Beteendestudier och miljöberikning av gnagare

It is often challenging to create a new enrichment program for any animal. This is especially true with the additional challenge that I wanted to use only naturalistic enrichment, and I’m working with animals some of which are nocturnal. Even with a many hurdles, a little bit of enrichment can do a big difference and make a big difference in activity levels of the animals. Eskilstuna parkens zoo have a house called the MUSeum housing four kinds of rodents. Rodents are generally much more active at night and spend much of the day sleeping out of sight of the public. One of the goals of starting an enrichment program was to increase the animal’s activity throughout the day to provide an improved guest experience. Many of the guests would stop briefly at the exhibit only seeing the empty exhibit, unaware of that there were animals there. Before starting an enrichment program, I wanted to determine how the rodent was spending their time. By observing the animals’ behaviour for 15 minutes a day at various times throughout the day, for a total of 15 observations, I was able to construct an activity budget for their behaviour. The results obtained were, as expected, that the rodents spent a lot of time resting. By enrichment both with food and the temperature we were able to take the activity to another level, and several new behaviours were observed.

Akademisk kvalitet, vad är det? : Om utarmningen av den akademiska autonomin

What is academic quality? On the decline of academic autonomy In light of the transformations that universities currently undergo, with Bologna as a keyword, the following questions are put: What ideals lie behind the assessment of academic “excellence” and “quality”? What agents have the ability to define what is good science and education today? These questions are approached through Pierre Bourdieus concept of field. Looking at the development the last decade, traditional academic values, such as the ideal of universal knowledge as (personal and collective) enrichment and the intellectual independence “of all political authority and economic power”, as stated in the Magna Charta Universitatum, seem to have emerged into the shadow of employability, knowledge control, competitiveness, and economic benefit. In connection with the formation of concepts such as “the knowledge society” and “knowledge based economies” the university has received a somewhat different and more central role in society. The university has come to take the role more of a knowledge producing enterprise clearly directed towards the surrounding society. There are higher demands on academic knowledge to contribute to economic, regional or national development and competitiveness. When the university is regarded as a knowledge company whose task is to accoun tfor the requests of the students, the labour market, and the business world it undertakes to follow trends and short term social phases rather than to critically examine them, which has been a traditional task for the university. If the academic work is guided by the market economical principle, that the client requests decide what quality is, instead of the experts on the academic field themselves (i.e. the scientists,) it is obviously not scientific ideals that constitute the criteria for what is good science and education.

Processes of feelings in a society with a violent past : A qualitative study of the communication for Societal healing in the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Sri Lanka and Ghana between 2002-2011

The research investigates in what extent and how communication for meeting feelings is provided in Truth Commission work. It examines if and in what way feelings are addressed in the communication officially published by the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Ghana and Sri Lanka, occurring between 2002-2011. The research is also looking at the healing processes in a time perspective to find out if there is a communication for Societal healing to be continued in a longer term. My conclusion is that two cases of three in my research, the TRCs in Ghana and East Timor, have communication clearly directed to meet feelings caused by the war. One of the three cases (East Timor) has a communication with a clear ambition to heal over a longer period, to continue after the existence of the Truth Commission. The research suggests that communication with a clear ambition to reach out widely in the society, a communication directed to meet and process feelings over a longer period, can make Societal healing more effective. It also concludes that, in the future, Societal healing, as a field in conflict resolution, will be more based on representational media than today, provided through web communication.

Large-scale metabolomic profiling identifies novel biomarkers for incident coronary heart disease

Analyses of circulating metabolites in large prospective epidemiological studies could lead to improved prediction and better biological understanding of coronary heart disease (CHD). We performed a mass spectrometry-based non-targeted metabolomics study for association with incident CHD events in 1,028 individuals (131 events; 10 y. median follow-up) with validation in 1,670 individuals (282 events; 3.9 y. median follow-up). Four metabolites were replicated and independent of main cardiovascular risk factors [lysophosphatidylcholine 18∶1 (hazard ratio [HR] per standard deviation [SD] increment = 0.77, P-value<0.001), lysophosphatidylcholine 18∶2 (HR = 0.81, P-value<0.001), monoglyceride 18∶2 (MG 18∶2; HR = 1.18, P-value = 0.011) and sphingomyelin 28∶1 (HR = 0.85, P-value = 0.015)]. Together they contributed to moderate improvements in discrimination and re-classification in addition to traditional risk factors (C-statistic: 0.76 vs. 0.75; NRI: 9.2%). MG 18∶2 was associated with CHD independently of triglycerides. Lysophosphatidylcholines were negatively associated with body mass index, C-reactive protein and with less evidence of subclinical cardiovascular disease in additional 970 participants; a reverse pattern was observed for MG 18∶2. MG 18∶2 showed an enrichment (P-value = 0.002) of significant associations with CHD-associated SNPs (P-value = 1.2×10-7 for association with rs964184 in the ZNF259/APOA5 region) and a weak, but positive causal effect (odds ratio = 1.05 per SD increment in MG 18∶2, P-value = 0.05) on CHD, as suggested by Mendelian randomization analysis. In conclusion, we identified four lipid-related metabolites with evidence for clinical utility, as well as a causal role in CHD development.