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Knowledge about seafloor depth, or bathymetry, is crucial for various marine activities, including scientific research, offshore industry, safety of navigation, and ocean exploration. Mapping the central Arctic Ocean is challenging due to the presence of perennial sea ice, which limits data collection to icebreakers, submarines, and drifting ice stations. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) was initiated in 1997 with the goal of updating the Arctic Ocean bathymetric portrayal. The project team has since released four versions, each improving resolution and accuracy. Here, we present IBCAO Version 5.0, which offers a resolution four times as high as Version 4.0, with 100 × 100 m grid cells compared to 200 × 200 m. Over 25% of the Arctic Ocean is now mapped with individual depth soundings, based on a criterion that considers water depth. Version 5.0 also represents significant advancements in data compilation and computing techniques. Despite these improvements, challenges such as sea-ice cover and political dynamics still hinder comprehensive mapping.

While technological change in organizations is fast and eminent to most people, the adoption of Massive Open Online Courses, micro-credentials, and flexible and scalable online courses, appear to be comparatively slow in Higher Education in the Nordic countries. To explore this phenomenon, we completed 10 qualitative interviews at ten different higher education institutions across Norway in fall 2020. The informants were strategically selected among employees who had been involved in open platform technology, MOOC production and support for faculties. Adopting thematic analyses, we found entrepreneurs who positioned themselves in pockets of innovation with the intention to transform teaching and learning. Rather than seeing technological innovations as "more of the same", the entrepreneurs embraced the possibilities emerging in new educational practices. Inspired by "New Institutionalism," we focused on the organizational conditions for MOOC production. The entrepreneurs often entered interpretive struggles at higher organizational levels in competition with other stakeholders. Despite national initiatives and funding, many stakeholders questioned the value of MOOCs. Our study points to discrepancies in understanding the disruptive and transformative change that new technology can bring to study programs and lifelong learning. The informants also experienced insufficient support from leaders and lamented the lack of a national platform for open online access. We link these findings to embedded theories, belief systems and discourses in educational cultures and management in Higher Education.

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors influencing the efficacy and safety of the ultrasound-guided radiofrequency ablation of renal tumors. Between January 2010 and December 2018, 159 patients with renal tumors treated with ultrasound-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation at our institution were included in this study. Biopsies were performed for histopathological analysis prior to each ablation. Patients underwent computed tomography follow-ups at 3, 6, and 12 months and were subsequently observed on an annual basis. The primary efficacy rate (i.e., residual tumor), local tumor progression, morbidity and mortality, and possible outcome predictors (age, body mass index, gender, tumor size, tumor location, tumor characteristics, ablation temperature, and reported technical problems) were analyzed using binary logistic regression. At the first follow-up, 3 months after ablation, the primary efficacy rate was 79%. Two percent of the tumors showed local tumor progression during the whole follow-up. Tumor proximity to the collecting system and the final temperature in the ablation region were associated with the occurrence of residual tumor (OR = 2.85, p = 0.019 and OR = 4.23, p = 0.006, respectively). A similar trend was shown for tumors larger than 3 cm (p = 0.066). A short distance to the collecting system and the ablation temperature were significantly related to the occurrence of residual tumors after the radiofrequency ablation of small renal masses. The ultrasound guidance used in our study has a lower primary efficacy rate than the computed tomography guidance used in comparable studies.

School improvement efforts rely on teachers' capacity for professional development and learning. We investigate the kind of roles taken by early career teachers (ECTs) with a master's degree from a research-based teacher education programme in relation to professional learning and school development in Norwegian schools after five years in the profession. The conceptual framework includes research of professional learning and trust. Semi-structured interviews of 26 ECTs were analysed using reflective thematic analysis. The findings illustrate four different roles that ECTs take: creators, translators, drivers and passengers. All the ECTs become creators, as they were enquiry-oriented and collaborated with colleagues to promote bottom-up professional learning, in order to improve teaching. Translators capture the ECTs' ability to translate a new curriculum into deep-learning and student-active teaching. Drivers obtain formal positions and promote professional learning in schools. Passengers take a passive role, and they are critical of the school system that introduces and performs a high number of top-down school-development projects. We discuss how ECTs want to develop relational trust, while the system may strengthen relational and structural trust.

This study used New Institutional Theory to explore how entrepreneurial activities in support units contribute to digital transformation in higher education in Norway. We describe how entrepreneurs initiated and operationalized support for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), micro-credentials and fully online courses in pockets of innovation within existing institutional arrangements. An ambition was to understand why capacity building for digital transformation in a country described by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as digitally mature is lagging behind other countries. We obtained our data from qualitative interviews with faculties and staff involved in fully online course production. The informants were chosen through strategic sampling from support units and faculties, where they filled different roles in the production of such online courses. Our findings describe entrepreneurial activities that strongly contributed to the emerging social field of digital transformation. Located in pockets of innovation, the entrepreneurs provided open digital platforms, a pedagogy for online course design and support for faculties who engaged in online course production. Yet, the findings also confirm previous research pointing out how the lack of supportive leadership may impede successful digital transformation in higher education institutions. The study concludes with a model for digital maturity which may be useful to researchers and stakeholders. The model can also support entrepreneurial processes in online environments.

Disease-specific sterols accumulate in the blood of patients with several rare lipid disorders. Biochemical measurement of these sterols is important for correct diagnosis and sometimes monitoring of treatment. Existing methods to measure sterols in blood, particularly plant sterols, are often laborious and time consuming. Partly as a result, clinical access to sterol measurements is limited in many parts of the world. A simple and rapid method to extract free sterols from human serum and quantitate their concentration using isotope-dilution liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) without derivatization was developed. The method was designed to be compatible with routine workflows (e.g., 96-well format) in a clinical lab and extensively validated. Serum from at least 125 controls were analyzed and used to estimate the upper reference limits for sitosterol, campesterol, stigmasterol, desmosterol, 7-dehydrocholesterol (7DHC), lathosterol, and cholestanol. Serum from patients with the rare lipid disorders sitosterolemia (n = 7), Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS; n = 1), and cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis (CTX; n = 1) were analyzed. All seven sitosterolemia patients had greatly elevated levels of free plant sterols (sitosterol, campesterol, and stigmasterol) compared to the controls. The SLOS serum contained massively increased concentrations of 7DHC. CTX serum contained greatly increased concentrations of cholestanol, as well as 7DHC and lathosterol. Spiking experiments indicated that the method is likely also useful for the diagnosis of desmosterolosis and lathosterolosis. The reported method is a relatively simple and fast LC-MS/MS method capable of quantitating diagnostically important sterols and differentiated patients with three rare lipid disorders from controls.

Abstract Objective To investigate the prevalence and natural history of POLG disease in the Norwegian population. Methods A national, population‐based, retrospective study using demographic, clinical, and genetic data of patients with genetically confirmed POLG disease. The patients were diagnosed between 2002 and 2022, and were included into the Norwegian POLG Patient Registry. Patients were stratified according to age at disease onset (early

Objective This study seeks to outline the features of digital competences among educators in health professions education and pinpoint areas in need of enhancement. Methods The transcribed interviews of nine educators in physiotherapy education were coded to align with The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), adhering to a step-by-step procedure. Results In total, 320 significant units were coded to an individual competence. Three competence areas (Professional engagement, Teaching and learning, and Empowering learners accounted for (94.2%) of the codes, while the three remaining (Digital resources, Assessment, and Facilitating learners’ digital competence) for 5.8% of cases. Several individual competences were not identified, across domains and the educators raised skepticism regarding the relevance of digital education for clinical practice. Conclusion The study reveals deficiencies in the digital competence of health professions educators, highlighting gaps in strategies to utilize technology in their work and the integration of technologies with clinical skills. Educators exhibit individual-driven rather than collaborative digital professional development, expressing skepticism about technology’s efficacy in clinical skills training. The results emphasize the urgent need for comprehensive improvement. Without addressing these issues, health education students may graduate without essential digital skills, hindering their contribution to technology development.

The application of chemical looping for reverse water gas-shift provides an efficient way for the conversion of CO2 to CO, enabling the transformation of captured CO2 into value-added products. For example, by using the produced CO along with renewable H2 to synthesise liquid fuels. In this study, we applied the concept of a chemical ‘memory’ reactor, employing a perovskite-based oxygen carrier (La0.6Sr0.4FeO3-δ, LSF) in a counter-current packed-bed reactor for CO2 splitting. This approach overcomes the chemical equilibrium limitation and could produce high purity CO.Our work experimentally investigated the performance of LSF pellets as oxygen carriers in a large lab-scale packed-bed reactor with gas switching technology for chemical looping CO2 splitting. We evaluated the effects of changes in feed time, bed temperatures, and flow rates on CO2 to CO conversion. Optimal conditions gave over 90 % CO2 to CO conversion via counter-current flow, compared to 45 % for conventional co-current flow in the same reactor. Higher bed temperatures enhanced the CO2 to CO conversion.

This paper explores the Norwegian stateʼs integration into the global web of neoliberal economic relations, a largely neglected dimension of contemporary Norwegian history. It argues that since the 1980s, restrictions in the domestic market have generated problems of overaccumulation within key state-controlled sectors of the Norwegian economy, and that the state has met these crisis tendencies by developing what Harvey calls ‘spatial fixesʼ. On the one hand, the state has set in motion a comprehensive process of internationalization of state-owned enterprises that have exhausted the limits to expansion within the domestic market. On the other hand, it has built up the worldʼs largest sovereign wealth fund by channeling surplus petroleum profits into rent extraction in global financial markets. These spatial fixes provide the backbone of what the paper calls the neoliberalization of the Norwegian welfare state: By turning public companies and investment funds into internationally oriented profit-maximizing entities, the state has externalized a significant share of its productive and extractive activities beyond territorial boundaries and thus become thoroughly integrated into the neoliberal world economy – all the while maintaining a relatively strong system of public ownership and social redistribution within its national borders. Seen from a global vantage point, the relative persistence of social democratic institutions within territorial borders has become increasingly dependent on – and thus combined with – more aggressive processes of neoliberalization elsewhere.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have the potential to enhance learning, teaching, and assessment by providing AI-generated feedback to students. This study used five different AI plug-ins and four different knowledge bases for the optimization of feedback in classroom formative assessments. The sample consisted of 26 students and 13 teachers at five secondary schools in Norway. Interviews and unstructured observations were used to collect data. The findings indicate that AI-generated feedback is appreciated by both students and teachers. It provides immediate subject-specific, concrete, and relevant feedback. High-performing students were motivated to further improve their writing. However, some students found the feedback to be too general or complicated, and the teachers who had not conducted whole-term periodic planning struggled with using AI for formative assessment purposes. Finally, both students and teachers contend that the teacher needs to have the last word when AI takes over formative feedback procedures.

Carbon dioxide is emitted in several industrial processes and contributes to global warming. One of the industries that is considered a significant emitter is metallurgy. Therefore, it is necessary to search for and implement methods to reduce its emissions from metallurgical processes. An alternative option to the use of conventional coke, which is produced solely from fossil coal, is the utilization of bio-coke. The production of bio-coke involves the use of coking coal and the incorporation of biomass-derived substances such as biochar (charcoal). The article presents the results of the research on the influence of the biochar addition on the structural, textural, and technological properties of produced bio-coke. Research on the production and analysis of the properties of the obtained bio-coke aimed at assessing the potential possibilities of applying it in the process of a carbothermal reduction of manganese ore in order to smelt ferroalloys. Studies have shown that biochar addition to the coking blend in an amount of up to 20% allows a bio-coke characterized by properties enabling the mentioned use to be obtained. Bio-coke was characterized by higher CO2 reactivity index (CRI), lower post-reaction strength (CSR), and higher reactivity to synthetic manganese ore than regular metallurgical coke. In the context of industrial applications of bio-coke, it is necessary to verify its production and use on a pilot and industrial scale.