The treatment that women get from health care staff can influence the experience of the abortion and how women manage to coping the experience emotionally. The aim of this study was to illuminate women’s experiences in connection with an abortion. The findings show that the women’s social situation led them to the decision of abortion. When the women had the pregnancy confirmed many felt unreality. Several women experienced the situation as a crisis. After the abortion most of the women experienced relief, but also guilt towards the abortion. Some knew that they had made the right decision, while others felt regret. Most of the women experienced that the nursing staff treated them well, but some women experienced that the staff was negative, insensitive and ignoring. Most of the women was satisfied with the total support from significant others. To make a satisfying nursing care possible for each woman who seeks abortion, more research is needed about women’s experiences of nursing staff’s treatment.

A wound- and insect-inducible expression system for transgenic plants was developed. Specifically, I demonstrate wound- and insect-inducible, localized gene expression driven by the potato proteinase inhibitor II (pinII)-promoter in transformed Arabidopsis, tobacco and white spruce. As reporter and target genes driven by the pinII-promoter, I used the GUS gene and a terpenoid synthase gene, respectively. In addition, I found that the pinII-promoter drives trichome-specific, systemically-induced gene expression in tobacco and Arabidopsis. Finally, I demonstrate that the pinII–promoter, when transformed into Arabidopsis, is extremely sensitive to subtle, low-impact stress treatment. This latter finding prompted me to use, in the second part of my thesis, the pinII-promoter in conjunction with GUS reporter gene expression to test if intact Arabidopsis plants can respond to exposure to monoterpene volatiles. My experiments using the pinII–promoter GUS reporter system clearly established that Arabidopsis plants respond to the exposure of the monoterpene volatiles tested. It is thought that monoterpenes and other volatiles can act as airborne signals between plants under stress or between distant parts of the same plant. At the outset of my thesis research, and to some extent still today, the concept of plant-plant signalling with volatiles has been met with scepticism. After establishing that Arabidopsis plants do respond in a laboratory setting to certain monoterpene volatiles, I further tested the extent of the response at the transcriptome level using a 30 K microarray platform. The gene expression analysis revealed several hundred transcripts that respond with a change of abundance in response to treatment of intact Arabidopsis plants with the monoterpenes ocimene or myrcene. Many of these transcripts were annotated as stress and defense genes including genes involved in octadecanoid signaling. Real-time PCR analyses of octadecanoid mutants confirmed a role for octadecanoid signaling in the response to the monoterpene ocimene. In addition, treatment with ocimene or myrcene caused increased levels of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) in Arabidopsis rosette leaves. However, plants treated with monoterpene prior to wounding or feeding by cabbage looper did not reveal any significant priming effect for these pre-treatments.

Pore pressure exists ubiquitously in the Earth’s subsurface and very often exhibits a cyclic loading on pre-existing faults due to seasonal and tidal changes, as well as the impoundment and discharge of surface reservoirs. The effect of oscillating pore pressure on induced seismicity is not fully understood. This effect exhibits a dynamic variation in effective stresses in space and time. The redistribution of pore pressure as a result of fluid flow and pressure oscillations can cause spatial and temporal changes in the shear strength of fault zones, which may result in delayed and protracted slips on pre-existing fractures. This research uses an experimental approach to investigate the effects of oscillating pore pressure on induced seismicity. With the aid of geophysical techniques, the spatial and temporal distribution of seismic events was reconstructed and analysed. Triaxial experiments were conducted on two types of sandstone, one with low permeability (Fontainebleau sandstone) and the other with high permeability (Darley Dale sandstone). Cyclic pore pressures were applied to the naturally-fractured samples to activate and reactivate the existing faults. The results indicate that the mechanical properties of the sample and the heterogeneity of the fault zone can influence the seismic response. Initial seismicity was induced by applying pore pressures that exceeded the previous maximum attained during the experiment. The reactivation of faults and foreshock sequences was found in the Fontainebleau sandstone experiment, a finding which indicates that oscillating pore pressure can induce seismicity for a longer period of time than a single-step increase in pore pressure. The corresponding strain change due to cyclic pore pressure changes suggests that progressive shearing occurred during the pore pressure cycles. This shearing progressively damaged the existing fault through the wearing of asperities, which in turn reduced the friction coefficient and, hence, reduced the shear strength of the fault. This ‘slow’ seismic mechanism contributed to the prolonged period of seismicity. This study also applied a material forecast model for the estimation of time-to-failure or peak seismicity in reservoir-induced seismicity, which may provide some general guidelines for short-term field case estimations.

Pore pressure exists ubiquitously in the Earth’s subsurface and very often exhibits a cyclic loading on pre-existing faults due to seasonal and tidal changes, as well as the impoundment and discharge of surface reservoirs. The effect of oscillating pore pressure on induced seismicity is not fully understood. This effect exhibits a dynamic variation in effective stresses in space and time. The redistribution of pore pressure as a result of fluid flow and pressure oscillations can cause spatial and temporal changes in the shear strength of fault zones, which may result in delayed and protracted slips on pre-existing fractures. This research uses an experimental approach to investigate the effects of oscillating pore pressure on induced seismicity. With the aid of geophysical techniques, the spatial and temporal distribution of seismic events was reconstructed and analysed. Triaxial experiments were conducted on two types of sandstone, one with low permeability (Fontainebleau sandstone) and the other with high permeability (Darley Dale sandstone). Cyclic pore pressures were applied to the naturally-fractured samples to activate and reactivate the existing faults. The results indicate that the mechanical properties of the sample and the heterogeneity of the fault zone can influence the seismic response. Initial seismicity was induced by applying pore pressures that exceeded the previous maximum attained during the experiment. The reactivation of faults and foreshock sequences was found in the Fontainebleau sandstone experiment, a finding which indicates that oscillating pore pressure can induce seismicity for a longer period of time than a single-step increase in pore pressure. The corresponding strain change due to cyclic pore pressure changes suggests that progressive shearing occurred during the pore pressure cycles. This shearing progressively damaged the existing fault through the wearing of asperities, which in turn reduced the friction coefficient and, hence, reduced the shear strength of the fault. This ‘slow’ seismic mechanism contributed to the prolonged period of seismicity. This study also applied a material forecast model for the estimation of time-to-failure or peak seismicity in reservoir-induced seismicity, which may provide some general guidelines for short-term field case estimations.

Coherent effects are studied in a dense atomic vapor driven by laser fields. With optical properties dramatically modified by these effects, the medium can be used to manipulate some of the properties of laser field. Our experiments demonstrate the coherent control over transmission, spatial distribution and noise feature of the laser field interacting with coherent media. The results have potential applications in the field such as precision metrology, precision spectroscopy, optical imaging and lithography. We develop an experiment to investigate the atomic excitation by few-cycle radio frequency (RF) pulses interacting with Zeeman sublevels. The system provides the flexibility to fully control all parameters of RF pulses. Such a flexibility can not be achieved in optical domain. Based on this system, experiments can be conducted to simulate processes in ultra-short laser physics. In particular, we study the carrier-envelope effect of few-cycle pulses and the strong off-resonant excitation by short pulses. We also discuss the selective reflection spectrum on a highly dense atomic vapor in which the dipole-dipole interaction can not be neglected. The spectrum broadening due to dipole-dipole interaction is much broader than the Doppler broadening. Our experiments show that the excitation by a pump laser can reduce the dipole-dipole interaction, thus reduce the broadening and improve the spectral resolution. The excitation dependence is studied at various atomic densities.

Wave-induced circulation in general coastal environments is simulated by coupling two widely-used finite-element models, namely, a refraction-diffraction-reflection model based on the elliptic mild-slope equation, and a two-dimensional (depth-averaged) shelf-scale circulation model. Such models yield wave-induced current-fields and set-up/down. This involves exploration of some numerical and practical issues, for example, the selection of appropriate boundary condition and grid resolution, numerical errors owing to higher-order derivatives, etc. Computations of the wave forcing from the elliptic wave model, and the wave-induced quantities from the circulation model, are validated with theoretical and published results. The coupled system is then used to simulate the wave-induced circulation in the domains where structures (e.g. breakwater, jetty, etc.) and bathymetric features (e.g. shoal, etc.) are present. In practice, usually an approximate form of the wave-induced forcing is used. This has certain limitations in some application, which have been poorly studied so far. Therefore, here we consider two alternative approaches. The performance of these wave forcing formulations is examined in the regions where the effects of wave reflection, diffraction and focusing are significant. It is observed that the “generalized approach” provides satisfactory results in most situations, provided a grid resolution of L/10 or more is achievable for the wave model domain. The widely-used simplified approach may produce a chaotic pattern of set-up/down and current field in the regions where the wave field is not purely progressive. The third approach ignores the effect of wave diffraction and reflection, and primarily simulates the effect of energy dissipation. Differences up to 25 percent are observed between the modeled current fields obtained with the generalized and the simplified approach. The results suggest that the generalized approach can be used with little practical difficulty and greater reliability.

Flow-induced vibration of small elastic cylinders mounted in the shear flow of a two-dimensional jet is investigated experimentally. There has been a great deal of work concerned with different vibrating conditions and practical dynamic responses by way of mass ratios and diameters of various different cylinders. In such cases, the amplitude of the cylinder oscillation changed along with the variation of the jet velocity is due to the influence of fluid elastic instability. The experiment is based on the method of the magnetic field induction to measure the motion of the small cylinder, and it involves measurements of the varying velocity in a jet through the hot- wire anemometer. The critical velocity of the cylinder vibration in the shear flow with different diameters, mass ratios and damping factors are examined. Moreover, the oscillation traces of the cylinder by fluid elastic instability were observed when the jet velocity was increased, and then decreased for examination of hysteresis phenomena. The results show that the bifurcation of the cylinder vibration traces is remarkable especially for cylinders with high mass ratios. By the amplitude diagrams of the cylinder vibration, the critical velocity for onset of fluid elastic vibration was determined. The dependence of the critical velocity and hysteresis phenomena on the mass ratio and damping factor are discussed.

Gene of DC2 protein, a novel unknown gene, was identified previously in our laboratory while studying the death progression in the rat brain stem. According to the search results of bioinformatics database, both human DC2 and house mouse DC2 are 149 amino acids long and 16.8 kDa. The entire sequence of human DC2 differs from house mouse DC2 by only a single amino acid substitution. The bioinformatics revealed that human DC2 and house mouse DC2 had three predicted transmembrane regions. These results suggest human DC2 and house mouse are highly homologous. DC2 protein expresses differentially between organs. Human liver is the top fourth DC2-expressed organ, while house mouse liver is ranked 23rd DC2-expressed organ. Shibatani et al (Shibatani et al¡A2005) proposed DC2 protein as a potential subunit of mammalian Oligosaccharyltransferase (OST) after mass spectrometry analysis and suggested DC2 might involve in glycosylation. House mouse liver fibrosis was induced by giving 300mg/L thioacetamide (TAA) in the drinking water for different periods of time, and then gene expression of house mouse DC2 of liver was analyzed. mRNA expression was found in normal house mouse liver and mRNA expression increased gradually after TAA administration. DC2 protein also found in normal house mouse liver and DC2 protein of house mouse liver increased after TAA administration.

Vibrations of small cylinder in a jet flow are investigated experimentally. Because of the flow field in shear layers of jet flow is very complex and filled with vortex structures, so the flow induced vibration phenomena in jet flow is different from the flow induced vibration in uniform flow. The major subject in this experiment is to discuss the major cause of small cylinder vibrations, and the flow field influenced by the cylinder vibration. About flow measurement, velocity measurement by hot-wire is applied. As for the vibration measurement, by using the principle of electromagnetic, a new measurement technology was successfully developed. This new vibration measurement can measure the vibrations in two axial, so as to describe the orbit of vibrations. To find the interrelation of flow field and cylinder vibrations, flow measurement and vibration measurement was carry on at the same time. It is shown that when the jet velocity is increased constantly, small cylinder will vibration intensely. The fixed velocity is called critical velocity. If add a perturb, the vibration will occur in advance. The dominant frequency of cylinder vibration, fr, will be the same with it's nature frequency, fn, in the critical velocity, but when the flow velocity keep on increasing, the dominant frequency, fr, will also increase. Besides, the relation of reduced velocity and mass damping was found in this case. The orbits of vibrations are all like ellipse, and the orbit is different with different reduced velocity. The vibration amplitude be changed into three sections that have different reduced velocity, and different orbit. About the flow field, the velocity profile in potential core is not influenced by vibrations of small cylinder, but the velocity fluctuations in shear layer indeed be inflected. At the fixed velocity region, the dominant frequency of flow is the same with dominant frequency of vibrations when the flow at downstream of small cylinder in shear layer. This phenomena only exist when the vibration amplitude under the fixed range.

Abstract The experiment was performed to measure the flow-induced vibration of tubes in cross flow and to study the effect of different experimental parameters, natural frequency, tube patterns and positions of the missing tube, on the tube vibration. The vibration mode of structures was investigated by root-mean-square values of tube displacements, dominant response frequencies, power spectral densities and orbits. The vibration signals in various velocities were used to analyze the mode and mechanism of the tube vibration by examining the interrelations between power spectral densities and orbits of the tube vibration. It was found that the stability thresholds were higher at the higher natural frequencies of the tubes and approach angles of the flow. Missing tube would affect the stability of local flow field, so that the surrounding tubes became more unstable. For each array pattern, the dominant response frequency of tube was changed with the flow velocity. It should be associated with the flow field, the mode and mechanism of vibration. As the tube frequency jumped, it should be the change of vibrating mode and mechanism. From the spectra and orbits of the tube vibrations, it can be found that the dominant frequencies are more complex at the high flow velocity.