Noise-dependent bias in quantitative STEM-EMCD experiments revealed by bootstrapping

Electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD) is a powerful technique for estimating element-specific magnetic moments of materials on nanoscale with the potential to reach atomic resolution in transmission electron microscopes. However, the fundamentally weak EMCD signal strength complicates quantification of magnetic moments, as this requires very high precision, especially in the denominator of the sum rules. Here, we employ a statistical resampling technique known as bootstrapping to an experimental EMCD dataset to produce an empirical estimate of the noise-dependent error distribution resulting from application of EMCD sum rules to bcc iron in a 3-beam orientation. We observe clear experimental evidence that noisy EMCD signals preferentially bias the estimation of magnetic moments, further supporting this with error distributions produced by Monte-Carlo simulations. Finally, we propose guidelines for the recognition and minimization of this bias in the estimation of magnetic moments

A Captured and Divided Civil Society : A Study of Democracy and Civil Society in Central Eastern Europe

This paper investigates the interplay between pernicious polarization, autonomy of civil society - here called civil society capture, and liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe from 2006 to 2020. In the absence of prior time-series data on pernicious polarization and civil society capture, this study built and analysed a dataset of these variables across the region, testing six hypotheses. The findings confirm that both pernicious polarization and civil society capture exhibited an increase during the study period across most CEE countries, the findings also confirm hypotheses linking polarization/civil society capture with democracy, revealing a negative correlation between these variables and liberal democracy. Moreover, a qualitative analysis conducted on four countries highlighted mechanisms through which polarization might contribute to democratic decline. Factors such as the depth of polarization, divisive rhetoric, and sociocultural divides emerged as crucial elements in potentially fuelling democratic backsliding

Serving two masters : How dual price signals can undermine demand flexibility

Demand-side flexibility is often encouraged via demand response programs, where users are incentivized to adjust their electricity consumption based on price signals in tariffs. The design and implementation of these signals are vital, as they link conditions of the energy system with user behaviour. As a result of energy system separation into stages of generation, many users are required to simultaneously respond to two price signals. While existing research has mainly examined responses to a single signal, this study highlights the complexities when users must react to two signals simultaneously. It presents a case study using two distinct price signals: real-time pricing (RTP) and a demand charge, analysing the implications such dual price signals could have on users. The study reveals the empirical incompatibility of these signals, leading to conflicting user goals. Such interference complicates decision-making for demand flexibility, potentially eroding user trust in retailers and system operators. The study ends with proposing an alternative tariff, resolving the dual price situation, which facilitates user comprehension and decision-making, and thus enhances the potential for demand flexibility.De två första författarna delar förstaförfattarskapet</p

Influence of dietary carbohydrates on plasma fatty acid composition : Results from interventional and observational studies

Given reporting bias in dietary questionnaires, biomarkers offer objective assessments. Measuring circulating fatty acid (FA) composition is an established method for evaluating dietary fat quality. However, the influence of carbohydrates and sugars on plasma FA composition is less clear. This thesis investigates how carbohydrates impact circulating FAs synthesized through de novo lipogenesis (DNL). We assessed palmitate and other FAs in circulating lipids. The hypothesis was that increased dietary carbohydrate intake elevates plasma palmitate levels. In Paper I, a randomized crossover study (with all meals provided) investigated the impact of three diets varying in carbohydrate amount and type on plasma palmitate levels in healthy adults. Results showed no influence of either carbohydrate quantity or quality on plasma palmitate. However, palmitoleate increased in higher-carbohydrate diets, and carbohydrate quality affected myristate levels. In Paper II, a parallel-groups study explored the impact of high intake of sugar-sweetened soda (SS) and semi-skimmed milk (milk) on plasma palmitate among Danish adults. Both SS and milk increased palmitate in phospholipids (PL) compared with water. Excessive SS, but not milk, increased palmitoleate in all lipid fractions. In Paper III, a prospective study in Swedish children found no association between plasma palmitate in PL and incident overweight. Palmitate did not correlate with carbohydrate or sugar intake. Only stearate was associated with overweight incidence. Again, stearate was not associated with carbohydrate or sugar intake. In Paper IV, a cross-sectional study in older men found no association between serum palmitate and carbohydrate or sucrose intake, even after considering BMI or insulin sensitivity. Instead, stearate was positively associated with carbohydrate and sucrose intake, while oleate was inversely associated with sucrose and fiber intake. In conclusion, this thesis suggests that moderate changes in carbohydrate quantity or quality do not alter plasma palmitate, although overfeeding with liquid sugar causes higher palmitate in plasma PL. Stearate, but not palmitate, was linked to incident overweight in children, but none of these FAs reflected higher carbohydrate or sugar intake. Overall, palmitoleate seems to be more responsive to increased carbohydrate intake than palmitate, whereas the latter does not appear as a useful biomarker of high carbohydrate intake in Nordic populations

Whole-genome selective sweep analyses identifies the region and candidate gene associated with white earlobe color in Mediterranean chickens

We compared the genomes of multiple domestic chicken breeds with red and white earlobes to identify the differentiated regions between groups of breeds differing in earlobe color. This was done using a selective sweep mapping approach based on whole-genome sequence data. The most significant selective sweep was identified on chromosome 11, where the white earlobe chicken breeds originated from Mediterranean share a common haplotype, and where multiple candidate genes are located. The most plausible functional candidate gene is the Melanocor-tin 1 Receptor (MC1R), a receptor known to regulate pigmentation in the skin and hair, and it is also the gene with the strongest positional support from the haplotype-based analyses. It, however, still needs to be explored experimentally to identify effects also on chicken earlobe color variation. Our study is the first exploration of the genetic basis of white earlobe color in Mediterranean chickens using a selective sweep mapping method based on whole-genome sequencing data and shows its value for identifying likely func-tional genes mediating the pigmentation in earlobe. It also indicates a potential novel role of MC1R in birds and exemplifies how selection on fancy traits has influenced the genome during formation of the modern chicken breeds

The single crystal diamond-based diagnostic suite of the JET tokamak for 14 MeV neutron counting and spectroscopy measurements in DT plasmas

The Joint European Torus (JET) has recently conducted its second deuterium-tritium (DT) experimental campaign DTE2, providing unique opportunity for studying both physics and engineering aspects of nuclear fusion plasmas. This also allowed the exploitation of new diagnostics and technologies that were not available during the first JET DT campaign held in 1997. Among these new instruments, the enhancement projects of the JET nuclear diagnostics lead to the development and installation of synthetic single crystal diamond detectors along different collimated line of sights. This paper describes the single crystal diamond-based diagnostic suite of the JET tokamak and the enhanced 14 MeV neutron diagnostic capabilities in terms of neutron yield and high resolution neutron spectroscopy. The diamond characterization measurements and the calibration procedure at JET are shown, together with performance of the diamond based neutron spectrometer as 14 MeV neutron yield monitor which allows the separation of 2.5 MeV and 14 MeV neutrons in trace tritium plasmas. The first high-resolution 14 MeV neutron spectroscopy measurements in neutral beam injection-heated DT plasmas are presented, allowing thermal and non-thermal neutron component separation. Prospects for the diagnose of DT burning plasmas such as ITER and SPARC will be presented

Equivariant Neural Networks for Biomedical Image Analysis

While artificial intelligence and deep learning have revolutionized many fields in the last decade, one of the key drivers has been access to data. This is especially true in biomedical image analysis where expert annotated data is hard to come by. The combination of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with data augmentation has proven successful in increasing the amount of training data at the cost of overfitting. In this thesis, equivariant neural networks have been used to extend the equivariant properties of CNNs to more transformations than translations. The networks have been trained and evaluated on biomedical image datasets, including bright-field microscopy images of cytological samples indicating oral cancer, and transmission electron microscopy images of virus samples. By designing the networks to be equivariant to e.g. rotations, it is shown that the need for data augmentation is reduced, that less overfitting occurs, and that convergence during training is faster. Furthermore, equivariant neural networks are more data efficient than CNNs, as demonstrated by scaling laws. These benefits are not present in all problem settings and which benefits will occur is somewhat unpredictable. We have identified that the results to some extent depend on architectures, hyperparameters and datasets. Further research may broaden the performed studies to explain how the results occur with new theory

Formulaic language in Early English Books Online : From computational linguistics to classical rhetoric

As Sinclair (2004: 30) points out, ‘so-called "fixed phrases" are not in fact fixed; there are very few invariable phrases in English.’ Consequently, any exploration of formulaic language needs to consider not only their structural forms but also their contextual functions. To this end, we analyse repeated clusters of words (n-grams) from Early English Books Online (EEBO) and subject our results to qualitative analysis using analytical frameworks from both classical rhetoric and stylistics. With regard to the former… With regard to the latter, we pay particular attention to discourse presentation (i.e. the techniques used to present the speech and thought of third parties). We extracted our clusters from the entire EEBO collection, as curated by the Oxford Text Archive. The corpus consists of 60,328 printed works, with approximately 1.5 billion words. Our study therefore constitutes what is likely to be the largest extraction of n-grams from a historical corpus of English to date. The n-gram frequency lists are all made freely available online via the Oxford Text Archive. Preliminary analysis of the most frequent 4-, 5-, and 6-word clusters reveals a preponderance of formulaic expressions from religious texts, often bible quotations or popular prayers and other ritual expressions. Our analysis of the rhetorical and stylistic functions of these clusters allows insight not only into the nature of formulaic expression in Early Modern English but also the nature of interpersonal communication in this period. In this respect, our study demonstrates the capacity of large corpora of written material to offer insights into the nature of communication across both writing and speech

"Du, har du sett min Gucciväska?" : En kvalitativ undersökning om hur kapital, respektabilitet och humor används för att gestalta klass i tv-serien Solsidan

Populärkultur är en social arena där det sker reproduktioner av normer och strukturer i samhället. Att undersöka tv-serien Solsidan kan synliggöra hur människor relaterar till varandra och hur samhälleliga problem som berör klass framställs i serien. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur klass och status framställs såväl som vilken betydelse dessa frågor får. Detta görs genom att undersöka normer, respektabilitet, klasskillnader och krockar utifrån det kapital som karaktärerna besitter. En av teorierna som har använts för att undersöka detta är Stuart Halls antologi Representation och specifikt representationsteorin som berör kommunikation och tolkning. Även Pierre Bourdieus teorier om kapital, habitus och smak som handlar om, och strukturerar, bakgrund och klass har använts i uppsatsen. Slutligen har Beverly Skeggs Att bli respektabel, som tydliggör klasstrukturer och hur dessa påverkar och inkluderar strävan efter respektabilitet, använts. Det är en kvalitativ undersökningen där en konventionell innehållsanalys appliceras. Resultatet är att karaktärerna i serien konsumerar vad de anser ger mest status på Solsidan. Genom att agera och följa de normer som andra gör passar de in. Skillnaden i innehav av resurser och kapital gör att karaktärerna agerar olika i de situationer som de hamnar i men de strävar trots det efter goda framtidsutsikter genom respektabilitet.  Humor används för att förstärka och tydliggöra klasskillnaderna genom serien och gränsdragande och förstärkande av identitet skiljer på de som bor på Solsidan och de som inte gör det. Det skapar i sig en känsla av respektabilitet att bo på vad som anses som rätt område, det vill säga Solsidan. Kapital får en central roll i strävan efter respektabilitet då främst stora ekonomiska och sociala kapital tyder på en väletablerad respektabilitet jämfört med mindre kapital. Dessutom blir tillgången till respektabla beteenden större när någon besitter stora kapital

Person-Oriented Profiles Can Clarify Variable-Oriented Associations : The Example of Communication with Parents and Adolescents' Mental Health Problems

Background: Variable-oriented analyses of time trends in the ease of communicating with mothers and fathers in the Swedish HBSC (Health and Behavior in School-aged Children) dataset show that communication problems with fathers, but not with mothers, positively predict mental health problems among adolescents. This similarity across years is likely to lead to high structural stability in person-oriented analyses across survey years, providing opportunities to uncover typical communication patterns in a robust way. A person-oriented method, cluster analysis, was used in this study to clarify these variable-oriented findings on the prediction of mental health problems. Methods: The Swedish HBSC dataset of 15-year-olds for 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018, with a total of 9255 participants, was used for variable- and person-oriented analyses. Results: Person-oriented analyses of ease of communication with the mother and ease of communication with the father show that poor communication with both parents is associated with the worst mental health problems. They also show that when there is poor communication with mothers, in most cases, adolescents also have poor communication with fathers. The variable-oriented analyses do not show that mental health problems are highest when adolescents find it difficult to communicate with both parents. Conclusions: Person-oriented analyses offer the possibility of drawing more specific conclusions about family conditions that affect adolescents’ mental health. More generally, person-oriented analyses are likely to clarify the results of variable-oriented analyses in many other areas also