Adverse Health Events and Vaccine Hesitancy

We study how experiencing adverse health events affects vaccine hesitancy by using new data on vaccination records and adverse events. We first consider a severe, well-identified case: narcolepsy, a chronic disease induced by the 2009–2010 swine-flu vaccine. We find large effects on COVID-19 vaccination more than a decade later, suggesting that individuals rely heavily on experiences when making decisions about their health. The effects do not attenuate among those with high health literacy but show some attenuation with prior healthcare contact. Second, we assess the social costs of adverse events by studying serious events from all pharmaceuticals. The effects of experiencing such events on COVID-19 vaccination outcomes are small: while there are some effects for vaccine side effects, there are virtually none for adverse events from other drugs. This shows that individuals draw on only a narrow set of experiences for future decisions and suggests that the social costs of adverse events are limited.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc? Side Effect Misattribution and Vaccine Hesitancy

Side effect concerns are the most frequently reported reason for vaccine hesitancy, yet we lack well-identified evidence on how these perceptions form. We study how experiencing illness after vaccination affects the decision to continue vaccinating by exploiting an episode during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign when links between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots triggered extensive media coverage. Those who experienced a blood clot after vaccination—unrelated to the vaccine-induced syndrome—drop out of vaccination at almost twice the rate of matched controls. Consistent with misattribution, the effect is strongest for diagnoses occurring soon after the dose, and is amplified when clinicians report the event as a suspected side effect. Effects are similarly strong for vaccine brands that were never scientifically linked to vaccine-induced blood clots.

Intergenerational Effects of Wealth Confiscation: Evidence from Sweden’s Great Reduction of 1680

This paper examines the long-run effects of the Great Reduction of 1680 in Sweden. During this episode, the Crown confiscated about half of all noble estates, marking the largest wealth redistribution in Swedish history. Using a novel dataset constructed by linking noble genealogies to landholdings, we exploit quasi-exogenous variation in which families were subject to confiscations to estimate the intergenerational effects. We find substantial effects on wealth: up to five generations later, descendants of affected families hold fewer manors than comparable nobles, implying stronger persistence than intergenerational correlations suggest. We find no effects on demographic traits, marriage patterns, or human capital, indicating that the long-run impact operated primarily through wealth without changes in social status.

Ethnic Capital or Dynastic Human Capital? Evidence from Multigenerational Data

Intergenerational convergence across immigrant groups is often found to be slower than traditional parent–child models predict. A common explanation is that ethnic capital, measured as the average human capital of the origin group, independently shapes outcomes. This paper shows that such estimates can be biased when extended-family influences are omitted, as standard specifications mechanically attribute family transmission to group effects. We decompose persistence in educational outcomes into parental, extended-family, and country-of-origin components. Once the extended family is accounted for, country-of-origin effects become negligible.

Wind-driven currents are an important component of the circulation in the Baltic Sea. During an alongshore wind event, Ekman transport determines convergence or divergence of water at the coast. If the wind event is strong enough, the sea level changes near the coast (rising or falling depending on wind direction), creating a cross-shore gradient. The wind also drives an alongshore boundary current which can persist in a state of geostrophic balance in the cross-shore direction, even after the wind has ceased. These currents are commonly referred to as "coastal jets", because they are typically stronger near the coast. Coastal jets are also associated with vertical motions that lead to coastal upwelling and downwelling. Together, the processes associated with coastal jets have multiple impacts relevant to coastal infrastructure, biogeochemistry, and marine ecosystems.

Coastal jets are time-dependent and exhibit spatial variability related to bathymetry and coastal geometry, as well as seasonal variability driven by stratification. Numerical modeling is a valuable tool for characterizing their vertical structure, timescales, and associated impacts. In Paper I, we investigated wind-driven circulation in an idealized channel configuration featuring a gently sloping bottom in the west and steep bathymetry in the east. The upwelling jets become baroclinically unstable in the Baltic Sea, during the wind-forced phase already after a couple of days, whereas instability onset for downwelling on the slope is after 2–3 weeks (during the relaxation phase). The downwelling on the steep side is consistently stable.

Coastal upwelling may pose a hazard to coastal infrastructure during extreme wind events by triggering strong currents, cross-shore transport, and abrupt sea temperature variations. In Paper II, we analyze the output from publicly available ocean model, identifying which variables can be used as proxies for reported hazards during the passage of an intense summer storm. We interpret and discuss the possible mechanisms responsible for determining the reported coastal hazard impacts. We demonstrate that a large portion of the variability in bottom temperature and in the currents in the ocean model can be explained by coastal upwelling along the sections of the coast aligned with the prevailing wind direction.

Finally, coastal jets can influence bottom oxygen and tracer concentrations by enhancing transport within the bottom boundary layer. We quantify the impacts of upwelling and downwelling on bottom oxygen concentration and bottom salinity in the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea in Paper III. We found the bottom area in the coastal sea zone along the Swedish coast to be significantly affected by upwelling and downwelling. 

Safeguarding the benefits people derive from nature is critical for sustainable development and human well-being. However, accelerating global change, including biodiversity loss and climate change, threatens both the provision and resilience of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP). Sustainable land use governance and management therefore depend on a robust understanding of how NCP are co-produced and maintained over time. Yet, significant knowledge gaps remain regarding how diversity across social and ecological elements shapes NCP provision and resilience. First, we still have a limited understanding of how societal demand for NCP varies across large spatial scales, and how biodiversity contributes to the ecological potential to meet these demands at scales relevant for international governance. Second, NCP assessments rarely account for temporal dynamics, and the resilience of NCP provision under increasingly intense, frequent, and unpredictable disturbances remains poorly understood. In particular, response diversity, a key property of resilience, is still sparsely studied in social-ecological systems. This thesis addresses these gaps by investigating how social and ecological diversity influence the provision and resilience of NCP at different spatial scales. Paper I empirically explores patterns of stakeholder preferences for NCP across Europe using a geographically stratified sample of studies covering diverse ecosystems and stakeholder groups. Results show that non-material NCP are consistently preferred, yet they remain underrepresented in key governance frameworks on terrestrial ecosystem management in the European Union. Paper II applies a trait-based approach to assess the role of biodiversity, in particular plant diversity, for the provision of NCP. Findings show that biodiversity contributes positively to multiple NCP, indicating that land-use management supporting biodiversity can potentially reduce trade-offs between them. In this paper, three priorities for advancing trait-based approaches are identified: expanding geographic coverage of species data, improving availability of trait data, and integrating traits linked to social-ecological processes. Paper III contributes to the conceptual development of response diversity and how it supports social-ecological resilience under conditions of polycrisis. It shows that beyond responses to different disturbances, response diversity must also support the three dimensions of resilience, that is, coping, adapting and transforming. Paper IV empirically explores these theoretical advances in the Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka Biosphere Reserve in northern Sweden. It focuses on the resilience of NCP provision to climate change, examining how response diversity is distributed across the three resilience dimensions. Findings reveal that despite a wide range of responses, actors in the region focus on adaptation more than coping and transformation. Together, these papers advance understanding of the social and ecological diversity underpinning NCP provision and resilience, offering conceptual and empirical insights to inform land use governance and management under accelerating global change.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between pairs of constructions in Swedish involving a reflexive preposition phrase such as med sig ‘with oneself’. Expressions such as ta med sig väskan ‘bring along the bag’ can occasionally be rearranged without a change in meaning, as in ta väskan med sig, though this word order alternation is not entirely free. While the existing literature has often noted the peculiarity of the former variant, its paraphrasability with the latter variant has been largely unexplored. Drawing on the usage-based constructionist approach, which sees a construction, or a form–meaning pairing, as a basic unit of grammar, the study aims to identify the range of usages of the two variants – the verb-particle construction (VPC) and the post-objective construction (POC) – and to shed light on their relation within linguistic convention.

The study focuses on cases in which the VPC and the POC appear with a lexical object and contain one of four frequent prepositions: av ‘off’, i ‘in’, med ‘with’, and på ‘on’. The empirical data consist of two types. Blog corpus data from 2016 were used to identify the range of usages of the VPC and the POC in naturally occurring data. Acceptability judgement data were collected through a formal experiment conducted online to examine the conventionality of the overlaps observed in the corpus.

The analysis of the corpus data shows that, although recurrent overlaps are found in two pairs of subconstructions, the VPC and the POC generally differ remarkably in lexical variability and semantic features. The VPC is lexically variable and prototypically resultative, whereas the POC is lexically highly constrained and prototypically stative. Moreover, the semantically equivalent, overlapping subconstructions are not pragmatically equivalent. Specifically, the POC with the stative verb ha ‘have’ co-occurs significantly more often with a shorter object. Furthermore, the POC with dynamic verbs is infrequent and significantly less acceptable than the VPC. These quantitative differences indicate that the POC variant is more constrained in usage than the VPC variant, making the variants pragmatically non-equivalent.

While the findings indicate that the VPC and the POC are two distinct argument structure constructions with specific word orders, the existence of recurrent overlaps between them suggests that the VPC and the POC may be related and could be abstracted into an argument structure construction without word order specification, or a constructeme, at some highly specific levels.

Overall, the study makes both empirical and theoretical contributions. Empirically, the study delivers a description of the VPC and the POC that specifies the conditions under which the VPC and the POC are chosen. The results are particularly interesting in light of earlier research on Swedish particles, which suggested that Swedish particles are limited to the VPC order and to a resultative meaning. Under the assumption that sequences such as med sig comprise complex particles, the present study provides a nuanced syntactic and semantic characterisation of these types of particles. Theoretically, the study presents a case study of the horizontal relations between formally distinct, yet similar, constructions within constructional networks, offering a means of relating argument structure constructions to other linguistic levels, such as individual lexical items and more general word order patterns.

In this thesis, I investigate the properties and dynamics of structures in the solar atmosphere, together with important physical processes required in order to detect, numerically model and analyse them. The understanding of how these structures are formed, driven and how their energy dissipate into their surroundings is an important step in order to solve the problem of why the Sun’s atmosphere is heated to high temperatures in its outer layers. Numerical simulations of dynamic structures advected in time are an essential tool for studying how they form and evolve, as they enable access to physical quantities that are unavailable through direct observations. The formation, dynamics and observable signatures of solar atmospheric structures are primarily governed by radiative transfer, which describes the interaction between photons and matter and determines the observable emission, and magnetohydrodynamics, which governs the dynamics of plasma and how it interacts with its surroundings. Therefore, in this thesis, I present the two concepts and how they can be used for creating synthetic observable signatures.

The main topic of this work is the dynamics of small-scale structures and large-scale regions in the chromosphere and low transition region, and how to identify them using synthetic observables. Three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations were performed in order to model the solar atmosphere from the upper convection zone to the lower corona. The simulated structures and their dynamics are compared with observations using synthetic Hα and/or Si IV 1394 Å and 1403 Å spectral lines, generated using radiative transfer calculations. In Paper I, a low-lying transition region loop is successfully reproduced in terms of spectral signatures, geometry, temperature, and lifetime. In addition, heating mechanisms and three possible drivers are presented. In Paper II, a dynamic chromospheric structure exhibiting signatures of torsional Alfvén waves is presented. The study assesses the suitability of Hα as a diagnostic for detecting such waves but finds that it is not fully reliable, as it captures the dynamics of the torsional wave to a limited extent. In Paper III, potential physical processes behind the net redshift of Si IV 1394 Å are investigated in a model atmosphere containing solar plage. We find average redshifts and non-thermal velocities that are broadly consistent with previous studies. Our final results indicate that the primary driver is through localised heating along magnetic field lines, and that flows that act at larger scales along magnetic structures occur less frequently.

Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACI) remain the largest source of uncertainty in the estimates of anthropogenic radiative forcing from Earth system models (ESMs). In this thesis, we combine theoretical tools including inverse modeling, sensitivity analysis, and cloud parcel model (CPM) simulations with observations from clean and polluted environments (SMEAR II station in Finnish boreal forest, and San Pietro Capofiume station in the Italian Po Valley) to yield new insights on ACI. For the boreal forest, we showed that if bulk chemical composition of submicron aerosol particles is used for cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) prediction, it would lead to significant errors (for e.g. a bias of ~34% at 1.0% supersaturation). Therefore, inverse CCN closures were performed in which optimized size-segregated chemical composition and thus the hygroscopicity parameter (κ) were obtained, which reduced the bias to below 21%. The results further confirmed the lower hygroscopicity of the ultrafine (smaller than about 100 nm in diameter) Aitken mode particles (median κ ≈ 0.1) as compared with the larger accumulation mode (median κ ≈ 0.3) – except in cases with very numerous Aitken mode particles.  We then performed multiple CPM simulations of warm and non-precipitating clouds using a decade-long aerosol and cloud base updraft data from the same location. The median of modelled maximum supersaturation (SSmax) and cloud droplet number concentration at SSmax height level (CDNCmax) were ~0.2-0.3% and ~200 cm⁻³, respectively, increasing to ~0.32% and ~500 cm⁻³ in summer cumulus clouds due to higher updrafts and aerosol number concentrations. Observed CCN showed a moderate correlation with modeled CDNCmax (Spearman correlation coefficient r ≈ 0.5), highlighting the importance of other parameters (particularly SS and κ). Furthermore, in case of the cumulus clouds, the observed peak liquid water path showed low correlation (Spearman correlation coefficient r = 0.26) with the ground observation of total aerosol number concentration. Co-condensation of organic vapors on growing droplets was found to enhance the cloud base CDNC by 16 to 22%, depending on updraft and the type of size distribution. In the Po Valley fog, in contrast to the boreal forest clouds, high aerosol loading and slower cooling rate resulted in low SS (0.01% to 0.03%) and lower CDNC ~12 cm⁻³ leaving, most (~87%) as hydrated haze particles. 

In the boreal forest, the most important factors driving the CDNC varied depending primarily on the size distribution shape. For cases with a relatively large number of accumulation mode particles present, their number and updraft velocities were the most important determining factors. For cases with numerous ultrafine particles, however, the Aitken mode properties (hygroscopicity, concentrations and size) became important as well.  In contrast to the boreal forest, in the Po Valley, the SS driven by the radiative cooling and aerosol number concentration were always the most important parameters for accurate prediction of fog microphysics – instead of the chemical composition. 

This thesis highlights that accurate representation of updraft velocity and aerosol number concentration is consistently needed for reliable CDNC estimates, while chemical composition becomes especially critical when the size distribution includes a large number of ultrafine particles. We recommend continuing current long-term measurements, which can be complemented by campaign-based vertical profiling of aerosol size distributions beneath low stratus and cumulus clouds to help close remaining knowledge gaps. For fog microphysics studies in polluted environments, hydrated particles must be accounted for, as activated and non-activated droplets behave very differently in terms of processes such as evaporation and sedimentation.

The Granular Drag on Growth

This paper uncovers a novel mechanism through which market structure shapes future productivity growth. Using a micro-founded exogenous growth model in which granular firms experience random productivity shocks, I characterize sectoral and economy-wide productivity growth conditional on the current market structure. I test the model's predictions using firm-level data from Sweden, complemented by industry data from the United States and other European economies. In efficient industries, the model predicts that higher sales concentration lowers expected productivity growth due to limited reallocation. In the data, a 10-percentage-point increase in the Herfindahl index of sales concentration is associated with a 3-percentage-point lower productivity growth rate over a five-year period. Moreover, in line with the model's predictions for distorted economies, a similar increase in the gap between the Herfindahl indices of sales and cost shares is linked to a stronger decline of about 13 percentage points. The model generates persistent cross-sectional growth heterogeneity consistent with the empirical evidence, even though all firms follow identically distributed productivity processes. I conclude that the interaction between micro-reallocation and market concentration, a mechanism I term the granular drag, is important for understanding productivity growth across industries and possibly entire economies.

Towards Granular Krusell-Smith Equilibria: An Endogenous Growth Application

I study an endogenous growth model with a finite but potentially large number of granular firms that choose innovation effort and face idiosyncratic productivity shocks. A Markov perfect equilibrium suffers from the curse of dimensionality because firms must track the full distribution of rival productivities. I overcome this problem by using deep learning to compute a Krusell-Smith-style approximate equilibrium in which firms use as state variables their own sales share together with a small set of concentration moments whose evolution they can approximately forecast. Despite the model's simplicity, it generates substantial growth heterogeneity across sectors with different levels of concentration. More broadly, the approach developed here can be used to study forward-looking firm behavior in environments populated by granular firms with empirically realistic market share distributions.

Inflation Persistence and a New Phillips Curve

Inflation exhibits substantial persistence in the data, yet the standard New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) fails to generate this persistence without resorting to ad hoc assumptions like inflation indexation. This paper demonstrates that menu-cost models with state-dependent pricing naturally produce inflation persistence consistent with empirical evidence. The key insight is that menu-cost models feature both intensive and extensive margins of price adjustment. In response to shocks to the growth rate of nominal demand, the intensive margin generates the standard marginal cost channel as in the NKPC, whereas the extensive margin generates history dependence that is captured by the lagged inflation rate. Using a calibrated menu-cost model with idiosyncratic productivity and stochastic adjustment costs, we show that when nominal demand growth is autocorrelated (as in the data), firms optimally delay price adjustments, generating history-dependent inflation dynamics. In Phillips Curve regressions, lagged inflation exhibits a coefficient of 0.50 when controlling for expected marginal costs alone—consistent with empirical estimates. However, this coefficient drops to 0.05 when we include lagged nominal demand growth, revealing that the persistence primarily stems from the extensive margin channel. Our findings suggest that inflation persistence emerges endogenously from firms' optimal price-setting behavior under menu costs, without invoking the Lucas critique concerns associated with mechanical indexation assumptions.

Zeolites are crystalline porous open-framework aluminosilicate materials whose unique channels and cages, as well as exceptional thermal stability, make them attractive for industrial applications. But to understand their properties and possibly explore new synthesis routes, accurate structure determination is essential. The small and/or anisotropic crystal size of zeolites and zeotypes makes structure determination extremely challenging and time-consuming using conventional methods based on X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, zeolites may possess disorders such as stacking faults and intergrowth meaning that average structural information is often insufficient for a complete understanding of the material.

Electron crystallography offers several advantages over conventional X-ray crystallography. Electrons interact more strongly with matter than X-rays, which enables studying crystals on a sub-micrometer scale by electron diffraction. Moreover, electrons can be shaped and controlled using electromagnetic lenses, allowing for imaging at atomic resolution, which is particularly important to investigate local structure variations within a material.

This thesis explores how electron diffraction and electron microscopy methods, such as three-dimensional electron diffraction (3D ED), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), and scanning electron diffraction (SED), can be applied for structure determination of zeolites and zeotypes across the disordered ladder. The thesis starts with the structure determination of three low-dimensional zeotype materials (EMM-75P, EM-L01, and EM-L02) using 3D ED, where the atomic positions of the organic structure-directing agents (OSDAs) determined by 3D ED shed light on their structure-directing role and helped rationalize the different condensation behavior. The thesis then advances to the localization of extra-framework cations in chabazite by pushing to the limits of 3D ED and further to complex intergrowth between chabazite and erionite resolved by SED. The disordered ladder story culminates with the structure determination of heavily faulted zeolite EMM-41. EMM-41 is an intergrowth of two distinct polymorphs consisting of two alternating layers, one of which is related to zeolite Beta. Additionally, the structure of EMM-41 appears to be structurally related to industrial catalyst NU-88. These challenging materials were approached using complementary techniques, such as 3D ED and STEM imaging.

Warm and moist air intrusions carry significant amounts of sensible and latent heat into the Arctic. The imported energy can alter the Arctic's sea ice surface and atmospheric thermodynamic structure contributing to the Arctic's amplified warming both directly and indirectly, through interaction with local feedback mechanisms. Energy is released from the intruding air masses and deposited into the Arctic through a series of turbulent, radiative, cloud and precipitation processes, summarized into the concept of the Arctic air mass transformation. Despite its importance, understanding of the air mass transformation is limited and models struggle to represent its timescales and impact, resulting in significant uncertainty in the prediction of Arctic weather and climate.

This thesis tackles the Arctic air mass transformation from a Lagrangian (air mass following) perspective, aiming to reveal its driving mechanisms and their timescales. We built a Lagrangian modeling framework based on the Atmosphere–Ocean Single-Column Model (AOSCM). Simulations of a warm-air intrusion observed during the HALO-(AC)³ campaign show good agreement with observations and reanalyses, provided that the air mass maintains a column-like structure during its poleward journey.

Instances of vertically coherent transport were identified in nine more WAIs, supporting the broader applicability of the Lagrangian AOSCM framework. The primary driver of the air mass transformation in most of the simulated WAIs was vertical ascent, most often initiated around the marginal ice zone. The updraft-induced adiabatic cooling contributed larger temperature changes than diabatic processes, also affecting the moisture and cloud evolution under the constraint of saturation.

The sensitivity of the transformation to diabatic processes was tested further with a wide array of perturbation experiments applied on microphysical and boundary layer parameterizations. Within the experiments, we observed that changes in the air mass' mean temperature and moisture content were modest and most often associated with changes in the height of the simulated cloud top. The surface energy budget had a more significant response to cloud changes, especially in the summer, due to changes in the solar radiation reaching the surface. Experimenting with boundary layer mixing parameters showed larger impact on the surface energy budget, as well as the near surface thermodynamic and cloud structure.

The representativeness of the vertical wind forcing, which plays a dominant role in the modeled air mass transformation, is assessed using a novel observational approach for the Arctic. Dropsondes released along closed flight patterns during the HALO-(AC)³  campaign are used to estimate profiles of large-scale divergence and vertical velocity within the sampled area. In some cases, these estimates differ from reanalysis in both magnitude and sign, highlighting substantial uncertainty in the dynamical forcing. These findings provide guidance for future measurement strategies, including optimal sampling design and resource allocation, and indicate the sensitivity of modeled air mass transformation to uncertainties in vertical velocity.

Oxygen (O₂) availability is a critical factor for the health of any aquatic ecosystem. It not only determines which organisms will be able to survive, persist, or thrive, but also fundamentally affects biogeochemical cycling. This is especially evident in its connection to the short carbon cycle, an umbrella term describing how carbon moves through the ecosystem via processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, and decomposition. It is well established that globally both the open oceans and the coastal waters have experienced a decline in dissolved O₂, over at least the last six decades, with the coastal regions being the most affected. 

There is a strong link between eutrophication and temporary or permanent anoxia, since high primary productivity in surface waters drives oxygen loss in bottom waters as organic matter is remineralized by microbes. 

In this thesis we explore near-seafloor oxygen dynamics over time at two sites: a coastal oxic site and a euxinic (sulfide can in this context be seen as negative oxygen) deep-basin site in the Western Gotland Basin (WGB) of the eutrophied Baltic Sea. Using a benthic lander system equipped with a profiling conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor, we monitored conditions in the benthic boundary layer (BBL), directly above the seafloor, over time. 

At the coastal site, we observed O₂ variations of up to 30 μmol L^-1 occurring over timescales of just a few hours. From the data collected by a vertically profiling CTD and a down-looking acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) we calculated measures for stratification and turbulent diffusivity over time. We observed a counterintuitive correlation between increased O₂, increased temperature (T) and decreased salinity (S) concurrent with an increase in stratification. Normally, it would be expected that O₂ and T increase and S decrease when vertical mixing—rather than stratification, which inhibits vertical mixing— is strong. Based on vertical transects of T and S over time, together with variations in flow velocity and direction, we developed a conceptual model explaining this behaviour as divergence and convergence of the lower water mass due to changing flow fields (Paper I). These oxygen dynamics occur on temporal scales and within a distance to the sediment surface that isn’t captured by snap shot ship-based monitoring. At the end of the time-series, a high-velocity high-turbidity event was followed by what appeared to be an increase in sediment O₂ uptake rate. 

Building on Paper I, we investigated how frequent and significant event-driven episodes are for bottom water O₂ availability. Following a hiatus for a deep-basin measuring campaign (Paper III), the next measuring campaign at B1 ran from May 2022 to January 2023. We found a general trend of declining bottom water O₂ concentrations from mid-May, interrupted by vertical mixing events associated with regional downwelling. From start to finish these events lasted less than 3 days. In the absence of these events, the bottom waters would have turned and remained anoxic from the onset of thermal stratification (~May) until its breakdown (~ November) (Paper II). 

The field campaign for paper III was built on the hypothesis that the BBL is a biogeochemical hotspot where suspended particles stimulate microbial activity, driving elevated rates of carbon remineralization and nutrient regeneration relative to both the sediments below and the water column above. However, the deep basin BBL was found to be much less dynamic than the coastal equivalent, with low amount of suspended solids and low sulfate-reduction rates. However, we found that the depth-integrated rate of sulfide generation in the anoxic below-pycnocline part of the water column exceeded the diffusion-limited flux from the sediments, indicating that water-column processes are more important than sediment processes in sustaining anoxia in the WGB (Paper III). 

The range contractions and expansions due to climate fluctuations during the Quaternary have profoundly shaped the evolutionary history of species and populations. In this thesis, I used ancient, historical, and modern mitochondrial and whole genomes to study the postglacial population history of Scandinavian mammals in the context of past climate changes and human actions. In Chapter I, I analysed 41 ancient, historical, and modern mitogenomes of Scandinavian brown bears (Ursus arctos), to gain further insights into the Holocene history of the species. I found that southern Scandinavia was likely recolonised by several female lineages, whereas northern Scandinavia was recolonised by only a single lineage after the last glaciation. Moreover, a recent population bottleneck resulted in a severe loss of mitochondrial genetic diversity, with only a single haplotype remaining in southern Scandinavia today. In Chapter II, I used seven historical and 21 modern high-coverage nuclear genomes of Scandinavian brown bears to study the genome-wide effect of the population decline ca. 100 years ago. The results suggested that while the individual genomic diversity and inbreeding levels were maintained, the population structure was reshaped as a consequence of the bottleneck, where our analyses suggest that male-biased gene flow resulted in a mitochondrial-nuclear discordance. Additionally, the overall population diversity likely declined as the unique genetic variation of southern Scandinavia mostly was lost. In Chapter III, I generated 86 modern Norwegian lemming (Lemmus lemmus) genomes, and investigated the present-day population structure of this small rodent endemic to Fennoscandia. Here I found geographically structured subpopulations which are characterised by an isolation-by-distance pattern, with the highest genetic diversity in lemmings in the northern part of Sweden. Finally, in Chapter IV, I studied the Late Quaternary population dynamics and biogeographic history of Lemmus in western Eurasia, using ancient and modern high-coverage genomes. The results suggest a complex population history of Lemmus sp. over the last 50,000 years, involving hybridisation among divergent lineages and genomic patterns that open new questions about the postglacial recolonisation of Fennoscandia.

Understanding terrestrial water system dynamics requires explicit account and integration of water fluxes and storage changes across spatial scales and datasets. However, hydrological processes are often examined in isolation or at specific spatial scales. This fragments the terrestrial water system, hinders a physically consistent interpretation of its variability, trends, and extremes, and leads to inconsistencies between observations and model-based assessments. This thesis addresses this fragmentation challenge by developing and applying a harmonized multi-dataset and multi-catchment synthesis framework for investigating terrestrial water system dynamics across different scales, from individual catchments up to global scale. The work integrates data and model estimates of precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, and storage change within a unified water balance framework, enabling systematic evaluation of spatial and temporal variations and dataset realism across numerous hydrological catchments with worldwide distribution across diverse hydro-climatic regions. The thesis pursues four main objectives: (i) to assess how research on integrated water fluxes and storage changes at catchment and larger scales has evolved in the scientific literature, and identify important remaining knowledge gaps; (ii) to advance methodological approaches for consistent multi-scale and multi-dataset investigation of terrestrial water systems; (iii) to evaluate water balance closure, variations, trends, and extremes in distinct hydro-climatic regions, including the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin, South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa; and (iv) to quantify space-time variability and change of hydro-climatic conditions at the global scale. The results reveal that terrestrial water research remains fragmented across variables, datasets, spatial scales, and geographical regions, leading to divergent and sometimes physically implausible representations of water flux and storage dynamics. Comparative multi-dataset analysis shows that terrestrial water system responses to atmospheric climate change are strongly heterogeneous. They are also frequently non-binary, exhibiting concurrent acceleration in some and deceleration in other water fluxes, rather than uniform intensification or weakening of all fluxes. The water flux changes in time further indicate different dominant cause-effect relationships than those for the flux variations in space. Diagnostics of water balance closure emerge as an important tool for identifying physically plausible hydro-climatic patterns among divergent implications of different types of observational and model-based dataset combinations. By synthesizing and comparing water fluxes and storage changes across datasets and spatial scales, this thesis advances a physically consistent framework for interpreting terrestrial water variability and change. The findings strengthen the conceptual and methodological foundation for large-scale hydrological assessment and improve scientific understanding of terrestrial water system dynamics under ongoing climate change.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses one of the most consequential governance challenges of the 21st century. Consequently, a range of actors, including states, international organizations, and non-state actors, recognize AI as a critical domain for strategic competition and risk mitigation. While policymakers around the world grapple with the question of whether and how to regulate AI, the focus of attention has recently shifted to the global level. Yet to date, we lack systematic knowledge about the patterns and drivers of global AI governance. To that end, this dissertation provides a systematic analysis of three areas of the governance process that hold considerable promise for deepening our understanding of the global governance of AI: actor preferences, bargaining dynamics, and institutional design. Through four independent papers, this dissertation makes substantive theoretical and empirical contributions to address shortcomings in prior research. Theoretically, it develops novel and testable arguments about the global governance of AI. Empirically, it spearheads a comprehensive analysis of global AI governance through large-scale data collection efforts for each of the singular papers, utilizing various methods for descriptive and explanatory analysis. The dissertation finds that global AI governance is characterized by three core patterns: heterogeneous actors, institutional fragmentation, and a predominance of non-binding rules. Two factors emerge consistently across the papers as drivers of these patterns: divergence of interests among relevant actors and uncertainty about AI. This dissertation makes contributions to three overarching bodies of literature: AI governance, global digital governance, and global governance.

Most management control research conceptualizes control as a top-down process, positioning central management as the primary architect of control systems. This thesis challenges this perspective, arguing instead that control is shaped by multiple actors and should be examined from perspectives beyond the managerial one. Through three empirical articles, the thesis explores how non-managerial workers perform, reshape, and resist control at the individual, organizational, and national levels.

At the individual level, the article Time to care? The temporal structuring of home care work, presents an ethnographic study of home care planning and delivery. It reveals how care workers and administrators adapt, modify, or disregard the outputs of the formal, semi-automated planning system. The analysis highlights how the control of care visits depends in no small part on the actions of individual workers and on relationships between workers. Ultimately, the article argues that care workers perform control work in addition to care work.

At the organizational level, the article Seizing overflows: exploring how accounting becomes emancipatory uses archival materials to analyze a decade-long accounting reform process in a home care organization. It demonstrates how a management accounting reform created stressful working conditions for care workers, who then mobilized health and safety legislation to resist these changes. The reform was ultimately reversed, illustrating how workers can shape control by highlighting the unintended consequences of managerial decisions.

At the national level, the article Winning the debate but losing the message employs mixed methods to trace a national campaign by care workers’ unions against ’minute-based control’ in home care. While the campaign succeeded in raising awareness and criticism of the concept at the national level, local efforts to change control practices faltered due to disagreements over the term’s meaning. Despite this finding of failure to push through a substantive change, the article shows how workers can set the agenda for discussions on control.

Drawing on these three articles and on critical accounting and management studies, the dissertation develops a conceptualization of worker agency in relation to organizational control. Specifically, it posits that workers combine varying levels of challenges to (1) organizational assumptions about control, and (2) organizational power relations, in order to bring control practices closer to what they view as quality work. This contributes theoretically to critical accounting research by nuancing the debate on how actors may use accounting for emancipatory purposes. It also demonstrates the potential for studying control systems without centering management. In doing so, it opens avenues for emancipatory research approaches in the study of organizational control.

Sexual signals and preferences play a central role in mate choice, sexual selection, and reproductive isolation. However, when such traits are learned rather than genetically fixed, maintaining their accuracy and alignment becomes a major challenge. Learning introduces variation across individuals that can accumulate into mismatches between signallers and receivers, raising the question of how learned mating traits remain sufficiently stable to function in communication and reproduction. Birdsong is one such trait. In songbirds, songs are acquired through vocal learning, and successful song development depends on young individuals attending to, discriminating, and learning from appropriate acoustic models. Understanding how early song responses arise, what shapes tutor related biases, and whether adult song reliably reflects broader aspects of male quality is therefore important for explaining the development and evolution of learned sexual signals.

In this thesis, I investigate these questions in the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), focusing on early song discrimination and the information content of adult song. In Chapter I, I examine whether nestlings discriminate between their social father's song and that of an unfamiliar local male. I show that 13-day-old nestlings respond more strongly to their social father's song, indicating that nestlings can distinguish socially familiar from unfamiliar conspecific songs at an early age.

In Chapter II, I test whether nestlings respond differently to simplified short songs and longer complex songs played back from either their social father or an unfamiliar local male. Since males sing shorter songs after pairing, nestlings are typically exposed to simplified rather than complex paternal song, raising the question of how song length shapes early responsiveness. Nestlings showed stronger postural begging responses to shorter songs regardless of familiarity, suggesting that both early auditory experience and intrinsic acoustic salience contribute to early song responsiveness.

In Chapter III, I investigate whether early discrimination of paternal song reflects inherited predispositions or early auditory experience using an embryonic cross-fostering experiment in the wild. Nestlings reared by either genetic or foster parents were exposed to songs of their social father, genetic father, and an unfamiliar local male, but showed no differential begging responses to the three treatments. Because begging was strongly influenced by nestling condition, these results suggest that behavioural assays may fail to reveal auditory discrimination when nestling motivation is low, and the data remain inconclusive about the relative contributions of experience and predisposition.

In Chapter IV, I shift to adult sexual signalling and test whether song complexity predicts cognitive ability in breeding males, using a novel foraging task and a detour reaching task. Contrary to the hypothesis that preferred song traits signal cognitive quality, I find no consistent positive relationship between song complexity and cognitive performance. The traits most strongly linked to female preference were either unrelated or negatively related to task performance, suggesting that song complexity is unlikely to serve as a straightforward indicator of cognition.

Together, these findings shed new light on how learned sexual signals emerge, are shaped during development, and are maintained in natural populations.

This thesis is based on three papers which focus on representations of Grothendieck toposes as localic groupoids, localic stacks, and categories of points equipped with convergence data.

In Paper I, we analyse various localic covering theorems and localic groupoid representations for toposes given in the literature. We note that each of these arises from a minimal, concrete object: a locale equipped with a suitable 'amorphous' sheaf. With this definition in hand, we abstract the standard recipe for covering theorems, describe and compare the amorphous sheaves associated to standard covering constructions from the literature, and give a general logical characterisation of amorphous objects.

In Paper II, we show that the 2-category of locales is dense in that of toposes, and that toposes can faithfully be represented as stacks over locales. This is achieved by the combination of an original technical result about the 2-localisation induced by a 2-site, and the key observation that open surjections are of lax descent type in toposes.

In Paper III, we build on the recent development that toposes with enough points can be represented as categories equipped with ultraconvergence data, using it to characterise the surjection–embedding and hyperconnected–localic factorisation systems in terms of points. We introduce analogous classes of functors between abstract categories equipped with ultraconvergence data; provide a new characterisation of separating families of points of a topos; and apply it to show preservation and reflection results between these classes of functors and geometric morphisms.

Since the early 2000s, pro-European secessionist parties have pursued “independence in the EU” while becoming increasingly mainstream in European politics. This suggests that the process of European integration might sustain rather than hamper the quest for independence among non-sovereign regions in the EU. This development is puzzling since EU representatives have consistently argued in public that independence is an “internal matter” and that regions of EU member states would automatically lose EU membership upon secession. Previous research has so far overwhelmingly focused on pro-European secessionist parties at the national level, even though mobilization in the European Parliament (EP) has been a consistent component of their strategy. As a result, few studies have focused on how and to what extent the EP is used as a political arena in secessionist parties’ independence strategies.

This thesis examines how pro‑European secessionist parties advance their independence agendas in the EP and explores the role of European integration in contemporary secessionist politics. Although the EU has not delivered on secessionist parties’ wishes and expectations, these parties have continued to mobilize electoral support to secure representation in the EP, raising the question of how Europe matters in their pursuit of independence. The thesis addresses two research questions: how have pro-European secessionist parties used Europe in their independence strategies in the EP between 1999 and 2024, and what contextual factors help understand differences in how Europe is used in secessionist parties’ independence strategies? The thesis adopts a strategic constructivist perspective and develops a new conceptual framework based on the concept of “usage of Europe”, originally established by Sophie Jacquot and Cornelia Woll. The framework is used to structure a comparative study of three secessionist parties from Scotland and Catalonia: Scottish National Party (SNP); Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and Convergència i Unió/Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català/Junts per Catalunya (CiU/PDeCAT/Junts). 

The thesis combines qualitative content analysis of a novel dataset of EP text data with semi-structured interviews with Members of the European Parliament. The findings show that pro‑European secessionist parties have continuously used the EP to address independence, albeit the SNP has used Europe primarily pragmatically, whereas the Catalan parties have used it more idealistically, making Europe more central to their independence strategies. While the different usages of Europe are shaped by contextual factors, the study also shows that all parties engage in practices aiming at normalizing both themselves and their independence claims within the EP. Taken together, the findings suggests that despite the EU’s formal reluctance to facilitate secession,European integration still offers secessionist parties institutional and discursive resources and is therefore not perceived by them as a closed opportunity structure. The thesis thus makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of secessionist politics in Europe.

In this thesis we explore several strategies for the valorization of forestry residues, which account for 30% of lignocellulosic biomass from forestry operations and are currently incinerated, due to the lack of feasible methods of fractionation of the complex feedstock. To address this challenge, chemical conversion methods capable of processing different components have been developed.

In the first chapter, valorization of spruce wood from tops and branches (T&B) was investigated. A fast fractionation method was applied to obtain three main fractions from spruce T&B: solid residue, organic, and aqueous fractions. The solid residue, comprised mainly cellulose, lignin, and small amounts of hemicellulose was converted to textile fibers. The organic fraction, rich in lignin, was converted into hydrocarbons. The environmental sustainability of the process was studied by life-cycle assessment (LCA) and demonstrated better scores in four out of five footprint categories benchmarked to cotton production. 

In the second chapter, conversion of spruce bark into different high-value compounds, such as starch, lipophilic extractives, lignin, tannins, and cellulosic pulp is presented. Pulping under alkaline conditions was chosen as a methodology to delignify bark and obtain cellulosic pulp. To enhance the efficiency of extractions and soda pulping process, a flow-through system was used. The flow-through system demonstrated tunability in the pulping step to achieve either high yields of lignin or pulp depending on the applied temperature. The process also allowed for the mechanical separation of condensed tannins from the cellulosic pulp. LCA showed that conversion of bark into valuable products is more climate-beneficial than combustion.

In the third chapter, the possibility of fractionating a mixture consisting of birch bark and wood, that represents T&B was demonstrated. Two different catalytic approaches allowed us to sequentially isolate monophenols, suberin and yield a cellulose-rich pulp, showing that valorization of complex mixtures could offer a more resource-efficient alternative to incineration. 

Overall, chemical conversion approaches for efficient fractionation of barks and T&B to a variety of compounds that can substitute fossil-based products on the market, was investigated in this thesis.

Postmating prezygotic isolation can reduce gene flow early in divergence, but the reproductive traits and postmating processes that generate these barriers are often challenging to identify. This is especially true in internally fertilizing animals, where fertilization depends on interactions between male ejaculates and the female reproductive tract, and where reduced fertilization can arise through several distinct postmating steps. In this dissertation, I investigate how divergence in interacting reproductive traits translates into postmating prezygotic isolation in Drosophila montana, with a particular focus on sperm length, female sperm storage, and female-mediated postmating processes.

In Chapter I, I test whether divergence in sperm length and seminal receptacle length predicts fertilization success across populations and genotypes. I show that these traits co-diverge and together form a major compatibility axis, such that fertilization success is best predicted by the sperm to seminal receptacle length gap. Fertilization is lowest when sperm are relatively short for a given seminal receptacle. I further show that both traits have substantial additive genetic variance and a polygenic basis, and that their QTL intervals overlap in several genomic regions, identifying candidate regions that may have facilitated coordinated divergence.

In Chapter II, I ask whether this compatibility relationship is fixed or modifiable by developmental condition. I show that seminal receptacle length is condition-dependent in the population with the longest seminal receptacles and sperm, whereas sperm length remains largely insensitive to developmental condition. I further show that female condition can alter fertilization success, both through general female effects and by amplifying sperm to storage mismatch in the cross-direction that already shows the strongest barrier.

In Chapter III, I examine whether divergence in female sperm management helps explain the postmating prezygotic barrier. Using Rhodamine B-labelled ejaculates and organ-specific sperm storage assays across time, I show that sperm management differs between female populations and between storage organs. Heteropopulation effects are female-population dependent, with reduced persistence of heteropopulation sperm in the seminal receptacle in one population and increased early spermathecal occupancy in the other, while complete sperm depletion is generally higher in one female population across the same postmating window regardless of male population origin.

Together, these results show that postmating prezygotic isolation in D. montana is not explained by a single reproductive failure. Instead, it emerges through divergence in interacting reproductive traits and female-mediated postmating processes. More broadly, this dissertation identifies a quantitative speciation phenotype linking sperm and sperm storage divergence to asymmetric reproductive isolation, shows that its expression can be modified by condition-dependence, and helps narrow the postmating mechanisms through which early reproductive barriers arise during speciation.

This compilation thesis consists of four studies examining how individuals and institutions respond to changes in economic conditions and information environments. The first three papers focus on contemporary Africa and study how technological and income shocks affect demographic outcomes and social norms, while the fourth paper examines how political and economic incentives influence institutional change in a historical setting.

The first paper studies the impact of mobile broadband expansion on fertility and child health. Using individual-level data and the staggered rollout of 3G networks, the paper finds that improved connectivity increases fertility, particularly among older and more educated women, but is associated with adverse child health outcomes. The evidence is consistent with two complementary forces: the marginal pregnancies induced by 3G are intrinsically higher-risk, and the maternal health system does not expand to meet rising demand.

The second paper investigates how the expansion of mobile and fixed internet affects attitudes toward intimate partner violence. Exploiting the rollout of submarine cables and 3G coverage across Africa, the study finds that different technologies have contrasting effects on gender norms, with mobile internet improving women's attitudes while male attitudes become more regressive.

The third paper examines how agricultural income shocks affect fertility and child outcomes. Using variation in global commodity price movements interacted with local crop suitability, the study shows that increases in cash crop income raise fertility, primarily through higher-order births, and alter the timing of family formation.

The fourth paper analyses the determinants of franchise expansion in nineteenth-century Britain. Using data on parliamentary voting behaviour, the study shows that political elites' support for democratization depends on electoral incentives, inequality, and the heterogeneity of voter interests, highlighting how strategic considerations shape institutional change.

Trapped ions are one of the leading platforms for quantum technologies due to their excellent control over their internal electronic and external motional degrees of freedom. Many techniques and interesting effects rely on the coupling of the ions to their motion, which makes precise control of them paramount.

In this work, two novel techniques for motional state detection are presented. They allow the probing of certain motional states with a single measurement, without affecting the motion of the measured ion. These techniques are employed to generate and detect a highly entangled state between two motional modes in a novel manner. Furthermore, we harness the rich and intricate dynamics arising from the coupling of the ion's motion to its electronic degrees of freedom to study the emergence of interference. Theoretical predictions, describing interference both in the quantum and the classical regimes, are verified, offering a new and more intuitive description of interference, not just for trapped ions, but for a variety of systems that can be described in a similar way.

On the other hand, Rydberg excitation with trapped ions enables new interaction mechanisms and makes them extremely sensitive to their surroundings. This thesis presents advances towards Rydberg experiments with longer ion strings and concludes with a first demonstration of coherent population transfer between Rydberg states in trapped ions. The methods developed significantly increase the toolbox for trapped Rydberg ions, enabling more sophisticated experiments, especially when multiple different Rydberg states are involved, and allow more flexibility when using longer ion strings.

Developmental gene regulation depends on the coordinated action of transcription factors, chromatin regulators, and histone modifications that establish and maintain cell-type-specific transcriptional states. In this thesis, I investigate how activating and repressive chromatin factors shape lineage specification in Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis, with a particular focus on the histone acetyltransferase CREB-binding protein (CBP) and Polycomb-mediated repression. Using genomic, genetic, and single-cell approaches, this work addresses how chromatin states are established during zygotic genome activation (ZGA), how CBP controls distinct steps of transcription, and how active and repressive histone modifications together define developmental trajectories.

The first paper examines the regulation of dorsoventral patterning genes. We demonstrated that RNA polymerase II is recruited to their promoters independently of whether the gene is expressed. Chromatin profiling revealed that H3K27ac closely correlates with gene and enhancer activity, while CBP occupancy at promoters remains invariant. These results identify promoter-proximal pausing as a central regulatory step in early developmental patterning and suggest that inactive CBP can remain associated with silent but poised promoters.

The second paper of the thesis dissects the catalytic and non-catalytic functions of CBP during ZGA. By combining catalytic inactivation and targeted protein degradation, we show that CBP has separable roles in transcriptional elongation and initiation. Its catalytic activity is required for pause release, whereas its non-catalytic activity supports pre-initiation complex stability and RNA polymerase II recruitment. CBP is dispensable for chromatin opening itself and therefore acts downstream of pioneer factors such as Zelda. 

The third paper addresses how CBP activity is regulated across the genome. We show that CBP activity enhances its own recruitment and affects transcription factor binding at regions pioneered by the transcription factor Zelda. Catalytic functions of CBP are shown to be crucial for proper expression of early patterning genes in the Drosophila embryo. Inactive CBP persists at a subset of paused promoters primed by the pioneer factor GAF, and may contribute to Polycomb-associated repression. Together, these results establish CBP as a transcription factor-dependent regulator whose catalytic and non-catalytic functions differently contribute to early development.

The final part of the thesis extends this analysis to later embryogenesis using single-cell nanoCUT&Tag to co-profile H3K27ac and H3K27me3 in individual nuclei. We suggest a new way for epigenetic potential visualization, and found genes where Polycomb repression and gene activity co-occur in one cell lineage. The data distinguishes between two repressive states: active Polycomb-mediated repression and passive chromatin inaccessibility. H3K27me3 associates with genes exposed to activation cues rather than with all silent developmental genes. We further corroborate this conclusion by showing preferential upregulation of lineage-matching genes when H3K27me3 was partially depleted in a mesoderm lineage. 

Together, the studies in this thesis show that developmental epigenetic regulation occurs by the controlled and context-dependent action of co-activators, co-repressors, and pioneer factors that together ensure lineage commitment and maintain robust boundaries between cell identities.