Antiviral Strategies for Pandemic and Seasonal Influenza

While vaccines are the primary public health response to seasonal and pandemic flu, short of a universal vaccine there are inherent limitations to this approach. Antiviral drugs provide valuable alternative options for treatment and prophylaxis of influenza. Here, we will review drugs and drug candidates against influenza with an emphasis on the recent progress of a host-targeting entry-blocker drug candidate, DAS181, a sialidase fusion protein

Demokratiska genvägar : Expertinflytande i den svenska lagstiftningsprocessen om medicinsk genteknik

This dissertation is about expert influence and democracy and focuses on how political decision-making about issues highly dependent on qualified scientific expertise should come about in order to be democratic. The primary purpose of the study is to evaluate, from a democratic perspective, the Swedish legislative process concerned with medical gene technology ? an archetypal case where the decision-making processes involve a marked level of expertise. It is argued that a democratic decision-making process should be characterized by openness and transparency and the possibility for a variety of standpoints to be visible and open to debate. This democratic norm is valid for all decision-making processes and the crucial question is whether a decision-making process highly dependent on qualified scientific expertise would have difficulties meeting such posed democratic criteria. The author makes a systematic empirical and normative analysis of the decision-making process in question, which is anatomised and evaluated against the democratic norm. The overall result of the study is that scientific experts have been able to define the problems on the political agenda and, thereby, had influenced the process as a whole. However, this has not constrained a variety of standpoints to be visible, but views expressed about the experts? problem definitions have prompted more frequent responses from the political decision-makers than other views, which only occasionally have been responded to. The Swedish legislative process concerned with medical gene technology has thereby partly deviated from democratic ideals

Prognosmodell för behovsanpassad bekämpning av Alternaria

Alternariasvampens betydelse som skadegörare i potatis har ökat i takt med att dithiocarbamatpreparaten (Mancozeb/Maneb) fasats ut som bladmögelpreparat. Odlarna efterfrågar verktyg för att årsmånsanpassa alternariabekämpningen och i projektet provades en prognosmodell. Både de odlare och rådgivare som provade var i princip positiva till modellen men man ifrågasatte om den inte rekommenderar för mycket bekämpning. Några viktiga frågor identifierades varav vissa i efterhand besvarats av modellutvecklarna. Trots det kvarstår ett visst behov av uppföljda experiment

Design Program for Dessie Campus, Wollo University, Ethiopia

A geographical position and its social, cultural and political context as well as climate and specific physical characteristics define the scope for a landscape design project. This has become clearer for us in our master project where we have made a Design Program for the outdoor environment of Wollo University in Dessie, Ethiopia and analysed and reflected on the work and process. The aim for the project has been to design an attractive and functional outdoor environment for the Campus, based on the inventories and the needs and wishes of clients and users. But, the aim has also been for us as landscape architect students to gain a greater knowledge about landscape architecture and the design process by position ourselves outside our usual context. The method has been open and seeking where the site, literature studies, dialogues with people and our own experiences from the field study in Ethiopia has influenced the work. Wollo University is situated 400 kilometers north of Addis Ababa, in a mountainous landscape. It faces problems of heavy rainfall during the summer, soil erosion, a lack of essential facilities, and is still a construction site with empty spaces in-between buildings and infrastructure. Our Design Program for future development of the Campus is based on visions from the University, dialogues with site users and inventories of the site and brings up an overall proposal, where problems and opportunities are dealt with. The large empty spaces between the buildings are transformed to places in different scales for various situations and a new system of pathways. Vegetation is used to make today's large-scale of the Campus to a more human-scale. We emphasize the use of a various kinds of vegetation to increase biodiversity and to become a role model in the country. Also the Design Program gives solution of how to deal with storm water, where it is essential to lead away water with swales and confronting the steep slopes next to buildings by vegetated slopes and terraces. Areas identified to lead the way for future change were chosen to be dealt with more into detail and as inspiration for the rest of the site. Making a design project in Ethiopia has raised many questions and traces to follow and we have gained both general and specific knowledge when reflecting upon our work

Sticky Legacies: Persistence of State Constitutional Provisions

In this paper, we assess the evolution of 32 state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution over a 100+ year time period (1776-1907). We construct an original sectionlevel dataset containing the text of every section within a constitution for every year between the adoption of the state’s first constitution and 1907. We classify each section by topic and compare the content of each new constitution as well as the impact of amendments. With a subset of these data, we analyze the extent to which sections were added, deleted, modified and remained the same over time using a novel approach that relies on an edit distance measure to quantify the similarity between sections of two constitutional documents. We are also able to empirically evaluate the level of similarity of modified sections as new constitutions were adopted or alterations were made to an existing constitution. Finally, we determine which topic areas were subjected to the largest amount of change. We demonstrate that it is possible to systematically assess a large corpus of constitutional documents to test theories of institutional change, provide empirical support to existing qualitative accounts, and create operationalizations of concepts such as “stickiness” that are comparable across states and over time

Gd2O3 nanoparticles in hematopoietic cells for MRI contrast enhancement

As the utility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) broadens, the importance of having specific and efficient contrast agents increases and in recent time there has been a huge development in the fields of molecular imaging and intracellular markers. Previous studies have shown that gadolinium oxide (Gd2O3) nanoparticles generate higher relaxivity than currently available Gd chelates: In addition, the Gd2O3 nanoparticles have promising properties for MRI cell tracking. The aim of the present work was to study cell labeling with Gd2O3 nanoparticles in hematopoietic cells and to improve techniques for monitoring hematopoietic stem cell migration by MRI. Particle uptake was studied in two cell lines: the hematopoietic progenitor cell line Ba/F3 and the monocytic cell line THP-1. Cells were incubated with Gd2O3 nanoparticles and it was investigated whether the transfection agent protamine sulfate increased the particle uptake. Treated cells were examined by electron microscopy and MRI, and analyzed for particle content by inductively coupled plasma sector field mass spectrometry. Results showed that particles were intracellular, however, sparsely in Ba/F3. The relaxation times were shortened with increasing particle concentration. Relaxivities, r1 and r2 at 1.5 T and 21°C, for Gd2O3 nanoparticles in different cell samples were 3.6–5.3 s−1 mM−1 and 9.6–17.2 s−1 mM−1, respectively. Protamine sulfate treatment increased the uptake in both Ba/F3 cells and THP-1 cells. However, the increased uptake did not increase the relaxation rate for THP-1 as for Ba/F3, probably due to aggregation and/or saturation effects. Viability of treated cells was not significantly decreased and thus, it was concluded that the use of Gd2O3 nanoparticles is suitable for this type of cell labeling by means of detecting and monitoring hematopoietic cells. In conclusion, Gd2O3 nanoparticles are a promising material to achieve positive intracellular MRI contrast; however, further particle development needs to be performed

Ett skepp kommer lastat... En studie i hur kryssningsdestinationer integrerar hållbar utveckling i platsmarknadsföringsprocessen

Problem: Det existerar ett paradigmskifte mot hållbar utveckling som medför att det blir allt viktigare för kryssningsdestinationer att följa hållbara utvecklingsprinciper samtidigt som de måste marknadsföra sig i en allt intensivare konkurrenssituation. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur kryssningsdestinationer kan integrera hållbar utveckling i platsmarknadsföringsprocessen för att överbrygga paradoxen mellan marknadsföring och hållbar utveckling. Metod: Uppsatsen utgår från en kvalitativ ansats där intervjuer ligger till grund och kompletterats med observationer, dokumentstudier samt en kvantitativ enkätundersökning. Intervjuerna genomfördes i både Helsingborg och Dubrovnik och fokuserade på marknadsföring, hållbar utveckling och kryssningsindustrin. Det kombinerade metodvalet har medfört att vi fått en god empirisk grund som möjliggjort en undersökning av problemet och därmed ett besvarande av frågeställningarna. Slutsatser: Utifrån förutsättning att kryssningsdestinationer måste följa rådande paradigmskifte mot hållbar utveckling har vi dragit slutsatsen att det krävs en hållbar marknadsföring för att fortsatt kunna attrahera besökare. Marknadsföring kan skapa beteendemönster hos kryssningspassagerare och därav har slutsatsen dragits att marknadsföring är ett viktigt verktyg i integrerandet av hållbar utveckling i platsmarknadsföringsprocessen. Varumärket blir en viktig resurs i detta arbete då de bidrar till destinationens image. Det är således viktigt att integrera de ekonomiska, ekologiska och socio- kulturella aspekterna i varumärkesskapandet. Slutligen har slutsatsen dragits att samarbete och samverkan är en förutsättning för att kunna integrera hållbara utvecklingsprinciper i platsmarknadsföringsprocessen

Emerging Genotype (GGIIb) of Norovirus in Drinking Water, Sweden

From May through June 2001, an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis that affected at least 200 persons occurred in a combined activity camp and conference center in Stockholm County. The source of illness was contaminated drinking water obtained from private wells. The outbreak appears to have started with sewage pipeline problems near the kitchen, which caused overflow of the sewage system and contaminated the environment. While no pathogenic bacteria were found in water or stools specimens, norovirus was detected in 8 of 11 stool specimens and 2 of 3 water samples by polymerase chain reaction. Nucleotide sequencing of amplicons from two patients and two water samples identified an emerging genotype designated GGIIb, which was circulating throughout several European countries during 2000 and 2001. This investigation documents the first waterborne outbreak of viral gastroenteritis in Sweden, where nucleotide sequencing showed a direct link between contaminated water and illness

How Will the Emerging Plurality of Lives Change How We Conceive of and Relate to Life?

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project