The effect of voluntary environmental disclosure on firm value : a study of Nordic listed firms

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between voluntary environmental disclosure and firm value. The analysis is based on a sample consisting of Nordic listed firms disclosing environmental information to the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2007 -2011. We investigate the impact of disclosure on firm value from both an accounting and a market perspective. We provide evidence of a significant, positive association between the level of voluntary environmental disclosure and Tobin’s Q. Furthermore, we find that firms with improved disclosure from one year to the next experience abnormal excess return. Firms with stable or aggravated disclosure do not yield the same result. This implies that voluntary environmental disclosure is value-relevant for stakeholders, and has a positive impact on firm value

Remodelling criminal insanity: Exploring philosophical, legal, and medical premises of the medical model used in Norwegian law

This paper clarifies the conceptual space of discussion of legal insanity by considering the virtues of the ‘medical model’ model that has been used in Norway for almost a century. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and especially with psychosis, without any requirement that the disorder causally influenced the commission of the crime. We explore the medical model from a transdisciplinary perspective and show how it can be utilised to systematise and reconsider the central philosophical, legal and medical premises involved in the insanity debate. A key concern is how recent transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychosis can illuminate the law\u27s understanding of insanity and its relation to mental disorder. The authors eventually raise the question whether the medical model can be reconstructed into a unified insanity model that is valid across the related disciplinary perspectives, and that moves beyond current insanity models

Inntrykk fra kurset «Lær fra deg – så det virker!»

Når man får stipend og skal rapportere fra et kurs, er det vanlig å skrive et resymé, slik at de som ikke var der kan få noe av den samme læringen. Dette verken kan eller vil jeg prøve på. Til det er kurset for komplekst, for mye av en helhetsopplevelse. De to dagene var vevd sammen med seg selv, med eksempler som ble belyst med kursets egen design, med lærerens måte å opptre på, med læringen vår som eksempel på læringsprosesser. Derimot kan jeg gi noen inntrykk som kanskje kan få andre til å ønske seg på kurs, og samtidig oppfordre SMH å sette opp kurset igjen? Og igjen

Remodelling criminal insanity: Exploring philosophical, legal, and medical premises of the medical model used in Norwegian law

This paper clarifies the conceptual space of discussion of legal insanity by considering the virtues of the ‘medical model’ model that has been used in Norway for almost a century. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and especially with psychosis, without any requirement that the disorder causally influenced the commission of the crime. We explore the medical model from a transdisciplinary perspective and show how it can be utilised to systematise and reconsider the central philosophical, legal and medical premises involved in the insanity debate. A key concern is how recent transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychosis can illuminate the law's understanding of insanity and its relation to mental disorder. The authors eventually raise the question whether the medical model can be reconstructed into a unified insanity model that is valid across the related disciplinary perspectives, and that moves beyond current insanity models.publishedVersio

Imaging Violence in Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review and Critical Discussion of the MRI Literature

Background: Persons with schizophrenia have a small but significant increase in risk of violence, which remains after controlling for known environmental risk factors. In vivo MRI-studies may point toward the biological underpinnings of psychotic violence, and neuroimaging has increasingly been used in forensic and legal settings despite unclear relevance.Objectives: (1) To present the first systematic review, following standardized guidelines, of MRI studies of violence with schizophrenia. (2) To critically discuss the promises and pitfalls of using this literature to understand violence in schizophrenia in clinical, forensic, and legal settings.Methods: Following the PRISMA guidelines and literature searches until January 2018, we found 21 original studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria: (1) Studies of persons with schizophrenia, (2) a history of violence or aggressive behavior, (3) the use of one or more MRI-modalities (sMRI, DTI, fMRI).Results: The most consistent findings from the structural studies were reduced volumes of the hippocampus and the frontal lobe (in particular the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex) in schizophrenia patients with a history of violence or higher aggression scores. The functional studies mainly showed differences and aggression correlates in the frontal lobe and amygdala. However, the studies were methodologically heterogeneous, with four particular areas of concern: different definitions of violence, region of interest vs. whole-brain studies, small subject samples, and group comparisons in a heterogeneous diagnostic category (schizophrenia).Conclusion: The literature reports subtle, but inconsistent group level differences in brain structure and function associated with violence and aggression with schizophrenia, in particular in areas involved in the formation of psychosis symptoms and affective regulation. Due to methodological challenges the results should be interpreted with caution. In order to come closer to the neurobiological underpinnings of violence in schizophrenia future studies could: (1) address the neurobiological differences of premeditated and reactive violence, (2) use RDoC criteria, for example, or other symptom-based systems to categorize psychosis patients, (3) increase subject cohorts and apply new data driven methods. In this perspective, MRI-studies of violence in schizophrenia have the potential to inform clinical violence prediction and legal evaluations in the future

Effects of obstetric complications on brain morphology in schizophrenia : four MRI studies

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have shown the brains of schizophrenia patients to have smaller hippocampi, larger ventricles, and reduced cortical thickness and regional brain volumes, as compared to the brains of mentally healthy subjects. The abnormal brain morphology may reflect subtle deviances from normal brain development. Early adverse somatic events, in the current thesis studied in the form of obstetric complications (OCs), in the pre-, peri-, or postnatal periods can cause or influence a deviant neurodevelopment. In scientific studies, it has been demonstrated that occurrence of OCs increase the risk of schizophrenia. Moreover, results from experimental animal studies demonstrate that different OCs cause both abnormal changes in brain morphology and behaviour that parallel what is observed in schizophrenia. In humans, OCs have been related to smaller hippocampi, larger lateral ventricles, and reduced cortical volume in schizophrenia patients with as compared to patients without a history of OCs. Taken together, these findings suggest that early somatic trauma such as OCs may exert an influence on neurodevelopment, detectable in the brain decades later. The main aim of this PhD thesis was to investigate the relationship between a history of (OCs) and brain morphology in patients with schizophrenia. The subaims were to study 1) if such a putative effect could explain some of the differences in brain morphology observed between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls, and 2) if the effect of OCs on hippocampal volume, if demonstrated, is modified by genetic variation (allele variation in single nucleotide polymorphisms). The subject sample included in the current four studies comprises 54 schizophrenia patients and 54 healthy control subjects. They all underwent clinical examination, genotyping, and MRI scanning at the Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Automated software tools were used to obtain measures of basal ganglia nuclei and hippocampal volumes, cortical thickness, and cortical folding patterns. Information on OCs was independently collected from original birth records. The main findings were that OCs are not associated with basal ganglia volumes (study I) or cortical thickness (study II), but significantly associated with reduced cortical folding in the left pars triangularis (Broca’s area) (study III) and with altered hippocampal volumes (study IV). The effect of OCs on hippocampal volume appeared to be modulated by allele variation in the hypoxia-regulated GRM3 gene (study IV). Furthermore, schizophrenia patients did not differ from healthy control subjects with respect to the rate or severity of OCs per se; the effects of OCs on basal ganglia volumes, cortical thickness, and cortical gyrification; or the gene*OCs interaction effect on hippocampal volume. In conclusion, while some brain structures (cortical thickness, basal ganglia volumes) were unaffected by a history OCs, OCs influenced other aspects of brain morphology (hippocampal volume, cortical folding) in the same way in both patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. The differences in brain morphology found between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls were not effects of OCs. Genetic variation may modulate the effect of OCs on hippocampal volume

Hva vet vi om sitteputers trykkavlastende effekt?

Sammendrag. Denne artikkelen gir et sammendrag av en undersøkelse foretatt ved SINTEF Unimed høsten 2000. Målet med undersøkelsen var å gi en oversikt over hva som gjøres i forebyggende hensikt innenfor feltet sitting og trykksår, med spesiell fokus på trykkavlastende sitteputer. Data ble hentet inn gjennom en litteraturstudie av et utvalg publiserte vitenskapelige artikler, gjennom kontakt med ressursmiljøer i Norden og via en gjennomgang av dokumentasjon gitt av norske leverandører av sitteputer. Undersøkelsen avdekket at vitenskapelige arbeider innen feltet utføres uten enhetlige retningslinjer. Dette fører til at det er vanskelig å bygge opp en kunnskapsbase som kan fungere som et referansemateriale for videre arbeid. Ut fra de funnene vi har gjort i denne undersøkelsen vil vi fremheve følgende anbefalte satsningsområder for nordiske miljøer involvert i sitting og trykksårsproblematikk: Kartlegging av de ulike årsaksfaktorene til utvikling av trykksår, i første rekke trykk over tid, shear, fuktighet og temperatur, utarbeidelse av mer enhetlige metodiske retningslinjer for måling av de faktorene som viser seg å være av betydning, etablering av nordiske nettverk for informasjonsspredning og erfaringsutveksling via internett og konferanser, og utarbeidelse av en samordnet tilnærming til opplæring og kompetanseheving hos formidlere, involvert helsepersonell og brukere.måsjekke

Criminal Insanity, Psychosis and Impaired Reality Testing in Norwegian Law

How mental disorder relates to criminal insanity is a contested matter. Norway has a tradition of using a ‘medical model’ for the definition of criminal insanity that is unique in an international perspective. According to this model, insanity is determined only in relation to a medical criterion, so that all that is required is the presence of a qualifying mental disorder. Criminal insanity is, under the current rule, equated with psychosis, although this rule has recently been subject to a law reform. This article explains and discusses this medical model by gathering together legal, forensic, and clinical empirical perspectives on the legal meaning and relevance of psychosis. The article will provide an explanation of the background of the medical model in Norwegian law, and the justifications for tying criminal insanity to psychosis. It will also explain how criminal insanity is operationalised in forensic practice, and discuss the legal conceptualisation of psychosis from a medical perspective. A main conclusion is that the legal meaning of psychosis is unclear, and the authors describe several challenges in legal and forensic practice. The authors emphasise the need for further knowledge development in the intersection between law and medicine