Planting Trees in a Forest: Frictions and Resistance in Puerto Princesa, The Philippines

The expansion of ecotourism around the world brings about certain structural transformations as it moves. When ecotourism is conceptualized as frictions, the transformations open up the analytical perspective for a broader understanding. Seemingly dispersed acts can be connected to wider structural shifts in the social reproduction. Studying global process like ecotourism ethnographically requires a vantage point from which the global can become visible in the local. This thesis examines what happened when the city of Puerto Princesa adopted ecotourism. By observing ecotourism as frictions, participant observation and interviews yield a greater richness in the ethnographic data, contextualizing otherwise peculiar behavior and sentiments. The adoption of ecotourism gave rise to new constellations of power and culture in which individuals are trying to navigate the new social terrain. Ecotourism has altered the sensation of place for the inhabitants of Puerto Princesa. The disruptive transformations of place have created a culture of subtle acts of resistance against the new elites and the ecotourism project they are connected to

Hamburgare, snigel eller mittemellan – En kvantitativ studie om implicita och explicita associationer mellan matens hälsosamhet och smak

Antalet överviktiga har i Sverige sedan slutet av 1980 talet fördubblats. Övervikt är något som dels påverkar den enskilda individen men är även något som kan medföra stora problem för samhället om utvecklingen fortsätter. Denna uppsats är tänkt att förse en bit av svaret till vad denna viktökning kan bero på. Uppsatsen ämnar utröna hur svenskar förhåller sig till en automatisk association gällande hur varierande hälsograd av matprodukter påverkar smakuplevelsen samt om denna association kan predicera framtida beteende angående val av önskad mat. Associationen mättes både på implicit nivå med hjälp av ett datortest kallat Sorting Paired Features Task och på explicit nivå. I studien undersöktes även om Dietary Restraint Scale (ett mått på kontrollerat ätande) och Body Mass Index modererade styrkan av associationen. I studien deltog 60 personer. Samtliga dataanalyser gällande hypoteserna genererade icke-signifikanta resultat

The C-terminal domain of the antiamyloid chaperone DNAJB6 binds to amyloid-β peptide fibrils and inhibits secondary nucleation

The DNAJB6 chaperone inhibits fibril formation of aggregation-prone client peptides through interaction with aggregated and oligomeric forms of the amyloid peptides. Here, we studied the role of its C-terminal domain (CTD) using constructs comprising either the entire CTD or the first two or all four of the CTD β-strands grafted onto a scaffold protein. Each construct was expressed as WT and as a variant with alanines replacing five highly conserved and functionally important serine and threonine residues in the first β-strand. We investigated the stability, oligomerization, antiamyloid activity, and affinity for amyloid-β (Aβ42) species using optical spectroscopy, native mass spectrometry, chemical crosslinking, and surface plasmon resonance technology. While DNAJB6 forms large and polydisperse oligomers, CTD was found to form only monomers, dimers, and tetramers of low affinity. Kinetic analyses showed a shift in inhibition mechanism. Whereas full-length DNAJB6 activity is dependent on the serine and threonine residues and efficiently inhibits primary and secondary nucleation, all CTD constructs inhibit secondary nucleation only, independently of the serine and threonine residues, although their dimerization and thermal stabilities are reduced by alanine substitution. While the full-length DNAJB6 inhibition of primary nucleation is related to its propensity to form coaggregates with Aβ, the CTD constructs instead bind to Aβ42 fibrils, which affects the nucleation events at the fibril surface. The retardation of secondary nucleation by DNAJB6 can thus be ascribed to the first two β-strands of its CTD, whereas the inhibition of primary nucleation is dependent on the entire protein or regions outside the CTD