With the elimination of Soviet state communism in the early 1990s, the ideational foundation of politics in the five Central Asian former Soviet republics had to undergo fundamental rebuilding. Instead of the defunct basis of Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism, the rulers of the suddenly independent Central Asian states urgently had to identify other ways and means of legitimizing their hold on power.

Y. Hashimoto, D. Yatou, T. Yamada, H. Yamamoto, R. Johansson, , , pp. 2P1-W06:1-4.

This paper discusses static stability of a planar object grasped by multifingers with three joints. Each individual joint (prismatic joint or revolute joint) is modeled as a linear spring stiffness. The object mass and the link masses are also included. We consider not only pure rolling contact but also frictionless sliding contact. The grasp stability is investigated using the potential energy me

This thesis contributes to empirical research in labor economics. It consists of three self-contained papers.The first paper, The Effect of Paid Vacation on Health: Evidence from Sweden, analyzes the causal effect of paid vacation on health. Using register data on the universe of central government employees in Sweden, I exploit an age-based rule stipulated in the collective agreement covering the

Background and aim: Moderate alcohol consumption has been associated with a lower risk of disease severity in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). It is unclear if this reflects current or lifetime drinking, or can be attributed to confounders such as diet and exercise. We evaluated the impact of lifetime alcohol consumption on fibrosis severity in NAFLD. Methods: We prospectively enrolled 1

Background: Recently, the block-sequential regularized expectation maximization (BSREM) reconstruction algorithm was commercially introduced (Q.Clear, GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI, USA). However, the combination of noise-penalizing factor (β), acquisition time, and administered activity for optimal image quality has not been established for 18 F-fluorocholine (FCH). The aim was to compare image

Epidemiological contact tracing complemented with genotyping of clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates is important for understanding disease transmission. In Sweden, tuberculosis (TB) is mostly reported in migrant and homeless where epidemiologic contact tracing could pose a problem. This study compared epidemiologic linking with genotyping in a low burden country. Mycobacterium tuberculosi

In the tropical moist semi-deciduous forests of West Africa, soil catenas with extremely gravel-rich soil horizons at the summits and upper slopes and largely gravel-free profiles at the lower slope are common. Previous investigations have suggested that these gravel layers are the result of macro-invertebrates mining of fine-grained soil material from the subsoil leaving behind the gravel, to bu

The magnitude of soil and sediment erosion and accumulation processes can profoundly affect landscape development and hamper efficient management of natural resources. Consequently, estimating the rates and causes of these processes is essential, particularly in remote regions, for prediction of changes in landform and river evolution and protection of local ecosystem. We here present the results

Multiple-pilot injection strategies with both moderate and short time separations (dwells) are investigated in a light-duty diesel engine. Both conventional and optical engine experiments are performed. By implementing triple-pilot injection strategies with short dwells between the individual injections, combustion noise can be significantly reduced. The sound pressure level was reduced by nearly