Diagnostic, regenerative or fossil-free- exploring stakeholder perceptions of Swedish food system sustainability

In an analysis of food system sustainability challenges and solutions among Swedish food system actors using Q -methodology, five perspectives were identified. One of the main three perspectives placed the highest priority on reduced meat consumption, food waste, and climate impact in agriculture, but downplayed strategies highlighted in the national food strategy and social aspects, and can be interpreted as a diagnostic climate mitigation-oriented perspective that does not reflect current negotiated policy processes or 'softer' values of food. In an alternative regenerative perspective, industrialized large-scale farming and lack of internalization of external costs were regarded as the main problems, and diversity, soil health, and organic farming as the main solutions. Proponents of a third perspective regarded phasing out fossil fuels, increased profitability of companies, increased meat production, and self-sufficiency as high priorities. These contrasting views can be a major barrier to transforming the Swedish food system. However, a number of entry points for change (i.e. aspects highly important for some and neutral for others) were identified, including focusing on healthy diets and increased production of fruit and vegetables. Focusing on these can build trust among stakeholders before moving to discussions about the larger and more sensitive systemic changes needed

Poor Reproducibility of Allergic Rhinitis SNP Associations

10.1371/journal.pone.0053975PLoS ONE81

Black and White in the Class Journey of the U.S. Health Care Reform : A comparative study of the American Health Care Reform in the Daily Press of USA and Sweden

Motivation: The aim of this study has been to conduct a comparative study concerning how race, ethnicity and class is represented in American contrary to Swedish daily press and from there on to explore and explain similarities and differences that have been found in the material. Problem statement: • How is race, ethnicity and class represented in American contrary Swedish daily press? • What are the similarities and differences between the countries’ daily news flow? • What causes the similiarities and differences to achieve their current form? Material: The material which has been the subject of this study consists of eight articles – four American articles (USA Today) and four Swedish articles (Dagens Nyheter). The material has been elected to meet certain criterias and mainly discusses the effects the health care reform will have on the American population. Approach: The material has been approached by using theories concerned with race, ethnicity, class and framing. The method used to analyze the material was Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Results: The results shows significant similarities, although mainly differences, between the countries’ daily news flow. The working class is offered limited space in American as well as Swedish newspaper reporting. Class is used as a tool to categorize the figurants in the material and to give them certain authority. The authority given is demonstrated by the allowance of drawing conclusions, something which is restriced to the capitalist class and upper middle class. The occurence of race and ethnicity differs and is only perceivable in Swedish media. The American articles appear more detailed in describing pros and cons with the health care reform while the Swedish articles mainly describe the negative effects of the current health care system. Conclusion: Swedish press invokes the ethnicity concept in correlation with non-whites. The race concept is invoked in correlation with the white race’s raceless power. The reason could be that ethnicity is not rated as rasism and has retrieved a positive affirmative, although it does reinforce the concept of portraying only non-whites as poor. It has been found unlikely that American press does not correlate with neither race nor ethnicity because they simply have not interviewed non-white people. The similarities are thought to be a result of Western similarities and differences are results of political and cultural national differences

Temperature Sensing Is Distributed throughout the Regulatory Network that Controls FLC Epigenetic Silencing in Vernalization

Many organisms need to respond to complex, noisy environmental signals for developmental decision making. Here, we dissect how Arabidopsis plants integrate widely fluctuating field temperatures over month-long timescales to progressively upregulate VERNALIZATION INSENSITIVE3 (VIN3) and silence FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), aligning flowering with spring. We develop a mathematical model for vernalization that operates on multiple timescales-long term (month), short term (day), and current (hour)-and is constrained by experimental data. Our analysis demonstrates that temperature sensing is not localized to specific nodes within the FLC network. Instead, temperature sensing is broadly distributed, with each thermosensory process responding to specific features of the plants' history of exposure to warm and cold. The model accurately predicts FLC silencing in new field data, allowing us to forecast FLC expression in changing climates. We suggest that distributed thermosensing may be a general property of thermoresponsive regulatory networks in complex natural environments.