The literature surrounding organic small-molecule donor-acceptor systems is summarised for a range of optoelectronic applications (OLEDs, OPVs, OFETs etc.). There is a focus on the key building blocks: 1,3,4-oxadiazole (OXD), diphenylamine (DPA), carbazole (Cbz) and fluorene (F). The incorporation of such moieties into various donor-acceptor systems is discussed with further reference to selected alternative organic donor and acceptor systems. The syntheses of novel bipolar molecules based on a donor-spacer-acceptor (DPA/Cbz-F-OXD) structure and the incorporation of these molecules into single-layer OLEDs is presented. It is demonstrated how the emission colour can be tuned from green to deep blue by systematic manipulation of the structure. A significant result is that high efficiency accompanied with pure, deep blue emission in single-layer OLEDs can be achieved with this structural motif. The incorporation of these materials as part of a simple two-component blend to produce white OLEDs is presented and the modification of the materials to improve electron-transport properties is discussed. The synthesis of DPA-bridge-OXD wire systems is presented with the use of oligo-p-phenyleneethynylene units as a bridge of varying length to investigate the effect on charge transfer between the donor and acceptor. Photophysical studies demonstrate the change in absorption, emission and fluorescence lifetimes as the length scale of the molecules is altered. The synthesis of a series of planarised and twisted DPA-bridge-OXD systems based upon phenylene linkers is discussed. Finally, a series of DPA-F-OXD-anchor molecules is presented for incorporation into DSSC devices. The synthesis of these materials is described and the suitability of various anchoring groups for DSSCs is analysed through photophysical and device studies.

Cette étude s’inscrit dans le cadre du diagnostic embarqué des réseaux filaires complexes. Elle vise à détecter et localiser les défauts électriques avec précision. En effet, l’intégration du diagnostic par réflectométrie dans un système embarqué fait apparaître des problèmes d’interférence qui s’aggravent dans le cas d’un réseau complexe où plusieurs réflectomètres sont placés en différents points du réseau. L’objectif est de développer de nouvelles stratégies de diagnostic embarqué des réseaux filaires complexes pour résoudre les problèmes d’interférence d’une part et l’ambiguïté de localisation du défaut d’autre part. La première contribution concerne le développement d’une nouvelle méthode de réflectométrie baptisée OMTDR (Orthogonal Multi-tone Time Domain Reflectometry). Elle utilise des signaux numériques modulés et orthogonaux pour éliminer les interférences. Pour davantage de couverture, la deuxième contribution propose d’intégrer la communication entre les réflectomètres. Elle vise à fusionner les données afin de faciliter la prise de décision. La troisième contribution adresse la problématique de la stratégie de diagnostic, c’est-à-dire, de l’optimisation des performances du diagnostic d’un réseau complexe sous contraintes opérationnelles d’utilisation. L’utilisation des Réseaux Bayésiens permet d’étudier l’impact des différents facteurs et d’obtenir une estimation de la confiance et donc, de la fiabilité du résultat du diagnostic. / This study addresses embedded diagnosis of complex wired networks. Based on the reflectometry method, it aims at detecting and locating accurately electrical faults. Increasing demand for on-line diagnosis has imposed serious challenges on interference mitigation. It aims at making diagnosis while the target system is running. The interference becomes more critical in the case of complex networks where several reflectometers are injecting their test signals simultaneously. The objective is to develop new embedded diagnosis strategies in complex wired networks that would resolve interference problems and eliminate ambiguity related to the fault location. The first contribution is the development of a new method called OMTDR (Orthogonal Multi-tone Time Domain Reflectometry). It uses orthogonal modulated digital signals for interference mitigation and thereby on-line diagnosis. For better coverage of the network, the second contribution proposes to integrate communication between reflectometers. It uses sensors data fusion to facilitate decision making. The third contribution addresses the problem of the diagnosis strategy, i.e. the optimization of diagnosis performance of a complex network under operational constraints. The use of Bayesian Networks allows us to study the impact of different factors and estimate the confidence level and thereby the reliability of the diagnosis results.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to make a methodical manual for planner of system wiring in smart/intelligent houses. Introductory part of the thesis lays stress on requirement of systems integration in an intelligent building with necessity of their mutual cooperation and communication. The base of the integration is appropriately chosen building control system including used technologies. The next chapter acquaints with requirements of legal regulations and valid technical standards relating to buildings. After that the thesis deals with technical equipment and building equipment with presentation of some intelligent systems. The fourth chapter acquaints with wires bus systems and protocols used in smart buildings. Planner´s working procedures with indication of each phase of project, regulations and standards important for system wiring design are developed in detail including chosen control system. Lightning and overvoltage protection is the integral part.

Les supraconducteurs à hautes températures sont considérablement utilisés dans des applications telles que des machines électriques. La conception de telles machines requiert une évaluation précise des pertes AC générées par leurs bobinages de câbles supraconducteurs multifilamentaires torsadés. Ainsi, des outils numériques robustes et précis sont indispensables afin de modéliser rapidement en 3D le comportement de tels câbles. Dans ce manuscrit, deux approches numériques dont une approche de type galerkin discontinue furent développées afin de simplifier considérablement la modélisation 3D de ce type de câbles. Elles furent appliquées à la formulation en H couplée aux effets thermiques. La modélisation de cas simples a permis de valider ces approches en les comparant à celle des éléments finis implémentée sur Comsol. Puis, une transformation géométrique fut proposée afin de modéliser de façon équivalente en 3D, quelque soit la configuration en champ magnétique, des câbles à filaments supraconducteurs droits à la place de filaments torsadés. De cette transformation, un modèle d'ordre réduit fut développé et validé afin de simplifier considérablement la modélisation 3D de ce type de câbles. À partir de ce modèle réduit, l'influence du champ elliptique sur les pertes par aimantation d'un échantillon de 100 câbles de 54 filaments de MgB ₂ torsadés fut modélisé en moins d'une journée. Par ailleurs, des premières études empiriques montrant la faisabilité d'une homogénéisation furent brièvement présentées et validées pour des câbles ayant une seule couche de filament. / High temperature superconductors are increasingly being used for several applications such as electrical machines. Thus the design of suchdevices ultimately requires an accurate evaluation of AC losses generated by superconducting coils sometimes made of twisted multifilamentary wires.The development of robust numerical tools geared towards the 3 D modeling of such wires is therefore needed. In this manuscript, the main objective isto develop numerical approaches allowing considerable simplifications of the modelling of twisted multi-filamentary superconducting wires in 3 D. First, two numerical approaches such as the discontinuous galerkin method applied on the thermally coupled H -formulation were developed. They were compared and validated on simple cases using the finite element method implemented in Com-sol. Then, a well-defined mapping was proposed to simply model in 3 D, for any magnetic field configuration, straight multifilamentary wires instead oftwisted ones. An application of this mapping allowed the development of a model-order reduction approach which simplify considerably the mod-elling of twisted wires in 3 D. Thus, the elliptical magnetic fields impact on magnetization losses was accurately modeled in less than a day with the reduced approach applied on 100 MgB ₂ wires with 54 twisted filaments. As a research perspective on the reduced model advanced applications, an homogenization, empirically defined, was briefly presented for wires with single layer only.

This work deals with COMBO2 card interconnect and memory devices testing. In the beginning of the paper, some existing testing algorithms for interconnect and RAM memories testing are introduced. This work is devoted to proposal of generic architecture for interconnect and memory devices testing. The proposed architecture is optimized for FPGA implementation.

Background: There are many factors are known to increase the risk of sternal wound infection (SWI), some studies have reported that nickel is a risk factor for SWI. Titanium wires have only been used as an alternative to steel wires in patients with known allergy to nickel. However, there is a paucity of literature regarding the safety of using titanium wires compared to that on the safety of steel wires for sternum closure after cardiac surgery. Therefore, this study aimed to demonstrate the non-inferiority of titanium wires, even in patients without a known allergy. Methods: A total of 322 Patients who underwent elective full median sternotomy were randomly assigned to sternal closure either by titanium wires (n=161) or by stainless steel wires. Results: 14 patients had sternal instability, six (3.7%) patients in the titanium group and eight (5%) patients in the stainless steel group (p = 0.585). There was no statistically significant difference between both groups in terms of postoperative wound infection (p=0.147). Patients in the titanium group experienced statistically significant lower postoperative pain than those in the stainless steel group (p = 0.024). The wire type was not an independent risk factor for SI, as shown by univariate and logistic regression analyses. Conclusion: Titanium wires are a good alternative and have been proven to be safe and effective for sternal closure. The surgeon should be aware of the possibility of developing an allergic reaction to the wires especially in patients with previous multiple allergic histories.:Table of Contents 1. Background 5 1.1. Anatomy of the sternum 5 1.2. Blood Supply of the Sternum 6 1.3. Basis and phases of acute Wound healing 7 1.4. Biomechanics of the sternum 7 1.5. Post-sternotomy complications 8 1.5.1. Dehiscence and sternal instability 8 1.5.2. Mediastinitis and Deep Sternal Wound Infection 10 1.5.3. Risk factors 12 1.5.4. Diagnosis 12 1.5.5. Bacteriology of Sterno-Mediastinal fluid and tissues 14 1.5.6. Osteomyelitis 14 1.6. Sternal fixation and Wiring Techniques 15 1.7. Overview of sternal closure techniques in Germany 16 1.7.1 Sternal closure Technique in Heart Center Dresden. 17 1.8. ASEPSIS SCORE 17 1.9. NICKEL Allergy/Suture materials and biocompatibility 19 1.10 Nickel allergy and cardiac surgery 20 1.11 Titanium Allergy 21 1.12. Pathophysiology of Metal Hypersensitivity Reactions 22 1.13. The hypothesis of the study 24 2. Materials and methods 25 2.1. Study Population 25 2.1.1. Inclusion criteria 25 2.1.2. Exclusion criteria 25 2.2. Intervention 25 2.3. Control 26 2.4. Outcome 26 2.5. Time 26 2.6. Sample Size calculation 26 2.7. Sternal closure technique 27 2.8. Handling of the wire 28 2.9. Blinding and randomization technique 29 2.10. Data collection and documentation 29 2.11. Statistics 29 3. Results 31 3.1. Preoperative parameters 31 3.1.1. Entire group 31 3.1.2. Group comparison 32 3.2. Intraoperative parameters 34 3.2.1. Entire group 34 3.2.2. Group comparison 34 3.3. Postoperative parameters 35 3.3.1. Entire group 35 3.3.2. Group comparison 36 3.4. Incidence of postoperative sternal instabilities 38 3.5. Univariate analysis 38 3.5.1. Pre-operative 39 3.5.2. Intra-operative 40 3.5.3. Post-operative 40 3.5.4. Statistically significant data 41 3.5.5. Descriptive presentation of the subgroup analysis (Sternal Instability, wire Classification) 41 3.5.6. Logistic regression 43 3.6. Summary / key result 44 4. Discussion 45 4.1. Sternal Instability 46 4.2. BMI “Obesity” 47 4.3. Wound Infection /ASEPSIS Score 48 4.4. Postoperative Pain 49 4.5. Type of the Wire 51 4.6. The Rising Potential Impact of Metal Hypersensitivity on other specialities 51 4.7. Limitation of the study 52 4.7. Conclusion 55 5. Summary 56 6. Zusammenfassung 58 7. List of figure 60 8. List of tables 60 Bibliography 64

No description available.

Background Degloving of the sole of the foot is a rare and serious injury because the heel pad cannot be replaced by similar tissue. The management is challenging and only a few cases have been reported with different treatment regimens. - Methods Here, we report on a 46-year-old female patient with complex foot trauma consisting of complete avulsion of the heel pad at the hindfoot and a soft tissue defect at the posterior aspect of the heel accompanied by rupture of the anterior tibial tendon and fractures of the talus, calcaneus and midfoot. The sole of the foot was fixed to the calcaneus with multiple temporary Kirschner wires and moist wound dressings. The anterior tibial tendon was sutured. The soft tissue defect at the posterior heel was treated with a free anterolateral thigh flap. The fractures were fixed in staged procedures. - Results At 2-year follow-up, the patient had a durable soft tissue cover over the heel with full sensation over the sole and pliable flap over the posterior aspect of the heel. The patient was able to fully bear weight and was pain free during her daily activities in comfortable, custom shoes. All fractures had healed, the talar neck fracture after one revision and bone grafting. The foot was plantigrade and stable with preserved painless but limited range of motion at the ankle, subtalar and mid-tarsal joints. - Conclusion The unique tissue at the sole of the foot can be salvaged even in cases of full degloving at the hindfoot with the simple method of anchorage with multiple temporary K-wires. Traumatic defects of the vulnerable skin at the posterior aspect of the heel requires durable coverage with free flap coverage. With staged treatment of all bone and soft tissue injuries, a favorable result can be obtained even in case of a complex foot trauma.

Žastikaulio viršgumburiniai lūžiai gana dažna vaikų trauma, ypač per pirmąjį gyvenimo dešimtmetį. Nėra vieningos nuomonės dėl šios patologijos gydymo taktikos bei chirurginio gydymo metodikų taikymo. Iki šiol neatlikta perspektyviųjų studijų, lyginančių kelių skirtingų chirurginių gydymo metodų pritaikymą viršgumburinių žastikaulio lūžių gydymui, įvertinant vėlyvuosius gydymo rezultatus. Todėl mūsų atliktos retrospektyvioji ir perspektyvioji studijos turės didelę įtaką formuojant naują požiūrį į šių lūžių diagnostiką, gydymą bei reabilitaciją. Remiantis atlikto tyrimo duomenimis, įvertinome skirtingų chirurginio gydymo metodų ankstyvuosius bei vėlyvuosius rezultatus, galimas komplikacijas, veiksnius, lemiančius gydymo sėkmę, ir rekomenduojam taikyti literatūroje iki šiol neaprašytą bei mūsų modifikuotą Dorgano perkutaninės osteosintezės metodą, gydant vaikus, patyrusius dislokuotą žastikaulio viršgumburinį lūžį. Taikant šį gydymo metodą, galima žymiai sumažinti jatrogeninių neurologinių komplikacijų skaičių. Vėlyvieji gydymo rezultatai, taikant šį gydymo metodą, nesiskiria nuo gydymo rezultatų įprastiniu osteosintezės būdu. / Supracondylar humeral fractures are rather common trauma in children, especially on the first decade of the life. There are no united opinion concerning therapy of this pathology and surgical technique. Still there is no high–quality perspective studies performed to compare several different surgery techniques for supracondylar humeral fracture that compare later results of the treatment. Therefore our retrospective and perspective studies will have great influence to form new viewpoint to diagnostics, treatment and rehabilitation of those fractures. Study performed will let us to evaluate early and late results, possible complications of different surgical techniques, will let us evaluate the factors that determine the success of the treatment. Summarizing the results of the studies, literature data and our practice we recommend an unpublished and modified by us pinning method of Dorgan percutaneous pining technique to treat children with displaced supracondylar humeral fracture. This technique leads to significant reduction of iatrogenic neurological complications. Late results of the treatment using this technique do not differ from standard pinning techniques in children.

The ultimate goal in the rapidly burgeoning field of spintronics is to realize semiconductor-based devices that utilize the spin degree of freedom of a single charge carrier (electron or hole) or an ensemble of such carriers to achieve novel and/or enhanced device functionalities such as spin based light emitting devices, spin transistors and femto-Tesla magnetic field sensors. These devices share a common feature: they all rely on controlled transport of spins in semiconductors. A prototypical spintronic device has a transistor-like configuration in which a semiconducting channel is sandwiched between two contacts (source and drain) with a gate electrode sitting on top of the channel. Unlike conventional charge-based transistors, the source electrode of a spin transistor is a ferromagnetic (or half-metallic) material which injects spin polarized electrons in the channel. During transit, the spin polarizations of the electrons are controllably rotated by a gate electric field mediated spin-orbit coupling effect. The drain contact is ferromagnetic (or half-metallic) as well and the transmission probability of an electron through this drain electrode depends on the relative orientation of electron spin polarization and the (fixed) magnetization of the drain. When the spins of the electrons are parallel to the drain magnetization, they are transmitted by the drain resulting in a large device current (ON state of spin FET). However, these electrons will be completely blocked if their spins are antiparallel to the drain magnetization, and ideally, in this situation device current will be zero (OFF state of spinFET). Thus, if we vary the gate voltage, we can modulate the channel current by controlling the spin orientations of the electrons with respect to the drain magnetization. This is how transistor action is realized (Datta-Das model). However, during transport, electrons' velocities change randomly with time due to scattering and hence different electrons experience different spin-orbit magnetic fields. As a result, even though all electrons start their journey with identical spin orientations, soon after injection spins of different electrons point along different directions in space. This randomization of initial spin polarization is referred to as spin relaxation and this is detrimental to the spintronic devices. In particular, for Datta-Das transistor, this will lead to inefficient gate control and large leakage current in the OFF state of the spinFET. The aim of this work is to understand various spin relaxation processes that are operative in semiconductor nanostructures and to indicate possible ways of minimizing them. The theoretical aspect of this work (Chapters 2-5) focuses on the D'yakonov-Perel' process of spin relaxation in a semiconductor quantum wire. This process of spin relaxation occurs because during transport electron spin precesses like a spinning top about the spin-orbit magnetic field. We show that the conventional drift-diffusion model of spin transport, which has been used extensively in literature, completely breaks down in case of a quantum confined system (e.g. a quantum wire). Our approach employs a semi-classical model which couples the spin density matrix evolution with the Boltzmann transport equation. Using this model we have thoroughly studied spin relaxation in a semiconductor quantum wire and identified several inconsistencies of the drift-diffusion formalism.The experimental side of this work (Chapters 6-8) deals with two different issues: (a) performing spin transport experiments in order to extract spin relaxation length and time in various materials (e.g. Cu, Alq3) under one-dimensional confinement, and (b) measurement of the ensemble spin dephasing time in self-assembled cadmium sulfide quantum dots using electron spin resonance technique. The spin transport experiment, as described in Chapter 7 of this dissertation, shows that the spin relaxation time in organic semiconductor (Alq3) is extremely long, approaching a few seconds at low temperatures. Alq3 is the chemical formula of tris- 8 hydroxy-quinoline aluminum, which is a small molecular weight organic semiconductor. This material is extensively used in organic display industry as the electron transport and emission layer in green organic light emitting diodes. The long spin relaxation time in Alq3 makes it an ideal platform for spintronics. This also indicates that it may be possible to realize spin based organic light emitting diodes which will have much higher internal quantum efficiency than their conventional non-spin counterparts. From spin transport experiments mentioned above we have also identified Elliott-Yafet mode as the dominant spin relaxation mechanism operative in organic semiconductors. Electron spin resonance experiment performed on self-assembled quantum dots (Chapter 8) allows us to determine the ensemble spin dephasing time (or transverse spin relaxation time) of electrons confined in these systems. In quantum dots electrons are strongly localized in space. Surprisingly, the ensemble spin dephasing time shows an increasing trend as we increase temperature. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is that spin dephasing in quantum dots (unlike quantum wells and wires) is dominated by nuclear hyperfine interaction, which weakens progressively with temperature. We hope that our work, which elaborates on all of the above mentioned topics in great detail, will be a significant contribution towards the current state of knowledge of subtle spin-based issues operative in nanoscale device structures, and will ultimately lead to realization of novel nano-spintronic devices.