Högskolan i Skövde

Introduction: Professional support is known to promote parents' transition to parenthood, however, there is a need for continued development in parental support to meet parents' needs and support them in their couple relationship. In Scandinavia a digital parental support tool, Interplay, has been developed for parents to use in their relationship during the transition to parenthood. However, research is needed on how a digital support tool such as Interplay can be included in care and professional support for parents. Therefore, the current study aims to explore how professionals perceive Interplay as a digital support tool for parents' couple relationship and parenting.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 professionals who had used Interplay. The professionals were working with parental support in Swedish antenatal care, child health care and family counselling. Data were analyzed using phenomenographic analysis method.

Results: The results are presented in two descriptive categories: A complementary interactive parental support tool and May facilitate parental transition and be valuable to include in care.

Conclusion: Interplay has the potential to be a valuable complement to existing parental support, as it could function as a modern tool that can be used by both parents together in their everyday lives to communicate on topics related to their relationship and parenting. It would be valuable to include Interplay in care as it could be combined with professional expertise, which may lead to enhanced parental support.

Data-driven government agencies frequently rely on using analytics (descriptive, predictive, prescriptive) together with high-quality data. A common benefit of being a data-driven agency is the ability to make informed decisions. Previous research has provided findings from case studies and small sample surveys that mix different types of organizations, e.g., municipalities and government agencies. Hence, it is difficult to generalize for an entire segment, e.g., government agencies, on what they do in practice to become more data driven. This paper aims to investigate what government agencies in Sweden do in practice to become more data driven. Data was collected from 137 government agencies via a web-based questionnaire, and analyzed with respect to current practices, systematicity, and strategies. The findings are that most government agencies are not characterized as data-driven, lack systematicity in using analyzed data in decision-making, and mostly develop strategies for technical platforms and data.

Polyphemus pediculus is a freshwater predatory crustacean with a highly specialized compound eye adapted for visually guided behaviour. Although structural regionalization within the eye has previously been described, the spatial localization of opsin gene expression in this species remains poorly understood. This study investigated the localization of selected opsin genes in the eye of P. pediculus using RNA in situ hybridization while also evaluating fixation and cryosectioning conditions for improved tissue preservation during hybridization procedures. Selected opsin genes were amplified, sequenced and used for synthesis of DIG-labelled antisense RNA riboprobes. Different fixation and cryosectioning approaches were tested prior to in situ hybridization. Cryosections prepared on the same day following fixation showed better tissue preservation and partial loss of sections during hybridization and washing procedures. Previously stored cryosections retained good tissue morphology when same day cryosectioning had been performed, indicating that storage itself was not the primary cause of tissue damage. Although non-specific background staining remained a limitation, localized staining patterns were observed in some retinal regions following hybridization with selected opsin riboprobes. Overall, the study highlights the importance of optimized fixation and cryosectioning conditions for successful RNA in situ hybridization in P. pediculus and provides a basis for future studies investigating visual organization and opsin expression in freshwater crustaceans.

Business developers navigating uncertainty at the initial stage of strategy engage in diagnostic processes. These processes have consequences for the macro strategic direction organisations take, yet the micro cognitive process by which this navigation occurs receives relatively little attention in existing entrepreneurial or organisational literature. This study addresses this gap by examining and comparing the initial diagnostic process of business developers operating in high-growth and stable business environments in Sweden. Using the Gioia methodology, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with five written and the other five spoken. The participants were chosen through purposive sampling with participants of business developers active across technology, manufacturing, and business incubator service sectors. The findings reveal two coherent diagnostic logics: an enactive-relational logic characterising high-growth practitioners and a confirmatory-institutional logic characterising stable practitioners. These two logics represent fundamentally distinct cognitive logics produced by practitioners’ respective institutions. Building on this, the study contributes to a boundary condition argument: institutional theory and sensemaking theory are not uniformly complementary but conditionally applicable, with each theory's explanatory power over diagnostic cognition determined by the practitioner's orientation toward institutional context. The study further contributes a five-stage empirical model of the initial diagnostic process and finds that depending on the organisational orientation, each stage is encoded with a different logic system.

Background: Hybrid work is a phenomenon that has become more popular as a way of working in recent years in line with technological developments and the corona pandemic. This way of working, which involves alternating between working in the physical workplace and working remotely, such as from home, can have both positive and negative aspects. It can result in increased flexibility and a better work-life balance. Hybrid work can, on the contrary, result in decreased social cohesion, impaired communication and social isolation. 

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how managers adapt their leadership and communication strategies to promote a sense of community in a hybrid work environment, as well as to highlight how these adaptations interact with employees' actual experiences. 

Method: This study is designed as a case study of a retail company in Western Sweden. This study has applied mixed methods, which is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The empirical material was collected using semi structured interviews with sex managers and a survey that was sent to the managers employees. The survey was sent to 33 employees and 28 responded, giving the study a response rate of 84,8%. The material collected from the interviews was then transcribed and analyzed through thematic analysis. Responses from the survey were analyzed through descriptive statistics. 

Results and Conclusion: The results show that the managers adapt their way of working when the team is working remotely by being more attentive during digital meetings and by focusing on informal conversations because the managers consider that communication worsens during hybrid work. Another important aspect to build and maintain social cohesion in a team is according to the managers to implement social activities such as teambuilding during physical meetings. The managers implement this because they consider that social cohesion can only be built during physical meetings and then be maintained during remote work. However, the employees consider that the managers’ adaptations do not contribute to increased social cohesion in the team, which implies that the managers’ adaptations are not effective enough in practice. Another difference in experience between the managers and employees is the opinion on motivation and engagement among the employees. The managers’ perception is that these factors are impaired during remote work while the employees, on the contrary, do not experience depreciation. This can be a result of the managers’ adaptations effectively maintaining motivation and engagement or the result of a discrepancy between the managers and employees’ perceptions.

Designing serious game visuals for multiple cultural contexts presents significant challenges, as imagery familiar to one audience may be misunderstood or carry different meanings in another. This thesis adopts the perspective that visuals in serious games are not merely decorative but function as connectors between game content and players’ cultural and perceptual contexts. It argues that visual elements must be both clear and appealing across different cultural and domain contexts, and therefore investigates how varying levels of visual fidelity influence players’ visual recognition and visual preferences in cross-cultural serious game contexts.

A mixed-methods research approach was adopted, combining a literature review, fieldwork, and multiple case studies, with qualitative and quantitative data collected in Nepal and Sweden. To support the empirical investigation, a serious game titled Happy Heart was designed and developed as both an educational game and a research instrument, enabling systematic evaluation of visual fidelity across culturally distinct contexts. In both locations, the same Happy Heart game was implemented in localized versions and playtested with local participants.

The findings indicate that higher levels of visual fidelity generally support improved recognition, increased preference, and greater familiarity with serious games in both cultural contexts. However, higher visual fidelity did not consistently result in stronger emotional responses. Participants in both Nepal and Sweden experienced difficulties identifying culturally specific food items, highlighting the role of visual literacy in shaping how visual representations are interpreted. The results further suggest that adolescents’ visual recognition and preferences are shaped more strongly by exposure to global media, such as video games, animation, and social platforms, than by everyday lived experiences. A clear preference for 3D graphics and globally recognizable game aesthetics was observed, reflecting increasing familiarity with shared visual design conventions across cultures.

Based on these findings, this thesis proposes a Visual Alignment Framework to support culturally inclusive serious game design. The framework offers structured guidance for selecting representational objects and determining appropriate levels of visual fidelity when designing for diverse audiences, thereby reducing the risk of visual miscommunication in cross-cultural contexts. This research contributes both empirically and conceptually to the field of serious games by providing cross-cultural evidence and a theoretical foundation for visual alignment in game visuals. By synthesizing insights from the Nepalese and Swedish case studies, the thesis advances understanding of how visual communication can be strategically aligned with players’ cultural and perceptual contexts to support more effective (in terms of visual recognition and visual preference) and inclusive educational game design. Future research is encouraged to further evaluate the framework across additional cultural settings and game genres.

Background: Sexual health is an important part of young people's social and personal well-being and development. Receiving education in sexual health is a prerequisite for each individual to be able to make informed decisions. The school nurse has the opportunity to inform and educate young people about sexual health during health interviews. However, the school nurse lacks the right conditions to teach the subject and collaboration with other staff at the school should be improved.

Aim: To investigate school nurses' experiences of discussing sexual health during health consultations in upper secondary school.

Method: The study is a qualitative interview study with an inductive approach. Which was conducted with an open interview guide. The material from the interviews was analyzed through a qualitative content analysis.

Findings: The results show that the health interview and the health questionnaire are an important gateway and support in conversations about sexual health. Important factors for the quality of the conversation are trust, security and relationships between school nurse and student. The results show that school nurses experience differences in the conversation based on gender and culture. In summary, the school nurses experience that the conversation is important and complex.

Conclusion: The conclusion is that school nurses need more time to talk about sexual health. More ongoing training to stay up to date in the area of sexual health. The school nurses believe they need to be trained in gender and culture in the aspect of sexual health.

Debates about underdetermination and interpretation—familiar from the philosophy of quantum mechanics—may also offer valuable insights for evaluating alternative cosmological frameworks. Bohm (1952) argued that the usual ‘Copenhagen’ interpretation of quantum theory is unfalsifiable not because it is empirically empty, but because its assumptions leave the mathematical formalism free to absorb any anomaly through ad hoc modifications. His response was not to argue that Copenhagen was false but to construct a hidden-variables alternative reproducing its predictions—showing, by existence rather than argument, that Copenhagen’s commitments were never forced by the data. We ask whether an analogous situation might be emerging in cosmology. The Dynamic Universe (DU) model of Suntola (2026) offers a candidate: from two postulates it reproduces several ΛCDM (standard model of Big Bang cosmology’s) predictions without dark energy or inflation, and with fewer parameters, while predicting a monotonic angular-size–redshift relation that recent JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) data appear to favour over ΛCDM’s non-monotonic one. We argue the Bohmian parallel is instructive but partial: DU’s equivalence with ΛCDM remains undemonstrated in domains—the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) spectrum, nucleosynthesis, gravitational waves—where ΛCDM’s evidence is strongest. Nonetheless, we suggest such rivals warrant continued attention precisely for what their partial success reveals about the mainstream view’s contingency.

This chapter first contrasts the classical worldview (deterministic, reductionist, and mechanistic) with that of quantum theory (indeterministic, contextual, and holistic). The working hypothesis is that quantum features may help explain aspects of consciousness that classical neuroscience struggles with. The chapter then reviews several major quantum interpretations and their connection to consciousness. First, the Copenhagen interpretation and QBism, which hold that the wave function represents knowledge or subjective beliefs, not objective reality. Second, Wigner’s view that consciousness is required to collapse the wave function, turning superpositions into definite outcomes. Third, the reverse idea by Penrose and Hameroff that collapse constitutes consciousness, in that objective gravitational collapse of quantum states (Orch OR) in neural microtubules underlies conscious moments. Fourth, the pilot wave interpretation, in which no collapse is needed; instead, in Bohm’s version, ‘active information’ in pilot waves guides particles and provides the intrinsically mental ground from which consciousness may emerge. And fifth, Everett’s many-worlds interpretation, according to which no collapse is needed and the world divides into branches at the macroscopic level in measurement-like situations; here, some researchers have linked conscious experience to superposition formation. The chapter concludes by briefly considering some related applications of quantum theory, such as quantum biology and quantum cognition.

The western honeybee, Apis mellifera, depends heavily on proper nutrition during overwintering, when colonies survive entirely on stored food resources. Many beekeepers replace natural honey with sugar-based feeds, but the effects of these diets on the honeybee gut microbiome are still not fully understood. This study investigated how different overwintering diets, including honey, sugar syrup, and a mixed honey-sugar diet, affect the gut microbiome of worker honeybees, with a special focus on the ileum, an important but understudied gut region. Worker bees were collected from three dietary treatment groups in Västra Götaland, Sweden, during early spring 2025. Ileal samples were dissected under sterile conditions, and full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed using Oxford Nanopore MinION technology to improve bacterial identification. Microbial diversity and bacterial composition were analyzed using taxonomic and statistical approaches. The results showed that core bacterial genera such as Gilliamella, Lactobacillus, and Snodgrassella were present in all dietary groups, indicating that the honeybee gut microbiome remained generally stable during overwintering. Bees fed with honey showed slightly higher microbial diversity compared with bees fed sugar or mixed diets. Some differences in the abundance of certain bacterial taxa were also observed between dietary treatments. Comparisons between the ileum and rectum revealed similar dominant bacterial groups, although the rectum contained greater bacterial abundance and variation. Overall, the study suggests that the overwintering diet can influence the balance and diversity of gut bacteria, while the core microbiome of honeybees remains relatively resilient under different feeding conditions.

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) allows plants to utilize atmospheric nitrogen for their nutrient needs, through a symbiotic relationship with rhizobia and has attracted considerable attention of the scientific community due to its potential to enhance sustainability in agriculture. Recent studies, focusing on model legume Medicago truncatula, imply an active role of glycoprotein GBP1 during nodulation, which is an important step in the establishment of the legume-bacteria relationship. The physiological properties of this protein remain poorly studied. Structural data indicate the existence of nine N-glycosylation sites plus one predicted site that could not be observed in the crystal structure. To investigate the importance of glycosylation in the physiological function of the protein, constructs with their glycosylation sites mutated were expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana and their structural stability and enzymatic activity were examined using nano differential scanning fluorimetry and reducing sugar assays.

Mutations affecting glycosylation resulted in a decrease in both protein stability and enzymatic activity, with the extent of these effects being highly site-dependent. This decreases across the mutants suggests that glycosylation contributes to both the structural integrity and functional efficiency of MtGBP1. Interestingly, the fully deglycosylated mutant apoGBP1 retained enzymatic activity and exhibited higher melting temperatures than variants with only single glycosylation site disrupted, shedding light in the non-additive effects of accumulation of mutations. Overall, these findings underline the importance of site-specific N-glycosylation in maintaining MtGBP1 stability and function and provide new insights into the role of site-specific glycosylation in regulatory role of glycosylation in enzyme activity.