No result found
2018-03-14
American Academy of Neurology;
Objective: To investigate whether greater cardiovascular fitness in midlife is associated with decreased dementia risk in women followed up for 44 years.Methods: A population-based sample of 1,462 women 38 to 60 years of age was examined in 1968. Of these, a systematic subsample comprising 191 women completed a stepwise-increased maximal ergometer cycling test to evaluate cardiovascular fitness. Subsequent examinations of dementia incidence were done in 1974, 1980, 1992, 2000, 2005, and 2009. Dementia was diagnosed according to DSM-III-R criteria on the basis of information from neuropsychiatric examinations, informant interviews, hospital records, and registry data up to 2012. Cox regressions were performed with adjustment for socioeconomic, lifestyle, and medical confounders.Results: Compared with medium fitness, the adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause dementia during the 44-year follow-up was 0.12 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.03–0.54) among those with high fitness and 1.41 (95% CI 0.72–2.79) among those with low fitness. High fitness delayed age dementia onset by 9.5 years and time to dementia onset by 5 years compared to medium fitness.Conclusions: Among Swedish women, a high cardiovascular fitness in midlife was associated with a decreased risk of subsequent dementia. Promotion of a high cardiovascular fitness may be included in strategies to mitigate or prevent dementia. Findings are not causal, and future research needs to focus on whether improved fitness could have positive effects on dementia risk and when during the life course a high cardiovascular fitness is most important.
2011-09-20
Open Society Institute;
Examines trends in and challenges for Sweden's media system, including media consumption, the role of public service broadcasters, media ownership, and digital media's effect on democratic debate and participation as well as news quality and pluralism.
2004-12-20
Stockholm School of Economics;
This working paper focuses on public benefit foundations in Sweden. It aims to provide a picture of its size, scope and structure and to present the historical development of this group of institutions in society.
2014-04-10
Migration Policy Institute;
The considerable diversity among Sweden's immigrants reflects a humanitarian migration policy. Refugees have arrived in the country since the 1970s and 1980s, with their countries of origin shifting according to the ethnic and political conflicts of any given period. Sweden is also a longstanding magnet for labor migration from surrounding Scandinavia, and has attracted mobile EU citizens since its entry into the European Union in 1995 -- and especially following the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007. Sweden's immigration flows continue to change today, as policy reforms in 2008 allowed employers to bring non-EU labor migrants to the country for the first time in decades. This report assesses how new immigrants to Sweden fare in the country's labor market. The report is part of a series of six case studies on labor market outcomes among immigrants to European Union countries.The report shows that employment rates during newcomers' initial years in Sweden are relatively depressed for low-educated refugees and migrants who come based on family ties, in comparison to natives and labor migrants from EU countries. Since Sweden's refugees and family arrivals are not selected through employment-related criteria, they are likely to lack locally in-demand skills and are often out of work in the years immediately after arrival. The obstacles these groups face can be exacerbated by certain features of Sweden's labor market, such as high minimum wages, a relatively small pool of low-skilled jobs, and stringent employment protection for permanent work.Non-EU labor migrants are also more concentrated in low-skilled jobs and have lower average annual earnings than both EU migrants and natives. Over time, however, all newcomers to Sweden have on the whole improved their employment rates, displayed income growth similar to natives, and moved into middle-skilled positions.
2012-01-01
Blekinge Institute of Technology School of Engineering;
There is an intersection where society's social and ecological challenges coincide with the industrial firm's challenge to maintain profitability in a globalizing world. Products connect these challenges. The development of these products together with services (product-service systems) therefore provides a critical intervention point to address these challenges. This includes e.g. defining what the products and services are, how they will deliver value to users, and the business models that enable them to be realized, as well as how these can contribute to sustainable development of society. The overarching goal of this research is to contribute to sustainable development of society by better understanding how a strategic sustainable development perspective based on backcasting from basic principles for a sustainable society can be brought into and guide product-service system innovation. Interviews with industry professionals, workshops with both manufacturing companies and within student projects, and industrial cases studies, together with a review of literature and theoretical considerations, provide the methodological basis for this work. This thesis contributes to clarifying theoretical and practical possibilities and limitations for a strategic sustainable development perspective to guide product service system innovation and provides a basis for the integration of these concepts. The findings indicate that the co-innovation of products and services in product-service systems can contribute to sustainable development of society both by supporting reduced material and energy use and by supporting improved life cycle management of materials. Further, a strategic sustainable development perspective can contribute to the refinement of existing tools and methods in product-service system innovation by providing an operational definition of sustainability articulated in the form of first-order principles that describe the boundary conditions for a sustainable society, and by providing guidelines for how to approach a vision of success inside those boundaries in a strategic way. In order to identify solutions that meet society's pressing challenges, new solution spaces may need to be identified, and this can be enabled by a shift from product development with service as "add-ons" to their co-innovation in product-service systems. An initial approach for how this could be enabled through bringing together set-based approaches to design product-service systems with a strategic sustainable development perspective is presented.
2015-01-01
Elsevier B.V.;
Previous research has investigated transitions of individual firms to PSS business. It has identified barriers and enablers and specified organizational capabilities needed. However, the transition to PSS has seldom been approached from a product-chain perspective. In addition, previous research has indicated the need for more assessments of environmental gains related to PSSs. This study aims at contributing to these perceived knowledge gaps by means of a case study. Questions posed include: Does the study's case company and one of its suppliers have the capabilities needed to adopt a PSS business model? and Could a PSS really contribute to material efficiency in their product-chain?
2010-03-31
The Pew Charitable Trusts;
This report assesses the environmental and social impacts of the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG), running from 2000 to 2006, using a range of quantitative and qualitative information. EU allocations for FIFG totalled €3.2 billion, of which Spain received nearly half. Member State contributions brought the total allocation of FIFG funding to €4.9 billion.A key objective of structural policy in the fisheries sector was to bring the fishing capacity of the European fleet into line with available biological resources. We identify that FIFG funding has not achieved the intended net fishing capacity reduction and, in some fleet segments, has led to fleet capacity increases. This has contributed to the worsening status of some stocks and has hindered the recovery of other stocks, as well as having had associated negative impacts on marine environment.
2014-08-26
Open Society Foundations;
This report is part of a six-city research series, Europe's White Working Class Communities, which examines the realities of people from majority populations in Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Lyon, Manchester, and Stockholm.White Working Class Communities in Stockholm explores the experiences and concerns of majority Swedes in Greater Stockholm, more specifically in the municipality of Southern Botkyrka. Botkyrka is the fifth-largest municipality in Greater Stockholm, with a history of migration stretching back to at least the 1960s. It is today the first municipality in Sweden where the majority population is no longer the majority locally, but the biggest demographic segment among many minorities.A working class and lower-middle class municipality, Botkyrka is divided into the North—traditionally a home to immigrant workers where today 65 percent of residents have a foreign background—and Southern Botkyrka, a relatively homogenous neighborhood where only 25 percent of residents have a foreign background. While Northern Botkyrka is relatively poor, Southern Botkyrka is a mix of poor and high-income residents. Though few Swedes from the majority population feel marginalized, there are signs that this is changing, with inequality on the rise and labor market participation decreasing for those with less education. Following on from work by the Open Society Foundations' At Home in Europe project on Muslim and Somali communities in Western Europe, this research focuses on white working class communities in seven areas of local policy—employment, education, health, housing, political participation, policing, and the media—as well as broader themes of belonging and identity. It is one of a series providing ground-breaking research on the experiences of a section of the population whose lives are often caricatured and whose voices are rarely heard in debates on integration, social cohesion, and social inclusion. Through a comparative lens, the project seeks to highlight parallels and differences in policies, practices, and experiences across the European cities.
2016-09-15
Elsevier;
In high-income countries, medical interventions to address the known risks associated with pregnancy and birth have been largely successful and have resulted in very low levels of maternal and neonatal mortality. In this Series paper, we present the main care delivery models, with case studies of the USA and Sweden, and examine the main drivers of these models. Although nearly all births are attended by a skilled birth attendant and are in an institution, practice, cadre, facility size, and place of birth vary widely; for example, births occur in homes, birth centres, midwifery-led birthing units in hospitals, and in high intervention hospital birthing facilities. Not all care is evidenced-based, and some care provision may be harmful. Fear prevails among subsets of women and providers. In some settings, medical liability costs are enormous, human resource shortages are common, and costs of providing care can be very high. New challenges linked to alteration of epidemiology, such as obesity and older age during pregnancy, are also present. Data are often not readily available to inform policy and practice in a timely way and surveillance requires greater attention and investment. Outcomes are not equitable, and disadvantaged segments of the population face access issues and substantially elevated risks. At the same time, examples of excellence and progress exist, from clinical interventions to models of care and practice. Labourists (who provide care for all the facility's women for labour and delivery) are discussed as a potential solution. Quality and safety factors are informed by women's experiences, as well as medical evidence. Progress requires the ability to normalise birth for most women, with integrated services available if complications develop. We also discuss mechanisms to improve quality of care and highlight areas where research can address knowledge gaps with potential for impact. Evaluation of models that provide woman-centred care and the best outcomes without high costs is required to provide an impetus for change.
2006-05-01
Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS);
In 2004 the European Union (EU) gained ten new Member States. However in many of the old Member States there were increasing concerns about the implications of this particular enlargement. Not only did it represent a large increase in the Union's population; in eight of the ten countries the wage levels were substantially below the wage levels in the old Member States. As several governments feared mass immigration, "welfare tourism" and negative effects on their labour markets, transitional rules were included in the Accession Treaty with regard to the freedom of movement for workers from the Central and East European Member (CEE) States.Two years after this momentous step in the European integration process, SIEPS decided to examine the effects from the 2004 enlargement in the countries that opened their labour market to workers from the CEE Member States. The study attempts to provide as thorough as possible a picture of the post-enlargement experiences in Ireland and Sweden.
2018-04-01
Migration Policy Institute;
This report explores the findings of a nine-country study of ECEC policies and practices designed to serve young children of refugees and asylum seekers. It draws on fieldwork conducted in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States—major host countries with varied refugee and asylum-seeker populations, migration-management policies, and ECEC systems—to highlights both common challenges and promising practices.
2011-07-11
Commonwealth Fund;
Examines "no-fault" systems in New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark, in which patients injured by medical negligence can file for compensation through governmental or private adjudicating organizations. Considers lessons for U.S. medical malpractice reform.
