Självmordstankar bland de äldsta äldsta – en kvantitativ undersökning om självmordstankar bland 95-åringar i Göteborg

Syfte och frågeställningar: Syftet med undersökningen är att studera sociala faktorers inverkan på självmordstankar bland 95-åringar i Göteborg. De huvudsakliga frågställningarna är: Hur vanligt är det med självmordstankar hos 95-åringar? Påverkar sociala faktorer självmordstankar bland 95-åringar? Samt: Har individens kön en inverkan på huruvida de känner självmordstankar? Metod och material: Data från 95+-studien i vilken 338 individer analyserades. Icke-dementa valdes att studera vilket lämnade ett urval bestående av 163 individer (116 kvinnor och 47 män). Variabler rörande individers sociala liv, såsom boendeform och religiös tro tittades på i förhållande till variabler rörande självmord. Huvudresultat: Trots att ett relativt litet antal 95-åringar har självmordstankar, visar studien att de som är troende samt dem som är religiöst aktiva har självmordstankar i lägre utsträckning än de som inte är troende eller religiöst aktiva. Sociala faktorer tycks ha inverkan på huruvida 95-åringar känner någon form av självmordstankar. Religiös tro och religiös aktivitet tycks vara skyddsfaktorer. Detta behöver dock inte tänkas ha ett samband med religion i sig, utan vara ett resultat av den gemenskap som kan skapas genom exempelvis religiösa sammankomster

DOAS for flue gas monitoring—II. Deviations from the Beer-Lambert law for the UV/visible absorption spectra of NO, NO2, SO2 and NH3

Deviations from the Beer-Lambert law were studied for the differential absorption cross-sections for NO, SO2, NO2 and NH3. This was performed by simple calculations, computer simulations of spectra and by recordings of spectra for the above mentioned species at various total columns. The linearity studies for the DOAS instrument displayed large variations for the molecules studied and for different wavelength bands. In a calculation it was shown that the optical depth deviated from a linear concentration dependence by a term which was directly proportional to the statistical variance of the true absorption cross sections and proportional to the square of the total column, under the assumption of a boxcar instrument lineshape. Species exhibiting little variance or fine structure in their spectra, for instance NO2, displayed a larger linear region compared with molecules exhibiting a rich structure, i.e., NO. The former species was linear to a total column of 3150 mg/m2, which correspond to a maximum optical depth of 0.7, while the latter was linear to only 6 mg/m2, corresponding to a maximum optical depth of 0.024, in the resolution range studied. The linear regions for the other species studied were 90 mg/m2 for SO2 at 230 nm, 180 mg/m2 for SO2 at 300 nm and 36 mg/m2 for NH3. The main effect of the nonlinearity was to cause a reduction in the peak height of the absorption. It was shown that the nonlinearity effect is independent on the spectral resolution when a large number of absorption lines are covered by the bandpass of the instrument. It was also shown that the largest change in linearity occurs when the resolution is similar in magnitude to the absorption linewidth. The nonlinear behavior for NO varied less than 2% in the temperature range 300–1000 K and the spectral resolution range 0.25–1 nm. The nonlinearity effect caused quantitative rather than qualitative changes of the spectral features and typical relative errors can be as high as 35% in a flue gas

Sustainability Assurance - The Swedish audit profession’s interpretation and manifestation of competence

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the audit profession's interpretation of the characteristic competence in sustainability assurance, and how this is practically demonstrated. Method: In this paper, a qualitative research with an inductive method approach has been used. Theoretical perspectives: Theories in this paper consist of Flint’s (1988) philosophy of auditing, Abbott’s (1988) theory on professions, Power’s (1997; 1999; 2003) theories of the audit profession, as well as the Swedish legal framework and sustainability assurance standard RevR 6. Empirical data: The empirical data presented in this paper consists of four interviews with sustainability assurers from the Big Four audit firms. The interviews have been used to analyse the profession’s interpretation and manifestation of necessary competence to perform sustainability assurance. Conclusions: The key findings are that the sustainability assurers from the audit firms claim competence due to a perceived overlap between financial audit and sustainability assurance, as well as their use of multidisciplinary teams. External attributes such as educational background, internal training and certification are not seen as factors determining competence

Surveillance of Sulfur Fuel Content in Ships at the Great Belt Bridge 2020

Results are reported from stack gas emission measurements of individual ships at the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark. From the data the fuel sulfur content (FSC) used by the ships has been estimated. The project has been carried out on behalf of the Danish Environmental Pro-tection Agency and this report covers the period December 2019 to November 9, 2020. The overall aim of the project was to carry out operational surveillance of ships with respect to the EU sulfur directive that was entered into force in 2015 and which is implemented in the Danish legislation. It requires the usage of low sulfur marine fuel in SECAs (0.10 %) or using abate-ment technique (e.g. scrubber), The main purpose of the surveillance was to guide further port state control of ships at the destination harbors of the ships, both in Denmark and other ports, and to gather general statistics about compliance rates.This report describes the technical systems and their performance and discusses the general compliance levels with respect to the EU sulfur directive and Danish legislation. The surveil-lance measurements were conducted by automatic gas sniffer measurements at the Great Belt Bridge, reporting in real time to a web database. The measurement systems have been developed by Chalmers University of Technology through Swedish national funding and EU projects. The measurement system at the Great Belt Bridge has been in operation since 2015.In the period December 2019 to November 9, 2020, 3910 valid sniffer measurements of indi-vidual ships were carried out at the Great Belt Bridge with medium and good quality. The pre-cision of the fixed sniffer is estimated as 0.04 FSC % (1σ) and therefore only ships running with an FSC of 0.18 % (2σ) or higher can be detected as non-compliant ships with reasonable statistical confidence. The sniffer also has an estimated systematic bias of - 0.077 % FSC for the measurements in 2020, based on comparisons with port state control authorities. This bias, together with the measurement precision, is accounted for when determining the non-compliance threshold value. The data for the period December 2019 to November 9, 2020 shows a compliance rate of 98.6 %. This corresponds to 55 non-compliant ships (1.4 %) and out of these only 1 ship (i.e. 0.03 %) was in gross non-compliance, i.e. running with FSC above 0.3 % while the rest had an FSC below 0.14 %. This is slightly lower than in 2019 (4 ships corresponding to 0.075% above FSC 0.3 %) and it can be compared to the correspond-ing numbers for 2018 when the compliance rate was 95.3 % and 1.8 % of the ships were in gross noncompliance. One reason for the improvements could be that scrubber installations appears to work better in 2019 and 2020 compared to the previous years.The observed high and improved compliance rate in 2020 is similar to the measurements in 2019 and consistent with other measurement studies in northern Europe during 2019. Airborne mini-sniffer measurements of 600 ships around the coast of Denmark, on behalf of the Danish EPA, shows 50 % less noncompliance between 2018 and 2019, with only 3 ships above FSC of 0.3 %. Sniffer measurements carried out in Belgian waters, in the English Channel, by fixed wing aircraft show that the non-compliance rates of ships with FSC above 0.4% changed from 4.9 % to 0.4 % between 2018 and 2019, with similar values in 2020. Fixed site measurements in the ship channel to Hamburg shows improved compliance rates since 2015 with noncompli-ance rates less than 1 % in Wedel and Bremerhaven in 2019. Sniffer measurements at the 6resund Bridge by Chalmers University of Technology, on behalf of Swedish transport agency, shows 99.7% compliance rates in 2020 with no ships in gross noncompliance.https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2020/12/978-87-7038-250-2.pd

Temporal and spatial dynamics of Fusarium spp. and mycotoxins in Swedish cereals during 16 years

We analysed the dynamics of Fusarium spp. and mycotoxin contamination in Swedish cereals during 2004-2018. More than 1400 cereal samples from field trials were included, collected in a monitoring programme run by the Swedish Board of Agriculture. Five Fusarium mycotoxins were quantified with LC-MS/MS and fungal DNA from four species was quantified using quantitative real-time PCR. Correlation analyses revealed that deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEN) were mainly associated with Fusarium graminearum, but stronger correlations with F. culmorum was seen some years. Nivalenol (NIV) was associated with F. poae and the HT-2 and T-2 toxins with F. langsethiae. Clear differences in mycotoxin contamination between different cereal crops and geographical regions were identified. The highest levels of DON and ZEN were found in spring wheat in Western Sweden. For NIV, HT-2 and T-2 toxins, the levels were highest in spring oats and spring barley. Regional differences were not detected for NIV, while HT-2 and T-2 toxins were associated with the northernmost region. We found that delayed harvest was strongly associated with increased levels of DON and ZEN in several crops. However, harvest date did not influence the levels of NIV or HT-2 and T-2 toxins. Our results suggest similar distribution patterns of DON and ZEN, in contrast to NIV and HT-2 and T-2 toxins, probably mirroring the differences in the ecology of the toxin-producing Fusarium species. Timely harvest is important to reduce the risk of DON and ZEN contamination, especially for fields with other risk factors

DOAS for flue gas monitoring—III. In-situ monitoring of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen monoxide and ammonia

A methodology is described for the in-situ detection of NO, NH3 and SO2 in flue gases by DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy). In order to perform accurate measurements of the concentration it is necessary to compensate for the temperature dependence of the absorption cross-sections as well as for potential deviations from the Beer-Lambert law (nonlinearity effects). From the experimental data in two previous papers, empirical equations were derived for the compensation of the nonlinearity and temperature effects. These were used to compensate obtained concentration values of NO and SO2 retrieved from DOAS spectra that were recorded in a flue gas at 413 K. The measurements of SO2 showed that in a concentration interval of 500–1600 ppm at 413 K, the resulting systematic discrepancies between the DOAS and a conventional reference system decreased from 40 to only 2% when compensating the DOAS data. The maximum random difference was approximately 15%. In the same manner the systematic difference for NO decreased from 23 to 1%, with a maximum random error of 5%, for concentrations between 60 and 160 ppm. The measurements of NH3 demonstrated the versatility of the DOAS technique for time resolved in-situ measurements (<20 sec), and also the feasibility of the technique for measuring several species simultaneously. The measurement methodology developed for NH3 was more complicated than for NO and SO2 and required a larger amount of laboratory calibrations. In the spectral evaluation procedure of NH3 hot bands were utilized for flue gas temperatures above 450 K

Surveillance of Sulfur Fuel Content in Ships at the Great Belt Bridge 2019

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Best practice report on compliance monitoring of ships with respect to current and future IMO regulation

Since 2015, new rules from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and legislation from EU and the US allows ships to run with maximum fuel sulfur content (FSC) of 0.1 % m/m on northern European and US waters, respectively, or use appropriate abatement technique. In addition, since2020, there is a global cap of 0.5 % for the FSC. From 2021, northern Europe is a NOx emission control area, requiring at least 80 % emission reduction (Tier III) for all ships built from this year and onward, compared to ships built between 2000 and 2010 (Tier I). There is also a discussion withinIMO how to control particle emission of black carbon (BC). This report focuses on best practice in remote compliance monitoring of FSC without stepping on board of the ship. Similar measurements for NOx are also shown, with a discussion whether these can be used for compliance monitoring.Some examples of remote measurements of BC are provided. Remote measurement methods for compliance monitoring of FSC in ships have been developed during the last 10 years within national and European projects (EnviSum and Compmon) and furthermore implemented in nationalmonitoring in Belgium, Denmark, Germany the Netherlands and Sweden. The measurement methods are generally based on sniffer systems measuring the exhaust gas concentrations of SO2, NOx and particulate matter (BC), respectively, against CO2. There are systems with varying sensitivity that areoperated at different distances from the ships (50 m to 2 km) and from different platforms, i.e. fixed, shipborne and airborne (manned and unmanned). There are also optical systems measuring the ratio of SO2 against NO2, as an indicator of the FSC, primarily used from manned aircraft. The focus inthis report is on standard sniffer systems, based on generally available equipment for air quality monitoring. Such systems have been used extensively during the last 5 years for operational compliance monitoring from both fixed and airborne platforms. A summary of FSC measurementresults for multiple operators and platforms shows that the noncompliance level has decreased significantly over the last 5 years at different parts of Europe, i.e. from 5-13 % in 2015 to below 1 % in 2020. The highest noncompliance levels were found at the SECA border in the English channeland in the middle of the Baltic sea. The measurement data, interpreted with ship modelling data from the Finnish Meteorological Institute, indicates that remote compliance monitoring of NOx should work reasonably well for ships operating at high loads (above 40 % load). For slow steaming shipsthe measurements are associated with larger uncertainties and care should be taken in the interpretation of then results here and further ship emission modelling is needed to assess this. The remote measurements of BC work well to identify high emitters and groups of polluting ships. However, the BC emissions have a strong load dependence are intermittent by nature and it is therefore difficult to make short term measurements. See\ua0https://cshipp.e

Quantification of methane emissions from cattle farms, using the tracer gas dispersion method

In Denmark, agriculture is the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions (81%), mainly from cattle (dairy and beef) farms. Whole-farm methane emissions were quantified at nine Danish cattle farms, using the tracer gas dispersion method. Five to six measurement campaigns were carried out at each farm, covering a full year. Of the nine cattle farms, seven were home to dairy cows and two to beef cattle. The farms represented typical breeds, housing and management systems used in Denmark. Whole-farm methane emission rates ranged from 0.7 to 28 kg h−1, with the highest measurements seen at locations with the highest number of animals. Emissions tended to be higher from August to October, due to elevated temperatures and high amounts of stored manure during this period of the year. The average emission factor (EF) for dairy cow farms was 26 \ub1 8.5 g Livestock Unit (LU)−1 h−1, whereas it was 16 \ub1 4.1 LU−1 h−1 for beef cattle farms, i.e. 38% lower for the latter. The use of deep litter house management explained some of the differences found in the EFs for dairy cows. Methane emission rates estimated using IPCC models and national guidelines tended, on average for all farms and measurements, to be underestimated by 35% in comparison with the measured methane emissions, for all models and farms. The results suggest that future improvements to inventory models should focus on enteric methane emissions from beef cattle and manure methane emissions for both dairy cows and beef cattle, especially from deep litter management

The connoisseur method

This thesis presents and asseses a method for participation in landscape planning and management. The method has a long-term perspective, while focusing on the interests of local stakeholders. Public participation has been recognized as a fundamental part of landscape planning and management. Through for example the European Landscape Convention’s (ELC) inclusive definition of “landscape”, landscape got a more democratic connotation where focus is put on people’s perception of a landscape. This shift calls for more collaborative working methods requiring more and somewhat different skills from the professional planner than a traditional top-down system does. The research presented in this thesis is context-bound, and based on action-oriented working methods and approaches where citizens, planners and managers are involved in parallel. Academia, represented by researchers and students, is proposed to supplement and assist municipal authorities and the local society in collaborative planning. Methods and approaches related to awareness raising, embodied knowledge, strengthening people’s relationship to their everyday landscape and identifying ways of letting local experts’ voices be heard in the municipal planning process, have guided the research. All the cases presented, describe planning processes in peri-urban landscapes, at different scales with strong connection to nature reserves, changed patterns of land use, and with varying amounts of stakeholders directly related to the landscapes in question. Three cases were selected to discover, design and investigate potentials with the “connoisseur methods”, and three cases were selected to test and refine the method, anchored in current municipal planning and resulting in actual plans. In this thesis ’The connoisseur method‘ is proposed as a way to achieve better collaborative planning. It invites a new type of expert to influence landscape development: the connoisseur is an expert in experiencing the landscape from her particular perspective, and represents the local society. The method proposed is a mix of different participatory methods used for landscape analysis as a way for the professional planner/manager to understand how the local community understands and uses different landscape features. The results of the different cases show how the process is of vital importance. A successful collaboration process is a valuable tool for learning, both locally among the connoisseurs and amongst the municipal planners and managers