Ethnomusichoreology? Ethnochoreomusic?

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NOTUM and RSPO3 in Bone - WNT signaling modulators regulating the skeleton

Osteoporosis is a skeletal disease affecting millions of people worldwide, often leading to fragility fractures and a decreased quality of life. There is an unmet medical need for new anabolic, bone building, treatments. WNT proteins, signaling via the WNT canonical or non-canonical pathway, are known to regulate cortical bone, trabecular bone, or both. There is currently a knowledge gap on the mechanisms behind this regulation, and it would be of great interest to find targets to specifically manipulate the different compartments. The aim of this thesis is to study the effect that WNT signaling modulators NOTUM and RSPO3 have on bone, using both in vivo and in vitro methods. In mouse studies, we inactivated NOTUM and RSPO3 globally and in specific cells using the Cre-loxP system, enabling us to, in detail, study these modulators mechanistically. First, we found that endogenous NOTUM, a WNT inhibiting secreted lipase, is a specific regulator of cortical bone, and that inactivation of NOTUM in all osteoblast-lineage cells increased cortical bone quality and thickness by increasing periosteal bone formation. Cell culture experiment showed that this effect is via enhanced osteoblast differentiation, and further studies concluded that it is the NOTUM expressed by late osteoblasts/osteocytes that is the main source of NOTUM. RSPO3, part of the R-spondin family, enhances WNT signaling and inactivation of RSPO3 in osteoblast-lineage cells specifically decreases trabecular bone in the vertebral column, with no effect on cortical bone. Osteoblast cultures revealed that inhibition of RSPO3 decreased proliferation and differentiation of osteoblasts through inhibition of WNT canonical signaling. In ovariectomized mice, a model for postmenopausal osteoporosis, RSPO3 was nonessential for the beneficial effects of estrogens on trabecular bone, but it was, surprisingly, needed for a full effect of estrogen on cortical bone. Together, the results presented in this thesis provide important new knowledge about the WNT signaling modulators NOTUM and RSPO3 and reveals them to be new possible targets for anabolic drugs against osteoporosis

Social work within a Jamaican Rastafarian community - A study of values regarding women

Author: Karin Tutturen Nilsson Title: Social work within the Rastafarian Community – A study of values regarding women Supervisor: Jan Magnusson This is a qualitative field study of social work within the Rastafarian community in purpose to investigate how values regarding women within the group reflect in social work executed by Rastafarians. The Rastafarian group is often portrayed as patriarchal in the literature while there are ideals in social work to treat all people equally. Based on this, focus is on how Rastafarian social workers relate to the values and ideals which exist regarding women within the Rastafarian Community in their professional role. The paper provides a possible approach of how the Rastafarians role as social workers affects the Rastafarian Community’s values regarding women

An Evaluation of the Impacts of Bolsa Família on Schooling

Conditional cash transfer programs have been proven effective when aiming to decrease poverty and increase school enrollment among poor. The Brazilian conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família is the largest program in the developing world and affect 13 million families in their everyday life. One of the long-term aims of Bolsa Família is to increase school enrollment in Brazil, which also is the focus of this thesis. With human capital theory as the foundation and with data from the Brazilian household survey PNAD2011, a regression discontinuity design is carried out in order to evaluate the impacts of Bolsa Família on school enrollment. As a complement to this analysis, semi-structured interviews with ten beneficiaries are conducted. The main result from the evaluation is that Bolsa Família does not increase school enrollment but appear to provide help for the children in poor and extremely poor families to assimilate education

The Logic behind the Internal Governance of Sweden's Largest Agricultural Cooperatives

This study comprises a qualitative analysis of the governance structures within the two largest agricultural cooperatives in Sweden, both of which have large and heterogeneous memberships, as well as sizeable and complex business operations. Interviews were conducted with district council members and representatives from the boards of directors. The data from both case cooperatives indicate a genuinely traditional democratic member governance structure. There is a great deal of social capital in the governance system. A tentative explanation of the member involvement is that the cooperatives' equity capital is owned by the individual members, and the members are free to sell and buy their shares at a market rate. The members are satisfied with the return on the capital they have invested in the cooperatives. They receive bonus shares and dividends above what most members would get in other investments. A conclusion is that very large cooperatives may succeed well with a member-democratic governance system of the traditional cooperative type, which in this case is probably due to the members' satisfaction with the individualized ownership of the cooperatives

International Biofuel Trade - A Study of the Swedish Import

Following the development of large-scale use of biomass energy in the EU, international biofuel trade is a plausible scenario and something that is already taking place in Northern Europe. This paper focuses on Swedish biofuel imports, both direct and indirect imports, the latter which derive from the fact that part of the imported pulpwood and timber end up as fuel. The objective is to describe the biomass import flows, the actors involved and analyse the fundamental drivers for the trade flows. The rapid expansion of biomass energy, that has taken place in district heating since the early 1990s in Sweden, has been met partly by imports. The direct biofuel import was estimated to 18 PJ for 2000, which corresponded to 26% of the biofuel supply in district heating. The total indirect biofuel import was estimated to 9 PJ of which 5.5 PJ is consumed in the district heating sector. Sawmill wood chips, decay-damaged stemwood and pellets are imported from Estonia and Latvia, whereas used wood and solid recovered fuels are imported from Germany and the Netherlands. Tall oil and pellets are imported from North America. Key factors related to the Swedish biofuel import are analysed, both from the view of Swedish demand and from the view of supply in the Baltic countries as well as supply from Germany or the Netherlands. National differences in energy policy are perhaps the most important driving force behind the seemingly strange trade flows. Structures in the different national energy systems are also discussed as well as the transformation process that has taken place in the forest sector in the Baltic countries

Assessment of the potential biomass supply in Europe using a resource-focused approach

This paper analyses the potential biomass supply in the 15 EU countries, 8 new member states and 2 candidate countries (ACC10), plus Belarus and the Ukraine. For this purpose five scenarios were designed to describe the short-, moderate- and long-term potential of biomass-for-energy. Our assessments show that under certain restrictions on land availability, the potential supply of biomass energy amounts to up to 12.8 EJy-1 in the EU15 and 6.1 EJy-1 in the ACC10. For comparison, the overall energy supply in the EU15 totalled 62.6 EJy-1 in 2001. Consequently, there are no important resource limitations in meeting the biomass target for 2010, which was set by the European Commission (5.6 EJy-1 for the EU15 according to the 1997 White Paper on Renewable Energy Sources (RES)). However, given the slow implementation of the RES policy it is very unlikely that the biomass target will be met within 2010

Investigating the relation between teachers’ actions and students’ meaning making of mathematics

International audienceIn this paper we present and illustrate a framework for analyzing the relation between teachers’ actions and students’ meaning making in mathematics. We adopt a pragmatic perspective on learning, and a methodological approach using already analyzed material, to see whether and how the framework of epistemological move analysis can contribute when analyzing the relation between teachers’ actions and students’ meaning making. The results suggest that epistemological move analysis can be used to identify teachers’ purpose in students meaning making in mathematics, by analyzing students’ responses. Further, it makes it possible to identify what earlier knowledge students use, and how they use it, to re-actualize mathematical objects, relations and concepts

The Use of N-Terminal Pro-Brain Natriuretic Peptide to Evaluate Vascular Disease in Elderly Patients with Mental Illness

Background: Serum N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is regarded as a sensitive marker of cardiovascular disease. Vascular disease plays an important role in cognitive impairment. Method: In 447 elderly patients with mental illness, serum NT-proBNP level and the presence or absence of vascular disease according to the medical record were used to categorize patients in different subgroups of vascular disease. Results and Conclusion: Patients with vascular disease and elevated serum NT-proBNP level had a lower cognition level, shorter survival time, lower renal function and a higher percentage of pathological brain imaging than patients with vascular disease and normal NT-proBNP level. Thus, elevated serum NT-proBNP level might be helpful to detect patients who have a more severe cardiovascular disease

The biogas value chains in the Swedish region of Skåne

Biogas systems are complex in the sense that they cut across several sectors, mainly agriculture, waste management and energy. Cooperation between actors in these sectors must work for biogas projects to be realised and successful. The aim of this report is to describe the biogas systems in Skåne from a value chain perspective, including important development pathways. The different segments in the value chain are mapped with regard to actors, actors in supporting activities, technologies and institutions (mainly regulations). Skåne is a fairly small part of Sweden in terms of land area but it is the most important agricultural and food producing region in Sweden and comparatively densely populated. These characteristics explain why Skåne is an important (if not the most important) biogas region in Sweden. The earliest applications of biogas were for the purpose of reducing the volume of sewage from waste water treatment plants. The biogas produced was used mainly for plant process needs and part of it was often flared. Much of the biogas today, from a variety of types of biogas plants, is upgraded and used for transport. The development towards transport applications can be traced back to the desire to reduce oil dependence and urban air pollution from diesel buses. Initially buses were converted to compressed natural gas, but with regional ambitions for fossil free public transport attention in recent years has turned to compressed biogas. Biogas value chains have developed in response to sustainability concerns in energy and transport, sewage sludge and waste handling, and in agriculture. The development has generated new business opportunities, especially in the field of upgrading. The production of biogas, for transport fuel, waste handling and fertiliser, is expected to continue to grow in Skåne