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Since the 1960s the literature on demography of rural northern Sweden has focussed on 'decline' - noting loss of population, population ageing, yourth outmigration and other 'negative' demographic developments (Friedlander, 1969; Hjort, 2009; Stone 1971); recent studies suggest that such generalizations may overlook the diversity of experiences of rural areas (D. Carson and Koch, 2013; Cernic-Maly, Koch and Koch, 2014; Hedlund, 2014; Hoggart and Paniagua, 2001; Koch and Carson, 2012). The purpose of this thesis is to explore aspets of the diversity of experiences of demographic change in one part of rural northern Sweden, focusing on differences between villages and towns within a single municipality. Theoretically, the large body of scientific studies of 'rural' tend to be at macro-scale and from the 'urban' perspective, which might provide generalized and biased assumptions of 'rural'; this study may contribute to the understanding of 'rural' by describing it 'how it really is' and by looking into demographic diversity and change at the micro-scale. Practically, the thesis might assist local planners to take 'place-based' decisions when planning for the future of rural areas when deciding where to place schools, health centres, youth activities centres, playgrounds, or invest in economic opportunities, etc. Moreover, this thesis should answer the following research questions:  Q1: Is there diversity in demographic characteristics when comparing proximate locations in the Swedish rural setting? Q2: If there is, is it something that has recently emerged, or sothing that has been present for a long period of history? The thesis studied the case of Vilhelmina municipality, in this case defined by local government boundaries, in three stages: first, looked at how settlement patterns within the area have changed over time - where has there been population growth? Decline? Both? Neither? - using data from 1890, 1970 and 2015. Second, selected five individual locations (defined by village' borders) within the area that have featured at those points in time, and compared them in terms of age, sex, age dependency ratios, and child-woman rates. Third, accessed secondary historical data and interviewed key informants with knowledge of these places to check which events could have influenced shaping them over the time. The findings of the thesis were: 'fragmentedä development over time, differences between individual places at different time; differences between different places at the same time; local, regional, national and international events and trends are likely to have played a role in these results. According to the findings, I can conclude that even since the 1960s, not all locations in rural northern Sweden have had the same experience of 'decline'. Furthermore, not all places share the presumed characteristics of rural areas - i.e. some are younger and some are older, etc. Hence, even the same events influence proximate places in different ways depending on their specific location (e.g. near geographical feature that become more or less valued), their connections with other places (through economic activities, communications, family ties, etc), rules and regulations especially regarding land use, and availability of infrastructure. This thesis describes the demographics of a case in rural northern Sweden in the micro perspective related to temporal and spatial scales. This study provides empirical evidence and might support arguments about the importance of scale and diversity of rural conditions. Moreover, it emphasises, as Koch and Carson (2012) did, the need to understand the spatial scale at which assessments of rural demographic change are being made. Lastly, more academics should perform this genre of research, so that we move past incomplete messages and concepts about rural development that have dominated in northern Sweden since the 1960s.

abstract: Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD) is a debilitating chronic disease of the lower extremities particularly affecting older adults and diabetics. It results in reduction of the blood flow to peripheral tissue and sometimes causing tissue damage such that PVD patients suffer from pain in the lower legs, thigh and buttocks after activities. Electrical neurostimulation based on the "Gate Theory of Pain" is a known to way to reduce pain but current devices to do this are bulky and not well suited to implantation in peripheral tissues. There is also an increased risk associated with surgery which limits the use of these devices. This research has designed and constructed wireless ultrasound powered microstimulators that are much smaller and injectable and so involve less implantation trauma. These devices are small enough to fit through an 18 gauge syringe needle increasing their potential for clinical use. These piezoelectric microdevices convert mechanical energy into electrical energy that then is used to block pain. The design and performance of these miniaturized devices was modeled by computer while constructed devices were evaluated in animal experiments. The devices are capable of producing 500ms pulses with an intensity of 2 mA into a 2 kilo-ohms load. Using the rat as an animal model, a series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the in-vivo performance of the devices. / Dissertation/Thesis / Muscle Twitching Excited by the Implanted Ultrasound Powered Device / Rat Hindlimb Withdraw Reflex / Masters Thesis Bioengineering 2014

To meet the requirements of miniaturization and multifunction in microelectronics, understanding of their reliability and performance has become an important research subject in order to characterise electronics served under various loadings. Along with the demands of the increasing miniaturization of electronic devices, various properties and the relevant thermo-mechanical-electrical response of the lead-free solder joints to thermal cycling and electro-migration become the critical factors, which affect the service life of microelectronics in different applications. However, due to the size and structure of solder interconnects in microelectronics, traditional methods based on experiments are not applicable in the evaluation of their reliability under complex joint loadings. This thesis presents an investigation, which is based on finite-element method, into the performance of lead-free solder interconnects under thermal fatigue and electro-migration, specifically in the areas as follows: (1) the investigation of thermal-mechanical performance and fatigue-life prediction of flip-chip package under different sizes to achieve a further understanding of IMC layer and size effects of a flip chip package under thermal cycling; (2) the establishment of a numerical method, simulating void-formation/crack-propagation based on the results of finite-element analysis, to allow the prediction of crack evolution and failure time for electro-migration reliability of solder bumps; (3) the establishment of a flow-based algorithm for combination effects of thermal-mechanical and electro-migration that was subsequent implemented in to an FE model to evaluate the reliability assessment of service lives associated with a flip chip package.

Increasing PM2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers) poses a significant health risk to people. Understanding variables critical to PM2.5 spatial and temporal variation is a first step towards protecting vulnerable populations from exposure. Previous studies investigate variables responsible for PM2.5 variation but have a limited temporal span. Moreover, although land-use classes are often taken into account, the vertical environment's influence (e.g., buildings, trees) on PM2.5 concentrations is often ignored and on-road circle buffers are used. To understand variables most critical to PM2.5 concentration variation, an air pollution sensor and GPS unit were affixed to a bicycle to sample for variables over three seasons (spring, summer, fall). Samples were taken on a route during the weekdays at four targeted hours (7AM, 11AM, 3PM, and 7PM) and joined with meteorological data. 3D morphology was assessed using LiDAR data and novel wind-based buffers. Wind speed only, wind direction only, and wind speed and direction buffers were computed and compared for their performance at capturing micro-scale urban morphological variables. Zonal statistics were used to compute morphological indicators under different wind assumptions in seasonal ordinary least squares regression models. A comprehensive wind and buffer performance analysis compares statistical significance for spatial and temporal variation of PM2.5. This study identifies the best wind parameters to use for wind-based buffer generation of urban morphology, which is expected to have implications for buffer design in future studies. Additionally, significant exposure hotspots for UNT students to PM2.5 pollution are identified.

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L’eau est une ressource vitale, indispensable à la vie sur terre. A l’instar de nombreuses autres ressources naturelles, l’eau propre à la consommation est soumise à une forte pression à cause de l’impact de l’activité humaine d’une part et de l’augmentation continue de la population mondiale d’autre part. Une pression tellement forte que l’eau propre représente l’un des 17 objectifs de développement durable des Nations Unies. Dans ce contexte, une gestion rationnelle et durable de la ressource s’avère indispensable. Dans ce but, un système intelligent de supervision des réseaux d’eau potable peut s’avérer très utile. Les systèmes existant sont toutefois peu intégrés et compacts, nécessitent souvent une alimentation externe, et restent relativement chers pour un déploiement massif sur les réseaux. La présente thèse s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche européen, PROTEUS, visant à pallier ces différents problèmes en mettant au point un système de mesure pour la supervision de la ressource en eau permettant la mesure de 9 paramètres physico-chimiques, reconfigurable, et énergétiquement autonome. La contribution de la présente thèse à ce projet porte sur la conception et l’optimisation des différents capteurs physiques (conductivité électrique, pression, température et débit) ainsi qu’à leur co-intégration sur une même puce. Le système proposé montre des performances au moins égales à celle de l’état de l’art en ce qui concerne la robustesse, assurée par la redondance de nombreux éléments sensibles, le domaine de sensibilité et la consommation énergétique. Le présent manuscrit est par conséquent construit comme suit : le premier chapitre est une introduction générale à la supervision de grandeurs environnementales et à la puce multi-capteurs. Le second chapitre décrit la structure de la puce multi-capteurs ainsi que les méthodes de fabrication utilisées, avec une attention particulière accordée aux capteurs de pression et de conductivité électrique. Le troisième chapitre porte sur l’utilisation de résistances électriques pour la mesure de diverses grandeurs physiques, notamment la température. Le dernier chapitre s’attarde plus particulièrement sur l’utilisation de ce type de résistances pour la mesure de débit avant de conclure et de proposer des perspectives pour des travaux futurs / Water is a vital element for every living being on the earth. Like many other dwindling natural resources, clean water faces a strong pressure because of human activity and the rapid growth of global population. The situation is so critical that clean water has been identified as one of the seventeenth sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Under these conditions, a sustainable management of water resources is necessary. For this purpose, a smart solution for water networks monitoring can be very helpful. However, commercially available solutions lack compactness, self-powering capabilities cost competitiveness, necessary to enable the large rollout over water networks. The present thesis takes place in the framework of a European research project, PROTEUS, which addresses these different problems by designing and fabricating a multi-parameter sensor chip (MPSC) for water resources monitoring. The MPSC enables the measurement of 9 physical and chemical parameters, is reconfigurable and self-powered. The present thesis addresses more precisely physical sensors, their design, optimization and co-integration on the MPSC. The developed device exhibits state of the art or larger performances with regard to its redundancy, turn-down ratio and power consumption. The present manuscript is split into two main parts: Part-I and Part-II. Part-I deals with non-thermal aspects of the MPSC, the pressure and conductivity sensor for instance, as well as the fabrication process of the whole device (Chapter 1 and 2). The background of environmental monitoring is presented in Chapter 1 along with the State of Art review. Chapter 2 describes fabrication methods of the MPSC. Preliminary characterization results of non-thermal sensors are also reported in this chapter. Chapter 3 and 4, included in Part-II, deal with thermal sensors (temperature and flow-rate). Chapter 3 describes the many possible uses of electric resistances for sensing applications. Finally, in chapter four, we focus on flowrate sensors before concluding and making a few suggestions for future works