The Parenthood “Happiness Penalty”: The Effects of Social Policies in 22 Countries

A large body of research has established that parents are less happy than nonparents. But is it always true that parents are less happy than nonparents? This research brief, by PRC faculty research associate Jennifer Glass and colleagues, shows that the “happiness penalty” is entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies that allow parents to better combine paid work with family obligations.Population Research Cente

Collaboration in Hybrid Spaces: The Case of Nordic Efforts to Counter Violent Extremism

In this article, we analyze policy regulating the multiagency organizational approaches used in Nordic countries to prevent violent extremism. From an institutional logic perspective and a conceptualization of multiagency work as conducted in hybrid spaces, we analyze and develop a new theoretical framework to explain how central policies inhabit distinctive logics that compete, mix, and co-exist in these spaces, and how they inscribe specific power relations embedded in dominant discourses

Tidsstudie av containerhuggbil

The fork lifter chipper truck is a concept which has been developed for harvest and transport of bio fuel. The system consists of one fork lifter chipper truck and 1, 2 or 3 transport lorries, usually two, which serves the fork lifter chipper truck. The system is driven by the fork lifter chipper truck that produces chipped material into a container on the truck. When the container has been filled the truck drives to the landing site where it’s offloaded. From the landing site the containers are being transported to industry by fork lifter trucks. The aim of the study was: - To measure the productivity of the system during various conditions considering distance of transportation, the quality of the windrow, mix of tree species and weight of the loads - To identify parameters within the system that could be improved - To compare the system to a similar system, tractor chipper and a truck equipped with a dipper Within the final thesis a time study has been carried out which have made it possible to estimate the productivity of the system and the time consumption of each work element. These data have then been used to analyze the system to show differences in productivity depending on different conditions on the site and constellation of vehicles. During the time study 50 % of the container chipper truck’s work time was consumed by chipping, which means that the utilization of the chipper is relatively low. The utilization of the chipper could be increased by reducing the distance between the windrow and the landing site, because the workelement container switch consumed 18 % of the worktime. Data were collected from SDC and Åkarewebben, which data showed that logging residues that have been extracted during summer and with a high share of pine had low moisture content when measured at industry. At the same time it was discovered that a dryer material took longer to chip because it was harder. During the time study of the system it was discovered that with a transport distance of 85 km one way, there were no waiting time when using one transport lorry. For two transport vehicles the optimal transport distance was 165 km one way. This means that at 85 km transport distance one transport vehicle should be used and at 165 km should two transport vehicles be used

Squat defects and rolling contact fatigue clusters - Numerical investigations of rail and wheel deterioration mechanisms

Squat defects, a type of localised rolling contact fatigue damage appearing on rail surfaces with rail break as an ultimate consequence, have concerned infrastructure managers for the last couple of decades. In recent years similar types of defects—so-called studs—that are visually resembling squats, have started to appear. In contrast to conventional rolling contact fatigue of rails, these defects are associated with a thin surface layer of brittle material—a "white etching layer". The wheel counterpart of squats/studs are called "rolling contact fatigue clusters". Despite significant research efforts, the exact initiation mechanisms of the defects are still unknown and it is difficult to relate the occurrence of squats/studs and rolling contact fatigue clusters to specific operational scenarios.The current work aims to deepen the understanding of squat/stud and rolling contact fatigue cluster initiation by comparing and ranking predicted damage from various potential causes of initiation under different operational scenarios. Special emphasis is put on local surface irregularities. These are studied using dynamic vehicle–track interaction simulations to evaluate the impact of e.g. irregularity size, vehicle velocity, wheel–rail friction conditions and position relative to a sleeper. It is seen that surface irregularities might cause substantial fatigue impact. Rolling contact fatigue initiation connected to operational scenarios of specific interest are studied\ua0 more in detail by mapping dynamic contact stresses from simulations of vehicle–track interaction to finite element models for subsequent stress analyses and ranking of operational scenarios via ratchetting response and low cycle fatigue impact. Among the results, it is seen that larger irregularities and higher wheel–rail friction promote higher fatigue impact. In order to study the influence of irregularity geometry when macroscopic cracks are present, dynamic contact stresses are mapped onto finite element models of a cracked rail head. The severity is assessed using an equivalent stress intensity factor, which is seen to increase with the size of the irregularity. This effect holds also for clusters of irregularities. It is furthermore seen that even a shallow irregularity can make a substantial impact.The influence of white etching layers is investigated by simulating thermally induced phase transformations occurring in spots on rail and wheel surfaces, subjected to subsequent mechanical loading. The influence of axle load and wheel–rail friction is investigated with respect to fatigue impact. It is seen that the axle load has a rather low influence whereas an increased frictional loading increases the fatigue impact considerably

A strand specific high resolution normalization method for chip-sequencing data employing multiple experimental control measurements

Background: High-throughput sequencing is becoming the standard tool for investigating protein-DNA interactions or epigenetic modifications. However, the data generated will always contain noise due to e. g. repetitive regions or non-specific antibody interactions. The noise will appear in the form of a background distribution of reads that must be taken into account in the downstream analysis, for example when detecting enriched regions (peak-calling). Several reported peak-callers can take experimental measurements of background tag distribution into account when analysing a data set. Unfortunately, the background is only used to adjust peak calling and not as a preprocessing step that aims at discerning the signal from the background noise. A normalization procedure that extracts the signal of interest would be of universal use when investigating genomic patterns. Results: We formulated such a normalization method based on linear regression and made a proof-of-concept implementation in R and C++. It was tested on simulated as well as on publicly available ChIP-seq data on binding sites for two transcription factors, MAX and FOXA1 and two control samples, Input and IgG. We applied three different peak-callers to (i) raw (un-normalized) data using statistical background models and (ii) raw data with control samples as background and (iii) normalized data without additional control samples as background. The fraction of called regions containing the expected transcription factor binding motif was largest for the normalized data and evaluation with qPCR data for FOXA1 suggested higher sensitivity and specificity using normalized data over raw data with experimental background. Conclusions: The proposed method can handle several control samples allowing for correction of multiple sources of bias simultaneously. Our evaluation on both synthetic and experimental data suggests that the method is successful in removing background noise

From Idea to Policy: Scandinavian Municipalities Translating Radicalization

Radicalization has emerged as a dominant idea for understanding processes that lead to extremist beliefs and behavior. As societal efforts to counter extremism have become increasingly decentralized, local policymakers are being confronted with the task of making sense of radicalization. Departing from neo-institutional theory, this paper explores how the idea of radicalization has been materialized in 60 Scandinavian (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) municipal policies that share the explicit aim of countering extremism. Most research on how radicalization has been conceptualized in policy focuses on the international and national levels. Instead, this paper provides a first large number analysis of how radicalization has been understood at the local level. A content analysis of the policies highlights the different definitions, explanatory factors and theories, models and checklists utilized. Findings show the considerable variance between municipal translations of radicalization. In some cases, the processual properties usually attributed to radicalization are contested as radicalization is portrayed as a mere outcome. A total of 66 different explanatory factors for radicalization are noticed by the municipalities, transforming most forms of deviant social and cultural statuses, psychological conditions and ideological positions to possible explanatory factors. Although the municipalities to a certain degree utilize the same labels for popular theories, models and checklists, this paper demonstrates that the content varies as they are transferred between contexts. The paper explains how and why such local variance occurs and which institutional elements that constrains translations of radicalization

Transcriptional decomposition reveals active chromatin architectures and cell specific regulatory interactions

Transcriptional regulation is coupled with chromosomal positioning and chromatin architecture. Here the authors develop a transcriptional decomposition approach to separate expression associated with genome structure from independent effects not directly associated with genomic positioning

Problematiken kring Easyswitch och spårväxelstandarden 60E

Spårväxeln är en viktig komponent i järnvägsanläggningen som möjliggör byte mellan spår. Att växeln fungerar väl är viktigt ur trafikeringssynpunkt då den största delen av trafiken någon gång måste byta spår under sin färd mellan två destinationer. Problemen kan bli påtagliga med en icke-fungerande växel vilket orsakar försenade/inställda tåg och resenärer som kostar samhället pengar. Att införa nya komponenter i järnvägsanläggningen i Sverige är dyrt och görs inte på en dag. Tester ska utföras och en säkerhetsbevisning ska finnas. Easyswitch och 60E är och har varit omtalade i järnvägsbranschen den senaste tiden. Många negativa åsikter har framkommit efter alla problem som varit med Easyswitch och 60E i samband med dess ibruktagning och drift. Examensarbetet tar upp hur upphandling av nya komponenter och införande i anläggning går till hos Trafikverket. Mot bakgrund av denna beskrivning diskuteras införandet av 60E och Easyswitch. Arbetet behandlar också problemen som varit med Easyswitch och 60E under ibruktagning och drift samt eventuella och slutgiltiga lösningar till dessa. Information och data har inhämtats från bland annat föreskrifter och standarder från Trafikverket och även till stor del från intervjuer. Intervjuerna har gjorts för att få information från inblandade parter där information inte finns tillgänglig i skriftlig form, samt för att få aktuell information

Resilience and alternative stable states of tropical forest landscapes under shifting cultivation regimes

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecolgical model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes' 'ecological resilience', or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productiviy. A measure of 'engineering resilience',- the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas