Bacterial diversity detected in osteoradionecrosis

Direct microscopy, culture based studies and DNA-DNA hybridization have previously demonstrated an association between microorganisms and osteoradionecrosis. The purpose of our study was to use culture independent molecular techniques to detect bacteria in necrotic bone lesions of the mandible after radiotherapy. Bacterial DNA was extracted from six deep medullary specimens from resected mandibles, including one sample of a relapse. 16S rRNA genes were PCR amplified, cloned, transformed into Escherichia coli and sequenced to determine species identity and closest relatives. From the analysis of 438 clones, 59 predominant species were detected, of which 27% have not been cultivated. The predominant species detected from radionecrotic mandibles were Campylobacter gracilis, Streptococcus intermedius, Peptostreptocooccus sp. oral clone FG014, Uncultured bacterium clone RL178, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and Prevotella spp.. The analysis demonstrated intersubject variability of the bacteria present in osteoradionecrosis. In contrast to the diverse bacterial profile detected in primary infection, only a few members of the oral indigenous flora were identified from a case of relapse. Detection of all members of the complex bacterial flora associated with osteoradionecrosis seems to be necessary to better understand the pathogenesis and to improve the therapeutic approach of the infection

Surfing or still drowning? Student nurses’ Internet skills

A study into student nurses’ ability to use the Internet was published in Nurse Education Today in 2004. This paper repeats the research with a cohort of students starting their pre-registration programme in a UK university in 2007. In 2004 students were reported as having poor Internet skills, and as not being frequent users of the Internet. In this study students were found to have significantly better ability to carry out basic tasks and significantly higher levels of Internet use. Their ability to apply these skills to more complex information literacy tasks however had not increased, with more than half of all students saying they found far too much irrelevant information when searching for specific information on the Internet. The earlier study found that skills and age were not related, which appears to still be the case. The need for these skills is increasing as education, lifelong learning, and patient information are all increasingly drawing on the developing Internet. Nurse education however is not integrating the skill and knowledge base essential to support this into pre-registration programmes, and the evidence suggests that this will not happen without active management

Prototyping of Tangible Programming - An Iterative Approach to a Multidisciplinary Design Problem

The Fibo Car is a game interface consisting of a kit of car parts. A virtual model of the assembled parts is generated on a computer and used in a physics engine based gameplay. This product vision is the source of this master s thesis task where the main goal was to develop a critical function prototype of the physical/virtual interface. The challenge of this task was to create a prototype that contained integrated technology from multiple engineering disciplines. After six weeks, a functioning prototype was completed using an incremental style of product development process. Based on this prototype and process, two papers were submitted and accepted for publishing at a conference on entertainment computing. The prototype was then further improved and shown at a live demonstration for potential investors. The final prototype is a complete set where external car parts can be attached to a central part and a rotating 3D model will appear on-screen with the corresponding structure. A list of process related learnings form the conclusion of the project

BECOMING IN/FERTILE: Data Practices and Reproductive Re-con-figurations

This dissertation explores how bodies, temporalities, and orientations become figured, configured, and reconfigured within everyday practices of fertility sensemaking. Fertility sensemaking refers to the ways people understand their bodies through data (e.g., about them, or in relation to statistics), alongside socio-cultural norms of reproduction and temporal scripts. Such practices become increasingly supported by various technologies that enter homes, clinics, and bodies, to generate and analyze data around reproductive bodies. It is thus necessary to understand how such data practices, and the technologies they enroll, augment and afford relations to, and understandings of, fertility. Throughout this dissertation I develop a qualitative analysis of fertility sensemaking that is grounded in interdisciplinary engagements with work in feminist theory, Human-computer interaction (HCI), and Science and Technology Studies (STS), and anchors in theories on posthumanism and crip/queer temporalities. I build on a range of empirical material, including bodily experiences around data obtained through mundane reproductive technologies, such as Menstruation and Fertility Tracking Applications (MFTAs), online forums, as well as medicalized datafication practices in Fertility Awareness Counseling (FAC), to scrutinize how different sites of datafication (the intimate, the shared, the medicalized) participate in the re-con-figuration of fertility. Rather than only being a ‘quality of the body’, this dissertation brings forth a conception of fertility as entangled, material, and relational practices. The three papers included in this dissertation contribute to HCI, STS, as well as feminist theory, and argue respectively 1) how reproductive bodies become figured through the datafication technologies; 2) how different objects and subjects come together, and configure fertile time and temporalities through relational and distributed practices of fertility sensemaking; and 3) how orientations to fertility become reconfigured in terms of possibility, time, and space, as infertility rather than fertility becomes anticipated

BECOMING IN/FERTILE: Data Practices and Reproductive Re-con-figurations

This dissertation explores how bodies, temporalities, and orientations become figured, configured, and reconfigured within everyday practices of fertility sensemaking. Fertility sensemaking refers to the ways people understand their bodies through data (e.g., about them, or in relation to statistics), alongside socio-cultural norms of reproduction and temporal scripts. Such practices become increasingly supported by various technologies that enter homes, clinics, and bodies, to generate and analyze data around reproductive bodies. It is thus necessary to understand how such data practices, and the technologies they enroll, augment and afford relations to, and understandings of, fertility. Throughout this dissertation I develop a qualitative analysis of fertility sensemaking that is grounded in interdisciplinary engagements with work in feminist theory, Human-computer interaction (HCI), and Science and Technology Studies (STS), and anchors in theories on posthumanism and crip/queer temporalities. I build on a range of empirical material, including bodily experiences around data obtained through mundane reproductive technologies, such as Menstruation and Fertility Tracking Applications (MFTAs), online forums, as well as medicalized datafication practices in Fertility Awareness Counseling (FAC), to scrutinize how different sites of datafication (the intimate, the shared, the medicalized) participate in the re-con-figuration of fertility. Rather than only being a ‘quality of the body’, this dissertation brings forth a conception of fertility as entangled, material, and relational practices. The three papers included in this dissertation contribute to HCI, STS, as well as feminist theory, and argue respectively 1) how reproductive bodies become figured through the datafication technologies; 2) how different objects and subjects come together, and configure fertile time and temporalities through relational and distributed practices of fertility sensemaking; and 3) how orientations to fertility become reconfigured in terms of possibility, time, and space, as infertility rather than fertility becomes anticipated

Human Pose Estimation Using a Two-Staged Convolutional Neural Network

Human pose estimation, metoden for å lokalisere menneskelige kroppsdeler, har i de siste årene blitt et populært forskningsfelt grunnet sitt brede applikasjonsdomene. Til tross for denne populariteten er metoden fortsatt vanskelig å utføre grunnet skjulte kroppsdeler, lavoppløselige bilder og dens generelle kompleksitet. Vi utforsker hvordan konvolusjonelle nevrale nettverk og dyplæringsteknikker kan tas i bruk for å øke kvaliteten på detekteringen av kroppsbevegelser, spesielt for medisinsk bruk. Disse dyplæringsteknikkene kan videre brukes til å detektere fidgety movements, komplekse, sirkulære bevegelser, der fraværet av slike bevegelser er en sterk indikator for cerebral parese. En automatisering av denne detekteringsprosedyren kan være av høy verdi ettersom dagens kvalitative metoder er avhengig av svært erfarne observatører. Metodene har derfor sine begrensninger innenfor medisinsk bruk. Visjonen til dette prosjektet er å komme med verdifulle bidrag til InMotion prosjektet, et samarbeidsprosjekt mellom St. Olavs Universitetssykehus og Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. Vi foreslår en to-stegs nettverksarkitektur i et forsøk på å forbedre prediksjoner for ekstremiteter. Første steg av nettverket produserer en approksimasjon av alle kroppspunkter, mens andre steg fokuserer på nøyaktig prediksjon av ekstremiteter. Ved å utnytte en betydelig mengde data, og ved å utføre prediksjoner av høy kvalitet for ekstremiteter viser vi til en økning i den totale presisjonen for prediksjon av ekstremiteter.Human Pose Estimation, the task of localizing human joints, has become a popular research field in recent years because of its broad application domain. However, it still remains a challenging task due to occlusions, low resolutions, and overall complexity. We investigate how convolutional neural networks and deep learning techniques can enhance the quality of automated tracking of movements, especially for medical purposes. These techniques can further be employed to track fidgety movements, complex and circular movements of small amplitude, whose absence is a strong indicator of cerebral palsy. An automatization of this tracking process could be of high value, as the qualitative metric of today's methods suffers from the dependency of highly experienced observers and is thus limited in clinical practice. The vision for this project is to make valuable contributions to the InMotion project, a collaboration between St. Olav's University Hospital and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. We propose a new, two-staged network architecture in an attempt to improve the prediction quality of extremities. The first stage of the network produces an approximation of all body parts, while the second stage focuses solely on extremities. By exploiting a larger quantity of data and performing high-quality predictions for extremities, our method increases precision for predicted extremities measured at lower thresholds

Understanding the Regional Dynamics of Solar Energy Adoption: A Case Study of Norway's Electricity Market

Masteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Economics - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024This thesis investigates the impact of bidding zones on solar photovoltaic (PV) uptake in Norway by replicating and adapting the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) used in a similar study conducted in Sweden. The SCM, developed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and further improved by Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller (2010), constructs a synthetic control unit by assigning optimized weights to a combination of control units, creating a counterfactual that closely resembles the treated unit before the intervention. This method addresses the biases inherent in simple before-and-after comparisons or difference-in-differences approaches. Drawing inspiration from the study "Do separate bidding zones within countries create imbalances in PV uptake? Evidence from Sweden" by Johanna Fink, this paper adapts the SCM to the Norwegian context by accounting for structural and socio-economic differences between the two countries. The results demonstrate that while bidding zones and price divergence have a significant impact on PV uptake in Norway, the choice of control variables is crucial to the robustness of the synthetic control. Our findings highlight the importance of avoiding overfitting and ensuring that the model captures true underlying patterns rather than noise. This study contributes to the literature on renewable energy adoption and provides insights for policymakers on the effects of electricity market segmentation

Nature kindergartens: a space for children’s participation

Children’s right to participate has become internationally recognised and the early years are a pivotal phase for realising children’s rights. Knowledge of how young children can enact their right to participation in different environmental and educational contexts is important for improving and facilitating pedagogical practices around the world. The use of the natural environment for educational purposes has become increasingly popular in the Nordic countries, the UK, Australia and in the United States. In this article, we explore how children and staff experience children’s participation through play and everyday life in kindergartens that organise most of the days outside. In Norway they are referred to as nature kindergartens. The primary data sources are focus group interviews with 30 children and 20 staff members from six nature kindergartens in Norway. The results show that the open and fluid character of nature creates a dynamic space for children’s play, stimulates creativity and social inclusion, promotes responsibility, and facilitates generational interdependency. Staff promote and participate in children’s initiatives but refrain from introducing and controlling activities. We conclude that the environmental and educational contexts in nature-kindergartens offer a range of participative situations while questioning whether all children have the capabilities for required active engagement.publishedVersio

Youth Experiences of and Views on Un-locked Coercive Placement in Residential Child Care

This article explores Norwegian youth experiences of and views on coercive placement in un-locked residential child care institutions. Inspired by Antonovsky’s salutogenic theory, the article discusses factors that make placement an opportunity for development among youth with serious drug and behavioural problems. The empirical material comes from interviews with 34 youth under and after coercive placement. The findings reveal that coercive placement in un-locked institutions can be helpful and necessary, provided that the institutions have the means available to protect the residents and provide supportive and meaningful treatment content. Factors such as treatment structure, the content of everyday life, clear expectations, and boundaries are discussed as important factors that help the placement to be an opportunity for development among youth with serious drug and behavioural problems.publishedVersio

Fertile Becoming: Reproductive Temporalities with/in Tracking Technologies

Through close analysis of fertility and menstrual cycle tracking apps, this contribution explores how reproductive bodies, and their temporalities are understood, made and reshaped with and through technologies. We rethink reproductive temporalities through the lens of Kafer’s (2013) and Forlano’s (2017) notion of queer/crip time to account for the different and individual temporalities of bodies. By tuning into the everyday rituals and temporalities that emerge when living with real-time data around sociocultural norms of reproduction (Forlano, 2017), we make visible how fertile bodies are in a constant state of becoming. Empirically, we home in on the processes of becoming or unbecoming fertile and engagements of self-tracking as well as practices of self-care by drawing on data inquired through digital ethnographic methods. To contextualize the analysis within broader, (sub-)cultural imaginaries of reproductive futures, we combine walkthroughs of apps (Light et al., 2018) with analysis of discussions and data-sharing practices on social network sites dedicated to fertility tracking and queer/non-binary experiences of reproduction