This thesis investigates why China, despite its stated commitment to development, sovereignty, and partnership, pursues a mining model in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that reproduces dependency, asymmetric ownership, and limited Congolese political agency. Drawing on a qualitative single-case study, the research combines systematic content analysis of Chinese official and corporate texts, Congolese state documents, and critical civil-society sources with explaining-outcome process-tracing of key mining deals. The theoretical framework draws on Susan Strange's structural power theory and Beach and Pedersen's process-tracing methodology. The analysis traces a three-component causal mechanism: China's structural power in the production and finance structures of the global cobalt economy; the DRC's post-colonial institutional weakness and elite patronage incentives; and the discursive legitimation produced by convergent Chinese and Congolese elite texts that frame asymmetric arrangements as win-win and sovereign. Content analysis of FOCAC action plans, Xi Jinping's 2024 keynote address, the State Council 2021 white paper, and the Tshisekedi 2023 Council of Ministers communiqué demonstrates that these framing categories operate systematically against a documented material reality of infrastructure underdelivery, forced labor conditions, and sustained revenue asymmetry. The thesis contributes to IR scholarship on resource politics and the role of official language in sustaining structural inequality.

Women's participation in peacebuilding has become a critical topic in international relations, particularly since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. Existing research frequently argues that women's participation in peace negotiations leads to more sustainable and inclusive peace agreements. However, limited attention has been paid to whether women's engagement translates into meaningful political inclusion in post-conflict institutions. This thesis examines that connection in the context of Liberia, focusing on how local and national women's groups involved in the 2003 peace talks promoted women's political inclusion in Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Drawing on Feminist International Relations and decolonial feminist perspectives, the study investigates how gendered institutional systems influenced women's involvement and accessibility to decision-making during Liberia's post-conflict transformation. Methodologically, the study incorporates a qualitative document analysis of primary sources of Liberia's peace process and post-conflict structure.   The findings show that women's organisations played an essential role in shaping Liberia's peace process during the 2003 discussions by mobilising, advocating, and taking collective action. Their efforts helped to include gender-sensitive concerns across the TRC framework. Despite these advances, women's participation did not fully translate into long-term political or substantive inclusion in post-conflict institutions.

This thesis explores how visibility of phone activity can be created and negotiated in social encounters. Drawing on prior work on making activity visible, the study examines the social dimensions of exposing phone activity in the context of friend phubbing. By engaging directly with the social context through sketching, situated testing, and observations of participants, the study developed an understanding of the problem in a designerly manner. The findings indicate that social accountability emerged when phone activity was made visible and when both the phone user and the co-present person had some degree of control over the visibility of the activity. This enabled negotiation not primarily through the system’s input and output mechanisms, but through social interaction and shared awareness of the situation. This study suggests that such concepts should be controlled by both parties, and further research can explore how visibility can shift between abstract indications of phone activity and detailed output that can evolve into shared activity.

This thesis explores how a wearable haptic system can be designed to support horse-human interaction in lunging. Horse-human communication during lunging involves complex and embodied interaction that extends beyond measurable physical signals. While equestrian technologies often focus on performance and behavioural measurement, less attention has been given to supporting communication and awareness within ongoing interaction. This thesis explores how haptic feedback can be designed to support experiences of connection during horse-human interaction. 

Using a Research-through-Design approach, the project combined observations, interviews, ideation and iterative prototyping. Findings show recurring interaction qualities associated with meaningful communication, including attentiveness, responsiveness, rhythmic consistency, willingness to engage and perceived connection. These insights informed the development of a wearable haptic prototype evaluated through Wizard-of-Oz testing. 

The results suggested that haptic feedback may support awareness and reflection during interaction rather than functioning as a tool for control or performance measurement. The findings also indicated that experiences of connection are relational, subjective and developed over time rather than existing as fixed measurable states. 

This thesis contributes to the field of Interaction Design through studying physical interaction that translates relational qualities into haptic feedback within multispecies contexts and highlights opportunities for technology to support mutual understanding in horse-human interaction. 

This thesis explores how AI agents and natural language interaction can support

beginner interaction with physical computing systems. Using a research through

design approach, the project combined literature research, interviews, prototyping,

user testing, thematic analysis, and iterative refinement to investigate how users

interact with AI assisted Arduino workflows. The research focused on how users

shape physical system behavior through natural language, how they interpret AI

generated outputs, and how they negotiate control when interacting with physical

hardware. The project resulted in an interactive website platform prototype that

integrates natural language prompting, AI assisted code generation, wiring

visualization, and hardware feedback within a single workflow. The findings show

that AI agents reduce barriers related to programming, but users still experience

challenges related to wiring, hardware interpretation, and physical understanding.

The thesis contributes design knowledge for future AI assisted physical computing

systems by highlighting the importance of transparency, visual guidance, and

physical understanding during interaction.

Finding ways to regulate our emotions has been challenging, especially at the time when stress is such an integral part of our day to day lives. Various technological advancements have been made within the interaction design field to help people manage their stress and emotional states. Within it, virtual reality (VR) has been explored as a promising tool with a wide range of possibilities owing to its immersivity. In this project I explore what design features in a virtual environment can encourage self-reflection and an appreciative way of viewing one’s emotions. I rely on the practice of detached mindfulness which is centered around acknowledging and observing one’s thoughts and emotions without engagement and judgement. The prototype presented in this paper, StarLog, is a VR experience that invites people to express their emotions and then view them in their own personal galaxy. The user logs their emotional state by sculpting their own star which they can then place in the galaxy environment for later viewing. This practice is meant for long-term engagement as the more stars the users input, the richer the galaxy. It is meant to elicit the sense of awe by externalising and observing the emotions that may be uncomfortable to feel. To the field of interaction design, I offer the design process overview of the prototype, recommendations for future development of VR systems for emotion regulation and a critical analysis of VR as a tool for self-reflection.

This thesis investigates how to improve the accessibility of generative artificial intelligence for older adults, specifically those aged 75 and above. Current large language models predominantly rely on screen-based graphical user interfaces, which often exclude older adults due to high cognitive load and assumptions of digital literacy. To address this, a Research through Design approach was applied to develop a tangible voice interface. A vintage telephone was retrofitted with a microcomputer and conversational artificial intelligence personas, replacing abstract text prompting with physically grounded spoken interaction. Through a comparative qualitative study using a Wizard of Oz setup, four older adults interacted with both a standard text-based chatbot and the tangible telephone handset prototype across four distinct conversational personas. The findings demonstrate that the tangible voice interface substantially reduced cognitive load and visual information overload. By relying on familiar embodied routines and muscle memory, the physical telephone handset created a more intuitive and emotionally approachable usability experience. However, the research also reveals that trust and conversational flow in voice interfaces remain highly dependent on accurately calibrated vocal tone, pacing, and emotional appropriateness. Furthermore, the study examines critical ethical challenges surrounding conversational artificial intelligence for older adults, specifically highlighting the risks of emotional dependency, anthropomorphic attachment, and the complexities of trust calibration in human like interactions. Ultimately, this project highlights that making generative artificial intelligence accessible is not solely a technical problem, but an embodied, emotional, and ethical design challenge.

This thesis investigates how Interaction Design can facilitate somatic consciousness of orientation within institutional “straightness” through embodied interaction, ambiguity, and non-normative movement. Drawing on queer phenomenology, somaesthetic interaction design, and Research-through-Design practices, the project explores orientation as a socio-somatic design material shaped through bodily movement, institutional expectations, visibility, and spatial relations. Through participatory workshops, reflective drawings, embodied digital sketching, and responsive sound-based interventions situated within university spaces, participants were encouraged to negotiate movement beyond habitual and efficiency-driven behaviour. The findings suggest that refusing normative movement patterns can provoke hesitation, playful experimentation, and reflection on bodily visibility and socially acceptable behaviour within institutional environments. The thesis offers two connected contributions: first, orientation as a design material for Interaction Design; and second, a social contribution by exploring how design can facilitate somatic consciousness of institutional orientations through embodied and non-normative movement. 

This thesis explores how interactive systems can enable audience participation within live interactive dance performances in the context of an immersive dome environment. Through a Research through Design approach, the project investigates how dancers, audience members, and interactive systems can co-create immersive experiences through movement, visuals, music, and audience interaction. Developed in collaboration with Wisdome Malmö, the project combines body tracking, real-time visuals, and seat-based buttons that allow audience members to take part in the performance. Through iterative prototyping, embodied exploration, user tests, and a final live performance, the project generated situated knowledge regarding audience participation, embodied interaction, and interactive performances. The findings highlight the importance of balancing immersion, visual complexity, and interaction clarity when designing participatory interactive performances. While increasing visual complexity enhanced immersion and playful exploration, excessive complexity also reduced participants’ understanding of the interaction and compromised their sense of agency. The thesis further contributes with insights regarding the design of interactive dance specifically for immersive dome environments. Ultimately, the project positions interactive dance as both a performative practice and a method for investigating embodied interaction, technological mediation, and interactive experiences for co-creation. 

Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) is a complex digital medium. The difficulty associated with learning how to build with the medium often blocks new designers and laypeople from fully engaging in the craft. In this thesis the researcher engages with making points of entry through seamful design. A material lens is applied l to understand what affordances exist in AR/VR. AR/VR authorship tools are reviewed to see which affordances are less accessible to laypeople. Finally a prototype tool, Alchemic Reality, is made to explore the role that playful interactions and spontaneity have in AR/VR literacy for new designers and laypeople.

Denna studie undersöker hur poliser i yttre tjänst beskriver och upplever sitt professionella handlingsutrymme i relation till organisatorisk styrning, juridiska krav och praktiska arbetsrutiner. Studien bygger på en kvalitativ forskningsansats där tio semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförs med poliser verksamma inom yttre tjänst i Sverige. Det empiriska materialet analyseras genom tematisk analys med utgångspunkt i teorier om street-level bureaucracy, organisatorisk styrning och professionellt omdöme. Kritisk realism och socialkonstruktionism används som övergripande vetenskapsteoretiskt perspektiv.

Resultatet visar på att poliser ofta behöver anpassa sina beslut efter både lagstiftning, interna krav och den aktuella situationen. Respondenterna visar att poliser i yttre tjänst ofta fattar beslut under tidspress där tidigare erfarenheter och situation bedömningar blir avgörande för hur ingripande genomförs. Flera respondenter beskriver också att statistik, dokumentation och interna mål påverkar vilka arbetsuppgifter som prioriteras i polisverksamheten. Studien visar även att polisiärt arbete präglas av juridiska, etiska och emotionella dilemman där poliser behöver balansera organisatoriska krav, mänsklig hänsyn och samhälleliga förväntningar i det praktiska arbetet.

Syftet med den aktuella studien var att undersöka vad kunskapsbaserat arbete innebär för den svenska polisen, med fokus på metoden problemorienterat polisarbete [POP], både vad gäller förståelse och praktisk tillämpning. Studien syftade vidare till att undersöka om och varför det uppstår ett potentiellt gap mellan teori och praktik, samt hur polisen genomför eventuella anpassningar av metoden. Slutligen syftade studien till att identifiera potentiella hinder och utvecklingsmöjligheter i arbetet med POP. Resultatet analyserades med stöd av Street-Level Bureaucracy Theory [SLBT] för att skapa en djupare förståelse för hur och varför polisen agerar som de gör i praktiken, trots tydliga riktlinjer. Datainsamlingen genomfördes genom sju semi-strukturerade intervjuer med poliser i Sverige och analyserades genom tematisk analys. Fem teman identifierades: Varierande kunskap om POP, Implementering av POP i praktiken, Att arbeta inom och utifrån sitt handlingsutrymme, Samspelet mellan resurser, struktur och prioriteringar samt Kunskapsbas och utveckling av arbetet. Resultatet visade att polisen i dagsläget inte arbetar kunskapsbaserat utifrån POP i den utsträckning som metoden förespråkar. Orsakerna var främst bristande kunskap om metoden, organisatoriska och resursmässiga begränsningar samt den återkommande prioriteringen av akuta ärenden. Resultatet ligger därmed i linje med tidigare forskning, där implementeringen av POP ofta inte sker i enlighet med metodens grundtanke. Studien synliggör flera organisatoriska faktorer som påverkar möjligheterna att bedriva ett kunskapsbaserat arbete i praktiken. Avslutningsvis belyser studien ett behov av förändring inom den svenska polisorganisationen mot ett mer kunskapsbaserat arbetssätt, samt ett fortsatt behov av forskning inom svensk kontext.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka hur Nordiska motståndsrörelsen (NMR) och Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) formulerar samhällskritik, kollektiv identitet och föreställningar om återupprättelse i sina offentliga texter. Uppsatsen analyserar också hur berättelser om kris, förfall och konflikt används för att legitimera idéer om gemenskap, mobilisering och samhällsförändring. Analysen genomförs genom en kvalitativ komparativ textanalys av ideologiskt material från båda rörelserna och tar teoretisk utgångspunkt i begrepp som retrotopia, ressentiment och frame alignment.

Resultaten visar att rörelserna, trots betydande ideologiska skillnader, använder liknande narrativa strukturer för att beskriva samtiden som präglad av moralisk degeneration, kulturell upplösning och förlust av gemenskap. Liberalism, pluralism och individualisering kopplas återkommande till samhälleligt förfall medan nationen respektive ummah framställs som alternativa former av kollektiv återupprättelse. Analysen visar också hur identitet och samhällskritik nära sammanflätas genom berättelser om hot, tillhörighet och konflikt. Skillnader framträder dock i hur rörelserna mobiliserar, där HT främst betonar ideologisk och religiös argumentation medan NMR i större utsträckning lyfter fysisk aktivism, disciplin och kampberedskap. 

Uppsatsen visar också hur extremistiska miljöer i ökande grad organiseras genom digitala nätverk, social gemenskap och lösare former av aktivism där gränsen mellan ideologi, livsstil och vardagsliv blir mindre tydlig. 

The purpose of this study is to analyse how the government commission Children and Young People in Organized Crime affects crime prevention efforts and partnership between the police and social services. By examining how police officers and social workers perceive the meaning of the commission, how it affected the responsibilities and partnership, as well as the benificial opportunities they identify, the study aims to contribute knowledge on how the government influences the practice of local crime prevention work.

The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with six key individuals from the police and social services. The participants have enriched the study with their experiences and perceptions of the partnership in relation to the government commission. The theory of nodal governance focuses on governance through nodes and networks rather than traditional hierarchical state structures. Nodal governance was therefore applied to analyse how the collaborative structure within the commission is organized and perceived to function in practice, which is the aim of this thesis.

The results show that the government commission is perceived to have both facilitated and hindered the partnership between the police and social services, reflecting a complex implementation process. There is a clear implementation gap between policy and practice, as the responsibility to interpret and operationalise the assignment has largely been put on the professionals themselves. Despite these challenges, the findings indicate that the commission has contributed to increased awareness and changes in working methods. For example, cases are more frequently analysed from a collaborative perspective, and exchange of information has improved, leading to more accurate assessments and interventions by both the police and social services. This suggests that the commission has the potential to strengthen the quality of crime prevention work.

This study examines how artisanal fishers in Lima use mobile adaptation strategies in response to environmental change. It relies on qualitative data from 26 interviews with fishers and stakeholders from two months of fieldwork in Lima, combined with quantitative landings data from the last 30 years. The theoretical framework treats mobility as an adaptation strategy with inherent challenges, while using “mobile capabilities” to examine barriers to movement and “spaces of mobility” to analyse relations between mobilities across ports. Through regression analysis and qualitative content analysis, the study finds that fishers are adapting to environmental change by becoming more mobile, increasing the distance, duration and scale of trips. The study contributes to the research field with the concept of “dynamic mobility”, arguing that fishers are becoming more variable in their mobility. Furthermore, the study finds that adaptation strategies are taking place in an increasingly interconnected space of mobility. Yet, the study also finds that increasing movement is negatively affecting fishing profitability and that lack of resources acts as a barrier for fishers in their mobility. In light of this, the study argues that governance structures should, among other things, provide better access to credit and enforce the 5-nautical miles limit.

AI-powered chatbots are increasingly being adopted on e-commerce websites as alternatives totraditional customer service solutions, transforming how users can access, experience, and interactwith information. Although primarily intended for customer support, chatbots also provide users withnew opportunities to find and retrieve information beyond conventional methods. While traditionalinformation architecture has been extensively studied, the integration of AI-powered chatbotsintroduces new dynamics that warrant further exploration, particularly regarding their impact on usersatisfaction, task completion, and information retrieval in e-commerce contexts.

To assess user satisfaction, information findability, and task efficiency, twelve participants completedtime-on-task experiments on Impecta’s e-commerce platform, a Nordic company specializing in seedsfor hobby gardening with an extensive product catalog. Participants performed predefined tasks underthree interaction conditions: using only the website, only the chatbot, and freely choosing between thetwo. After each task completed using only the website or only the chatbot, participants responded to anAfter-Scenario Questionnaire (ASQ) for immediate subjective feedback. Semi-structured interviewsprovided qualitative insights into user experience, challenges, and findability across the interfaces.Additionally, expert heuristic evaluations of both the chatbot and the website’s hierarchical menubased interface supported interpretation of the user study results and provided further context for thediscussion.

The findings indicate that a hybrid approach offers the most support for user satisfaction, perceivedefficiency, and findability. These results suggest that chatbots function best as complementary toolsrather than replacements for traditional navigation, particularly in information-finding contexts and theearly stages of information seeking. The relationship between chatbot use, user experience, and timeon-task indicates that users perceived the chatbot as equally efficient as the website despite itsobjectively slower performance. These results provide preliminary insights that may prove valuablefor future design practices and contribute to ongoing research on information architecture in ecommerce, as AI continues to transform how users find and retrieve information online. Given thelimited number of participants (N = 12), however, the quantitative results should be regarded asexploratory and interpreted with caution rather than as statistically generalizable.

This study examines how the Riksbank’s policy interest rate has affected housing prices in Sweden during the period 2010 to 2025. Particularly interesting is this period due to it including both historically low interest rates, down to negative rates, and one of the fastest increased rates cycles in Swedish modern times between 2022 and 2023. Sweden stands out among European countries since a large share of Swedish mortgages have variable interest rates and households carry high levels of debt, meaning that interest rates changes affect household finances very quickly.

To examine this relationship, a VAR model is used, it is a statistical method for analysing how variables affect each other over time. The model includes three variables: the policy rate, housing prices measured by the HOX index, and household interest costs as a share of income. The third variable is included to capture the cash flow channel, meaning how rate changes affect households finances and their willingness to pay for housing.

The results show that housing prices fall when the policy rate is raised, with effects visible within 2 to 3 months and the strongest impact around 6 to 8 months. Household interest costs rise quickly after a rate increase, confirming that the cash flow channel is an important explanation for falling housing prices. Overall, the results support that the policy rate plays an important role in housing price development in Sweden.

This study investigates how displaced Myanmar female students experience belonging and exclusion within Thai public universities, and how they navigate the consequences for their visibility, narrative coherence, and sense of self. Following the 2021 military coup, growing numbers of young women have pursued higher education in Thailand under conditions of forced displacement, scholarship dependency, and legal precarity. Existing research has yet to examine the specific intersection of these conditions. The study follows a qualitative, interpretivist design. Data were generated through ten semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with Myanmar women aged 19–28 enrolled at Thai public universities, alongside four months of participant observation at Thammasat University in Bangkok and a field visit to Mae Sot on the Thai–Myanmar border. Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling, and the sample included Burman, Karen, Karenni, and Shan women across multiple academic disciplines. Data were analysed thematically through an integrated theoretical framework combining Hannah Arendt's space of appearance, Julia Kristeva's account of foreignness and narrative identity, and Andrew D. Brown's organisational identity-work perspective, read through an intersectional lens informed by Crenshaw and Collins. The findings demonstrate that non-belonging is not a condition that displaced students bring with them but one continuously produced by institutional environments. Six themes structure the analysis: non-belonging as institutionally produced, linguistic vulnerability, emotional fragmentation, performing gratitude, resisting stereotypes, and negotiating visibility. Together, these findings demonstrate that the university environment does not simply fail to include displaced students but actively produces the conditions of their non-belonging, with implications for how higher education institutions globally manage forced displacement. 

Research question: “How can commission tier structures affect the real estate agent’s incentives in relation to the client’s interests, and to what extent can the use of commission tiers create risks of misleading advice in connection with real estate brokerage?”

Purpose of study: The purpose is to analyze how commission tier structures relate to the real estate agent’s advisory responsibility and the principle of good real estate practice.

Methodology: The study applies a legal dogmatic method, complemented by a law and economics approach and elements of legal analysis. 

Theoretical framework: Principal-agent theory, information asymmetry, moral hazard, and utility maximization. 

Legal framework: Commission tier structures in practice, advisory responsibility, good real estate brokerage practice, and the precedential value of FMI supervisory decisions. 

Result: The study shows that commission tier structures are generally accepted within Swedish real estate brokerage law, but that this compensation model may create incentive conflicts through information asymmetry, principal-agent problems, and moral hazard.

Conclusion: Commission tier structures are not necessarily incompatible with the real estate agent’s advisory responsibilities or good real estate brokerage practice, but they may create risks of conflicts of interest and misleading advice, highlighting the importance of transparency and clear information disclosure. 

This thesis examines how the Dayton Agreement constructs representations of conflict,governance and political identity through language and institutional design. The study is guidedby Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach and draws uponpost-structuralist perspectives on discourse and power. The purpose of the thesis is to analyzehow the Dayton Agreement represents the Bosnian conflict and how these representationsbecome embedded within post-conflict political structures.Methodologically, the thesis employs a qualitative case study design based on qualitativedocument analysis of selected annexes and constitutional provisions of the Dayton Agreement.The analysis focuses on how political problems are constructed through representations ofethnonational division, territorial separation and institutionalized power-sharing.The main findings show that the Dayton Agreement represents the conflict mainly as a problemof ethnic division requiring continuous institutional management through separation, balanceand group representation. The thesis argues that the Dayton Agreement did not only end the warbut also institutionalized certain understandings of identity, governance and peace that continueto shape political and social life in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995.

This thesis examines how global biodiversity norms under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) are translated into New Zealand’s domestic governance framework. Instead of understanding implementation as a straightforward process of adopting international commitments, the study sees translation as a process of interpretation, adaptation, and institutional embedding within domestic political and governance contexts. Drawing on constructivist norm theory, especially Acharya’s concept of norm localisation, and policy transfer literature, the study analyses how global biodiversity norms are translated into national governance systems. Methodologically, the thesis conducts a qualitative case study based on a document analysis of key international and national biodiversity governance documents, including the KMGBF, Te Mana o te Taiao, New Zealand’s 2024 national targets submission, the Conservation General Policy, and New Zealand’s Seventh National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The findings show that technical biodiversity norms are translated mostly through alignment and operational adaptation, while governance norms that are connected to participation, Indigenous knowledge, and authority are substantially reframed through Treaty-based governance arrangements and mātauranga Māori. The study argues that the variation in the translation of biodiversity norms is an inherent part of how global biodiversity governance operates across domestic contexts.

With the advent of the second Trump administration, new directives and policies for border control and immigration restrictions have emerged through various facets of the United States government. This thesis will aim to analyze select policies and techniques of migration and essentially seek to understand how racist discourses concerning migration fuel and enable expansive new surveillance technologies that are used upon the American population. Such research will be conducted through a critical and qualitative discursive analysis that will seek to define both an identifiable discourse and the demonstrable effects of it. Official texts and press releases from both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be utilized as a source of migration discourse, with theoretical concepts derived primarily from Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe being used to define the possible racist and postcolonial nature of such discourses. With a discourse identified and subsequently analyzed, the analysis will turn to Mobile Fortify, a policing application used by the DHS, and how this new technology coincides with the racialized nature of the aforementioned discourse and its connection to racist concepts outlined in the chosen theories. 

Objective: The aim of the study was to compile and analyze scientific literature on xylitols effects on plaque and xylitols effects on caries in adults. 

Methods: The study was conducted as a general literature review. The search strategy was implemented in the databases PubMed and Scopus with search blocks xylitol, caries and plaque/biofilm. The selection of articles was based on title, abstract and a full-review of the articles, where only original articles that presented empirical data on adults were included. 

Results: Clinical studies in adults show that regular use of xylitol in the form of chewing gum can reduce plaque mass and levels of cariogenic bacteria, especially Streptococcus-mutans. In vitro-studies show that xylitol has an inhibitory effect on bacterial metabolism, growth, production of extracellular polysaccharides and can affect certain gene expressions linked to adhesion and virulence, although the total biofilm mass is not always reduced. Clinical studies investigating xylitols effects on caries in adults are few. Some studies show that xylitol can reduce caries increments, while other studies show no significant difference compared to the control group. 

Conclusion: Xylitol can affect biofilm directly through antibacterial effects, but also indirectly through reduced acid production and thereby changing the biofilm environment. Despite this, more long-term clinical studies are needed to clearly establish the clinical effects of xylitol on plaque and caries in adults. Xylitol therefore appears primarily as a potential complement to established preventive measures rather than an independent caries prevention method. 

The aim of this literature study was to investigate current research on the significance of apoptosis in the interaction between cells in the periodontal supporting tissues. The material and method consisted of a narrative literature review in which scientific articles from the databases PubMed and Scopus were analyzed. Only peer-reviewed studies on apoptosis, a regulated form of cell death, in periodontal supporting tissues in humans were included. The selection process was carried out in several stages based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. After full review, a total of 9 articles from PubMed and 3 articles from Scopus were included in the study. The selection process was conducted by two independent reviewers to reduce the risk of bias. The included studies were quality assessed using established appraisal templates adapted to the study design. The results were analyzed and compiled in a structured manner. The results showed that apoptosis plays a central role in the communication between periodontal cells and immune cells through the release of cytokines and other inflammatory mediators, which consequently contribute to chronic inflammation and tissue degradation. Increased apoptosis in gingival fibroblasts, periodontal ligament cells, and osteoblasts leads to impaired tissue structure, alveolar bone loss, and disease progression. Apoptosis-related proteins, such as caspases, were associated with increased disease severity. At the same time, studies indicate that reduction or modulation of apoptosis may contribute to preserved cell survival, improved bone homeostasis, and reduced tissue loss. The conclusion is that apoptosis constitutes a central mechanism in the pathogenesis and disease progression of periodontitis. Dysregulated apoptosis contributes to impaired cell communication, inflammation, and tissue destruction, while regulation of cell death may represent a future strategy for diagnosis and treatment.

The aim of this study was to examine the connection between parents’ attitudes towards dental care and their children's oral health. Parents’ knowledge and other factors such as their attitude towards dental care, as well as previous experiences with dental care, were of interest. The method used is a general literature review along with qualitative content analysis, with the aim of providing a summary of the current state of knowledge within the chosen field. The results show that factors such as oral health literacy, as well as knowledge, attitude and practice of parents play a major role in their children's oral health. Other factors found to influence children's oral health were socioeconomic conditions, parenting methods, the child's temperament, dietary habits and dental anxiety. The conclusion drawn from this study is that children's oral health habits are primarily formed at home and are dependent on what opportunities their parents have to contribute to good habits. Dental hygienists’ task is to contribute with support and knowledge to strengthen these abilities in parents, while also including their children and strive to give them positive associations with dental care.

This thesis analyzes how the German zeitenwende altered the German exercise of power towards Russia. German – Russian relations had since the 1970s been characterized by constructive diplomatic engagement and trade. Though, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine Chancelor Scholz held the famous zeitenwende speech where he labeled Russia as a threat and stated that German would start arming the Bundeswehr. The thesis applies poststructuralist though to emphasize discourse as a means of power. By conducting a Critical Discourse Analysis, the discursive shift constituted by the zeitenwende is established and how the exercise of power has altered. Moreover, subsequent speeches between 2023-2026 are evaluated to assess whether the zeitenwende policy shift happened once or has become institutionalized. Findings suggest that the discursive shift by the zeitenwende has become an established discourse across speeches from 2023-2026. Each of the speeches are intertextually anchored in the zeitenwende speech. A new hegemonic security discourse has thus been established where framing Russia as an enemy and militarization has become normalized. The exercise of power has thus changed from soft power to an increasingly hard power approach. 

Colour-blindness, the practice of avoiding or denying the societal relevance of race, has been identified within Swedish institutions, yet its expression with SFI, a state-funded language program intended to help immigrants integrate into Swedish society, has remained underexplored.  By conducting in-depth interviews with SFI teachers and 

using the theoretical framework of colour-blindness, this thesis seeks to explore how race is articulated and talked about within SFI.

The research identified colour-blind language in various forms. Teachers used evasive language that either indirectly described racial phenomena or explained them through the lens of other structural factors like economic or individual choices and outdated attitudes. Furthermore proxies like educational background and nationality were identified. 

The study contributes to the growing literature on Swedish colour-blindness in education and highlights the need for further research using observational methods across multiple municipalities.

This thesis investigates whether a general-purpose multimodal large language model (LLM) can be used for indoor localization by estimating the position of a query image on a floorplan without task-specific training or prior environmental knowledge. Indoor localization remains a challenging problem because many existing solutions depend on dedicated infrastructure or prior mapping. A general-purpose multimodal LLM is therefore interesting to investigate because it may offer a low-setup alternative that uses visual and spatial reasoning rather than specialized localization hardware or training data.

An experimental study was conducted in a controlled office environment where the model was evaluated under varying conditions, including different prompt strategies, image types, number of query images, image quality and environmental settings. Localization performance was measured using Euclidean error distance, and both accuracy and consistency were analyzed across 432 test cases.

The results show that the model is capable of producing reasonable localization estimates in some cases, with a mean error of about 9 meters, but performance is highly variable and lacks consistency. Differences between prompt strategies were minimal, while environmental factors and image conditions had a more noticeable impact. The model demonstrated an ability to interpret structural and semantic features from images, but often struggled to distinguish between similar locations on the floorplan. Coherent reasoning explanations did not consistently correspond to accurate spatial predictions.

Overall, the findings indicate that the tested general-purpose multimodal LLM has potential for approximate, area-level indoor localization with low setup requirements, but was not reliable enough for precise positioning. The approach is therefore more suitable as a supportive component in a localization system than as a standalone indoor positioning solution.

Sammanfattning

Ring, Hanna (2026). Stöd i vetenskapligt skrivande för elever med språkstörning i gymnasieskolan – Lärares, elevstödjares och elevers perspektiv. Speciallärarutbildningen, Institutionen för skolutveckling och ledarskap, Fakulteten för Lärande och samhälle, Malmö universitet, 90 hp.

Förväntat kunskapsbidrag

Studien förväntas bidra med kunskap om utmaningar och stödstrategier i vetenskapligt skrivande i kursen svenska 3 för elever med språkstörning på högskoleförberedande program.

Syfte och frågeställningar

Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med kunskap om hur elever med språkstörning, lärare och elevstödjare uppfattar utmaningar och arbetar med språkliga stödstrategier i relation till vetenskapligt skrivande på högskoleförberedande program.

Frågeställningar

• Hur uppfattar och beskriver några lärare och elevstödjare med erfarenhet av att undervisa elever med språkstörning utmaningarna för elever med språkstörning i arbetet med texter av vetenskaplig karaktär?

• Hur arbetar lärare och elevstödjare med språklig tillgänglighet för elever med språkstörning i arbetet med texter av vetenskaplig karaktär?

• Vad beskriver några elever med språkstörning som utmanande och vilka strategier uppfattar de ger stöd i arbetet med texter av vetenskaplig karaktär?

• Vad uppfattar lärare, elevstödjare och elever som centralt för att förbereda eleven inför vidare studier?

Teori

Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår från det sociokulturella perspektivet och kompletteras med Nilholm och Göranssons diskussion kring olika nivåer av inkludering samt Nilholms dilemmaperspektiv.

Metod

Studien är kvalitativ och genomfördes med semistrukturerade intervjuer och tematisk analys. Urvalet av informanter var målstyrt. Sju personer, tre lärare, tre elever och en elevstödjare intervjuades utifrån en intervjuguide.

Resultat

Studiens resultat visar att det akademiska språkets ord och begrepp samt att hantera en stor mängd text är en utmaning för elever med språkstörning i arbetet med den vetenskapliga texttypen. Lärarna i studien förenklar inte undervisningen för elever med språkstörning utan arbetar med språklig tillgänglighet genom ordlistor och visuellt stöd i form av text- och språkmallar. Det senare uppfattar eleverna som ett effektivt stöd.

Studien visar att ett högt stöd vid hög utmaning är viktigt, och kan öka möjligheten för elever med språkstörning att bli delaktiga i en lärandegemenskap. Resultatet visar dock att lärarna upplever ett dilemma då man uttrycker osäkerhet kring elevernas förmågor utan ett högt stöd och kring huruvida eleverna är förberedda för fortsatta studier.

Specialpedagogiska implikationer

Eleverna i studien uttrycker ordkunskap som ett område där deras språkliga sårbarhet är särskilt tydlig, och ett större fokus på att utveckla det akademiska ordförrådet och skolspråket kan leda till ökad lärandegemenskap för elever med språkstörning. Studien visar också att om visuella stödinsatser i form av textmallar används flitigt kan de autonomiseras hos elever med språkstörning, vilket innebär ett högt stöd vid den höga utmaning som den vetenskapliga texttypen är. För att elever med språkstörning ska komma in i en lärandegemenskap behöver dock textmallen fungera medierande och inte enbart som en visuell bild eller som rubriker. I speciallärarens uppdrag på gymnasiet bör därför ligga en strävan efter att så tidigt som möjligt öka elevers möjlighet att ingå i en akademisk lärandegemenskap, samt att utveckla ett långsiktigt tänkande kring stödstrategier för dessa elever, så att de får så bra förutsättningar som möjligt inför vidare studier.

Background: Mental health problems are common among adolescents and may affect oral health. Aim: The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between mental health and oral health in adolescents aged 10-19 years. Method: A general literature review with a total of 12 articles that were analyzed and reviewed based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Result: Among adolescents, mental ill-health was associated with reduced oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL), unfavorable oral health behaviors, and variations in clinical conditions. Factors such as psychoactive substance use, bullying, and dental anxiety were identified as contributing to impacts on toothbrushing habits and diet. Conclusion: Mental ill-health is associated with oral health through impaired oral hygiene behaviors, dental care habits, and oral health-related quality of life. 

Aim: The purpose of this literature review is to examine how previous research describes the effect of non-surgical periodontal treatment on long-term blood sugar in people with type 2-diabetes.

Material and method: This literature review compiles existing research within the chosen topic. The study is based on ten quantitative articles. The search was conducted in PubMed and Scopus.

Results: This study shows that non-surgical periodontal treatment reduces long-term blood sugar in patients with type 2-diabetes. The study also shows that non-surgical periodontal treatment with adjunctive treatments further lowers long-term blood sugar regarding laser therapy, antiseptics such as chlorhexidine and povidone iodine and systemic antibiotics.

Conclusion: The conclusion indicates a significant association between non-surgical periodontal treatment and reduction of long-term blood sugar in patients with type 2-diabetes. The result also shows an improvement in long-term blood sugar when adjunctive treatment has been used together with non-surgical periodontal treatment.

Spridning av kromosompreparat på objektglas är en kritisk process inom cytogenetiken och en avgörande faktor för kvaliteten på preparaten inför analys av kromosomavvikelser. Syftet med denna studie var att utvärdera och optimera kromosomspridningen inför implementering av automatiserad utrustning. Studien undersökte hur temperatur, luftfuktighet, lutning och fuktighet på glaset påverkar kvaliteten på kromosomspridningen. Studien undersökte även hur spädning av preparat samt appliceringsvolym påverkade kromosomspridning på glas utan lutning. Parametrar som utvärderades var celltäthet, preparatets utbredning över objektglasets yta, kromosomernas spridning i förhållande till varandra samt längden på kromosomerna. Resultaten visade att lutande glas gav en mer optimal celltäthet, vilket förbättrade spridningen och längden på kromosomerna, medan glas utan lutning resulterade i en högre celltäthet som gav en sämre spridning av kromosomerna. Dessutom påverkade temperatur och luftfuktighet resultatet, där hög luftfuktighet och temperaturer tenderade att förbättra spridningen och längden på kromosomerna. Spädning av proverna bidrog till en mer optimal celltäthet för glas utan lutning. En ökning av appliceringsvolym bidrog till en ökning i utbredning av preparat över objektglasets yta men gav samtidigt en försämrad spridning av kromosomerna. Studien identifierar nyckelparametrar för optimering av kromosomspridning och har bidragit till en ökad förståelse av hur experimentella förhållanden påverkar kromosomspridning, vilket ger en grund inför implementering av automatiserade metod.

The paper looks into the sequential pictorial storytelling on the record sleeves for Santana Lotus, the most expanded packaging for a set of records so far - released in 1973, its twenty-two pages of pictorial narration are unsurpassed according to the Guiness Book of World Records.

Before going into the details of the pictorial storytelling of Lotus, the functions of record packages are introduced briefly, the packaging is described in respect to its protective function as a wrapping to the records themselves and regarding its communicative function. This paper focuses on the way in which pictorial and textual information is provided, and a visual narrative is developed, the extend to which it connects or adds to the musical content is discussed more briefly, as there is not that much to discover for this example.

The chosen package and its visual content are especially well suited to allow us to reflect on the functions of record sleeves as it goes so far beyond the average record sleeve in its illustrative or narrative intent. It illustrates how the package is part of the narrative set-up of an album: the importance of the sleeve especially for a concept album - just like Sgt Pepper's by the Beatles as the first concept album had showcased. The visual design helps to create an atmosphere and adds narrative content that frames the experience of the music on the records themselves. 

From a science of religion-perspective, the combinations and braiding of motives and symbolic references might provide syncretistic suggestions of similarities between the referenced religions and beliefs. For research into narrations and myth-making around selected religious motifs, themes, and figures (and even their mystification), visualisations of syncretistic perspectives allow to understand the underlying references and cultural processes better. The visual narrative provided on Lotus illustrates the search for some inclusive religious feeling that transcends individual religions, confessions, and beliefs - an issue that was dominant at the time of release of the records and - though subdued - remains current, usually more sophisticated in details and argument now, including elements of religions that were not part of the visual programme on the Lotus-package.

But the engagement with these belief-systems or religions appears superficial, first in the very choice of these motives, second in the specific visualisations used: They seem put into place mostly because of their pictorial style, colours, and forms, not because of their meaning within the logic of their religious narrations or the cultic myths around the figures shown. They do not contribute any message: There is no argument put forward about salvation or redemption nor any other issues that religions usually are concerned with. 

This thesis examines how Norway, Russia, and the United States securitize Arctic energy resources and emerging trade routes in official state discourse, and what explains the divergence in their securitization strategies. Despite facing broadly shared material conditions: retreating sea ice, opening shipping routes, and increasingly accessible energy reserves,  the three states construct Arctic security in fundamentally different ways. The study applies securitization theory as developed by Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde (1997), extended through Balzacq's (2011) institutional approach and Stritzel's (2014) localisation argument, and operationalises it through qualitative discourse analysis of a corpus of 22 official policy documents produced between 2013 and 2026. The analysis finds that Russian securitization is structurally integrated and presidentially anchored, treating sovereignty over the Northern Sea Route, energy reserves, and military presence as a single indivisible national interest justified through a logic of defensive escalation. Norwegian securitization is distributive and people-centred, maintaining a cooperative rhetorical frame alongside unprecedented military investment, producing a productive tension between stated preference and actual policy trajectory. American securitization is trajectory-defined and dual-adversarial, remarkable less for its current content than for the speed and completeness of its transformation from environmental stewardship to zero-sum strategic competition over roughly a decade. The study concludes that divergence in Arctic securitization is explained by three factors: strategic position, institutional structure, and audience orientation, rather than by differences in material conditions. The relationship between securitization and militarization is found to be non-linear and case-dependent. Desecuritization is identified as an active political resource across all three cases, preserving discursive space for de-escalation even as military commitments expand. The findings contribute to comparative securitization theory and Arctic security studies by providing an explanatory account of cross-national variation that goes beyond single-case description.

This thesis examines how Finland sustains economic cooperation with China while deepening its security alignment with Western institutions following its NATO accession in 2023. It addresses the puzzle of why economic engagement persists despite intensifying geopolitical competition.

The analysis draws on Foreign Policy Analysis and International Political Economy to explain how foreign policy emerges from the interaction between domestic actor preferences and structural economic conditions. It focuses on how security-oriented and economically oriented priorities are articulated, negotiated, and stabilised within Finnish policy.

Methodologically, the study applies qualitative content analysis to government reports, policy documents, and public statements from 2017 to 2026. It examines how policymakers frame and justify the relationship between economic interdependence and security concerns in official discourse.

The findings show that Finland does not prioritise one objective over the other but instead maintains a dual-track approach. Economic engagement with China is preserved due to its continued importance for growth and competitiveness, while security policy is increasingly shaped by geopolitical risk and alignment with Western institutions. This coexistence is sustained through policy practices that allow different priorities to operate in parallel.

The thesis argues that foreign policy coherence is not the result of a unified strategy, but of ongoing domestic negotiation under conditions of economic interdependence and strategic constraint.

Across Europe, the forty to fifty million people who provide informal care to relatives increasingly do so through digital health systems that were not designed to accommodate them. In most countries, no formal mechanism exists to make that role legitimate. Informal caregivers share credentials, use patients' devices, and attend appointments in person just to access information that should be reachable digitally. This is not an individual failure, nor a technical one. It is a structural condition that existing systems were not designed to see.

This project investigated how interaction with digital health systems can be designed to support the gradual and negotiated delegation of access between patients and their informal caregivers, within eHealth infrastructures where formal proxy mechanisms are absent or inadequate. It was conducted through Research through Design across Spain, Italy, and France, three countries chosen because each represents a distinct stage of the same unresolved problem. Twenty-three participants took part across three phases: contextual inquiry, co-design workshops with patient and caregiver dyads (pairs in which both members of a caregiving relationship participated), and think-aloud evaluation of a medium-fidelity prototype.

Three findings shaped the design. Informal caregivers have built sophisticated parallel documentation systems, handwritten notebooks, shared folders, phone notes, because the official system provides no equivalent. An expert participant who is simultaneously the information architect of the Andalusian Health System and an informal caregiver confirmed that revocation of delegated access is technically trivial and was never designed as a user-facing function not because it could not be, but because no one imagined it would be needed. And most consistently across every complete dyad: the research session was the first occasion on which participants had discussed the delegation of digital health access directly. Across relationships of five, ten, and fifteen years, the conversation had not happened. No system, and no caregiving relationship, had created the conditions for it to occur.

These findings produced a design response covering three interaction flows: configuring delegation, modifying and revoking it, and acting as a delegate while contributing structured observations to the clinical record. Twenty-five design principles were synthesised from the fieldwork, fifteen confirmed across participant profiles, delegation types, and national contexts. The think-aloud evaluation corrected the design in three specific ways: a new screen that resolved a critical perspective-shift failure, the removal of a severity classification that placed clinical judgment on the informal caregiver, and the replacement of pre-selected permission defaults with named starting configurations. In Research through Design, these corrections are not incidental; they are the mechanism through which the prototype produced knowledge that workshops alone could not generate.

The project contributes on two levels. At the level of design knowledge, the twenty-five principles constitute a transferable framework for anyone designing delegated health access. At the level of theoretical contribution, the prototype operationalises Nissenbaum's concept of contextual integrity through mechanisms that existing systems do not provide: a relational identification field that encodes the norm of the specific caregiving relationship rather than a generic proxy category; a granular permission structure that allows the patient to calibrate access to match the actual norms of that relationship; and an attributed observation channel that preserves the distinction between patient-generated and caregiver-generated clinical data. Two principles document where interface design reaches its boundary: the policy threshold that currently excludes the entire sample from formal delegation rights, and the structural absence of contingency networks that no delegation interface can substitute. The barriers are not technical. They are design decisions that were made without the informal caregiver in the room, and that this project has attempted to make visible and designable.

 Between December 2024 and January 2026, Donald Trump, first as president-elect and from 20 January 2025 as president, pressed the Kingdom of Denmark for control over Greenland, refusing to rule out the use of military force. Despite acute security dependence on the United States, Denmark publicly defied the alliance hegemon: joining ad-hoc European multilateral statements, deploying multinational forces to Greenland, and covertly preparing to demolish Greenlandic airfield runways in the event of US invasion (DR Nyheder, 2026b). This thesis asks why a small NATO ally so dependent on US security defied the United States. Drawing on Kupchan (1988), three competing hypotheses: balance-of-power, collective action, and pluralist, are tested through a single-case congruence analysis on a purposive small-N corpus of 26 diagnostic documents. No single hypothesis accounts for the case in full; each captures a distinct dimension. The alliance security dilemma explains the political motive; a shadow-institution refinement of collective-action theory explains the institutional form (NATO was bypassed because the US controlled its consensus rule, forcing resistance through ad-hoc European venues and the EU); and the over-determined Danish domestic configuration, anchored by Rigsfællesskabet, explains the political space.

Traditional gender roles result in women who are members of transnational criminalorganisations (TCO) and commit crimes often not being perceived as a security threat. Toclassify them as a security threat, they must either be de-securitised or have their femininitydenied. Furthermore, the study examines how national and international documents framewomen differently. To address the problem, this study seeks to understand how convictedwomen’s framing affects the perception of them as a security threat. To address the relevance,a discourse analysis is applied using the theoretical framework of feminist securitisation theory.The findings indicate that the portrayal of women is often associated with stereotypical gendernarratives and that there is a significant difference between national and international framingof female members of transnational criminal organisations.

This study examines how condominium buyers interpret financial information presented in housing association annual reports, and how they assess relevant risks associated with purchasing a condominium. Previous research shows that financial literacy has a significant impact on individuals’ ability to make well-informed financial decisions.

The aim of this study is to investigate how condominium buyers reason about financial information in relation to a condominium purchase, with a particular focus on how they perceive potential risks. The data collection was conducted through nine semi-structured interviews with individuals who have previously purchased a condominium in Sweden. The interviews were carried out both in person and digitally, and the collected data was analyzed using a thematic approach.

The results show that the majority of respondents perceived themselves as having a basic level of financial understanding. However, many respondents did not feel fully confident in independently interpreting the financial information presented in annual reports and therefore relied on external support, such as family members, colleagues, bank representatives, and real estate agents. Furthermore, the findings indicate that previous experience of purchasing a condominium contributed to increased confidence in interpreting financial information, although it did not necessarily result in a complete understanding of its content and implications.

The adaptive reuse of properties with cultural and historical value is an important strategy inurban development, and the new legislation means that transformations of such buildings arelikely to become increasingly more common.This study aims to examine how different stakeholders reason about the future use of difficultheritage, through a case study of the Institution of Kirseberg in Malmö, in order to identifythe opportunities and limitations that emerge in the transformation process.The case study is based on a qualitative methodological approach using semi-structuredinterviews with a purposive sample of individuals who possess particular connections to orknowledge of the site and the property. To ensure validity and reliability, the study wasconducted using a systematic and transparent approach, along with careful transcription.The results of the study show that the future development of the Institution of Kirsebergcannot be reduced to the selection of a single function. Instead, a long-term sustainablestrategy appears to depend on a gradual, flexible, and mixed-use transformation process inwhich the building’s physical conditions, cultural heritage values, social needs, and economiccircumstances are integrated.The main opportunities lie in strengthening local identity and creating social activity thatmakes the property a more integrated part of Kirseberg, while the major constraints areidentified as high redevelopment costs, the building’s technical conditions, such as access todaylight and stormwater management, as well as conservation requirements and the complexbalance between economic viability and the preservation of cultural heritage values.The findings indicate that transformations of difficult heritage involve complex trade-offsbetween multiple aspects, while a historically charged past does not necessarily constitute abarrier but may also contribute to place identity and development potential.

The aim of this study was to investigate how foreign-born women experience that their gender, ethnicity and education affect when they try to establish themselves in the Swedish labor market and to identify the structural and social obstacles they encounter.To answer the study's purpose and research questions, the study was based on six semi-structured interviews with foreign-born women living in Sweden. The collected material was analyzed using an intersectional perspective and human capital theory to gain a deeper understanding of how different factors interact and shape the women's experiences.The results show that the participants experience several challenges in relation to the labor market. These difficulties are both individual and structural, including, for example, language barriers, discrimination, lack of social networks and difficulties in getting their education and previous work experience recognized. The results also indicate that many women feel the need to constantly prove their competence and value in working life. At the same time, the study highlights the importance of education, support systems and social networks to facilitate establishment and inclusion in the labor market.The study concludes that foreign-born women's opportunities in the labor market are influenced not only by individual factors, but also by structural inequalities and societal norms. Therefore, greater efforts are needed to promote inclusion, reduce discrimination, and create more equal opportunities in the Swedish labor market.

 This thesis examines how the United States frames its security cooperation with Kurdish actors in Iraq across four crisis episodes the 1991 humanitarian intervention, the 2014–2016 anti-ISIS campaign, the 2017 independence referendum, and the 2025–2026 US–Iran confrontation and through what discursive mechanisms it simultaneously supports and limits Kurdish political standing. Using qualitative content analysis with elements of frame analysis, the study codes seventeen official documents from US and Kurdish sources using a seven-category framework capturing partnership, security necessity, legitimacy-by-performance, territorial integrity, non-recognition, conditionality, and dialogue language. The findings reveal a structurally recurring pattern: crisis conditions generate partnership and legitimacy-by-performance framing that constitutes functional recognition, while sovereignty risks trigger territorial integrity, non-recognition, and conditionality language that bounds it. This pattern is not contingent on a single crisis but is embedded in the US–Kurdish relationship across thirty-five years, confirming that recognition in international politics operates as an ongoing discursive practice rather than a binary legal act.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia worldwide, signifi-cantly raising the risk of stroke, heart failure, and mortality. Early identification is crucial,yet paroxysmal AF, which occurs in brief, often asymptomatic episodes frequently goesundetected during routine clinical visits, as standard short ECGs are unlikely to capture anintermittent arrhythmia. This creates a dangerous diagnostic gap: patients may suffer anAF-related stroke before the underlying condition is ever identified.This thesis proposes a machine learning pipeline for predicting Paroxysmal AtrialFibrillation (PAF) risk from normal sinus rhythm ECG, without requiring the observationof any AF episode. Using the Saitama Heart Database of Atrial Fibrillation (SHDB-AF), a publicly available Japanese Holter ECG database with beat-level manual rhythmannotations, we extract time-domain, frequency-domain, and nonlinear heart rate variability(HRV) features from 10-minute AF-free windows using the Python NeuroKit2 library. ARandom Forest classifier with recursive feature elimination (RFECV) and patient-levelmajority voting is trained to distinguish PAF patients from non-AF patients based solely ontheir normal-rhythm HRV profile.All evaluations are performed under Leave-One-Subject-Out cross-validation to ensurethat reported results reflect genuine generalisation to unseen patients. The final modelachieves a patient-level AUC of 0.911, a macro F1-score of 0.90, a PAF sensitivity of 95%,and a specificity of 85% across 40 patients (20 PAF, 20 non-AF). Nonlinear HRV features,particularly DFA alpha1, the Cardiac Sympathetic Index (CSI), and the SD1/SD2 ratioemerge as the most discriminative predictors, consistent with the hypothesis that PAFpatients exhibit chronic autonomic dysregulation detectable during sinus rhythm.The proposed clinical workflow, a short ECG at the point of care, accompanied byalgorithmic risk stratification, followed by selective referral for extended Holter monitoringhas the potential to substantially improve PAF detection rates before the condition manifestsas stroke, offering a practical and interpretable complement to existing deep learningapproaches for AF management.

 The production and use of concrete and cement in the construction industry have a

substantial negative impact on the climate. As a response, 3D-printed concrete has been

developed to improve resource efficiency and reduce material waste.

The 3D-printing process is based on a layer-by-layer principle, where each layer must

develop sufficient strength before the next layer is applied. At low temperatures, curing

is delayed, increasing the risk of permanent damage if the concrete doesn’t reach 5 MPa

before freezing.

This study analyzes the curing process of 3D-printed concrete under three ambient

temperatures: 0°C, -5°C and -10°C. Wall thickness is also varied between three

standardized printing dimensions: 20x10 mm, 40x10 mm and 50x10 mm, resulting in

nine different cases.

The cases are modelled in CALFEM using a two-dimensional finite element model with

transient heat transfer calculations. The temperature progression is used to calculate the

equivalent time required to reach critical strength, based on curing development curves.

The temperature development was compared with another calculation for concrete with

a cast at -15°C, to validate the model’s reliability. The comparison indicated that the

model has reasonable cooling behavior but did not fully validate the model’s reliability.

The results show that all wall thicknesses reach critical strength at 0°C. However, at -

5°C and -10°C, none of the cases reach critical strength within the studied time period.

At -10°C, the temperature falls below 0°C before 24 hours, indicating a risk of

permanent damage. The study shows that wall thickness and ambient temperature are

critical factors in the curing process. Protective measures are therefore necessary to

enable concrete printing under low temperature conditions and ensure sufficient early

strength development.

The purpose of the study is to investigate both what lies behind students' choices for the craft program with a focus on hairdressing at high school and hairdressing students' motivation within the professional subject of hairdressing. The study's research questions - What motivates students to apply for hairdressing education at high school? and - What factors influence their decision to either continue or discontinue their career as a hairdresser after graduation? The study started with a pilot study using questionnaires. 73 respondents in the third grade participated from eleven schools spread across Sweden. The questionnaire responses provided support for the study's interview guide. A qualitative method in the form of semi-structured interviews with ten respondents was conducted. Five have continued in the profession or decided to continue as a hairdresser and five who have left the profession or decided not to continue as a hairdresser. The study's results show that the motivation to apply for hairdressing education has a lot to do with the student's own interest in hair and beauty. There has been interest in the profession since childhood. The study also shows uncertainty within the profession and a desire for continued further education in hairdressing after graduation, which is lacking in Sweden. Finally, the study shows that the design of workplace-based learning (wbl) is the main reason why hairdressing students in the current study continue or leave their profession. Workplace-based learning has also had an impact on the hairdressing students' professional skills and the path to a professional identity.

Sweden has a unique policy of psychological defence stemming from the post war period in which the state, civil society and the population bear different responsibilities of the defensive efforts. Using a Poststructural theoretical framework and a genealogical analysis, this thesis investigates the origins of these responsibilities and how they represent an ideal identity production, and how the term psychological defence has been operationalised through analysis of governmental reports from 1953, 1980 and 2020. The results showcase how the main objectives of maintaining defence willingness and combatting foreign disinformation has been continuous throughout the policy’s history with changes in their level of importance and respective responsibility. Geopolitical tensions, technological developments and Sweden’s historic neutrality are shown to have been drivers of these changing responsibilities in the policy. The analysis concludes that certain moral components between prepared and unprepared are created through problem representation, yet it is argued that it is inconclusive to state that the policy is producing an ideal identity. 

Money laundering in Sweden is a growing societal problem, and commercial real estate has been identified as an attractive sector for integrating criminal profits into the legal economy. This is due to its high transaction values, complex ownership structures and the possibility to create legitimate income streams through rental revenues. Despite increased attention to money laundering within the real estate sector, there is still limited knowledge regarding how companies within the real estate sector in reality perceive and manage these risks. 

The study is based on a qualitative research approach, where empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with transaction advisors and representatives of the anti-money laundering departments within the banking sector. The empirical material was coded and analyzed using thematic analysis, supported by three central business administration theories: Stakeholder theory, asymmetrical information and Principal-agent-theory. 

The findings show that commercial real estate can be used as a tool for money laundering, for example through decoy front men, complex owner structures and the creation of seemingly legitimate cash flows through rental income. A central finding is the strong trust in Swedish banks. Several respondents view banks Anti money laundering and Know your customer processes as an important control mechanism. At the same time, the study indicates that this trust may lead to a shift in responsibility between the parties involved in the transactions. As some rely on the banks controls rather than conducting their own verification of the parties involved in the transaction. The study also identifies potential risks that economic incentives may cause parties to deprioritise their responsibilities in the background check. 

In conclusion, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenge the involved parties faces in efforts to prevent money laundering within the commercial real estate sector.