The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to investigate how charged groups within the pulp fibre affect the beatability and the strength of the papers. To obtain different levels of charges on the pulp it was carboxymethylated. The different pulp samples were beaten to different degrees to investigate how charges interact with the beating. A PFI-mill was used for the beating because of the relatively homogenous effect on the fibres and the low demand for pulp fibres for each beating. The influence of the amount of charged groups on the surface and bulk swelling, as a result of the beating process, was evaluated.   The fibres were then analysed in a Fibre tester and using a microscope to see what had happened to the fibre structure.  The results showed that the PFI-mill mainly affects the surface of the fibres. The beatability, defined as the swelling obtain for a specific energy input, was greatly increased by the introduction of charges. It was also shown that there is a possibility to replace some of the energy input in the mill with the introduction of charges to obtain the same swelling and strength.   Paper sheets were formed from the different samples and some mechanical properties were analyzed. It was shown that the strength was initially improved by the introduction of charges but the improvement was partially lost during the beating. At the highest rate of beating the difference in strength between the samples had disappeared. This can be explained by the fact that the fibres, from the sample with highest number of charges, were destroyed. Microscopic images showed that the fibre was delaminated and at some sites there were extreme balloon-like swellings / Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka hur laddade grupper hos massafibrer påverkar malbarheten och styrkan hos de papper som tillverkats av dessa fibrer. För att skapa olika laddningsnivåer karboxymetylerades viss del av massan för att introducera laddade grupper, två delar av ursprungsmassan karboxymetylerades och en del användes som referensmassa.  De olika massaproverna maldes i olika nivåer för att undersöka hur laddningarna och malningen interagerade. En PFI-kvarn användes för att mala fibrerna då det endast krävs små mängder fibrer och denna typ av kvarn påverkar fibrerna relativt homogent. Fibrerna analyserades sedan i en Fibre tester och med ett mikroskop för att se vad som hade hänt med fiberstrukturen. Resultaten visade att en PFI-kvarn till största delen påverkar fibrernas yta.  Malbarheten, som definierades som den svällning som åstadkoms vid en viss energiinsats i form av malvarv i kvarnen, ökades markant då ytterligare laddningar fanns närvarande i fibrerna. Det visades också att det går att ersätta en del av malningen med introduktion av laddningar till fibrerna för att uppnå samma svällning och styrka. Pappersark tillverkades därefter av de olika massatyperna och några mekaniska egenskaper testades. Det visades att styrkan ökades initialt av introduktionen av laddningar men denna förbättring minskade vid malningen. Vid den högsta malgraden hade skillnaden mellan de olika massorna försvunnit. Det kan förklaras av att fibrerna, från den massatyp med mest laddningar, hade förstörts. På vissa ställen hade fibern helt delaminerats och extrema ballonglika svällningar fanns.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第23571号 / 医博第4785号 / 新制||医||1054(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 齊藤 博英, 教授 大森 孝一, 教授 大鶴 繁 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka skillnader i förekomsten av resultatmanipulation mellan den internationella redovisningsstandarden IFRS och huvudregelverket inom K-regelverken, K3. Studiens hypotes är att företag som tillämpar IFRS, som har mer vägledning och mer omfattande upplysningskrav än K3, uppvisar lägre grad av resultatmanipulation. Resultatmanipulation mäts av studien primärt genom en regressionsanalys, vilket ger ett mått på diskretionära periodiseringar vars resultat testas mellan de olika redovisningsstandarderna. Sekundärt undersöks resultatmanipulation genom visualisering av företagens önskan att slå uppsatta mål i histogramform. Vidare testas asymmetrin i histogrammens staplar kring gränsvärdena för att testa förekomsten av resultatmanipulation via target beating. Resultaten indikerar på att företag som redovisar enligt K3 resultatmanipulerar mer än företag som redovisar enligt IFRS.

No description available.

The views of medical doctors regarding organ donation and transplantation in the Durban Metropolitan Region were examined in an exploratory and explanatory study, which included a descriptive, convenience sampled study of 43 graduate and postgraduate professionals, practicing in the private and provincial sectors. Characteristics were obtained from a 1 D6-item questionnaire that were later divided into component contributions according to Fazio's attitude to behavior process model (Fazio, 1989; Fazio & RoskosEewoldson, 1994). Variables which were analysed included personal demographics, personal views, knowledge and skills, practice-related issues, attitudes and perceptions as well as future recommendations. Analysis of the information revealed that most medical doctors approved of organ donation practices and viewed transplantation as a significant roleplayer in both the community and medical sectors. However, a knowledge and skills deficit combined with religious presumptions and general uncertainty regarding issues surrounding the practical, legal and emotional concepts of brain death may be responsible for the relatively low personal dedication and practice participation rate among the sample. Medical doctors from the provincial sector appeared to have considerable concerns which included: time constraints; a perceived lack of support from colleagues, nurses and hospital administrators; a lack of medico-Iegal awareness relating to organ donation and brain death and a scarcity of experience and insight into the transplant process. In order to address the paucity of awareness pertaining to brain death and organ donation activities, the findings indicate that formal and interactive education programs during the undergraduate, postgraduate and medical development phases are required in which issues surrounding death and dying can be explored by a multidisciplinary team. It appears that this team must comprise of doctors, lawyers, religious leaders, psychologists, administrators, nurses, donor families and transplant co-ordinators. This development may serve to emphasize the professional importance of holistic bereavement counseling, improve doctor and patient satisfaction, increase organ donation referrals and transplantation rates as well as diminish medico-Iegal concerns. / Thesis (M.Cur.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

This dissertation examines the discussion that took place during the 19th century surrounding men’s violence against their wives, as well as the contemporary norms and ideas that shaped people’s understanding of, and ability to deal with the problem. The overall objective is to examine how cultural conceptions of gender, class, violence and power (relationships) were created and expressed during the period 1810–1880. I approach this objective through an examination of how men’s violence against their wives was reported and treated as marital conflict, both within local religious arenas (such as church councils and cathedral chapters) and in the Riksdag of the Estates. With a longer diachronic analysis of the discussions in the Riksdag of the Estates con-cerning propositions for changes in the law regarding marital conflict and divorce during the period 1828–1860, the dissertation shows that men’s violence against their wives as well as other forms of male misuse of power were neither made invisible, privatised nor marginalised in the public discussion in Sweden, which previous research has maintained. In contrast to previous research, the dissertation also shows that political attention to wife-beating and the reform work that took place in 19th century Sweden cannot be entirely characterised as a secularised project. The attention politicians directed towards the problem took place in a re-ligious context where the clergy, in practice, through their experience of dealing with wife-beating and other unsatisfactory conditions in marital relations, took the initiative and were instigators in the political process that after the middle of the century brought changes in the law on marital conflict and divorce. The dissertation’s investigations of how marital conflict and violence were dealt with by church councils and cathedral chapters also show how those involved talked about marital conflict based on competing ideas of gender, class, violence and marriage. The dissertation supports previous research that has demonstrated how men’s violence against their wives tended to be made invisible when it was interpreted and dealt with as marital conflict within the religious arenas. However, the results of the dissertation open up for other interpreta-tional perspectives regarding how violence was made invisible in the past, demonstrating that the prevailing understanding of violence that existed through concepts such as conflict and maltreatment may rather have resulted in an exposition of violence, which also included other forms of marital violence and oppression that were not physical. With a starting point in a marital ideology that perceived marriage as being in principle life-long, the intention of the church’s warnings during conflicts was to mediate, even in cases that included men’s vio-lence against their wives. The principal significance was not to make it easier for wives to remove themselves from their husbands’ violence, but to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Despite this, the study of praxis during the period shows that the church councils in particu-lar could assume more flexible and pragmatic attitudes towards the law. In their attempts to find solutions to their congregation’s unsatisfactory state of marital problems, they could even pursue actions that conflicted with legal provisions.

Le langage APL a été défini en 1962 par K.E. Iverson dans un ouvrage intitulé " A Programming Language " [Iverson62]. En dépit des difficultés nouvelles que ce langage posait aux concepteurs, des interprètes APL furent rapidement disponibles chez I.B.M. [Chomat71, Iverson73]. Ce langage s'étant d'emblée révélé intéressant pour toutes les applications réclamant plus de programmation que de longs calculs, plusieurs systèmes virent le jour chez d'autres constructeurs [Martin72, Girardot76]. Réalisés pour la plupart sur de gros ordinateurs, ils réclament des ressources hors de proportion avec les moyens habituels mis à la disposition des ingénieurs ou des étudiants. Parallèlement de nombreux travaux de recherche ont été menés afin d'accélérer l'interprétation du langage. P.S. Abrams fut le premier à introduire certaines notions fondamentales d'optimisation comme le beating devenu classique de nos jours. Il a également envisagé la construction d'un matériel muni d'un code machine très voisin du langage APL [Abrams70]. D'autres approches ont consisté à réaliser un maximum de fonctions au niveau matériel, en microprogrammant un sous-interprète scalaire ou vectoriel, et en rédigeant ensuite, dans l'APL restreint ainsi obtenu, l'interprète complet. L'étude des divers systèmes existants montre que les architectures purement logicielles, utilisant presque toujours une technique d'interprétation naïve sont les plus répandues. Cependant, même si les architectures sont restées identiques, l'évolution des techniques d'implantation a permis des progrès considérables. De fait, il semble assez difficile de progresser beaucoup dans une voie purement logicielle si ce n'est par des approches radicalement différentes comme celles décrites dans [Hewlett77]. Ce système APL réalisé sur HP 3000 est en fait un compilateur incrémental générant pour chaque ligne de code qu'il exécute pour la première fois, un fragment de code machine. , Une signature associée à ce code permet de savoir ultérieurement si la réutilisation de ce code est possible.

No description available.

abstract: Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) has a high negative predictive value for ruling out coronary artery disease with non-invasive evaluation of the coronary arteries. My work has attempted to provide metrics that could increase the positive predictive value of coronary CTA through the use of dual energy CTA imaging. After developing an algorithm for obtaining calcium scores from a CTA exam, a dual energy CTA exam was performed on patients at dose levels equivalent to levels for single energy CTA with a calcium scoring exam. Calcium Agatston scores obtained from the dual energy CTA exam were within ±11% of scores obtained with conventional calcium scoring exams. In the presence of highly attenuating coronary calcium plaques, the virtual non-calcium images obtained with dual energy CTA were able to successfully measure percent coronary stenosis within 5% of known stenosis values, which is not possible with single energy CTA images due to the presence of the calcium blooming artifact. After fabricating an anthropomorphic beating heart phantom with coronary plaques, characterization of soft plaque vulnerability to rupture or erosion was demonstrated with measurements of the distance from soft plaque to aortic ostium, percent stenosis, and percent lipid volume in soft plaque. A classification model was developed, with training data from the beating heart phantom and plaques, which utilized support vector machines to classify coronary soft plaque pixels as lipid or fibrous. Lipid versus fibrous classification with single energy CTA images exhibited a 17% error while dual energy CTA images in the classification model developed here only exhibited a 4% error. Combining the calcium blooming correction and the percent lipid volume methods developed in this work will provide physicians with metrics for increasing the positive predictive value of coronary CTA as well as expanding the use of coronary CTA to patients with highly attenuating calcium plaques. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Bioengineering 2013

A study of Imāmī Islamic law, gender and soteriology; marriage and divorce as technologies of the self. / This dissertation explores marriage in Muslim Imāmī juristic law as an embodiment of a set of practices that are aimed at cultivating the pious and virtuous self. As a ritual practice for mainstream Imāmī jurists, marriage (and its corollary activities, e.g. sex) was a mode of pietistic self-fashioning and hence a technology of the self. When faced with the strong possibility or inevitability of marital breakdown, and the sexual sins that may have come about as a result of this breakdown, Imāmī jurists opted for creating a space for women’s prerogative to divorce in which the marriage could end whilst still upholding Islam as a program for the circumvention of sin and the production of īmān. Divorce, in this sense, can be thought of as a safety mechanism and extension of marriage’s program for the nurturing of a pietistic psychology in men and women. The textual and gendered discourse of juristic law was therefore aimed at creating a legal program for individuals so as to maintain the normative Muslim’s ontological bond with God through a series of regulations, disciplines, bodily practices and juristically permitted gendered power inversions that promoted soteriological success. This study argues that the primary concern of Imāmī jurists was not to maintain a gendered hierarchy as the current dominant scholarship holds, but to prevent sin, especially zinā, the corruption of the qalb (metaphysical heart) and ultimately avoid damnation in the Hereafter. For Imāmī jurists, marriage was not just a procedural practice of rights and duties, but a mode of self-development and a platform through which an eschatological battle against sexual sin and the Devil took place in. When patriarchy, or more specifically, asymmetrical power relations between (actual/potential) wives and husbands (or guardians) conflicted with the soteriological aims of juristic discourse, the former was inverted. The study concludes that maintaining gender hierarchy was not integral to the cosmology of juristic practice (even in its premodern discourse); it was maintaining the normative believer’s ontological bond with God and saving him/her, as well as the believing community, from damnation. Theological concerns for salvation - and the cultivation of the pious self that made salvation possible – is what animated Imāmī juristic discourse and not patriarchy whether it was obtained from the source-texts (Qur’an, ḥadīth) or social custom (ʿurf). This study undertakes this task by observing six key areas in the Imāmī tradition where notions of salvation and spiritual ontology in marriage/divorce figure the most prominently: juristic preliminaries on marriage and zinā, interfaith marriage, prepubescent marriage, temporary marriage with zānīyahs, nushūz and khulʿ divorce. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)