One of the most important aspects of the marriage legislation in medieval canon law is the doctrine of free choice. According to this doctrine, established by pope Alexander III in the second half of the twelfth century, the validity of a marriage depended solely on the freely given consent of the parties. Neither family nor witnesses, not even the presence of a priest were necessary to form a val

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the situation of male teachers in the day-to-day work of pre-school, taking into account the fact that men are underrepresented in this profession. The methodic field is qualitative. Video recordings and interviews have been carried out with the fourteen male pre-school teachers who have participated in the project. Some of these men work together w

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most common form of epilepsy among adult patients, and the most problematic one as seizures cannot be controlled by currently available drugs in 30 % of patients. Gene therapy based on overexpression of endogenous anti-epileptic agents such as the neuropeptide galanin and the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) represents a promising new approach

The main contribution of this thesis is approximation algorithms for several computational geometry problems. The underlying structure for most of the problems studied is a geometric network. A geometric network is, in its abstract form, a set of vertices, pairwise connected with an edge, such that the weight of this connecting edge is the Euclidean distance between the pair of points connected. S

This study challenges the prevailing assumption that the expansion of cultivated land areas and increasing number of livestock in the agro-pastoral regions of northern China have aggravated the process of land degradation since the start of the rural reforms in 1978. Land-use and productivity trends in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), with special attention to the Keerqin steppe region

In this thesis the role of cartilage proteins and their potential as antigen and availability to the immune system in arthritis were investigated. Six papers are included; where four present new animal models for Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), one shows how genetic disorders in cartilage may affect arthritis and the last how posttranslational modification of collagen type II (CII) affects tolerance. P

This thesis explores the relationship between the position, function and semantics of the German particle "also" (?so?). Traditionally, "also" is classified as a conjunctional adverb because it can fill the position in front of the finite verb in the German clause, the so-called "Vorfeld" (?pre-field?). In this position, it has a meaning similar to that of a conjunction but a distribution similar

During moisture uptake in polymers, the diffusion of the water molecules is believed to occur via unoccupied voids. These voids are called free volume cavities and their sizes are continuously altered when the moisture content in the polymer is enhanced. Not only the free volume cavity sizes, but also other polymer properties such as the degree of crystallinity, are changed as a consequence of moi

Understanding of the growth of fatigue cracks is of utmost importance since such growth often has a profound influence on the life of components subjected to cyclic loading. Thus, reliable fatigue life models enable a more efficient use of materials and improve the performance and efficiency in many applications. This thesis deals with the growth of fatigue cracks subjected to high load amplitude

The aim of this dissertation is to address a paradox: government control and social freedom on China's Internet are growing simultaneously. The study, which is based on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2006, and 48 interviews, seeks answers to the following two questions: 1. How can Internet use contribute to an unlocking of the public sphere, making it more independent from party-state contro

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the role of visibility in the production and contestation of belonging to political communities. On the basis of an empirical enquiry of Russian media during the 2010s, a theoretical conceptualization of the relation between visibility and belonging is suggested, starting in the idea that what becomes visible to publics and how, and what is rendered i

In order to produce fuel ethanol from lignocellulose, it is necessary to hydrolyse the sugar-containing constituents hemicellulose and cellulose. During acid hydrolysis, a number of compounds are formed or liberated in addition to the fermentable monomeric sugars. Several of these compounds might act as inhibitors during the fermentation of the sugars to ethanol. Thus, in order to obtain high etha

It is important to replace fossil resources such as oil, coal and natural gas with renewable raw materials for the production of materials and fuels in order to reduce environmental impact. Furthermore, these raw materials should preferably be residues, e.g. agricultural or forest residues, in order not to compete with the production of human food and animal feed. High molecular weight arabinoxyla

Three main themes are outlined in this thesis: Polyelectrolytes/DNA : In a living cell, DNA molecules have a compact conformation in order to fit in, while in a test tube they will take on an expanded cylindrical shape, due to the negative phosphate groups along the DNA molecule. With the help of computer simulations it has been shown that like-charged monomers of a poly- electrolyte can attract

A network of perivascular nerve fibres was demonstrated in coronary arteries and veins from guinea-pig and man. Nerve fibres displaying immunoreactivity to neuropeptide Y (NPY) had a distribution pattern similar to those containing immunoreactivity to tyrosine hydroxylase. Immunoreactivity to substance P and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) occurred in the same varicose nerve fibres, which w

Plasticity induced damage evolution is considered using a thermodynamical approach. Different postulates on how to include the effects of damage in the constitutive equations have been studied. The results reveal that a mapping, similar to that of the stress, of both the kinematic and isotropic hardening variables is to be preferred. The undesired property that, irrespectively of the postulate emp

New measurements of the elements Ba, Fe, Ga, In and Ru are reported. The analysis of barium contains new wavelengths, improved energy level values and new values of the ionization limit in both Ba I and Ba II. Oscillator strengths and radiative lifetimes in Fe II, as a part of the FERRUM project, are reported. The gallium analysis includes new wavelengths, ab initio calculated oscillator strengths

The xanthophyll cycle involves the light-dependent and reversible conversion of violaxanthin to zeaxanthin. The enzyme, violaxanthin de-epoxidase (VDE) catalyses the conversion of violaxanthin to zeaxanthin, via the intermediate antheraxanthin. VDE is a membrane-hosted enzyme during its activity. Low lumenal pH, violaxanthin, ascorbate and monogalactosyldiacylglycerol are required for activity. Th

The fundamental question in this work concerns the ideal relation between asceticism and society in a 5th c. writing (C.E.), the Philotheos Historia (PH), written in elaborate Greek by the learned bishop of Cyrrhus, Theodoret. This collection of saints’ stories tells about the lives of a number of ascetics who lived in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, many of them close to Antioch. As these n

A route from epoxy alcohols to cis- and trans-trisubstituted vinylaziridines has been developed. The vinylaziridines have been used as substrates in the base induced aza-[2,3]-Wittig rearrangement to substituted 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridines. The influence of the anion-stabilising group on the reaction outcome has been investigated and it was found that tert-butyl ester enolate promotes a clean conv