Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax, a serious and globally distributed zoonosis affecting a wide range of wild and domestic animals, invariably also humans. However, although known to humans since biblical times, much remains to be elucidated concerning the ecology and transmission of this bacterium. Of particular interest is the Bacillus anthracis spore, the uptake of which is the predominant way to contract anthrax and which is legendary for its resilience in the environment and thus crucial for persistence and spread of the disease. Hence, the aim of this study is to review the natural transmission of Bacillus anthracis and investigate potential means by which soil persisting Bacillus anthracis spores reach concentrations sufficient to infect susceptible hosts. When reviewing the literature, three different theories can be distinguished. Firstly, ?the incubator area? hypothesis suggests that favourable soil factors, possibly in association with amoebas, may constitute an environment supporting repeated spore-bacterium-spore cycling, thus increasing the local amount of spores.

Introduction: Sex and education level has demonstrated effects on health status.Osteoarthritis is a widespread disease that causes reduced health-related quality of life and isthe most common reason for total hip replacement. Osteoarthritis was ranked as the 11thhighest contributor to global disability as reported in the Global Burden of Disease 2010.Aim: The aim of this study was to explore how sex and education level together affectedhealth-related quality of life after total hip replacement. The aim was also to examine whatdimensions of EQ-5D that changed.Methods: The study is a prospective observational study with a quantitative approach. Dataconsisted of education level, obtained from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and health-relatedquality of life before and one year after total hip replacement from the Swedish HipArthroplasty Register (SHAR). Health-related quality of life was measured with astandardised instrument, the EQ-5D, and the study population consisted of 39,141 patients.Results: Womens? EQ-5D-value, before and one year after surgery, were lower in alleducational categories compared with men.

The objective of this study is to understand how people with psychiatric diseases who are enrolled at a psychiatric clinic experience the recovery process and which internal motivations and external factors influence the process. The study is based on interviews with five people who have been enrolled at a psychiatric clinic. Another aim of the study is to understand how the importance of the outpatient care for the personal recovery and the improvement opportunities of the support from the rehabilitation unit that the interviewees see. The study is qualitative and abductive approach was chosen. This means that the study is based on empirical data supported by established theories.

This report is a joint venture with SCA Forest, Ångermanlands forest man-agement area. The purpose of the study is that SCA Forest wants to know what the landowners in Ångermanlands forest management area think about SCA Forest and who they deliver their timber to. SCA Forest is the largest private landowner in Europe, with an area of about 2.6 million hectares. Today, SCA offers lumber, wood products, tis-sue and packaging and has factories all over the world. SCA Forest has five forest management areas in the north of Sweden, with the headquarters in Sundsvall. A questionnaire was sent to 265 landowners, where they had to answer 15 questions with possibilities to give comments. The survey was sent out on 21 of February with a response requested by 3 of March 125 landowners responded to the survey, giving a response rate of 47%.

Conjunctival swabs from 12 cats in a Swedish animal shelter were analyzed by real-time PCR for FHV-1, Mycoplasma felis and chlamydiae. The purpose of this study was to see whether and to what extent these agents can be detected and if they were detected from cats housed in quarantine or in the adoption department. Samples were first taken upon arrival at the quarantine and then a second sample was taken two weeks after moving to the adoption department, or upon presentation of signs of disease. The cats spent the quarantine period in two separate quarantines: five in a new quarantine (quarantine A) and seven in a room in the old shelter (quarantine B). The difference between these quarantines was that in B the cats were often mixed together ant the hygiene routines were not as good as in quarantine A.

The Swedish Red Polled breed is threatened by extinction and there are only around 1100 animals left. The breed was popular in the early twentieth century, but since then the numbers have steadily decreased. The overall objective of this study was to find out whether there may be economic incentives for preserving the breed. The milk quality properties are of major importance in the production of dairy products. Therefore we would like to establish if the Swedish Red Polled breed carries favourable alleles at loci of relevance for milk quality, to potentially make the breed more interesting for milk production.

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: A vegetarian diet, a possible treatment complement for relief of symptoms ofrheumatoid arthritis? A systematic review.Author: Alexandra Ahlsén and Caroline ForsbergSupervisor: Mette AxelsenExaminer: Anna WinkvistProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: May 22, 2012Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic remitting polyarthritis that is relapsing.Symptoms are inflammation of the joints with pain, stiffness and degradation of joint tissue.In some cases, also other parts of the body are involved. The treatment consists ofmedications to reduce pain, inflammation and degradation of joint tissue. Today, the offerednutritional treatment is primarily focused on meeting energy requirements and nutrient needs.The diet has also been discussed as symptomatic treatment, and one of the factors believed toinfluence the symptoms is meat.Objective: To assess the evidence as to whether a vegetarian diet affects the symptoms ofrheumatoid arthritis, and if so, to suggest how it can be implemented in practical dieteticswork.Search strategy The databases used in the literature search was PubMed, Scopus, and AMED.The search words used were: "rheumatiod arthritis", "vegetarian", "vegan", "diet", "meat" and"animal protein".Selection criteria: Studies investigating a vegetarian diet on the symptoms of RA wereincluded. Only RCT, clinical trial, controlled clinical trial, human studies and original articlesin English or Swedish were included.

This report tries to discuss the concept of social sustainability; what it means and how residential development can be made more socially sustainable. This is done by interviewing several and various representatives in JM AB, the municipality of Uppsala and residents of Åriket to explore how JM AB as a housing developer and the municipality are working with issues regarding social sustainability and what the residents in one of the new housing projects themselves think of these issues. The result of these interviews will be compared and analyzed with the prospect of finding common variables and hopefully ways of improvement.This will result in our own recommendations of areas of improvement either by broad initiatives or specific actions to increase the social sustainability. Areas such as meeting places, sustainable functions and joint efforts between different parties. During the work on the report we come in contact with several other areas of interest that we are not able to process ourselves and therefore recommend them for future studies..

We have made a suggestion for a map based search tool used with a database containinginformation on natural disasters. The database is being developed by NCO (SwedishCentre for Lessons Learned from Incidents & Accidents).We examined both Swedish and international examples of databases on naturaldisasters. The examples that we found were often hard to get the hang of, due to poorcompilation. The problem, that is typical of the international examples, is that the processof data collection is not standardized, as it is performed by different organizations andcompanies with diverse demands on and needs for the database. Therefore, to keep itsymmetrical, there ought to be only one department with the overall responsibility for anational database on natural disasters in Sweden.The natural disaster we based our study on was the flooding in Arvika in the year 2000.We inspected the availability of data about the flooding, and found it to be satisfying.Through contact with the municipality of Arvika, by mail and telephone, and a visit at theArvika municipality office, we acquired reports on the flooding and the joint rescueoperation that followed, and also GIS layers showing the extension of the flooding..

Have you encountered problems when you are unlocking a door? Perhaps you have had your hands full when you needed to unlock the door? Or, you might be suffering from a disease and have difficulties to put force on to small objects. To solve these problems there are different options. The most common alternative is a key button. With the key button, you do not need turn the pinion to unlock.

Bakgrund: Inflammatorisk tarmsjukdom (IBD) inkluderar ulcerös kolit och Crohns sjukdom. De är kroniska och uppkommer i skov då tarmslemhinnan blir inflammerad och sårig vilket ger en komplex symtombild med akuta diarréer, rektalblödning och buksmärtor. Behandlingen går ut på att minska symtom och förebygga uppkomst av skov. Då dessa sjukdomar påverkar det dagliga livet så påverkas också den individuella hälsorelaterade livskvaliteten, vilket mäter den fysiska, psykiska och sociala aspekten av ett hälsoproblem.Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva upplevelsen av hälsorelaterad livskvalitet hos personer med inflammatorisk tarmsjukdom.Metod: En litteraturöversikt har gjorts där tolv vetenskapliga artiklar har utgjort grunden till resultatet och skapat en översikt på befintlig forskning. De har lästs, sammanfattats och analyserats där likheter och skillnader har hittats och teman bildats.Resultat: Resultatets fyra huvudteman är Fysisk funktion, Psykisk funktion, Social funktion och Att återställa sin livskvalitet.

Lameness causes suffering and poor performance in sheep, as in other species. The cause of lameness often originates in problems of the claws. Many claw diseases of sheep are described in British and Australian research, but this field has previously not been of special concern in Sweden. This graduate thesis contains the first claw health survey made on Swedish sheep. The chief objective was to give an overview of sheep claw diseases and to assess claw health in adult sheep.

The top selection of Swedish beef bulls are evaluated yearly by Svensk Köttrasprövning AB at Gismestad. The bulls are selected from six different breeds; Angus, Blonde d´Aquitaine, Charolais, Hereford, Limousin and Simmental, and are kept on straw bedding apart from a concrete alley in front of the feeding area during the six months of evaluation period. The bulls are evaluated according to their fertility scores, growth, exterior and temperament and the exterior, body posture and claw conformation reflect important qualities for their longevity. In spite of good values for fertility, it has been noticed in the last years that the fertility results and longevity have been unsatisfactory and claw and/or bone disorders have been suspected as a contributory cause. Persson et al. (2007) studied breeding bulls from Gismestad and other places, which had been slaughtered due to poor fertility (no pregnancies in the herd during their last year in service).

The aim of this study was to determine a method to habituate treadmill-naive Labrador Retrievers to walk and trot on a treadmill. 17 Labradors was equipped with reflective markers glued to the skin. Their motions were captured with six 240 Hz infra-red cameras as they walked and trotted on a treadmill three times a day for two days. Also the heart-rate was recorded. We then used QTM and custom built software to analyze the measurements.

The project in question is a joint effort between students at Karlstad University and Marcus Norström at the company Hovercraft solutions. The project is divided into two parts, one focusing on the purely technical aspects of engineering the product and one focusing on the design aspects of the product development. The project described in this report is the design of the product. The assignment from Hovercraft solutions is regarding design engineering of a cabin for the hovercraft 380TD from the manufacturer Griffon hovercraft. The product lacks a cabin and none is offered from Griffon at the time being. 380TD is a relatively small hovercraft with a length of 6.8 metres and a width of 3.8 metres.The surface available for the cabin is not much different from the body of a car.Because of this, research has been focused primarily on car bodies.The product development process used in the project is following a systematic approach.From a chosen concept, the project was finalized with a CAD-modell as well as a detailed prototype.The weight target of 80 kg was reached and the ergonomic aspects were considered developing the sight field, roof- and entrance height.    .