Abstract This essay addresses how the Norwegian government has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Compared with many other countries, Norway has performed well in handling the crisis. This must be understood in the context of competent politicians, a high‐trust society with a reliable and professional bureaucracy, a strong state, a good economic situation, a big welfare state, and low population density. The Norwegian government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly by adopting a suppression strategy, followed by a control strategy, based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision‐making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, and a high level of citizen trust in government. The alleged success of the Norwegian case is about the relationship between crisis management capacity and legitimacy. Crisis management is most successful when it is able to combine democratic legitimacy with government capacity.
The Tromso Study was initiated in 1974 in an attempt to help combat the high mortality of cardiovascular diseases in Norway, that was particularly pronounced among middle-aged men. In the mid-1970s, Norwegian men had a 20% risk of dying of myocardial infarction (MI) before the age of 75 years. The situation in Northern Norway was even worse. The primary aim of the Tromso Study was to determine causes of the high cardiovascular mortality, and also to develop ways of preventing heart attacks and strokes. This was reflected through the first name of the study: The Tromso Heart Study. However, during the 37 years since the first examination of the Tromso Study took place, increasing emphasis has been put on other chronic diseases and conditions, in particular atrial fibrillation, venous thromboembolism, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis and fractures. It has been a deliberate policy to invite a wide range of faculty research groups to join in with subprojects in the surveys, and there are currently some 100 different ongoing research projects based on the data from the consecutive six surveys. The study was initially funded by the University of Tromso, and has been so for the entire period since 1974, but there have also been substantial contributions, directly and indirectly from, for example, the National Screening Services, the Research Council of Norway, Northern Norway Regional Health Authority, Norwegian Council on Cardiovascular Diseases and Norwegian Foundation for Health and Rehabilitation. Teams of investigators approach public research programmes for funding of the different examinations conducted. Tromso is the largest city in Northern Norway. It is situated 400 km north of the Arctic Circle, and has approximately 67 000 inhabitants. The physical living conditions are dominated by dramatic changes in the light with 2 months of midnight sun and 2 months of the polar night. However, due to the Gulf Stream, the climate is relatively mild, the latitude (698N) taken into account.
Harmful algal blooms (HAB) are recurrent phenomena in northern Europe along the coasts of the Baltic Sea, Kattegat-Skagerrak, eastern North Sea, Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. These HABs have caused occasional massive losses for the aquaculture industry and have chronically affected socioeconomic interests in several ways. This status review gives an overview of historical HAB events and summarises reports to the Harmful Algae Event Database from 1986 to the end of year 2019 and observations made in long term monitoring programmes of potentially harmful phytoplankton and of phycotoxins in bivalve shellfish. Major HAB taxa causing fish mortalities in the region include blooms of the prymnesiophyte Chrysochromulina leadbeateri in northern Norway in 1991 and 2019, resulting in huge economic losses for fish farmers. A bloom of the prymesiophyte Prymnesium polylepis (syn. Chrysochromulina polylepis) in the Kattegat-Skagerrak in 1988 was ecosystem disruptive. Blooms of the prymnesiophyte Phaeocystis spp. have caused accumulations of foam on beaches in the southwestern North Sea and Wadden Sea coasts and shellfish mortality has been linked to their occurrence. Mortality of shellfish linked to HAB events has been observed in estuarine waters associated with influx of water from the southern North Sea. The first bloom of the dictyochophyte genus Pseudochattonella was observed in 1998, and since then such blooms have been observed in high cell densities in spring causing fish mortalities some years. Dinoflagellates, primarily Dinophysis spp., intermittently yield concentrations of Diarrhetic Shellfish Toxins (DST) in blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, above regulatory limits along the coasts of Norway, Denmark and the Swedish west coast. On average, DST levels in shellfish have decreased along the Swedish and Norwegian Skagerrak coasts since approximately 2006, coinciding with a decrease in the cell abundance of D. acuta. Among dinoflagellates, Alexandrium species are the major source of Paralytic Shellfish Toxins (PST) in the region. PST concentrations above regulatory levels were rare in the Skagerrak-Kattegat during the three decadal review period, but frequent and often abundant findings of Alexandrium resting cysts in surface sediments indicate a high potential risk for blooms. PST levels often above regulatory limits along the west coast of Norway are associated with A. catenella (ribotype Group 1) as the main toxin producer. Other Alexandrium species, such as A. ostenfeldii and A. minutum, are capable of producing PST among some populations but are usually not associated with PSP events in the region. The cell abundance of A. pseudogonyaulax, a producer of the ichthyotoxin goniodomin (GD), has increased in the Skagerrak-Kattegat since 2010, and may constitute an emerging threat. The dinoflagellate Azadinium spp. have been unequivocally linked to the presence of azaspiracid toxins (AZT) responsible for Azaspiracid Shellfish Poisoning (AZP) in northern Europe. These toxins were detected in bivalve shellfish at concentrations above regulatory limits for the first time in Norway in blue mussels in 2005 and in Sweden in blue mussels and oysters (Ostrea edulis and Crassostrea gigas) in 2018. Certain members of the diatom genus Pseudo-nitzschia produce the neurotoxin domoic acid and analogs known as Amnesic Shellfish Toxins (AST). Blooms of Pseudo-nitzschia were common in the North Sea and the Skagerrak-Kattegat, but levels of AST in bivalve shellfish were rarely above regulatory limits during the review period. Summer cyanobacteria blooms in the Baltic Sea are a concern mainly for tourism by causing massive fouling of bathing water and beaches. Some of the cyanobacteria produce toxins, e.g. Nodularia spumigena, producer of nodularin, which may be a human health problem and cause occasional dog mortalities. Coastal and shelf sea regions in northern Europe provide a key supply of seafood, socioeconomic well-being and ecosystem services. Increasing anthropogenic influence and climate change create environmental stressors causing shifts in the biogeography and intensity of HABs. Continued monitoring of HAB and phycotoxins and the operation of historical databases such as HAEDAT provide not only an ongoing status report but also provide a way to interpret causes and mechanisms of HABs.
In Norway, the Directorate of Health is responsible for two nationwide registries – the Norwegian Patient Registry (NPR) and the Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care (NRPHC) – which together cover all governmental-funded health care. The NPR (specialist health care) was established in 2008, while the NRPHC (primary health care) was established in 2017. Data from the NPR are extensively used in a large variety of studies. We expect that data from the NRPHC will increase in importance when the registry covers a longer time period. The NRPHC will be especially important for studying conditions mainly treated in primary care and for investigation of patient trajectories. The main aim of this paper is to give an overview of the history and content of the NPR and its research possibilities. In addition, we introduce the NRPHC as a possible future research tool and the potential for studying patient trajectories when combining data from the two registries.
G. Giannopoulos, Renate Victoria Kihle Fagernes, Mahmoud Elmarzouky
et al.
The world is constantly changing, and with an evolving global environmental crisis, there is a growing trend of Corporate Social Responsibility, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure initiatives. The final report on the new E.U. taxonomy for sustainable activities was released in 2020, making ESG disclosure more relevant. This paper investigates the effects of ESG initiatives on the financial performance of Norwegian listed companies from 2010 to 2019. ESG is measured through the Thomson Reuters Eikon ESG disclosure score and financial performance through ROA and Tobin’s Q. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this relationship has been investigated in Norway. Using panel data regression analysis and two proxies for the dependent variable (financial performance), the results of this study are mixed. In particular, findings suggest a strong significant relationship between ESG initiatives and financial performance. More specifically, the regression model, with ROA as the dependent variable, suggests that ESG initiatives have a clear negative impact. On the other hand, the variable Tobin’s Q increases when ESG increases. This could be explained by the different horizons of the measures and other factors affecting the business environment.
Tone Jørgensen, Trine Brinkmann, Ann-Karina E. Henriksen
et al.
Youths with restrictive eating disorders can be admitted to voluntary and involuntary treatment in acute psychiatric units for children and adolescents when their need for help is urgent or there is an emergency situation related to their vital functions. Providing sufficient nutrition for these patients is a key focus in treatment plans, making meal planning and calorie intake an essential part of the treatment. This article examines mealtime practices in the treatment of restrictive eating disorders at child and adolescent psychiatric acute hospitals in Norway. The analysis shows a complex interplay between treatment and coercion, where coercion underpins and ultimately ensures treatment compliance. The study contributes to the limited literature on coercion in inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry, and findings call for critical reflection to advance new ways of enforcing nutritional intake for patients with eating disorders admitted to involuntary treatment.The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted across three acute units in Norway. Drawing on Goffman's perspectives on frame analysis and his dramaturgical approach to social interaction, we examine how the establishment of frames in eating situations produces different meanings for this treatment activity. In our analysis, we demonstrate how three different frames (a biomedical therapeutic frame, a coercion frame, and a mealtime frame) constitute and regulate interactional behaviour in eating situations, and how participants negotiate these frames. It is argued that treatment and coercion are entangled in the routine treatment activity of meals, which makes coercion omnipresent in the treatment of restrictive eating disorders.
Dong Trong Nguyen, Christian Lindahl Elseth, Jakob Rude Øvstaas
et al.
As aquaculture expands to meet global food demand, it remains dependent on manual, costly, infrequent, and high-risk operations due to reliance on high-end Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). Scalable and autonomous systems are needed to enable safer and more efficient practices. This paper proposes a cost-effective autonomous inspection framework for the monitoring of mooring systems, a critical component ensuring structural integrity and regulatory compliance for both the aquaculture and floating offshore wind (FOW) sectors. The core contribution of this paper is a modular and scalable vision-based inspection pipeline built on the open-source Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) and implemented on a low-cost Blueye X3 underwater drone. The system integrates real-time image enhancement, YOLOv5-based object detection, and 4-DOF visual servoing for autonomous tracking of mooring lines. Additionally, the pipeline supports 3D reconstruction of the observed structure using tools such as ORB-SLAM3 and Meshroom, enabling future capabilities in change detection and defect identification. Validation results from simulation, dock and sea trials showed that the underwater drone can effective inspect of mooring system critical components with real-time processing on edge hardware. A cost estimation for the proposed approach showed a substantial reduction as compared with traditional ROV-based inspections. By increasing the Level of Autonomy (LoA) of off-the-shelf drones, this work provides (1) safer operations by replacing crew-dependent and costly operations that require a ROV and a mothership, (2) scalable monitoring and (3) regulatory-ready documentation. This offers a practical, cross-industry solution for sustainable offshore infrastructure management.
Mechanical engineering and machinery, Electronic computers. Computer science