Comment on “Fundamental molecules of life are pigments which arose and co-evolved as a response to the thermodynamic imperative of dissipating the prevailing solar spectrum” by K. Michaelian and A. Simeonov (2015).

This is a comment on Michaelian and Simeonov (2015). Michaelian and Simeonov formulate the leading thought in their article: “The driving force behind the origin and evolution of life has been the thermodynamic imperative of increasing the entropy production of the biosphere through increasing the global solar photon dissipation rate”. I shall in the following try to provide some information that might help to clarify whether this is correct

The links and chains of culture : how to reach a position on culture

PhD ThesisThis thesis enters the debate regarding liberalism and multiculturalism and provides an answer to the question of how the state is to treat cultures. This involves first breaking down the assumptions made relating to culture into links and investigates how these links interact and form chains. This approach allows us to more easily examine the coherence of our thinking on issues relating to culture by showing us how a position on one element relating to culture has consequences for the outcome to our reasoning relating to how the state is to treat culture. The thesis then builds on this approach and constructs a contractualist answer to the question of how the state is to treat cultures, premised around the most burdened. The position of the thesis is that the state is to act in the way which the most burdened could reasonably accept. After examining the assumptions which this thesis is premised on the project then applies this to four examples of the type of issues which the state is called on to take action in relation to cultures. Concluding that the state is best placed in taking action in situation where this would lead to an increase in the options of the members of cultures, and less suited to act when the action would decrease the options available

The evolution of photosynthesis and chloroplasts

This review focuses on what has been learned about the evolution of photosynthesis in the past five years, and omits evolution of CO2 assimilation. Oxygenic photosynthesis (using both photosystems I and II) has evolved from anoxygenic photosynthesis. The latter occurs in different variants, using either a type 1 photosystem resembling photosystem I, or a type 2 photosystem resembling photosystem II. Opinions differ as to how two types of photosystem came to be combined in the same organism, whether by gene transfer between bacteria, by fusion of bacteria, or as a result of gene duplication and evolution within one kind of bacterium. There are also different opinions about when oxygenic photosynthesis arose, in conjunction with the Great Oxygenation Event, 2.3 billion years before the present, or more than a billion years before that. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to carry out oxygenic photosynthesis. Some of them gave rise to chloroplasts, while others continued to evolve as independent organisms, and the review outlines both lines of evolution. At the end we consider the evolution of photosynthesis in relation to the evolution of our planet

Design for me?

In this paper, as a generative contrast to the notion of design “for all”, we present and discuss the potential benefits of a design “for me” approach, where the design process from the starts from, and initially is targeted at, just one person. Given many things developed for a user group or a constructed average user, in this text we describe starting from design for a single user as an alternative approach for achieving useful and useworthy designs. We provide an example from the development of an assistive device as the starting point and discuss how and why this alternative approach should be of interest for everyone interested in usability

Sinnesorganet i växtrotens spets

A popular overview of recent research into the various sensory organs of the plant root is given

Ginkgo – det kinesiska tempelträdet

Abstract is not availabl

Home, Sweet Home: Returns to Returning in the Age of Mass Migration

Studying migrants from Sweden to the United States, we provide new evidence on return migration during the Age of Mass Migration. Focusing on a sample of migrants and stayers observed in childhood, we document limited effects on income and occupational upgrading, but large effects on wealth. Male returnees held about twice as much wealth as stayers and about 40 percent more than staying brothers. These effects were likely driven by accumulated savings overseas, rather than inheritance or an income premium back home. For female returnees, wealth effects are of similar magnitude, but appear to be realized primarily through marriage

Adaptive Internal Model Control for Mid-Ranging of Closed-Loop Systems with Internal Saturation

This paper considers the problem of performing mid-ranging control of two closed-loop controlled systems that have internal saturations. The problem originates from previous work in machining with industrial robots, where an external compensation mechanism is used to compensate for position errors. Because of the limited workspace and the considerably higher bandwidth of the compensator, a mid-ranging control approach is proposed. An adaptive, model-based solution is presented, which is verified through simulations and experiments, where a close correspondence of the obtained results is achieved. Comparing the IAE of experiments using the proposed controller to previously established methods, a performance increase of up to 56 % is obtained