The effect of resistance training with single set vs multiple sets, on muscle strength

Idrett, fysisk aktivitet & helse, ID3-302, desember 201

Maternal Health Care in the Time of Ebola: A Mixed-Method Exploration of the Impact of the Epidemic on Delivery Services in Monrovia

Public health emergencies like major epidemics in countries with already poor health infrastructure have the potential to set back efforts to reduce maternal deaths globally. The 2014 Ebola crisis in Liberia is claimed to have caused major disruptions to a health system not fully recovered after the country’s civil war, and is an important and relevant case for studying the resilience of health systems during crises. We use data on the utilization of maternal health care services from two representative surveys, one conducted before the outbreak of Ebola, the 2013 Liberian DHS, and another, smaller survey conducted in Monrovia in December 2014, during the height of the epidemic. We focus exclusively on data for women aged 18–49 residing in urban Monrovia, restricting our samples to 1,073 and 763 respondents from the two surveys respectively. We employ a mixed methods approach, combining a multinomial logit model with in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our regression analyses indicate that deliveries in public facilities declined whereas they increased for private facilities. Furthermore, overall facility delivery rates remained stable through the Ebola epidemic: the proportion of home births did not increase. Drawing on insights from extensive qualitative interviews with medical personnel and focus groups with community members conducted in Monrovia in August–September 2015 we attribute these survey findings to a supply side “substitution effect” whereby private clinics provided an important cushion to the shock leading to lower supply of government services. Furthermore, our interviews suggest that government health care workers continued to work in private facilities in their local communities when public facilities were closed. Our findings indicate that resources to shore up healthcare institutions should be directed toward interventions that support private facilities and health personnel working privately in communities during times of crisis so that these facilities are safe alternatives for women during crisis

Recruitment of research participants with intellectual disability in a Norwegian context - a response to Williams

Williams’s paper discusses a very important topic for researchers that want to include the voices of people with intellectual disability (ID): how to get in touch with possible participants. When I was asked to give a response to Williams’s paper, I could draw on some experiences from my own projects, but I also checked some other Norwegian projects where people with ID have been participants.publishedVersio

Archaic Temple Architecture in Arcadia

Papers from the third international seminar on Ancient Arcadia, held at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 7-10 May 2002A surprisingly rich tradition of monumental temple architecture, which has so far received little attention, existed in Arcadia in the archaic period. The impressive, late 7th century temple of Athena Alea at Tegea is now known to have been preceded by two simple cult buildings of Late Geometric date, of small dimensions and of simple materials reflecting, probably intentionally, early prehistorical architecture. Based on the early archaic temple, a fine tradition of Doric temples using local marble developed and can be traced through the 6th century B.C., coming to an abrupt end in the first half of the 5th century. Some of its characteristics, such as the open spacing of the colonnades and the avoidance of angle contraction, are significantly different from the mainstream of archaic Dorism, as exemplified e.g. in the temple of Apollo at Corinth

Forståelse og optimalisering av rollen til lytisk polysakkarid monooksygenaser i enzymatisk nedbrytning av lignocellulosisk biomasse

Lignocellulosic biomass holds great potential for production of biofuels and other chemicals traditionally produced from fossil fuels. However, its significant recalcitrance presents a substantial challenge in industrial biorefining, where chemical and/or physical pretreatment methods and enzymatic saccharification are used to convert the polysaccharides within the lignocellulosic structure to fermentable sugars. One way of overcoming this innate recalcitrance is by developing strategies for improved enzymatic conversion, via process optimization or by exploring new enzyme activities. The discovery of lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) and their role in plant biomass degradation, and, more recently, the ability of these enzymes to catalyze a fast and specific peroxygenase reaction, has altered our understanding of the mechanisms of lignocellulose depolymerization, and revealed new avenues for potential improvement of this process. However, achieving such improvement requires in-depth understanding of how LPMOs function, including their substrate specificities, their catalytic mechanism, and the conditions under which they perform best, both alone and during synergistic action with hydrolytic enzymes. In addition, for process improvement and general understanding of LPMO activity, we must be able to analytically interpret and quantify the complex product mixtures generated by LPMOs. The work presented in this thesis has addressed several of these topics both from a fundamental and an applied perspective. Paper I of this thesis describes the implementation of a recently developed chromatographic platform for high-performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD) using dual electrolytic eluent generation in analytical methods for separation and quantification of LPMO-generated carbohydrate products. In this platform, the eluents are based on potassium methanesulfonate and potassium hydroxide. We established methods for simultaneous detection of native, C1-, and C4-oxidized cello-oligosaccharides, as well as separate methods for analysis of gluconic and glucuronic acid. The developed methods showed increased sensitivity and precision in detection and quantification of LPMO products compared to traditional HPAEC-PAD using manually prepared eluents based on sodium hydroxide and sodium acetate. In the study described in Paper II, we evaluated the use of a relatively simple, LPMO-rich fungal enzyme cocktail produced by Thermoascus aurantiacus in saccharification of pretreated lignocellulosic biomass, and showed that this cocktail performs nearly as well in saccharification of lignin-poor sulfite-pulped spruce at 60°C as the commercial cellulase preparation Cellic CTec2 at 50°C. These results underpin the potential of the T. aurantiacus fungus as a producer of enzymes for use in industrial biorefining processes, where maintaining higher temperatures during saccharification can be advantageous. Furthermore, addition of H2O2-producing glucose oxidase to saccharification reactions with Cellic CTec2 showed that in situ H2O2 production can drive LPMO activity in saccharification of lignin-poor substrates. The results obtained in this study were substrate-dependent: when using a lignin-rich substrate, the T. aurantiacus cocktail was less advantageous, and addition of glucose oxidase was detrimental to the saccharification efficiency of Cellic CTec2. These results highlight the importance of adapting process conditions to individual lignocellulosic feedstocks and enzyme preparations. Paper III and Paper IV of this thesis describe the functional characterization of AA9 LPMOs. In Paper III, we demonstrate the C4-oxidizing activity of ScLPMO9A from Schizophyllum commune on a range of hemicellulosic substrates and soluble cellooligomeric substrates, including cellotetraose and cellohexaose (with apparent preferential -3 - +3 binding), and its strong peroxygenase activity when acting on soluble and insoluble amorphous substrates. In contrast to the traditionally-perceived role of LPMOs in depolymerization of crystalline substrates, ScLPMO9A appeared to have little-to-no activity on crystalline cellulose. Although further investigation of these observations is needed, including determination of potential active site residues that may contribute to the observed substrate preferences, these results are intriguing and may aid in providing insight into hitherto unknown biological roles of LPMOs. The research presented in Paper IV uncovered the glucuronoxylanolytic activity of two LPMOs from Neurospora crassa. By quantification of cellulose- and xylan-derived oxidized products, this study demonstrated that preferential cleavage of xylan or cellulose in a mixture of these two polysaccharides can vary substantially between xylan-active LPMOs, suggesting that these LPMOs may have evolved to target different co-polymeric structures within plant biomass. Phylogenetic analysis and structural modeling also enabled the identification of additional putatively xylan-active LPMOs. The results reported in this thesis add to our understanding of LPMO action and how best to leverage this action for current and future academic and industrial applications.Lignocellulose innehar et stort potensial for produksjon av biobrensel og andre kjemikalier som tradisjonelt produseres fra fossile kilder. Men dens komplekse sammensetning gir betydelige utfordringer i industriell bioraffinering, hvor kjemiske og/eller fysiske forbehandlingsmetoder og enzymatisk nedbrytning brukes for å omdanne polysakkaridene i lignocellulosen til fermenterbare sukkere. En måte å løse denne kompleksiteten på er å utvikle strategier for forbedret enzymatisk omdanning, via prosessoptimalisering eller ved å utforske nye enzymaktiviteter. Oppdagelsen av lytisk polysakkarid monooksygenaser (LPMOer) og deres rolle i nedbrytning av plantebiomasse, og, nylig, evnen disse enzymene har til å katalysere en hurtig og spesifikk peroksygenasereaksjon, har endret vår forståelse av mekanismene for nedbrytning av lignocellulose, og åpnet opp for nye mulige forbedringer av denne prosessen. Dog, det å få til slike forbedringer krever mer kunnskap om hvordan LPMOer fungerer, inkludert deres substratspesifisiteter, den katalytiske mekanismen og om hvilke forhold de presterer best under, både alene og i synergi sammen med hydrolytiske enzymer. I tillegg, for å kunne forbedre prosessen og generelt forstå LPMO-aktiviteten, må vi kunne analysere og kvantifisere de komplekse produktblandingene som LPMOer gir. Arbeidet presentert i denne avhandlingen adresserer flere av disse temaene, både fra et fundamentalt og et anvendt perspektiv. Artikkel I beskriver implementeringen av en nylig utviklet kromatografisk plattform for høypresisjons-ionebytterkromatografi med pulserende amperometrisk deteksjon (HPAEC-PAD) ved bruk av dobbel elektrolytisk eluentgenerering i analytiske metoder for separasjon og kvantifisering av karbohydratprodukter produsert av LPMOer. I denne plattformen er eluentene basert på kaliummetansulfonat og kaliumhydroksid. Vi etablerte metoder for samtidig deteksjon av native, C1- og C4-oksiderte cello-oligosakkarider, samt separate metoder for analyse av glukonsyre og glukuronsyre. Metodene som ble utviklet her viste økt sensitivitet og presisjon ved deteksjon og kvantifisering av LPMO-produkter sammenlignet med tradisjonell HPAEC-PAD, hvor eluentene lages manuelt og er basert på natriumhydroksid og natriumacetat. I studien beskrevet i Artikkel II, evaluerte vi bruken av en relativt enkel, LPMO-rik enzymblanding produsert av soppen Thermoascus aurantiacus i sakkarifiseringen av forbehandlet lignocellulose, og viste at denne blandingen presterer nesten like godt i sakkarifisering av ligninfattig sulfitt-prosessert gran ved 60°C som det kommersielle cellulasepreparatet Cellic CTec2 ved 50°C. Disse resultatene understreker potensialet til T. aurantiacus som produsent av enzymer for bruk i industrielle bioraffineringsprosesser hvor det å opprettholde høye temperaturer kan være fordelaktig. Tilsetting av H2O2-produserende glukoseoksidase til sakkarifiseringsreaksjonene med Cellic CTec2 viste i tillegg at in situ H2O2 produksjon kan drive LPMO-aktiviteten ved sakkarifisering av ligninfattige substrater. Resultatene oppnådd i denne studien var substratavhengige: ved bruk av et ligninrikt substrat var enzymblandingen fra T. aurantiacus mindre fordelaktig, og tilsetting av glukoseoksidase var uheldig for sakkarifiseringseffektiviteten til Cellic CTec2. Disse resultatene fremhever viktigheten av å tilpasse prosessbetingelsene til individuelle lignocellulosesubstrater og enzympreparater. Artikkel III og IV beskriver den funksjonelle karakteriseringen av AA9 LPMOer. I Artikkel III demonstrerte vi C4-oksideringsaktiviteten til ScLPMO9A fra Schizophyllum commune på en rekke hemicelluloser og løselige cello-oligomer-substrater, inkludert cellotetraose og celloheksaose (med tilsynelatende -3 – +3 binding), og enzymets sterke peroksygenaseaktivitet på løselige og uløselige amorfe substrater. I motsetning til den tradisjonelt antatte rollen til LPMOer i depolymeriseringen av krystallinske substrater, ser ScLPMO9A ut til å ha liten til ingen aktivitet på krystallisk cellulose. Selv om videre undersøkelser av disse observasjonene er nødvendig, inkludert bestemmelse av mulige aminosyrer i det aktive setet som kan bidra til de observerte substratpreferansene, er disse resultatene interessante og kan gi innsikt i LPMOers hittil ukjente biologiske roller. Forskningen presentert i Artikkel IV avdekket aktivitet på glukuronoxylan for to LPMOer fra Neurospora crassa. Ved kvantifisering av oksiderte produkter fra cellulose og xylan, demonstrerte denne studien at foretrukket kløyving av xylan eller cellulose i en blanding av disse to polysakkaridene kan variere betydelig mellom xylan-aktive LPMOer, noe som antyder at disse LPMOene kan ha utviklet seg til å virke på ulike co-polymeriske strukturer i plantebiomasse. Fylogenetisk analyse og modellering av strukturer gjorde det også mulig å identifisere andre mulige xylan-aktive LPMOer. Resultatene rapportert i denne avhandlingen gir utvidet kunnskap om vår forståelse av LPMO-aktivitet og hvordan best bruke dette i nåværende og fremtidige akademiske og industrielle anvendelser

FPGA Framework for CMP

The single core processor stagnated due to four major factors. (1) The lack of instruction level parallelism to exploit, (2) increased power consumption, (3) complexity involved in designing a modern processor, and (4) the gap in performance between memory and the processor. As the gate size has decreased, a natural solution has been to introduce several cores on the same die, creating a chip multicore processor. However, the introduction of chip multicore processors has brought a new set of new challenges such as power consumptions and cache strategies. Although throughly researched in context of super computers, the chip multiprocessor has decreased in physical size, and thus some of the old paradigms should be reevaluated, and new ones found. To be able to research, simulate and experiment on new multicore architectures, simulators and methods of prototyping are needed by the community, and has traditionally been done by software simulators. To help decrease the time between results, and increase the productivity a hardware based method of prototyping is needed. This thesis contributes by presenting a novel multicore architecture with interchangeable and easily customizable units allowing the developers to extend the architecture, rewriting only the subsystem in question. The architecture is implemented in VHDL and has been tested on a Virtex FPGA, utilizing the MicroBlaze microcontroller. Based upon FPGA technologies, the platform has a more accurate nature than a software based simulator. The thesis also shows that a hardware based environment will significantly decrease the time to results

Norway’s population groups of developing countries’ origin. Change and integration

The project, Scandinavia’s population groups of developing countries’ origin: Change and integration has collected statistics on key aspects of six groups originating from – Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey and Vietnam – living in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The project is carried out in cooperation between the immigration authorities in Denmark, Statistics Norway and Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM) at Malmö University, and coordinated by Miroslav Macura the University of Geneva. It was financed by a grant from the Nordic Council of Ministers, and the participating organisations. Key aspects of population dynamics are studied for immigrants as well as for their descendants, along with three facets of integration into the host societies – change in demographic behavior, participation in the education system, and labor market integration during the period 1999 to 2008. The study makes extensive use of national register data, and constitutes one of the first efforts to conduct a comparative, policy relevant analysis for the same population groups across different host societies. Comparative analyses will be published by Malmö University and the University of Geneva later in 2013. After having presented the national setting, focusing on a broader period, economic situation and the predominant policies in related areas, population dynamics for the six population groups are analysed. The immigrant population and in particular our six groups in focus have been increasing through immigration as well as due to high birth numbers related to high fertility and young age structure. The Pakistani group is the largest, immigrants and descendants taken together, but the immigration from Iraq and Somalia during the decade gave larger numbers of immigrants from these two countries. The growth for these two groups with a short history in Norway is much faster than for the other, more mature groups. Duration of stay is a variable closely related to demographic behavior and integration of immigrant groups. The marital pattern is characterized by a clear tendency, although varying between the nationalities and generations, to marry someone of their own background. The descendants are still too young to make it possible to conclude how their marital pattern will be. Education is the basis for a successful integration. The level of participation is generally much higher for descendants than for immigrants, and varies less between the population groups for them. Quite naturally, immigrants who have arrived to Norway recently are not as frequently represented in the educational system as those who have stayed longer in the country and acquired linguistic and other skills necessary for successful participation in education. The gender difference in education is mostly in the same direction as among natives, more women than men are participating. Often female descendants are considered to be much more active than men in education, but for many groups the difference in rates between descendant men and natives are larger than the difference between female descendants and their native counterparts. The participation rates for descendants in tertiary education have been strongly increasing during our decade, bringing descendants from Vietnam to far higher participation rates than the natives in Norway. As full labour market participation is the aim for many integrational efforts, we have studied carefully how immigrants and descendants fare in the labour market. Employment prospects also for immigrants and descendants have been quite positive. Still, the participation rates for immigrants, and in particular immigrant women, are much lower than for the natives. One can hardly expect groups coming from countries with very different labour markets, and different traditions for female labour market participation, to be able to reach rates characteristic for countries with among the highest participation rates in the world. Young immigrants, and descendants, do better than the older immigrants. The gender gap for some countries (like Pakistan) is a sign that efforts to employ immigrant adult women have not be quite successful. The level economic inactivity is very high, especially among immigrants towards the end of their active period in the labour market, and among women. The difference in activity rates for natives shows that there is still a way to go before equal activity pattern is obtained

Digital transformation of public security - developing tripleloop- learning artifacts to meet emerged information security incident response resilience and readiness challenges in public emergency organizations

Studies have found that resilience and response capabilities in a cyber-attack are unfamiliar to organizations, and it is also found that not only the IT-personnel, but also the crisis management group and teams need socio-technical resilience and readiness to handle such attacks. To overcome this resilience and readiness gap in the society and shortage of trained personnel to handle information security incidents, this project was established to suggest effective and efficient methods and tools and artifacts to train and work with information- and cyber security incident management in all organizations in general and particularly in public emergency organizations. The Design Science Research in Information Security as a pragmatism philosophical perspective was chosen for this project to develop learning artifacts to close the resilience and readiness gap in public emergency organizations. The research was approached with a naive inductive approach, and the strategy has been to meet the challenges with multiple mixed methods, and several public emergency organizations have been invited to take part in the research. Mostly, the studies have been cross-sectional, but the student-exercise have been executed over a 3-year period (longitude). The collection of data was initially done explanatory and descriptive, but exploratory data collection was collected to discuss and validate the findings. To analyze the data, socio-technical root-cause-analysis, categorical analysis from descriptive data/results questionnaires and expected/not expected or yes/no questions (dichotomous descriptive data), and qualitative effect analysis from the variety of actions, were used. In this thesis summary, several key concepts from the research project that have been developed and published in conference proceedings and journals are presented, together with analyzes of data from case-studies, training and exercises executed in the period of the research. Two publications and one report (appendix) present the current level of resilience and readiness in public emergency organizations, five of the publications and the appendix presents learning knowledge and learning frameworks, and four of the publications presents frameworks to learn from exercises. The major findings of this project are that a preparation for exercises framework and how to build EXCON teams for full-scaled information- and cyber security exercises has received very little attentions in the research community, and also in regard to societal training for readiness and resilience experiencing a cyber-attack. It was also established that 1) triple-loop-learning and 2) scoping development of serious games for information- and information- and cyber security incident response, are both relevant and new approaches to information security management exercises. Fine-tuned coordinated learning activities to meet the timeline of a scenario, and triple-loop-learning activities for use in the exercises are of great importance, and a user-centric-approach is of importance to be able to implement the activities at the right level in the organization and to close the gap one step at the time. Finally, socio-technical learning activities have shown that 1) targeted exercise goals developed in the scenarios are met during the exercises, 2) socio-technical step-by-step improvement can be developed based on the level of escalation maturity, and 3) organizations can learn from training and exercises

Exploring How Lignocellulose Is Degraded by Pseudomonas veronii During a Denitrifying Life-Style

As a result of fertilizer overload in agricultural farmland, there is a chance that excess fertilizer leach to nearby water bodies, escalating eutrophication in these environments. One solution to combat this runoff fertilizer is to utilize pits/bioreactors filled with woodchips (lignocellulose) in which microorganisms break down the components in the wood while converting the nitrate from the fertilizer to harmless nitrogen gas (denitrification). The underlying biology involved in this process is only scarcely studied, therefore we have isolated several bacteria from such pits for further study, among these Pseudomonas veronii. The P. veronii isolate had been shown to be a complete denitrifier, i.e., converting nitrate stepwise to nitrogen gas via nitrite, nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide, while growing (slowly) on cellulose prior to the startup of these experiments. Here we tested the isolate for aerobic growth on multiple carbon sources in a controlled medium and observed that P. veronii grew rapidly on acetylated Beechwood xylan and acetate, while slower growth were also observed on mannose, xylose, CMC, Ferrulic acid and vanillic acid. * veronii was then tested for growth under denitrifying conditions on acetylated xylan and alkali lignin, which showed growth on both substrates, although growth on alkali lignin was much slower than that on acetylated xylan, while releasing no observable N2O which is a potent greenhouse gas. The proteome of these cultures were then analysed with mass spectrometry, which found that several enzymes with activity on the lignol coniferyl alcohol and its degradation products, all the way down to succinate. Among these some oxygenases, which was shown to be expressed regardless of the presence of O2 indicating that their expression is unrelated to having access to O2. The lack of xylan active enzymes in the proteomics data would seem to indicate that the bacterium merely de-acetylated the xylan, and not actually degrade the xylan. In addition to this several other polyphenol active enzymes were found, to indicate the bacterium has a wider repertoire of enzymes that can work on various aromatic compounds, several of these related to the degradation of lignols. All this data points to P. veronii having potential to degrade a lot of different compounds found in wood chip bioreactors (lignocellulose), thus thriving while converting NO3- to N2 gas, combatting eutrophication in wood chip bioreactors