Submitted by Almir Azevedo (barbio1313@gmail.com) on 2014-07-28T16:55:19Z No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-28T16:55:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014 / O iodo-124 é um emissor de pósitron com 4,2 dias de meia vida física. Seu decaimento dá-se por emissão de pósitrons (23,3%) e captura eletrônica (76,7%). Suas características físicas e químicas o tornam um isótopo atrativo para aplicações médicas. O desenvolvimento de novas técnicas de imagens, melhorias na tecnologia do Tomografia por Emissão de Pósitrons (PET), o desenvolvimento de novos detectores e métodos computacionais de processamento de sinal, abrem novas perspectivas para a sua aplicação. Os crescentes usos da tecnologia PET em oncologia, em estudos de farmacocinética e de metabolismo de drogas, fazem dos radiofármacos marcados com 124I uma ferramenta de grande interesse e utilidade. O uso de moléculas marcadas com 124I destaca-se especialmente devido à conveniente meia-vida do 124I. Esta característica possibilita diagnóstico por imagens, em centros PET longe do local de produção de radionuclídeos. Dentro deste contexto, este trabalho apresenta um método de produção e separação de 124I. Este método é inovador e pioneiro no país. Baseia-se no desenvolvimento e utilização de alvos de natTeO2 nanoestruturados. Estes alvos são irradiados em um acelerador de partículas carregadas, de energia variável, o cíclotron CV-28 do IEN. As irradiações são realizadas com feixes de prótons de 24 MeV de energia inicial. Na preparação dos alvos nanos particulados o destaque foi a simplicidade do método, que usa a técnica de sol-gel para obtenção de nano partículas, o TeCl4 como precursor e a água como solvente. O 124I produzido foi separado do material alvo por destilação seca e capturado numa solução de NaOH (0,02M), em sistema automatizado. O rendimento de alvo grosso foi de 6,81 MBq/Ah, sendo o rendimento da síntese de aproximadamente 90%. O 124I obtido foi então utilizado em estudos preliminares de biodistribuição. Estes estudos forma realizados em um MicroPET, modelo LabPET4 do CDTN, em camundongos tipo Swiss. Os resultados da aplicação de Na124I mostraram alta qualidade de imagem PET da tireoide, sendo que a máxima captação deu-se 6h após injeção / Iodine-124 is a positron emitter with physical half-life of 4.2 days. Its decay occurs by positron emission (23.3%) and electron capture (76.7%). Their physical and chemical characteristics make it an attractive isotope for medical applications. The development of new imaging techniques, improvements in Positron Emission Tomography (PET), the development of new detectors and computational methods of signal processing, open new perspectives for its application. The increasing use of PET technology in medical oncology, pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism, make the radiopharmaceuticals labeled with 124I a tool of great interest and usefulness. The use of 124I - labeled molecules stands out particularly due to the convenient half-life of 124I. This feature enables diagnostic imaging in PET centers far away from the radionuclides producing center. Within this context, this work presents a method for the production and separation of 124I. This method is innovative and pioneering in the country. It is based on the development and use of nanostructured targets of natTeO2. These targets are irradiated in a charged particles accelerator, with variable energy, the IEN´s CV-28 cyclotron. The irradiations are performed with 24 MeV, initial energy, proton beams. In the preparation of nanoparticulated targets the highlight was the simplicity of the method that uses the sol-gel technique for obtaining nanoparticles, TeCl4 as precusor and water as solvent. The produced 124I was separated from the target material by dry distillation and trapped in a NaOH solution (0.02M), in an automated system. The thick target yield was 6.81 MBq/Ah, and the synthesis yield was 90%. The 124I obtained was then used in preliminary biodistribution studies. These studies were performed on a microPET, model LabPET 4 of the CDTN, in Swiss type mice. The results of the application of Na124I showed high quality PET imaging of the thyroid, with the maximun uptake at 6h after injection

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Topic of diploma thesis "Automatization of electrical tests in automotive industry" is execution of the electrical tests in automotive industry. Common reasons for electrical tests and electrical tests according to customers norm LV 124 are described in this work. Automation application for controlling of the available equipment at laboratory of the department PS-SD/EPS-Bj of company Robert Bosch spol. s.r.o., which is necessary for execution of the electrical tests is designed and created in last section of this diploma thesis.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 sparked a debate over the usefulness of fair value accounting. Many banks and other financial institutions claim that the strict rules of fair value accounting exacerbated the financial crisis. To fix the problem of fair value accounting, FASB issued FAS 157-4, FAS 115-2 and FAS 124-2. These Staff Positions relax the rules for fair value accounting by providing entities more flexibility in fair value estimates and OTTI reporting. This study explores the merits of these changes to fair value accounting and analyzes whether they will improve banks’ financial reporting. First, I examine the role of fair value accounting in the recent financial crisis. Next, I evaluate whether these Staff Positions result in more useful information to investors and other decision makers. I find evidence that suggests that fair value accounting had a limited role in the financial crisis and did not contribute to banks’ financial burdens. These findings bring into question the purpose and necessity of FAS 157-4, FAS 115-2 and FAS 124-2. Furthermore, my analysis shows that these Staff Positions do not enhance the usefulness of information to decision makers. In fact, they appear to weaken the usefulness of financial information.

Conventional electrocardiography (ECG) is an essential tool for investigating cardiac disorders such as arrhythmias or myocardial infarction. It consists of interpretation of potentials recorded at the body surface that occur due to the electrical activity of the heart. However, electrical signals originated at the heart suffer from attenuation and smoothing within the thorax, therefore ECG signal measured on the body surface lacks some important details. The goal of forward and inverse ECG problems is to recover these lost details by estimating the heart&amp / #8217 / s electrical activity non-invasively from body surface potential measurements. In the forward problem, one calculates the body surface potential distribution (i.e. torso potentials) using an appropriate source model for the equivalent cardiac sources. In the inverse problem of ECG, one estimates cardiac electrical activity based on measured torso potentials and a geometric model of the torso. Due to attenuation and spatial smoothing that occur within the thorax, inverse ECG problem is ill-posed and the forward model matrix is badly conditioned. Thus, small disturbances in the measurements lead to amplified errors in inverse solutions. It is difficult to solve this problem for effective cardiac imaging due to the ill-posed nature and high dimensionality of the problem. Tikhonov regularization, Truncated Singular Value Decomposition (TSVD) and Bayesian MAP estimation are some of the methods proposed in literature to cope with the ill-posedness of the problem. The most common approach in these methods is to ignore temporal relations of epicardial potentials and to solve the inverse problem at every time instant independently (column sequential approach). This is the fastest and the easiest approach / however, it does not include temporal correlations. The goal of this thesis is to include temporal constraints as well as spatial constraints in solving the inverse ECG problem. For this purpose, two methods are used. In the first method, we solved the augmented problem directly. Alternatively, we solve the problem with column sequential approach after applying temporal whitening. The performance of each method is evaluated.

The heart is a muscular organ which acts as a biomechanical pump. Electrical impulses are generated in specialized cells and flow through the heart myocardium by the ion changes on the cell membrane which is the beginning of both the electrical and the mechanical activity. Both the electrical and the mechanical states of the organ will directly affect the pumping activity. The main motivation of this thesis is to better understand physiological and pathological properties of the heart muscle via studying the electro-mechanics of the heart. This model could be used to gain better solutions of the ill-posed inverse problem of ECG and Body Surface Potential Maps (BSPM) or to estimate the electrical propagation and mechanical response on patient specific heart geometry models which can be obtained by using MRI technique. Cellular automaton technique will be used to simulate the physiological function of the left ventricle to estimate the cardiac functions. To model the heart tissue firstly the anatomical knowledge of the heart will be used such as properties of the myocardium, fiber orientations, etc. to simulate the three dimensional electrical propagation. Then the mechanical activity consisting of contraction and relaxation will be simulated according to the material properties of the heart. Using this simulation, the effects of the cardiac arrhythmias such as reentry will be generated. In this study, electrical and mechanical properties of the heart tissue are modeled for normal heart beat and heart beat in case of ischemic heart tissue. Contraction of the tissue via electrical activation has also been considered in terms of time synchronization. &ldquo / Cellular automaton&rdquo / method is used for modeling the electromechanical interactions in the heart tissue. A simplified left ventricle model is used to observe the electrical and the mechanical behavior. Using this method, both the normal heart beat&rsquo / s electrical activation and the arrhythmia excitation could be taken on, without using complex differential equations. To consider the anisotropy of the heart tissue, fiber orientations have also been added to the model. In this thesis work, electro-mechanic models at cellular, macroscopic and heart left ventricle level are presented. The electro-mechanical adaptation is performed by cellular electrophysiology and cellular force development due to intercellular excitation propagation. Varying densities of transmembrane proteins, changes on concentration of calcium, metabolic and hormonal effects are neglected. Also in simplified ventricular model the fluid mechanics and mechanoelectrical feed-back is not taken into-account.

Η παρούσα εργασία εκπονείται στα πλαίσια της επιστήμης του μανατζμεντ του ανθρώπινου παράγοντα-κεφαλαίου και ειδικότερα υπό το πρίσμα της εκπαίδευσης και ανάπτυξης στελεχών μέσω του θεσμού της συμβουλευτικής / συμβούλευσης / mentoring στους Ελληνικούς χρηματοπιστωτικούς οργανισμούς. Παράλληλα, διεξάγεται έρευνα που αφορά στο κατά πόσο τα ανωτέρω στελέχη αντιλαμβάνονται κάποιο πρόσωπο, από το εργασιακό τους περιβάλλον, στο ρόλο του μέντορα και πως επηρεάζονται. / The present study is concentrated on the science of human resource management and specifically describes the methods of training and development for executives in the Greek financial institutions, while it is focused on the method of mentoring. At the same time is carried out research that concerns to find out if the above executives conceive at least a person, from the same organism, in the role of mentor and how they are influenced by him/her.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:52:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T14:00:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Tese (Doutoramento) / IPEN/T / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN/CNEN-SP

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:52:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T14:00:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / O desenvolvimento da Medicina Nuclear, aliado à evolução dos equipamentos de diagnóstico e terapia, necessita, cada vez mais, da disponibilidade comercial de radioisótopos. Nesse contexto, o IPEN tem buscado atender e abastecer o mercado nacional. Um dos investimentos nesta área foi a aquisição de um ciclotron de 30 MeV, modelo Cyclone-30, que permitiu a produção dos radioisótopos tais como, o 18F, 67Ga, 201Tl e o 123I, sendo este último o foco do presente trabalho. Através de dados de produções rotineiras de 123I via irradiação com prótons em alvo gasoso de Xenônio com enriquecimento superior a 99,8% em 124Xe, foi realizado um estudo para identificar os fatores relevantes que influenciam diretamente o rendimento de obtenção de 123I com altíssimo grau de pureza. Embora a metodologia seja bem conhecida, quando se trata de produção comercial há uma escassez de dados sobre os parâmetros operacionais utilizados. Os parâmetros avaliados foram: pressão do gás 124Xe, intensidade de corrente de feixe de prótons, tempo de irradiação, temperatura de operação do sistema durante a irradiação, tempo de espera para formação de 123I, tempo de aquecimento do porta-alvo para recuperação do 123I formado, temperatura de aquecimento da solução de lavagem e influência do revestimento interno da câmara de irradiação com Ni. Com os resultados obtidos, foi possível alterar as condições operacionais nas produções rotineiras, conduzindo a um aumento de eficiência do processo em torno de 30%. / Tese (Doutoramento) / IPEN/T / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN/CNEN-SP