Stockholm, Feb 3 - Affected by price pressure and increased costs for raw materials, the income of the Swedish multinational appliance manufacturer Electrolux fell by 48 percent last year compared to 2010, the company said in its fiscal report Thursday.

The net income of the company in 2011 amounted to 2.78 billion Swedish kronor (about $412 million), while net sales amounted to 101.59 billion Swedish kronor (about $15,057.1 million), reported Xinhua.

The serotonin system in a woman's brain gets affected more with alcohol consumption than the same in the men's brains, according to a new study.

The serotonin system in the brain manages a person's impulse control and mood. The changes in men's serotonin system can be noticed after 12 years of alcohol drinking which the same can be detected in women after just 4 years, according to the research carried out at the Department of Psychology and the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Atlas Copco, India’s leading construction equipment maker has announced delisting of its share from the exchange. The Sweden Based promoters who hold 83.77% stake in this Indian unit want to buy back 16.23 percent of the remaining public stake. The buyback offer will be at Rs. 2250 per share. The analysts have said that it’s good to see the buyback price.

The delisting process will start on next month. The offer will start on March 7 and close on March 11. After this process Atlas Copco would delist from BSE and Pune stock exchange.

Swedish home appliance manufacturer Electrolux announced that strong demand in several markets comprising North America helped increase its second-quarter profits.

The company's net profit, excluding items affecting comparability, stood at 1.1 billion kronor ($148 million) as against 633 million kronor during the same period of 2009.

Sales during the three month period remained down by 1% to 27.3 billion kronor.

Recently, a treatment is discovered for the deadly disease blood cancer by the researchers from Uppsala University. At present, multiple myeloma, one of the most common blood cancers is incurable but researchers have mange to find out the treatment for this disease.

Researchers have examined several patients suffering from myeloma and discovered that epigenetic mechanisms in the malignant plasma cell put some genes on silence.

Scientists from Uppsala University have exhibited a conceptually new model for the growth and advancement of multiple myeloma, which is presently considered as an incurable disease.

Multiple myeloma is one of the most common blood cancers.

Using large cohorts of myeloma patients, the researchers have identified a profile of genes that are silenced by epigenetic mechanisms in the malignant plasma cell.

It has been reported that two brothers who firebombed the home of a Swedish cartoonist who drew the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog were sentenced to prison Thursday.

Swedish news agency TT has reported that Mentor Alija, 21, was given a three-year sentence for the arson attack on the home of cartoonist Lars Vilks and Mensur Alija drew a two-year sentence.

It has been reported that a Swedish investigation has been started into Lundin Petroleum's activities in the Sudan and whether it was a party to war crimes between 1997 and 2003.

The Christian Science Monitor has reported that Magnus Elving, the public prosecutor, announced the investigation on Monday. It was sparked by a report by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan that a consortium led by Lundin and including Petronas of Malaysia and OMV of Austria "may have been complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Swedish researchers have said that "Watchful waiting," or active surveillance, may be the best treatment option for men with low-risk prostate cancer.

It has been reported that study leader Dr. Par Stattin of Umea University and colleagues looked at 2,021 patients receiving the increasingly popular option of active surveillance, in which treatment is deferred until there is evidence of disease progression. Also involved in the study were 3,399 patients who received a radical prostatectomy, prostate removal, and 1,429 who received radiation therapy.

Swedish personal care company Oriflame has decided to roll out 25-30 products on a monthly basis, and hire 50,000 more individuals to tap the booming Indian cosmetics market, already a $5.4 billion industry rising at 12% annually.

Marcus Sandström, Oriflame India's new managing director, stated, "In Asia, India is the most important market, besides China. In the coming year, I see it as the largest market for us. Our ultimate aim is that Oriflame should be a 'must-have' brand in India."

Researchers in Sweden have said that thinking outside the box, creativity, may also be linked to mental illness.

Fredrik Ullen of Karolinska Institutet said in a statement, "We have studied the brain and the dopamine D2 receptors, and have shown that the dopamine system of healthy, highly creative people is similar to that found in people with schizophrenia."

Studies show dopamine receptor genes are linked to the capacity for divergent thought, Ullen said.

Researchers have discovered that one of the most common side effects of obesity - inflammation - can be fought by having insulin.

As an additional advantage, the group behind the work said that this also lessens one's possibility of developing diabetes.

The noteworthy discovery was recently presented in a new thesis, written by specialists at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden.

When you put on weight, your fat tissue develops and starts to create a wealth of inflammatory molecules.

Sectra has been selected by Swedish Defense Materiel Administration to develop next-generation encryption capabilities for integration with government networks.

According to the official reports, Swedish secure communications systems development company Sectra announced it will provide its high-speed crypto technologies to improve the encryption speeds of the Swedish government's top secret voice, video and other data transfers.

They refuse to perform circumcisions, as they say they must perform other medical procedures that have greater priority, doctors in western Sweden have said.

The Goteborgs-Posten reported on Thursday that the medical profession in the Vastra Gotaland region is obligated to provide circumcisions for approximately 300 Jewish and Muslim patients each year.

Researchers have found that a person who has lung cancer in Norway or Sweden is much more likely to survive than a person in Britain.

Lung cancer survival in England, Norway and Sweden from 2001 to 2004 using data from lung cancer registries in all three countries was analyzed by researchers at King's College, London.

Ericsson has announced its first quarter results for the year 2010. As per the report the Swedish company has faced a revenues declined by 9%. It has been gone down to $6.24 billion (45.11 billion Swedish kronor). The net income of the company has also decreased by 26% to $ 174,400,000.

President and CEO of Ericsson, Hans Vestberg has informed that the sales of the company in this quarter have declined almost over 9% due to its poor sales network. The company has managed to enhance its global services but the sales have decreased. So far as the sales figure in India is concerned, it is also disappointing.

According to a 22 nation survey released on Thursday, it has been stated that the residents of the places where the health-care system is run by Government, nations like Sweden and Canada have appeared to have more faith on the system than Americans have. It has been disclosed that people of the former two nations believe that their families will be provided with high-quality, reasonable care when needed.

A Swedish researcher has said that the differences among human beings become greater as they age.

Older people are usually thought of as a rather homogenous group -- ill, lonely and unable to take care of themselves, says Bo Eriksson, a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Eriksson further said that however, differences among people actually grow with age and stereotypes of the aged are not based on reality.

According to a research done by Swedish researchers, women who take a daily multivitamin pill to ward off illness may actually be increasing their risk of breast cancer.

More than 35,000 women aged between 49 and 83 were tracked by experts from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, over a ten-year period. It was found by them that those who regularly took multivitamins were 19 percent more likely to have developed a breast tumor.

The country's Medical Products Agency has said that three brands of silicon breast implants are being banned in Sweden because of the possibility they could burst.

The Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra reported on Friday that the action against the implants manufactured by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) of France follows a decision by French authorities to ban the products in their country.

Some 35,000 to 45,000 European women are estimated to have received the faulty implants but there is no record of how many Swedish women are among those affected.