In 2014, Jose Cuervo, the largest tequila producer in the world, partnered with IBM and the local government to transform the town of Tequila, in western Mexico, into a smart city by 2040. The project, Smart Tequila, was an ambitious "preventive model" meant to forestall chaotic urban growth and contribute to the corporation's wider tourism promotion and city-branding efforts. By 2023, though, Smart Tequila mainly existed on paper, as high running costs, operational challenges, and the trajectories of other sociospatial processes hindered the project. Despite this apparent failure, the project's vision of urbanism lives on. Inspired by critical interventions that ask us to investigate smart urbanism acknowledging the fabric of everyday life and attending to the privatization of urban governance, this paper seeks to explore the interplay between space, power, and colonial remains in Smart Tequila. Expanding the concept of the "digitalizing state," I argue that Smart Tequila's urbanization efforts enacted epistemic violence through the process of defining what to know, how to know it, and to what end. The digitalizing para-state's experiment with smart urbanism highlights the unexpected turns, contradictions, and enduring effects of epistemic violence that emerge when the smart city intersects with the messiness of everyday life.

Packaging-free grocery shopping enables consumers to avoid single-use packaging and buy specific quantities tailored to their needs. Despite its benefits, it faces challenges such as limited product variety and availability. This qualitative study explores the motivations, behaviors, and strategies of individuals who engage in or discontinue packaging-free shopping, including how they combine packed and unpacked products. Based on 115 open survey responses from packaging-free users across Europe, the study uses Activity Theory (AT) to analyze the interactions between consumers, food formats, and their goals within social and environmental contexts. The findings outline the consumer journey in combining packaging types, identifying tensions and harmonies within packaging systems. The analysis proposes a classification of consumer types based on behaviors, motivations and trip planning, offering insights for assessing environmental impacts, informing Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), and developing practical strategies for more sustainable grocery consumption.

The development of marketing theory continues to rest on the assumption that services and goods have distinct value creation implications. To further advance such theorizing and enhance the practical applications of marketing knowledge, this paper applies practice theory and the emerging Services-as-Practices framework to conceptualize goods, distinguish them from services, and integrate both within a common practice-based framework. The paper contributes by: (1) identifying a practice-based goods construct that captures how they cocreate and codestroy value, (2) differentiating the practice-based conceptualizations of goods and services in separate frameworks, and (3) relating these conceptualizations within a common framework that explains their mutual value cocreation and codestruction.

Introduction Long-term pelvic floor symptoms after childbirth may impair women's quality of life. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of self-reported pelvic floor symptoms 1 year postpartum in primiparous women by degree of perineal tear, with a focus on minor and major second-degree tears, and their association with quality of life.Material and Methods This prospective cohort study was based on data collected within a randomized controlled trial (the Oneplus trial). Women in the trial who had a vaginal birth and responded to a 1-year postpartum follow-up questionnaire were included. Data were collected between January 2020 and May 2021. The main outcome measures were pelvic floor symptoms assessed using the Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory (PFDI-20), the Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire (PFIQ-7), and study-specific items related to suturing and perceived body image. Associations between type of perineal tear and pelvic floor symptoms and their impact on quality of life were examined using generalized linear models, estimating adjusted risk ratios (aRRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03770962.Results The cohort consisted of 1911 primiparous women. Among the tear categories investigated, major second-degree tears were the most common (30.4%), followed by minor second-degree tears (18.4%), episiotomy (9.8%), and obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI) (5.3%). PFD symptoms were reported by 31.4-51.5% of the women. Women with OASI had an increased risk of colorectal-anal distress compared with those with no tear or a first-degree tear (aRR 1.56, 95% CI 1.24-1.96). No associations were observed between minor or major second-degree tears and pelvic floor symptoms. Increasing tear severity was associated with a higher likelihood of perceiving the vagina as narrow. No differences between tear categories were observed regarding impact on quality of life. Episiotomy was associated with a negative body image related to vaginal symptoms (aRR 1.45, 95% CI 1.03-1.99).Conclusions Pelvic floor symptoms and their impact on quality of life were common 1 year postpartum, irrespective of perineal tear category. Minor and major second-degree tears were not associated with an increased risk of pelvic floor dysfunction or reduced quality of life.

Network latency directly affects the performance of many applications that run over the Internet. While significant effort is spent on reducing network latency, the fundamental capability to observe latency remains limited in many network environments. Network operators who rely on active measurements do not get a complete view of the latency encountered by ordinary application traffic, while the coarse-grained measurements frequently used by network researchers fail to capture the rapid latency fluctuations in emerging wireless networks.

In this thesis, we explore the potential of technologies like eBPF and hardware timestamps to address the limited observability of latency in modern networks. To this end, we use eBPF to design two lightweight in-kernel passive monitoring solutions that network operators can use to monitor the end-to-end network latency and track the latency within the local endhost network stack. Through deployments in an Internet service provider network and across servers in a global content distribution network, we demonstrate the feasibility of continuously monitoring the latency in production. Our analysis of the monitoring data highlights that last-mile access remains a significant source of latency in end-users' Internet connections, and shows how large latency spikes can occur already in the early parts of web servers' packet processing pipeline. Additionally, we develop methodologies that combine high-frequency active measurements with accurate hardware timestamps to gain a more detailed understanding of the latency characteristics in wireless networks. Using our high-fidelity measurements to study Starlink, we reveal how its link-layer scheduling and apparent use of front-drop queueing impact latency. By studying latency in various network environments, we thus advance our understanding of network latency, and by designing new tools to measure latency, we provide a foundation for future research on network latency.

Cognitive deficits are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and reduce quality of life, yet they are often overlooked in clinical practice and respond poorly to standard medication. Working memory updating (WMU) training has shown to improve WMU performance and dopaminergic availability in healthy populations. As PD is characterized by dopaminergic depletion, WMU training may represent a promising intervention. This thesis investigated the feasibility, effects, and experience of WMU training in people with PD.

A feasibility study and single-subject study (Study I) indicated that WMU training is feasible, and improvements were observed in cognition, motor function, and functional brain response.

In Study II, 86 people with PD were randomized to 30 sessions of WMU training or active control. Findings demonstrated improvements immediately after training for the WMU group on cognitive tests that share cognitive processes with the training tasks, and these gains were maintained four months after training. Broader cognitive improvements were observed at follow-up, suggesting delayed transfer effects to untrained domains. Self-reported psychological health remained stable.

Study III focused on the experience of cognitive training via semi-structured interviews with 18 people with PD. Three themes were identified: commitment to the training, receiving feedback during training, and inspiration to apply strategies from training to everyday life.

In sum, this thesis provides evidence that WMU training in people with PD is feasible and leads to measurable cognitive benefits. Improvements were observed on tasks that share cognitive processes with the training, and after four months in broader cognitive domains. The findings further indicate that emotional, motivational, and metacognitive processes develop during training and transfer to everyday life. Together, these results suggest that WMU training can enhance aspects of cognitive ability and cognitive efficiency in people with PD.

Contemporary service encounters increasingly occur in phygital environments, where physical and digital merge, blurring traditional boundaries and redefining human roles at the service frontline. In these hybrid settings, the technical subsystem (digital interfaces) and the social subsystem (human actors) become inextricably intertwined. Yet, many organizations continue to manage Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EMX) in functional and ontological silos. This disconnected approach, treating the frontstage and backstage as parallel tracks rather than a single system, leads to phygital gaps, where technical efficiency is achieved at the expense of human connection and system resilience.

This thesis builds on five appended papers that collectively develop a framework for phygital congruence. The research journey moves from establishing the technical micro-architecture of the frontstage (TCQ) to investigating the social mechanisms of the backstage (EMX). Through a multi-methodological approach, including conceptual development, field observations in unmanned retail, and experimental testing of automated touchpoints, the research identifies the generative mechanisms required to bridge the ontological divide between marketing-driven CX and HR-driven EMX.

The thesis contributes to the service literature by integrating these isolated domains through a Socio-Technical Systems (STS) lens, guided by a Human Experience (HX) normative compass. It yields a unified theoretical perspective where phygital congruence is defined as the state of joint optimization: where the designed qualities of the technical frontstage are perfectly synchronized with the organizational resources of the social backstage. Within this framework, human well-being is established not merely as a secondary outcome, but as a structural necessity for a sustainable service system. For practitioners, it offers actionable governance tools, such as Phygital Gap Analysis, to transition from brittle, automated interactions to coherent, human-centric service journeys.

Morphology formation in thin films produced from a ternary solution is crucial for the performance of organic solar cells. Both the separation of excitons into free charges as well as the charge transport that follows depend on the shape and connectivity of the distinct polymer regions (the morphology).In this thesis, we study morphology formation from two different perspectives:A lattice-based Blume-Capel model with Kawasaki dynamics, and then a continuum system of coupled parabolic equations with nonlinear and nonlocal drift. The objective of this licentiate thesis is to represent morphology formation in three space dimensions using these two models. We relate our work to previous two-dimensional results for different parameter regimes. At the technical level, we construct a semi-discrete finite volume scheme to approximate the weak solution of our continuum model and implement it in Julia. We prove a convergence result of our semi-discrete scheme as well as a stability result of the weak solution with respect to temperature variations - a key parameter in the model. Looking at both the lattice model and the continuum parabolic system, we quantify and compare growth rates of the formed domains. Finally, we perform numerical experiments confirming convergence of our scheme and the effect of parameters on the obtained solution. These results provide a solid foundation for future extensions, including the evaporation of a mixture component. 

In this study, we report on the outcome of implementing conceptual hands-on activities in a Swedish introductory university mechanics course. The purpose of the activities was to ground the central concepts in the course in students’ shared, embodied experiences of physical phenomena. A total of 112 students, consisting of 105 engineering students and 7 teacher students, were enrolled in the same course. Randomly assembled groups of 3–4 students were video recorded as they undertook four different practical activities. Our analysis mainly focused on two groups of students’ embodied engagement with two of the four activities, consisting of lifting a weight with and without a system of pulleys, and finding the centre of mass using a metre stick. This is contrasted with the activity of standing on a bathroom scale as a lift goes up and down, where the embodied engagement of one of the groups was quite limited. A student interview and course evaluation reports were also analysed to evaluate the implementation of the hands-on activities from a student perspective. The results show that the participating students’ embodied experience, acquired from the conceptual hands-on activities, became an important asset as they tried to explain and link observations of the studied phenomena to their theoretical understanding. The students combined gestures, mimicking the practical procedure, and spoken language, to make their explanations more convincing for both themselves and peers. The intuitive nature and simplicity of the activities invited students to focus on the actual core of the task. In the interview, students emphasised the importance of the actual embodied feeling of the experienced phenomena, and that the activities made them notice other related physics aspects, making them go beyond their initial thoughts. 

This article is a contribution to debates on the role of trade unions and industrial relations institutions in boosting popular support for a greener economy. Building on prior work that demonstrates a positive association between collective bargaining coverage and pro-environmental attitudes among workers, the article adds a more robust country-comparative focus. Matching data from the European Social Survey with the new European Participation Index (EPI), it examines whether cross-national variation in the strength of unions and industrial relations institutions is related to country differences in public support for carbon taxation and considers a range of explanatory factors. Results of multi-level regression models support the core argument by revealing a positive association between the EPI and public support for carbon taxation, which is robust to several control variables, including the domestic weight of the fossil fuel industry. The article thus highlights the importance of trade unions and industrial relations institutions in the successful navigation of green transitions. 

Introduction PTSD is defined by the presence of a qualifying traumatic event (Criterion A), yet considerable debate remains regarding how this criterion should be operationalized, as individuals exposed to non–Criterion A stressors may develop clinically significant PTSD-like symptoms. This diagnostic complexity poses challenges for identification and treatment of trauma-related distress in primary care settings. Objective The aim of the study was to investigate whether Coping School , a psychoeducational group for patients and their relatives, is feasible and associated with symptom reduction, how participants experience the intervention, and therapists’ perspectives on recruitment difficulties. Method Eleven assessment interviews with potential participants were conducted, of which only four were deemed eligible. The study used a within-group design with measurements conducted pre, mid, and post intervention, and three-month follow-up. Results At follow-up, changes in symptom ratings relative to baseline varied across participants. Participants perceived the intervention as valuable for increasing self-understanding, but that an overly condensed intervention led to the loss of important therapeutic elements. Therapists were also interviewed (n = 11) regarding their views on the intervention and factors that may have contributed to recruitment difficulties. The thematic analysis resulted in three themes: A limited eligible patient population, Hesitation toward group treatment, and Organizational barriers to collaboration and development. Conclusions These preliminary findings suggest that Coping School may be feasible and acceptable for some participants, but recruitment challenges – including how to engage and motivate other therapists to refer patients – highlight the need for further development and larger studies to evaluate effectiveness and generalizability. 

While convenient experiences have become the epitome of modern consumption, this has led to ecological repercussions and serves as an underpinning driver of linear economies. To understand why this connection between convenience and environmental degradation is so strong, we examine convenience as a mindset, which affects our ways of being, thinking, and doing. The prevailing individual-centric convenience mindset is characterized by a focus on minimizing resource expenditure for personal benefits—often leading to short-term gratification—which inhibits the transition to regenerative circular economies. The individual-centric convenience mindset adheres to an outdated marketing perspective, emphasizing economic exchange rather than contemporary marketing that prioritizes value creation and seeks to extend benefits beyond individuals to society as a whole. The theorizing of convenience has accordingly failed to sufficiently evolve. To address this problem, we propose an alternative collective-centric convenience mindset grounded in stewardship principles, where individuals prioritize collective benefits and long-term sustainability over immediate personal gain. Our paper reviews and critiques current convenience conceptualizations and advocates for a paradigm shift toward a collective-centric approach. This study expands the theoretical scope of the convenience phenomenon from an individual-level phenomenon to the collective level. We contribute to the theoretical foundations of sustainability in marketing theory and practice by offering an alternative that aligns individual actions with broader societal and ecological imperatives. 

Large freshwater mussels, also known as naiads, are important organisms that provide crucial ecosystem functions and services but are experiencing significant declines across Europe. To ensure effective conservation, it is essential to have a well-coordinated monitoring scheme. Therefore, we analyzed the functioning of naiad monitoring systems in 31 European countries. Monitoring of naiad populations is not coordinated in Europe, is largely unrelated to monitoring of water quality or host fish species, and receives irregular funding. Raw data on monitored species are typically unavailable, which hampers independent and/or large-scale analyses. The quality of EU monitoring schemes according to Article 17 of the Habitats Directive is poor for the most threatened species. To improve this, a new scheme is recommended with raw data stored in publicly available repositories to enable instant analysis and rapid, appropriate, evidence-based responses that can support the conservation of this imperilled taxon. 

From the vantage point of infrastructuring – an assemblage of technologies and user practices – this study explores the constitution of counterpublics in a Russian militarised and authoritarian context. Following a materialist phenomenology addressing the interrelations between technological materiality and human agency, the research seeks to understand how media technologies have been mobilised as heuristic instruments to reconfigure public attention and as infrastructures for anti-war resistance in a Russian context in the wake of the war against Ukraine.   

Critical scholarship on platformisation highlights how big tech has uprooted societies. Through the processes of datafication, platforms have amassed unprecedented economic and political power, reshaping public space formation. This dissertation contributes to these debates from the perspective of publics, looking at how media technologies have been enacted as sites for publicness, asking how both Russian activists and ordinary citizens reflect on and narrate their involvement with anti-war activism and the role of media technologies as embedded into these processes. In what ways do actors perceive, enact and imagine platform affordances in order to renegotiate forms of communicative interaction? How does technology bridge heterogenous and geographically dispersed actors in an authoritarian political context? By providing extensive empirical analysis based on interviews with core activists and broader publics, underpinned by ethnographic immersion, it is revealed that 1) actors enact platform affordances – negotiating possibilities and constraints of media infrastructures in routines of activism and everyday life. The study also shows how 2) people perceive and imagine infrastructures, treating them not only as pipelines but as compounds in social systems of human practices, deployed for the constitution of semi-public spaces. 3) Finally, the research arrives at the concept of distributed attention, which helps to grasp the struggle for public attention in hostile environments, under governmental restriction and surveillance. 

International development practice has increasingly been shaped by professionalization and managerialization. This trend has intensified in the last decades, driven by a governance paradigm centered on results and evidence. As a consequence, standardized planning tools, monitoring mechanisms, and evaluation methods have become prevalent. Foundational for these practices is documentation—especially templates which provide instructions and guidelines for documenting development work. Drawing on insights from anthropological scholarship on the transformative capacities of documents, this article denaturalizes templates as neutral forms of documentation, and examines how they shape development practice. Using templates and interviews with development professionals working in Swedish-funded peacebuilding projects, I mobilize the concept of affordance to analyze the possibilities for action rendered possible and impossible by templates. The analysis demonstrates how templates enable an affordance of visibility, making development interventions visible as projects composed of separate, discrete components. Moreover, templates carry colonial affordances, functioning as vehicles for the perpetual problematization and categorization of the developing world as an object of improvement. The article concludes that templates subtly sustain coloniality as a structure of power that outlives formal colonialism, and calls for greater attention to the colonial affordances embedded in everyday bureaucratic objects and artifacts in international development.

This systematic conceptual mapping review investigated definitions of instructional quality in secondary language arts (LA) research. Although LA inherently integrates multiple competencies, such as reading, writing, and oracy, educational research frequently isolates topics, thus limiting comprehensive definitions and overarching instructional frameworks. By analyzing 39 studies from 2000–23, we identified nine core quality themes representing varied definitions of instructional quality, notably including competence support, intellectual challenge, fostering a community of learners, student engagement, and instructional coherence. Our findings identified a critical epistemological tension between linear conceptions of quality, focusing on isolated instructional practices, and systems-oriented approaches, emphasizing dynamic interactions within instructional contexts. Results emphasized the need for integrated frameworks to better capture the complexity and multidimensionality of quality in secondary LA education. This review contributes to ongoing discussions regarding instructional quality, offering a nuanced synthesis to inform teacher education, professional development, and future research frameworks in LA secondary education.

This study examines the microstructural, mechanical, and electrochemical passivation characteristics of a Ti-35 Nb-5Fe alloy fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) using elemental powders, with Ti-40 Nb serving as a reference β-type alloy. Fe addition effectively stabilizes the β phase, increasing its fraction from ∼85% in Ti-40 Nb to ∼99% in Ti-35 Nb-5Fe, and promotes substantial grain refinement (from ∼48 µm to ∼11 µm). These microstructural modifications enhance hardness, compressive strength, and plasticity while maintaining a low elastic modulus suitable for biomedical applications. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy in phosphate-buffered saline at 37 °C reveals the formation of a stable, protective passive film on Ti-35 Nb-5Fe, characterized by higher polarization resistance and lower capacitance during immersion. Mott–Schottky analysis confirms n-type semiconducting behavior with reduced donor density, consistent with Fe³ ⁺-mediated oxygen-vacancy compensation predicted by the point defect model. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy depth profiling identifies an ∼3 nm thick mixed-oxide layer composed predominantly of TiO₂, Nb₂O₅, and Fe₂O₃. The combined effects of β-phase stabilization, grain refinement, and modified passive-film chemistry demonstrate that SLM-fabricated Ti-35 Nb-5Fe possesses superior passivation stability and mechanical performance, highlighting its potential for load-bearing biomedical implant applications.

Earth Observation (EO) systems combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have significantly advanced in recent years. The emergence and success of foundational models (FMs), such as ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, based on Large Language Models (LLMs), have influenced the development of the so-called “Geo” Foundational Models (GFMs). These models are trained using Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) strategy on broad datasets and can be adapted to a wide variety of downstream tasks, such as flood mapping, Building Damage Classification (BDC), and Land Cover (LC) classification. This versatility addresses complex issues in Earth science, offering a significant advantage compared to traditional Deep Learning (DL) or Machine Learning (ML) models, which are typically restricted to one or several data types and optimized for a single task, such as classification or change detection. With the launch of GFM Clay, which was initially pre-trained for segmentation, classification, and biomass information extraction using a variety of sensors such as Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Landsat, we fine-tune the model for the task of building damage assessment (BDA) in Beira, Mozambique. Therefore, in this study, the model is fine-tuned to the EDDA dataset, a high-resolution drone dataset released in October 2023, which captures building damage levels after Tropical Cyclone (TC) Idai devastated nearly 90% of Beira, the fourth-largest city in Mozambique. The fine-tuned Clay model achieved a validation mean intersection over union (mIoU) score of 0.829 and an F1 score of 0.869, demonstrating strong performance even with imbalanced data, compared to a fully supervised U-Net model, that we trained using the same dataset, and attained an mIoU of 0.567 and F1-score of 0.717. The qualitative results observed are highly acceptable, underscoring the transferability of the Clay Model to different tasks, datasets, and regions. These capabilities are crucial assets for its potential globalization. 

Green infrastructure (GI) is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas designed and managed to sustain biodiversity and deliver ecosystem services. To support GI planning for boreal regions, we mapped structurally mature forest habitat for the Siberian jay (Perisoreus infaustus), a taiga species often portrayed as an old-growth umbrella species associated with late successional spruce-dominated conifer forest. Using forest data from Sweden, we developed a new habitat suitability model based on airborne laser-scanning (LiDAR) canopy-structure metrics to test whether this commonly assumed association holds across gradients of forest management and proximity to human activity. We compared LiDAR-based predictions with those from a pre-existing Heureka stand-age model, validated both models using occurrence data, and used the resulting suitability maps to quantify habitat patch size and evaluate the influence of human presence. The LiDAR model estimated 44% of the suitable habitat area predicted by the Heureka model and identified the largest high-suitable blocks mainly in the southern part of the study area, dominated by older multilayer pine stands. In both models, predicted suitable habitat increased with occurrence class, and mean annual presence was lower near settlements, indicating a negative effect of human settlements associated with corvid nest predators. Suitable habitat was highly fragmented. Most patches were < 1 ha, while patches > 1000 ha were rare. Forest management should prioritize retention of older multilayer forest patches, and connectivity of remaining habitat, especially small patches that due to edge effect are more vulnerable to external disturbances.

The 2025 California wildfires revealed persistent gaps in translating well-established knowledge of wildfire risk reduction into effective land-use planning, building practices, and community preparedness. Drawing on the widely discussed case of a wildfire-surviving residential building in Pacific Palisades, this paper examines four interrelated constraints on community resilience that are consistently observed across diverse hazards: limited stakeholder awareness and risk perception; inadequate capacity at both household and institutional levels; weak incentives for proactive adaptation; and governance barriers, including regulatory fragmentation, unclear accountabilities, and insufficient integration of risk into policy frameworks. Prompted by the 2025 California wildfires, this paper examines these gaps in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and highlights how social, economic, and political dynamics interact with these constraints to perpetuate exposure in hazard-prone areas. Examples from other recent disastrous events, such as the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, the 2024 Valencia floods, and the 2025 Texas floods, illustrate that these challenges are common across diverse hazards and contexts, underscoring the need for more integrated, participatory, and context-sensitive approaches. Strengthening institutional capacity, aligning incentives with risk, and fostering awareness and engagement are essential to support adaptive, equitable, and sustainable resilience strategies capable of addressing both single and multi-hazards.

For 1 < p <= 2, we establish sharp inequalities for the Fourier transform of the characteristic function of the l(p)-unit ball B-p subset of & Ropf;(2). We show that sup (omega is an element of & Ropf;2) parallel to omega parallel to(3/2) (2) |chi Bp (omega)| asymptotic to (p - 1)(-1/2) as p -> 1+ As an application, we obtain corresponding bounds for lattice point discrepancy inequalities for dilates of B-p.

This study investigates young people's experiences of participation in the matching process when placed in foster care. Matching is the process by which the social services select a foster home for an individual child. The aim of the study is to highlight participation in the matching process from the young people's perspective. The research questions are as follows: How did the young people experience their opportunities to participate? Did they feel involved in the process, and if so, how? How can young people's opportunities to participate in the matching process be understood? The empirical data are based on interviews with nine participants who had previously experienced placement in foster care by social services. The findings show that even when young people have opportunities to express their voices early in the process, there is often a lack of feedback and dialogue about the social services' subsequent decisions. Better communication, feedback, dialogue and information throughout the matching process could improve young people's sense of participation, including their voice, influence and sense of control when placed in care.

We investigate the effective coupling between heat and fluid dynamics within a thin fluid layer in contact with a solid structure via a rough surface. Moreover, the opposing vertical surfaces of the thin layer are in relative motion. This setup is motivated by grinding processes, where cooling lubricants interact with the rough surface of a rotating grinding wheel. The resulting model is nonlinearly coupled through (i) temperature-dependent viscosity and (ii) convective heat transport. The underlying geometry is highly heterogeneous due to the thin rough surface characterized by a small parameter is an element of -> 0 that represents both the height of the layer and the periodicity of the roughness. We analyze this nonlinear system for existence, uniqueness, and energy estimates and study the limit behavior epsilon -> 0 within the framework of two-scale convergence in thin domains. In this limit, we derive an effective interface model in 3D (a line in 2D) for the heat-fluid interactions inside the fluid. We implement the system numerically and validate the limit problem through a direct comparison with the e-model. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of the temperature-dependent viscosity and various geometrical configurations with simulation experiments. The corresponding numerical code is freely available on GitHub.

Purpose To examine mortality and causes of death in a population-based cohort of adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and to compare findings with a sample drawn from the general population. Methods A population-based cohort of individuals (N = 113) born 1962-1984 and diagnosed with ASD in childhood during the 1970's and 1980's was followed up through register between 2000 and 2023. Most individuals were diagnosed with co-occurring intellectual disability (ID). The group was compared to an age- and sex-matched group (N = 1130) from the general population. Data for both groups were obtained from the National Cause of Death Register in Sweden. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to calculate the survival distributions of the participants with ASD and the comparison group, and Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate Hazard ratios for mortality. Results During the study period (2000-2023) 9.7% of the ASD group and 2.7% of the comparison group had died, p < .001. The ASD group had a higher risk of mortality than the comparison group (Hazard Ratio = 3.77, 95%CI = 1.89-7.52, p < .001). Mortality did not differ significantly between males and females in the ASD group. Significantly more individuals with severe ID had died compared to the rest of the cohort, X-2 (1, N = 113) = 4.7, p < .05. Conclusion Individuals with ASD and co-occurring ID may be at greater risk of death compared to the general population. Our findings emphasize the importance of monitoring and promoting health in individuals with autism, with special attention to individuals with co-occurring ID.

Objective To appraise the quality of theories, conceptual models, and theoretical frameworks about SDM for oral healthcare practices.Background Shared decision-making (SDM) is crucial to person-centred care. Yet little is known about how (and if) patient engagement in SDM is conceptualised in oral healthcare.Methods We conducted a theory analysis of theories, conceptual models, and frameworks. We searched Medline, Scopus, and CINAHL. Eligible theories/conceptual models/frameworks had to specifically focus on SDM in oral healthcare. Eligible papers were analysed using Walker and Avant's theory analysis steps and mapped onto the 8 core elements of SDM.Main Findings Of 195 citations, two conceptual models specific to oral healthcare were identified. The SDM System on Dental Restorations (SDMS-DR; South Korea) focuses on decisions between dentists and patients about restorative treatment. The Four + one Habits Model for dental visits (4 + 1 HB; Norway) is an approach for SDM across oral healthcare decisions, more broadly. Both conceptual models focus on the patient-professional encounter and met 4 (SDMS-DR) and 6 (4 + 1HB) of the 8 core elements of SDM. The SDMS-DR provided no reference to the patients' expertise. The 4 + 1HB presented SDM as a standardised linear process rather than a dynamic process. Neither has been empirically tested, and they do not acknowledge the broader healthcare system within which the encounters take place.Conclusion We identified two conceptual models that incorporated some elements of SDM for oral healthcare. Neither was evaluated, and both focus exclusively on the patient-oral healthcare professional encounter, without consideration of intersectional, multidisciplinary healthcare services.

This study presents a novel multi-regional evaluation framework for short-term load forecasting (STLF) in Japan's structurally fragmented, regionally heterogeneous electricity market. While previous research often treats the Japanese grid as a monolith or focuses on a single forecasting paradigm, this study addresses the critical research gap of spatial performance variability across the 50/60 Hz frequency divide. Motivated by the critical need for regional accuracy, this research compares three forecasting paradigms: the classical SARIMA model, the probabilistic Hidden Markov Model (HMM), and the deep learning Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. Using hourly load data from 2019 to 2022 for all nine Japanese regional power systems, the models are evaluated across two horizons (day-ahead and hour-ahead. Furthermore, an Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) framework is employed to generate 95% Prediction Intervals (PI) under extreme operating conditions-including maximum demand, minimum demand, and public holidays-in order to assess model robustness under atypical scenarios. Results show that no single model is universally superior; forecasting performance is highly context and region-dependent. In Tokyo on a maximum demand day, LSTM achieves the best accuracy (4.55% MAPE), outperforming SARIMA (6.31% MAPE). In contrast, for Chugoku under the same scenario, SARIMA (2.72% MAPE) slightly outperforms LSTM (2.80% MAPE). The HMM proved particularly effective for atypical conditions, delivering the most accurate forecast in Tohoku on a public holiday (4.03% MAPE versus 6.93% for SARIMA). The findings underscore the critical impact of statistical forecasting errors on regional financial risk. This framework reveals that improved accuracy can reduce daily financial burdens by 5.4 million yen in Chugoku, 102 million yen in Tohoku, and up to 642 million yen in Tokyo. By linking forecasting accuracy, uncertainty, and economic impact, the proposed framework provides practical guidance for context-aware forecasting strategies in Japan's fragmented electricity market.

This article explores what newly arrived men with migrant backgrounds narrate about their vocational education and career choices in Sweden, focusing on how the expression must (Swedish: måste) is used to describe societal demands and constraints. Drawing on twelve semi‑structured interviews with men who arrived as refugees or through family reunification during or after the 2015 peak in asylum arrivals to Europe, and who participated in adult vocational education (Yrkesvux), the study explores how education and work are narrated under migration‑related and labour‑market conditions. The analysis adopts a theory‑informed, deductive approach guided by selected concepts from Bernstein’s sociology of education, including pedagogic discourse, recognition and realisation rules, and recontextualisation. This framework is used to interpret how institutional requirements are narrated as necessities and translated into concrete educational and vocational choices. The findings show that must functions as a linguistic marker of constrained agency in four recurrent ways. It is used to narrate legal and economic compulsion related to residence permits and income thresholds; to index strategic adaptation when prior education or qualifications are not recognised; to express existential responsibility in relation to family obligations and time pressures; and to signal struggles over recognition, legitimacy and inequality within educational and migration regimes. By analysing must as a narrative marker, the article contributes a linguistic and narrative perspective to research on integration and labour‑market participation, showing how policy demands are recontextualised into everyday reasoning about education, work and future possibilities, and how choice is constructed and negotiated within institutionally constrained conditions.

Background:Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly recognized for its potential to transform cancer care. However, much of the existing evidence of its efficacy comes from controlled settings. There remains a need to complement this knowledge with insights into how AI tools are perceived and used in real-world clinical settings, as well as how their use impacts clinical practice.

Objective:This study aimed to explore key factors influencing clinicians’ acceptance of AI tools and examine how AI adoption and use impact clinical workflows in cancer care.

Methods:We used purposive sampling for recruiting oncology-related health care professionals and collected data using web-based semistructured interviews to gather their perceptions. Data were thematically analyzed and interpreted through the lenses of sociotechnical systems theory and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology.

Results:Participants largely accept and perceive AI tools as beneficial to clinical practice. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology constructs were reflected in our data as determinants of intention to adopt AI tools. Trust appears as an influential factor in shaping attitudes toward AI tools. Acceptance is found to both precede AI tool use and to grow following successful integration. The use of AI tools is perceived to yield operational benefits, such as reduced workload and time savings, and clinical benefits, such as increased diagnostic reliability and reduced patient recall. Minimal disruption to clinical workflows following integration of AI tools was reported for some cancer screening applications and organ-at-risk segmentation, whereas greater disruption was anticipated for 3D cancer screening. Although accountability and lack of explainability are highlighted in literature as barriers to AI adoption, participants do not view these as significant obstacles in image-based diagnostic contexts. Additionally, negative impacts, such as overreliance on AI and reduced critical review of AI results, arise in association with the use of AI tools.

Conclusions:Participants perceive AI tools to deliver benefits to clinical cancer care. However, their adoption relies on their alignment with clinical needs and seamless integration into clinical workflows. To encourage clinician acceptance, the identified concerns must be addressed. Future work should focus on training programs, co-design with clinicians, and exploration of mitigation strategies for emerging adverse effects, such as automation bias and potential skill erosion.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are increasingly promoted as part of future fossil-free energy systems, yet they may introduce new types of risks and involve a broader set of actors compared to conventional nuclear power plants. This study examines how key actors in Sweden understand SMRs and interpret their roles in radiation emergency preparedness. This qualitative study is based on qualitative interviews with actors involved in emergency preparedness for potential SMR deployment, a context shaped by Sweden’s recent policy shift toward expanded nuclear energy. Findings show that expectations of SMRs are generally high, and benefits tend to overshadow considerations of radiation risks. Among newcomer actors, emergency preparedness is widely perceived as an issue that can be addressed later in the SMR development process rather than as an integral part of early strategic planning. Among actors with previous experience of radiation risks, SMRs do not entail any major changes or challenges. As a result, a broad preparedness culture—including early engagement across organizational boundaries and systematic integration of radiation emergency preparedness—is not yet discernible. These gaps warrant continued attention as SMR initiatives advance.

Complex smallholder agriculture, characterized by overlapping sowing windows and crop mixtures, poses a challenge to crop type mapping using remote sensing. While previous studies have addressed smallholder crop type classification, few have examined intercropping, necessitating a nuanced understanding of the temporal characteristics of cropping practices (e.g., crop combinations and crop sequencing). We integrated Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 for mapping mono- and intercropping systems across multiple growing cycles, which has been overlooked by studies treating the rainy season with multiple growing cycles as a single temporal block. Field-based crop inventories were incorporated to identify eight farming system classes in the southern Guinea Savannah of southwest Nigeria (SGS). These include early maize, late maize, early cassava, late cassava, yam, rice, maize-cassava intercropping, and Others, comprising sweet potato, cocoyam, and cowpea, as well as other minority crops. Random Forest models were trained using monthly and bimonthly composites in seven experiments which were validated through 30-fold cross-validation. Models with only Sentinel-1 had low overall accuracy (0.50). Accuracy improved to over 0.75 for all classes in the best-performing model combining monthly Sentinel-1 and bimonthly Sentinel-2 data. Class-wise accuracy for rice was highest (UA = 0.90, PA = 0.81), whereas maize-cassava intercropping had PA = 0.85, UA = 0.79. Early maize was higher (UA = 0.81, PA = 0.89) than late maize (UA = 0.74, PA = 0.58). Regional distribution across the SGS reveals that yam concentrates in the north, while early cassava and early maize are mainly found in the central areas, and intercropping dominates fragmented southern landscapes. The scalable approach to mapping similar crop types across multiple growing cycles accounted for inter-growing cycle crop dynamics and demonstrated how integrating local cropping practices and crop calendars with satellite data can advance the remote sensing of smallholder agriculture. 

High penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) motivates coordination mechanisms that reconcile individually preferred operation with mutual-interest performance in microgrids. Achieving mutual-interest objectives remains challenging due to the need for fair treatment of network-related responsibility. One of the most crucial mutual-interests of the power grids is network loss. Hence, proposing effective mechanisms that encourage loss reduction, and explicit representation of heterogeneous owner preferences in a fair manner is of vital importance. This paper develops a comfort-based market-clearing framework in which each DER owner is characterized by a monetary comfort value ($/MWh) that quantifies how strongly the owner weights the mutual-interest objective (network loss minimization) relative to their preferred operating schedule, while ensuring that all participants’ comfort preferences are satisfied. The main novelty is twofold: (i) embedding owner-specific comfort into the loss-related payment component so that loss responsibility becomes preference-aware across DERs, and (ii) solving the resulting comfort-based, network-constrained market-clearing problem in a decentralized manner to preserve privacy and enable scalability. Simulations on the IEEE 30-bus distribution test system demonstrate that the proposed framework reduces total network losses and improves voltage profiles, and illustrates how comfort values tune the trade-off between mutual-interest performance and individual operating preferences. 

Land degradation (LD) is a major barrier toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), due to challenges in national assessments. A comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis integrating all three UNCCD-recommended indicators at critical subnational scales remains absent in Nigeria, despite global reporting frameworks. In the Nigerian Guinea Savannah (NGS), LD severely threatens livelihoods, ecosystem services, and sustainability efforts. To support SDG 15.3.1, this study aims to provide a comparative assessment and enhanced context for subnational LD patterns and status in the NGS, using available national data and the UNCCD-endorsed Default Method (DM) and its Adapted Method (AM), across defined baseline and monitoring periods. Results reveal that the AM detected between 6% and 28% more degraded areas than the DM, demonstrating greater sensitivity to localized degradation. Based on the LULC indicator, degraded areas declined from 0.70% to 0.38% under the DM, whereas the AM increased from 26.00% to 28.68% of the NGS. Biomass loss showed declining land productivity, from 22.55% to 10.20% under DM and from 5.15% to 3.84% under AM. Both methods confirmed widespread degradation in key frontline states in the NGS, with consistent convergence in degradation patterns. However, the AM proved more capable of identifying degradation masked by coarse-resolution data, especially under prevailing unsustainable conditions such as widespread insecurity-induced land abandonment. This study presents a robust, locally adapted EO-based framework for assessing SDG 15.3.1 in Nigeria and, by extension, across SSA, providing actionable insights to close management gaps and inform policy interventions at multi-levels. 

Information privacy is an integral part of users' lives, as many digital services and their business models heavily rely on personal data. For example, conversational agents will use massive amounts of user conversations to hyper-personalize ads. Although privacy information is provided through policies and app notifications, and regulation increasingly adopts risk-based approaches, users remain largely uncertain about the risks they face. Design tweaks such as privacy icons or nutrition labels have yielded little improvement, as the central issue lies not in how privacy information is presented, but in what is omitted: the emphasis on disclosing data practices alone does not sufficiently reduce users’ uncertainty about potential harms. This paper develops an argument for complementing the current paradigm of “procedural transparency” with “risk transparency.” Risk transparency prioritizes the clear communication of privacy risks to individuals using digital services, similar to established practices in domains such as drug safety, public health, or consumer protection, where explicitly informing users about risks is considered the main priority. In this article, we discuss risk transparency terminology, illustrate how risk can be communicated, and review the evidence on the effectiveness of risk communication as well as its associated challenges. A shift towards privacy risk transparency aims to provide consumers and data subjects with more meaningful information that supports their informed decision-making in the data econo

In regulated rivers, hydropeaking may create abrupt sub-daily changes in discharge that can rapidly alter fish habitat. Although hydropeaking impacts on juvenile salmonids have been widely studied, short-term effects on foraging by early life stages remain poorly documented. We used a laboratory flume experiment to test how a downramping flow regime and substrate heterogeneity affect the foraging performance of brown trout (Salmo trutta) fry. We exposed fry to four treatments, combining two flow conditions (stable vs. downramping) and two substrates (gravel vs. gravel with cobbles). We quantified individual total prey intake, assessed from stomach contents, and drift-feeding activity from video analyses. Our results showed that the flow treatment had no detectable effect on total prey intake, indicating that both stable and rapid flow reductions did not disrupt short-term feeding under an adequate food supply. The number of drift-feeding attempts was similar across all treatments. In contrast, the presence of cobbles increased total prey intake, suggesting that structural complexity enhanced intake by providing hydraulic refuges and additional feeding opportunities. Prey intake showed a general size-dependent pattern, with larger fry consuming more prey. Our findings indicate that adding or maintaining fine-scale substrate complexity is a potent enhancer of fry feeding and should be considered as a restoration measure for habitat mitigation in hydropeaking rivers. 

The conditional stability of explicit time integration algorithms limits the critical time step size, which depends on the highest natural frequency of the discretized problem. For shear deformable structural finite element formulations, efficiency is typically limited by the highest transverse shear frequencies. Selective mass scaling (SMS) methods aim at selectively scaling the high frequencies while preserving the important low frequency content. In particular, recent SMS concepts, which are inspired by the discrete strain gap (DSG) method [1] and, thus, are denoted as DSGSMS concepts, result in effective and accurate methods, which naturally preserve both linear and angular momentum. In this contribution, we extend previous work on DSGSMS for shear deformable element formulations [2] with respect to several aspects. First, we perform a theoretical analysis of the DSGSMS method that provides new insight into spectral properties and analytical time step estimates. Second, we extend the DSGSMS method from Timoshenko beam elements to Mindlin plate elements. Third, we test the extended concept with respect to spectral accuracy and the transient behavior in explicit time integration. 

Background: Emergency rooms prioritize rapid, life-saving interventions, often at the expense of patients’ psychosocial and existential needs. Patients in these settings are particularly vulnerable, yet such needs are frequently overlooked. Despite growing emphasis on person-centered care, knowledge of how existential needs (e.g. fear, anxiety, vulnerability) are expressed and addressed in emergency rooms remains limited. This study aims to describe how existential needs are expressed in the emergency room context. Methods: A qualitative secondary analysis was conducted using 108 field notes, 14 registered nurse interviews, and 15 patient interviews viewing emergency room care through a Fundamentals of Care framework lens. An inductive approach was inspired by key existential concepts described in a review and relevant to acute care. Reflexive thematic analysis was applied to each dataset, followed by cross-data comparison to identify patterns of existential needs. Results: The secondary analysis resulted in four themes; Existential vulnerability in a technical environment, Ensuring trust through presence and communication, Violations of privacy and dignity, and Moments of meaning-making through connection showing that existential needs in the emergency room are widespread and closely connected to both patients’ experiences and registered nurses’ care practices. Patients faced sudden transitions, fear, and emotional vulnerability, while registered nurses balanced these needs with organizational constraints. Existential concerns were expressed verbally and non-verbally and shaped by the environment, communication, and presence. Even brief, attentive encounters were experienced as meaningful and created a sense of safety in the stressful clinical setting. Conclusions: Addressing existential needs is integral to emergency care. Recognition and responsive care can mitigate patients’ emotional isolation and enhance safety, despite organizational constraints, highlighting the importance of integrating existential support with medical treatment. The organization should enable healthcare professionals to recognize and respond to existential needs as an integrated part of patient assessment and care interventions, supporting a more person-centered and holistic care in acute environments. This study highlights the importance of addressing existential needs within the emergency room, for both patients and registered nurses. Organizational constraints and ethical tensions challenge person-centered fundamental care, while underscoring safety as a crucial condition for meaningful and compassionate encounters. The findings offer guidance for emergency care professionals on integrating existential and relational awareness into practice, education, and policy. Trial registration: Clinical trial number: Not applicable. 

Aim To describe newly graduated nurses' experiences of taking responsibility to ensure safe nursing care in their first year and how COVID-19 affected their professional development.Background Newly graduated nurses faced many challenges and great pressure from healthcare to take responsibility to ensure safe nursing care under their first year in the profession. Challenges increased with COVID-19, possibly affecting safe nursing care and the psychosocial work environment.Design A descriptive qualitative design was chosen and data were collected through group interviews from nurses in their first year as newly graduated nurses (n = 15) in the middle of Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were conducted digitally, and inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.Results The experiences of newly graduated nurses were summarized along two themes: Own responsibility from start and Challenges lead to professional development. The participants described how they initially had to take full responsibility for patient's care. They described feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty in relation to safe nursing care and highlighted a lack of support from more experienced colleagues. They had to take their own initiative more, conduct complex caregiving, and had the opportunity to share experiences with other professions. The pandemic contributed to increased demands on their own responsibility for patient's care. Experiences were both positive and negative, and different challenges led to professional development.Conclusion Newly graduated nurses felt that challenges and responsibility led to their development in the profession. Support and competence development are needed in their first year.Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care Newly graduated nurses should be offered continuous support and well-organized competence development to enhance professional self-confidence. Well-functioning teams create a sense of belonging, where knowledge and experience are exchanged, leading to professional development.Patient or Public Contribution There was no patient or public contribution.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Sweden has witnessed a substantial build-up of both military and civil defense. With this development, cultural heritage has been assigned a new role in war preparedness. This article addresses the question of what makes cultural heritage an appealing and productive national security asset in an established democracy. Focusing on the under-researched issue of heritage's domestic security role, the article explores the role and meanings ascribed to cultural heritage in contemporary security policies and war preparedness initiatives. The specific aim is to investigate how heritage is framed as a vital national security resource. What values are projected onto the past, and what security functions are attributed to cultural heritage? The study combines critical heritage studies (CHS) with feminist and critical international relations (IR) theories on security and militarization. Through a framing analysis highlighting central metaphors, the article demonstrates that heritage is ascribed a dual meaning: both as a national treasure that needs masculinized protection, and as a resource that strengthens defense willingness and enhances deterrence capabilities. The article argues that cultural heritage becomes a particularly productive security resource due to its capacity to activate a logic of threat. Moreover, the emotional force and gendered dimensions of heritage help depoliticize issues of security, potentially constraining critical discussions on rearmament and militarization.

Quantitative epidemiological studies have identified victim- or fire-related risk factors for fire mortality and have shown radical sociodemographic differences. Whilst important, such studies are limited in explaining the underlying reasons why some individuals are more vulnerable than others. Based on focus group interviews with nurses at burn clinics in Sweden, this qualitative study therefore aims to deepen the understanding of the risk factors surrounding individuals with severe burns and the fires that caused them. The testimonies from the nurses show, with few exceptions, that the patients have extensively challenging backgrounds and are, therefore, more similar to fatal fire victims than victims with minor or no injuries. By applying a qualitative approach rather than the traditional epidemiological methodology, nurses' testimonies contextualise the individual risk factors often highlighted in fire-related research. As such, we put forth that the underlying cause is a "systemic vulnerability", that the victims are alienated from the rest of society due to a combination of physical, cognitive, economic, social, and external factors that limit the available compensating resources. In turn, this means that their ability to handle a potentially dangerous situation is severely compromised, thereby requiring a more holistic preventative approach.

Historically, leadership research has focused on managers’ characteristics and behavior, their leadership style and its implications for a business’s success. In contrast, this dissertation examines how working conditions in the workplace affect first-level managers’ everyday work, their possibilities to practice leadership, and consequently their leadership style. The theoretical framework guiding the dissertation is a gender analysis with a doing gender perspective and the methodology is a case study. Two workplace organizations in a Swedish municipality are studied: a male-dominated manufacturing industry and a female-dominated elderly care service. The empirical materials consist of twenty-six semi-structured interviews, primarily with male and female first-level managers, but also with their immediate supervisors. In addition, the materials include a questionnaire and organizational documents. The results show that organizational structure and culture have implications for managers’ working conditions and consequently the leadership style they are willing and able to implement. The sex ratio among employees did not have any implications for which type of leadership informants described in their everyday practices. The ideal leadership and the everyday leadership practices portrayed by informants entail being explicit, controlling and rational managers who are able to make decisions and carry forth extensive structural changes. Their narratives reveal an authoritarian and task-oriented leadership style that has its roots in early industrialism. Leadership is strongly marked by masculinity, and even though women and men describe practicing the same type of leadership in their everyday work, their ideas about gender depict two complete opposites in which women and femininity is subordinated to men and masculinity. This indicates a divergence between the gender we think and the gender we do. Nonetheless, sex ratio among employees has implications for the level of sexism. While informants in both workplace organizations described gender discrimination, only those in the manufacturing industry described experiencing sexual harassment.

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are lightweight, flexible, scalable alternatives to traditional silicon solar panels. In OSCs, molecular semiconductors convert solar energy into electricity. With efficiencies exceeding 20%, OSCs have become a promising renewable energy technology.

The photoactive layer in a photovoltaic device is typically coated from a blend solution of electron-donor and electron-acceptor molecules. Recent development of new materials introduces new challenges in controlling and characterizing the morphology of the photoactive layer.

In this work, we use X-ray absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate that the choice of solvent used to process the photoactive layer plays an important role in determining the molecular orientation of the molecules. In addition, we introduced a novel approach that allows selective probing of the molecular orientation of the electron-acceptor in blended films. We also demonstrate that the deposition method can be used to control the vertical stratification in donor-acceptor systems. Complementary SPM techniques were applied to investigate the morphology-property relations at the nanoscale, highlighting both opportunities and challenges in the study of modern photoactive layers.

Buyouts, or agreements to terminate employment in exchange for financialcompensation, have become an increasingly common but also debated practicein Swedish working life. Buyouts can be understood as part of a broader juridificationof working life, where conflicts are handled administratively rather thanresolved through dialogue—situated at the intersection of law, economics, andorganizational governance. The purpose of the study is to analyze the role thatbuyouts play in the Swedish labour market from a work environment perspectiveby considering what precedes such agreements. Data were collected througha focus group with union negotiation representatives, who represent membersin negotiations concerning these agreements. The results show that agreementsare preceded by conflicts of interest between employers and employees, variousforms of loss of trust, as well as organizational–political strategies. The studydemonstrates that buyouts can be understood as a forced agreement in which theemployee has little leverage. Buyouts legitimize an exchange logic in the labourmarket and disrupt the balance of power in the Swedish labour market model.

In a time marked by democratic backsliding and an increasingly polarized societal climate, teaching about controversial societal issues (CSI) can strengthen students’ democratic understanding and political agency. At the same time, research shows that teachers often avoid this type of teaching due to uncertainty regarding its implementation and concerns about emotionally charged classroom situations. This study examines how student teachers in social studies can be prepared for CSI teaching through the use of a newly developed subject-didactic planning model. The aim is, first, to design and develop the model based on previous research, and second, to analyze the didactic choices, critical aspects, and civic educational potentials that emerge when the model is applied in student teachers’ planning and teaching during their school-based placement. The study is qualitative and draws on document analysis of lesson plans and didactic analyses, as well as semi-structured interviews with fourteen student teachers. The planning model is designed on the basis of research within controversial issues education, German politische Bildung, and Nordic social studies didactics. It is structured around three didactic principles: the controversial, the emotional, and the exemplary.

The results show that the model provides a supportive framework that both guides and challenges the student teachers’ instructional planning. Their didactic choices reveal, among other things, differences between student-near and society-near issues, variation in how different dimensions of politics are employed, and difficulties in balancing institutional and specialized knowledge. The critical aspects in the classroom primarily concern the pursuit of teacher neutrality, the handling of students’ emotions, and the significance of the classroom context. The planned teaching highlights a broad citizenship education oriented toward understanding society, developing one’s political identity, and participating democratically. In conclusion, the study indicates that the planning model can contribute to reflective and civic-oriented CSI teaching and serve as a didactic support in the teaching process. 

Since the introduction of the RUT tax deduction in 2007, the sector for domesticservices has expanded, and people over the age of 65 now constitute one of thelargest user groups. An increasing number of companies offer services targetingolder people and their relatives. Based on interviews with RUT-companies,employer organisations and trade unions, the aim of the article is to analyse theposition of private care services in relation to publicly funded eldercare. The findingsindicate that cutbacks in publicly funded eldercare have contributed to theestablishment of a private market for care services. Other consequences includechanges in the social relations of care and the potential reproduction of genderedinequalities.

This study focuses on international master’s students’ experiences ofentering and working in the Swedish labour market and their perceptions oflabour market mobility. Through interviews with former master’s students, thearticle contributes knowledge about a group that has received limited attention inresearch, despite being considered desirable labour migrants due to their educationand technical skills. The analysis highlights patterns excluding non-Europeanmaster’s students, while those with European backgrounds encounter fewerobstacles in the transition from studies to employment. Once established, bothgroups report that being perceived as different may constitute a barrier to advancingor changing jobs in Sweden.

This thesis presents a design research project, comprising five papers on the design and implementation of a topic-centered research-based teacher guide for quadratic equations in Swedish upper-secondary school. The thesis aims to explore if and how such teacher guides can be designed to support mathematics teachers in their planning and teaching, and their professional learning. Further, it examines how teachers and their contexts affect conditions for such support.

The papers investigate teachers’ existing resource use when planning, previous research on quadratic equations, the design of the teacher guide, and the support found through teachers’ interactions with the teacher guide in two cycles of implementation.

The practice of planning and teaching is examined through teachers’ interactions with resources, perceiving and mobilizing them in designing instruction. Professional learning is operationalized as developing Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching and is further discussed through the lens of the Documentational Approach to Didactics. A theoretical contribution of the thesis is that the notion of what is educative differs across lenses for professional learning. Previous ideas on educative features in curriculum materials are extended by highlighting how these are interrelated and context-dependent in relation to the support they provide. Such support is found to function differently across stages of planning and teaching.

The findings provide empirical insights into teachers’ use of teacher guides, and further suggest that teacher support will be most effective when designed features meet the needs of teachers within their context. For Swedish upper-secondary teachers, this was found to include providing suggestions for lesson activities with rationale, grounded in implications emerging from issues found in research, rather than providing student tasks alone. The designed teacher guide constitutes a practical contribution for teaching quadratic equations.

Den här rapporten beskriver lärandet av ett delprojekt inom projektet Helhetsenkelt, som finansieras av Vinnova inom ramen för Impact Innovation och SustainGov. Helhetsenkelt använder systemdesign för att undersöka och utveckla åtgärder för att minska den upplevda regelbördan inom lantbruket.

Det här delprojektet har fokuserat på de regelgivande och regelutformande nivåerna i systemet. Problembeskrivningar och formuleringar av uppdrag sker bland annat på Regeringskansliet. Arbetsgruppen har inte i detta arbete haft möjlighet att utforska i vilken utsträckning aktörsinvolvering och kontakter med bransch sker i de riktigt tidiga faserna, där direktiv och uppdrag formuleras.

Arbetet har drivits av behovet av att besvara frågan: Hur skulle vi kunna öka inflytandet från lantbrukarnas  verklighet med syfte att förstå, tydliggöra och beskriva konsekvenser av reglering?. Syftet är att minska den upplevda regelbördan och skapa beslutsunderlag som är mer ändamålsenliga, genomförbara och heltäckande. Arbetet har avgränsats till den svenska delen av lagstiftningskedjan. Jordbruks- och livsmedelspolitiken styrs i hög grad av vad som sker inom EU. Hur och när involvering sker i den delen har inte rymts inom detta arbete.

Dagens konsekvensutredningar bedrivs per regelområde och är expertstyrda, vilket innebär att de fokuserar på enskilda regler snarare än den samlade regelbördan i lantbrukarens vardag. Utredningarna missar ofta den kognitiva och emotionella belastningen samt de målkonflikter som uppstår när olika regelverk krockar. Dessutom betraktas lantbrukare ofta som en homogen grupp, trots stora skillnader i förutsättningar och drivkrafter. Involvering sker framförallt genom textbaserade metoder som ger begränsat utrymme för att uttrycka erfarenheter samt i regel för sent i processen. Exempelvis i remissförfarandet när förslagen redan är färdigformulerade, vilket begränsar möjligheten till reellt inflytande.

Projektet har använt sig av systemdesign för att se helheten och samla relevanta aktörer. Arbetet har innefattat:

• Intervjuer och dokumentstudier för att kartlägga nuvarande regelprocesser.
• Workshops med lantbrukare, handläggare och experter för att identifiera problembilder.
• Metodtester med visualiseringar, där man skapat fallföretag och jämfört ”nu- och nylägen” för att göra komplexa lagförslag (t.ex. SOU 2025:64) begripliga och möjliga att reagera på för lantbrukare.
• Visuellt stödd dialog med lantbrukare för att fånga upplevda och relationella dimensioner av kontroll.

Genom att utgå från olika fallföretag kunde projektet tydliggöra diversifieringen hos lantbruksföretagen och hur den upplevda regelbördan skiftar beroende på verksamheternas förutsättningar och logik. De visuellt stödda dialogerna gjorde det möjligt för lantbrukare att bidra med expertkunskap om sin vardag på ett sätt som textbaserade remisser inte tillåter.  [SH1]Behöver ”systemdesign” förklaras? Jag känner i alla fall inte till definitionen/innebörden.