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Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease, characterized by the accumulation of lipids and fibrous tissue in the wall of medium and large-sized arteries. The characteristic culprit of the disease is the atheroma, or atherosclerotic plaque, a patchy thickening of the arterial wall which affects the lumen, inducing various degrees of stenosis. The rupture of the atherosclerotic plaques, foll
In this thesis we explore and further develop several techniques used in the animal laboratory as well as in the clinical setting. In particular, we expand the understanding and usefulness of plethysmographic techniques in small rodents. Study I shows that the pressure signal from an un-restrained plethysmograph (UP) depends largely on heating and humidification of the inhaled air. This brings int
In this thesis, I have studied nitrogen turnover processes in watermeadows. A watermeadow is a wetland where water infiltrates through the soil of a grassland field. It is hypothesized that infiltration of water through the soil matrix promotes nutrient transformations compared to surface flow of water, by increasing the contact between water, nutrients, soil organic matter and bacteria. I have st
This thesis consists of three self-contained empirical studies on international financial economics. The common economic theme is that all three studies deal with international stock market return and risk. The common econometric theme is that all estimations are performed using simulated annealing, a stochastic optimization algorithm in the Markov Chain Monte Carlo family, in an attempt to solve
The planning and design of street networks in cities influence driving behaviour and give rise to variations in driving patterns (i.e., speed and acceleration profiles) that affect exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. The primary objective of this study has been to use real-life driving patterns to investigate how the characteristics of street networks influence fuel consumption and vehicular e
Local anaesthetics provide excellent pain relief after central and peripheral nerve blocks. However, in many clinical situations there is an insufficient duration of action to allow effective treatment of long-term pain with single injection techniques. This problem became the focus of the present studies. The natives in South America used to chew the leaves from Erythroxylon Coca and were well aw
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Few studies have demonstrated that bacterial vaginosis (BV) is associated with sexual behavior risk factors similar to those for other sexually transmitted diseases. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of these factors in a multivariate analysis of data from women infected with BV and Chlamydia trachomatis, and noninfected control subjects. GOALS:
In linkage analysis or, in a wider sense, gene mapping one searches for disease loci along a genome. This is done by observing so called marker genotypes (alleles) and phenotypes (affecteds/unaffecteds) of a pedigree set, i.e. a set of multigenerational families, in order to locate the loci corresponding to the underlying disease genes or, at least, to narrow down the interesting genome regions. I
Objectives: Smoking has been associated with higher disease activity and poor response to anti-tumour necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We wanted to study the effect of smoking on response to therapy, disease activity measures, and drug survival in RA patients starting their first anti-TNF drug. Methods: In 2005, RA patients in a voluntary rheumatology
