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The study delves into the perspectives of pre-service science teachers in Sweden regarding science education and how these perspectives influence their learning process to teach science. By utilizing visions of scientific literacy and curriculum emphases as an analytical framework, interviews were conducted to gain insights into how pre-service teachers reflect on what is essential to teach in science and how they approach it. Thereby, the present study contributes to the knowledge of science teacher education regarding how pre-service science teachers` perspectives on science education guide their future teaching. The study found that the pre-service teachers described science education primarily in terms of learning scientific facts and concepts. Being able to make use of scientific facts for everyday issues was also part of their goal of teaching. Scientific engagement in relation to society and taking action were absent in their talk about scientific literacy and future teaching plans. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for research and teacher education and underscore that teacher education is central to the students’ perspectives. Those perspectives are important to foster scientific literacy of the pupils who are engaged in society.

This study has two related aims; to investigate the perspectives of pre-service science teachers from Türkiye and Sweden on scientific literacy including what content is relevant and important and how these perspectives might be related to their future teaching practices. Utilizing the framework of Visions of Scientific Literacy and Curriculum Emphases by Roberts (1998, 2007), the research conducts a comparative analysis to give an overview of how pre-service teachers privilege specific contents that they attributed to science education in terms of “why to teach science” according to their perspectives. The findings reveal that participants from both countries referred to the curriculum emphases, Everyday Coping (EC) and Correct Explanation (CE), as the most important reasons to teach science, whereas Scientific Skills Development (SSD) and Science, Technology, and Decision (STD) were notably underemphasized in both contexts. However, the study also revealed differences in the perspectives of pre-service science teachers. For the pre-service teachers from Türkiye, teaching science was important to deal with daily life issues, whereas the ones from Sweden privileged more scientific facts and processes. Furthermore, participants from both countries problematized science teacher education but in different ways, including teaching evolution, having too few or too many subject courses in the teacher education. This cross-cultural comparison provides insights into how scientific literacy is promoted within diverse educational environments; the results help to reflect on what may be included and excluded in science teacher education and inform possible future improvements within science teacher education.

Scientific literacy (SL) is a widely recognized goal of science education, yet its meaning and purpose are interpreted differently across contexts. This study compares how SL is conceptualized and related to future teaching in elementary science teacher education curricula in Türkiye and Sweden. A pragmatic discourse analysis was conducted on national guidelines and university curriculum documents. The analysis reveals two distinct discourses: the Disciplinary discourse, dominant in the Turkish documents, and the Integrative discourse, foregrounded in the Swedish documents. The Disciplinary discourse presents SL as an explicit and separate body of knowledge, emphasizing subject mastery and preparing pre-service teachers to teach this knowledge. In contrast, the Integrative discourse frames SL as embedded in teaching practices that connect science with sustainability, democracy, and critical engagement with socioscientific issues. The comparison underscores how curriculum and teaching traditions and policy frameworks guide teacher education.

Objective

Tumor deposits (TDs) are a negative prognostic factor in colorectal cancer, independent of lymph node metastasis (LNM). This study aimed to investigate the ability of pre-operative MRI to identify TDs and differentiate them from LNM in rectal cancer.

Materials and methods

Patients with histopathological N1-N2 rectal cancer with and without TDs who underwent curative-intent primary surgery between 2013 and 2023 were retrospectively included. Three radiologists independently reviewed pre-operative MR images for the presence of TDs and LNM. Histopathology served as the reference standard from which interobserver agreement by Cohen’s kappa (κ) was calculated. Unblinded node-to-node comparison of MRI and histopathological images was used to identify sources of discrepancies between the modalities. Post hoc analysis stratified on nodal size (> or ≤ 5 mm) was performed.

Results

Eighty-eight patients (50% with TDs on histopathology, 74% male, median age 70 [20–89] years) were included, of whom 27 were excluded due to poor image quality. Agreement between MRI and histopathology (p), both for TD-presence (κ = −0.04) and LNM-presence (κ = 0.16), was low. In the node-by-node comparison, 43 out of 50 pTDs (86%) measured ≤ 5 mm, and 131 of 167 pLNM (78%) measured ≤ 5 mm. In post hoc analysis of smaller (≤ 5 mm) nodules, no pTDs and 3% of pLNM were diagnosed using MRI.

Conclusion

MRI demonstrated limited ability in detecting and differentiating TDs and LNM in pre-operative low-risk patients. Diagnostic performance was particularly poor for nodules ≤ 5 mm, which constituted 174 out of 217 (80%) pathological nodular structures.

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible risk factors for developing a parastomal hernia (PSH) in a cohort of rectal cancer patients with and without the application of a retro-muscular prophylactic mesh. The evaluated risk factors included the position of the stoma in the rectus abdominis muscle (RAM), RAM atrophy and shift of abdominal wall midline structures. Methods Rectal cancer patients treated with an abdominoperineal excision or Hartmann's procedure between 2002 and 2015 at Vastmanland Hospital, Sweden was included. Postoperative CT examinations were retrospectively reviewed regarding the presence of PSH and RAM atrophy and for measurements such as position of the stoma in the RAM. Results 116 patients were included, with a median age of 71 years. 70 patients received a prophylactic stoma mesh. 55 patients (47%) had a parastomal hernia at three-year follow-up. Rectus abdominis muscle atrophy was significantly higher in the mesh group compared with the non-mesh group (37% vs 2%; P = 0.04). RAM atrophy was a significant independent protective factor for developing a PSH (P = 0.007; OR 0.15; 95% CI 0.03-0.55). Conclusion Placement of a prophylactic retro-muscular stoma mesh resulted in a high frequency of RAM atrophy distal to the stomal aperture and patients with such atrophy had a lower risk of developing a PSH.

Purpose

The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether rectus abdominis muscle atrophy is associated with a lower risk of developing parastomal hernia. Secondary objectives were to assess whether the use of prophylactic mesh is a risk factor for rectus abdominis muscle atrophy and whether the position of the stoma within the rectus abdominis muscle affects the risk of parastomal hernia.

Methods

This retrospective study analysed patients from a prospective, randomised, multicentre trial in which rectal cancer patients were randomised to stoma creation with or without prophylactic mesh. Computed tomography at 12 months was evaluated to identify parastomal hernia, rectus abdominis muscle atrophy and position of stoma in the rectus abdominis muscle.

Results

Out of 149 patients, rectus abdominis muscle atrophy was observed in 9% and parastomal hernia in 42% of patients. There was no association between rectus abdominis muscle atrophy and parastomal hernia (p = 0.80; RR 1.07; CI 0.62–1.86), nor between prophylactic mesh and rectus abdominis muscle atrophy (p = 0.19; RR 2.00; CI 0.7–5.73). Stoma placement within the rectus abdominis muscle also showed no association with parastomal hernia development (p = 0.69; RR 0.97; CI 0.81–1.15).

Conclusion

This study found no statistically significant association between rectus abdominis muscle atrophy and parastomal hernia. The use of prophylactic mesh was not a risk factor for rectus abdominis muscle atrophy, and stoma placement within the rectus abdominis muscle was not associated with parastomal hernia. The previously reported association between prophylactic mesh, rectus abdominis muscle atrophy, and parastomal hernia was not confirmed in this cohort.

Flexibility is the defining promise of the gig economy, yet also its central contradiction. Often framed as a benefit, flexibility operates dialectically, as both a mechanism of control and a potential site of agency. Workers’ ability to navigate or resist precarity is shaped by their position within segmented labour markets, their subjectivities, and broader socio-economic structures. The gig economy is not a single labour market, then, but a stratified one in which conditions vary drastically across sectors and worker groups. This paper examines two differently situated workers in distinct segments of gig work to explore the determinants of precarity. It identifies three key dialectical tensions: (1) flexibility as both freedom and control; (2) gig work as promizing autonomy but delivering insecurity; and (3) the gig economy as simultaneously embedded in and excluded from Sweden’s labour market model, undermining protections whilst reproducing exclusion. Through digital mediation, task atomization, and misclassification, gig work entrenches inequality in new ways. In Sweden, Europe’s most segregated labour market, the gig economy exacerbates existing divisions. Whilst some workers benefit, others, particularly racialized migrants, face deepened precarity and algorithmic discipline. Rather than disrupting hierarchies, Sweden’s gig economy reinforces them through new forms of segmentation and spatio-temporal discipline.

This paper concerns migrants in Sweden working in various types of on and offline gig work. It explores how the temporal and spatial flexibility afforded to gig customers is predicated on temporal and spatial inflexibility for workers. The argument moves discussions beyond relational space by promoting a more fully dialectical view of space that understands it as simultaneously relational, relative, and absolute. Without such a view of space-which understands that space is not always open and fluid but just as often closed and fixed-it is impossible to understand the specific relations of labour that structure gig work, particularly offline gig work in such ways as to provide maximal flexibility for customers. This paper shows that the Marxian adage concerning how, in capitalism, space is annihilated by time, does not always hold. For workers doing cleaning and delivery gig work, the converse is oftentimes truer: time is annihilated by space. Gig workers-and even more so migrant gig workers crowded in the above-mentioned industries-experience the annihilation of time by space through the dual mandate that they must be available "just-in-time" and "just-in-place" to produce the spatiotemporal flexibility upon which the gig companies base their model and their success.

This paper examines labour agency in Sweden’s gig economy through a spatio-temporal reading of resilience, reworking, and resistance. Drawing on qualitative interviews with platform workers and union representatives, alongside policy, media, and observational material, it argues that worker agency is not absent under platform capitalism, but fragmented and unevenly organised through the spatial and temporal logics of platform work. Building on Katz’s framework of the 3Rs, the paper shows how resilience emerges under conditions of temporal compression and spatial isolation; how reworking becomes possible through partial decompressions of these pressures; and how resistance depends on fragile moments of synchronisation, when dispersed workers are able to recognise shared grievances and act collectively. Focusing on platform labour in Sweden, the paper demonstrates that these forms of agency are unevenly distributed across lines of migration status, race, gender, sector, and access to institutional support. In doing so, it contributes to labour geography and platform labour studies by developing a spatio-temporal account of disaggregated agency, while also showing how platform labour exposes the limits of collective representation within the Swedish model.

This paper develops the concept of spectral infrastructures to examine how platform capitalism reorganises visibility, labour, and value in the contemporary city. Drawing on debates across urban theory, labour geography, logistical urbanism, and the infrastructural turn, it argues that the fulfilment city is sustained by infrastructures that are simultaneously ubiquitous and elusive: dark stores, ghost kitchens, platform interfaces, automated delivery systems, and the workers whose movement keeps these circuits in motion. Through empirical exemplification from Stockholm, the paper shows how these infrastructures appear unevenly across urban space, from branded façades and containerised ghost kitchens to vacant shopfronts, digital traces, dark stores, and delivery robots. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the phantasmagoria of commodity culture, the paper conceptualises spectrality not as absence, but as a regime of selective appearance in which labour is made visible as movement, service, or spectacle whilst remaining socially and politically obscured. By tracing how logistical rationality mediates visibility, value, and everyday urban experience, the paper contributes to debates on urban infrastructural politics and the changing geographies of work. In doing so, it re-embeds labour within analyses of infrastructure and urban form, showing how the apparent smoothness of platform urbanism depends on the uneven organisation of work, visibility, and friction.

New research indicates that genetic variants related to educational attainment influence individuals’ political participation. This suggests that political inequality of opportunity is partially rooted in an inequality in genetic resources. However, the possibility that these genetic influences are contingent on individuals’ environments, such that they are amplified or reduced by certain environmental characteristics, remains unexplored. Using longitudinal and geo-coded register data for a large sample of genotyped twins in the Swedish Twin Registry, this paper explores whether early-life proximal environments that are conducive to participation modifies the effects of individuals’ education-related genetic resources on voting, as measured by a polygenic index for educational attainment. The results suggest that the level of political engagement, and of SES, both within the family and within the neighbourhood, can reduce the effects of genetic resources on voting. This has implications for how we can direct policy to ameliorate genetic inequalities in political participation.

For half a century, scholars have debated the societal implications of research that suggests genetic explanations for socioeconomic disparities. However, studies of whether and how such genetic explanations affect the attitudes of citizensare surprisingly limited. Using two identical, pre-registered survey experiments fielded in the United States (N=2003) and Sweden (N=2005), this study tests whether a short, twin study-based genetic explanation for income and education differencesleads to citizens adopting a lower perceived possibility, as well as a lower perceived fairness, of the government reducing socioeconomic differences. The results do not provide systematic evidence to this effect. Rather, there are indications that citizens increase their belief in the effectiveness, as well as in the fairness of government intervention. Most clearly, the treatment increased citizens’ support for a set of redistributive policy proposals, particularly in Sweden. Overall, however, the treatment effects appear to have been limited. This is likely attributable to the experimental manipulationbeing inadequate in magnitude. This study suggests that genetic explanations for socioeconomic differences do not necessarily have to cause a naturalization of inequality among citizens, but further research on this important topic is needed.

Interest in the role of genetics in influencing key life outcomes such as educational attainment has grown quickly. However, the question of whether genetic influences on educational attainment, on average as well as in conjunction with socioeconomic circumstances, are moderated by macro-level factors has not yet received sufficient attention. This study combines polygenic indices for educational attainment (EA PGI) with high-quality register data in a large sample of Swedish twins of European ancestry born 1920–1999. Employing both conventional between-family and within-family models, the analyses suggest that the influences of education-related genetic propensities on educational attainment have increased in Sweden during the twentieth century, a period featuring major expansions of the Swedish educational system, and decreasing economic inequality. The analyses also suggest that the degree to which socioeconomic background enhances genetic influences on education has decreased across cohorts. Genetic influences on education do not appear to have translated into increased genetic influences on income. Additionally, there is some evidence of floor and ceiling effects in the analyses of dichotomous educational outcomes.

Pathogenic multidrug-resistant bacteria with hybrid chromosomes have emerged as a significant global healthcare threat. These include the pandemic Escherichia coli ST1193, the product of homologous recombination events involving two phylogenetically distant strains of E. coli, in which mutant alleles of the widely separated genes, gyrA and parC, generating high-level fluoroquinolone resistance were acquired. The mechanisms and frequency of hybrid formation are poorly understood. We developed a robust hybrid selection procedure and applied it to 118 clinical UTI isolates of E. coli mixed with suitable recipient strains. Hybrids were selected from 39% of isolates. All hybrids were recombinants of donor and recipient chromosomal DNA (median length of donor DNA 367 kb), with 90% also acquiring conjugative mobile genetic elements (MGE) from the donor. We showed that individual conjugative plasmids, and integrative conjugative elements (ICE), from donors were sufficient to drive hybrid formation. These observations strongly support conjugative chromosomal DNA transfer as the major mechanism underlying hybrid formation. ICE are genome-integrated and passively propagated but when transferring to recipients they normally do so by excising and producing their own conjugation machinery. We found that ICE were responsible for the highest frequencies of hybrid chromosome formation. They could mobilize DNA around the full length of the chromosome, including the simultaneous acquisition of mutant variants of gyrA and parC, separated by ∼826 kb, generating highly fluoroquinolone-resistant bacteria in a single event. Bacterial hybrid chromosome formation driven by conjugative MGE may be an important and widespread mechanism in the emergence and evolution of high-risk bacterial pathogens.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between bacterial species is an important contributor to the development of multidrug-resistant (MDR) clinical pathogens. One example is the transfer of MDR conjugative plasmids from Klebsiella pneumoniae into Escherichia coli occurring within co-infected human hosts. Here, we asked whether, in mixed-species bacterial populations, we could also detect the transfer of chromosomal DNA. To address this, we screened 50 K. pneumoniae clinical isolates for their ability to generate chromosomal hybrids with E. coli as recipient. We found that 7/50 (14%) generated chromosomal hybrids at frequencies above our limit of detection (~10-11) up to a frequency of 5x10-10. Genome sequence analysis of 28 hybrids revealed multiple underlying mechanisms of DNA transfer and recombination. These included two different mechanisms by which a region of the E. coli chromosome was replaced with K. pneumoniae chromosomal DNA (Hfr-like mechanisms, with up to 586 kb of K. pneumoniae DNA acquired), and three different mechanisms by which F’-like plasmids carrying K. pneumoniae chromosomal DNA were created and transferred into E. coli. Accordingly, clinical isolates of K. pneumoniae have the ability to transfer, not just plasmids, but also intrinsically non-mobile chromosomal DNA into E. coli to create novel hybrid strains. Several of the isolated hybrids acquired genes related to virulence or antibiotic resistance. Chromosomal hybrids were stable after evolution in rich media and had a 70-95% fitness compared to MG1655. The results provide insights into the mechanisms involved in creating bacteria with novel hybrid chromosomes, which may have important implications for bacterial evolution, and the spread of antibiotic resistance and virulence genes.

Integrated conjugative elements can drive the transfer of chromosomal DNA from one Escherichia coli strain into another, generating strains with hybrid chromosomes. Several pandemic virulent multidrug-resistant strains of E. coli are chromosomal hybrids. Here we show that the frequency of hybrid formation can differ by orders of magnitude depending on the parental combination. However, the donor-recipient characteristics affecting hybridization efficiency are poorly understood. The laboratory workhorse strain E. coli MG1655 is significantly more proficient as a recipient in hybrid generation than E. coli ATCC25922, the strain used for quality control in antibiotic susceptibility testing. Focusing on these two strains we tested several hypotheses to identify barriers to hybrid formation. Among these, we found that relative conjugation efficiency correlated with hybrid formation frequency. To explore this, we used transposon mutagenesis to identify genes in ATCC25922 whose inactivation relieves a conjugation barrier. Among the first 1500 mutants tested we isolated and identified one that was 500-fold more conjugation-permissive than the parental strain. Whole genome sequencing identified this candidate ‘barrier’ gene as a protein-coding sequence on plasmid 3. Understanding the barrier mechanism will require further study. We are currently testing whether inactivation of this gene also increases chromosomal hybrid formation. The importance of this work is that it could significantly deepen our understanding of preferred pathways of HGT, something that will have broad application in both clinical and evolutionary biology.

Escherichia coli is a prototroph and can synthesize all twenty proteinogenic amino acids when required to grow in minimal medium. There are approximately sixty protein-coding genes individually essential for amino acid synthesis. This is a large mutational target for the accumulation of detrimental mutations. E. coli can rewire biosynthetic pathways in response to mutational damage but the limits of this capacity are poorly understood. Here, to address evolutionary robustness, we asked whether and how the phenotypes of irreversible mutations causing auxotrophy could be suppressed or bypassed in the absence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Spontaneous suppressors could be selected for only ten of fifty-nine mutants tested (detection limit ~7x10^-11). Mechanisms of suppression included: regional amplifications; mutations increasing gene or operon expression; mutations relaxing enzyme specificity; and mutations causing biochemical pathway diversions. Overall, the data show that spontaneous suppression of auxotrophy caused by an irreversible mutation is an evolutionary survival mechanism relevant only to a minority of the genes essential for amino acid synthesis. As a consequence, the essential genetic foundations for amino acid prototrophy are expected to be degraded over time by mutations (Muller’s ratchet) and metabolic rewiring alone will be insufficient to counteract this effect. This implies that maintaining phenotypes, including prototrophy in E. coli, and potentially other bacterial species, is likely to be reliant on HGT of housekeeping genes to counteract the effects of inevitable mutational inactivation. Accordingly, chromosomal HGT in bacteria may be critical for survival across diverse environmental niches. 

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are growing in popularity to mitigate and adapt to climate change, enhance biodiversity, and secure human well-being. However, the emergence of NBS has not generated equal attention for all ecosystems. One such neglected ecosystem are ponds and pondscapes (i.e. groups of ponds in a landscape), which are deteriorating in quality and diminishing in quantity. As the European Union (EU) is regarded as influential in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of NBS, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of 38 EU policies to identify opportunities and limitations for the implementation of ponds and pondscapes as NBS. We focus our analysis on ponds and pondscapes, but their prevalence in different landscapes and their multitude of benefits allows us to also make some inferences about the implications of the EU policy context for NBS at large. We find that EU policies strengthen NBS linked to existing and potential Natura 2000 sites, as well as to ecosystems protected through the EU's Birds and Habitats Directives and Water Framework Directive. However, if ecosystems fall outside of these already established policies - as is the case with the vast majority of ponds and pondscapes - their implementation as NBS may be hampered. We also find that the EU emphasises natural water retention measures and carbon-rich ecosystems for climate change adaptation and mitigation, but mostly does not explicitly include ponds and pondscapes despite their potential contributions. Other findings are that the EU's Horizon Europe research policy will likely influence which ecosystems will be used and financed as NBS, while the exact ambition and selection of NBS rests with lower-level authorities or individuals. Therefore, further studies tracing the impact of the supra-national EU policy framework at lower governance levels are vital.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly suggested to address biodiversity decline and climate change. However, many ecosystems are hardly used as NBS, including ponds and pondscapes. We therefore examine how policies and practices affect their implementation as NBS. Using a content analysis of policy documents and stakeholder inputs, we assess the policy context in eight countries but also zoom in on policies and practices in seventeen pondscapes. We derive three key insights: first, a protective status for a pond or pondscape interlinks with other enabling factors for NBS implementation, and protection and conservation should therefore be considered more often as NBS. Second, there is a shortage of, especially long-term, financing. Third, local leadership should be nurtured to overcome a lack of institutional cooperation and stakeholder awareness as well as fragmented land ownership. Beyond that, we show that implementation barriers interlink and interventions should therefore address several barriers simultaneously.

Low-carbon transitions are essential but contested, particularly regarding what constitutes a ‘just transition’. To grasp their political nature, adopting a spatial perspective becomes indispensable, as different actors hold different views on how to allocate burdens and benefits across scales. In this study, we examine how notions of ‘justice’ are expressed and manifested spatially, negotiated between conflicting parties, and undergo changes, delving into the conflict surrounding an electric vehicle (EV) factory near Berlin, Germany. To do so, we leverage the theoretical lens of ‘hydrosocial territories’. This framework helps to understand how beliefs about desirable societal development (‘imaginaries’) interlink with actors’ perceptions of just distribution of water-related benefits and burdens, as well as decision-making power across spatial scales. We identify one territory supporting the factory and two counter-territories challenging its legitimacy. Actors of one counter-territory question the net benefit for in situ communities due to water challenges, while the other casts doubt on the legitimacy of the capitalist systems as such and considers the EV technology and its supply chains exemplary of exploitative relations in the water sector. We derive three key insights for the conceptualisation of ‘justice’: Firstly, divergence in the underlying values of desired societal development and the spatial scales at which transitions are conceptualised can affect the possibilities for compromise. Secondly, justice, as viewed by actors negotiating transitions, requires continuous reassessment due to its fluid nature. Thirdly, localities where low-carbon transitions occur are perceived at multiple spatial scales simultaneously, adding complexity to how actors understand justice. Our research holds value for the study of low-carbon transitions, illuminating the complexity, spatiality, and fluidity of justice and offering a heuristic device to capture it.

This study explores the production of coherence between Uruguay’s agricultural, environmental and water policies amidst growing tensions, which are particularly manifested in conflicts between an expanding agricultural sector and water insecurity for the broader public. We apply a novel mixed-method approach, combining a political discourse analysis of key sectoral policies, the ruling party’s programme and workshop discussions with a survey of implementing technical staff, thus capturing both the discursive nature of coherence and perceptions of its practical implementation - extending thereby beyond instrumental and even existing critical policy coherence analysis frameworks. Our findings reveal divergent views on policy coherence, with agricultural sector staff generally viewing it more positively than their counterparts in the environmental and water sectors. We also identified two distinct discourses: the hegemonic discourse, which promotes agricultural growth with minimal environmental safeguards, and the counter-hegemonic discourse, which advocates for a cultural shift that challenges the capitalist structures underpinning large-scale agriculture. Our study highlights how prevailing discourses shape both the perception and practice of policy coherence. However, we also found that vagueness in policy objectives and instruments allow powerful actors to maintain the status quo, making policy objectives appear coherent while diverging from the discursive ideals of a strong sustainability in practice. The gap between discursive ideals and real-world outcomes illustrates that coherence, to a degree, is a choice shaped and limited by power dynamics and institutional capacities. Overall, our approach and findings bear relevance for an ever-increasing number of contexts in which economic and environmental priorities intersect and compete.

FemTech, technology often in the forms of apps developed to specifically target female health issues, have billions of users globally. Yet, despite the popularity of e.g., period trackers or pregnancy apps, we know little about the potential impact of these technologies, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. How interactive technology is designed, and in our case the cycle represented through the design, has the potential to shape women's understanding of menstruation. In this study we analyse the interaction design of nine of the most downloaded menstruation apps, asking how commercial menstruation apps represent the cycle through their interaction design. While previous research has criticized these types of apps for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment and users do indeed seem to find them very useful for period and fertility tracking. However, the term 'empowerment' is today used broadly and is known for having many potential meanings. Even within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), 'empowerment' is used frequently but rarely explicitly defined. The question then becomes what empowerment could mean for menstruation tracking. In order to begin exploring the way menstruation and the period is represented in current apps and the way that future apps could design for empowerment, we engage in a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology where an app's design is explored comprehensibly at one point in time and apps interacted with over a longer time period through researcher use-diares. Our results center around three ways in which these apps represent the cycle to users through design. We analyse; (1) interface metaphors used to represent the temporality of bleeding, (2) datafication of menstruation through input and output for intimate data tracking, and (3) the ways fertility predictions convey certainty over uncertainty. In a second step, we then explore what empowerment could mean for period trackers and how design could support empowering experiences. Finally, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders. These are: support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less.

Digital applications for tracking pregnancy and fetal development are increasingly popular, yet we know little of how these technologies shape individual pregnancy experiences. This empirical study investigates how 17 expectants in Sweden use such apps to make sense of their pregnancies. It is grounded in feminist perspectives, highlighting the need to focus on women's health. Drawing on entanglement and flat ontology, we show how apps are part of socio-material configurations where they contribute to pregnancy meaning-making. We show how users experience a gradual realization that apps model ideal pregnancies and not the participants' own, how the app's commercial nature conflicts with many participants' ideals of pregnancy, and how participants continue to use apps despite this but engage in selective use. All to support ways of making pregnancy in desired ways. Finally, we outline how users engage with pregnancy apps and the resulting natureculture arrangements where bodies and technology are intertwined and co-constructed. We argue that entanglement should be seen as a process, not a state, as users continually negotiate their use, engaging in what could be called processes of untangling.