Consumers of services that are financed by a third party, such as publicly financed health care or firm-sponsored health plans, are often allowed to freely choose provider. The rationale is that consumer choice may improve the matching of consumers and providers and spur quality competition. Such improvements are contingent on consumers having access to comparative information about providers and

Europeans have tried for decades to find a way to take a mutual stance on issues of higher education and its development. In terms of taking on the challenge of such a mutual commitment with respect to higher education, the Bologna process is a giant step for the European Union. It involves a large number of countries, representing a great variety of higher education systems, which are currently e

I have a returning nightmare: my computer breaks down and I am losing all my written words. Losing the record I keep of my stories. The trails of where I have been in my thoughts dissolve and I am left empty. ”Stories matter. Many stories matter”, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us in her famous TED-talk on ’the danger of a single story’ (Adichie 2009). Telling stories from my research on

What are the pedagogical impacts of internationalisation on the development of higher education in Europe? How can we proceed in this process and take a pedagogical stance on the issue? This theoretical article is partly based on a series of empirical studies, conducted by the author, investigating students' and teachers' experiences and understanding of an internationalised educational context in

Queer- och transforskning, i: Werner, Ann, & Anna Lundberg (2016) :En introduktion till genusvetenskapliga begrepp. Nationella sekretariatet för genusforskning: Göteborg.

Den här avhandlingen handlar om aerodynamik hos fladdermöss. Det vill säga, hur fladdermöss skapar de krafter som låter dem flyga, hur de påverkar luften för att åstadkomma detta, och hur deras vingar rör sig när de gör det.Tack vare förmågan att flyga kan djur utnyttja annars otillgängliga födoämnen, undfly rovdjur, och övervintra i varmare trakter. Fördelarna med flygning blir än mer uppenbara nBats are the only mammals capable of flight, and they are the only animal flyers that are mammals. This thesis focuses on the latter of those facts, and investigates how bats fly, from an aerodynamic perspective. The data on which this thesis is based were generated by examining the airflows beneath and behind bats flying in a wind tunnel, and by examining their wing kinematics manually and automa

We study the complexity of the so called semi-disjoint bilin-ear forms over different semi-rings, in particular the n-dimensional vector convolution and n × n matrix product. We consider a powerful unit-cost computational model over the ring of integers allowing for several addi-tional operations and generation of large integers. We show the following dichotomy for such a powerful model: while alm

The protein corona formed around nanoparticles in protein-rich fluids plays an important role for nanoparticle biocompatibility, as found in several studies during the last decade. Biological fluids have complex compositions and the molecular components interact and function together in intricate networks. Therefore, the process to isolate blood or the preparation of blood derivatives may lead to

Geometrically designed III-V nanowire arrays are promising candidates for disruptive optoelectronics due to the possibility of obtaining a strongly enhanced absorption resulting from nanophotonic resonance effects. With normally incident light on such vertical nanowire arrays, the absorption spectra exhibit peaks that originate from excitation of HE1m waveguide modes in the constituent nanowires.

We study the monotone circuit complexity of the so called semi-disjoint bilinear forms over the Boolean semi-ring, in particular the n-dimensional Boolean vector convolution. Besides the size of a monotone Boolean circuit, we consider also the and-depth of the circuit, i.e., the maximum number of and-gates on a path to an output gate, and the monom number of the circuit which is the number of dist

Background and purpose Stroke affects mortality, functional ability, quality of life and incurs costs. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the costs of stroke care in Sweden by level of disability and stroke type (ischemic (IS) or hemorrhagic stroke (ICH)). Method Resource use during first and second year following a stroke was estimated based on a research database containing link

This article presents a summary of what has been achieved during the last 20 years within the project 'The hawkweeds (Hieracium s.s.) of Sweden' in general, and concerning Hieracium sect. Vulgata in particular, a review of our present understanding of the taxonomy and evolution of this group, as well as some new results and classifications that will be implemented in a forthcoming monographic trea

We have developed a prognostic index model for survival data based on an ensemble of artificial neural networks that optimizes directly on the concordance index. Approximations of the c-index are avoided with the use of a genetic algorithm, which does not require gradient information. The model is compared with Cox proportional hazards (COX) and three support vector machine (SVM) models by Van Bel

Soft particles such as polymeric microgels can form ultra-dense phases, where the average center-to-center distance a s can be smaller than the initial unperturbed particle diameter σ 0, due to their ability to interpenetrate and compress. However, despite of the effort devoted to microgels at ultrahigh densities, we know surprisingly little about their response to their environment at effective v

An individual's foraging behaviour and time allocated to feeding have direct consequences for its fitness. Despite much research on population-level foraging decisions, few studies have investigated individual differences in fine-scale daily foraging patterns among wild animals. Here, we explore the consistency and plasticity of feeding tactics of individual great tits (Parus major) and blue tits