Newspaper articles and media have shown that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, such as ephedrine and Melanotan, is becoming more common among adolescent girls, who are at risk of becoming a new group of addicts. These girls are rarely aware of the risks that the use of these compounds entails and the consequences that could adversely affect their bodies, mentally and physically. The aim of this paper was to investigate the use of and attitudes towards illegal weight loss compounds amongst girls in year three, at Swedish upper secondary schools. In order to do that, a questionnaire was sent out to 120 girls in five different high schools, with varying college preparatory and vocational program directions. My research shows that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, particularly ephedrine, was found among girls in year three, at upper secondary schools. Seven percent of the girls claimed they use, primarily, ephedrine. This result exceeds earlier studies findings on boys' use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS).

Newspaper articles and media have shown that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, such as ephedrine and Melanotan, is becoming more common among adolescent girls, who are at risk of becoming a new group of addicts. These girls are rarely aware of the risks that the use of these compounds entails and the consequences that could adversely affect their bodies, mentally and physically. The aim of this paper was to investigate the use of and attitudes towards illegal weight loss compounds amongst girls in year three, at Swedish upper secondary schools. In order to do that, a questionnaire was sent out to 120 girls in five different high schools, with varying college preparatory and vocational program directions. My research shows that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, particularly ephedrine, was found among girls in year three, at upper secondary schools. Seven percent of the girls claimed they use, primarily, ephedrine. This result exceeds earlier studies findings on boys' use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS).

Environmental chemicals are transported to the Arctic through the air and oceans, once within the Arctic they spread through rivers, lakes and other watercourses. Polar bears and sledge dogs in-gest high concentrations of environmental chemicals since many of the chemicals are fat-soluble and their diet mainly consists of marine mammals. The aim of this study is to describe how environmental chemicals spread in nature, how they reach the polar bears, and finally how they affect the animals reproduction, with reproductive hormones and genitals in focus. The animals are exposed to a cocktail effect which complicates the assessment of the chemicals impact on the reproduction. Studies show that the genitals can decrease in size or become malformed, sexual maturation can be affected and the reproductive hormones can be disturbed.

The purpose of this report was to investigate how the abiotic factors (temperature, pH, nutrients, oxygen levels and water content) would affect the decomposition of oil-contaminated soil and how a variance in structured soil would affect the decomposition-rate. A minor field-study was made and soil where structured in five different ways (one was a default pile and was used as a reference). The study took place over 137 days and three samples were taken (start, middle, end) and analyzed for aromatic and aliphatic compounds. The result of this study shows that there is a significant difference between all methods for the aliphatic compounds and no significant difference for the aromatic compounds. The abiotic factors that affect decomposition vary from organism to organism, depending on what type of environment it will function the best.

The purpose of this project was to investigate if retention of polar compounds that are given to treat tuberculosis, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and childhood leukemia could be obtained with HILIC separation. By varying different parameters for different types of columns the compounds were analyzed with the aim of finding guidelines for future method optimizations. To perform these analyzes three different columns were tested ? ZIC-HILIC (silica-based with zwitterions), ZIC-pHILIC (polymer-based with zwitterions) and XBridge Amide (amide functions). The results were evaluated with selected quality measures.

If not purified leachate from landfills would cause damages on the environment. At most landfills in Sweden local treatment of leachate is achieved, at the rest the leachate is transported to sewertreatment. While no comprehensive legal provisions for discharge exist in Sweden there is a difference in discharges between the installations for landfill. If no comprehensive legal provisions is produced guidance must improve.Treatment of leachate and self monitoring system at fifteen installations in Sweden has been studied and compared. A study of literature about different treatment solutions has also been performed.

The purpose of this literature review was to describe the paths of exposure and accumulation of organic pollutants into the tissues of farm animals. Organic pollutants can be spread in the environment by air and rainwater. Farm animals can be exposed to these pollutants for example by eating soil or contaminated plants. Many of the pollutants can then accumulate in the fat tissues of the body because of their lipophilic character. Brominated flame retardants and perfluorolated compounds are both pollutants of current interest.

Phytoestrogens are secondary metabolites produced by plants. Among the plants that make phytoestrogens are soya, red clover and some types of grass. The name phytoestrogen is a collective term for compounds such as genistein, daidzein, biochanin A and formononetin. These compounds are similar to oestradiol-17? in their chemical structure.

A renewed application for environmental permit for the Hovgården landfill in Uppsala shall be submitted before December 2004, therefore the municipality of Uppsala needs improved knowledge of the contents, mostly organic compounds in the leachate and they also want to find a method to minimize the emissions of these compounds. The purpose of this study was to find a practical and economical method based on chemical oxidation using oxidants. The oxidants investigated are Fenton's reagent, hydrogen peroxide, Oxypro, potassium permanganate and potassium persulfate. The study was made on untreated leachate and leachate that has been treated in an aerated dam followed by sedimentation dams collected from the Hovgården landfill, and alson on sludge water from sludge storage cells. The effects of the five oxidants have been established by analysing the UV absorbance at the wavelengths 253,7 nm and 260,0 nm at different pH values. The UV absorbance was used to indicate the amount of aromatic hydrocarbons in the water. Also analyses of iron and manganese were done after the experiments with potassium permanganate, hydrogen peroxide and Fenton's reagent.

The process of drug discovery is very slow and expensive. There is a need for reliable in silico methods; however the performance of these methods differs.This work presents a targeted study on how the drug discovery methods used in OpenEye?s tools ROCS, EON and FRED perform on targets with small ligands. It was examined if 12 compounds (markers) somewhat similar to AMP could be detected by ROCS in a random data set comprised of 1000 compounds. It was also examined if EON could find any electrostatic similarities between the queries and the markers.

Introduction The genetic skin disease epidermolytic ichtyosis is caused by mutations in either keratin gene 1 or 10 and leads to blisters and hyperkeratosis of the epidermis. At cellular level the disease is seen as aggregates in the keratin filaments. Since medicines are hard to investigate and produce mainly due to lack of reproducible model systems, there is no good treatment available for this disease today. In this article we describe how an in vitro model consisting of cells from a stable cell line transfected with expression plasmids to mimic patient cells, may be a possible alternative for screening compounds for therapies. The first step was to generate an expression plasmid required to complete the in vitro model.

Oilseed rape crops are an important in southern Sweden because of the high intensity of wheat growing. Pollen beetles are the most important pest in oilseed rape and causes often economic losses. Therefore it?s of great importance that we can control the population density, e g by using insecticides if necessary, to avoid mayor yield losses. In year 2000 pollen beetles were numerous in the province of Östergötland. The farmers sprayed with insecticides several times, but with low effects on the beetles. Field trials and laboratory experiments showed that pollen beetles had developed resistance against pyrethroids.

The purpose of this study is to give an overview about iron fortification from the view of technique and health. Example of a technical aspect is different iron compounds which are used for fortification like ferrous sulfate, ferrous fumarate and elemental iron. In the aspect of health the big question is if iron fortification can improve the health in reducing the prevalence of anemia. The study focuses on flour fortification with iron in Egypt and Iran and involves a literature study with scientific articles. Also information from WHO (World Health Organization), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and FFI (Flour Fortification Initiative) are used.Fortification means an intentionally increasing of the content of micronutrient in foods with the aim to improve the food quality and deliver a nutritional benefit to the consumer.

The search for antibiotic compounds from the natural environment has been going on for seven decades, ever since penicillin entered the market and antibiotic treatments became routine. The evolutionary pressure put on the pathogenic microorganisms induced a rapid spreading of naturally occurring resistance genes, leaving only the option of finding new antibiotics to treat the resistant pathogens. Microorganisms have been extensively mined for their biosynthetic abilities to produce biologically active compounds. To date, more than 23 000 microbial natural products have been discovered. The Actinomycetales are ubiquitous bacteria that have been used for antibiotic discovery for more than half a century, and over 10 000 natural products have been identified from the order.

Aim: The purpose of this work is to investigate what differences there are between a credit union that is connected to Sweden?s Credit Association and an independent association, and how these differences have affected the union?s success. Method: A qualitative study has been made by means of email and telephone interviews. Respondents were chosen from Sweden?s Credit Association, Credit Guarantee Association in Gävleborg and Övre Norrland Guarantee Association. The interviews were then analyzed in the light of our theoretical studies. Result and conclusions: We have found that there are three major differences between the unions.