This chapter discusses the possibilities of ethnographic film for studying migration and movement due to conflict. It is based on anthropological fieldwork and a long-term ethnographic film in progress called “Bread and Salt,” featuring 26 years of footage. The film starts in Little Waterfall, a remote village in Syria’s Aleppo province, introducing two cousins and their families, as well as the anthropologist’s role in the village. After a massacre in 2013, some villagers became refugees in Europe, while others were displaced within Syria. Through the application of anthropological methods, such as participant observation, interviews and ethnographic film, the initial research field in one locality, shifted to a multi-sited, translocal and transnational field by necessity, because of the impact of the Syrian war. The film shows the filmmaker searching for missing villagers in northern Syria and reuniting with family in the Netherlands and Germany. The final part depicts life after fleeing, highlighting family reunification and the impact of the Syrian regime's fall in 2024, exploring the ethical issues faced during research. Through a translocal lens this chapter offers reflections both on how im-mobilities influenced the methods, positionalities of researcher and the ethical dilemmas that emerged within these conflict dynamics.

Engineering legend sheets are vital in Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects, visually defining complex assemblies. Automating information extraction from these legends can significantly reduce manual effort, yet their spatially ambiguous layouts pose barriers to digital transformation. To address this, we introduce ICICLE (In-Context Interactive Cue-guided Legend Extractor), a Generative AI system for parsing these documents. ICICLE's core innovation is the In-Context Multimodal Annotation Prompting (ICMAP) method. This technique instructs a Vision Language Model (VLM) by providing a single annotated visual example alongside a textual prompt. This enables the VLM to ground abstract concepts like "detailed assembly"in visual evidence, making the system adaptable without per-query annotation or costly model retraining. Validated on legend sheets from four industrial projects, ICMAP achieved superior extraction accuracy (96-100%) compared to established alternatives and demonstrated robustness across varied visual examples. An ablation study confirms that the tight coupling of visual annotations and textual instructions is critical for success. ICICLE serves as a successful case study for operationalizing Generative AI, offering a blueprint for solving complex information extraction tasks in challenging industrial domains.

As many cities are increasingly threatened by natural disasters, the study of evacuation and population behaviour during those disasters is identified as a crucial point by many stakeholders and researchers. As the environment is very important in those studies, integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data into an Agent Based Social Simulation (ABSS) marks a significant step forward in crisis modelling. However, it also introduces a key challenge: adapting highly detailed spatial data to reduce environmental complexity while preserving the essential information necessary to approximate higher-resolution environments. Drawing on two disaster evacuation scenarios using different spatial data structures, namely graph-based and grid-based representations, this paper proposes an original methodology to address this challenge. The proposed methodology, HoMer (Homogeneous Merging), provides a structured approach to reducing spatial resolution while retaining crucial information and striking a balance in computational scale for environments that afford agent-environment interactions. It is composed of a three-step framework: (1) attribute reduction, (2) merging of spatial entities, and (3) evaluation of the output. Our results demonstrate that HoMer makes it possible to identify an appropriate ABSS resolution for a given project while maintaining maximum data integrity.

We study the watchman route problem for a set of two watchmen for the objective of minimizing the length of the longest route (min-max) inside a simple polygon P having n vertices, which is known to be weakly NP-hard. First, we consider seeing a discrete set of m points in the interior of P. We show that even this problem is weakly NP-hard and present an approximation algorithm with approximation ratio 2 + ε that runs in O(m5n) time, assuming that a starting point for each of the two routes is given. We generalize the algorithm to see all of the interior of P in O(n6) time with approximation ratio 2 + π/2 ≈ 3.571, improving on the previously known best algorithm that has an approximation ratio of ≈ 6.922 and runtime O(n2) [8]. Finally, we describe how to extend this algorithm to the case where no starting points are given, this taking O(n8) time, yielding an approximation ratio of 3 + π/2 ≈ 4.571, improving on the previously known best approximation algorithm with ratio ≈ 5.969 also having runtime O(n8) [8].

Background – Over the last decades alcohol intake has decreased among the Swedish men but been on the rise among the women, thus leading to an increased risk of alcohol dependence (AD) and related consequences among the Swedish women. The aim of this study was therefore to compare the mortality between women with AD and population-matched controls. Method – Data were retrieved from the medical records of 2, 037 women with AD at the Addiction Centre in Malmö in 1970–2013 and followed up until 2019. They were matched by sex, age, and calendar year with a control group from the general population in Region Skåne. For persons who died during follow-up, death certificates were obtained from the national registers to obtain time and cause of death. The mortality was compared between the groups as observed vs. expected, cumulative survival was assessed by comparing the survival rates of the women with AD to those of the control group. The cumulative survival was calculated as observed compared to expected. Results – The cumulative survival and standardized life expectancy were significantly reduced for the women with alcohol dependence compared to the matched controls; T1/2 = 21 vs. 11, p < 0.05 and OR 1.9 CI 1.73–2.02, respectively. More women with alcohol addiction passed away due to accidental and intended causes of death (15.5% vs. 2.8%, p < 0.05). Their cause-specific mortality was significantly increased for mental health disorders, respiratory and digestive diseases, but significantly lower for cardiovascular and cancer diseases. Conclusion – This study showed that the mortality among Swedish women with long term alcohol dependence was significantly increased, thereby suggesting a need for a special focus on this group.

This paper offers an introductory reflection on the workshop track of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2026, outlining the key questions and perspectives that emerge from it. Participatory Design (PD) is a growing international academic and practice-based field, with an extensive body of work addressing a wide range of questions surrounding the idea of designing together [14]. Across these developments, one practice consistently sits at the core of PD: The workshop. Workshops constitute intentional moments of engagement with others within research and professional projects. This paper introduces the workshop track of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC) 2026, framed by the theme Peace, Dialogue, Coexistence. Building on the historical role of workshops within PD, we approach creating a workshop track for the conference as temporary democratic infrastructures where participation is staged, negotiated, and critically examined. Twelve workshops were selected within four thematic clusters: (a) Living Together Beyond the Human; (b) Place, Spatiality, and Situated Participation foregrounds; (c) Conflict, Dialogue, and Peacebuilding; and (d) Narratives, Emotions, and the Politics of Participation. Across these trajectories, workshops are understood as designed situations that distribute agency, structure tension, and materialise future conditions for coexistence. Significally, the workshop track at PDC 2026 reveals a constellation of experimental practices concerned with how participation can infrastructurally support plural forms of living together.

This Situated Action proposes the building of a correspondence archive, initiated by Pelle Ehn, and now expanded towards the PDC community. In this proposal, we turn from the archive's current focus on peace, dialogue, and coexistence towards a generational turn that considers the need for expressing and making space for dissent, disagreement, and disillusionment. In a world in disarray, we turn to unpacking our own participation in systems of oppression and rethinking the role of participatory design in those same mechanisms. This action encompasses the making and starting of an archive in honour of the conversations that need to happen between us to build the dialogue and coexistence we dream of in our utopias.

Scholarship on refugee transnationalism has long framed refugees’ attachments as gravitating toward either their country of origin or destination. This binary framing, however, overlooks how some refugees maintain simultaneous lives across borders. Drawing on repeated interviews with Ukrainian women who fled to Germany after the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion, we show that refugees at times live in two countries at once and explain why transnational living is possible. Uncertain whether to return to Ukraine, many maintained footholds in Ukraine through tending to property, cross-border remote work, and dual schooling of children, while establishing lives in Germany. We foreground structural factors, like digitalisation, that enable transnational living, challenging the assumption that it requires geographical mobility. We also highlight how socioeconomic background facilitates transnational living. Yet, our longitudinal material shows that transnational living is not static. As the war persists, we observe a gradual shift from sustaining lives in Ukraine to a stronger orientation toward Germany. This research challenges linear understandings of forced migration, highlights the role of socioeconomic positioning in shaping refugee experiences, and calls for further investigation into the implications of transnational living for both refugees and protection systems.

This study compares deep learning models for point-level anomaly detection in multichannel satellite telemetry data. Raw event-based telemetry was converted into segment-based multivariate time series without windowing or feature extraction, allowing models to learn system behavior at each time step. Preprocessing included channel alignment, training set-based normalization, missing value imputation, and temporal label smoothing, while Focal Loss and segment-level oversampling addressed class imbalance. Five architectures, BiLSTM, BiGRU, Transformer, Hybrid BiLSTM–Transformer, and Hybrid BiGRU–Transformer, were evaluated, with thresholds optimized on a validation set. The results show that hybrid models combining recurrent networks and attention mechanisms effectively capture both short- and long-term dependencies. The standalone BiGRU model achieves the highest overall classification performance in terms of F1 score and accuracy. In contrast, the Hybrid BiGRU–Transformer architecture does not outperform BiGRU in classification metrics but provides superior temporal stability, improved boundary sensitivity, and better interpretability in anomaly detection tasks.

This study presents a phenomenological estimation framework for a membraneless alkaline water electrolyzer (MAWE), developed primarily from experimentally measured current signals and end-of-test mass-loss data. Thirteen KOH concentrations (5–35 g in 1 L deionized water) were investigated under a constant 12 V DC supply for 7200 s. The time-varying current was continuously recorded throughout each experiment, while the total gas production was determined from the net mass loss measured at the end of the electrolysis process. A time-resolved hydrogen-production representation was subsequently reconstructed from the measured current signal using Faraday’s law and constrained to be stoichiometrically consistent with the experimentally observed total mass loss. The term “charge-consistent” used throughout this study does not imply a new electrochemical principle, but rather refers to maintaining physical consistency between the experimentally measured current signal, Faraday-based charge transfer, and the experimentally observed end-of-test mass loss within the proposed phenomenological framework. Experimental results indicate that both the current response and the cumulative gas production exhibit a strong and distinctly nonlinear dependence on the KOH concentration. Two phenomenological modeling approaches were examined. The first is a static polynomial formulation describing the nonlinear relationship between the measured current signal and the reconstructed production rate. The second is a semi-empirical grey-box formulation in which the Faraday-based theoretical production term is corrected using an experimentally identified efficiency coefficient. Model performance was assessed using train/test data partitioning, residual analysis, autocorrelation functions, and Ljung–Box tests, demonstrating a high degree of internal charge consistency and macroscopic agreement with the reconstructed experimental representation. The proposed framework provides a reduced-order and experimentally accessible approach for representing reconstructed production behavior in MAWE systems without resorting to detailed multi-physics modeling or EIS-based characterization and offers a physically consistent baseline for comparison with more complex data-driven or control-oriented modeling strategies.

Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is widely used to probe macromolecular structures in solution, but conventional analysis often relies on low-resolution models that overlook chemical and molecular details essential for understanding protein behavior in biological and food systems. We present a methodology that integrates high-resolution SAXS modeling with AlphaFold-predicted oligomeric assemblies to enable hypothesis-driven structural interpretation under complex and physiologically relevant conditions. Using pea globulin as a model system, we test an hybrid approach across a temperature gradient to capture transitions from native globular assemblies to unfolded conformations. Association is described using structure factors, and thermally unfolded states are represented through rigid-body refinements. This strategy may provide more precise characterization of proteins across diverse conformational conditions. Furthermore, by applying a structure factor it could offer deeper insight into oligomerization, unfolding, and processing-related phase transitions. By bridging computational prediction with experimental scattering data, this approach allows for testing at high resolution a variety of structural assumptions, and could improve our understanding of the structural changes occurring due to environmental stimuli.

Growing awareness of the environmental impact of conventional detergents has driven interest in eco-friendly cleaning methods, such as the use of purified water as a sustainable washing medium. Recent studies show that purified water can effectively remove olive oil from hydrophilic surfaces through roll-up and bulk mechanisms, while pH-adjusted or enzyme-enhanced purified water can clean hydrophobic surfaces efficiently. However, the effect of purified water grades on bacterial viability remains largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate the viability of the bacteria Limosilactobacillus reuteri after washing with different grades of purified, non-purified or pH-adjusted water. In addition, bacteria were exposed to purified and non-purified water grades for varying incubation periods. The bacterial viability and growth were assessed using isothermal microcalorimetry, introducing this technique for quantifying bacterial survival after washing treatments. The key parameter used for bacteria quantification was the thermal power extrapolated to the start of exponential growth. Calorimetric analysis revealed that bacterial viability was lower in all tested treatments compared to the control and decreased with increasing numbers of washing cycles. Repeated washing reduced cell viability across all samples, while the growth rate of the surviving bacteria slightly increased. Moreover, prolonged incubation in the various water grades resulted in further reductions in both viability and growth rate, with the strongest effect observed in MQ water. Overall, these results indicate that exposure to purified water imposes significant stress on bacterial cells. While purified water grades have been proposed as an eco-friendly washing method in recent years, the effects on bacterial viability remain unexplored. By applying isothermal microcalorimetry to this problem, our study provides both new methodological insights and initial evidence for using purified water to develop a fully effective cleaning approach.

In this study, we developed a leakage-free time-series machine learning framework to improve the accuracy of short-term (10 min ahead) wind speed forecasting. The measurements were obtained from real operational data collected at the Bandırma/Balıkesir wind power plant in Türkiye. The framework incorporates chronological train validation test splitting, causal missing data imputation, leakage-free feature engineering, and supervised lag-based modeling. Such a leak-proof design is crucial to avoid future information influencing the training and testing process of models, thus making the forecasting process more realistic and reliable in practice. We tested several models, including persistence, Support Vector Regression (SVR), Least-Squares Gradient Boosting (LSBoost), Random Forest (RF), Elastic Net (ELASTIC), and a stacking ensemble, and evaluated their performance using Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), R-Squared (R2), bias measures, and skill scores, complemented by diagnostic analyses including residual distribution, autocorrelation, regime-based evaluation, Bland–Altman plots, and Quantile Quantile (Q-Q) plots. Our analyses showed that the Elastic Net model achieved balanced and statistically consistent performance, with a test RMSE of 0.6325 m/s, R2 = 0.977, and negligible bias. Residual analysis indicated that errors were centered around zero, exhibited weak temporal dependence, and followed an approximately normal distribution in the central quantiles. Regime-based evaluation revealed that the model performed strongly in medium- and high-wind-speed conditions, while accuracy decreased under low wind speeds due to measurement uncertainty and low signal-to-noise ratios. Feature importance analysis indicated that previous wind speed was the dominant predictor, with solar irradiation and air temperature also contributing significantly. Forecast error decomposition showed that most prediction errors arose from natural atmospheric variability, with minimal systematic bias. The Diebold–Mariano test confirmed that ELASTIC statistically outperformed conventional machine learning models such as SVR and Random Forest. The proposed framework demonstrates statistically consistent short-term forecasting behavior that may support operational wind energy management and grid balancing applications.

Climate, and especially cities with hot climatic conditions, directly impact human life. In this study, hourly datasets from the central meteorological station in Diyarbakır city center for the years 1990–2022 were utilized. These data were analyzed using RayMan Pro-2.1 software, and Physiological Equivalent Temperature values were derived. The obtained Physiological Equivalent Temperature values were analyzed using the SARIMAX model implemented on a machine learning infrastructure to uncover the changes between 2022 and 2050. According to the results obtained, the Physiological Equivalent Temperature value, which was 15.42 °C in 1990 in real terms, increased by 21.3% to 18.66 °C in 2022. According to the SARIMAX model predictions, Physiological Equivalent Temperature values in 2022 are estimated to rise to 21.42 °C by 2050, reflecting an increase of 14.79%. The aim of this study is to examine the temporal variations in human bioclimatic comfort values and provide a foundation for future predictions. This will contribute to the development of urban master plans by local and administrative authorities.

We report the AC electric field-induced directed assembly of 10 mol% crosslinked ionic microgels at various effective volume fractions, investigated using confocal microscopy and small-angle neutron scattering. At low effective volume fractions, in an electric field, the microgels form strings, tubes, and islands of body-centered-tetragonal structures. While tubular structures have previously been reported for intrinsically anisotropic particles such as ellipsoids or bowl-shaped colloids, analogous assemblies have not been observed for initially isotropic hard or soft particles. Small-angle neutron scattering experiments under the so-called zero-average contrast conditions were carried out to obtain the single-particle size and structure as the microgels align along the direction of the field. The P(r) analysis of the small-angle neutron scattering data reveals a clear signature of elongated ellipsoidal particles. A fuzzy-ellipsoid model was thus employed to fit the data, yielding aspect ratios ranging from 1.93 to 2.46 depending on the field strength and effective volume fraction. We therefore propose that the tubular assemblies observed at low effective volume fractions arise from field-induced shape anisotropy of the microgels. Our results demonstrate how external electric fields can dynamically induce particle anisotropy in initially spherical soft colloids, thereby enabling the formation of new self-assembled structures that are typically associated with anisotropic building blocks. We discuss the experimental phase diagram and compare our observations to the theoretical phase diagram for soft dipolar spheres.

Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from buildings is essential for climate change mitigation, with universities representing major energy consumers. This study develops a hybrid data-driven framework combining machine learning and simplified emission factor rescaling to predict campus-wide CO2 emissions. Nine machine learning models were comparatively evaluated under both cross-sectional and temporal validation settings. Among all evaluated models, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) demonstrated the most reliable predictive performance, achieving the best balance between prediction accuracy and generalization capability. Although the proposed physics-informed LSBoost_PI framework aimed to integrate physical priors with machine learning through residual correction, it did not improve predictive generalization under the limited sample conditions of the dataset. Time-series cross-validation further confirmed the ANN model’s temporal forecasting capability (RMSE = 2.13 ton/year, R2 = 0.985). To support trustworthy and interpretable machine learning, feature importance analysis identified CO2 intensity indicators (CO2/kWh and CO2/TEP) as the dominant drivers of emissions. The study also conducted an emission reduction assessment, revealing that a limited number of high-energy buildings dominate overall campus emissions. These findings provide actionable insights for campus-scale energy management, supporting targeted energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy integration strategies in high-emission buildings.

Automated visual inspection of photovoltaic (PV) cells is an important component of solar-module quality assurance. However, adapting modern pre-trained vision backbones to PV defect classification remains challenging because full fine-tuning requires substantial memory, naturally imbalanced datasets can reduce sensitivity to rare defect classes, and edge-oriented inspection workflows impose computational constraints. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods, such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) and Quantized LoRA (QLoRA), have been widely studied in natural language processing, but their use for PV defect classification remains underexplored. This study presents a controlled benchmark of LoRA and QLoRA against full fine-tuning for PV cell defect classification. Four adaptation strategies—full fine-tuning, LoRA with rank 8, LoRA with rank 16, and 4-bit QLoRA with rank 16—are evaluated using a ConvNeXt-Tiny backbone on a 17,377-image polycrystalline PV cell electroluminescence dataset referred to as POLY, covering five classes: intact, cracked, broken, surface-diffuse, and surface-point. The natural 6.7× class imbalance is preserved without synthetic resampling, and a group-aware StratifiedGroupKFold protocol based on available cell or panel-image identifiers is used to reduce identifiable leakage across folds. All PEFT variants slightly outperform full fine-tuning in macro-F1 while training 26–52× fewer parameters. QLoRA_r16 achieves the highest macro-F1 score of 79.92 ± 0.75%, compared with 78.26 ± 0.94% for full fine-tuning, while training the same number of parameters as LoRA_r16 (1.060 M; 3.67% of the adapted model). QLoRA_r16 also improves F1 on the intact (+4.75 points) and surface-diffuse (+2.62 points) classes relative to full fine-tuning. This class-wise pattern suggests that quantized low-rank adaptation may influence minority and visually ambiguous categories; however, the present experiments do not isolate the independent effect of NF4 quantization from adapter rank, batch size, or optimization dynamics. Under the training configuration used, QLoRA_r16 records the lowest observed peak training GPU memory, approximately 30% below full fine-tuning (1727 MB versus 2478 MB). Because QLoRA_r16 was trained with batch size 16 whereas the other methods used batch size 32, this reduction should be interpreted as an end-to-end configuration effect rather than as the isolated effect of 4-bit quantization. Overall, the results indicate that PEFT is a promising and resource-efficient alternative to full fine-tuning for PV defect classification, although batch-matched memory experiments, direct embedded-device profiling, and cross-dataset validation remain necessary before making deployment-level claims.

Electroluminescence (EL) imaging is widely used for photovoltaic (PV) defect inspection, yet fair comparison of deep learning backbones remains difficult because datasets, labels, and protocols vary across studies. This work presents a controlled image-level benchmark of six architectures (ConvNeXt-T, ViT-B/16, DeiT-B/16, Swin-T, DenseNet121, and MobileNetV3-Large) across five hierarchical tasks for monocrystalline and polycrystalline cells with binary and multi-class labels. A balanced proprietary dataset of 20,000 single-cell EL images was evaluated with identical preprocessing, augmentation, training, and stratified five-fold cross-validation, yielding 150 runs. ConvNeXt-T achieved the highest mean macro-F1 (93.12%) while using about one-third of the parameters of base ViT/DeiT models. On the four-class polycrystalline task, it reached 84.94 ± 0.45% macro-F1, compared with 70.08 ± 1.19% for DenseNet121 and 59.43 ± 1.71% for MobileNetV3-Large. Error analysis revealed conservative missed-defect behavior in lightweight CNNs, especially for surface-level degradation and crack categories. The results provide image-level cross-validation evidence for controlled benchmarking and motivate future module-level grouped validation.

Blockchain (BC) Technology is an important part of Industry 5.0 inventions for managing digital supply chains. The management of supply chains is a process of coordinating the smooth flow of goods, information and value from raw material to end user. With conventional supply chains facing increasing complexity, it is imperative that traceability and transparency be enhanced. By leveraging its unique features (e.g., being distributed, decentralized, immutable and transparent), BC technology has the potential to transform the supply chain sector. Prior studies analyze BC, smart contracts, Internet of Things (IoT), or Artificial Intelligence (AI) independently; this review integrates these fragmented strands into a unified, domain-specific perspective. The purpose of this review is to analyze the overall body of recent literature relative to the smart contracts, IoT, AI and consensus protocols for transparent and intelligent supply chain systems. Contributions made by this review include: (i) an overview of the challenges that exist within traditional supply chains and their respective domains; (ii) a discussion of the key enablers of BC that will enhance supply chain traceability and transparency; (iii) an explanation of how use of smart contracts, IoT and AI can address supply chain traceability and transparency problems; (iv) discussion of consensus algorithms, and on-chain/off-chain collaboration for supply chains; (v) an analysis of the theoretical, managerial and practical implications based on existing literature. The paper analyzed one hundred (100) studies published between 2019 to 2025. This research will provide essential knowledge to supply chain professionals regarding the potential of emerging technologies to establish a transparent Industry 5.0 supply chain infrastructure.

Background: Hemifacial microsomia (HFM) is a congenital craniofacial malformation characterized by unilateral hypoplasia of structures derived from the first and second pharyngeal arches. Although the phenotype is well described, the underlying etiology remains incompletely understood. Disturbances in embryonic vascular development have long been proposed as a potential mechanism contributing to the characteristic unilateral craniofacial phenotype. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. Searches were performed in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and CINAHL to identify studies investigating vascular mechanisms in hemifacial microsomia and related craniofacial microsomia phenotypes. Evidence from epidemiological, clinical, radiological, and genetic studies was synthesized narratively because of methodological heterogeneity. Results: Of 450 screened records, eight studies met the inclusion criteria. Epidemiological studies identified associations between HFM and maternal factors potentially affecting embryonic perfusion, including vasoactive medication exposure, maternal diabetes, multiple gestations, and second-trimester vaginal bleeding. Population-based data further demonstrated an increased prevalence of single umbilical artery and growth restriction among affected infants. Clinical and radiological observations described regional vascular abnormalities, including carotid artery attenuation. One genetic association study suggested interactions between pathways involved in vascular development and neural crest cell biology. Conclusions: The available evidence is consistent with a possible contribution of disturbances in vascular development to the pathogenesis of hemifacial microsomia, particularly in unilateral presentations. However, current evidence remains indirect and heterogeneous. Vascular mechanisms may interact with genetic susceptibility and neural crest cell biology within a broader multifactorial developmental framework. Further studies integrating genomic analyses, developmental models, and detailed vascular imaging are needed to clarify the role of vascular mechanisms in craniofacial microsomia.

Research has consistently shown that attitudes favorable to violence increase the likelihood of violent perpetration, including intimate partner violence (IPV). Exposure to violence is a key factor shaping such attitudes. This study examines Swedish youths' attitudes toward general violence and IPV in parallel, and whether exposure to violence is associated with these attitudes in similar ways. The study draws on longitudinal data from the Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study, collected through questionnaires between late 2011 and 2015. The sample consists of 387 adolescents. Attitudes toward general violence and IPV as well as exposure to violence were measured using self-reported questionnaire items. Logistic regressions were used to assess associations between exposure to violence and attitudes toward violence and IPV. Swedish youth generally disapprove of violence, although gender differences are evident for attitudes toward general violence. Exposure to violence was statistically significantly associated with attitudes favorable to general violence, particularly when exposure was recent or repeated. In contrast, exposure showed limited associations with attitudes toward IPV. The findings suggest that different mechanisms may shape attitudes toward general violence and IPV, highlighting the need for further research on the formation of IPV-related attitudes.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate whether differences exist in the number of oral neutrophils between snus users and non-users. A secondary aim was to evaluate a method for measuring total neutrophil count (TNA) in the oral cavity using mouth rinse samples in combination with flow cytometry.

Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine participants (15 snus users, 14 non-users; aged 19–31 years) were included. Mouth rinse samples were collected using sterile phosphate-buffer saline and analyzed by flow cytometry. Clinical assessments included bleeding on probing (BOP) and grading of snus lesions. Statistical analyses were performed using the Mann–Whitney U test and correlation analyses (p < 0.05).

Results: The mean TNA was 26,733 neutrophils/ml, with substantial inter-individual variability. No statistically significant difference in TNA was observed between snus users and non-users (p = 0.9029). However, a statistically significant association was found between the severity of snus lesions and TNA (p = 0.046), with higher lesion severity corresponding to higher neutrophil counts. No significant correlations were identified between TNA and duration of snus use, daily consumption, or BOP.

Conclusion: No significant difference in TNA was observed between snus users and non-users. However, a significant association between the severity of snus lesions and TNA was identified. The use of mouth rinse samples in combination with flow cytometry appears to be a simple and non-invasive method for assessing oral neutrophils. Nevertheless, further studies with larger sample sizes are required to confirm these findings.

Aim: Based on the current state of knowledge, to explore the use of personal protectiveequipment (PPE) and identify factors contributing to avoidable waste within student clinicalsettings at the Faculty of Odontology, Malmö University.Materials and methods: A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a literaturereview (RQ1), analysis of purchase data (RQ2), and an empirical observational study (RQ3).Purchase data on single use products was analyzed for 2023-2025 in Malmö Universitydental clinics. Clinical observations were conducted over two days at two student clinics fromtwo different clinical disciplines (endodontics and periodontology respectively), whereobservers recorded PPE use in real time during four hour sessions. Reasons for doffing werecategorized as either hygiene-related or logistics-related (e.g., retrieving supplies or seeking asupervisor).Results: The literature review shows 70% of research published the last decade waspublished between 2019–2022, though evidence levels for specific equipment choices arereported generally low. Notably, scientific evidence is lacking for the routine use of plasticaprons during a single-patient encounter when the risk of fluid splashes is assessed as low.Purchase data revealed a sharp increase in the number of surgical masks consumed, from 1.3per patient in 2023 to 3.3 in 2025. Clinical observations indicated that up to 33% of glovedoffing was driven by logistical factors rather than hygiene requirements, primarily due toretrieving supplies or contacting supervisors outside the treatment booth. Conclusion: Logistical factors directly impact waste levels during the various observedtreatments at the student dental clinics of Malmö University. By optimizing materialaccessibility and supervisor synchronization, single-use product consumption could bereduced to an estimated 5–33%, promoting more sustainable and economically efficientpractices across clinics with similar operational structures without compromising infectionprevention.

Objective: To analyse posts on TikTok and Instagram about clear aligners, advantages, disadvantages, costs, and how this compares to scientific studies.

Material and method: The search included databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus. On TikTok and Instagram, different search terms were used to locate relevant posts, with the inclusion criteria of at least 100 likes. The gathered data was analysed using the DISCERN questionnaire.

Result: The DISCERN-analysis of the 170 gathered posts resulted in a score of 2.45/5. These posts were published most often by laypersons (37.1%) and clinics (35.3%). Only 8.2 of posts included costs while 1.2% referred to any scientific source. Majority of the posts (63.5%)excluded the disadvantages; however, some discussed pain and pressure (10.1%), lisp (4.7%), socially awkward (4.1%), gingivitis (3.5%) and others (13.5%). Among the advantages mentioned were that clear aligners are invisible, removable, have no dietary restrictions, are comfortable, require fewer visits, and are easy to maintain oral hygiene.

Conclusion: Advantages of clear aligners prevailed over their disadvantages. They promised that they are invisible, aesthetic, comfortable, more effective and require fewer visits compared to fixed appliances. Most of the posts were made by either laypersons or clinics, with only a handful including costs and even fewer referring to scientific research. The side effects mentioned were also scientifically proven, such as pain, pressure, lisp and social awkwardness. This becomes an underlying liability of erroneous information being derived by social media users.

Aim: The primary aim was to investigate the impact of an asynchronous digital CPD course on objective knowledge of the 2017 AAP/EFP periodontitis classification among Swedish dentists and dental hygienists. The secondary aim was to measure satisfaction and subjective learning development. 

Method: The study was conducted as a single-arm study with two anonymous measurements: baseline and follow-up after 2–3 months. Participants were general dentists and dental hygienists at Smile Colosseum. After baseline, all participants were given access to a digital CPD course including a knowledge document, a digital lecture, and the web-based game PerioClass. On both occasions, SCQ and MCQ tests were performed. Format and satisfaction were evaluated at follow-up. Anonymization resulted in an independent sample analysis where responses were not linked to individuals. 

Results: Statistically significant improvements occurred at population level in both knowledge tests at follow-up. SCQ mean increased from 4.84 to 5.30 and MCQ from 9.34 to 10.90. Analysis by profession showed significant improvements only among dentists. Subjective diagnostic time decreased from 7.19 to 5.26 minutes. The game-based component was rated lower than other components. 

Conclusion: Results showed that an asynchronous digital CPD course is an adequate method for updating knowledge on the periodontitis classification. The course increased theoretical knowledge and reduced subjective diagnostic time. Higher clinical realism to increase pedagogical meaningfulness may be needed for the game-based component. 

Aim: The aim of this narrative literature review was to compile and evaluate the antibacterial efficacy of Salvadora persica (miswak) against oral pathogens.

Methods: A literature search was conducted via the PubMed database using MeSH terms related to S. persica and oral pathogens. Both in vivo and in vitro studies were included based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Full-text screening resulted in 15 relevant articles. A supplementary free-text search was also conducted in PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar to identify supporting literature for the introduction and discussion sections.

Results: In vitro studies demonstrated that S. persica exhibits antibacterial activity against specific oral pathogens. The effects varied depending on extraction method and preparation format, with methanol based extracts showing the strongest inhibitory activity. Intact miswak sticks (particularly from the plant root) demonstrated antibacterial effects primarily through direct contact with microorganisms. Suggesting that bioactive components are effectively released through direct contact. However, in vivo studies showed a more limited and selective effect compared to laboratory tests. Rather than a broad antibacterial effect, the findings indicate that miswak may play a protective role by enhancing leukocyte defense against specific bacterial toxins.

Conclusion: Salvadora persica exhibits potential antibacterial properties that may contribute to limiting the growth of specific oral pathogens and supporting the maintenance of oral homeostasis. Thus, it may serve as a complement to conventional mechanical hygiene. Despite strong evidence from in vitro-studies, further research and clinical application are required to determine optimal formulations and long-term clinical effects.

Dental caries is a very common, sometimes chronic disease globally, especially among children, and it affects both oral and general health. Despite preventive efforts, the problem remains widespread.

Aim: The aim of this literature review was to investigate the use and effect of fluoride toothpaste, as well as the effect of fluoride varnish on caries development among children aged 1–15 years. 

Method: A literature review based on 15 articles from the PubMed and Scopus databases.

Results: showed that regular use of fluoride toothpaste has a clear preventive effect, however, incorrect use is common. Fluoride varnish also reduces caries, particularly when applied regularly and in combination with other preventive measures. 

Conclusion: Both methods are effective, but improved knowledge and adherence are required to achieve optimal outcomes. Furthermore, the effect of fluoride may be influenced by other various factors such as, caries severity, treatment frequency and adherence to other preventive measures.

The proliferation of AI-algorithms prompts new questions for educating mathematics teachers in relation to critical perspectives and ethics. Critical Al-literacy which could be utilized for this, may however be dependent of dominant discourses in mathematics education. This article reports on a discourse analysis related to a teaching unit in mathematics pre-service teacher education. The teaching unit was on designing and conducting lessons on societal, critical, and ethical perspectives on AI. Drawing on Foucault's framework, three discourses were construed from documentation of the teaching unit. The diversity aware teacher discourse relates to managing the classroom, the keeping it real discourse relates to connecting teaching to society and pupils' experiences, and the enlightenment ideal discourse relates to epistemological considerations. The construed discourses are discussed in relation to the local pre-service teacher education institutional context, especially their relationship to values and perspectives that exist there. The discourses portray delimitations of what critical AI-literacy is allowed to become in this institutional context. Thus, the discourses represent how critical AI-literacy emerged there and how it fits within the institutional praxis.

Aim: The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of how the oral microbiome uses the salivary glycoproteins MUC5B, MUC7 and GP–340 as a source of nutrition. 

Material and method: This study is designed as a narrative literature review and is based on scientific publications retrieved from the medical database PubMed. Prior to the structured searches, scoping searches were conducted to gain a general understanding of the subject area, and to identify relevant search terms. Once the search terms had been established, structured searches were preformed followed by a two-step selection process, resulting in 11 included publications. Included articles were selected and analysed according to predefined inclusion- and exclusion criteria. 

Result and discussion: Saliva serves as an important nutrient source for oral bacteria, through the degradation of glycoproteins such as MUC5B, MUC7 and salivary agglutinin, GP-340. In the presence of salivary glycoproteins, oral bacteria induce proteolytic and glycolytic activities by stimulating specific enzymes. In addition, a full proteolytic and glycolytic activity requires a cooperative interaction of multiple species within the oral microbiome for the degradation of complex glycoproteins. 

Conclusion: The dual role of saliva in the oral ecosystem is more complex than traditionally recognized. It contributes to maintaining oral homeostasis through its antimicrobial properties and its role as a potential nutrient source for oral bacteria. 

Aim: To evaluate the awareness and attitudes of gastroenterologists about the connection between inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and oral diseases.

Material and method: Gastroenterologists in Sweden were invited to complete a self-administered survey consisting of 22 questions, divided into two parts. The first part collected general sociodemographic and job-related information, and the second part collected information on awareness of and practices regarding extraintestinal manifestations of IBD in general and with a special focus on oral manifestations. 

Results: Thirty-two of invited 166 gastroenterologists returned the survey, resulting in a 19.3% response rate. Thirty-one (96.9%) answered that the oral cavity may be affected by IBD. Seven (22.6%) usually ask IBD patients about their oral health when taking the medical history, 11 (35.5%) examine mouth and lips, 9 (29%) provide information about potential oral complications, 13 (41.9%) recommend a dental check-up regularly, 22 (71%) inform about special dental care allowance, and 20 (64.5%) have received previously a referral from a dentist due to suspected IBD. Twenty-nine (93.5%), 12 (38.7%), and 13 (41.9%) believe that aphthous stomatitis, periodontitis, and dental caries, respectively, are associated with IBD. No significant differences (p > 0.05) between participants’ demographic characteristics and clinical routines were found.

Conclusion: Gastroenterologists are in general aware that the oral cavity may be affected in IBD patients, but only about 12 respective 13 out of 31 gastroenterologists assume an association between periodontitis respective dental caries, and IBD. Furthermore, the general awareness of oral health issues is not well represented in their clinical routines; this seems to be independent of the years since graduation or how much they work clinically.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore older patients’ experiences and perceptions before,during, and after implant treatment using a qualitative research approach.

Material and Methods: A strategic sample consisting of ten participants who had receivedimplant treatment at the Faculty of Odontology, Malmö University, was selected. Semi-structuredinterviews were conducted focusing on participants’ experiences of the treatment process. Thedata were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: Following analysis, three categories were identified prior to treatment: Motivation,Professional Encounter, and Age. The decision to undergo implant treatment was primarilymotivated by the desire to restore adequate masticatory function and aesthetics, while supportiveprofessional interaction, clear information, and financial considerations influenceddecision-making. Some concerns were expressed regarding age, bone quality, and previousnegative dental experiences; however, professional communication contributed to trust.Two categories were identified during treatment: Trustful Care and Unpredictable TreatmentProcess. The treatment phase was generally perceived as safe and supportive. Most participantsdescribed the treatment as painless and free from complications, although the prosthetic phase andthe prolonged treatment duration were sometimes experienced as demanding.Two categories were identified after treatment: Improved Quality of Life and Oral Health-RelatedChallenges. After completion of treatment, participants reported improved quality of life,enhanced oral function, and increased self-confidence. At the same time, implants were perceivedto require more self-care than expected.

Conclusion: The study showed that older patients overall experienced implant treatment ashighly positive, with improvements in masticatory function, aesthetics, and quality of life.Implant placement was perceived as painless, whereas the prosthetic phase was consideredtime-consuming and occasionally unpredictable. Post-treatment self-care was experienced asmore demanding than anticipated. The findings emphasize the importance of clear and realisticinformation and of incorporating the patient perspective throughout the entire treatment process.The reliability of the study may be partially limited as participants were mainly treated withsimilar implant constructions (single and partial implants). Therefore, there is a need for futureresearch on older patients’ long-term experiences of implant treatment, as well as howcomorbidity, polypharmacy, and care setting influence treatment outcomes and patient experience.

Keywords: older patients, implant treatment, qualitative interview study, quality of life, oralhealth, patient experiences, expectations, prosthetic treatment.

Do we only seek community when we are in crisis? This thesis develops the original theoretical concept of prefigurative learning: the educational process through which repeated participation in prefigurative relations transforms individual and collective dispositions, producing capacities for collective judgment that persist independently of the crisis that originally created them. The Greek economic crisis from 2010-2018 and the Solidarity School Movement demonstrates not only how the educational communities that grew out of the crisis continued to exist but became greater and broader in the period following the crisis. Using secondary literature including sociological, ethnographic, and case-based accounts of the Solidarity School of Mesopotamia in Athens, the thesis presents a four-part analytic framework. The first part traces the etymological and philosophical origins of krinein, arguing that the capacity for collective judgment is not incidental to crisis but definitional to it. The second part describes how the Greek economic crisis created the conditions for prefigurative learning through the emergence of Solidarity Schools. The third part focuses on examining the internal educational logic of Solidarity Schools through the original concept of prefigurative learning, developed here using three different theoretical frameworks-habitus, exaptive learning and kritik- arguing that solidarity is developed as a civic skill through the building of collective practice rather than as a value embedded in a curriculum. Finally the fourth chapter grounds this argument in the philosophical work of Hannah Arendt, Freire, Bourdieu, and Korsgaard's education commons by demonstrating that the organizational logic of the commons is an intentionally designed institutional form for prefigurative learning that does not require a state of crisis as justification for existence but rather relies on a sustained political and educational commitment to keep it going.

This thesis argues that teaching cannot be adequately understood as a technical or instrumental practice and instead proposes it as a moral vocation constituted through ethical self cultivation, pedagogical presence, and the safeguarding of dignity. Taking contemporary Ghana as its point of departure, the study examines how structural accountability frameworks, including the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project and the informal pressures of BECE pass rates and School Performance Appraisal Meetings, can reduce teaching to measurable outputs while eclipsing its ethical, relational, and existential dimensions. Building on David Hansen's concept of the fusion of person and role, the thesis draws on Kant to ground dignity as the unconditional worth of persons, on Noddings to deepen the relational dimension of care and presence, on Li to expose how structural injustice erodes the basal and robust self respect that ethical teaching requires, and on Masschelein, Ricken, and Foucault to trace, through genealogy, how the ideal of Bildung, or self cultivation, can itself become entangled with power and normalisation. Gur Ze'ev's notion of Bildung as a negative utopia offers a final, unsettling counterweight, suggesting that under late modern conditions self cultivation may be sustainable only as a fragile, counter educational form of resistance, a "worthy suffering" rather than a harmonious achievement. The thesis combines conceptual analysis, philosophical genealogy, and autoethnographic testimony drawn from the author's own experience as a Ghanaian educator and administrator, using Ghanaian policy documents and lived case material, rather than empirical data, to give philosophical claims concrete purchase. It concludes that the tension between personal integrity and institutional demand is not a problem to be resolved but the generative condition of teaching itself, and it closes by considering what this means for teacher education, educational policy, and future philosophical inquiry into the educator as a human being rather than merely a professional role holder.

This thesis asks what happens to genuine caring in education when teaching moves online or is handed to artificial intelligence. It takes Nel Noddings’ ethics of care as its starting point. Noddings argues that education is, at its heart, a caring relationship. It requires a teacher who is genuinely focused on this particular student’s reality, and a student who recognizes and responds to that attention. The thesis develops the concept of digital care to describe what this kind of genuine caring looks like when it is practiced through digital tools, what conditions it needs in order to survive, and how it differs from the performance of caring that most online and AI- mediated education currently offers instead. 

Digital care, as this thesis defines it, is not caring with a different medium attached. It is not the performance of caring functions through digital tools. It is genuine caring-for enacted through a digital medium. It requires actual engrossment in the particular student’s reality, actual motivational displacement toward their projects and needs, and genuine completion of the caring relation in the student’s recognition and response. The medium is digital. The caring is real. The distinction between digital care and its institutional substitute, digital caregiving, is the distinction this thesis pursues across six chapters. 

The thesis makes four original contributions. First, it is the first systematic philosophical examination of Noddings’ ethics of care in relation to digital and AI-mediated education, asking not just whether the framework applies but what it actually requires and where those requirements can no longer be met. Second, it introduces the concept of relational attention. This is the idea that genuine caring presence does not depend on being in the same room as someone. What matters is whether a teacher is truly focused on this particular student as a person, not processing them as a data point. Relational attention can exist in a letter, an email, or a video call. It can also be absent in all of them. The concept gives educators and institutions a clear, practical standard for asking whether what they are doing counts as digital care or only its appearance. Third, it connects Noddings’ framework to the tradition of Bildung, the idea that education is not just about acquiring knowledge but about becoming a person, and argues that this kind of formation requires genuine human encounter that digital caregiving cannot provide. Fourth, and most originally, the thesis identifies what it calls the problem of unrequitable caring. Most discussions of AI in education ask whether AI can genuinely care for students. This thesis argues that the more urgent question runs the other way. Students can develop real emotional investment in an AI tutor. But because the AI cannot actually receive them, cannot be moved by who they are, and cannot complete a caring relationship from its side, the student is always giving care to something that cannot give it back. Over time, this shapes how students understand what caring feels like, and what they come to expect from it. 

The thesis uses Martin Buber’s distinction between genuine encounter and purely functional interaction to show why digital platforms tend to treat students as data rather than people, and why teachers who want to care genuinely must actively work against that tendency. It maps a spectrum from face-to-face teaching through letters, video calls, asynchronous platforms, and AI tutoring, asking at each point what caring can still look like and where it becomes impossible. Master's Thesis | 2 Eid, L.S.A. (2026) | Caring in the Digital Classroom Drawing on the philosophy of mind, particularly Searle’s Chinese Room argument, it grounds the claim that no current AI system can genuinely be present to a student in the way caring requires. The teaching triangle, developed from D’Olimpio, Gatley and Wareham (2025), shows that when AI replaces the teacher, the loss is ethical as much as it is pedagogical. 

The thesis concludes with a reconstructed framework built around the concept of relational attention, four principles for ethical digital education, and a developed account of what digital care requires from educators working in digital environments today. It ends with a reflection on what Noddings herself might have made of a world in which we might meet her, for the first time, over Zoom. The concept of digital care – understood as the practice of attentiveness, responsiveness, and relational responsibility in digitally mediated learning environments – is an original contribution of this thesis and remains an open field. Its empirical dimensions, design implications, and policy consequences are questions that future research will need to take up. 

This thesis is a philosophical inquiry into how the balance of power over a child's upbringing between guardians and the state affeccts the protection of the fundamental rights of the child.  The thesis begins with a defense of fundamental human rights.  In the second part of the thesis, the legitimacy of state power and its legitimate limits are explored using the framework of the "minimal state" as described in Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State and Utopia.  Finally, in the third part of the thesis, a society where parents have the power to make decisions about their children's education and the state has the power to protect children's fundamental rights is described.

This thesis develops an interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy as “pedagogy of redemption” centered on the human task of self-discovery and self-creation. It argues that individuals live behind forms of masking shaped by the inherited past through education, culture, and social values, concealing the possibility of realizing the true self, which Nietzsche presents as the telos of human existence. He nevertheless understands this condition as a necessary stage within human development. Through an analysis of immanent ethics, the thesis examines how individuals may overcome inherited limitations and move toward creation rather than conformity. Education is presented as the condition that initiates and sustains this entire developmental process, since it is through education that individuals first inherit the past and later acquire the capacity to reinterpret and transform it.

Central to this interpretation are Nietzsche’s theory of drives, the doctrine of eternal recurrence, and the three metamorphoses presented in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The organization of the drives is initially inherited through education and external structures but can later be transformed through a process of self-overcoming. Eternal recurrence is interpreted as a developmental and intergenerational process through which individuals and humanity continually reinterpret and recreate the past. This movement unfolds through the stages of the camel, the lion, and the child, which together describe the movement from inheritance, to negation, to creation.

The thesis further examines the figures of the redeemer and the destroyer, distinguishing between forms of education that enable self-realization and those that reinforce dependence on inherited values. By bringing these concepts together, the thesis presents Nietzsche’s philosophy as a coherent account of human transformation in which redemption consists in overcoming masking, reorganizing the drives, and becoming capable of creating anew.

This thesis explores the concept of trust in relation to the teacher in the setting of education in Swedish primary school. Drawing on Gert Biesta’s concept of the necessity of risk in education, it explores what may be at risk when trying to minimize risk in education by exchanging trust with measurement and control. To conceptualize trust, the thesis engages primarily with the work of Niklas Luhmann, Annette Baier, and Onora O’Neill. It takes trust as a fundamental condition in educational relations as a starting point together with trust contrasted to accountability and control.

 The thesis also includes teacher testimonies in the form of interviews which serve as a hub around which theories and questions revolve. This leads to exploring and discussing what we trust teachers to do, problematizing measurements and evidence-based practice in education and whether accountability can be a threat to responsibility and tact. 

 Ultimately, the thesis argues the importance of question-asking and a vital ever-continuing discussion about what we really want with education in order to find a balance between when and what is worth measuring and controlling and when what we risk losing from doing the same is not worth the cost. 

This thesis explores the role and notion of experience in education through a theory-based analysis, grounded in selected works by John Dewey and bell hooks. Dewey’s understanding of the said notion is explored in terms of experience as active and passive, direct and indirect, as well as its relation to imagination, while hooks’ approach is analysed through the concepts of experiential knowledge, the “authority of experience” and the elements of pain and passion within learning. The analysis is further expanded by incorporating relevant excerpts from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein(1818/2015), which intends to illustrate the theoretical perspectives presented. Followed by a case-based analysis of the notion of diversity as presented in the Swedish curriculum for compulsory school (Lgr22, 2024), to serve as a practical example where the theoretical lenses are applied. This analysis culminates in a discussion of “The Role of Imagination versus The Presence of Experiential Knowledge”, drawing on the ideas of Dewey and hooks. The findings of this discussion suggest a greater need for experiential knowledge in education than imagination alone. However, as the following personal reflection indicates, a synthesis is proposed: a combination of experiential knowledge, as the foundation for understanding experience in education, and imagination as a key pedagogical tool, developed through the addition of an intersectional approach, to enhance the overall learning process. 

Sammanfattning/AbstractDellenbo, A., Streblow, H. (2026). Kartläggning av elevers läsförståelse - Vad händer sedan? - En intervjustudie -. Speciallärarprogrammet, språk-, skriv- och läsutveckling, Institutionen för skolutveckling och ledarskap, Lärande och samhälle, Malmö universitet, 90 hp.

Förväntat kunskapsbidrag

Examensarbetet bidrar med kunskap om hur lärare i svenska/svenska som andraspråk, speciallärare och specialpedagoger beskriver vilka verktyg de använder vid språkliga kartläggningar i årskurs 4 och 7. Examensarbetet bidrar vidare med kunskap om respondenternas uppfattning om vem som analyserar resultaten, hur resultaten analyseras och hur de används i planering av pedagogiska insatser på organisations-, grupp- och individnivå.

Syfte och frågeställningar

Syftet med arbetet är att bidra med kunskap om vilka verktyg lärare, speciallärare och specialpedagoger beskriver att de använder vid kartläggning av elevers läsförståelse i årskurs 4 och 7 samt varför den språkliga kartläggningen genomförs. Studien syftar även till att undersöka hur lärare, speciallärare/specialpedagoger uppfattar att kartläggningen analyseras och av vem, hur den används för att identifiera elever i behov av extra anpassningar och särskilt stöd samt för att planera stödinsatser för att utveckla elevers läsförståelse.  

Följande frågeställningar undersöks:

1.     Vilka bedömnings- och kartläggningsunderlag uppger lärare i svenska/svenska som andraspråk samt speciallärare/specialpedagoger att de använder, och hur motiveras valet av dessa underlag enligt respondenterna?

2.     Hur beskriver lärare i svenska/svenska som andraspråk samt speciallärare/specialpedagoger analysarbetet av bedömnings- och kartläggningsunderlag på respektive skola?

3.     Vilka insatser uppger lärare i svenska/svenska som andraspråk samt speciallärare/specialpedagoger att de planerar att genomföra efter analysen av screeningresultaten för att utveckla läsförståelsen hos elever som identifierats som språkligt sårbara?

Teori

I studien används Bronfenbrenners ekologiska systemteori med mikro-, meso-, makro- ,  exo-, och kronossystem för att synliggöra hur olika funktioner och strukturer inom och utanför skolan samverkar och påverkar varandra i arbetet med elevers läsutveckling, som tillsammans med det sociokulturella perspektivet där språket används som medierande redskap samt Senges organisationsteori med dess fem element så som personligt mästerskap, gemensam version, systemtänkande, teamlärande och mentala modeller bidragit till att studien fått ett holistiskt perspektiv på både de undersökta organisatoriska och de pedagogiska processerna.

Metod

Studien har en kvalitativ ansats då semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem speciallärare/specialpedagoger, två lärare i svenska/svenska som andraspråk på mellanstadiet och fem på högstadiet genomförts. För analysen av empirin användes innehållsanalys där koder och kategorier identifierades utifrån respondenternas svar.

Resultat

Respondenterna från de skolor som ingick i studien beskrev att de använde sig av LegiLexi på mellanstadiet och DLS på högstadiet. Respondenterna beskrev också analysarbetet kring de genomförda språkliga kartläggningarna, och det visade sig att det såg olika ut på de undersökta skolorna. På vissa skolor (både mellan- och högstadium) analyserade bara speciallärarna/specialpedagogerna resultaten av screeningarna medan på andra skolor analyserades de av lärarna och speciallärarna/specialpedagogerna tillsammans. På mellanstadiet berättade respondenterna att resultaten användes mer strukturerat för att planera undervisningen då kartläggningsverktyget LegiLexi ger förslag på fortsatt arbete.Respondenterna beskrev att på högstadiet användes kartläggningsverktyget DLS nästan bara för att identifiera elever som befinner sig i språklig sårbarhet. På högstadiet planerades få insatser systematiskt och det förekom bara samarbete med speciallärare/specialpedagog kring undervisning i begränsad omfattning enligt respondenterna. Intresse för ett utökat samarbete mellan lärare och speciallärare/specialpedagog uttrycktes av respondenterna men bristen på tid, resurser och gemensam förståelse av innebörden av testresultaten identifierades av dem som centrala utmaningar för att utveckla undervisning, baserad på gemensam analys av kartläggningarna.Respondenterna på de olika skolorna uttryckte även att skolan som organisation skulle behöva arbeta systematiskt med regelbundna, schemalagda analysmöten där både lärare och speciallärare/specialpedagog samverkar och planerar undervisningen tillsammans. Såväl lärare som speciallärare/specialpedagoger uttryckte att speciallärare med inriktning språk-, skriv- och läsutveckling (SSL) spelar en central roll genom att vara en kvalificerad samtalspartner.

Specialpedagogiska implikationer

Studien visar att specialläraren med inriktning språk-, skriv- och läsutveckling (SSL) har en viktig funktion inom skolorganisationen för att förmedla kunskap om hur screeningsresultat ska tolkas och hur undervisningen i samråd med undervisande lärare kan planeras och utvecklas för att vara förebyggande för elever som befinner sig i språklig sårbarhet. Specialläraren (SSL) behöver bidra med kunskap om hur en gemensam organisation kan skapas som möjliggör gemensamma mötesplatser för kollegialt lärande, kontinuerliga träffar för att systematiskt följa upp undervisningen och insatserna snarare på gruppnivå än på individnivå för att öka hela skolans kapacitet att möta alla elevers förutsättningar.

Maintenance decisions in industrial fleets must balance the cost of unnecessary interventions against the higher cost of missed failures. This paper presents a cost-sensitive deep learning approach for the Scania Component X benchmark. Rather than predicting the original five degradation classes directly, the problem is reformulated as a binary task that identifies whether a vehicle is healthy or at risk based on recent operational data. The predicted risk score is then converted into a maintenance decision through asymmetric threshold optimisation under the official Scania 5×5 cost matrix. Three temporal deep learning models—CNN, Transformer, and Temporal Convolutional Networks—are evaluated under the same cost-aware training and decision setting. Results on real data from thousands of heavy-duty trucks show how cost-sensitive learning affects the trade-off between failure avoidance, maintenance workload, and total operational cost.

European Society of Endodontology har udarbejdet retningslinjer for behandling af pulpitis, som vi i denne artikel beskriver og vurderer fra et skandinavisk perspektiv. 

The study explores how adult students’ prior educational and occupational experiences are actualized within a technically oriented higher vocational education programme in Sweden. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital, and field, the study examines how previous experiences are expressed through students’ actions, strategies, and positioning, and how these relate to the norms, values, and legitimacy structures that characterize the educational field.

The study was conducted using an interpretive ethnographic approach, combining participant observations with follow-up conversations and semi-structured interviews. The empirical material was analysed thematically through a Bourdieusian relational perspective.

The findings show that prior educational and occupational experiences do not function as fixed assets that can be directly transferred into the educational setting. Rather, their significance is shaped by the norms, values, and legitimacy structures of the educational field. The analysis demonstrates how different forms of cultural, social, and symbolic capital are recognized and assigned varying value depending on the educational situation and task. The findings further reveal how students employ different strategies to manage uncertainty, navigate educational expectations, and position themselves within the social structure of the programme.

The study contributes practice-oriented knowledge about how vocational becoming is shaped through the interaction between adult students’ prior experiences and the conditions of higher vocational education. The findings highlight how the norms and legitimacy structures of the educational field influence which dispositions and forms of capital are recognized as legitimate and competent within vocational education.

The world of architecture as we know it today is an everchanging landscape where the built environment and its connection and interaction with the growing global population is in a constant state of growth and change. The connection between the built environment and human beings is formerly known as Urbanism, defined as the interaction between the human life and the many designs of the built environment.

The rapidly growing global population creates large cities with an increased density and concentration of inhabitants. The consequences of larger and denser cities result in an increasing and unsustainable consumption of natural resources in addition to the loss of usable space between and around buildings as the builings continue to grow in size and reach. The value of usable space as a resource is increased by the size and density of the city and it is therefore important to make use of the existing space, rather than replacing it with building projects.

To preserve the existing space in the urban environment requires an understanding of space as a concept in relation to the built environment. The built environment is one of the major players in climate change through the consumption, transport and usage of natural resources resulting in permanent consequences for us and our planet. These consequences come in the form global warming, an end to natural resources and in the context of this project, the loss of space as a resource in the urban environment. A word for this phenomenon is issued in this research project as Permanence, defined as an unchangable or irreversable action in relation to the context of the built environment. The permanence in this research project emphasises building projects such as buildings and infrastructure and how these large-scale structures in the urban environment stretches sustainability to its limits during the construction and maintenance phases of building projects. The phenomenon of permanence in this research project will therefore show how the human being is affected through changes in the urban environment.

The study of impermanance or rather, the Temporary, gives way to solutions not constrained by the permanent nature of architecture of today. This research project argues that applying temporary, short-term interventions in defective areas are needed as a possible alternative to permanence in the urban context. The use of a modular system through adaptive, designed for deconstruction, flexible and movable structures is the prefered approach to a temporary, short-term intervention in the urban environment.

The city of Värnamo, located in Småland, Sweden, is selected as a testing ground to see if the theory of modular intervention systems work in practice by applying the system to the three key locations of Prostsjön, Östbohallen and Värnamo Centrum. Each location in the city of Värnamo is selected due to their unique characteristics and challenges in the urban environment. Starting with application of interventions to the non-urban environment and ending with the application in the urban environment with an intervention in a third, semi-urban environment, inbetween the two. 

The conclusion of this research project gives way to a thesis where the implementation of modular systems in the urban environment works better as a complement to permanence, rather than the sole solution as there are many alternatives and ways of approach to counteracting permanence.

This thesis analyses the Nordic countries' security policy reorientation after Russia's full-scale

invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The focus is on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The

thesis aims to explain why the Nordic countries chose to apply for or confirm their

membership in NATO, and why their decision-making processes and motives differed.

Through a comparative study design, Stephen Walt's theory of threat balance is combined

with a constructivist perspective on security identity and securitization, and Charles

Hermann's theory of foreign policy change. The analysis shows that all Nordic countries

perceived Russia as an increasingly greater threat after 2022. However, factors such as

historical experiences, national identity, and previous doctrines influenced each country's

perception. Sweden and Finland were involved in the most extensive changes by leaving

military non-alignment. Denmark and Norway deepened their already established relations

with NATO. The thesis contributes to research on foreign policy change, alliance behavior,

and Nordic security policy in situations of changed security order.

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.