Jämställdhet en självklarhet? En studie om musiklärarstudenters syn på genus, identitetsskapande och musik

Title: Gender equality taken for granted? A study of how music teacher students view gender, identity and music. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how students at the music teacher program view gender, identity and music, the influence of teachers' standards and values, and if the training gives them the methods they need in their future roles as teachers to counteract traditional gender patterns and, additionally, let the students have the same opportunities regardless of gender, as specified in the policy documents. Seventy-nine teacher students have responded to an online survey about their perceptions and experiences. The result of the study shows that the students have great knowledge of what is considered feminine and masculine, not least when it comes to what instrument the children choose. However, few are familiar with reasearch within the field. The students also feel that there are lower expectations on women, in some courses in the program, and that the program favors men more than women. Students see gender equality as a matter of course, where simply the desire to treat equally is believed to lead to equality. Students feel that gender sensitive pedagogy and gender perspectives are treated by some teachers and courses only, or occasionally, and that this leads to them not being provided with sufficient methods to teach in a gender aware manner as future music teachers.Syftet med uppsatsen är att belysa hur musiklärarstudenter ser på genus, identitetsskapande och musik, hur de påverkas av lärares normer och värderingar samt om utbildningen ger dem metoder att som framtida lärare motverka traditionella könsmönster och låta elever oavsett kön få samma möjligheter, då detta står i styrdokumenten för grund- och gymnasieskola. Sjuttionio lärarstudenter har svarat på en webbenkät om sina uppfattningar och erfarenheter. Resultatet i studien visar att musiklärarstudenter har stor kunskap om vad som anses vara kvinnligt och manligt, samt vilka instrument som tjejer och killar väljer, men få känner till faktisk forskning inom området. Studenter upplever att det är lägre förväntningar på kvinnor i vissa ämnen på utbildningen, och att utbildningen på så vis gynnar män mer än kvinnor. Studenter ser jämställdhet som en självklarhet, där en del menar att viljan att behandla alla lika räcker för att resultatet ska bli detsamma. Studenter upplever att genusmedveten pedagogik och genusperspektiv behandlas av vissa lärare och i vissa kurser eller vid enstaka tillfällen under utbildningen och de allra flesta studenter upplever att de då inte fått tillräckligt med metoder att undervisa genusmedvetet i sin framtida lärarroll

Valid and efficient manual estimates of intracranial volume from magnetic resonance images

Background: Manual segmentations of the whole intracranial vault in high-resolution magnetic resonance images are often regarded as very time-consuming. Therefore it is common to only segment a few linearly spaced intracranial areas to estimate the whole volume. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate how the validity of intracranial volume estimates is affected by the chosen interpolation method, orientation of the intracranial areas and the linear spacing between them. Methods: Intracranial volumes were manually segmented on 62 participants from the Gothenburg MCI study using 1.5 T, T-1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Estimates of the intracranial volumes were then derived using subsamples of linearly spaced coronal, sagittal or transversal intracranial areas from the same volumes. The subsamples of intracranial areas were interpolated into volume estimates by three different interpolation methods. The linear spacing between the intracranial areas ranged from 2 to 50 mm and the validity of the estimates was determined by comparison with the entire intracranial volumes. Results: A progressive decrease in intra-class correlation and an increase in percentage error could be seen with increased linear spacing between intracranial areas. With small linear spacing (<= 15 mm), orientation of the intracranial areas and interpolation method had negligible effects on the validity. With larger linear spacing, the best validity was achieved using cubic spline interpolation with either coronal or sagittal intracranial areas. Even at a linear spacing of 50 mm, cubic spline interpolation on either coronal or sagittal intracranial areas had a mean absolute agreement intra-class correlation with the entire intracranial volumes above 0.97. Conclusion: Cubic spline interpolation in combination with linearly spaced sagittal or coronal intracranial areas overall resulted in the most valid and robust estimates of intracranial volume. Using this method, valid ICV estimates could be obtained in less than five minutes per patient

Varumärkeskaraktären – den levande marknadsföringsstrategin

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate what the process should look like when a company chooses a brand character to personify their brand. Furthermore the purpose is to recognize the challenges and risks that should be taken into consideration when managing this strategy. The aim of this is to give marketers clear guidelines regarding the work process of how a brand character should be formed. Methodology: This study is based on a qualitative method where a multiple case study has been executed, containing four different cases. The empirical findings have been collected through in-depth interviews and the authors’ own observations. Theoretical perspectives: The theoretical perspectives presented in the thesis are primarily based on research about celebrity endorsement, storytelling and brand personification. Theories regarding the managerial process, marketing actors and branding have also been used. Empirical foundation: The empirical foundation contains of 14 in-depth interviews with nine respondents; five of the interviews were follow-up interviews. The interviews were semi- structured with the purpose of receiving as much information as possible from the respondents. The authors’ own observations contributed to the empirical foundation. Conclusion: This thesis has found that many of the successful marketing concepts are difficult to predict. After executing the study, several conclusions have been reached. Among the most important ones; corporate brands have advantages in reaching customers through their brand characters because of more avaliable communication platforms. The study has also found that thanks to brand characters, customers can feel happiness when consuming from low-budget brands, as opposed to previous theory, which has primarily made this connected to the consumption of luxury brands. Finally, the process of brand characters can be run by external sources, and is not always a result of an internal strategy surrounding a Marketing manager

Improving wild animal welfare through contraception

To date, research on the welfare impacts of wildlife contraceptives has mostly been focused on the potential harms of contraceptives. However, there are compelling theoretical reasons to expect direct and indirect welfare benefits of wildlife contraceptives. These positive welfare effects would be experienced by more than just the treated individuals, because per capita resource availability will increase with decreasing numbers of individuals sharing a resource. In the present article, we discuss the potential for wildlife contraceptives to alleviate resource competition and their associated negative welfare effects at different scales. These effects are expected to vary across contexts and would presumably be stronger when wildlife contraceptives are used with the explicit purpose of improving wild animal welfare. The potential for considerable welfare gains for wildlife through the targeted use of contraceptives highlights the importance of both species-specific studies on the welfare benefits of wildlife contraceptives and further research on the links between population dynamics and wild animal welfare

Improving validity of the trail making test with alphabet support

The Trail Making Test (TMT) is commonly used worldwide to evaluate cognitive decline and car driving ability. However, it has received critique for its dependence on the Latin alphabet and thus, the risk of misclassifying some participants. Alphabet support potentially increases test validity by avoiding misclassification of executive dysfunction in participants with dyslexia and those with insufficient automatization of the Latin alphabet. However, Alphabet support might render the test less sensitive to set-shifting, thus compromising the validity of the test. This study compares two versions of the TMT: with and without alphabet support. Methods: We compared the TMT-A, TMT-B, and TMT-B:A ratios in two independent normative samples with (n = 220) and without (n = 64) alphabet support using multiple regression analysis adjusted for age and education. The sample comprised Scandinavians aged 70–84 years. Alphabet support was included by adding the Latin alphabet A–L on top of the page on the TMT-B. We hypothesized that alphabet support would not change the TMT-B:A ratio. Results: After adjusting for age and years of education, there were no significant differences between the two samples in the TMT-A, TMT-B, or the ratio score (TMT-B:A). Conclusion: Our results suggest that the inclusion of alphabet support does not alter TMT’s ability to measure set-shifting in a sample of older Scandinavian adults

Identification of Mild Cognitive Impairment From Speech in Swedish Using Deep Sequential Neural Networks

While people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) portray noticeably incipient memory difficulty in remembering events and situations along with problems in decision making, planning, and finding their way in familiar environments, detailed neuropsychological assessments also indicate deficits in language performance. To this day, there is no cure for dementia but early-stage treatment can delay the progression of MCI; thus, the development of valid tools for identifying early cognitive changes is of great importance. In this study, we provide an automated machine learning method, using Deep Neural Network Architectures, that aims to identify MCI. Speech materials were obtained using a reading task during evaluation sessions, as part of the Gothenburg MCI research study. Measures of vowel duration, vowel formants (F1 to F5), and fundamental frequency were calculated from speech signals. To learn the acoustic characteristics associated with MCI vs. healthy controls, we have trained and evaluated ten Deep Neural Network Architectures and measured how accurately they can diagnose participants that are unknown to the model. We evaluated the models using two evaluation tasks: a 5-fold crossvalidation and by splitting the data into 90% training and 10% evaluation set. The findings suggest first, that the acoustic features provide significant information for the identification of MCI; second, the best Deep Neural Network Architectures can classify MCI and healthy controls with high classification accuracy (M = 83%); and third, the model has the potential to offer higher accuracy than 84% if trained with more data (cf., SD≈15%). The Deep Neural Network Architecture proposed here constitutes a method that contributes to the early diagnosis of cognitive decline, quantify the progression of the condition, and enable suitable therapeutics

Macroevolutionary evidence suggests trait-dependent coevolution between behavior and life-history

ABSTRACT Species with fast life-histories typically prioritize current over future reproductive events, compared to species with slow life-histories. These species therefore require greater energetic input into reproduction, and also likely have less time to realize their reproductive potential. Hence, behaviours that increase access to both resources and mating opportunities, at a cost of increased mortality risk, could coevolve with the pace of life-history. However, whether this prediction holds across species, remains untested under standardized conditions. Here, we test how risky behaviours, which facilitate access to resources and mating opportunities (i.e. activity, boldness and aggression), along with metabolic rate, coevolve with the pace of life-history across 20 species of killifish that present remarkable divergences in the pace of life-history. We found a positive association between the pace of life-history and aggression, but interestingly not with other behavioural traits or metabolic rate. Aggression is linked to interference competition, and in killifishes is often employed to secure mates, while activity and boldness are more relevant for exploiting energetic resources. Our results suggest that the trade-off between current and future reproduction plays a more prominent role in shaping mating behaviour, while behaviours related to energy acquisition may be influenced by ecological factors. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reservedPeer reviewe

Demographically adjusted Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test norms in a Swedish and Norwegian cohort aged 49–77 years and comparison with North American norms

Introduction The Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCFT) is one of the most commonly used neuropsychological tests in Sweden and Norway. However, no publications provide normative data for this population. The objective of this study was to present demographically adjusted norms for a Swedish and Norwegian population and to evaluate these in an independent comparison group. Methods The RCFT was administrated to 344 healthy controls recruited from the Swedish Gothenburg MCI study, the Norwegian Dementia Disease Initiation study, and the Swedish Cardiopulmonary Bioimage Study. Age ranged from 49 to 77 years (mean = 62.4 years, SD = 5.0 years), and education ranged from 6 to 24 years (mean = 13.3 years, SD = 3.0 years). Using a regression-based procedure, we investigated the effects of age, sex, and years of education on test performance. We compared and evaluated our Swedish and Norwegian norms with North American norms in an independent comparison group of 145 individuals. Results In healthy controls, age and education were associated with performance on the RCFT. When comparing normative RCFT performance in an independent comparison group, North American norms generally overestimated immediate and delayed recall performance. In contrast, our Swedish and Norwegian norms appear to better take into account factors of age and education. Conclusions We presented demographically adjusted norms for the RCFT in a Swedish and Norwegian sample. This is the first normative study of the RCFT that presents normative data for this population. In addition, we showed that North American norms might produce inaccurate normative estimations in an independent comparison group

Characteristics of subjective cognitive decline associated with amyloid positivity

Introduction: The evidence for characteristics of persons with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) associated with amyloid positivity is limited. Methods: In 1640 persons with SCD from 20 Amyloid Biomarker Study cohort, we investigated the associations of SCD-specific characteristics (informant confirmation, domain-specific complaints, concerns, feelings of worse performance) demographics, setting, apolipoprotein E gene (APOE) ε4 carriership, and neuropsychiatric symptoms with amyloid positivity. Results: Between cohorts, amyloid positivity in 70-year-olds varied from 10% to 76%. Only older age, clinical setting, and APOE ε4 carriership showed univariate associations with increased amyloid positivity. After adjusting for these, lower education was also associated with increased amyloid positivity. Only within a research setting, informant-confirmed complaints, memory complaints, attention/concentration complaints, and no depressive symptoms were associated with increased amyloid positivity. Feelings of worse performance were associated with less amyloid positivity at younger ages and more at older ages. Discussion: Next to age, setting, and APOE ε4 carriership, SCD-specific characteristics may facilitate the identification of amyloid-positive individuals