Italian novelist Italo Calvino ([1972] 1974: 102–103) described Leonia as a city where ‘every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio’. This opulent newness is dependent upon garbage trucks collecting

Sustainable solutions are needed to drive a profound industrial and societal transformation towards a sustainable, low-carbon, resilient, equitable and prosperous future. This Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses possibilities and drivers for change by focusing on strategies for sustainable solutions with the underlying purpose of defining an interdisciplinary and collabor

Numerous auto-scaling strategies have been proposed in the past few years for improving various Quality of Service (QoS) indicators of cloud applications, for example, response time and throughput, by adapting the amount of resources assigned to the application to meet the workload demand. However, the evaluation of a proposed auto-scaler is usually achieved through experiments under specific cond

A sound pedagogical framework must be explored and identified to implement opportunities for collaborative learning through international exchange. This paper identifies the framework used by two universities, in Sweden and the United States. Virtual learning environments and meaningful learning activities can be constructed using web-based learning platforms. The goal for this initiative was 'int

Introduction: The gastro-intestinal hormone glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) potentiates glucose-induced insulin secretion, with bone anabolic effects through GIP receptor (GIPR) in animal models. We explore its potential in humans by analyzing association between polymorphisms (SNPs) in the GIP and GIPR genes with bone phenotypes in young and elderly women. Methods: Association

The National Environmental Objectives (NEOs) adopted by Swedish Parliament in 2001 and proclaimining that major environmental problems should be solved within a generation are often portrayed as good practice of a concrete yet visionary sustainability strategy. In this paper we summarize one and a half decade of the NEOs' experience for the international audience. The NEOs were based on an eclecti

Homeostasis of short-lived blood cells is dependent on rapid proliferation of immature precursors. Using a conditional histone 2B-mCherry-labeling mouse model, we characterize hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) and progenitor proliferation dynamics in steady state and following several types of induced stress. HSC proliferation following HSC transplantation into lethally irradiated mice is fundamentall

It has been suggested that neural mechanisms may contribute to effects of the incretin hormones, and, therefore, also to the effects of dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP-4) inhibition. We therefore examined whether muscarinic mechanisms are involved in the stimulation of insulin secretion by DPP-4 inhibition. Fasted, anesthetized mice were given intraperitoneal saline or the muscarinic antagonist atropine

This dissertation argues that lower-level military leaders, commanding between a dozen and a few hundred troops, can have a major political and strategic impact. Furthermore, it is argued that the decisions made by these lower-level military leaders are shaped by subcultures, in particular under conditions of stress and uncertainty. The concept of tactical-level subcultures is defined, drawing on

Cloud applications are often subject to unexpected events like flashcrowds and hardware failures. Users that expect a predictable behavior may abandon an unresponsive application when these events occur. Researchers and engineers addressed this problem on two separate fronts: first, they introduced replicas - copies of the application with the same functionality - for redundancy and scalability; s

Critique of religion and its consequences is a topical theme. The attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015 made the Western media establishment to rally in defence of freedom of expression, but it also raised the question of the limits of this freedom. There are always defined limits to freedom of expression, which change over time and are adapted to the political sy

A Ni-PY5 [PY5 = 2,6-bis(1,1-bis(2-pyridyl)ethyl)pyridine)] complex has been found to act as an electrocatalyst for oxidizing water to dioxygen in aqueous phosphate buffer solutions. The rate of water oxidation catalyzed by the Ni-PY5 is remarkably enhanced by the proton acceptor base HPO42−, with rate constant of 1820 M−1 s−1. Controlled potential bulk electrolysis with Ni-PY5 at pH 10.8 under an

We present time-resolved X-ray absorption measurements of vanadium dioxide using ionizations radiation generated by a femtosecond pulsed laser source in combination with superconducting microcalorimeters capable of measuring energies of individual radiation quanta.

Nanocrystalline diamond films (NCD) are strong candidates for applications in a wide variety of fields. An important concern in all these applications is to understand the properties of variously prepared NCD surfaces. This contribution is focussed on the surface science study of hydrogen and oxygen containing NCD films using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) as well as high resolution electr

This chapter analyses local strategies against poverty and social exclusion in Sweden, often seen as illustrative of a Social democratic welfare regime. The chapter addresses whether public actors play such a significant role in local anti-poverty strategies as established regime-debates suggest. Empirical investigations cover patterns of coordination between the social assistance system and activ