The topic of this thesis is architecture and settings of gothic horrors, particularly in films. The work explores the relationship between the genre of gothic horror and gothic architecture, mainly within examples of haunted castles. The aim of the work is to study in what way the haunted castles are depicted in films and how the gothic architecture is applied in their appearance. The thesis is divided in two parts. The first one is an analysis of some of the gothic horror tendencies which have an influence on the image of haunted castles. These can be observed in films as well as in literature and theatre since the beginnings of gothic horror in the second half of the 18th century until today. The second part uses these tendencies to analyse images of haunted castles in films Dracula (John Badham, 1979), Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) and Van Helsing (Stephen Sommers, 2004).

Ingeniero Civil en Computación / Mientras los programas se vuelven más complejos, nacen nuevos problemas. Uno de ellos es la poca modularidad que se tiene con las llamadas funcionalidades transversales. Estas funcionalidades están dispersas por toda la aplicación y no pueden separarse mediante el paradigma de la programación orientada a objetos. Para solucionar este problema nace el paradigma de la programación orientada a aspectos. En la programación orientada a aspectos se modularizan las funcionalidades trans- versales en una entidad llamada aspecto. El aspecto se ejecuta donde corresponde gracias a que, conceptualmente, el programa se está monitoreando por el aspecto en toda su ejecución, decidiendo cuando se debe ejecutar una acción provista por el aspecto. La- mentablemente, el monitoreo de la aplicación conlleva a un sobrecosto que, muchas veces, los desarrolladores no están dispuestos a pagar. En este trabajo se presenta Casper, un lenguaje orientado a aspectos construido sobre Pharo Smalltalk. Las características más importantes buscadas por Casper son la simplicidad de uso, la explicitud de lo que sucede con los aspectos y bajar el sobrecosto de la ejecución de los programas que utilicen Casper. Casper basa sus funcionalidades en PHANtom. PHANtom es un lenguaje de aspectos construidos sobre Pharo Smalltalk. Ambos lenguajes tienen sintaxis similares, pero las implementaciones son muy diferentes. Casper busca mejorar los sobrecostos generados al usar PHANtom. Para ello Casper propone compilar las funcionalidades dadas por los aspectos junto con los métodos originales. Gracias a la compilación, Casper expone las funcionalidades al desarrollador, en cambio, PHANtom esconde las funcionalidades y nunca muestra de forma explícita donde se ejecuta una funcionalidad transversal. Se comprobó el uso de Casper refactorizando SPY. SPY es un framework para el aná- lisis dinámico de programas. SPY instrumentaliza los métodos que se quieren analizar. Casper provee la instrumentalización de SPY con aspectos. Se realizaron pruebas sobre SPY versus SPY con Casper versus SPY con PHANtom. Se tomaron los tiempos sobre la preparación de la aplicación misma y lo que demora en ejecutar. Estos resultados comprueban un sobrecosto del uso de aspectos en la aplicación. Sin embargo, también demuestra que la ejecución de la refactorización de SPY con Casper es mucho menos costosa que la refactorización de SPY usando PHANtom.

In live sound reinforcements scenarios, the majority of the audience is placed in a non- optimal listening position and will not experience the stereophonic image as intended by the mixing engineer. This study was conducted to examine the impact of a central loudspeaker source and phantom center, on the stereophonic image from different listening positions. Sixteen subjects, consisting of audio engineering students and professionals, were subjected to an optimal and non-optimal listening position and a three channel and stereo system, and was asked to estimate the perceived location of a stimulus, consisting of a 40 ms 1 kHz tone, placed on five different locations within the panorama. The results of these test were then summarized and analyzed by utilizing three t-tests in order to examine; the difference between perceived and intended location for each combination of system configuration and listening position, the difference between the listening positions and the difference between system configurations. The results show that a three-channel system is less affected by the listening position than a stereo system, indicating that a three-channel system can provide a more similar experience to audience members regardless of their listening position. However, the preference of system configuration is not examined and should be examined before making the claim that one system configuration is superior. The number of t-test conducted may also have impacted the results and provided a false significance. Subsequent studies could be made to confirm or reject the results of this study.

Introduction: Despite the relatively low dose (0.5 mSv – 1 mSv) generated by Attenuation Correction CT (ACCT) in PET examinations, the ALARA principle is still applicable. The currently used ACCT standard protocol at the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna uses 7.6 effective mAs (mAseff) and 120 kVp, but reducing mAseff and/or kVp would decrease patient dose as well as facilitate an increased number of research subjects. A CT reconstruction algorithm called Quantification Achieved Consistently (Q.AC.) (Lonn, 2012) has recently been developed to enable reduced doses from ACCT, while preserving quantitative PET data. The purposes of this study were to investigate possible limitations of the Q.AC. with respect to patient size, and to optimise protocols, aiming at minimising ACCT dose in terms of Volumetric Computer Tomography Dose Index CTDIvol. Methods: Measurements were performed with a GE PET/CT Discovery system, which offers Q.AC. reconstruction. The NEMA NU-2 protocol was followed to quantify PET quality, including evaluations of relative count error in the artificial lung in the phantom centre (lung), hot- and cold-sphere contrast (Q), and background variability (N). Two phantoms were used; the NEMA body phantom (elliptical cross section sized 30 cm laterally and 23 cm anterior-posterior (AP)), here representing paediatric patients and small-sized adults, and the same phantom with an additional (20 cm laterally and 4 cm AP) ellipsoid plastic (PMMA) extension ring, representing mid- and large-sized patients. ACCTs were acquired with 15 mAseff values, range [2.3 - 260], in combination with four kVp values [80, 100, 120, 140] and reconstructed with two algorithms (Q.AC. and a regular soft CT algorithm). Consequently, PET reconstructions were performed based on each mAseff, kVp and CT-reconstruction combination. Results: Quantitatively similar PET results to the standard protocol were achieved with the Q.AC. CT reconstruction algorithm using a CTDIvol = 0.06 mGy (2.3 mAseff and 80 kVp) for the NEMA body phantom, respectively a CTDIvol = 0.20 mGy (2.3 mAseff and 120 kVp) for the phantom with additional extension ring. Conclusions: This study indicates that the Q.AC. CT reconstruction algorithm enables accurate PET results at lower ACCT mAseff and kVp settings than the currently used clinical standard protocol. For paediatric patients and small-sized adults, a reduction of CTDIvol by approximately 90% may be achieved, while for mid- and large-sized patients, the CTDIvol can be reduced by approximately 70% without loss of quantitative PET data.

Multi-tier heterogeneous networks have become an essential constituent for next generation cellular networks. Meanwhile, energy efficiency (EE) has been considered a critical design criterion along with the traditional spectral efficiency (SE) metric. In this context, we study power and spectrum allocation for the recently proposed two-tier network architecture known as phantom cellular networks. The optimization framework includes both EE and SE. First, we consider sparsely deployed cells experiencing negligible interference and assume perfect channel state information (CSI). For this setting, we propose an algorithm that finds the SE and EE resource allocation strategies. Then, we compare the performance of both design strategies versus number of users, and phantom cells share of the total available resource units (RUs). We aim to investigate the effect of some system parameters to achieve improved SE performance at a non-significant loss in EE performance, or vice versa. It is found that increasing phantom cells share of RUs decreases the SE performance loss due to EE optimization when compared with the optimized SE performance. Second, we consider the densely deployed phantom cellular networks and model the EE optimization problem having into consideration the inevitable interference and imperfect channel estimation. To this end, we propose three resource allocation strategies aiming at optimizing the EE performance metric of this network. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of changing some of the system parameters on the performance of the proposed strategies, such as phantom cells share of RUs, number of deployed phantom cells within a macro cell coverage, number of pilots and the maximum power available for transmission by the phantom cells BSs. It is found that increasing the number of pilots deteriorates the EE performance of the whole setup, while increasing maximum power available for phantom cells transmissions reduces the EE of the whole setup in a less severe way than increasing the number of pilots. It is found also that increasing phantom cells share increases the EE metric in the dense deployment case. Thus, it is always useful to allocate most of the network RUs to the phantom cells tier.

Glioblastoma multiforme (Glioma) is an extremely aggressive tumor that arises from intrinsic glial cells in the central nervous system (CNS)5. It is the most common primary brain tumor in humans and has a typical survival time of 15-16 months5. Current treatments for gliomas include surgery, radiation, and treatment with temozolomide (TMZ). While these treatments tend to add 2-3 months to a patient’s survival, none have been capable of altering the course of the disease1. One of the shortcomings of novel therapeutics for glioma, is the inability to evaluate in real time how therapeutics are affecting the patient. There is also the problem of the blood brain barrier (BBB), which can be overcome by administering drugs through an intracranial catheter (delivered via CED). The primary obstacle that’s been observed in intracranial drug delivery is the inadequacy of the delivery. This inadequacy is an inability of the drug to diffuse homogenously throughout the tumor. CED also creates a possibility for toxicity due to highly concentrated volumes of drugs delivered; we believe the novel delivery method we are trying to develop, will make this possibility null. The purpose of this study was initially to demonstrate the problem of delivering drugs via diffusion while simultaneously collecting biomarkers to interpret efficacy of the drugs, due to differing molecular weights. The other objective of this study was to demonstrate that it is possible to manipulate both the direction of bulk flow and the rate of diffusion of drugs delivered through a catheter using a gel phantom as a representative of brain tissue. What we found is that by utilizing a two-catheter method with convection and retro-convection enhanced delivery, we could in fact manipulate these parameters and achieve a more even distribution of drug (represented by fluorophores in our experiments). Using these two catheter methods, we will also be able to collect fluids from the tumor to monitor the effect of any treatment in real time.

Haptic feedback is feedback relating to the sense of touch. Current research suggests that the use of haptic feedback could give an increase in speed and accuracy when doing certain tasks such as outlining organ contours in medical applications or even filling in spreadsheets. This master thesis project has two different goals concerning haptic feedback. The first is to try to improve the forces for the SensAble PHANTOM Omni® Haptic Device when used in an application to outline contours in medical images, to give the user better feedback. The PHANTOM Omni is a device able to read in user movement of an arm attached to it in three dimensions, but it is also able to output forces through this arm back to the user, i.e. giving haptic feedback. By improving these forces and thus providing better feedback, we hope that speed and accuracy increases for a user working with the mentioned application. The second part of the project consists of evaluating if delays in a network between the haptic feedback device and the place where the data sets are located impact the user perceived quality or the outcome of the task. We do this by considering a number of potential architectures for distributing the image processing and generation of haptic feedback. By considering both of these goals we hope to demonstrate both a way to get faster and more accurate results when doing the tasks already mentioned (and other tasks), but also to understand the limitations of haptic performance with regard to distributed processing. We have successfully fulfilled our first goal by introducing a haptic force which seems quite promising. This should mean that the people working with outlining contours in medical images can work more effectively; which is good both economically for hospitals and quality of service-wise for patients. Our results concerning the second goal indicate that a haptic system for outlining contour can work well when using this new haptic force, even on low quality data links (which can be used for example in battlefield medicine or by specialists to conduct long distance operations or examinations) -- if the system architecture distributes the functionality so as to provide low delay haptic feedback locally. We have tried to compare our results from the second part with a model for the impact of network delay on voice traffic quality developed by Cole and Rosenbluth, but as there is not necessarily a numeric correspondence between the quality values that we used and the ITU MOS quality values for voice we cannot make a numeric comparison between our results and that model. However our experimental data seem to suggest that the decrease in perceived quality was not as fast as one might expect considering simply the ratios of the voice packet rate (typically 50 Hz) and the 1000 Hz rate of the haptic feedback loop. The decrease in quality seems to only be about one half of what the ratio of these rates might suggest (i.e., a factor of 10x faster decrease in quality with increasing delay rather than 20x). / Haptisk återkoppling är återkoppling som fås genom känseln. Nutida forskning visar att användandet av sådan återkoppling kan öka effektiviteten vid vissa arbetsuppgifter inom sjukvård, till exempel vid förberedande uppgifter inom strålbehandling, men också vid kontorsarbete såsom att fylla i värden i ett kalkylark. Detta examensarbete har två mål som rör haptisk återkoppling. Det första är att försöka förbättra krafterna som ges från den haptiska enheten SensAble PHANTOM Omni® Haptic Device vid användning i ett medicinskt datorprogram rörande strålbehandling, i syfte att förbättra användareffektiviteten. PHANTOM Omni är en maskin som har en arm kopplad till sig som både kan läsa av rörelser och ge ut krafter med hjälp av en inbyggd motor, det vill säga ge haptisk återkoppling. Genom att förbättra dessa krafter och därigenom ge mer realistisk återkoppling hoppas vi att effektiviteten kan öka för en användare av det nämnda datorprogrammet. Det andra målet är att utvärdera hur fördröjningar i ett nätverk mellan den plats där enheten är placerad och den plats där informationen som ska bearbetas finns, påverkar upplevelsen för användaren och därmed resultatet av arbetet. Vi genomför detta genom att analysera flera olika tänkbara arkitekturer, där placeringen av bilddatat och uträkningen av krafter som ska ges ut av den haptiska enheten varierar. Genom att undersöka dessa två olika aspekter hoppas vi att vi både kan visa ett sätt att få snabbare och bättre resultat när man arbetar med uppgifter av den karaktären som redan beskrivits, men också att förstå begränsningarna för att använda haptisk återkoppling i distribuerade system. Vi har framgångsrikt lyckats uppfylla vårt första mål genom att utveckla en kraft till den haptiska enheten som verkar lovande. Om denna kraft funkar i praktiken innebär det att personer som arbetar med förberedande uppgifter inom strålbehandling kan göra dessa uppgifter effektivare vilket är positivt både ekonomiskt för sjukhusen och kvalitetsmässigt för patienterna. De resultat vi har fått fram avseende vårt andra mål indikerar att användandet av en haptisk enhet inom medicinsk bildbehandling kan fungera bra med vår nyutvecklade kraft, även på nätverkslänkar med dålig kvalitet (som kan vara fallet exempelvis när medicinska specialister utför undersökningar eller operationer på distans) – om systemet är uppbyggt så att den haptiska återkopplingen sker lokalt med en minimal fördröjning. Vi har försökt att jämföra våra resultat från nätverksdelen med en modell beskriven av Cole och Rosenbluth, som ger kvaliteten på rösttrafik som en funktion av fördröjningen i ett nätverk. Dock finns det inte nödvändigtvis någon korrelation mellan de värden vi har fått fram och den kvalitetsskala för rösttrafik som de använde. Vi kan därmed inte göra en jämförelse rakt av mellan våra resultat och deras modell. Däremot så pekar de data vi har fått i våra experiment på att den användarupplevda kvaliteten inte sänktes lika snabbt som man kunde ha väntat sig om man bara tar hänsyn till förhållandet mellan uppdateringsfrekvenserna för rösttrafik (vanligtvis 50 Hz) och den haptiska återkopplingen (1000 Hz). Kvalitetssänkningen verkar vara hälften av vad detta förhållande skulle kunna antyda (det vill säga en faktor på 10 gånger snabbare sänkning i kvalitet med ökande fördröjning snarare än 20 gånger).

Bakgrund: Fantomsmärtan är vanlig hos patienter som amputerat en kroppsdel. Att behandla smärtan är en utmaning för sjuksköterskan där en kunskap om fenomenets manifestation och de komplementärmedicinska alternativ som finns att tillgå är viktiga redskap för att stötta patienten genom hela vårdförloppet. Syfte: Syftet var att belysa sjuksköterskans roll i omvårdnaden av patienter med fantomsmärta som behandlas med komplementärmedicinska behandlingar. Metod: Studien var en litteraturstudie med induktiv ansats baserad på kvalitativ och kvantitativ forskning med olika design. Resultat: Litteraturstudiens resultat presenteras i två kategorier: Sjuksköterskans roll före amputationen och Sjuksköterskans roll efter amputationen. Sjuksköterskan har en viktig roll i behandlingen av fantomsmärta där den personcentrerade vården är i fokus. Kunskap om fantomsmärtans manifestation samt komplementärmedicinska alternativ, till exempel spegelterapi och VR med AG, är nödvändig för att bygga förtroende och finna rätt behandlingsalternativ till den unika patienten. Konklusion: Sjuksköterskans förståelse för patienter med fantomsmärta samt patientens hälsolitteracitet har en central roll i omvårdnaden. Tidigt implementerande av en vårdplan, utbildning om fantomsmärtans karaktär samt information om komplementärmedicinska behandlingsalternativ skapar förtroende mellan sjuksköterska och patient. Ytterligare forskning kring fantomsmärtan och de komplementärmedicinska metoderna är nödvändig för att arbeta fram tydligare riktlinjer och en bredare förståelse för fantomsmärtan. / Background: Phantom limb pain is common in patients who have amputated a body part. Treating the pain is a challenge for the nurse where a knowledge of the phenomenon's manifestation and the complementary medicine alternatives that are available are important tools for supporting the patient throughout the care process. Aim: The aim was to illustrate the nurse’s role in the care of patients with phantom limb pain who are treated with complementary medicine methods. Method: The study was a literature study with an inductive approach based on qualitative and quantitative research with different designs. Results: The results of the literature study are presented in two categories: Nurse’s role before the amputation and Nurse’s role after the amputation. The nurse has an important role in the treatment of phantom limb pain where the person-centered care is in focus. Knowledge of the manifestation of phantom limb pain as well as complementary medicine alternatives, such as mirror therapy and VR with AG, is necessary to build trust and find the right treatment alternative for the unique patient. Conclusion: The nurse's understanding of patients with phantom limb pain and the patient's health literacy has a central role in nursing. Early implementation of a care plan, education about the nature of phantom limb pain and information about complementary medicine treatment options creates trust between nurse and patient. Further research on phantom limb pain and the complementary medicine methods is necessary to work out clearer guidelines and a wider understanding of phantom limb pain.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-79). / In vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is an imaging technique that allows the chemical study of human tissue non-invasively. The method holds great promise as a diagnostic tool once its reliability has been established. Inter-scanner variability has, however, hampered this from happening as results cannot easily be compared if acquired on different scanners. In this study a phantom was constructed to determine the localisation efficiency of the 3 T Siemens Allegra MRI scanner located at the Cape Universities Brain Imaging Centre (CUBIC). Sufficient localisation is the key to acquiring useful spectroscopic data as only the signal from a small volume of interest (VOI) is typically acquired. The phantom consisted of a Perspex cube located inside a larger Perspex sphere. Solutions of the cerebral metabolites N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) and choline (Cho) were placed in the inner cube and outer sphere respectively. The phantom was scanned at a range of voxel sizes and echo times in order to determine parameters that typically indicate the performance of the scanner in question. The resultant full width at half maximum (FWHM) and signal to noise ratio (SNR) values indicated that optimal results were obtained for a voxel with dimensions 20 x 20 x 20 mm3. The selection efficiency could not be measured due to limitations in the scanner, but two other performance parameters ' extra volume suppression (EVS) and contamination ' could be determined. The EVS showed that the scanner was able to eliminate the entire background signal from the out-of-voxel region when voxel sizes with dimensions (20 mm)3 and (30 mm)3 were used. This performance decreased to 96.2% for a voxel size of (50 mm)3. The contamination indicated that the unwanted signal, weighted by the respective proton densities of the chemicals, ranged from 12% in the (20 mm)3 voxel to 24% in the (50 mm)3 voxel. These ranges are well within acceptable limits for proton MRS. Analysis of the water suppression achieved in the scanner showed an efficiency of 98.84%, which is acceptable for proton spectroscopy. It was also found that manual iv shimming of the scanner improved the spectra obtained, as compared to the automated shimming performed by the scanner. The second objective of the study was to quantify absolute metabolite concentrations in the familiar SI units of mM as results were previously mostly expressed as metabolite ratios. The LCModel software was used to assess two methods of determining absolute metabolite concentrations and the procedure using water scaling consistently showed superior performance to a method using a calibration factor. The method employing water scaling was then applied to a study of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) where the deep cerebellar nuclei of children with FASD and a control group were scanned. The cerebellar nuclei were of interest as children with FASD show a remarkably consistent deficit in eye blink conditioning (EBC). The cerebellar deep nuclei is known to play a critical role in the EBC response. The results show significant decreases in the myo-inositol (mI) and total choline (tCho) concentrations of children with FASD in the deep cerebellar nuclei compared to control children. The FAS/PFAS subjects have a mean mI concentration of 4.6 mM as compared to a mean of 5.3 mM in the controls. A Pearson correlation showed that there was a significant relationship between decreasing mI concentrations with increasing prenatal alcohol exposure. The mean tCho concentrations are 1.3 mM for FAS/PFAS and 1.5 mM for the controls. There was no significant differences between the heavily exposed group and either the FAS/PFAS or the control subjects for either metabolite. The decreased mI and tCho concentrations may indicate deficient calcium signalling or decreased cell membrane integrity ' both of which can explain the compromised cerebellar learning in FASD subjects.

Robotics in rehabilitation provides considerable opportunities to improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities. Computerized and Virtual Environment (VE) training systems for persons with disabilities, many of which utilize the haptic feedback, have gained increasing acceptance in the recent years. Our methodology here is based on creating virtual environments connected to a haptic interface as an input device. This robotic setup introduces the advantages of the haptic rendering features in the environment and also provides tactile feedback to the patients. This thesis aims to demonstrate the efficacy of assistance function algorithms in rehabilitation robotics in virtual environments. Assist functions are used to map limited human input to motions required to perform complex tasks. The purpose is to train individuals in task-oriented applications to insure that they can be incorporated into the workplace. Further, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based motion recognition and skill learning are used for improving the skill levels of the users. For the Hidden Markov Model based motion recognition, the user's motion intention is combined with environment information to apply an appropriate assistance function. We used this algorithm to perform a commonly used vocational therapy test referred to as the box and the blocks test. The Hidden Markov Model based skill approach can be used for learning human skill and transferring the skill to persons with disabilities. A relatively complex task of moving along a labyrinth is chosen as the task to be modeled by HMM. This kind of training allows a person with disability to learn the skill and improve it through practice. Its application to motion therapy system using a haptic interface helps in improving their motion control capabilities, tremor reduction and upper limb coordination. The results obtained from all the tests demonstrated that various forms of assistance provided reduced the execution times and increased the motion performance in chosen tasks. Two persons with disabilities volunteered to perform the above tasks and both of the disabled subjects expressed an interest and satisfaction with the philosophy behind these concepts.