Bakgrund: Huvud- och halscancer leder till olika förändringar som påverkar patienten fysiskt och psykiskt samt påverkar vardagen och livssituationen. Sjuksköterskan har en central roll för dessa patienter då dennes uppgift är att främja hälsa genom att bidra med stödåtgärder. Mer kunskap om hur patienterna upplevelser förändringar efter huvud- och halscancer krävs för att kunna ge adekvata omvårdnadsåtgärder.Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva patienters upplevelser av förändringar i utseende och funktion under och efter behandling av huvud- och halscancer. Metod: En litteraturöversikt med kvalitativa artiklar genomfördes utifrån tolv artiklar från databaserna Medline och Cinahl. Dataanalysen genomfördes enligt Fribergs femstegsmodell. Resultat: Litteraturöversiktens resultat bestod av tre kategorier och sju subkategorier. Kategorierna var förändringar av kroppens funktioner, förändringar i utseende och förändringar i sociala sammanhang. Resultatet visade att patienterna upplevde svårigheter att äta och konsekvenserna det ledde till. Patienterna upplevde också utseendeförändringar och att deras sociala liv påverkades.Slutsats: Patienternas liv förändrades negativt på olika sätt och ur olika aspekter. De hade svårigheter att äta, drabbades av utseendeförändringar och upplevde en påverkan på deras sociala liv. Sjuksköterskor kan erbjuda adekvata omvårdnadsinsatser till dessa patienter genom att vara lyhörd kring de förändringar som huvud- och halscancer medför. / Background: Head and neck cancer (HHC) leads to various changes which affect the patient physically and psychologically, but also the life situation. Nurses have a central role in promoting health and providing support to this patient group. More knowledge about patients’ experiences of changes after HHC is needed to offer adequate nursing interventions.Aim: The aim was to describe patients' experiences of changes in appearance and function during and after treatment for head and neck cancer. Method: A literature review with qualitative articles was carried out based on twelve articles retrieved from Medline and Cinahl. The data analysis was carried out according to Friberg's five-step model. Result: The result of the literature review consists of three categories and seven subcategories. The categories were Changes in the body's functions, Changes in appearance, and Changes in social contexts. The results showed that HHC patients experienced difficulties in eating and the consequences it led to. It also showed how patients experienced negative changes in their appearance. Furthermore, the patients experienced a negative impact on their social life.Conclusion: The patients' lives changed in different ways and from different aspects in a negative way. The patients had difficulties eating, suffered from changes in appearance, and experienced an impact on their social life. Nurses can offer adequate nursing interventions to these patients by being responsive to the changes.

Bakgrund: Hjärtinfarkt är en vanlig hjärt-kärlsjukdom som årligen drabbar många personer i Sverige och internationellt. Livsstilsförändringar är en viktig del av sekundärpreventionen för att minska risken för att återinsjukna. Svårigheter med att genomföra livsstilsförändringar ställer därmed höga krav på att vårdpersonal har adekvat kunskap i ämnet.  Syfte: Att beskriva personers erfarenheter av att genomföra livsstilsförändringar efter genomgången hjärtinfarkt.   Metod: En litteraturöversikt med kvalitativ metod och induktiv ansats. Artikelsökningar utfördes i databaserna Cinahl och Medline och inkluderade artiklar publicerade mellan 2013-01-01 och 2023-03-03. Elva resultatartiklar analyserades utifrån Fribergs analysmetod i fem steg.   Resultat: I resultatet framkom två huvudkategorier och sju underkategorier. Huvudkategorin att påbörja en livsstilsförändring påvisar personers erfarenheter av förändrade kostvanor, fysisk aktivitet och att sluta röka. Vidare i resultatet framkom det hur en vilja att göra en förändring hade en betydande roll i genomförandet av livsstilsförändringar. Huvudkategorin externa resurser som påverkar livsstilsförändringar visar hur vården, familjen och rehabiliteringsprogram var externa stöd som påverkade personers förmåga till livsstilsförändring.   Slutsats: Att genomföra livsstilsförändringar var krävande för personerna då erfarenheterna påverkas av viljan att genomföra förändringar samt externa resurser. Stöttning och information från vården hade en betydande roll för att lyckas genomföra livsstilsförändringar och där vårdpersonal är i behov av ytterligare kunskap. / Background: Heart attack is a common cardiovascular disease that annually affects many people in Sweden and internationally. Lifestyle changes are an important part of secondary prevention to reduce the risk of relapse. Difficulties in implementing lifestyle changes therefore place high demands on healthcare professionals to have adequate knowledge on the subject.  Aim: To describe people’s experiences of implementing lifestyle changes after suffering a heart attack.   Method: A literature review with qualitative method and inductive approach. Article searches were performed in the databases Cinahl and Medline and included articles published between 2013-01-01 and 2023-03-03. Eleven scientific articles were analysed based on Friberg´s analysis method in five steps.  Result: The results revealed two main categories and seven subcategories. The main category of starting a lifestyle change shows people's experiences of changing dietary habits, physical activity and quitting smoking after the heart attack. Further in the results, it emerged how a willingness to make a change had a role in the implementation of lifestyle changes. The main category external resources that influence lifestyle changesshows how healthcare, family and rehabilitation programs were a form external support that influenced people's ability to change lifestyles.   Conclusion: Making lifestyle changes was demanding for the people as the experiences are influenced by a desire to make a change and external resources. Support and information from healthcare professionals had a significant role in successfully implementing lifestyle changes and where healthcare professionals need additional knowledge.

Bakgrund: Under 2019 överlevde ca 18% av de som drabbats av hjärtstopp. Dödligheten vid hjärtstopp är hög och konsekvenserna kan bli stora och konvalescensen lång. För att förstå vad patienter upplever efter överlevnad krävs kunskap om ämnet. Syfte: Att belysa patienters upplevelser efter att ha överlevt ett hjärtstopp. Metod: En litteraturöversikt med kvalitativ design genomfördes. Resultat: Analysen resulterade i temat ett främmande liv med nytt perspektiv innehållande tre subteman; att vakna i kaos, att leva i närvaron av sitt hjärtstopp och att se livet med andra ögon, samt temat ett begränsat liv i ett nytt sammanhang innehållande fyra subteman; att inte lita på sin kropp, att leva i skuggan av mental ohälsa, att vara i behov av stöd och att fortsätta leva livet. Slutsats: Överlevnad var förenat med upplevelser av lidande vilket medförde begränsningar i det dagliga livet men det gav också nya perspektiv. Det upplevdes svårt att komma hem efter utskrivning relaterat till osäkerhet och minskad tillit till kroppen. Sjukvården upplevdes inte tillmötesgå patienternas behov av information och rådgivning vilket förorsakade ytterligare lidande. Att i framtiden utforska behovet av stöd och uppföljning utifrån ett långsiktigt perspektiv är relevant då studieresultatet visar att det har upplevts saknats för patienterna. / Background: Mortality from cardiac arrest is high and the consequences can be big and the convalescence long. In terms of being able to understand what patients experience after survival, more knowledge is required. Aim: To illuminate patients' experiences after surviving a cardiac arrest. Method: A literature review with qualitative design was conducted. Results: The analysis resulted in the theme of a foreign life with a new perspective containing three subthemes; to wake up in chaos, to live in the presence of the cardiac arrest and to see life with different eyes. The other theme was a limited life in a new coherence containing four subthemes; not to trust their body, to live in the shadow of mental illness, to be in need of support and to continue living life. Conclusions: Survival was associated with experiences of suffering, which led to limitations in daily life, but also gave new perspectives on life. It was difficult to come home after discharge related to insecurity and decreased confidence in the body. Healthcare was perceived as not being able to meet patients' needs for information and advice, which caused further suffering. According to the result, it is relevant to further explore the need for.

This thesis presents a microbattery recharging circuit suitable for autonomous microsystems. The battery charger chosen for this design is a constant current battery charger. Two methods of regulating the constant-current are discussed. A published shunt regulator design is analyzed and is presented with enhancements to the design. A series regulator that controls the current to the battery with a switch is designed and fabricated in a 1.5µm CMOS process. The fabricated prototype occupies less than 2.20x2.20mm and is expected to dissipate less than 25µW of power. A discrete model of the integrated circuit is constructed and tested to demonstrate that the series regulator will work using a solar cell as the energy source. The design of the charger is a major step toward the construction of a completely integrated autonomous system.

As FPGA densities continue to improve, single chips are becoming capable of implementing larger and more complex systems. Even today these systems may include several processors working in conjuction with a handful of other standard interfaces or custom modules. Additional system complexity naturally leads to added complexity throughout the different design and implementation stages. Attempting to design such a system while maintaining high performance and within a reasonable time frame is becoming more and more difficult. Architectural design approaches ranging from direct module interconnection to sophisticated bus schemes have been used to build such systems, all with their own trade-offs. Often direct module interconnection results in the best overall performance but at the cost of design time and flexibility. Bus schemes on the other hand attempt to simplify the integration of the different hardware modules and allow for a more modular design approach. However, since the bus is a single shared interconnection medium, a practical limit is placed on the system's acheivable throughput. A relatively new architectural approach to system design involves a network-based communication infrastructure. A network-based interconnect scales much better than the shared bus and provides a potential increase in system throughput capabilites. An effective approach would be one that can provide the throughput capabilities of direct interconnect, the modular design advantages of the shared bus, and the flexibility to adapt to different system requirements while maintaining lightweight communication. A design infrastructure that attempts to meet these requirements has been developed. This infrastructure is based on a circuit-switched network architecture. The circuit-switching aspect allows two nodes, or modules, to temporarily establish a direct and dedicated connection for high-throughput data transfer. The network-based topology allows this to occur without tying up all the interconnect resources as other routes can be used to connect the other nodes. Each node is connected to the network via a well-defined interface therefore allowing for modular design. Flexibility is built into the architecture to accommodate many different topology configurations. Lightweight protocols and handshaking mechanisms are used to establish node-to-node connections, and initiate and terminate data transfers. Two different example applications have been implemented with this network-based interconnect: one that involves the use of a single resource that must be shared among different modules, and another that has high system bandwidth requirements and dynamically schedules the use of functionally identical resources. These implementations were then compared against that of a bus- ased approach. Both applications illustrate the effectiveness of this network architecture in SoC implementation.

The rapid progress made in integrating enormous numbers of transistors on a single chip is making it possible for hardware designers to implement more complex hardware architectures in their designs. Nowadays digital telecommunication systems are implementing several forms of SOC (System-On-Chip) structures. These SOCs usually contain a microprocessor, several DSP cores (Digital-Signal-Processors), other hardware blocks, on-chip memories and peripherals. As new IC process technologies are deployed, with decreasing geometrical dimensions, the probabilities of hardware faults to occur during operation are increasing. Testing SOCs is becoming a very complex issue due to the increasing complexity of the design and the increasing need of a test mechanism that is able to achieve acceptable fault coverage in a short test application time with low power consumption without the use of external logic testers. As a part of the overall test strategy for a SOC, functional self-testing of a DSP core is considered in this project to be applied in the field. This test is used to verify whether fault indications in systems are caused by permanent hardware faults in the DSP. If so, the DSP where the fault is located needs to be taken out of operation, and the board it sits on will be later replaced. If not, the operational state can be restored, and the system will become fully functional again. The main purpose of this project is to develop a functional self-test of a DSP core, and to evaluate the characteristics of the test. This project also involves proposing a scheme on how to apply a functional test on a DSP core in an embedded environment, and how to retrieve results from the test. The test program shall run at system speed. To develop and measure the quality of the test program, two different coverage metrics were used. The first is the code coverage metric achieved by simulating the test program on the RTL representation of the DSP. The second metric used was the fault coverage achieved. The fault coverage of the test was calculated using a commercial Fault Simulator working on a gate-level representation of the DSP. The results achieved in this report show that this proposed approach can achieve acceptable levels of fault coverage in short execution time without the need for external testers which makes it possible to perform the self-test in the field. This approach has the unique property of not requiring any hardware modifications in the DSP design, and the ability of testing several DSPs in parallel.

A novel concept of on-chip bondwire inductors and transformers with ferrite epoxy glob coating is proposed, offering a cost effective approach to realize power systems on chip (PSoC) or System-in-Package (PSiP). The concept has been investigated both experimentally and with finite element modeling. Improvement in total inductance is demonstrated for multi-turn bondwire inductors over single bondwire inductors. The inductance and Q factor can be further boosted with coupled multi-turn inductor concept. Transformer parameters including self- and mutual inductance, and coupling factors are extracted from both modeled and measured S-parameters. More importantly, the bondwire magnetic components can be easily integrated into SoC manufacturing processes with minimal changes to the layout, and open enormous possibilities for realizing cost-effective, high current, high efficiency PSoC's or PSiP's. The design guidelines for single bondwire inductors as well as multi-turn inductors are discussed step by step in several chapters. Not only is the innovated concept for bondwire inductor with ferrite ink presented, but also the practical implementation and design rules are given. With all the well defined steps, people who want to use these bondwire inductors with ferrite ink in their PSoC research or products will find it as simple as using commercial inductors. Last but not least, the PSoC concept using a bondwire inductor is demonstrated by building the prototype of dc-dc buck converter IC as well as the whole package. IC and the whole function block are tested and presented in this work.

Bakgrund: Hjärtsvikt är en allvarlig sjukdom med hög dödlighet. Globala siffror visar att cirka 64 miljoner människor har hjärtsvikt. I Sverige är det cirka 250 000 individer som har drabbats av sjukdomen. Hjärtsvikt är i dag den vanligaste orsaken till sjukhusinläggningar bland personer över 65 år. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att beskriva patienters erfarenheter av att leva med hjärtsvikt. Metod: Litteraturstudien var av beskrivande design och baserades på tio kvalitativa vetenskapliga artiklar. Artiklarna söktes fram via databasen PubMed. Huvudresultat: I resultatet framkom huvudtemat; Förändrad vardag med subteman fysisk påverkan, psykisk påverkan, social och ekonomisk påverkan. Andra huvudtemat som framkom var; Att hantera sin sjukdom med subteman livstilsanpassningar, andlighet och upplevelser av information från vården. Slutsats: Hjärtsviktpatienter upplevde fysiska, psykiska och sociala utmaningar, samtidigt som det framkom brister i kommunikation och information kring bland annat egenvård. Det framkom även en brist i vården när det gäller kontinuitet. Det är avgörande att sjuksköterskor erbjuder stöd och information till patienterna för att säkerställa högkvalitativ vård och individanpassad information. / Background: Heart failure is a serious illness with high mortality. The global figures show that approximately 64 million people have heart failure. In Sweden, there are approximately 250,000 individuals that has the disease. Today, heart failure is the most common cause of hospitalizations among people over 65 years of age. Aim: The aim of this literature review was to describe patients' experiences of living with heart failure. Method: The literature review had a descriptive design and was based on ten qualitative scientific articles. The articles were retrieved through the PubMed database. Main results: The result revealed the main theme; Changed everyday life with subthemes physical impact, psychological impact, social and economic impact. Another main theme that emerges was; Managing one's illness with subthemes lifestyle adjustments, spirituality and experiences of information from healthcare. Conclusion: Heart failure patients experiences physical, psychological and social challenges, while deficiencies in communication and information regarding self-care were revealed. The study also revealed a deficiency in care regarding continuity. It is crucial for nurses to provide support and information to patients to ensure high-quality care and tailored information.

Reindeer have been shown to alter boreal ecosystems by changing the vegetation cover and influencing belowground processes. By providing nutrients for plants and by exerting trampling stress on the field layer vegetation, reindeer induce shifts in the vegetation where ground-lichen are being replaced by evergreen shrubs. Nutrients also stimulate microbial activity in the soil which has been shown to increase decomposition rates, thus potentially reducing the carbon (C) stock in boreal soils. Microbial activity is potentially further increased by higher soil temperatures caused by a removal of the lichen layer which could further increase C losses from the soil. However, findings of the effects of reindeer on the C stock diverge and potential implications of changes in C quality have rarely been considered. Here I show that reindeer reduce the C stock in lichen-dominated boreal forests in northern Fennoscandia and shift the C quality towards higher recalcitrance and reduce concentrations of labile C. I found that a reduction of tree and lichen biomass by reindeer reduces soil organic carbon (SOC) pools directly through lower litter inputs. Further, the reduction of lichen biomass and increase in evergreen shrubs directly reduces the quality of SOC. My results suggest that reindeer-induced vegetation changes have a direct control over SOC quantity and quality in the study sites and that microbial adaptations to resource availability may only play a minor role in shaping SOC, since year-round low soil temperatures strongly inhibit microbial decomposition. / <p>Parts of the methods section has been written in the active form (e.g., I did ...) to highlight which analyzes I conducted myself since some of the data that I used was not collected by me.</p>

No description available.