The use of catanionic drug-surfactant mixtures was proven to be an efficient novel method of obtaining prolonged drug release from gels. It was shown that various commonly used drug compounds are able to form catanionic mixtures together with oppositely charged surfactants. These mixtures exhibited interesting phase behaviour, where, among other structures, vesicles and large worm-like or branched micelles were found. The size of these aggregates makes them a potential means of prolonging the drug release from gels, as only monomer drugs in equilibrium with larger aggregates were readily able to diffuse through the gel. When the diffusion coefficient for drug release from the formulation based upon a catanionic mixture was compared to that obtained for the drug substance and gel alone, the coefficient was some 10 to 100 times smaller. The effects of changes in the pH and ionic strength on the catanionic aggregates was also investigated, and this method of prolonging the release was found to be quite resilient to variations in both. Although the phase behaviour was somewhat affected, large micelles and vesicles were still readily found. The drug release was significantly prolonged even under physiological conditions, that is, at a pH of 7.4 and an osmolality corresponding to 0.9% NaCl. Surfactants of low irritancy, capric and lauric acid, may successfully be used instead of the more traditional surfactants, such as sodium lauryl sulfate (SDS), and prolonged release can still be obtained with ease. Some attempts to deduce the release mechanism from the proposed systems have also been made using transient current measurements, dielectric spectroscopy, and modelling of the release using the regular solution theory. In these studies, the previous assumptions made concerning the mechanism responsible for the release were confirmed to a large extent. Only small amounts of the drug existed in monomer form, and most seemed to form large catanionic aggregates with the oppositely charged surfactant.

Title: Morning papers, evening papers or webb magazines? - a qualitative study about young adults attitudes about the different magazine types.Number of pages: 45Author: Antonella MarinoTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and communication studiesPeriod: Autumn term 2009University: Division of Media and communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.Purpose/aim: The aim of this essay is to find out how young adults of the age of 20-30 discusses about the different types of news papers: morning papers, evening papers and Webb magazines. I have chosen four needs for my essay which are surveillance, emotional release/ entertainment, personal identity and interactivity. The purpose is to find out the differences between morning papers, evening papers and webb magazines. Which magazine type satisfies my four chosen needs in a best way? Which other conditions influence the young adults choices of magazine type? I will also try to find out if the new idea interactivity can be equivalent to the other three needs.Material/Method: I have used three groups for discussion for my essay. The three groups contained 4-5 people. Everyone was in the age of 20-30. I brought some friends of mine to the groups, who instead brought there friends. So everyone in the group knew someone, but not everybody.Main results: There were bigger differences between the attitudes towards morning- and evening papers than between them and the webb magazines. The young adults had positive attitudes towards morning papers, but very negative attitudes towards evening papers. The webb magazines depended on which type of magazine it was. If it was a morning paper in a webb version the attitudes were positive. So the morning papers and their versions in the webb satisfied the needs of the young adults in a best way. But of course the results were different, some of the young adults preferred the evening papers for entertainment and webb maqazines for surveillance and interactivity. The other conditions that influence the choices of the young adults for reading different types of papers were for example their personal attributes, their social situation but even occasions. I found interactivity equivalent to the other needs.Key words: morning papers, evening papers, webb magazines, young adults, surveillance, personal release/entertainment, personal identity and interactivity.

Cylinder pressure modeling and heat release analysis are today important and standard tools for engineers and researchers, when developing and tuning new engines. Being able to accurately model and extract information from the cylinder pressure is important for the interpretation and validity of the result. The first part of the thesis treats single-zone cylinder pressure modeling, where the specific heat ratio model constitutes a key part. This model component is therefore investigated more thoroughly. For the purpose of reference, the specific heat ratio is calculated for burned and unburned gases, assuming that the unburned mixture is frozen and that the burned mixture is at chemical equilibrium. Use of the reference model in heat release analysis is too time consuming and therefore a set of simpler models, both existing and newly developed, are compared to the reference model. A two-zone mean temperature model and the Vibe function are used to parameterize the mass fraction burned. The mass fraction burned is used to interpolate the specific heats for the unburned and burned mixture, and to form the specific heat ratio, which renders a cylinder pressure modeling error in the same order as the measurement noise, and fifteen times smaller than the model originally suggested in Gatowski et al. (1984). The computational time is increased with 40 % compared to the original setting, but reduced by a factor 70 compared to precomputed tables from the full equilibrium program. The specific heats for the unburned mixture are captured within 0.2 % by linear functions, and the specific heats for the burned mixture are captured within 1 % by higher-order polynomials for the major operating range of a spark ignited (SI) engine. In the second part, four methods for compression ratio estimation based on cylinder pressure traces are developed and evaluated for both simulated and experimental cycles. Three methods rely upon a model of polytropic compression for the cylinder pressure. It is shown that they give a good estimate of the compression ratio at low compression ratios, although the estimates are biased. A method based on a variable projection algorithm with a logarithmic norm of the cylinder pressure yields the smallest confidence intervals and shortest computational time for these three methods. This method is recommended when computational time is an important issue. The polytropic pressure model lacks information about heat transfer and therefore the estimation bias increases with the compression ratio. The fourth method includes heat transfer, crevice effects, and a commonly used heat release model for firing cycles. This method estimates the compression ratio more accurately in terms of bias and variance. The method is more computationally demanding and thus recommended when estimation accuracy is the most important property. In order to estimate the compression ratio as accurately as possible, motored cycles with as high initial pressure as possible should be used. The objective in part 3 is to develop an estimation tool for heat release analysis that is accurate, systematic and efficient. Two methods that incorporate prior knowledge of the parameter nominal value and uncertainty in a systematic manner are presented and evaluated. Method 1 is based on using a singular value decomposition of the estimated hessian, to reduce the number of estimated parameters one-by-one. Then the suggested number of parameters to use is found as the one minimizing the Akaike final prediction error. Method 2 uses a regularization technique to include the prior knowledge in the criterion function. Method 2 gives more accurate estimates than method 1. For method 2, prior knowledge with individually set parameter uncertainties yields more accurate and robust estimates. Once a choice of parameter uncertainty has been done, no user interaction is needed. Method 2 is then formulated for three different versions, which differ in how they determine how strong the regularization should be. The quickest version is based on ad-hoc tuning and should be used when computational time is important. Another version is more accurate and flexible to changing operating conditions, but is more computationally demanding.

In working towards a sustainable society, recycling and recovery of products together with handling of scarce resources must be considered. The growing quantities of sludge from wastewater treatment plants and the increasingly stringent restrictions on landfilling and on agricultural use of sludge are promoting other disposal alternatives. Sludge fractionation, providing sludge volume reduction, product recovery and separation of toxic substances into a small stream, has gained particular interest. In this thesis, the potential for phosphate release and recovery from treated sewage sludge is investigated as an alternative for agricultural use in urban areas. Leaching and recovery experiments were performed on sludge residue from supercritical water oxidation, ash from incineration and dried sludge at different temperatures. Results showed that acid or alkaline leaching is a promising method to release phosphate from sewage sludge treated with supercritical water oxidation, incineration, or drying at 300°C. The leaching is affected by a number of factors, including how the sludge residue has been produced, the origin of the sludge residue, the quantity of chemicals added and the presence of ions in the leachate. The implementation of any particular sludge treatment technology would depend on cost, environmental regulations, and social aspects. The results of this thesis may be beneficial for minimizing the use and cost of chemicals, and give increased knowledge for further development of technology for phosphate recovery. / QC 20100930

The purpose of this study is to from a client point of view study the release process. The first issue is which positive and negative aspects on the release situations that are revealed trough the interviews. The second issue is which changes that are needed to improve the conditions for the release work to be crime preventive. The study has been performed by means of qualitative interviews with clients, and one person with a long professional experience of treatment of offenders. The results show that the release work has generally not been successful. This is, according to the clients, due to a lack of cooperation between the client and the authorities. The clients also mean that their own motivation is the base for change, but that they may need help to mobilize the motivation. The next step is to se to that the soberness and the motivation obtained during the time in prison is not destroyed shortly after release. This is a significant risk that has been described both in previous research and by the interviewees. It is a paradox to from one day as institutionalised to the next day as released be expected to take responsibility for all aspects of life. The release process is not finished when the prisoner leaves the prison. The subsequent release work needs to be improved. A possibility that came up during the interviews is to set up a post-release system in the form of apartments owned by the local authorities. Crime is a symptom of both social system problems and personal problems. However, both the previous research and the result of this study show a tendency that the client’s will to change often meets hinders caused by the social systems. It is on the social system level that improvements in the first place are needed. / Syftet med studien är att ur klientperspektiv studera frigivningssituationen. Första frågeställningen är vilka positiva och/eller negativa omständigheter som kommer fram om frigivningsarbetet. Den andra frågeställningen är vad som behöver förändras för att skapa bättre förutsättningar för att frigivningsarbetet ska förebygga återfall i brott. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med klienter samt en person med lång yrkeserfarenhet inom kriminalvården. Resultatet visar att frigivningsarbetet inte fungerat tillfredsställande. Detta har enligt klienterna sin grund i bristande samverkan mellan klient, Kriminalvård och övriga samhällsaktörer. Klienterna menar även att deras egen vilja är grunden för förändring men att det kan behövas hjälp att väcka den. Nästa steg är att se till att den nykterhet och vilja som uppnåtts under anstaltstiden inte raseras direkt efter frigivningen. Detta är en reell risk som har beskrivits både i intervjusvaren och i tidigare forskning. Det innebär en paradox att ena dagen vara institutionaliserad intagen till att som frigiven förväntas ta ansvar för sitt liv på alla plan. Frigivningsprocessen är inte avslutad i och med att klienten lämnar anstalten. Det frigivningsarbete som kvarstår behöver förbättras. Ett förslag som presenteras i intervjusvaren är inrättandet av ett mellansystem i form av kommunalägt boende. Kriminalitet är ett symtom på samhällsproblem likväl som det har individuella orsaker. I den tidigare forskningen och i intervjusvaren framtonar dock en bild av hur klientens vilja till förändring hindras av den ram samhällssystemet skapar. Det är i första hand på samhällsnivån som förbättringar behövs.

Stimulus-responsive colloidosomes which completely dissolve upon a mild pH change are developed. pH-Responsive nanoparticles that dissolve upon a mild pH increase are synthesized by a nanoprecipitation method and are used as stabilizers for a double water-in-oil-in-water Pickering emulsion. These emulsions serve as templates for the production of pH-responsive colloidosomes. Removal of the middle oil phase produces water-core colloidosomes that have a shell made of pH-responsive nanoparticles, which rapidly dissolve above pH 7. The permeability of these capsules is assessed by FRAP, whereby the diffusion of a fluorescent tracer through the capsule shell is monitored. Three methods for tuning the permeability of the pH-responsive colloidosomes were developed: ethanol consolidation, layer-by-layer assembly and the generation of PLGA-pH-responsive nanoparticle hybrid colloidosomes. The resulting colloidosomes have different responses to the pH stimulus, as well as different pre-release permeability values. Additionally, fundamental studies regarding the role of particle surface roughness on Pickering emulsification are also shown. The pH-responsive nanoparticles were used as a coating for larger silica particles, producing rough raspberry-like particles. Partial dissolution of the nanoparticle coating allows tuning of the substrate surface roughness while retaining the same surface chemistry. The results obtained show that surface roughness increases the emulsion stability of decane-water systems (to almost twice), but only up to a certain point, where extremely rough particles produced less stable emulsions presumably due to a Cassie-Baxter wetting regime. Additionally, in an octanol-water system, surface roughness was shown to affect the type of emulsion generated. These results are of exceptional importance since they are the first controlled experimental evidence regarding the role of particle surface roughness on Pickering emulsification, thus clarifying some conflicting ideas that exist regarding this issue.

This master thesis aimed to create and characterize multilayer coatings upon mesoporous silica particles (MSP). The properties of the coating aimed for, was to have a triggerable controlled release, where a targeted enzyme within the intestine, alpha-amylase, is supposed to degrade the coating. The coating was created from a bilayer consisting of DOTAP and DOPC in a 1:3 molar ratio, which serves as a protective coating. The second layer interacting with the surroundings consisted of a starch component, amylopectin, which is degraded by alpha-amylase. The study of the coating was performed with ellipsometry, where the adsorption of the different layers of the coating on a planar silica surface and the enzyme-triggered degradation was recorded. The adsorbed amount of DOTAP/DOPC was 4,22 ± 0,11 mg/m2 and amylopectin 1,82 ± 0,94. The effects of different pH where performed, simulating the coated particle going through the gastro-intestinal system. Two enzymes alpha-amylase and phospholipase A2 (PLA2) where used for degradation of the coating. The knowledge from ellipsometry was applied to coating mesoporous silica particles and it was confirmed that the two layers had formed with zeta- potential measurement.

The shared memory systems should support parallelization at the computation (multi-core), communication (Network-on-Chip, NoC) and memory architecture levels to exploit the potential performance benefits. These parallel systems supporting shared memory abstraction both in the general purpose and application specific domains are confronting the critical issue of memory consistency. The memory consistency issue arises due to the unconstrained memory operations which leads to the unexpected behavior of shared memory systems. The memory consistency models enforce ordering constraints on the memory operations for the expected behavior of the shared memory systems. The intuitive Sequential Consistency (SC) model enforces strict ordering constraints on the memory operations and does not take advantage of the system optimizations both in the hardware and software. Alternatively, the relaxed memory consistency models relax the ordering constraints on the memory operations and exploit these optimizations to enhance the system performance at the reasonable cost. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. First, the novel architecture supports are provided for the different memory consistency models like: SC, Total Store Ordering (TSO), Partial Store Ordering (PSO), Weak Consistency (WC), Release Consistency (RC) and Protected Release Consistency (PRC) in the NoC-based multi-core (McNoC) systems. The PRC model is proposed as an extension of the RC model which provides additional reordering and relaxation in the memory operations. Second, the scalability analysis of these memory consistency models is performed in the McNoC systems. The architecture supports for these different memory consistency models are provided in the McNoC platforms. Each configurable McNoC platform uses a packet-switched 2-D mesh NoC with deflection routing policy, distributed shared memory (DSM), distributed locks and customized processor interface. The memory consistency models/protocols are implemented in the customized processor interfaces which are developed to integrate the processors with the rest of the system. The realization schemes for the memory consistency models are based on a transaction counter and an an an address ddress ddress ddress ddress ddress ddress stack tacktack-based based based based based based novel approaches.approaches.approaches.approaches. approaches.approaches.approaches.approaches.approaches.approaches. The transaction counter is used in each node of the network to keep track of the outstanding memory operations issued by a processor in the system. The address stack is used in each node of the network to keep track of the addresses of the outstanding memory operations issued by a processor in the system. These hardware structures are used in the processor interface to enforce the required global orders under these different memory consistency models. The realization scheme of the PRC model in addition also uses acquire counter for further classification of the data operations as unprotected and protected operations. The scalability analysis of these different memory consistency models is performed on the basis of different workloads which are developed and mapped on the various sized networks. The scalability study is conducted in the McNoC systems with 1 to 64-cores with various applications using different problem sizes and traffic patterns. The performance metrics like execution time, performance, speedup, overhead and efficiency are evaluated as a function of the network size. The experiments are conducted both with the synthetic and application workloads. The experimental results under different application workloads show that the average execution time under the relaxed memory consistency models decreases relative to the SC model. The specific numbers are highly sensitive to the application and depend on how well it matches to the architectures. This study shows the performance improvement under the relaxed memory consistency models over the SC model that is dependent on the computation-to-communication ratio, traffic patterns, data-to-synchronization ratio and the problem size. The performance improvement of the PRC and RC models over the SC model tends to be higher than 50% as observed in the experiments, when the system is further scaled up. / <p>QC 20130204</p>

Flexible polyurethane foam (PUF) is a very versatile material ever created. The material is used for various applications and consumer end-use products such as upholstered furniture and mattresses. The increased use of these polymeric materials causes fire safety concerns. This has led to the development of various regulations and flammability test standards aimed at addressing the hazards associated with polyurethane foam fires. Several fire protection engineering correlations and thermal models have also been developed for the simulation of fire growth behaviour of polyurethane foams. Thus, the overall objective of this research project is to investigate the laboratory test behaviour of this material and then use finer modeling techniques to predict the heat release rate of the specimens, based on information obtained from cone calorimeter tests.<p> Full-scale fire tests of 10 cm thick polyurethane foams of different sizes were conducted using center and edge-ignition locations. Flame spread and heat release rates were compared. For specimens of the same size, center-ignition tests produced flame areas and peak heat release rates which were respectively 10 and 20% larger compared to edge-ignition tests. Average flame spread rates for horizontal and vertical spread were determined, and results showed excellent agreement with literature. Cone calorimeter tests of the specimens were performed using steel edge frame and open durarock board. Results indicate that different test arrangements and heat sources have significant effects on the fire behaviour of the specimens.<p> Predictions using the integral convolution model and other fire protection engineering correlations were compared with the full-scale tests results. Results show that the model was more efficient in predicting the heat release rates for edge-ignition tests than the center-ignition tests. The model also was more successful in predicting the heat release rates during the early part of the growth phase than during the later stages of the fire. The predicted and measured peak heat release rates and total heat release were within 10-15% of one another. Flame spread and t-squared fire models also gave satisfactory predictions of the full-scale fire behaviour of the specimens.

This qualitative analysis of the framing of health issues by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the world’s premier health organizations, and by major U.S. newspapers analyzes the frames present in a sample of the CDC’s press releases, and the frames present in the contemporaneous (and often resulting) press coverage. This study focuses on communication surrounding public health events that occurred in the six-year period 2002–2007.