cohort of 3,045 foundry workers and a final measurement database of 2,333 number of samples was established.

The exposure measurements showed high levels of respirable quartz, in particular for fettlers and furnace and ladle repair workers with individual 8 hr TWA (GM=0.041 and 0.052 mg/m3; range 0.004-2.1 and 0.0098-0.83 mg/m3). In our database, the quartz concentrations as 8hr TWAs of current and historical data varied between 0.0018 and 4.9 mg/m3, averaging 0.083 mg/m3, with the highest exposures for fettlers (0.087 mg/m3) and furnace and ladle repair workers (0.42 mg/m3). The exposure for workers using respirators assuming full effect when used were assessed quantitatively, revealing workers with actual exposure exceeding the occupational exposure limits.

Overall cancer morbidity was not increased, but the incidence of lung cancer was significantly elevated (SIR 1.61; 95 % CI 1.20-2.12). In the cohort study, significant associations between lung cancer and cumulative quartz exposure were detected for quartz doses of 1-2 mg/m3 * year (SIR 2.88; 95 % CI 1.44-5.16) and >2 mg/m3 * year (SIR 1.68; 95 % CI 1.07- 2.52). These findings were not confirmed in the case-control analysis.

The agreement between the estimated exposure in our early historical model and the development model showed a regression coefficient of 2.42, implying an underestimation of the historical exposure when using the development model data. The corresponding comparison between the development and the validation model based on our survey data showed a B of 0.31, implying an overestimation of present exposures when using data from the validation model.

The main conclusions of the thesis are that certain foundry workers are still exposed to high levels of quartz, and the overall excess lung cancer could not be confirmed in the exposure-response analysis.

Med kränkningar som måttstock : om planerade bemötanden av främlingsfientliga uttryck i gymnasieskolan

Emma Arneback — Fri, 2 Dec 2011 12:12:00 +0200

The aim of this dissertation is to map and analyse planned responses to expressions of racism in upper secondary schools. Three questions are in focus: (1) What courses of action, in response to expressions of racism, are advocated in philosophical texts and equal treatment plans for upper secondary schools? (2) What consequences have these courses of action for the formation of the mission of schools, the responsibility of teachers, and the limits of free speech? (3) What kinds of expressions of racism are these courses of action intended to be a response to? The study takes its point of departure in two theoretical traditions: Pierre-André Taguieff’s categorisations of racism are used to define the problem in the dissertation, while John Dewey’s moral philosophy provides the methodological base.

From an analysis of equal treatment plans four temporal phases are identified. In the first phase, preventive measures, the purpose is to prevent students from developing racism. In phase two, limitations in schools, the dominant course of action is to prohibit violations in schools. The third phase, corrective measures, is concerned with how to handle situations that are contrary to the limitations in schools. The final phase, limitations on schools, relates to when schools are required to transfer responsibility for action to the social services, work environment or police authorities.

The results indicate that the national laws (since 2006) have a strong impact on equal treatment plans, and that ‘non-violation’ becomes a dominant moral principle that displaces or subsumes other views of morality. How the non-violation principle is applied also affects the space for political conversations on topics that can be hurtful. Finally, the analysis indicates that equal treatment plans are mainly concerned with expressions of racism among students, and pay little attention to expressions of racism that occur in the organization of schools. The plans thus describe schools as a force for good that seeks to combat (potential) racism among students.

Journalism in a network : role of information communication technologies inside egyptian newsrooms

Ahmed Mohamed El Gody — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:15:00 +0200

Regulatory aspects of innate immune responses

Ahmed El Marghani — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:27:00 +0200

Activation of innate immunity is regulated by a variety of signaling molecules within the immune cells. The present thesis was aimed to improve our understanding of innate signaling mechanism and their possible use as bio-indicators of exposure and disease. The first part of the thesis deals with the involvement of TOM1L1 (Target of Myb1 like 1) in innate immune signaling and regulation of inflammatory cytokines in immune cells (study I and II). The initial event of T-cells activation depend on the recruitment of Src family kinases Fyn and Lck, leading to interleukine-2 (IL-2) production in T cells. Understanding the regulatory aspects of IL-2 induction in T-cells is of importance as IL-2 is a key regulator for T-cell proliferation and survival. Interaction screening indicated the ability of TOM1L1 protein to interact with Fyn, and Lck, that is important for IL-2 production in Jurkat T-cells. TOM1L1 silencing decreased the levels of CD3/CD28 dependent induction of IL-2 in Jurkat T-cells, and LPS dependent induction of TNF-α in THP-1. Furthermore, overexpression of TOM1L1 in Jurkat T-cells causes an increase of STAT3 expression. This was accompanied by an increase in the levels of IL-1β dependent induction of IL-6 and TNF-α in THP-1 cells. These results indicate that TOM1L11 participate in regulation of innate immune response. The second part of the thesis deals with development of innate immune signaling responses used as a diagnosis tools for disease and exposure (study III and IV). Inflammatory diseases are associated with innate immune reactions. In response to inflammation, the immune cells release inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1-β, IL-2, IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α and CXCL8. These cytokines are regulated by stress related kinases include MAP kinase proteins such as ERK1-2, JNK, and MAPK p38, through activation of transcription factors AP-1, ATF-2, and NF-AT. In a clinical study, it was observed that activated MAPK p38 has a potential role in the regulation of IL-10 expression in intermittent claudication. However, expression of IL-10 and MAPK p38 was opposed in stable angina group. Therefore, targeting MAPK p38 in inflammatory disease such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis might be useful in development of treatment strategies. Innate immune reactions can also be used to monitor stress related inflammatory responses following environmental exposure of immune cells. Inflammatory responses of exposure were studied by in vitro exposure to waters from sewage treatment works and recipient waters. The analysis shows that exposure to inland waters can result in activated immune responses and that these responses are both site dependent and vary over time.

Local infiltration analgesia in knee arthroplasty

Per Essving — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:09:00 +0200

Familjemedlem till person med psykossjukdom : bemötande och utanförskap i psykiatrisk vård

Mats Ewertzon — Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0200

Gestational diabetes mellitus in Sweden : screening, outcomes, and consequences

Helena Fadl — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:36:00 +0200

Foster youth's sense of belonging in kinship, network, and traditional foster families : an interactive perspective on foster youth's everyday life

Lena Hedin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:23:00 +0200

Expert performance in golf

John Hellström — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:58:00 +0200

The competition in elite golf is fierce. Players therefore often have psychological, physical, and technical experts supporting them. The associations between these experts focus areas and how they relate to the playing results are valuable to understand, in order to create more effective training programs. The aim of this thesis is therefore to investigate the relationships between physique, technique, and playing results in golf, and to integrate these findings with psychological research on elite golfers.

Two review studies (A and B) and three empirical studies (I, II, and III) are included. Study A and B provide a theoretical foundation where the relationship of psychological, physiological, and technical variables to playing results is reviewed. The empirical studies (Study I, II, and III) were selected based on the findings in the reviews and the applied needs.

Study I shows that some stability test results are strongly correlated to swing technique. Study II found that strength tests as measured in absolute strength or power are strongly correlated to clubhead speed for elite players, but relative strength (percentage of body mass) is not. Study III used PGA Tour ShotLink statistics collected over a year to investigate tee shot accuracy, striking distance, and hole scores. It was found that the ability to hit the ball with high accuracy and a long distance is strongly correlated with low hole scores. Furthermore, the type of fairway miss is relevant to consider as well as striking distance in relation to the distance of the hole.

These results may be used to make gap and needs profiles. Task, personal, and environmental variables should also be considered before giving training advice based on test results. Future studies should further investigate the causality between key areas and playing results, and test the validity of models that may be used to analyze and set goals for elite golfers.

Öppenhetsindustrin

Peter Jakobsson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:14:00 +0200

Convergence in mixed reality-virtuality environments : facilitating natural user behavior

Daniel Johansson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:27:00 +0200

Preventing underage alcohol drinking through working with parents

Nikolaus Koutakis — Fri, 2 Dec 2011 13:08:00 +0200

An evaluation is reported of an alcohol prevention program that targets parents in order to decrease drinking among 13-16 year-olds. The evaluation was performed in a quasi-experimental study with a matched control group and annual assessments, directed at youths and their parents independently, in a longitudinal intention-to-treat design. The implementation of the program centered around three different schools located in inner city, public housing and small town areas. Participants in the study were 900 students entering junior high school and their parents.

The intervention consisted in information and mailings directed at parents, which advised them to maintain restrictive attitudes towards underage alcohol drinking, and to encourage their youths’ involvement in organized leisure activities. The implementation successfully influenced parents’ attitudes to underage drinking, but failed to increase youth participation in organized activities. At post-test at grade 9, youths in the intervention group reported less drunkenness and delinquency. Effect sizes were 0.35 for drunkenness and 0.38 for delinquency. Two subsamples, early starters in drinking and early delinquents, were analyzed separately in addition to full sample. Results from analyses of these subsamples yielded effect sizes of .52 for drunkenness and .32 for delinquency. The findings were similar for boys and girls. The effects of the intervention were not moderated by type of community. The main results were replicated in a latent growth curve analysis, which too the clustered nature of the data into account. It is concluded that working via parents is an effective way of reducing underage drinking and delinquency.

Unmanned operation of load-haul-dump vehicles in mining environments

Johan Larsson — Wed, 1 Feb 2012 07:35:00 +0200

Underground mines typically do not represent the best working conditions for humans, and many mining companies have the intent to remove all humans from the ore extraction areas. To achieve this goal automation of the mining machinery is required. One of the riskier jobs in a mine is to operate the Load-Haul-Dump (LHD) vehicles that are used to transport the ore from the blast site to a truck, lorry or directly to a crusher. Today these vehicles are typically controlled by an on-board manual operator. The purpose of the work presented in this thesis is to develop and evaluate algorithms and methods to enable high productivity unmanned operation of LHDs, including two different operating modes.

The first mode is fully autonomous navigation, applicable to static environments, where the LHDs are repeatedly driven along the same paths for extended periods. Here, an existing framework for reactive navigation based on fuzzy logic has been extended with novel feature detection algorithms for tunnel following and topological localisation based on 2D laser range scanner data. These algorithms have been verified in quantitative tests to be fast, reliable and tolerant to noise in the sensor data. Moreover, the whole navigation system has been evaluated in qualitative tests in indoor environments using an ordinary research robot. The autonomous navigation system for LHDs currently commercialized by Atlas Copco is partly based on the experiences gained from the work presented here.

The second mode explored is semi-autonomous operation, where local-autonomy functionality on-board the machine assists a tele-remote operator in driving the vehicle along a collision-free path. This mode is intended for mines where the driving path of the machine changes frequently, so the setup needed for a fully autonomous system becomes impractical. In this part of the work a user study in a real mine has been performed, showing that local autonomy has the potential to significantly improve the productivity of a tele-remote operated LHD. Based on these results, a commercial tele-operating system for underground mines has been extended with a novel local autonomy functionality, inspired by existing autonomous navigation systems. The performance of this system has been verified in experiments performed on a real 38 tonnes LHD in a test mine, and in simulations aimed to show that the system works in arbitrary underground mine environments.

Situation-aware vehicles : supporting the next generation of cooperative traffic systems

Kristoffer Lidström — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0200

Wireless communication between road vehicles enables a range of cooperative traffic applications including safety, efficiency and comfort functions. A common characteristic of the envisioned applications is that they act on environmental information to intepret traffic situations in order to provide the driver with warnings or recommendations. In this thesis we explore both the detection of hazardous traffic situations in order to provide driver warnings but also the detection of situations in which the cooperative system itself may fail.

The first theme of this thesis investigates how traffic safety functions that incorporate cooperatively exchanged information can be constructed so that they become resilient to failures in wireless communication. Inspired by how human drivers coordinate with limited information exchange, the use of pre-defined models of normative driver behavior is investigated by successfully predicting driver turning intent at an intersection using mobility traces extracted from video recordings. Furthermore a hazardous driving warning criterion based on model switching behavior is proposed and evaluated through test drives. Maneuvers classified as hazardous in the tests, such as swerving between lanes and not braking for traffic lights, are shown to be correctly detected using the criterion. Whereas robust coordination mechanisms may mask communication faults to some degree, severe degradations in communication are still expected to occur in non-line-of-sight conditions when using wireless communication at 5.9 GHz.

The second theme of the thesis explores how communication performance can be efficiently logged, gathered and aggregated into maps of communication quality. Both in-network aggregation as well as centralized aggregation is investigated using vehicles in the network as measurement probes and the feasibility of the approach in terms of bandwidth and storage requirements is shown analytically. In conjunction with a proposed communication quality requirements format, tailored specifically for vehicle-to-vehicle applications, such maps can be used to enable application-level adaptation in response to situations where quality requirements likely cannot be met.

Idrottsutövandets estetik : en narrativ studie om meningsskapande och lärande

Ninitha Maivorsdotter — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:26:00 +0200

The overall interest of this thesis is to explore aesthetic experience in sport and its significance for learning in sport. The main purpose is to contribute to a theoretical and methodological development of studies relating to learning in sport. The exploration is undertaken within the field of pragmatism using the works of John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The exploration consists of four case studies, consisting mainly of narrative analyses of people’s written stories of participating in different sporting activities. A practical epistemology analysis (PEA) with a focus on aesthetic experience is used in three of the studies. The theoretical contribution comprises exploring learning in sport as something that is connected to emotions and perceptions, where other elements of experience, such as the social, cultural, historical, physical and mental aspects, are also important. Examining learning in the light of aesthetic experience contributes to an examination of emotion s and perceptions as integral parts of sport, without reducing learning to only consisting of emotions and perceptions. The results of the study also contribute to the possibility of exploring values in sport-related learning and shed light on the importance of habits (feelings of familiarity) when learning sport. How people ‘bodying’ the world aesthetically as part of their participation in sport has also been shown in one of the studies. The methodological contributions of the thesis consist of the development of PEA to include the examination of written texts. Furthermore, one of the studies includes the development of aesthetic events as a tool for exploring aesthetic experience in sport. Finally, a methodological contribution is made by using PEA to examine sport, since in the past PEA has only been used in studies in science education.

Rational drug treatment in the elderly : "To treat or not to treat"

Inger Nordin Olsson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:15:00 +0200

The general aim of this thesis was to examine the effect of interventions on the usage of inappropriate and hazardous multi-medication in the elderly ≥75 years with ≥5 drugs.

Methods: Paper I describes a cluster randomization of nursing homes, the outcomes were; number of drugs, health status and evaluations. A randomized controlled trial concerning elderly in ordinary homes was performed in paper II and the outcomes were; EQ-5D index, EQ VAS and prescription quality. In paper III a cohort study was carried out and the outcomes were; medication appropriateness index, EQ-5D index and EQ VAS. In paper IV, registered nurses from the nursing homes study were interviewed in a descriptive study with a qualitative approach.

Results:There was a significant reduction of number of drugs used per patient at the intervention nursing homes (p<0.05). Monitoring and evaluation of medications were significantly more frequent at the intervention homes (p<0.01). The registered nurses at the nursing homes described a self-made role in their profession and the leadership was not at sight. Drug treatment seems to be a passive process without own reflection. Extreme polypharmacy was persistent in all three groups of elderly living in ordinary homes and there was an unchanged frequency of drug-risk indicators. In the cohort study a lower medication quality was shown to be associated with a lower quality of life. EQ-5D index was statistically significantly different among the groups as was EQ VAS.

Conclusion: The nursing home study showed an extreme shortage of monitoring of health status and surveillance of the effects of drugs in the elderly. More attention must be focused on the complexity of the nursing process; medication management must be promoted in teamwork with the physician. The resistance to change prescriptions in accordance with the intervention underlines the need of new strategies for improving prescription quality. Since medication quality is related to the patients’ quality of life, there is immense reason to continuously evaluate every prescription and treatment in shared decision with the patient.

Utmaningar, utsatthet och stöd i palliativ vård utanför specialistenheter

Birgitta Wallerstedt — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:18:00 +0200