Annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure

By 2045, Sweden is to have zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. To reach this goal, stakeholders involved in planning and construction of Swedish transport infrastructure aim to half their climate impact by 2030. Planning for emission reduction measures require network level studies showing environmental impacts of the infrastructure network. Previous studies do not allow assessment of current hotspots in the infrastructure network, which limits their relevance for decision-support in this question. The aim of this paper is to assess the current annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure by using a methodological approach based on life cycle assessment. The scope includes new construction and management (operation, maintenance, and reinvestment) of existing roads, railways, airports, ports, and fairway channels. The annual climate impact was estimated to 2.8 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalents and the annual primary energy use was estimated to 27 terawatt hours. Mainly road and rail infrastructure contributed to these impacts. Environmental hotspots of the infrastructure network were management of the infrastructure stock (particularly reinvestment of road and rail infrastructure) and material production (particularly production of asphalt, steel, and concrete). If climate targets are to be met, these areas are particularly important to address. Additional research on impacts of small construction measures, the size of biogenic carbon emissions (in standing biomass as well as soil carbon), and the use and impacts of asphalt for road construction and management would further increase the understanding of impacts related to Swedish transport infrastructure at the network level. (Note: an Erratum has been published to this paper in volume 20(2)

Erratum to: Annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure

In the original version of this paper, some figures and units in Table 5 (in the main text) and Table A1, A2, A6, and A7 (in the Appendix) were found to be incorrect. The corrected tables are presented below. These changes only concern the presentation of data. They do not concern any of the calculations made; hence, they do not affect any of the results or conclusions in the paper. (the original paper was published in volume 19(2)) &nbsp

LC/MS/MS Analysis of N-Terminal Protein Adducts with Improved Sensitivity: A Comparison of Selected Edman Isothiocyanate Reagents

This study provides a basis for a new and straightforward method for LC/MS/MS-based screening of N-terminal protein adducts. This procedure is denoted the “FIRE procedure” as fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) gave superior sensitivity by LC/MS/MS when measuring adducts (R) of electrophilic compounds with a modified Edman procedure. The principles of the FIRE-procedure are that adducts to N-terminal amino acids selectively are detached and measured from of proteins after derivatisation by isothiocyanate Edman reagents. In this study, FITC, 4-N,N-dimethylaminoazobenzene 4′-isothiocyanate (DABITC) and 4-dimethylamino-1-naphthyl isothiocyanate (DNITC) were used to synthesize thiohydantoin analytes from valine and N-methylvaline. The sensitivity by LC/MS/MS was enhanced by up to three orders of magnitude as compared to phenyl isothiocyanate and higher as compared to pentafluorophenyl isothiocyanate. The FITC reagent will enable measurements of low background adduct levels. Synthesized analytes were characterised with, for example, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, LC/MS/MS, and UV

Jämförelser mellan metoder för fastvolymbestämning av stockar

In 2008 a new method for automatic measurement of solid volume under bark (m3sub) of sawlogs was introduced in southern Sweden. In this method the diameters at 10 cm intervals are used, thus producing a section-wise volume (m3sub-sw). The scanners used are programmed to leave out bumps and indents when diameters are calculated. The objective of the study was to compare this method with two other methods used on the Swedish wood market; a) volume based on top and butt end diameters (m3sub-tb) and b) volume based on top end diameters and conversion factors to solid volume (m3sub-cf). The conversion factors are arranged as a matrix based on diameter and length of the logs. Volume m3sub-tb is the most widely used method for measuring m3sub in Sweden. M3sub-cf is partly used for payment but more widely for planning purposes, for example when the logs are priced as a cylinder volume based on top end diameter. The study was performed on spruce (Picea abies). The three different volume estimates as well as the diameters obtained from the log scanners were evaluated on 435 manually measured control logs from five different mills. For an additional 180 000 automatically measured logs from four of the sawmills the m3sub-sw and m3sub-cf volume estimates were compared. The results showed only minor differences between the methods. The volume m3sub-sw was, for the 180 000 logs, 0.6 % greater than the volume m3sub-cf. The analysis of the matrix for conversion factors showed that, if the matrix was to be revised, this should be done as slightly increased factors for small diameter logs and for big diameter logs. However, it was concluded that it would mean less implications for the wood market if the section-wise volume could be reduced to make this volume equal to m3sub-tb and m3sub-cf. This to achieve that all three methods, given a sufficient number of representative logs, would give the same volum

Combining Flow and Mass Cytometry in the Search for Biomarkers in Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a debilitating complication arising in around half of all patients treated with an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Even though treatment of severe cGVHD has improved during recent years, it remains one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in affected patients. Biomarkers in blood that could aid in the diagnosis and classification of cGVHD severity are needed for the development of novel treatment strategies that can alleviate symptoms and reduce the need for painful and sometimes complicated tissue biopsies. Methods that comprehensively profile complex biological systems such as the immune system can reveal unanticipated markers when used with the appropriate methods of data analysis. Here, we used mass cytometry, flow cytometry, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and multiplex assays to systematically profile immune cell populations in 68 patients with varying grades of cGVHD. We identified multiple subpopulations across T, B, and NK-cell lineages that distinguished patients with cGVHD from those without cGVHD and which were associated in varying ways with severity of cGVHD. Specifically, initial flow cytometry demonstrated that patients with more severe cGVHD had lower mucosal-associated T cell frequencies, with a concomitant higher level of CD38 expression on T cells. Mass cytometry could identify unique subpopulations specific for cGVHD severity albeit with some seemingly conflicting results. For instance, patients with severe cGVHD had an increased frequency of activated B cells compared to patients with moderate cGVHD while activated B cells were found at a reduced frequency in patients with mild cGVHD compared to patients without cGVHD. Moreover, results indicate it may be possible to validate mass cytometry results with clinically viable, smaller flow cytometry panels. Finally, no differences in levels of blood soluble markers could be identified, with the exception for the semi-soluble combined marker B-cell activating factor/B cell ratio, which was increased in patients with mild cGVHD compared to patients without cGVHD. These findings suggest that interdependencies between such perturbed subpopulations of cells play a role in cGVHD pathogenesis and can serve as future diagnostic and therapeutic targets

Extreme Electron Beams and Brilliant X-rays : Generation, Manipulation and Characterization of Relativistic Electron Beams for and from Plasma-Based Accelerators

This thesis is based on work done by the author on the development of plasma-based electron accelerators driven by ultra-intense laser pulses and dense electron bunches. Plasma based accelerators have several benefits, such as accelerating fields around 1000 times stronger than in “conventional” radio-frequency accelerators, which can allow for shrinking the overall footprint of the accelerator. They can also allow for generating electron beams with unprecedented peak currents and ultra-low emittances, meaning that a large number of electrons can be packed into a very short time duration and that the quality of the bunches is high. They can also be used to generate X-ray pulses with durations only otherwise achievable at a few large accelerator facilities, using a laboratory setup the size of a large living room. These characteristics make plasma-based accelerators interesting as a technology for future particle colliders and free-electron lasers, as well as, for example, smaller and more available X-ray sources with particular source characteristics such as ultra-short pulse durations.This thesis describes both numerical and experimental studies on plasma-based accelerators. The experimental work has mainly been on generating electron bunches and X-ray pulses using a laser-wakefield accelerator, as well as applications of the generated X-rays. The results from this branch of the research include the identification and demonstration of a new regime for laser-driven X-ray generation, which produces pulses with significantly reduced divergence compared to the standard method, simplifying the subsequent use of such pulses in applications.The numerical work has been focused towards conventional radio-frequency accelerators, concerning the shaping of electron bunches from such an accelerator for use in electron beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration. Themain point in this research has been removing or circumventing detrimental effects that occur during acceleration and transport, to create bunches which can drive stable wakes. One of the results from this research is an optimization strategy for certain bunch compressors, leading to a decrease in chromatic and geometric aberrations in the bunch. The common thread through both experimental and numerical work is plasma-based acceleration of electrons, and as such there is a larger overlap between these two parts than might initially be seen