Högskolan i Skövde

Traditional commercial video games frequently rely on text-heavy expositions for complex narratives, often failing to realistically portray deeply embodied experiences. This study addresses this limitation by exploring how game mechanics can foster somatic empathy without relying on traditional narrative techniques. Using a 10-day longitudinal diary study and semi-structured interviews, representative milestones of pregnancy were mapped and translated into gameplay mechanics by using an elevated RMDA framework. These mechanics were designed for Painwives, creating a theoretical UI-less framework that restricts player agency to mirror the protagonist’s physical and psychological reality. The findings validate that conveying narrative through game systems prevents ludonarrative dissonance and ensures engagement with the psychological arc. Ultimately, this research provides a UX-driven blueprint to the industry, demonstrating the expressive power of mechanic-driven narratives in exploring highly sensitive human experiences.

En ökande hotbild mot verksamheter inom kritiska sektorer som finans, vatten, energi m.m, tillsammans med en bristfällig gemensam cybersäkerhetsnivå inom EU-medlemsländer gjorde att upprustning av cybersäkerhet inom EU ansågs nödvändig. Därför togs NIS2-direktivet och cybersäkerhetslagen fram för att stötta och sätta krav på verksamheters cybersäkerhetsarbete i form av ökad systematik, dokumentation, och lämpliga säkerhetsåtgärder. Målet med studien var att se hur ett stort industriföretag i Sverige arbetade mot efterlevnad av NIS2-direktivet inom sin IT- och OT-miljö. Operationsteknologi (OT) definieras som teknologi som integrerar med den fysiska världen. Semistrukturerade intervjuer med öppna frågor och följdfrågor användes för att samla in information om företagets efterlevnadsarbete. Intervjuerna skedde med fyra anställda på företaget, två från IT- och två från OT-avdelningen. Intervjuerna transkriberades med hjälp av en transkriberingstjänst för att därefter bli tematiskt kodade. Detta gjordes för att göra den stora mängden data mer hanterlig samt hitta återkommande teman i intervjuerna. Baserat på intervjuerna genomfördes också en gapanalys över företagets OT-miljö för att definiera befintliga brister, bedöma dess allvarlighetsgrad, samt ge förslag för hur bristerna skulle kunna åtgärdas. Studien fann att många hinder och underlättande faktorer kring efterlevnadsarbetet delades av båda avdelningarna, där NIS2-direktivets och cybersäkerhetslagens oklarhet kring vad kraven betyder och den ökade arbetsbelastningen som efterlevnadsarbetet medför var stora hinder. Tidigare arbete mot andra säkerhetsdirektiv samt kontinuerlig utbildning inom cybersäkerhet var faktorer som alla medverkande framförde som underlättande faktorer i efterlevnadsarbetet.

Denna studie undersöker hur AI-baserade beslutsstöd påverkar roll och ansvarsfördelningen mellan patienter och vårdpersonal inom diabetesvården. Bakgrunden till studien är den ökande digitaliseringen inom hälso- och sjukvården, där tekniker som kontinuerlig glukosmätning, insulinpumpar och AI-baserade beslutsstöd blivit en allt större del av diabetesbehandling och egenvård. Studien fokuserar särskilt på samspelet mellan människa, teknik och organisation samt hur AI-baserade beslutsstöd påverkar beslutsfattande, tillit och ansvar i praktiken.

Studien genomfördes som en kvalitativ fallstudie med semistrukturerade intervjuer med patienter, vårdpersonal och tekniska experter inom den svenska vården. Det empiriska materialet analyserades genom en tematisk analys och kopplades till tidigare forskning om AI, kliniskt beslutsstöd och människa- maskininteraktion.

Studiens resultat visar att digitala system fungerar som värdefulla verktyg i egenvården. Samtidigt visar resultaten att rekommendationer från AI-baserade beslutsstöd inte följs blint, utan värderas mot patientens egna erfarenheter och kroppsliga signaler. Analysen belyser även utmaningar såsom tekniska sårbarheter, osäkerhet kring ansvarsgränser och risken för över tillit till AI-baserade beslutsstöd.

Slutsatsen är att AI-baserade beslutsstöd kan bidra till förbättrad egenvård och mer effektiva vårdprocesser men att en framgångsrik användning kräver tydlig ansvarsfördelning samt fortsatt mänskligt ansvar och system som upplevs säkra, begripliga och tillförlitliga av användarna.

Background: The aging population is increasing due to advancements in medical research and public health, leading to a growing demand for healthcare services and special housing facilities (SHF). Welfare technology (WT) has been introduced to support older adults by enhancing safety, independence, and care efficiency. Despite its potential, WT adoption remains limited, and research on older adults' experiences, particularly in SHFs, is scarce. This study explores the experiences of older adults using a digital alarm system with a safety sensor and camera function (DASSCF) in SHFs.

Methods: An inductive qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with older adults (3 men, 14 women, aged 67–98) in SHF equipped with DASSCF in a municipality in western Sweden. Data were collected between April and September 2024 and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: Experiences of DASSCF resulted in balancing vulnerability, tolerance, and having peace of mind in daily life categorized into: emotional aspects, where DASSCF contributed to security in everyday life but also raised concerns about privacy; integrity aspects, highlighting the process of learning to live with surveillance and the tension between safety and autonomy; and technological aspects, which focused on usability challenges and the desire to have control over the system.

Conclusions: When integrating DASSCF into SHF, WT should be as supportive as possible without being too intrusive, allowing older adults to feel strengthened while ensuring their safety and independence.

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) remain a significant issue in industrial workstations, negatively affecting workers’ well-being and productivity. This project focused on the redesign of a workstation in which harmful ergonomics conditions were identified, with the objective of reducing workers’ exposure to WMSDs through the integration of computer-vision (CV) and Digital Human Modelling (DHM) tools.

Motion capture (MoCap) data were obtained from video recordings using the RTMDet, FastSAM3D, and SAM3DBody pipelines. The extracted data were implemented in the DHM software IPS IMMA to evaluate workers’ poses through the ergonomics evaluation methods AFF, REBA, and QEC, allowing the identification of the most critical ergonomics risk factors. In parallel, CV-based techniques were also employed to generate 3D objects from images, facilitating the creation of a virtual representation of the workstation within the DHM environment.

Based on the ergonomics analysis, several redesign concepts were developed through brainstorming, concept generation, and concept evaluation methodologies. The selected redesign proposal was implemented and simulated in IPS IMMA, where a final ergonomics evaluation was conducted to validate the proposed improvements and evaluate their effectiveness in reducing exposure to harmful poses.

The integration of Digital Twins and immersive technologies in manufacturing has progressed substantially in recent years, yet empirical evidence on how Key Performance Indicator (KPI)-enriched immersive environments improve industrial decision quality remains limited. Most Virtual Reality (VR) implementations have emphasised visualisation rather than structured decision support, and sustainability has typically been treated through data-intensive lifecycle methods that are impractical for early-stage scenario evaluation.

This thesis designs, implements and empirically evaluates a Digital Twin–inspired production model integrated with a VR-based, human-centred KPI dashboard, applied to a continuous fibreglass layup and ultrasonic sewing system at Talleres Mector. Following a Design Science Research methodology, the production logic was modelled in inFACTS Studio as a discrete-event simulation with three aggregated modules; Extension, Sewing and Palletising and an 82/18 weighted routing representing material-equivalent loss after the Extension stage. The immersive environment was developed in NVIDIA Omniverse and complemented with operational, sustainability and cost-oriented KPI proxies. A within-subject experiment (N = 16) compared the immersive environment with a conventional 2D dashboard, using paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with a one-sided alternative and Cohen’s dz effect size.

The results show that both interfaces enabled participants to make correct decisions, with no significant difference in decision accuracy between the 2D and VR conditions. However, the immersive environment produced clear improvements in perceived KPI interpretation, decision confidence and overall self-confidence. Participants also rated the VR environment highly for understanding spatial scale and for connecting operational KPIs with sustainability-related indicators, and 62.5% preferred the immersive environment overall. These findings suggest that VR-based KPI dashboards are most valuable not as replacements for conventional dashboards, but as complementary decision-support tools that improve clarity, confidence and sustainability-aware interpretation, especially for cross-functional and non-expert stakeholders.

Emotional processing and regulation are challenging for individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and may contribute to deficits in executive functioning. The aim of this systematic review was to examine how emotional stimuli affect executive function performance and associated neural activity in children and adolescents with ADHD aged 5–17 years compared to typically developing peers. A systematic search of PubMed and Web of Science databases identified seven peer-reviewed empirical studies that met the inclusion criteria. The included studies employed between-subjects designs and examined executive functions such as inhibitory control, working memory, and attentional control in emotionally salient contexts. The findings suggest that children and adolescents with ADHD were more susceptible to emotional distraction than typically developing peers, particularly in response to negatively valanced stimuli. This heightened sensitivity was associated with poorer performance on executive function tasks. Studies further reported altered activity in brain regions involved in cognitive control and emotional processing, including prefrontal and limbic areas. Overall, the findings suggest that emotional stimuli may be associated with executive function difficulties in ADHD by increasing attentional capture and placing additional demands on cognitive control processes.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period characterized by a heightened vulnerability to anxiety disorders, potentially due to a functional mismatch between early-maturing emotional response systems and the still-evolving prefrontal emotion regulation related circuitry. The present review aimed to synthesize empirical evidence on functional neural alterations in brain regions involved in emotion regulation in adolescents with anxiety disorders. A systematic search of MEDLINE, PubMed, and Web of Science identified 611 unique articles, of which 14 studies (each including adolescents with anxiety disorder diagnosis and healthy controls) met the inclusion criteria. Of those 14, four studies used resting state connectivity paradigms, nine used emotional face/picture processing tasks, and one used an explicit emotion regulation task. All studies used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with brain activity analyzed using whole brain analysis and/or seed-based regions of interest (ROI) analysis. Results showed increased amygdala activation alongside reduced activation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC). Additionally, while connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal regulatory regions showed inconsistent patterns across studies, there was evidence of increased amygdala-insula connectivity and decreased striatal-prefrontal connectivity. These findings demonstrate that adolescents with anxiety disorders display functional neural alterations in brain regions responsible for emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. This highlights the importance of advancing research on emotion regulation as a key target for medication and intervention efforts in youth.

Visual mental imagery (VMI) refers to the ability to generate visual representations in the absence of external stimuli, where vividness reflects how clear and intense these images are. Previous research has identified neural correlates of imagery; however, the mechanisms underlying the vividness of visual imagery remain unclear. Earlier theories have suggested that vividness primarily depends on the early visual cortex, but this has increasingly been questioned.

This study aimed to examine how different levels of vividness of visual imagery relate to neural activity across different brain regions and networks. A systematic search was conducted through Medline, PubMed, and Web of Science. Studies were required to assess functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and vividness using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). After screening, based on predefined inclusion criteria, 17 studies were included. The results showed that vividness was not consistently associated with activity in the early visual cortex. Instead, more consistent associations were observed in higher-order cognitive regions, including parietal and frontal cortices, as well as large-scale brain networks. Vividness was linked to patterns of functional connectivity, particularly involving the fusiform gyrus, insula, and occipital networks. In addition, the overlap between imagery and perception is discussed, although imagery relied more strongly on top-down processes. Evidence from aphantasia further demonstrated a dissociation between neural representations and subjective vividness. In conclusion, vividness of visual imagery is supported by distributed neural processes rather than a single region. Vividness appears to emerge from interactions between sensory, cognitive, and network-level mechanisms, noting the importance of individual differences in imagery. 

Chronic stress in non-clinical populations is increasingly recognized as a public health concern. To reduce the risk of prolonged stress leading to adverse health outcomes, there is a need for easily accessible preventive interventions. Slow-paced breathing (SPB) is a promising strategy for enhancing autonomic regulation and reducing perceived stress. In stress research, autonomic regulation is commonly indexed by heart rate variability (HRV) and subjective stress is measured using self-report. However, it has rarely been investigated whether SPB-induced changes in HRV co-occur with reductions in subjective stress, an association that could reflect the bidirectional pathways proposed by the Neurovisceral Integration Model. This systematic review examines the psychophysiological effects of multi-session SPB interventions at a resonance frequency of 4.5–7.2 breaths per minute. Specifically, it evaluates whether increases in HRV, including the standard deviation of normal-to-normal intervals (SDNN), root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD), and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), co-occur with reductions in self-reported stress in non-clinical adults. Overall, findings were mixed. SPB interventions showed more consistent improvements in SDNN than in RMSSD, RSA, or self-reported stress, and the co-occurrence of these outcomes was limited. These findings suggest that improvements in HRV following multi-session interventions do not necessarily co-occur with reductions in perceived stress in non-clinical adults, and that these outcomes may represent partly independent processes. Further research is needed to clarify this psychophysiological relationship and determine the effectiveness of SPB as a public health intervention.

Multisensory integration allows the brain to combine information across the senses. For decades, integration was viewed through the lens of visual dominance when our senses are presented with conflicting information. The sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) challenged this view and demonstrated that the auditory modality can alter visual activity. The SIFI has two variants: the fission illusion, in which one flash paired with two beeps is perceived as two flashes, and the fusion illusion, in which two flashes paired with one beep are perceived as one. Audiovisual cross-modal activity seems to arise very early in the processing stream which can potentially explain audiovisual illusions such as the SIFI. This systematic review synthesised event-related potential (ERP) evidence of the SIFI in both of its variants, fission and fusion, in a healthy population. A total of five studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The synthesised ERP evidence suggests that the early cross-modal interactions underlying the SIFI can be explained by direct activity between modality-specific cortices rather than by higher-order feedback alone, with later components reflecting both general audiovisual integration and illusion-specific processing. The fission and fusion variants appeared to share the superior temporal gyrus (STG) as a common mediator but with opposite directions of effect and different timing of visual-cortex involvement, suggesting they are separable at the neural level.

Emotional abuse is a pervasive yet often overlooked form of intimate partner violence (IPV) characterized by persistent humiliation, manipulation, and coercive control. Although it leaves no visible injuries, chronic exposure to psychological threat may disrupt neurobiological systems involved in stress regulation and emotional processing. The present systematic review aimed to synthesize empirical evidence on the psychological, cognitive, and neurobiological effects of emotional abuse in adult intimate partner relationships and to examine whether post-traumatic growth (PTG) is supported in this population. A systematic search was conducted in Scopus and Web of Science for peer-reviewed studies published in English. Studies were included if they examined adults exposed to emotional or psychological abuse and assessed neurobiological outcomes using neuroimaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), or diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Four neuroimaging studies met the inclusion criteria. Findings indicated alterations in white matter integrity, fronto-limbic connectivity, and functional activation patterns in regions associated with emotional regulation, cognitive control, and memory processing. Psychological literature consistently linked emotional abuse to depression, anxiety, diminished self-concept, and betrayal sensitivity. Evidence also suggested that PTG may occur alongside distress, particularly in domains of personal strength and autonomy. Although limited by cross-sectional designs and heterogeneous operationalizations of emotional abuse, the findings suggest that emotional abuse may be associated with measurable neural and psychological alterations.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive primary brain tumour in adults, with a median overall survival of approximately 15 months despite standard-of-care therapy. Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) are a new generation of therapeutics which rely on high levels of tumour aminopeptidase activity to selectively release a cytotoxic payload (alkylating agent) and predictive biomarkers of response to these PDCs are not yet defined. The objectives of this thesis were to identify transcriptomic determinants of PDC sensitivity in patient-derived GBM models and to validate the resulting signature in an independent solid-tumour validation cohort. Two biobank data sets were used for a fully computational reanalysis: (1) a biobank of Human Glioblastoma Cell Culture (HGCC) with matched expression and IC₅₀ data for two PDCs across 48 patient-derived cell cultures, and (2) a 16-model breast cancer organoid panel from Crown Bioscience with matched Compound B IC₅₀ data. Gene–IC₅₀ Spearman correlations and over-representation analysis in HGCC and gene set enrichment analysis in organoids were used together. Both compounds converged on a near-identical single-gene response signature: the strongest single-gene correlate of sensitivity for both compounds was ZNF121, together with genes involved in mitotic-segregation machinery (KIF20B, MPHOSPH9) and structure-resolution factors of the homologous-recombination axis (BLM, RMI1). Cell-cycle and chromosome-segregation processes were the most enriched pathways. Cross-platform validation of the signature in breast cancer organoids was performed and confirmed the signature: BRCA1, BRCA2, BLM and RAD51 demonstrated directional concordance and organoid GSEA reflected the cell-cycle biology observed in HGCC. An extracellular-matrix and stromal-signalling resistance signature was also seen for Compound A. These results highlight a replication-and-repair-coupled transcriptomic vulnerability that is shared across two structurally distinct PDCs and conserved across tumour type and dimensionality, providing candidate biomarkers for future functional validation and clinical translation.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are widely recognised as signalling molecules that regulate cellular behaviour. Preliminary findings from the Martner lab suggest that ROS generated by nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase 2 (NOX2), which is highly expressed in myeloid cells, may influence tumour progression by modulating tumour-infiltrating macrophage polarisation. However, the effects of stable NOX2 suppression, using RNA interference approaches, remain insufficiently characterised. This thesis aimed to establish a short hairpin RNA (shRNA)-mediated NOX2 knockdown system in human monocytic leukaemia cell lines. To identify a suitable experimental model, HL-60, THP-1 and U937 cells were evaluated for their responsiveness to macrophage-like differentiation. Both HL-60 and THP-1 cells responded to Phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (PMA)-induced differentiation; however, only THP-1 cells could efficiently be transfected with siRNA. PMA treatment increased the expression of maturation-associated markers, including gp91phox (NOX2). The efficiency of NOX2-targeting sequences was assessed in THP-1 cells transiently transfected with three different NOX2 targeting siRNAs. Among the tested candidates, siRNA1 and siRNA3 produced the greatest reduction in gp91phox expression and were selected for conversion into shRNA oligonucleotides. To generate a stable knockdown model, shRNA oligonucleotides were annealed and cloned into the pLKO.1 plasmid vector. Although pLKO.1 digestion was successfully optimised, ligation and bacterial transformation did not yield recombinant plasmids. Overall, this thesis established THP-1 cells as a suitable model, optimised conditions for transient siRNA-mediated NOX2 knockdown, identified suitable NOX2-targeting sequences and completed initial steps toward a stable shRNA-mediated knockdown construct, providing a methodological basis for future NOX2-deficient macrophage models and investigation of NOX2-dependent signalling.

Digitalisation has radically changed children's everyday lives and living conditions. It appears that parents' digital competence can affect children's use in terms of content and purpose, but the connections between competence, mediation strategies and children's digital use are not fully understood. The purpose of the study is to map the connections between digital parenting and children's digital use in the ages of 6–12 years, with a focus on how parents' digital competence, parental mediation and social learning relate to children's digital use. The study was based on a quantitative cross-sectional study using a digital questionnaire that was answered by 133 parents. Data were analysed with Spearman's Rho, Chi-two test and Kruskal Wallis test. The results showed that parents' digital competence was not related to the child's digital use, but weak positive associations between parents' digital competence and active mediation and co-use. The practical benefit of the study lies in the fact that it contributes with a more nuanced understanding of the factors that affect children's digital use. The results show that increased digital competence among parents does not necessarily lead to changes in children's digital behaviour. Against this background, it seems relevant that future research should investigate to a greater extent how different social contexts, such as peer groups and socio-economic conditions, interact in shaping children's digital use.

Introduction: The digitalization of healthcare has increased the use of digital health tools, such as healthcare applications and patient portals. These tools can improve accessibility and participation, but also raise questions regarding equity, digital inclusion, and trust, particularly among older adults.

Aim: The aim of this literature review was to examine which factors influence older adults’ trust in digital health tools and to highlight how these factors can be understood in relation to equity, accessibility, and digital inclusion from a public health perspective.

Methods: The study was conducted as a literature review using inductive thematic analysis. Systematic searches were carried out in PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus. A total of 20 scientific articles were included after a structured selection process based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The analysis was inspired by Braun and Clarke (2006).

Results: The results show that trust is a crucial factor in older adults’ use of digital health tools. Six themes were identified: trust as a central factor, perceived usefulness and ease of use, digital competence and support, barriers, the importance of relationships, and independence and control. Trust is not shaped only by individual factors, but is also influenced by structural conditions such as the organization of healthcare, access to support, data security, and the distribution of responsibility. Digitalization can strengthen trust by increasing participation, control, and accessibility, but may also weaken it through technical difficulties, privacy concerns, and insufficient support.

Conclusion: Trust is shaped through an interplay between technical, individual, relational, organizational, and structural factors. For equitable and inclusive digital care, technical functionality, clear communication, support, and active institutional responsibility are required.

Sweden has recently been marked by deadly violence linked to criminal gangs. Girls have taken an active role in these environments and are increasingly used to store and transport drugs and weapons, and sometimes, to carry out acts of violence. This development has highlighted the need for knowledge about how support interventions can influence girls’ identity development. The aim of this study was to examine how staff at residential care homes perceive work with girls’ identity formation in relation to criminality and norms within criminal environments. The study is theoretically based on a social perspective on identity, where self-image is shaped through interactions with relationships, norms, and social contexts.The method consisted of a qualitative interview study with staff at residential care homes. The results show that staff have the opportunity to influence identity development through relationship-building work, motivational interviews, and structured activities. It demonstrates that identity processes in institutional care are shaped through interaction between the individual, relationships, and organizational structures, and that relationships and long-termorganizational conditions are central to change. The study has contributed knowledge to residential care homes and professionals by highlighting approaches and conditions that may strengthen supportive and preventative work against criminality among girls.

Cloud computing is a widely used and continuously growing concept within the digital world on a global scale. As cloud computing continues to grow and expand, so does the threats it faces. The services provided by cloud computing vendors are being used for criminal and nefarious purposes more frequently as the usage of cloud services continues to rise. To crack down on this, cloud forensics was introduced, a branch of digital forensics focused on the forensic investigations of cloud services. Due to the decentralized, global and remote nature of cloud computing, cloud forensic investigators face various challenges in areas that are relatively simple in traditional digital forensics. The aim of this thesis is to contribute current and relevant knowledge to the continuously evolving topic of cloud forensics. In this systematic literature review, the current challenges of cloud forensic investigations were researched, identified and presented. The collected data from 38 research articles was analysed using a thematic analysis approach. The analysed data was categorized into 3 themes and a total of 16 codes. The results of this study reveals that within the collected literature, the most common challenge was volatile data, while the least occurring challenge was live forensics.

Working from home has become a common part of working life in Sweden after Covid-19. The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of factors influencing employees’ choice between working from home and working on-site, as well as how these work forms are experienced in relation to work environment, motivation and social interaction. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who can work both from home and at their workplace. The material was analyzed using thematic analysis. The results show that workplace choice is influenced by several factors, including life situation, family, personality, work tasks and organizational policies.Working from home is experienced as more flexible and provides better conditions for concentration, while working on-site is important for social interaction and motivation.The study shows that communication changes when working from home, as digital tools enable contact while spontaneous conversations and social presence decrease. Working from home and working on-site should be understood as complementary ways of organizing work, where different environments suit different needs and tasks. The results also show that individuals’ choices are shaped by personal needs, social relationships and organizational conditions.

No present treatment exists that can cure HIV-1, because of its ability to integrate into host DNA and to stay dormant. While current treatments are highly effective, a cure is still desirable, due reasons such as the emerging risk of drug-resistant strains, access to treatment, lifelong daily drug regime compliance, and societal stigma of infection status. One possible strategy aimed at eliminating the virus is the shock and kill strategy, that aims to reactivate the dormant virus and allow for immune mediated elimination of infected cells. Previous work has shown that treating natural killer cells with certain pan-caspase inhibitors causes the reactivation and killing of the HIV-1 latency model J-Lat. Preliminary data suggested this might be mediated through caspase-8 interacting with the CBM complex. The aim of this study was to test this theory by inhibiting MALT1 activity and measuring subsequent HIV-1 reactivation. This was tested by incubating the natural killer cell model KHYG-1 with the MALT1 inhibitor MI-2, whereupon J-Lat cells reactivated by the supernatant were measured using fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Results showed that MALT1 inhibition completely abolished pan-caspase inhibitor mediated HIV-1 reactivation, which strongly suggests that signalling happens through the CBM complex. Furthermore, these results serve to broaden our understanding of this complex in natural killer cells, and serving as a step towards possibly developing a shock and kill drug that can act synergistically with other treatment to ultimately cure this currently incurable disease.

Detta examensarbete undersöker hur ett utvärderingsverktyg kan utvecklas och prövas för att stödja dokumentation och reflektion vid individuell idégenerering, med fokus på upplevd mental arbetsbelastning och upplevd kreativitet.

Studien genomfördes med ett empiriskt och användarcentrerat angreppssätt baserat på Double Diamond-modellen och kombinerade kvalitativa och kvantitativa datainsamlingsmetoder. Genom en litteraturstudie och intervjuer utvecklades en checklista med fokus på upplevd mental arbetsbelastning och upplevt kreativt utfall. Checklistan integrerar självskattningsskalan Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME) med frågor om upplevt kreativt utfall samt kvalitativa reflektionsfrågor. Checklistan utvärderades genom användartester, där ingenjörsstudenter genomförde individuella idégenereringssessioner i två moment: ett med tumnagelskisser och ett med morfologisk matris.

De skattningar och reflektioner som samlades in genom checklistan gav underlag för att beskriva deltagarnas upplevelser under idégenereringsprocessen. Resultaten visade att de kvalitativa reflektionerna kompletterade de kvantitativa skattningarna genom att belysa faktorer som påverkade upplevd mental arbetsbelastning och upplevd kreativitet.

Resultaten tyder på att checklistan kan användas för att samla in både kvantitativa och kvalitativa data om individers upplevelser under idégenereringsprocesser. Den framtagna checklistan utgör därmed ett underlag för fortsatt utveckling av utvärderingsverktyg som kan användas under idégenereringsprocesser inom design.

The incidence of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) has increased in the Nordic countries in recent years, highlighting the importance of detecting and sequencing tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV). The aim of this project was to detect and partially sequence TBEV in tick samples collected in Åland, Finland, and in human samples collected in Örebro, Sweden, thereby contributing to the monitoring of TBEV subtypes and strains circulating in these regions. Nested PCR was performed, amplifying five different regions of the genome. PCR products were analyzed by gel electrophoresis, and amplicons of the expected size were purified and subjected to Sanger sequencing. Sequence alignment and chromatogram correction were performed using SnapGene Software, and BLAST analyzes were conducted to identify the closest matching sequences. TBEV was confirmed in eight of the 31 tick samples by sequencing of the 5′NCR, two for the NS4B/NS5 region, and two for the 5′NCR-prM region. Sequence analysis revealed high similarity to the TBEV strain K23, as well as to sequences originating from Ixodes scapularis and Homo sapiens. In contrast, none of the human serum or cerebrospinal fluid samples could be confirmed as TBEV. Because several tick-derived sequences showed complete identity to the K23 vaccine strain, which had been used as a positive control during real-time qPCR analyses, contamination was considered as a possible explanation for these findings.

Introduction: Sports performance capacity has been linked to beneficial effects on longevity. A simple way to support athletes is to shift the macronutrient composition of their diet. Previous studies examined the effects of ketogenic or low-carb diets on sports performance capacity and longevity. This study aims to investigate the effects of a super-low-carb diet on longevity under the aspect of sports performance capacity. Methods: Participants underwent a three-week super-low-carb (<10 g carbohydrates per day) diet intermission with basal parameter and blood analyses before and after. Results: Participants showed significantly higher fasted blood ketone levels. No other changes were found to be significant. The majority of participants had lower muscle mass, body fat percentage, resting heart rate and blood pressure, serum T3 levels, and expression of PDK4 after the diet. Serum ferritin and homocysteine levels, serum valine levels, and expression of PPARGC1α were found to have increased in the majority of participants after the diet. Serum arginine, beta-alanine, isoleucine and leucine levels, as well as the expression of PYGM increased and decreased equally across participants. Conclusion: The diet seemed to have a net positive effect on the participants’ sports performance capacity and longevity, but more research is needed with larger sample sizes and over a longer time period to confirm these changes to be statistically significant as well as investigating the effects of the diet long-term.

Apis mellifera mellifera is the native honey bee to Northern Europe and was, for a long time, the only honey bee present. During the 19th century, bees of other subspecies were imported, as mellifera was said to be nervous and to produce less. This led to mellifera becoming a threatened subspecies. To preserve mellifera, more knowledge is needed. This study aims to describe the spring development of mellifera and its response to weather and light. Mellifera is compared to two other subspecies, A. m. carnica and A. m. ligustica, and the hybrid Buckfast. The data came from the EU INTERREG project BIstånd. Their project set up an apiary in Uddevalla with 16 hives, four per subspecies/hybrid, and measured the changes in weight and the weather. Pollen traps were used to collect pollen every fortnight. From this data, descriptive statistics on pollen collections and weather were made. This, combined with weight change per day, was used as a measurement of the colonies’ behaviour during spring. A linear model was used to evaluate the effect of weather and light on yield, per pentad. The results showed that there were no significant differences between how much pollen the subspecies/ hybrid collected. Carnica was found to have a significantly higher yield than mellifera. Temperature and rain both had positive effects on yield, but contrary to other research, no effect of light was found. Wind affected mellifera positively and the others negatively. This is likely an adaptation to Europe being windier. Overall, mellifera seems to have kept a more natural behaviour. This might make wild honey bees in the Nordics possible again.

Background: Domestic violence is a serious social issue that affects the health, development and education of children and adolescents. School nurses interact with many students and therefore have a unique opportunity within student health services to identify children who are exposed to, or at risk of being exposed to, domestic violence. Previous studies highlight that clear routines, knowledge, and support are crucial for school nurses to respond to these children in a safe and professional manner. By highlighting school nurses' experiences of encountering children and adolescents exposed to domestic violence, the understanding of the challenges and needs in their work can be strengthened.

Aim: To describe school nurses´ experiences of encountering children who are exposed to domestic violence.

Method: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with six experienced school nurses and analysed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach. Ethical principles such as informed consent and confidentiality were observed.

Findings: The results are presented through three main categories: Identifying children exposed to domestic violence, support and collaboration, and trust and relationship preservation in the work following the discovery that a child is exposed to violence. These categories are further described through eight subcategories. School nurses identify children exposed to domestic violence by noticing behavioral changes, physical symptoms and through suspicions. Their work was influenced by both obstacles and opportunities. Professional experience contributed to increased confidence in their role and strengthened their ability to manage such situations, while the work also entailed an emotional burden.

Conclusion: Trusting relationships with the child were crucial in the work. At the same time, parents’ reactions and a lack of feedback from social services posed challenges for the school nurses. Interprofessional collaboration and support, adequate training, and clear routines emerged as key factors.

Background: Skin rashes are a common reason for children seeking care in primary healthcare, where the district nurse is often responsible for the initial assessment. Skin rashes may be harmless or indicate life-threatening conditions, placing high demands on clinical judgment to achieve safe care.

Aim: The aim of the study was to describe district nurses’ experiences of assessing skin rashes in children within primary healthcare.

Method: The study employed a qualitative, inductive approach. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews with 12 district nurses and was analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Findings: The analysis resulted in four categories and 11 subcategories: Challenges in daily practice; the child’s ability to cooperate and integrity, diagnostic uncertainty, communication difficulties, and digital and organizational limitations. Facilitating factors in daily practice; structured working methods and clinical experience, stepwise treatment and follow-up, and the importance of collegial support. Meeting and involving parents; when parents seek answers and reassurance, and from questions to understanding. Need for knowledge and development; the importance of professional development and digital support - today and in the future.

Conclusion: Assessment of skin rashes in children is described as detective work requiring clinical judgment, experience, and confidence. District nurses’ confidence is strengthened through experience, collegial support, and education.

The rapid growth of biological data, along with advances in structural bioinformatics, has made it possible to investigate the structure and function relationships of proteins on a large scale. G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) establish the largest group of membrane receptors in eukaryotes and are critical for cellular signal transduction. Moreover, GPCRs constitute major targets for therapeutic drugs. Despite their significance, the effect of disease-associated mutations on the structure and function of GPCRs has been a major challenge for the field of molecular biology. In the present study, structural bioinformatics has been used to study the spatial distribution and functional impact of disease-related mutations in the human GPCRome. The structural model of the complex formed by the GPCR and G protein was used, together with the ClinVar database, to study the effect of missense mutations on the structure and function of the G protein coupled receptors. The study used the Atlantis platform to study the structural features and the effect of the mutations on the function. This analysis enabled the identification of mutation patterns within structurally important regions, including transmembrane helices, conserved functional motifs, interaction interfaces, and structurally connected network hubs. Several mutation hotspots were observed at conserved Ballesteros-Weinstein positions related with receptor activation and signalling. Overall, this study demonstrates the value of integrating structural models, network analysis, and genetic variation data to better understand the effects of disease-associated mutations in GPCRs. These findings contribute to improved interpretation of genetic variants and provide a structural framework for future studies of disease mechanisms and therapeutic targeting.

Background: Patients with substance use and addiction disorders have the same right to good, safe, and equitable care as other patients. At the same time, caring for these patients can involve complex situations for nurses, particularly when pain, opioid treatment, withdrawal, tolerance, and stigma occur simultaneously. This can affect the nurse–patient relationship and the patient’s trust in healthcare services.

Aim: The aim of this study was to illuminate nurses’ experiences and perceptions of ethical challenges when caring for patients with substance use and addiction problems.

Method: This study was conducted as a qualitative literature review. Article searches were performed in CINAHL, PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus. A total of ten articles were included and analysed using Friberg’s model for analysis.

Results: The findings showed that nurses experienced the care of patients with substance use and addiction problems as challenging. Three main themes were identified: difficulties in balancing pain management and patient safety, the care relationship shaped by stigma and mistrust, and nurses’ vulnerability in demanding care situations. Lack of knowledge, unclear guidelines, insufficient teamwork, and emotional strain were found to complicate the delivery of care.

Conclusion: Nurses need knowledge, support and clear guidelines in order to provide safe, equal and ethically sustainable care for patients with substance use and addiction problems. A person-centred and non-judgemental approach is essential to reduce stigma and strengthen the nurse-patient relationship.

Global reporting of obesity is commonly based on comparisons over multiple decades1 and lacks a granular and systematic analysis of its dynamics. We used 4,050 population-based studies with measured height and weight data on 232 million participants to assess the worldwide dynamics of obesity from 1980 to 2024. The rise in obesity decelerated in school-aged children and adolescents throughout the 1990s in many high-income countries, and subsequently plateaued in most at age-standardized prevalences spanning 20 percentage points, from 3–4% for girls in Japan, Denmark and France to 23% for boys in the USA. There were indications of a small decline in obesity in children and adolescents in some high-income western countries (for example, Italy, Portugal and France) since the 2000s. Similar trends were seen in some countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In adults, the rise in obesity slowed down in high-income western countries about a decade after children, followed by a plateau or possibly a small reversal of the rise in some countries (for example, Spain). In most low-income and middle-income countries, the annual absolute change in prevalence has remained stable or increased over time, even though prevalence has surpassed that of high-income countries. These highly varied dynamics suggest that the social, economic and technological trends that influence the availability, affordability and use of different foods may have helped control the rise in obesity in high-income countries, but require policy interventions in low-income and middle-income countries.

Background: With an aging population and the development towards more advanced home care, an increasing number of patients are being cared for at home in the late palliative stage. This places increased demands on municipal home care and the nurse's competence, responsibility, and ability to collaborate. Palliative care at the end of life aims to improve the quality of life for patients with incurable illnesses through symptom relief and a person-centered approach that also includes relatives. The nurse meets patients and relatives in existentially vulnerable situations where ethical considerations, relationships, and emotional strain are part of the work.

Aim: The aim was to illustrate experiences of caring for patients in the late palliative stage at home from a nurse's perspective.

Method: The study was conducted as a systematic literature review with a qualitative approach. Articles were searched in the databases of Cinahl and Medline as well as through manual searches. A total of 22 qualitative studies were included and quality-assessed according to the SBU's review template. The material was analyzed using inductive thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke.

Findings: The results showed that nurses experienced the work as meaningful but that there were challenges in working with palliative care at home. Three main themes were identified: the importance of relationships, professional responsibility, and organizational conditions. Close relationships with patients and relatives were described as central for creating security, participation, and person-centered care. The nurses experienced a great responsibility for symptom relief, coordination, and decision-making, often in situations where support from other professions was limited. Lack of continuity, unclear distribution of responsibilities, time constraints, and insufficient resources made the work more difficult and affected the ability to provide good care.

Conclusion: Palliative care at home is experienced as meaningful but demanding work that places high demands on the nurse's clinical competence, independence, and emotional ability. To enable sustainable and person-centered palliative care at home, clear allocation of responsibilities, improved collaboration between care providers, sufficient resources, and structured emotional and professional support for nurses are required.

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, making it one of the greatest public health challenges. Ketogenic diets have been found to be beneficial for cancer prevention as most cancer cells rely on glucose for fuel. The aim of this study is to investigate what effects a super-low carbohydrate ketogenic diet has on longevity and cancer prevention. The study design consisted of four healthy adults undergoing a three-week super-low carb dietary intervention, to evaluate pre- and post-intervention changes in different longevity and caner biomarkers. After the diet intervention, 5-10% reduction in body weight and blood pressure was observed. Fasting glucose and ketone levels showed significant changes, no other parameters showed statistically significant changes, but homocysteine and ferritin serum levels showed an increase, while levels of hs-CRP showed a decrease. Glutamine and methionine serum levels decreased while BCAA serum levels increased, and SIRT1 and AKT1 showed slight upregulation. To conclude, our study observed overall positive impacts of the ketogenic diet on various parameters related to longevity and cancer prevention and could be used as a great starting point for future studies. Focus for the future research should be directed towards extending the length of the dietary intervention and increasing the sample size to enhance the understanding of the effects that a ketogenic diet can have on longevity and cancer prevention.

Background: Regular physical activity has a positive effect on both physical and mental health, including better sleep and improved concentration. Even though physical activity has many health benefits, children and young people become less active, while time being still increases. This literature review looks at the role of the school nurse in promoting physical activity in their daily lives. 

Aim: The aim is to describe school nurses health-promoting work in relation to physical activity. 

Method: The study was conducted as a qualitative systematic literature review with inductive thematic analysis. Where ten peer-reviewed articles were included in the analysis. 

Findings: The results show that school nurses’ health-promoting work related to physical activity is individualized and relationship-based, where motivation and trust are central to facilitating change. The work is influenced by individual and organizational factors, with limited resources acting as a barrier, while collaboration and support serve as facilitators. Health dialogues emerge as an important tool. 

Conclusion: The school nurse’s work in promoting physical activity is person-centered and based on trusting relationships as well as the student’s individual circumstances. The ability to support sustainable lifestyle habits is influenced both by the student’s life situation and by organizational factors such as time, resources, and collaboration.

Background: Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease that often develops during childhood and requires lifelong treatment and daily self-management. When a child is diagnosed, the disease affects not only the child but also the everyday life of the whole family. Parents take on a central role in the child’s treatment and need to manage both practical demands and emotional challenges. Aim: The aim of this study was to describe parents’ experiences of living with a child with type 1 diabetes. Method: The study was conducted as a general literature review according to Friberg. A total of ten scientific articles were included, nine qualitative and one quantitative. Results: The results identified five themes describing parents’ experiences of living with a child with type 1 diabetes: worry and fear related to the child’s illness, constant responsibility, the need for knowledge, the importance of support, and the balance between control and the child’s independence. Parents experienced emotional burden, daily responsibility and a need for clear, repeated and individually adapted information. Support from healthcare services, family and school was important for creating security in everyday life. Conclusion: Parents of children with type 1 diabetes need continuous, individually adapted and family-centred support. Nurses have an important role in strengthening parents’ knowledge, sense of security and ability to manage everyday life, as well as supporting the child’s participation in self-management. 

In mammals, circadian rhythms are managed by a central clock in the hypothalamus and peripheral oscillators found in various tissues, including the skin. Light and temperature are significant factors that influence the skin. This study examined whether temperature cycles can synchronise rhythms in epidermal cells, such as keratinocytes and melanocytes. Both cell types underwent two cycles of a 12-h temperature-entrainment protocol at 34 °C, followed by 12 h at 37 °C. Cells were released at constant temperatures on the third day, and sampling was performed every 4 h. The expression of core clock genes, such as BMAL1, PER2, and auxiliary clock genes DBP and NR1D1, was assessed using qPCR. Circadian analyses were performed using the cosine-based R function CircaSingle from the CircaCompare package. Both cell lines exhibited synchronisation after the temperature cycle, with BMAL1 and PER2 showing opposite temporal patterns. Human keratinocyte cells displayed significant rhythmicity for all genes analysed, indicating a strong clock output. In human melanocytes, all tested genes, except NR1D1, were rhythmic. These results show that both cell lines responded to temperature cycles, providing a robust strategy to synchronise epidermal skin cells in culture. The results provide a foundation for future experiments using more complex models, such as reconstructed skin epidermis. 

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offer powerful platforms for disease modelling, though maintaining genomic stability across varying culture conditions remains challenging. This study aimed to generate and characterize a new human iPSC line from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of an adenylosuccinate lyase mutation carrier; and to evaluate how different extracellular matrix coatings, Matrigel, Geltrex, and BioLaminin 521, influence the genomic stability of pre-established schizophrenia-derived iPSC lines. PBMCs were reprogrammed using non-integrating Sendai virus vectors, yielding fully characterized, virus-free pluripotent clones with a normal 46, XY karyotype at an average efficiency of 0.126%. In the matrix study, high-resolution quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based genetic screening revealed variations in chromosomal abnormality profiles among different substrates. Across conditions, the most commonly observed recurrent submicroscopic copy number variations involved chromosome 12p (chr12p), chr17q, chr20q, and chrXp. BioLaminin 521 showed the highest overall variability, Matrigel displayed intermediate instability with a chr10p deletion, and Geltrex maintained the greatest genomic stability. However, because these alterations became more pronounced at higher passages, these outcomes are heavily influenced by prolonged passaging alongside potential matrix effects. In conclusion, while a trend suggests that matrix composition influences colony architecture, prolonged culture duration appears to drive selective replication pressures. These preliminary findings highlight the need for further validation and the importance of combining cytogenetics with molecular screening for monitoring genomic integrity.

Background: Vaccination is one of the largest disease prevention efforts in the world. Despite good vaccination coverage in Sweden, there are differences in trust and compliance with vaccines between different groups in society. To create trust around future vaccination decisions, the school nurse needs to establish a good relationship with guardians through an empathetic approach and active listening in the conversation. 

Aim: To describe school nurses' experience of meeting guardians in Sweden who oppose vaccination. 

Method: A qualitative interview study with an inductive approach. Eleven semistructured interviews were conducted with schoolnurses and analyzed through qualitative content analysis. 

Findings: The study resulted in three main categories and eight subcategories; Barriers to vaccination - Ignorance and misinformation among guardians/Vaccination resistance related to background, culture or religion/Disagreeing guardians; Strategies for vaccine resistance - Approaches/The school nurse's approach/Finding a balance; Confidence in facing vaccine resistance - Peer support/Experience, education and guidelines. 

Conclusion: The study shows that the school nurses experienced that vaccine resistance comes from misinformation as well as cultural and religious values. An empathetic non-judgmental approach was experienced as the most successful strategy when a guardian chooses to refuse a vaccine. The school nurses found security through peer support such as professional meetings, supervision and collaboration with school doctors. There is a desire for national guidelines for how school nurses should handle vaccine resistance.

The roguelite genre has grown significantly in recent years, with meta-progression becoming one of the most central design features of many popular titles. However, little research exists on how different meta-progression designs affect the player experience. This study has investigated how two widely different meta-progression designs shape player motivation, perceived fairness and sense of mastery. It used Hades 2 as an example of heavy meta-progression and The Binding of Isaac as an example of minimal meta-progression. A comparative game analysis of ten hours of recorded gameplay per game was conducted together with a Reddit forum analysis of roughly 15-20 threads per game. The findings show that heavy meta-progression sustains motivation more immediately but can conceal the player’s mastery, while minimal meta-progression produces a stronger sense of personal achievement, however, getting there is longer and more demanding. Additionally the lack of meta-progression can directly amplify the experience of unfairness in specific encounters.

Museums as places of informal learning are increasingly adopting playful interactives and serious games as educational tools. Due to the complex nature of learning and the objectives of museums, definitive methods of designing serious games for museum use is difficult. This study identifies the themes of autonomy, social interaction and physical space as key themes that encapsulate the common requirements of museum serious games and proposes a framework for the design of museum serious games based on a review of previous research and interviews with museum professionals. Evaluation of the interviews result in the identification of design approaches to serious game development that better support learning in a museum environment.

Machine Learning (ML) model diagnostics provide valuable information about model behaviour and performance but are often difficult to understand for non-expert users that have no experience in data science or ML. The information is often presented in a numerical format or in graphs that are difficult to understand for the end user that needs to make decisions based on the insights derived from the diagnostics. This thesis investigates the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to transform model diagnostic information into human-centered insights. The main focus of the thesis is how different input configurations and data representations influence the LLM-generated explanation quality, which was explored through multiple comparative experiments. To evaluate the experiment outcomes an evaluation approach combining automatic evaluation and human evaluation is used. The automatic evaluation is based on the G-EVAL framework from Y. Liu et al. (2023) and the human evaluation is performed with weighted scoring. The last part of the thesis involves a user study which assesses whether LLM-generated explanations improve users’ perceived understanding, trust and helpfulness compared to a conventional dashboard. 

The results show that the data representation and structure of the prompt has a significant impact on the explanation quality. Numerical and textual representations with time-series data presented in windows outperformed visual data representation and continuous numerical time series data representation. The user study revealed that participants found LLM-generated explanations easier to understand and helpful than a dashboard alone. However, users preferred a combined solution where the LLMgenerated explanations provide the initial interpretation and dashboards can be used to investigate further. The thesis contains practical recommendations for the representation of diagnostic information to maximize the quality of generated explanations.  

The internet has been subjected to undue information influences since its inception but video games and even to an extent game-adjacent platforms have started to be subjected to undue information influences too. The Swedish Psychological Defence Agency has documented the ways Sweden could be subjected to undue information influences although they have not documented if it has already occurred, and they only focused on foreign threats and not domestic threats. This research tries to document if undue information influences has already occurred to Swedish players on game-adjacent platforms with a focus on both domestic and foreign threats. This research found out that Swedish players are not subjected to information influences on a daily basis although there are occasions where they are, and when they do see information influences it is usually connected to foreign countries or organisations, Swedish political parties and anti-wokeness like Gamergate and Nazism.

Police incidents and the public safety are remaining as essential concerns that are societal, especially within urban environments where there are patterns of incidents that vary through location and time. In conjunction with the availability of data within the public sector together with progresses within artificial intelligence (AI), new opportunities have been created for conducting analysis of patterns of police incidents that are spatio-temporal. The aim of the thesis was investigating the extent to which models of machine learning and deep learning approaches can predict the counts of police incidents through diverse locations and time periods within Sweden. Additionally, the thesis explored which factors that were temporal and spatial that were contributing the most to the predictions of the models with explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Historical data of police incidents was retrieved out of the public API that was provided by the Swedish Police Authority (Polismyndigheten). Decision tree, random forest, XGBoost, long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural network (CNN) were the models that were implemented and also evaluated by utilizing metrics for regression including R2-score, MAE and RMSE.

An explainability analysis was applied with the aim of improving the models’ interpretability. The results indicated that the approaches of traditional machine learning achieved a stronger performance of predictions compared to the approaches of deep learning. XGBoost achieved the overall strongest performance, followed by random forest being close, while LSTM and CNN achieved a performance that was weaker for the available data. The analysis of explainability showed that both of the variables that were temporal and spatial had an influence on the predictions where the factors that were geographical contributed the strongest. The findings in the thesis suggest that techniques of machine learning, especially models that are tree based are able to provide insights that are valuable to patterns of police incidents that are spatio-temporal. Furthermore, the thesis illustrated how XAI have the possibility of improving the transparency and also the understanding of the models in contexts of the public sector.

The increased use of AI-driven technologies in cognitive cities has introduced new challenges related to cybersecurity. While previous research has primarily focused on traditional cybersecurity threats, less attention has been given to emerging challenges related to adaptive AI systems and human involvement, particularly concept drift and human-centric vulnerabilities. The aim of this study was therefore to explore how these threats are defined, conceptualized and addressed within existing smart and cognitive city research. To address this, a scoping review was conducted to examine existing literature related to these emerging challenges. The findings showed that concept drift is primarily described as changes in data distribution over time that reduce model performance and require continuous adaptation strategies. The findings also described cybersecurity concerns with concept drift, particularly in relation to intrusion detection, anomaly detection, and malware classification systems. Human-centric vulnerabilities are mainly discussed through multiple themes such as participation, bias, trust, transparency, governance and human behavior. The review identified potential connections between these threats, suggesting that human-generated data may influence the data that AI systems rely on. The study concludes that existing research remains fragmented between technical and socio-technical perspectives, highlighting the need for more integrated approaches to support the development of adaptive, trustworthy and resilient cognitive city systems.

Modern vehicles run on software. Braking, steering, driver assistance, and even door locking all depend on code, and a new passenger car may carry more than 100 million lines of it. When that code needs fixing, manufacturers increasingly distribute patches wirelessly through over-the-air (OTA) updates rather than physical recalls. However, the same wireless channel that delivers a security fix can also be exploited, and the OTA chain presents a long attack surface: backend servers, cellular links, in-vehicle gateways, and individual control units each offer a point of entry. Man-in-the-middle interception, replay of outdated firmware, rollback to vulnerable versions, and firmware tam-pering have all been documented, and a 2024 formal analysis of the Uptane framework, widely regarded as the most trusted OTA security standard, surfaced six previously undetected flaws. Regulators have responded with legally binding requirements. UNECE R155 and R156, ISO 24089, ISO/SAE 21434, and China's GB 44495/44496 now govern how vehicle software must be secured and updated across most major markets. What has been missing is a methodologically transparent synthesis of the academic research that could inform compliance efforts. Existing OTA surveys rely on narrative methods without documented search protocols, and PRISMA-compliant automotive reviews have not targeted OTA specifically. This thesis addresses that gap. Six databases were searched for peer-reviewed work published between 2018 and March 2026; 1,299 unique records were screened; and after quality assessment and a post-hoc narrowing to the post-regulation period (2021 to 2026), fifty studies were retained for in-depth analysis. The review produces a threat-countermeasure map and a regulatory coverage matrix, both of which surface a pattern that prior surveys were not positioned to detect: research has concentrated heavily on se-curing the delivery of updates, while operational requirements such as update failure handling, post-update verifi-cation, and continuous monitoring are each addressed by no more than three studies.

Background: Vaccinations are among the most effective measures for preventing serious diseases. Despite this, the coverage of HPV vaccination is lower than other vaccines in the Swedish childhood vaccination programme. Guardians who are hesitant or choose not to vaccinate their child may affect both individual and public health. School nurses play a central part in providing guardians with evidence-based information and answering questions about HPV vaccination. Although parental hesitancy towards HPV vaccination has been described in previous research, there is limited synthesized knowledge regarding school nurses’ experiences of interacting with these guardians and the barriers that may arise in this interaction. Such knowledge is important for understanding and developing school nurses’ work in their interactions with guardians.

Aim: To describe school nurses’ experiences of encountering guardians who are hesitant about or decline HPV vaccination for their child, and to describe the barriers to HPV vaccination that schoolnurses perceive in their interactions with guardians.

Method: A systematic literature review with a qualitative approach was conducted. A total of 15 studies were included and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Findings: Three themes were identified: different expressions of vaccine hesitancy in interactions with guardians, balancing the responsibility to provide information with respect for guardians’ decisions, and barriers in interactions with guardians regarding HPV vaccination. The findings showed that vaccine hesitancy could be expressed through concerns about side effects, limited knowledge, and perceptions related to the child’s age as well as the association between HPV vaccination and sexuality. School nurses described striving to provide evidence-based information while respecting guardians’ right to make decisions. Dialogue was highlighted as central in encounters with hesitant guardians. Furthermore, various barriers, such as time constraints, language barriers, and challenges in the consent process, were found to affect opportunities for dialogue and follow-up.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that interactions with hesitant guardians are complex and influenced by several interrelated factors. School nurses need to balance providing information with respecting guardians’ decisions, with dialogue constituting a central component of these interactions. Guardians’ beliefs and knowledge, as well as barriers such as time constraints, language barriers, and challenges in the consent process, may affect opportunities for dialogue.

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has shown promise for extracting useful representations from unlabelled tabular data, but recent work has found that SSL embeddings do not improve unsupervised anomaly detection. This thesis investigates whether these limitations can be overcome by pairing SSL representations with semi-supervised detector heads, a direction identified as future work by Mai et al. (2024). Using SCARF as the SSL method, embeddings from a frozen, contrastively pre-trained encoder are passed to four downstream models: Isolation Forest and One-Class SVM in the unsupervised setting, and self-training with XGBoost and logistic regression at label budgets of 1%, 5%, 10%, and 20%. Raw and PCA-transformed features serve as baselines. Experiments are conducted on three tabular benchmark datasets from ADBench (Cardiotocography, Shuttle, SpamBase), across five random seeds. The results show that SCARF embeddings consistently underperform raw and PCA features across all datasets, detectors, and supervision levels. Semi-supervision improves detection for all feature conditions, but the improvement is proportionally similar across conditions, and the performance gap between SCARF and baselines does not close as more labels are introduced. These findings extend the negative results of Mai et al. into the semi-supervised regime, suggesting that the contrastive pre-training objective of SCARF, applied without supervised fine-tuning, does not produce representations sufficiently aligned with the anomaly detection task to benefit from semi-supervised detector heads.

Manufacturing organisations are increasingly becoming a more important topic of discussion in terms of cybersecurity due to the growing numbers of directed attacks towards the sector and updated regulatory requirements. Although previous research has shown that game-based training is one of the more effective methods for behavioural change, its suitability in time-constrained organisations such as in the manufacturing sector is an underexplored subject. This study investigates the use of analogue serious games for cybersecurity awareness training in large Swedish food manufacturing organisations, with a particular focus on organisational factors influencing its implementation. 

A mixed-methods design was used to gain a broad and deep understanding of existing barriers and potentials for game-based implementation in this sector. In practice, the qualitative data collection consisted of 12 semi-structured interviews. Additionally, a quantitative data collection was performed, using the organisational culture assessment instrument (OCAI) and 14 additional opinion-based questions with the use of a likert scale. The combination of these methods enabled this study to identify cultural and operational barriers for implementing game-based training for a large Swedish food manufacturer. 

The findings showed several barriers for feasibility and acceptance for example time-constraints, fears of being judged and attitude towards change, amongst others. 

Predicting continuous output signals from heterogeneous observational data –where input sources differ not only in content but in their fundamental temporal structure– poses a significant challenge in applied data science. This study investigates the extent to which preprocessing and structural representation decisions determine the predictability of such signals, and which input variables and temporal representations retain the most predictive information. The experimental work was conducted in collaboration with Alleima, a Swedish metallurgical company, using real production data from the induction heating stage that precedes hot steel extrusion – a setting that naturally combines static process parameters with time-varying sensor measurements. 

The proposed pipeline encompasses signal segmentation of the output profile, three input aggregation strategies of increasing domain dependency, and dimensionality reduction of the target signal prior to modeling. A total of 3.004 billet heating observations were used across three aggregation strategies –one of which was further combined with dimensionality reduction of the target signal– yielding four experimental configurations thatwere systematically compared. The best-performing configuration achieved an RMSE of 10.55^◦C and an R² of 0.74. ASHAP-based feature importance analysis consistently identified a small set of dominant predictors across experimental configurations, with the most informative temporal representations differing from those initially anticipated by domain experts – a finding that highlights the value of data-driven feature evaluation in heterogeneous input settings. 

The results demonstrate that preprocessing design is the primary driver of predictive performance in this class of problem, and that domain-informed aggregation strategies yield measurable improvements over purely statistical alternatives. The methodology and findings generalize beyond the specific industrial context studied here, with implications for any supervised regression setting involving heterogeneous data sources of differing temporal structure. 

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has become a method for users looking to protect their online accounts. While MFA is secure, the process of recovering MFA-enabled accounts remains highly vulnerable, with no standard implementations across online platforms and often compromising either security or user convenience. This thesis aims to address this issue by designing, developing and evaluating evidence-based design guidelines aimed at aiding platform owners to balance security and usability for their MFA recovery mechanisms. By utilising a Design Science Research approach, the thesis analysed data from a multi-vocal literature review of both academic and grey literature sources using thematic analysis. An initial artefact was developed, demonstrated and evaluated by experts via semi-structured interviews. The finalised guidelines provide an evaluation matrix and rules structured around low-, medium-, and high-value platform contexts. Key results include a decision matrix, rules applicable to certain contexts and general rules that apply everywhere. Ultimately, this thesis provides platform owners with guidelines that, when followed, balance MFA account recovery security and usability, preventing potential account compromises and account lockouts.

The approach of using visual effects (VFX) as navigation has been adopted in several recent video game titles. This research aims to examine what the industry has generated and how it potentially affects the player experience. This study took inspiration from Moura and Bartram’s research on wayfinding tools (2014) and Krukowski et al.’s guidance with global illumination effect (2025) following the three main categories of VFX that have been previously outlined by Yang et al. (2009). By examining how specifically environmental VFX can be used in open-world environments, this study presents two types of VFX navigation - Dynamic and Static. The adopted method for this study was qualitative in nature, including playtesting a prototype and a semi-structured interview after. Thematic analysis was selected for treating the raw data. This paper is aiming to be useful for developers as the results contain potential points of consideration when choosing this tool as for navigating.

This qualitative study explores the impact of diegetic and traditional non-diegetic Heads-Up Display (HUD) designs on player experiences. HUDs serve a dual purpose in video games: they communicate essential gameplay mechanics while contributing to the game’s aesthetic and narrative identity of the game world. There is often a trade-off between immersion and usability. While traditional non-diegetic HUDs excel in delivering clear, immediate information, they can detract from immersion by drawing attention away from the game world. This study aims to unpack these trade-offs and explore how HUD designs can affect the players' playing experience.

Previous research has lacked research testing the same game with both a traditional non-diegetic and a diegetic HUD; therefore, in this study, a game prototype was made and was tested on participants. A semi-structured interview, questionnaires with Likert scales, and a thematic analysis were conducted, focusing on the players' playing experiences and immersion with the two different HUDs.