Finding a balance: Placing Farmers' Markets in the context of sustainability in modern society

This thesis focuses on local food systems in Sweden, using examples from the Farmers’ Markets that are a growing phenomena in Sweden, as well as in many other developed countries across Europe and the Americas and many other developed countries. Farmers’ Markets are about consumers and producers reconnecting and re-establishing the relationships of trust and transparency that are lacking in today’s modern industrial food production and distribution chains through consumers meeting producers and interacting with them directly. This thesis explores the socio-economic aspects of Farmers’ Markets and the reasons producers are willing to engage. It asks if a balance can be found between the local system and the global system in our modern fast track lives

The conditions of agriculture in the peri-urban landscape - The case of Malmö and Stadsbruk

We are now more people on Earth than ever before and more people are living their lives in cities. In parallel, food production is getting more and more attention, not least due to climate change, and the expected climate change. Climate change which both change growing conditions and destroys growing conditions. Food production depends on farmland, but as the urban population grows, the cities surface grows as well. Not infrequently we find growing cities in areas with high-quality farmland. Thus growing cities often equal to farmland disappearing. If we look at the relationship between town and countryside, the growing city population also has moved further and further away from primary production of food. Thus it can be difficult to value both food production, farmland, and the importance of preserving production landscape. If we look at the city's planning, the ideal in recent has been the green-, the dense and the mixed city. However, the planning of the city's suburbs, the peri-urban landscapes, is often not planned after these ideals. The peri-urban landscapes often consists of external trade centers, or alternatively, left untouched without any real function while waiting for exploitation. At the same time, we see an increasing interest from urban residents to farm food, both for own use and to sale. But as a consumer, it can be difficult to get access to farmland, although there is unused, and unplanned urban land that could be used for large-scale city farming. The other side of the story is the countryside just outside the city boundary, the peri-urban landscape and the agriculture. As the city grows, it influences the large-scale farming, it becomes increasingly difficult to farm and the agriculture companies can be prevented in developing their businesses efficiently. Moreover, if the municipality owns of the farmland, they often leases at one year at time, which makes it even more difficult for the farmer. Thus, this essay aimed to seek difficulties and opportunities between urban development and agricultural production. The essay has looked at both urban farming and large-scale conventional agriculture to give a broad picture. The city of Malmö and the urban farming project, Stadsbruk has been the case study. For both cases, the availability of land and lease times a crucial question, why lease also discussed in the essay. Based on this essays question and the results, I established that the various farming businesses are affected to different degrees of proximity to the city. The short leases have negative consequences both large-scale and small-scale production, for the individual user, the company and the biodiversity. Food production in the city can be a way to build bridges between the city and the countryside, and to increase knowledge of both food and farmland. The essay also conclude that urban farming has many positive effects, but Stadsbruk might not be the very best and most advantageous method for urban farming. Finally, urban farming can be a way to preserve and develop farm land within the city. The city's population and its planning, especially the peri-urban landscape, could gain a lot in being used for urban farming and not being left untouched with no planning

Brukarmedverkan i fysisk planering. Landskapskonventionen i fokus

Kandidatuppsatsen i samhällsplanering syftar till att belysa brukarmedverkan i planering. Fokus ligger på landskapet och den Europeiska landskapskonventionen. Frågorna som tas upp och besvara, med hjälp av en fallstudie och kvalitativa intervjuer, är följande: - Vilka är motiven till medborgardeltagande i fysisk planering? - Vad innebär den europeiska landskapskonventionen i, och vad säger den om brukarmedverkan? - I det enskilda fallet: Hur ser de kommunala tjänstemännen på att brukarna kommer in i planprocessen tidigare (utöver de lagstadgade samråden)? - I det enskilda fallet: Hur ser brukarna på sin roll i planeringen, vill de vara med och känner de att de får gehör för sina åsikter? I analysen hävdar jag att brukarmedverkan är viktigt för att kunna skapa en hållbar planering och utveckling. Dock är brukarmedverkan inte helt lätt att få tillstånd och det finns flera svårigheter. Bland annat visar min undersökning att brukaren själv inte var odelat positiv till medverkan i planeringen. För tjänstemännen var brukarmedverkan däremot ett roligt och positivt inslag i det dagliga arbetet. Den Europeiska landskapskonventionen syftar till att planeringen ska innefatta alla typer av landskap, både i staden och på gelsbygden. Frågan är dock hur stort genomslag landskapskonventionen kommer att få i ett instabilt Europa

Chromatic interaction between egg pigmentation and skin chromatophores in the nuptial coloration of female two-spotted gobies

In two-spotted gobies (Gobiusculus flavescens Fabricius 1779), females develop an orange belly as they approach sexual maturity. Bright belly coloration is preferred by males and has been suggested to act as a female ornament. This coloration is unusual in that it originates partly from pigmentation of the abdominal skin but also from strongly pigmented gonads directly visible through the skin. In addition, females have been observed to temporarily become more colourful during courtship and competition. To understand how gonad and skin pigmentation interact in this nuptial coloration, the potential for colour modification via regulation of skin chromatophores was investigated. Noradrenaline caused aggregation of chromatophore pigment and was used to experimentally reduce the contribution of skin chromatophores to the nuptial coloration. Chromatophore pigment aggregation caused bellies to become less colourful and abdominal skin biopsies to become less colourful and more transparent. There was a strong positive relationship between belly coloration and the coloration of the underlying gonads. This shows that belly coloration honestly reflects egg pigmentation, mainly because the transparency of the abdominal skin allows other fish to see the gonads directly. Interestingly, when noradrenaline caused pigment to aggregate and thereby increased the transparency of the skin, the relationship between belly and gonad coloration weakened. We conclude that female G. flavescens have a potential to use skin chromatophores to rapidly alter their nuptial coloration, thereby affecting the efficacy with which information about gonad coloration is conveyed. <br /

“Verklig lycka hittas bortom skärmen” - En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av fyra rikstäckande dagstidningar kring psykisk ohälsa och sociala medier.

The aim of this study is to examine media’s portrayal, in form of different newspaper articles, of mental illness among adolescents and its connection to social media. In order to fulfill the purpose of the study, a qualitative text analysis is being used. The results of the media review are divided into three main categories; Problem picture, positive aspects and actions as these are mentioned to the greatest extent in the articles. The results are showing that media points out that there has been an increase of adolescents with mental illness and that the increase is likely due to the daily usage of social media and digital display. However, the media also presents positive aspects of the use of social media and other internet sites and says that aid for mental illness is available on social media. Although after writing our analysis we see that the negative aspects of the usage of social media and digital display took over the positive and the conclusion is that young people feel better without them

Effects of Birthing Room Design on Maternal and Neonate Outcomes: A Systematic Review

Aim: To summarize, categorize, and describe published research on how birthing room design influences maternal and neonate physical and emotional outcomes. Background: The physical healthcare environment has significant effects on health and well-being. Research indicates that birthing environments can impact women during labor and birth. However, summaries of the effects of different environments around birth are scarce. Methods: We conducted a systematic review, searching 10 databases in 2016 and 2017 for published research from their inception dates, on how birthing room design influences maternal and neonate physical and emotional outcomes, using a protocol agreed a priori. The quality of selected studies was assessed, and data were extracted independently by pairs of authors and described in a narrative analysis. Results: In total, 3,373 records were identified and screened by title and abstract; 2,063 were excluded and the full text of 278 assessed for analysis. Another 241 were excluded, leaving 15 articles presenting qualitative and quantitative data from six different countries on four continents. The results of the analysis reveal four prominent physical themes in birthing rooms that positively influence on maternal and neonate physical and emotional outcomes: (1) means of distraction, comfort, and relaxation; (2) raising the birthing room temperature; (3) features of familiarity; and (4) diminishing a technocratic environment. Conclusions: The evidence on how birthing environments affect outcomes of labor and birth is incomplete. There is a crucial need for more research in this field

A curious case of dynamic disorder in pyrrolidine rings elucidated by NMR crystallography

A pharmaceutical exhibits differing dynamics in crystallographically distinct pyrrolidine rings despite being nearly related by symmetry, with one performing ring inversions while the other is constrained to torsional librations. Using 13C solid-state magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR and DFT calculations, we show that this contrast originates from C-H···H-C close contacts and less efficient C-H···π intermolecular interactions observed in the transition state of the constrained pyrrolidine ring, highlighting the influence of the crystallographic environment on the molecular motion

Long telomeres are associated with clonality in wild populations of the fissiparous starfish Coscinasterias tenuispina

elomeres usually shorten during an organism's lifespan and have thus been used as an aging and health marker. When telomeres become sufficiently short, senescence is induced. The most common method of restoring telomere length is via telomerase reverse transcriptase activity, highly expressed during embryogenesis. However, although asexual reproduction from adult tissues has an important role in the life cycles of certain species, its effect on the aging and fitness of wild populations, as well as its implications for the long-term survival of populations with limited genetic variation, is largely unknown. Here we compare relative telomere length of 58 individuals from four populations of the asexually reproducing starfish Coscinasterias tenuispina. Additionally, 12 individuals were used to compare telomere lengths in regenerating and non-regenerating arms, in two different tissues (tube feet and pyloric cecum). The level of clonality was assessed by genotyping the populations based on 12 specific microsatellite loci and relative telomere length was measured via quantitative PCR. The results revealed significantly longer telomeres in Mediterranean populations than Atlantic ones as demonstrated by the Kruskal-Wallis test (K=24.17, significant value: P-value<0.001), with the former also characterized by higher levels of clonality derived from asexual reproduction. Telomeres were furthermore significantly longer in regenerating arms than in non-regenerating arms within individuals (pyloric cecum tissue: Mann-Whitney test, V=299, P-value<10−6; and tube feet tissue Student's t=2.28, P-value=0.029). Our study suggests that one of the mechanisms responsible for the long-term somatic maintenance and persistence of clonal populations is telomere elongation