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Background: The menopausal transition is, for most women, accompanied by hot flushes and night sweats (i.e., vasomotor symptoms, VMS). VMS has been associated with a worsened cardiovascular risk profile, but whether VMS constitutes an independent risk marker for developing subclinical atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) is still uncertain. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) contributes more to systemic low-grade inflammation than abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (ASAT), enhancing atherosclerosis development. Physical activity is an effective behavioral strategy to maintain and improve cardiovascular health. Whether a resistance training intervention (RTI) could reduce low-grade inflammation and VAT volume in postmenopausal women with VMS remains unclear, and whether the RTI-associated effects could be maintained over time requires further investigation. Material and Methods: This thesis is based on three studies. Study 1 was conducted on a subset of participants from the cross-sectional population-based Swedish CArdioPulmonary BioImage Study (SCAPIS), including women 50-64 years of age. The women underwent comprehensive cardiovascular assessments and completed an extensive female-specific questionnaire. VMS was assessed on a 4-point scale. Subclinical ASCVD was detected via coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), computed tomography (CT), and carotid ultrasound. Study 2 is a sub-study of 65 postmenopausal women with VMS and low physical activity, randomized to either three days/week of an RTI or unchanged physical activity for 15 weeks. Women underwent anthropometric measurements, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and blood sampling at baseline and after 15 weeks. During the last followup contact in Study 2 after two years, 35 women agreed to attend an additional clinic visit to reevaluate cardiovascular risk markers, marking the inception of Study 3. Results: Of 2995 women included in Study 1, 14.2% reported severe VMS (n = 425), 18.1% moderate

The cemetery is a place which carries many different meanings and is used in varying ways. This holds true for these places today, as well as historically. The cemetery, as opposed to the churchyard, is a distinctly urban location, designed especially for burials and remembrance. Today, it is used for activities such as cultural heritage tourism, exercise, picnics etcetera as much as it is a place used by people to bury and mourn their dead friends and relatives. What does this mean for the definition and understanding of the cemetery today? The aim of this master’s thesis is to shed light on which of the cemetery’s different aspects are actually valued today, in relation to its visitors. This means shedding light on how cemeteries, as a destination for visitors, are defined today, which can in turn affect how these cultural heritage locations will be preserved, altered and interpreted in the future. To define is to exercise power. The main theoretical and methodological framework is discourse analysis, but the concepts of heterotopia and cultural and communicative memory also play a part. The main conclusion is that the discourse of the Swedish cemetery is a discourse in flux. The definition of the cemetery as a quiet landscape inscribed with communicative as well as cultural memory has been a relatively fixed point within the discourse since the 18th century. New dominant uses redefine these places as a kind of united park and garden – still reflecting the cemetery’s complex combination of public and private landscape. These differing definitions have been part of the discourse since its inception, but the power dynamics between them now seem to shift. These shifts can change certain aspects of the cemetery while acknowledging others, such as the old, unmarked graves of the poor becoming excluded from the affirmation and musealisation of the cemetery’s memorial culture.

Physical inactivity and the onset of menopause increase the risk of cardiovascular disease amongst postmenopausal women. We aim to investigate the effect of resistance training (RT) on plasma levels of selected cytokines, adipokines, myokines, and sex hormones in postmenopausal women with vasomotor symptoms. This was a sub-study of a randomised controlled trial investigating the effects of RT on vasomotor symptoms in postmenopausal women. Women were randomised to join a 15-week RT program (n=26) or remain sedentary as control (n=29). Venous blood samples were taken at week-0 and week-15 for all participants. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and multiple bead assays were used to measure cytokines, adipokines, myokines, and sex hormones in plasma. Plasma measurements of 16 of 33 analytes were within detectable limits. After adjusting for good compliance in the RT group (58% of RT participants), after 15 weeks, significantly lower plasma levels of adiponectin (p<0.001), lipocalin-2 (p<0.01) and resistin (p=0.04) were found. Comparing control and RT women, using change-over-time values, significant increases in median testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin levels were seen in RT women. RT intervention lowers the levels of adipokines, particularly adiponectin, in postmenopausal women with vasomotor symptoms. These results were secondary outcomes of a clinical trial, and further investigations in a larger cohort are essential with the additional control of diet control and body composition analyses. Nevertheless, our study shows RT may be a beneficial intervention in reducing inflammation amongst postmenopausal women., Funding Agencies|Karolinska InstituteKarolinska Institutet

In late 18th and early 19th century Britain, a new literary genre called The Gothic was created. It heavily featured architecture and its space in order to create atmosphere and emotional impact. The rise of the Gothic novel coincided with a growing interest in Gothic architecture. In order to gain knowledge about the conception of Gothic architecture during the romantic era, this bachelorʼs thesis investigates the correlation between medieval Gothic architecture and the Gothic literature of the 18th and 19th century. The base of this inquiry is a collection of pictorial and textual representations of the ruins of Netley Abbey, a 13th century Cistercian monastery. The romantic revaluation of what the word Gothic meant – and what the architecture connected to it signified – was quite dramatic. The medieval Gothic architecture was supposed to convey godliness and sacred light, but in the Gothic literature it was presented as something dark and mysterious. By filtering the analysis of the representations of Netley Abbey through the typical traits of Gothic literature, the conception of Gothic architecture – which allowed for this significant revaluation of impression and visual rhetoric – of the romantic era is made distinct. The ruins of Netley Abbey are consistently portrayed as something on the border between such categories as nature-culture, history-the present and sacred-profane. This creates the impression of an architecture that manages to uphold a constant liminal, sublime state. It also sets the ruins apart from reality, creating an heterotopia of time and space – a consecrated space for the sublime. This advances the idea of Gothic architecture as a bearer of an immanent numinousness.

Frågan om civil-militär samverkan i multinationella insatser har länge diskuterats. I takt med att den säkerhetspolitiska situationen i världen förändras, förändras också inställningen som de i multinationella insatser ingående aktörerna har till civil-militär samverkan. Sedan det kalla krigets slut har konfliktmönstren i världen förändrats. Trenden pekar mot färre mellanstatliga krig, och fler inomstatliga konflikter. I dessa konflikter samexisterar militära och civilaaktörer, och samverkan dem emellan blir därför viktig.Detta har uppmärksammats i det internationella samfundet, medan det har varit tystare i Sverige.Den här uppsatsen söker finna en möjlig förklaring till att det blivit så. Jag gör det med hjälp av NilsBrunssons teori om Svampmodellen. Brunsson presenterar i modellen ett antal variabler sompåverkar införandet av nya idéer i en organisation. Han menar att en organisation som befinner sig ien reformeringsprocess kan ha svårt att ta till sig ytterligare nya idéer, eftersom den är upptagen medatt genomföra den ifrågavarande reformen.Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka om Svampmodellen kan bidra till en förståelse avvarför Sverige, senare än andra länder, anammat idén om civil-militär samverkan i multinationellainsatser. Den svenska Försvarsmakten har det senaste decenniet genomfört en omfattandeförsvarsreform; övergången från invasionsförsvar till insatsförsvar. Jag kommer alltså att undersökaom denna reform utgjort ett hinder för Försvarsmakten, och den politiska nivån, att samtidigt ta tillsig idén om civil-militär samverkan i multinationella insatser., The issue of civil-military relations in multinational missions has been discussed a lot over the past decades. As the security situation in the world changes, with new threats evolving and others fading away, the approach to civil-military relations change. Since the end of the Cold War, the patterns of conflict around the world have changed. The trend points towards fewer inter-state conflicts, and more intra-state. In this kind of conflict, civil and military actors exist side by side, and thus, coordination and cooperation between them is important. The importance of this cooperation has been highlighted in the international context, while it’s been a bit quieter in Sweden. This paper seeks to find a possible explanation to this relative silence. I will try to find the explanation with help from Nils Brunssons theory of “The standardization or organizational forms as a cropping-op process.” Brunsson presents here an amount of variables that affect the introduction and implementation of new ideas in an organization. Brunsson states that an organization that faces a major reform may, at the same time, have problems with incorporating additional ideas, since the organization is already occupied with the first reform in question. The aim of this paper is to examine whether Nils Brunssons theory can contribute to anunderstanding of why Sweden, later that other countries, has adopted the idea of civil-military cooperation in multi-national missions. The Swedish Armed Forces has the last decade been involvedin a far-reaching reform, namely the transition from being organized as an invasion army, with the aim to deter a possible enemy even from attacking, to an organization that should be ready to be usedat all times. This also involved a considerably higher emphasis on the international commitment. I will examine if this reform has constituted an obstacle for the Swedish Armed Forces, including the government, to also adopt the idea of civil-military relations.