Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, where joints are attacked by the own immune system, leading to chronic inflammation and destruction of bone and cartilage. Inflammation is a complex process, controlled by many different substances. One of them is adenosine, which has anti-inflammatory properties. In this project, three polymorphisms in different genes, involved in synthesis and signaling of adenosine, were genotyped for 188 patients with RA and 362 controls without RA. The results shows that for the polymorphism in A2a, a gene coding for an adenosine receptor, there was no significant difference in genotype distribution between the groups.

The subject of this two year Master's thesis in Library and Information Science is the information practices of illiterate immigrants in everyday life. The purpose is to examine how immigrants seek, identify, understand and value information sources and information, and how the practices have changed with their arrival in Sweden. It furthermore focuses on the barriers that illiterate immigrants meet in accessing and understanding information. It moreover investigates the strategies they use to overcome them.For this purpose twelve qualitative research interviews were carried out, with illiterate immigrants as well as with service providers. The theoretical concepts of the essay is information practices, which means that the information process is within a context, and information poverty, that people in different context do not have adequate and equal access to information and information sources.Using McKenzie's model of information practices, the essay concludes that illiterate immigrants are active in their information process, especially when they interact with information.

Placed within the field of recent research concerning religion and contemporary religious landscapes, this thesis aims to show conceptions of human life and body displayed in ten Swedish health magazines. The analysis aims to demonstrate the appearance of body and bodily experience and in addition see in what way ?westernized? religious traditions and methods from east Asia may contribute to perspectives of health. The main theories for the study are objectified versus phenomenological understanding of the human body by Drew Leder (1992; 1990) and Kristen Zeiler (2010). The quote in the main title is from the empirical material (Hälsa & Fitness, 2014 (11), cover).

Bakgrund: Globalt ses en ökad internationell migration där Sverige varje år tar emottiotusentals asylsökande. De asylsökandes rättigheter skyddas av internationelladeklarationer och konventioner om mänskliga rättigheter, där rätten till hälsa ärcentral. Ändå lider asylsökande av hög grad av ohälsa, mycket till följd av derasstatus som asylsökande och den utsatthet som det medför. Att dessutom vara gravidgör dem extra utsatta trots att de har rätt till mödrahälsovård på samma villkor somicke-asylsökande i Sverige, då de inte har rätt till övrig sjukvård. Barnmorskor inommödrahälsovården arbetar för vård på lika villkor utifrån kompetensbeskrivningen ochden etiska koden, men utifrån lagstiftningens begränsningar riskerar barnmorskornaställas inför professionsetiska dilemman i vården av asylsökande gravida kvinnor.Syfte: Att förstå hur barnmorskor upplever det är att vårda asylsökande gravidakvinnor inom mödrahälsovården i Sverige.

Outdoor housing of horses? best fulfils the horses? need for physical activity and it is an alternative to the more cost and energy demanding indoor housing in stables. Furthermore, if outdoor housed horses have access to shelter they can generally cope well with adverse weather conditions such as high or low ambient temperature, heavy rain or strong winds. In this study, the daytime shelter-seeking behaviour of three groups of horses housed outdoors was studied during the summer. The aim was to evaluate whether shelter use is related to weather variables (e.g., ambient temperature and wind speed) and insect harassment. The shelter-seeking behaviour was studied for three different groups of horses: Group 1) eight individually housed horses in paddocks that had access to three different shelter types (C: closed on three sides with roof, R: open on three sides with roof, W: closed on three sides without roof), Group 2) 25 group housed mares with foals on pasture with access to shelters C, and Group 3) ten mares without foals on pasture without access to shelter. Each group was studied for eight days.

Purpose: The purpose of our thesis is to analyze the application of models from product branding on job-seeking business students as a way to establish a personal brand.Conclude: We found that the principles of product branding closely resembles those of personal branding and are therefore applicable. The models that build a products brand can do the same for a business student. Thereby we can conclude that personal branding does derive from product branding..

Barn med Down syndrom (DS) har problem med hypotonus och hyposensitivitet som begränsar rörligheten i ansiktets och munnens muskulatur, vilket därmed försvårar tal och sväljning. Målet med en intra- och extraoralsensorisk behandling är att öka medvetenheten och kontrollen av munnens muskulatur, dess rörelser, spänning och känsel.  Syfte med föreliggande studie var att undersöka effekten av en intra- och extraoralsensorisk intensivbehandling med eltandborste hos en grupp barn med DS och hypotonus. Effekten valdes att studeras utifrån områdena orofacial funktion, läppslutning, talproduktion och oralsensorik. Nio barn i åldrarna 6 till 12 år genomgick behandlingen med fyra behandlingstillfällen i veckan under fyra veckor.

The design of packages is something that product manufacturers put great effort on. The package is often the consumers' first interaction with a product and consumers judge the product based on the package. A common way to evaluate a package design is to let respondents look at a package and answer which attributes they think the product has. This paper wants to take this evaluation a step further, i.e. it examines if consumers experience differences in taste between two identical products that have different package designs.

A growing problem in Swedish herbicide free agriculture, the Canadian thistle has been the object of several new trials, seeking methods for non-chemical weed control. The new trials have mainly confirmed earlier experiences; that the most successful methods of control are springtime ploughing, repeated cutting and competition from a stout crop. Row hoeing has also been proven effective. As opposed to earlier recommendations, half season fallow has shown to be a risky and often ineffective method of control. Trials regarding biological methods have shown that above others thistle rust (Puccinia punctiformis) may have the potential of controlling Canadian thistle the future. .

In this essay different aspects of the motif of the criminal have been traced in Lotta Lotass?s Min röst ska nu komma från en annan plats i rummet and Vladimir Nabokov?s Lolita. By seeking its representation in the texts, the intention was to show how themes, stylistic patterns and narrative functions interrelate in the construction of the motif. The perpetrator?s position within the narrative structure and its consequences have also been assessed.By discussing the meta-fictive aspects of the novels I stressed the importance of the reader?s function, arguing the reader?s participation in the construction of the motif..

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine student secondaryteachers? perceptions of the role of the school library libraries aswell as compare results with an earlier study. The followingquestions were posed:1. How do student teachers view the school library?2.

This essay examines the using of consensus method for decision making within the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the process that led to the decision to adopt its usage. The main question of my essay is why the method was introduced to the WCC and what motives lay behind its introduction. Other questions are how the consensus method works; both in theory and in practice, and what the predecessors and prototypes for the method are.The consensus method belongs to a broad Christian tradition of spiritual discernment and spiritual decision making. The New Testament, in particular Acts, gives examples of decision making in the early church which show that discerning God's will was considered essential. However the most influential model for the consensus method have been the decision making process of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, and also the consensus model of the Uniting Church in Australia.

The purpose of the essay has been to clarify why and how small companies, whose major resource is knowledge, establish strategic alliances and which opportunities it brings. We have increased our understanding for the concept of strategic alliances through empirical search and through well-known scientist work. The method, which has been used in the essay, is principally qualitative interviews and gathering secondary data from articles from well-known authors. Our study has given that we have found that entering strategic alliances can make growth and by that way create competitive advantages for the company in question. We also found that there are risks with strategic alliances and the company can protect themselves by legal actions.

How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

Master thesis studying the use of multimedia on CD-ROM in a library setting by analysis ofqualitative interviews with nineteen persons.The thesis relates the study to some relevant issues in human-computer interface (HCI) researchand to the commercial market for multimedia CD-ROM products. Three main types ofuse were described by the persons interviewed: recreational, information seeking and usingmultimedia to learn more about using computers. Children and young people interviewed mademost use of the multimedia provided, whereas adults thought it to be less valuable as a sourceof knowledge for them personally.HCI research shows various results of using multimedia for educational purposes. Thecommercial market is dominated by American products which can have a negative effect onthe use of multimedia in Swedish public libraries..