Sejam K, a garrafa de Klein, e K M S^ um fibrado com base S^ e fibra K. Neste trabalho estudamos o seguinte problema: dadas aplicações f, g : M M que preservam fibra sobre S^, quando o par (f, g) pode ser deformado, por uma homotopia que preserva fibra sobre S^, a um par de aplicações (f^{\'} , g^{\'} ) livre de coincidência? / Let K be the Klein bottle and let K M S be a Klein bottle bundle over S 1 . In this work we study the following question: given a pair of fiber preserving maps over S^ , when can it be deformed by a fiberwise homotopy over S into a pair of coincidence free fiber preserving maps over S^, (f^{\'} , g^{\'} ) ?

Na maior parte deste trabalho, estudamos a existência de involuções livres sobre algumas 4-variedades fechadas, com o mesmo tipo de homotopia do espaço total de algum fibrado de superfície sobre superfície, bem como uma generalização do teorema de Borsuk-Ulam para tais 4-variedades. Também estudamos a relação do teorema de Borsuk-Ulam, para aplicações da n-esfera em variedades, com a teoria de conível. / In the most part of this work, we study the existence of free involutions over some closed 4-manifolds with the same homotopy type of the total space of some surface bundle over surface, as well as a generalization of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem for such 4-manifolds. Also we study the relation of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem, for maps from the n-sphere into manifolds, with the colevel theory.

Palms support the largest leaves in the world and have evolved on Earth for over 120 million years. They are often reported to be the only structure left standing post-hurricane. Cross-sectional shapes of cantilevered structures are important design factors affecting torsional and bending performance. Understanding the shape contribution of natural sections such as palm petioles (modified leaf stalks) is more difficult than those for simple 2D shapes because conventional methods of calculating section properties are not well suited to these irregular shapes. The role of internal structure, material properties and external shape of palm petioles in cantilever performance has been investigated and three main contributions to knowledge result from this research. Firstly, 3D mapping, i.e., the size, orientation and position, of vascular bundles in the Trachycarpus fortunei palm petiole reveals the distributions of stress and Young’s modulus values, providing a more detailed understanding of petioles than previous work. Secondly, bulk elastic material properties along the longitudinal axis of the same petiole are then input to a bi-layered model of the same petiole establishing the Young’s modulus of the two layers without mechanically testing them individually and for determining that the outer layer is not lignified. Thirdly, the largest contribution is the introduction of modified shape transformers employing the use of circular envelopes, eliminating error caused by approximating second moment of area with the torsional constant. This leads to a novel Shape Edge Mapping (SEM) technique which deconstructs petiole cross section shape elements and enables the structural contribution of these elements to be calculated, improving the understanding of the petiole section and how it relates to its mechanical function. This thesis makes a valuable addition to the knowledge of palm function and presents novel techniques for non-destructive extraction of natural shape data for abstraction and use in preliminary engineering design.

Classificação das auto-aplicações de fibrados, com fibra toro, que preservam fibra sobre o círculo, com a propriedade de poderem ser deformadas sobre o círculo a uma aplicação livre de ponto fixo. Ainda, investigamos a relação entre o número de Reidemeister sobre o círculo e a propriedade acima / Classification of all fiber-preserving self-maps of torus bundles over the circle by the property of being able to deform them over the circle into a fixed point free map by a fiberwise homotopy over the circle. We also investigate the relationship between Reidemeister number over the circle and the property above

O presente trabalho envolve um estudo teórico e experimental do escoamento bifásico externo a banco de tubos. Inicialmente, apresenta-se uma ampla revisão da literatura sobre padrões de escoamento, fração de vazio e perda de pressão, durante escoamentos monofásicos e bifásicos externos a banco de tubos. Nesta análise são também descritos os métodos de previsão destes parâmetros. Verificam-se diferenças significativas entre as estimativas proporcionadas por eles, fato que indica a inexistência de métodos generalizados. Posteriormente é apresentada uma descrição detalhada da bancada experimental projetada e construída durante o doutoramento. O aparato completo compõe-se da seção de testes, circuito de água, sistema de compressão e condicionamento de ar, e seções de injeção dos fluxos e condicionamento do escoamento. A seção de testes consiste em um banco de tubos distribuídos segundo configuração triangular normal, com os tubos apresentando diâmetro externo de 19,1 mm, comprimento de 381 mm, e espaçamento transversal de 24 mm. Os experimentos foram realizados para escoamento vertical ascendente de misturas água-ar e velocidades superficiais da fase líquida e gás de 0,020 a 1,500 m/s e de 0,10 a 10,00 m/s, respectivamente. Neste estudo foram desenvolvidas técnicas inéditas para determinação experimental da fração de vazio superficial no interior do banco de tubos baseadas em sistemas óptico e de sensoriamento capacitivo. Os padrões de escoamento foram identificados subjetivamente através de visualização de imagens e vídeos do escoamento, e objetivamente com o auxílio do método de agrupamento de dados k-means utilizando parâmetros baseados no sinal de perda de pressão e do sensoriamento capacitivo. Identificou-se subjetivamente os padrões de escoamento bolhas, bolhas dispersas, bolhas grandes, agitante, intermitente e anular. Constatou-se equivalência entre os padrões de escoamento identificados através dos métodos objetivo e subjetivo. Resultados experimentais para fração de vazio foram obtidos através de técnicas óptica e capacitiva. Constatou-se que o traçador rodamina B utilizado no método óptico altera as condições do escoamento, ainda que em concentrações reduzidas. A partir dos resultados obtidos com o sensoriamento capacitivo estimou-se a fração de vazio para o padrão bolhas. Resultados para a parcela friccional da perda de pressão também foram levantados. Constata-se o incremento da fração de vazio e da parcela friccional da perda de pressão com as velocidades superficiais das fases líquida e gás. Os resultados para fração de vazio foram comparados com métodos de previsão da literatura, e de maneira geral os métodos preveem as tendências dos resultados experimentais apenas para vazões de líquido reduzidas. Analogamente, os resultados para perda de pressão foram comparados com estimativas segundo métodos da literatura, concluindo que os métodos não preveem satisfatoriamente os resultados obtidos. Desta forma, foram propostos novos métodos de previsão para padrões de escoamento, fração de vazio e parcela friccional da perda de pressão, desenvolvidos a partir de análises dos mecanismos dominantes do escoamento, e adotando parâmetros adimensionais para correlacionar os dados. Os métodos propostos preveem satisfatoriamente os resultados experimentais deste estudo e da literatura para escoamentos bifásicos água-ar. / The present thesis concerns a theoretical and experimental study of external two-phase flows across tube bundles. Initially, a comprehensive literature review covering flow patterns, void fraction and pressure drop for single and two-phase flows across tubes bundle is presented. The review also describes predictive methods for these parameters. A comparison of these methods reveals reasonable disagreement among their predictions, indicating the absence of generalized methods. Subsequently, the apparatus and instrumentation designed and built to obtain the experimental data are described. The experimental apparatus comprises the test section, a water loop, air compression and conditioning systems, and sets for fluid flow injections and conditioning. The test section is a normal triangular tube bundle, with 19.1 mm OD tubes, 381 mm long and transversal pitch of 24 mm. The experiments were performed for air-water upward vertical flow, for superficial liquid and gas velocities ranging from 0.020 to 1.500 m/s and 0.10 to 10.00 m/s, respectively. Innovative techniques to evaluate the void fraction within the bundle were developed based on capacitive and optical methods. The flow patterns were identified subjectively and objectively by k-means clustering method, using as clustering parameters the pressure drop and the capacitive signals. Bubbles, dispersed bubbles, large bubbles, churn, intermittent and annular flow patterns were identified subjectively. The data groups identified by the objective method are representative of the flow patterns. Void fraction measurements were obtained for bubbly flow using both techniques (optical and capacitive). The void fraction data based on the optical method had its experimental range limited due to changes in the flow characteristics caused by the addition of the fluorescent dye Rhodamine B. The experimental results indicate that the void fraction increases with increasing the superficial velocities of both phases. In general, the void fraction predictive methods available in the literature capture the trends of the experimental results only for reduced liquid flow rates. According to the experimental results, the frictional pressure drop increases asymptotically with increasing the flow rates of both phases. None of the predictive methods from literature evaluated in the present study predicted satisfactorily the experimental results. Methods for prediction of flow patterns, void fraction and frictional pressure drop parcel were also developed in the present study. These methods provided reasonable predictions of the experimental results obtained in the present study, and also from the literature for air and water flows across tube bundles.

A frame is a possibly linearly dependent set of vectors in a Hilbert space that facilitates the decomposition and reconstruction of vectors. A Parseval frame is a frame that acts as its own dual frame. A Gabor frame comprises all translations and phase modulations of an appropriate window function. We show that the space of all frames on a Hilbert space indexed by a common measure space can be fibrated into orbits under the action of invertible linear deformations and that any maximal set of unitarily inequivalent Parseval frames is a complete set of representatives of the orbits. We show that all such frames are connected by transformations that are linear in the larger Hilbert space of square-integrable functions on the indexing space. We apply our results to frames on finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces and to the discretization of the Gabor frame with a band-limited window function.

Hospitalized children are vulnerable to pressure injuries. Multiple methods are available to decrease pressure injuries. One specific method is the pediatric pressure injury prevention bundle, which includes device rotation, moisture management, positioning, skin assessment, and support surface management. Although this prevention bundle is available nationwide, it is not known if this type of bundled methodology helps decrease pressure injuries in hospitalized children. Secondary data regarding nursing interventions implemented as a bundle and pressure injury rates from a large pediatric hospital consortium were used to address this gap in the literature. The research questions explored the impact of the pressure injury prevention bundle on pressure injury rates over time and further dissected the data to determine the significance of each intervention in the treatment bundle. Benoit and Mion's model for performance improvement along with the continuous quality improvement model used by the hospital consortium guided the study. The secondary data sample included 102 children's hospitals participating in the national initiative Solutions for Patient Safety. Pearson correlation statistics revealed a significant inverse relationship between nursing interventions and pressure injury rates for hospitalized children. The findings indicated a 57% reduction in rates of pressure injuries over 5 years with nursing participation in implementing the pediatric pressure injury prevention bundle. The impact of any one intervention over the bundle was inconclusive. Positive social change is seen in the ability to decrease pressure injuries in hospitalized children by nurses' implementation of a pediatric pressure injury prevention bundles.

Central venous catheters (CVCs) are commonly used as vascular access for patients who require hemodialysis. Infectious complications are a serious clinical problem, and they are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality, prolonged hospital stay, and increased medical treatment costs. The purpose of theproject was to evaluate the effectiveness of educating registered dialysis nurses regarding CVC maintenance care to reduce catheter-related bloodstream infection (CRBSI) in a hemodialysis unit. The project question focused on the educational program derived from the evidence-based guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to improve registered dialysis nurses' knowledge regarding CVC maintenance care. The theoretical foundation of the study was based on Donabedian's structure-process-outcomes model. In this project, nurses considered a structural element and used a self-study module to improve the process of providing CVC maintenance care. A paired-samples ttest was conducted to compare knowledge scores of the participants in the posttest (n = 56) and knowledge scores of participants in the pretest (n = 57). The ttest was significantly higher for the posttest than scores for the pretest. The results suggested a statistically significant improvement in the registered dialysis nurses' knowledge following the educational intervention. This study contributes to social change by identifying an educational intervention that helped improving nurses' knowledge in hemodialysis unit, thus helping hemodialysis patients stay safer and possibly reducing infectious complications.

We construct a deformation quantization on an infinite-dimensional symplectic space of regular connections on an SU(2)-bundle over a Riemannian surface of genus g ≥ 2. The construction is based on the normal form thoerem representing the space of connections as a fibration over a finite-dimensional moduli space of flat connections whose fibre is a cotangent bundle of the infinite-dimensional gauge group. We study the reduction with respect to the gauge groupe both for classical and quantum cases and show that our quantization commutes with reduction.

Self-assembly has emerged as a promising technique for fabrication of novel hybrid materials and nanostructures. The work presented in this thesis has been focused on developing nanoscale materials based on synthetic de novo designed polypeptides. The polypeptides have been utilized for the assembly of gold nanoparticles, fibrous nanostructures, and for sensing applications. The 42-residue polypeptides are designed to fold into helix-loop-helix motifs and dimerize to form four-helix bundles. Folding is primarily driven by the formation of a hydrophobic core made up by the hydrophobic faces of the amphiphilic helices. The peptides have either a negative or positive net charge at neutral pH, depending on the relative abundance of Glu and Lys. Charge repulsion thus prevents homodimerization at pH 7 while promoting hetero-dimerization through the formation of stabilising salt bridges. A Cys incorporated in position 22, located in the loop region, allowed for directed, thiol-dependent, immobilization on planar gold surfaces and gold nanoparticles. The negatively charged (Glu-rich) peptide formed homodimers and folded in solution at pH < 6 or in the presence of certain metal ions, such as Zn2+. The folding properties of this peptide were retained when immobilized directly on gold, which enabled reversible assembly of gold nanoparticles resulting in aggregates with well-defined interparticle separations. Particle aggregation was found to induce folding of the immobilized peptides but folding could also be utilized to induce aggregation of the particles by exploiting the highly specific interactions involved in both homodimerization and hetero-association. The possibility to control the assembly of polypeptide-functionalized gold nanoparticles was utilized in a colorimetric protein assay. Analyte binding to immobilized ligands prevented the formation of dense particle aggregates when subjecting the particles to conditions normally causing extensive aggregation. Analyte binding could hence easily be distinguished by the naked eye. Moreover, the peptides were utilized to assemble gold nanoparticles on planar gold and silica substrates. Fibrous nanostructures were realized by linking monomers through a disulphide-bridge. The disulphide-linked peptides were found to spontaneously assemble into long and extremely thin peptide fibres as a result of a propagating association mediated by folding into four-helix bundles. / Ingenjörer och vetenskapsmän har ofta inspirerats av naturen i sökandet efter lösningar på tekniska problem. Allt ifrån byggnadskonstruktioner, flygplansvingar, kompositmaterial till kardborrebandet har skapats med utgångspunkt från förebilder i naturen. Många av de material och konstruktioner som återfinns i naturen har åtråvärda egenskaper som är svåra att erhålla i syntetiska matrial med traditionell teknik. Även om vi i flera fall kan härma sammansättningen och formen blir resultatet inte nödvändigtvis det samma. Den största skillnaden mellan syntetiska material och material producerade av levande organismer är hur deras komponenter sinsemellan är organiserade och sammansatta. I syntetiska material är komponenterna ofta inbördes mer eller mindre slumpvis ordnade medan de i biologiska material är organiserade med en oerhörd precision som sträcker sig ända ned på molekyl- och atomnivå. Naturens byggstenar har genom evolutionens gång förfinats för att spontant kunna organisera sig och bilda komplexa material  och strukturer. Denna process, som styrs genom att många svaga krafter inom och mellan byggstenarna samverkar, kallas ofta för självorganisering och är en förutsättning för allt liv. Självorganisering har också blivit en allt viktigare metod inom nanotekniken för att konstruera material och strukturer med nanometerprecision. I den här avhandlingen beskrivs en typ av självorganiserande material där byggstenarna utgörs av nanometerstora guldpartiklar och syntetiska proteiner. De syntetiska proteinerna är designade för att efterlikna naturliga biomolekyler och antar en välbestämd tredimensionell struktur när två av dem interagerar med varandra. Denna interaktion är mycket specifik men kan styras genom att variera kemiska parametrar som surhet och jonstyrka vilket ger en möjlighet att påverka och kontrollera proteinernas struktur. Proteinerna har vidare modifierats för att spontant organisera sig till fibrer som är flera mikrometer långa men endast några nanometer tjocka. Proteinfibrer utgör en mycket viktig typ av strukturer i biologiska system och finns i alltifrån spindelväv till muskler. Syntetiska proteinfibrer är därför både ett intressant modellsystem och ett material med många potentiellt intressanta användningsområden. Genom att fästa de syntetiska proteinerna på ytan av guldnanopartiklar går interaktionerna mellan partiklarna att kontrollera på samma sätt som interaktionerna mellan proteinerna. Krafterna mellan proteinerna och interaktionerna involverade i proteinernas veckning har använts för att reversibelt aggregera och organisera nanopartiklarna. Ett antal olika byggstenar har studerats och utvecklats till något som liknar ett mycket enkelt nano-Lego, som på en given signal spontant bygger ihop sig eller trillar isär. Guldnanopartiklar är intressanta eftersom de är stabila och lätta att modifiera kemiskt men också på grund av deras optiska egenskaper som ger dem en ovanligt vacker vinröd färg. Färgen uppstår på grund av partiklarnas ringa storlek och varierar naturligt med egenskaperna hos den omgivande miljön. Detta gör det enkelt att studera hur partiklarna interagerar eftersom de byter färg när de närmar sig varandra, men gör dem också intressanta för sensortillämpningar. En enkel och robust sensor beskrivs i avhandlingen där syntetiska proteiner, speciellt utformade för att upptäcka och binda andra molekyler, har fästs på nanopartiklarna. Med partiklarnas hjälp går det att med blotta ögat detektera ett mänskligt protein i koncentrationer under ett tusendels gram per liter. En tidig diagnos av sjukdomstillstånd kan i de flesta fall avsevärt underlätta behandlingen och behovet av enkla sensorer för att bestämma närvaro och koncentration av medicinskt intressanta molekyler är därför mycket stort.