The epidemiology of lost meaning: a study in the psychology of religion and existential public health

The existential dimension of spirituality has proven to be of great importance over the last two decades when it comes to studies of self-rated health and quality of life. We see the positive effects it has on blood pressure, depression and life expectancy for chemotherapy and HIV patients, to mention just a few examples. In the public health sector, it is interesting to note that this existential/spiritual dimension had already been present in the early years when the term public health first came into the Swedish language. In the year 1926 public health was defined as ‘a people’s physical and spiritual health’. During the intervening years of major medical and scientific technical improvements in the field, the existential/spiritual perspective had been put aside, but now once again this dimension has come into focus. The central question is, how does the existential dimension of health, understood as a person’s ability to create and maintain functional meaning making systems, affect the person’s self-rated health and quality of life? The working theories and basic perspectives in this article are drawn from health research with attention to the existential dimension, public health from the perspective of the psychology of religion, and object relations theory

Municipal co-financing - voluntary extortion?

This thesis investigates the rationales of municipal co-financing. The introduction of passenger trains on the Söderås Line is used as a case study to investigate this concept. The empirical analysis is primarily based on 10 in-depth interviews – with decision makers, politicians and officials. Focus lies on Svalöv Municipality, who is co-financing the introduction of passenger trains on the Söderås Line (together with the other municipalities, the Region of Scania and the Swedish Transport Administration). Additionally, a questionnaire has been sent to Sweden’s 290 municipal mayors to examine if the patterns emerging from the in-depth interviews can be generalized. It is concluded that municipal co-financing primarily is a way to distribute costs between the different agents who sign the agreement of co-financing. At the same time a large degree of information asymmetry is present. The Swedish Transport Administration is providing the calculations and the projections. Additionally, municipal co-financing is becoming increasingly common. In the case of the introduction of passenger trains on the Söderås Line, Municipal co-financing was required – as the project would otherwise not have been conducted

Gender Mainstreaming: Just an Empty Slogan? On the Norm Diffusion of the Gender Equality Concept from the EU to the Local Level

Gender mainstreaming is currently the main gender equality approach of the EU. This concept differs from former gender approaches since it is cross-sectional and applicable to every governmental level and all kinds of organisations. Considering gender mainstreaming as a norm, the aim of this study is to trace the process of the norm development from the EU to the local level in order to suggest how to precipitate and improve socialisation. The analysed and compared cases are the municipality of Malmö in Sweden and the municipality of Essen in Germany. Socialisation theories with a focus on social movement and social learning approaches provide the theoretical framework. This study analyses and compares the municipalities according to the norm life cycle suggested by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink and scrutinises which mechanisms impel socialisation. After tracing the process it transpires that gender mainstreaming is more internalised in the Swedish case because of the more frequent appearance of the mechanism normative suasion, which features an interactive discussion without manipulation between the actors. However, in the German case the mechanism role playing is more apparent, which is related to the wish for conformity in order to avoid conflict with the community. Nevertheless, gender mainstreaming is not deeply internalised in either of the discussed municipalities

Analyses of the MEC1 DNA Damage Pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Eukaryotic organisms implement conserved surveillance machinery to sense and respond to DNA damage. Fundamental to the repair process is coordinated regulation of repair genes and initiation of cell cycle arrest protocols. Failure to preserve these checkpoints results in accumulation of mutated DNA and aberrant cell phenotypes that are characteristic of human disease. The yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, utilizes the MEC1 checkpoint pathway to regulate the DNA damage response. This study addressed two overarching themes of transcriptional and post-translational regulation within the MEC1 pathway. We first applied our understanding of the MEC1 DNA damage transcriptional response to develop advanced luciferase whole cell biosensors that could detect a broad range of carcinogens using the promoter sequence of the MEC1 DNA repair gene, HUG1. The enhanced whole cell yeast biosensor exhibited improved sensitivity and dynamic range when compared to fluorescent-based biosensors while reducing reporter read-out processing time through a one-step, in vivo measurement regime. Previous global transcription studies performed in our lab identified a dose-dependent biphasic response of MEC1 repair genes to alkylating agents. The origin of this unique profile, however, remained unknown. Using a GFP promoter-reporter construct placed under MEC1 pathway genes, we found that the biphasic response persists through the MEC1 pathway, and that neither reactive oxygen species accumulation nor pro-apoptotic genes contributed to the expression profile. Cell cycle analysis revealed that cells immediately enter a senescent state after experiencing high alkylating concentrations which we proposed was the root cause of the MEC1 pathway gene repression. The role of a functionally uncharacterized MEC1 DNA repair protein, HUG1, in the DNA damage response was also explored. Using overexpression phenotype and subcellular localization assays, we demonstrated that HUG1 is a negative regulator of the MEC1 pathway and that its co-localization with the positive MEC1 effector, Rnr2p, was likely the source of its regulation. Protein affinity assays confirmed the Hug1p-Rnr2p interaction while mutagenesis analysis probed domains within Hug1p to determine regions necessary to its inhibitory action. Finally, we discovered that Hug1p also interacts with human ribonucleotide reductase homologs, p53R2 and hRRM2, demonstrating that Hug1p uses a conserved interaction motif for its inhibition

Review NMR studies of RNA dynamics and structural plasticity using NMR residual dipolar couplings

An increasing number of RNAs are being discovered that perform their functions by undergoing large changes in conformation in response to a variety of cellular signals, including recognition of proteins and small molecular targets, changes in temperature, and RNA synthesis itself. The measurement of NMR residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) in partially aligned systems is providing new insights into the structural plasticity of RNA through combined characterization of large-amplitude collective helix motions and local flexibility in noncanonical regions over a wide window of biologically relevant timescales (<milliseconds). Here, we review RDC methodology for studying RNA structural dynamics and survey what has been learnt thus far from application of these methods. Future methodological challenges are also identified. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 86: 384–402, 2007. This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The “Published Online” date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at [email protected] Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56044/1/20765_ftp.pd

Cultural dialogues in the good society

Value conflicts involving gender equality are interwoven into current multicultural tensions in many European societies. They are at the core of these tensions in Sweden, in which gender equality and principles of individual human rights constitute the state profile and political identity. In this article, we focus on three cases of honor killings that became flash points for public debates on `culture and cultures' among political parties, immigrant groups and feminists in Sweden. The media fervor surrounding honour-related violence has provided xenophobic groups with political opportunities, but at the same time, the public debate has given visibility and opened up public space for immigrant women's groups. We conclude that the notion of the `good society' has kept at bay the recognition of overtly xenophobic parties, but it has also inhibited open dialogue across and within majority and minority cultures, which would allow for reflections upon the diversity within cultures, marked by religion, gender, class differences and generational conflicts

Policies and Measures for Speeding Up Labour Market Integration of Refugees in the Nordic Region: A Knowledge Overview

The employment gap between refugees and the native-born population in the Nordic countries has been highlighted by numerous studies, as has the large variety in the extent of the gap based on country of origin. Studies of earlier migrant cohorts show that the chance of being unemployed decreases over time and it takes on average 5-10 years for people to become fully employed. The integration process is slower for women, with low levels of education and family conditions, including child care, having a substantial impact. With respect to the most recent wave of refugees arriving in 2015, primarily from Syria and Afghanistan, research has yet to determine the effectiveness of the new measures which have been used in an attempt to close this gap in years to come. The fact that Sweden has the smallest share of low-qualified or simple jobs (5.2%) in the EU28 is a factor, together with labour market policies and regulations

Clustering of multiple instance data.

An emergent area of research in machine learning that aims to develop tools to analyze data where objects have multiple representations is Multiple Instance Learning (MIL). In MIL, each object is represented by a bag that includes a collection of feature vectors called instances. A bag is positive if it contains at least one positive instance, and negative if no instances are positive. One of the main objectives in MIL is to identify a region in the instance feature space with high correlation to instances from positive bags and low correlation to instances from negative bags -- this region is referred to as a target concept (TC). Existing methods either only identify a single target concept, do not provide a mechanism for selecting the appropriate number of target concepts, or do not provide a flexible representation for target concept memberships. Thus, they are not suitable to handle data with large intra-class variation. In this dissertation we propose new algorithms that learn multiple target concepts simultaneously. The proposed algorithms combine concepts from data clustering and multiple instance learning. In particular, we propose crisp, fuzzy, and possibilistic variations of the Multi-target concept Diverse Density (MDD) metric, along with three algorithms to optimize them. Each algorithm relies on an alternating optimization strategy that iteratively refines concept assignments, locations, and scales until it converges to an optimal set of target concepts. We also demonstrate how the possibilistic MDD metric can be used to select the appropriate number of target concepts for a dataset. Lastly, we propose the construction of classifiers based on embedded feature space theory to use our target concepts to predict the label of prospective MIL data. The proposed algorithms are implemented, tested, and validated through the analysis of multiple synthetic and real-world data. We first demonstrate that our algorithms can detect multiple target concepts reliably, and are robust to many generative data parameters. We then demonstrate how our approach can be used in the application of Buried Explosive Object (BEO) detection to locate distinct target concepts corresponding to signatures of varying BEO types. We also demonstrate that our classifier strategies can perform competitively with other well-established embedded space approaches in classification of Benchmark MIL data