Nanoparticle-based delivery vehicles have received substantial interest in the field of drug delivery particularly pertaining to chemotherapeutics. By virtue of their size, nanoscale drug delivery vehicles overcome many obstacles encountered by traditional systems. Moreover, nanocarriers can be fabricated to be ‘smart’, meaning they can be responsive to internal stimuli relating to the microenvironment of the tumor and/or external stimuli that can be delivered non-invasively from outside of the body. One such external trigger is ultrasound, well-known for its role in biomedical imaging based on its wide availability, non-invasiveness, and safety but increasingly being applied for drug delivery. This thesis proposes solutions to two key challenges associated with locally-targeted polymer-based drug delivery: enhanced tumor accumulation and externally-triggered control over release kinetics. In the former case, brush polymer PLA-PEG analogues are synthesized and explored to correlate how the architecture of these brush blocks affects the resulting self-assembled nanoparticle size, zeta potential, cytotoxicity in vitro, circulation time, and accumulation profiles in vivo. Indeed, brush copolymer analogues allow for copolymerization with additional monomers while conserving ‘stealth properties of linear copolymers, as well as exhibit superior circulation times and longer-term tumor accumulation. In the latter case, a new ultrasound-triggered drug delivery platform is designed consisting of a hollow polymeric shell in which silica “corks” are entrapped; the application of ultrasound can exploit the high difference in the compressibility between the polymeric shell and the silica corks to pop out or otherwise perturb the cork particles, allowing for both on-demand drug release as well as a pulsatile release profiles to be achieved. Overall, by manipulating the surface properties and/or morphologies of polymer-based micro/nanoparticles, the results of this thesis show that key challenges in local drug delivery can be addressed and applied specifically to applications in cancer therapy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Drug delivery vehicles attempt to address many of the shortcomings of traditional therapeutics, in particular their low solubility and a lack of tissue targeting, which result in poor efficacy and unwanted side-effects. Polymers specifically have been commonly employed in biomedical applications as there are a wide range of biodegradable polymers that do not cause adverse effects during intended application and can be removed from the body through normal biological function. More recently, more advanced, ‘smart’ materials have been developed that can respond to internal or external stimuli to better address treatment needs. This thesis presents novel polymer-based drug delivery vehicles with new structures useful to passively target particular sites in the body and/or alter drug release profiles, enabling improved drug efficacy and reduced side-effects.

Adaptability is defined as having the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose; the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions. Adaptability in a space can have many venues and effects depending on the intent of its flexibility. This thesis will explore several methods of adaptability in design in context with a Makerspace, a community space which functions to provide the facilities and work environment for a variety of creators to use. In a building typology, a Makerspace with a large variety of users, the ability for the spaces to be informed by and reactive to each individual user is imperative to its objective. The approach to exploring adaptable design solutions is in analyzing the potential makers occupying the space, what their specific needs are and how can architectural designs become flexible in a way that allows the Makers to craft their own work environments. The primary objectives of this thesis are to: 1. Explore some of the various definitions of adaptability and how those meanings can be incorporated into design solutions 2. Identify spaces in the project that can be adapted for their specific purpose 3. Determine the methods of adaptability suited to the building typology and its users 4. Discuss adaptable design in terms of fixed and kinetic characteristics 5. Design spaces that are responsive to the site, the project's purpose and the unique needs of each user. The site of the project is located on the 500 block of South Broadway Street, Baltimore MD in the upper Fells Point district. Site dimensions are roughly 55' by 200' of infill space between surrounding retail and residential properties. This site was chosen to accommodate a Makerspace as it is central to Baltimore city's three major arts districts (Bromo, Highlandtown, and Station North Arts Districts) and could be considered a hub where local makers convene and establish a work space for a period of time that has the specific equipment and environment they require. / Master of Architecture / Adaptability is defined as having the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose; the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions. This thesis explores ways in which architectural design can be adaptable. To have the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions, in this case the people that will use the space and the purpose of the spaces. Baltimore city is home to a large variety of local artists and creators working on their craft. The three major arts districts in the city, Bromo, Highlandtown, and Station North cultivate a community of people that create and consume artistic and innovative projects. In order to most successfully create, an artist should have access to a work environment that is not a hindrance but an asset to their process. The arts community of Baltimore could greatly benefit from a place that offers suitable work environments to a community which does not typically have a designated place. This thesis uses the building type: Makerspace which is a facility used as a tool for creators or "makers" to enter with an idea and facilitate a project. A makerspace can provide access to communal equipment that would otherwise be expensive for the individual maker to own, private and/or public work spaces to use for the maker's individual needs and a sense of community. The Makerspace was chosen as the vessel for exploration into adaptable design because of the nature of the building's purpose. The people that will inhabit and use the spaces will have a variety of specific needs in a work space. I wanted to explore how the designs of spaces could become flexible to accommodate those specific needs. The primary objectives of this thesis are to: 1. Explore some of the various definitions of adaptability and how those meanings can be incorporated into design solutions 2. Identify spaces in the project that can be adapted for their specific purpose 3. Determine the methods of adaptability suited to the building typology and its users 4. Discuss adaptable design in terms of fixed and kinetic characteristics 5. Design spaces that are responsive to the site, the project's purpose and the unique needs of each user.

Yes / Thermal desolvation of poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) in the presence of a low concentration of gold nanoparticles incorporates the nanoparticles resulting in suspended aggregates. By covalently incorporating <1% acenaphthylene into the polymerization feed this copolymer is enabled to be used as a model to study the segmental mobility of the PNIPAM backbone in response to gold nanoparticles both below and above the desolvation temperature, showing that there is a physical conformational rearrangement of the soluble polymer at ultralow nanoparticle loadings, indicating low affinity interactions with the nanoparticles. Thermal desolvation is capable of extracting >99.9% of the nanoparticles from their solutions and hence demonstrates that poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) can act as an excellent scrubbing system to remove metallic nanomaterial pollutants from solution. / Science Foundation Ireland's ETS. Grant Number: 11/W.I/12085; MRC. Grant Number: MR/N501888/2

Yes / This study shows how highly branched poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (HB-PNIPAM) with a chain pendant solvatochromic dye (Nile red) could provide a fluorescence signal, as end groups bind to bacteria and chain segments become desolvated, indicating the presence of bacteria. Vancomycin was attached to chain ends of HB-PNIPAM or as pendant groups on linear polymers each containing Nile red. Location of the dye was varied between placement in the core of the branched polymer coil or the outer domains. Both calorimetric and fluorescence data showed that branched polymers responded to binding of both the peptide target (D-Ala-D-Aa) and bacteria in a different manner than analogous linear polymers; binding and response was more extensive in the branched variant. The fluorescence data showed that only segments located in the outer domains of branched polymers responded to binding of Gram-positive bacteria with little response when linear analogous polymer or branched polymer with the dye in the inner core was exposed to Staphylococcus aureus. / Innovate UK/Smith and Nephew Ltd. (UK) (TSB 103988) and by MRC (MR/N501888/2).

Denna uppsats beskriver utvecklingen inom projektet att skapa en redesign av en intranätmall till företaget Circuit i Stockholm. Denna intranätmall representerar de intranät som företaget producerar och används för att sälja in intranät till nya kunder. På grund av att många uppdateringar och nya funktioner tillkommit i de senaste intranäten som levererats vill företaget uppdatera sin intranätmall och som en del i arbetet skapa en ny design till den. Det som levererades inom projektet var slutgiltiga Photoshopskisser med syftet att beskriva designen i detalj, samt påbörjad kodmässig implementering i front-end med hjälp av ramverk för responsiv design. / This report describes the the production within the project of creating a redesign of an intranet template for the digital full-service agency Circuit in Stockholm. This intranet template represents the intranets the company produces and is used as a demonstration of the services for new clients. Due to many updates and additions of functionalities in the newest delivered intranets, Circuit wants to update their template version and as a part of that work creating a new design for it. The deliveries in this project was several final Photoshop-sketches which described the design in detail, and initiated front-end implementations using frameworks for responsive design.

No description available.

The purpose of this autoethnographic study was to critically examine my personal experiences with culture and race to better understand myself, my perceptions of culture and race, and how my perceptions of educators' interactions with culturally and racially diverse students may have been impacted as a result. Autoethnography is the study of self in which researchers draw on their own experiences to understand a culture or phenomenon. The following research questions guided the study: 1) what does an examination of my lived experiences as an African American female educator reveal about me? and 2) what are the potential implications for my role as an administrator? Data sources consisted of journal entries, notes, and narratives based on my lived experiences. The data were analyzed by initial coding to uncover recurring themes in the narratives of: 1) negative perceptions of those offended by issues of race; 2) the need to promote cultural awareness; and 3) personal silence around issues of race. The themes were then examined through the lens of critical race theory with specific attention to the tenets of permanence of race, interest convergence, intersectionality, and storytelling. The insights provided here in response to the first research question were then considered in light of the framework of culturally responsive pedagogy and leadership, thus responding to the second question. The implications discussed provide insights for me personally as a teacher leader, for educators in general, and for future researchers.

Das corneale Endothel bildet die innere, einschichtige Zelllage der Cornea und ist für die Aufrechterhaltung der cornealen Transparenz zuständig. Krankheiten oder Verletzungen des cornealen Endothels können zu schweren Beeinträchtigungen des Sehvermögens führen und eine corneale Transplantation erforderlich machen. Der während und nach der Operation auftretende endotheliale Zellverlust erschwert das Überleben des Transplantates. Darum besteht ein Hauptziel des cornealen Tissue Engineerings in der Bereitstellung von transplantierbaren humanen cornealen Endothelzellsheets (HCEC-Sheets) mit einer adäquaten Zelldichte. Thermo-responsive Zellkulturträger fanden für die schonende, enzymfreie Gewinnung von Zellsheets für verschiedene Gewebetypen bereits Verwendung. HCEC stellen in diesem Kontext einen besonderen Fall dar, da sie eine starke Adhäsion zu ihrem Kultursubstrat ausbilden, was deren schonende, thermisch induzierte Ablösung als funktionelles Zellsheet erschwert. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde ein neuartiger thermo-responsiver Zellkulturträger entwickelt. Dieser basiert auf dem durch Elektronenbestrahlung immobilisierten und vernetzten thermo-responsiven Polymer Poly(vinylmethylether) (PVME) sowie dem alternierenden Co-Polymer Poly(vinylmethylehter-alt-maleinsäureanhydrid) (PVMEMA) als biofunktionalisierbare Komponente. Die Kombination dieser Polymere führte zur Etablierung eines thermo-responsiven Zellkulturträgers, dessen physikochemische und biomolekulare Eigenschaften in weiten Grenzen einstellbar und dadurch an die spezifischen Anforderungen von HCEC anpassbar waren. Das PVME-PVMEMA-Blend ermöglichte die Bildung konfluenter HCEC-Monolayer mit den morphologischen Grundlagen für ein funktionelles corneales Endothelgewebe. Durch Inkorporation von Poly(N-isopropylacrylamid) (PNiPAAm) als weitere thermo-responsive Polymerkomponente konnte das Ablösungsverhalten funktioneller HCEC-Sheets weiter verbessert werden. In einem weiteren Schritt erfolgte der Transfer abgelöster HCEC-Sheets auf ein planares, biofunktionalisiertes Kultursubstrat sowie auf endothelfreie porcine Corneae. Die HCEC-Sheets wurden auch nach dem Transfer umfassend biologisch analysiert. Diese Arbeit legt einen Grundstein für die Bereitstellung klinisch anwendbarer Alternativen für das Tissue Engineering von cornealem Gewebe.

Responsive design is a common expression at the web today. This thesis was about learning about responsive web design in order to apply it to Windows 8 applications created in C# and XAML. The purpose of this thesis was to learn if responsive design can be used in such applications. This was done by first learning about responsive design through a literature study about responsive web design and then specifying responsive application design. How responsive design can be used in applications was found through research and creation of an example application. No literature was found about responsive design for Windows 8 applications in C# and XAML and therefore most of the results came from own ideas and partly solutions found on different forums. The thesis was performed at Infor in Kista. The example application was a social application which was connected to a social web service developed by Infor. Responsive web design is a technique used for making webpages adapt to the size and resolution of the viewport. This is done by creating a structured, fluid layout by using a flexible grid and flexible images. Media queries are used to set up different states for presenting the page in different ways for different sizes and resolutions of the viewport. In the different states parts of the content can for example be hidden or styled. The number of columns of information can also be set to adapt to make the page easier to view. Responsive design for applications should make the layout of the application adapt to fit the application window of the device used depending on its resolution. One way to specify a responsive design for Windows 8 applications could be to create only one application which could be used on all different Windows 8 platforms, such as phones, tablets and computers. It is probably not possible today to create this one application for different Windows 8 platforms. Another way of specifying responsive design for application is to create a responsive user interface which could be shared and used in the different Windows 8 applications. The latter was the chosen definition for this thesis. The scope of this thesis was limited to only research for responsive design in Windows Store apps and Windows Phone 8 applications. Windows Phone 8 applications are applications used on smartphones with Windows Phone 8 as operating system while Windows Store applications are used on computers with Windows 8 as operating system. Other Windows 8 devices were not included in this thesis. The final conclusion of this thesis was that although it is complicated to use responsive application design it can be used for most of the user interface. A responsive user interface for the applications can be created separately, but some parts of the application pages cannot be shared between the different platforms. This results in a mostly responsive sharable user interface.

No description available.