This thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part we study thermodynamics of the two-dimensional Heisenberg ferromagnet with dipolar interaction. This interaction breaks the conditions of the Mermin-Wagner theorem, resulting in a finite transition temperature. Our calculations are done within the framework of the self-consistent spin-wave theory (SSWT), which is modified in order to include the dipolar interaction. Both quantum and classical versions of the Heisenberg model are considered. The second part of the thesis investigates the chemical bonding in solids from the first principles calculations. A new chemical bonding indicator called balanced crystal orbital overlap population (BCOOP) is developed. BCOOP is less basis set dependent than the earlier indicators and it can be used with full-potential density-functional theory (DFT) codes. We apply BCOOP formalism to the chemical bonding in the high-T_c superconductor MgB2 and the theoretically predicted MAX phase Nb3SiC2. We also study how the chemical bonding results in a repulsive hydrogen–hydrogen interaction in metal hydrides. The role of this interaction in the structural phase transition in Ti3SnHx is investigated.

Uppsatsen, Kriskommunikation i ett förändrat medielandskap, är en fallstudie på webbplatsen www.krisinformation.se. Utgångspunkten för uppsatsen är det förändrade medielandskapet och vad det innebär för kommunikation i kris. Uppsatsen berör flera olika hörnstenar som är viktiga för framgångsrik kriskommunikation. Hörnstenarna rör bland annat vilken tillit och vilket förtroende användarna har för Krisinformation.se, dess innehåll samt Internet som medium i den förändring som skett i medielandskapet när det gäller kriskommunikation. Fallstudien undersöker även om det är privatpersoner eller yrkesverksamma som besöker Krisinformation.se. Den undersöker även vad användarna anser är viktigast när de ska ta del av information i en krissituation gällande om informationen är snabb, kortfattad, relevant eller tydlig. Vi har i fallstudien också studerat vilket medium de använder i olika situationer samt hur de agerar på webbplatsen när det gäller att följa hyperlänkar till vidare information. Teoretiska utgångspunkter är teorierna om kriskommunikation och teorin global village. Forskning inom andra områden berörs också, då de är relevanta för uppsatsen och dess syfte. Dessa områden är gatekeeping-teorins förändring, fördelar och nackdelar med Internet, vilka medievanor människor har haft i tidigare kriser, samt forskning om vilket medium människor föredrar i kris. Resultatet som framkommit bekräftar tidigare forskning och indikerar på att Internet kan ses som en framgångsrik kanal vid kommunikation i kris. Respondenterna har ett högt förtroende för Krisinformation.se som avsändare och ett ännu högre förtroende för innehållet. De har även högt förtroende för Internet som medium när de ska ta del av information i kris. De prioriterar att informationen förmedlas snabbt, oavsett informationens form i det läget. Något anmärkningsvärt är att respondenterna föredrar att ta del av krisinformation via myndigheters webbsidor. De väljer dock först att hämta informationen på nyhetssidor på Internet, vilket ytterst få har störst förtroende för. Det paradoxala i detta, är att majoriteten av respondenterna föredrar att informationen ska vara sann. De agerar alltså inte som de säger att de vill göra. Resultatet som avviker från tidigare forskning, är att det finns fler aktörer än traditionell media som fungerar som guider i det förändrade medielandskapet. Vilka dessa aktörer är och hur de agerar, är värt att undersöka vidare.

<p>This by implication would mean that the best way to prevent child abduction is to desist from international marriages and moving abroad.The modern reality is that&nbsp / relationships are being formed internationally. In the same breath, relationships are easily un-formed and the family fractured. The emotional impact of any breakup is usually&nbsp / tense, and it follows by implication that this will be exacerbated if a child is involved. For reasons that will be expounded on in the thesis, many caregivers, usually mothers have&nbsp / opted to abduct their children. Some have opted to apply formally to relocate. Relocation disputes are widely regarded as one of the most controversial and difficult issues in&nbsp / family law internationally. These disputes usually arise pursuant to a relational breakdown, when the resident parent (usually the mother) seeks to relocate with the children&nbsp / either&nbsp / domestically or internationally. This causes a significant impact&nbsp / on contact arrangements with the other parent (usually the father). Depending on the country in which they find themselves and the laws applicable to relocation with the child, mothers are faced with the decision to remove the child either lawfully or wrongfully. International family law&nbsp / jurisprudence has been developed over time to assist with custody and relocation disputes. &lsquo / Much has been written on the Hague Convention &ndash / its flaws and its successes, its&nbsp / effectiveness and utilization. This thesis aims to look specifically at relocation disputes within the context of international parental child abduction / more specifically, it sets out to&nbsp / explore whether there is a link between those phenomena, and whether the Hague Convention is sufficient for dealing with relocation disputes. I hope to make a convincing&nbsp / argument that if there were an international instrument regulating relocation, there would be uniformity and consistency. People&rsquo / s confidence in the legal processes would be&nbsp / restored, motivating them to apply formally to relocate and, in doing so, the incidence of child abductions would be reduced.</p>

<p>This by implication would mean that the best way to prevent child abduction is to desist from international marriages and moving abroad.The modern reality is that&nbsp / relationships are being formed internationally. In the same breath, relationships are easily un-formed and the family fractured. The emotional impact of any breakup is usually&nbsp / tense, and it follows by implication that this will be exacerbated if a child is involved. For reasons that will be expounded on in the thesis, many caregivers, usually mothers have&nbsp / opted to abduct their children. Some have opted to apply formally to relocate. Relocation disputes are widely regarded as one of the most controversial and difficult issues in&nbsp / family law internationally. These disputes usually arise pursuant to a relational breakdown, when the resident parent (usually the mother) seeks to relocate with the children&nbsp / either&nbsp / domestically or internationally. This causes a significant impact&nbsp / on contact arrangements with the other parent (usually the father). Depending on the country in which they find themselves and the laws applicable to relocation with the child, mothers are faced with the decision to remove the child either lawfully or wrongfully. International family law&nbsp / jurisprudence has been developed over time to assist with custody and relocation disputes. &lsquo / Much has been written on the Hague Convention &ndash / its flaws and its successes, its&nbsp / effectiveness and utilization. This thesis aims to look specifically at relocation disputes within the context of international parental child abduction / more specifically, it sets out to&nbsp / explore whether there is a link between those phenomena, and whether the Hague Convention is sufficient for dealing with relocation disputes. I hope to make a convincing&nbsp / argument that if there were an international instrument regulating relocation, there would be uniformity and consistency. People&rsquo / s confidence in the legal processes would be&nbsp / restored, motivating them to apply formally to relocate and, in doing so, the incidence of child abductions would be reduced.</p>

A complete non trivial supersymmetric deformation of the maximal supergravity in two dimensions is achieved by the gauging of a SO(9) group. The resulting theory describes the reduction of type IIA supergravity on an AdS_2 x S^8 background and is of first importance in the Domain-Wall / Quantum Field theory correspondence for the D0-brane case. To prepare the construction of the SO(9) gauged maximal supergravity, we focus on the eleven dimensional supergravity and the maximal supergravity in three dimensions since they give rise to important off-shell inequivalent formulations of the ungauged theory in two dimensions. The embedding tensor formalism is presented, allowing for a general desciption of the gaugings consistent with supersymmetry. The SO(9) supergravity is explicitly constructed and applications are considered. In particular, an embedding of the bosonic sector of the two-dimensional theory into type IIA supergravity is obtained. Hence, the Cartan truncation of the SO(9) supergravity is proved to be consistent. This motivated holographic applications. Therefore, correlation functions for operators in dual Matrix models are derived from the study of gravity side excitations around half BPS backgrounds. These results are fully discussed and outlooks are presented.

L’auto-assemblage de macromolécules amphiphiles dans des solutions aqueuses est un mécanisme important sous-jacent à de nombreux processus présents dans les organismes vivants. La formation spontanée de structures auto-organisées de phospholipides et de biomacromolécules se produit en raison d'un équilibre délicat entre les forces d'attraction et de répulsion. Ces forces comprennent l'attraction hydrophobe, la liaison hydrogène, les forces de coordination des métaux et la répulsion stérique ou électrostatique. En outre, l'auto-assemblage de molécules amphiphiles synthétiques est largement utilisé dans divers domaines technologiques. Un exemple frappant est celui des surfactants de faible poids moléculaire qui peuvent modifier de manière significative les propriétés des systèmes. Les autres domaines importants dans lesquels les tensioactifs et les macromolécules amphiphiles sont activement utilisés sont la cosmétologie et l'hygiène. Cependant, l'utilisation de structures auto-organisatrices de macromolécules amphiphiles nécessite une étude approfondie et soulève quelques questions pour les chercheurs concernant leur structure, leur comportement sous l'influence de facteurs externes et leur stabilité. L'objectif principal de la thèse était de développer une théorie de champ analytique auto-cohérente de l'auto-organisation dans des solutions de copolymères de déblocage non ioniques linéaires dendritiques et dendritiques doubles dans des solvants sélectifs. Cette théorie nous permet de prédire comment la dendronisation d'un ou des deux blocs affecte les propriétés structurelles et thermodynamiques d'assemblages auto-organisés formés par des copolymères. Il a été démontré que la dendronisation des corona bloc permet d’obtenir les micelles stables de taille relativement petite, mais avec de nombreux groupes terminaux. Cette dernière caractéristique est particulièrement intéressante dans le contexte de la liberation contrôlée, puisque les groupes terminaux exposés à l'environnement peuvent être facilement fonctionnalisés par des groupes de ligands pouvant être ciblés. Ces deux caractéristiques peuvent être obtenues simultanément car la dendronisation des corona bloc réduit le nombre d'agrégation à l'équilibre et les dimensions globales des micelles par rapport aux micelles formées par des molécules de copolymères diblocs linéaires homologues tout en conservant un grand nombre de groupes terminaux par micelle. La dendronisation du bloc insoluble peut être utilisée pour augmenter le nombre d'unités monomères terminales dans le core. Nous avons également démontré que la dendronisation des blocs solubles favorise la formation de micelles sphériques, alors que les gammes de stabilité thermodynamique des micelles cylindriques et des dendrimersomes sont déplacées vers un degré plus élevé de polymérisation des séquences insolubles. Au contraire, la dendronisation du bloc insoluble a l'effet inverse et conduit à un élargissement des gammes de stabilité des polymeres et des micelles cylindriques.Nous avons étudié les effets de l'extensibilité finie dans les brosses polyélectrolytes à chaîne linéaire et à dendron contenant des groupes ioniques. Nous avons développé la théorie analytique des brosses polyélectrolytiques dans l'approximation de Poisson-Boltzmann qui explique explicitement l'extensibilité finie des chaînes de polyélectrolytes formant des brosses. Il a été montré que pour la même série de paramètres de la brosse, la théorie basée sur l’élasticité non linéaire des polyions prédit une épaisseur de la brosse plus faible et une plus grande amplitude du saut de la densité du polymère au bord du pinceau. Les connaissances obtenues fourniront une base rationnelle pour la conception moléculaire de nouveaux copolymères à blocs complexes sur le plan architectural, y compris ceux destinés à des applications médicales. / An important mechanism underlying many processes occurring in living organisms is self-assembly of amphiphilic (macro)molecules in aqueous solutions. Spontaneous formation of self-organized structures of phospholipids and biomacromolecules occurs because of a delicate balance between attraction and repulsion forces. Such forces include hydrophobic attraction, hydrogen bonding, metal coordination forces and steric or electrostatic repulsion.In addition, self-assembly of synthetic amphiphilic molecules is widely used in various technical fields. A striking example are low molecular weight surfactants (small amphiphilic molecules) that can significantly change the properties of systems. Other important areas in which surfactants and amphiphilic macromolecules are actively used are cosmetology and hygiene. However, the use of self-organizing structures of amphiphilic macromolecules requires detailed study and raises a few questions for researchers regarding their structure, behavior under the influence of external factors and their stability.The main goal of the present work was development of the theory of self-assembly of diblock copolymers where one or both of blocks (soluble or/and insoluble) exhibit dendritic branching and established relations between degree of branching of the block(s) and structural properties (size, shape, aggregation number) of the self-assembled aggregates.The major focus of the thesis was on developing an analytical self-consistent field theory of self-organization in solutions of non-ionic linear-dendritic and double-dendritic deblock copolymers in selective solvents. This theory enables us to predict how dendronization of one or both blocks affects structural and thermodynamic properties of self-organized assemblies formed by copolymers. It was demonstrated that dendronisation of the corona blocks allows obtaining the stable micelles of relatively small size, but with many terminal groups.The latter feature is most attractive in the context of controlled delivery, since the exposed to the environment terminal groups can be readily functionalized by targetable ligand groups. Both these features can simultaneously be achieved because dendronization of the corona blocks reduces the equilibrium aggregation number and overall dimensions of micelles compared to micelles formed by homologous linear-linear diblock copolymer molecules while keeping large number of terminal groups per micelle. Dendronization of the insoluble block may be used for increasing of the number of terminal monomer units in the core. Such terminal groups can be further functionalized to be able to interact with active drugs, thereby increasing the loading capacity of the micelle.We have also demonstrated that dendronization of the soluble blocks favors formation of spherical micelles, whereas the ranges of thermodynamic stability of cylindrical wormlike micelles and dendrimersomes are shifted to larger degree of polymerisation of the insoluble blocks. On the contrary, dendronization of the insoluble block has the opposite effect and leads to widening of the stability ranges of polymersomes and cylindrical micelles.We investigated effects of finite extensibility (non-linear elasticity) in linear chain and dendron polyelectrolyte brushes containing ionic groups. We developed the analytical theory of polyelectrolyte brushes within the Poisson-Boltzmann approximation which explicitly accounts for finite extensibility of the brush-forming polyelectrolyte chains. It was shown that for the same set of the brush parameters the theory based on non-linear elasticity of the polyions predicts smaller thickness of the brush and larger magnitude of the jump in polymer density at the edge of the brush.The obtained knowledge will provide a rational background for molecular design of novel architecturally complex block copolymers, including those for medical applications.

We consider the broad framework of supervised learning, where one gets examples of objects together with some labels (such as tissue samples labeled as cancerous or non-cancerous, or images of handwritten digits labeled with the correct digit in 0-9), and the goal is to learn a prediction model which given a new object, makes an accurate prediction. The notion of accuracy depends on the learning problem under study and is measured by a performance measure of interest. A supervised learning algorithm is said to be 'statistically consistent' if it returns an `optimal' prediction model with respect to the desired performance measure in the limit of infinite data. Statistical consistency is a fundamental notion in supervised machine learning, and therefore the design of consistent algorithms for various learning problems is an important question. While this has been well studied for simple binary classification problems and some other specific learning problems, the question of consistent algorithms for general multiclass learning problems remains open. We investigate several aspects of this question as detailed below. First, we develop an understanding of consistency for multiclass performance measures defined by a general loss matrix, for which convex surrogate risk minimization algorithms are widely used. Consistency of such algorithms hinges on the notion of 'calibration' of the surrogate loss with respect to target loss matrix; we start by developing a general understanding of this notion, and give both necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for a surrogate loss to be calibrated with respect to a target loss matrix. We then define a fundamental quantity associated with any loss matrix, which we term the `convex calibration dimension' of the loss matrix; this gives one measure of the intrinsic difficulty of designing convex calibrated surrogates for a given loss matrix. We derive lower bounds on the convex calibration dimension which leads to several new results on non-existence of convex calibrated surrogates for various losses. For example, our results improve on recent results on the non-existence of low dimensional convex calibrated surrogates for various subset ranking losses like the pairwise disagreement (PD) and mean average precision (MAP) losses. We also upper bound the convex calibration dimension of a loss matrix by its rank, by constructing an explicit, generic, least squares type convex calibrated surrogate, such that the dimension of the surrogate is at most the (linear algebraic) rank of the loss matrix. This yields low-dimensional convex calibrated surrogates - and therefore consistent learning algorithms - for a variety of structured prediction problems for which the associated loss is of low rank, including for example the precision @ k and expected rank utility (ERU) losses used in subset ranking problems. For settings where achieving exact consistency is computationally difficult, as is the case with the PD and MAP losses in subset ranking, we also show how to extend these surrogates to give algorithms satisfying weaker notions of consistency, including both consistency over restricted sets of probability distributions, and an approximate form of consistency over the full probability space. Second, we consider the practically important problem of hierarchical classification, where the labels to be predicted are organized in a tree hierarchy. We design a new family of convex calibrated surrogate losses for the associated tree-distance loss; these surrogates are better than the generic least squares surrogate in terms of easier optimization and representation of the solution, and some surrogates in the family also operate on a significantly lower dimensional space than the rank of the tree-distance loss matrix. These surrogates, which we term the `cascade' family of surrogates, rely crucially on a new understanding we develop for the problem of multiclass classification with an abstain option, for which we construct new convex calibrated surrogates that are of independent interest by themselves. The resulting hierarchical classification algorithms outperform the current state-of-the-art in terms of both accuracy and running time. Finally, we go beyond loss-based multiclass performance measures, and consider multiclass learning problems with more complex performance measures that are nonlinear functions of the confusion matrix and that cannot be expressed using loss matrices; these include for example the multiclass G-mean measure used in class imbalance settings and the micro F1 measure used often in information retrieval applications. We take an optimization viewpoint for such settings, and give a Frank-Wolfe type algorithm that is provably consistent for any complex performance measure that is a convex function of the entries of the confusion matrix (this includes the G-mean, but not the micro F1). The resulting algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art SVMPerf algorithm in terms of both accuracy and running time. In conclusion, in this thesis, we have developed a deep understanding and fundamental results in the theory of supervised multiclass learning. These insights have allowed us to develop computationally efficient and statistically consistent algorithms for a variety of multiclass learning problems of practical interest, in many cases significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art algorithms for these problems.

A formação de camadas de cargas elétricas na superfície de Hélio liquido e em filmes de H´leio sobre um substrato está bem estabelecida tanto teórica quanto experimentalmente. Não existia, porém, até o presente, um cálculo auto-consistente para essas camadas de cargas, pois no regime de baixas densidades eletrônicas, estes sistemas podem ser tratados como o problema de 1-elétron. Em nosso trabalho incluímos os efeitos de muitos corpos usando a aproximação de Hartree-Fock e, via cálculos auto-consistentes, mostramos que estes efeitos tornam-se relevantes para densidades a partir de 108 e/cm2 para elétrons sobre Hélio e 103 e/ cm2 para elétrons sobre filme de Hélio. Calculamos também a mobilidade desses elétrons, em superfície de Hélio, incluindo dois mecanismos diferentes de espalhamento; as interações elétron-ripplons e elétrons-átomos de vapor. Usando nossos cálculos auto-consistentes obtivemos resultados que melhores concordam com dados experimentais para a mobilidade, em regimes de altas densidades eletrônicas / The formation of electric charged layers outside liquid Helium and outside films are well understood experimentally as well as theoretically. But, until today, there was not a self-consistent calculation for these electronic layers because, at low densities, these system can be treated as a one-electron problem. In this work we have included the many-body effects using the Hartree-Fock approximations and, via self-consistent calculations, we pointed out that these effects are relevants for densities above 108 e/cm2 for liquid Helium and 103 e/ cm2 for Helium films. We also have calculated the electronic mobility due to different scattering mechanisms: electron-ripplon and electron-vapour interactions. Using our self-consistents calculations we have obtained results that fit very well the experimental data, at high densities

Nous avons réalisé une déformation non-triviale et complète de la théorie de supergravité maximale en dimension deux. Il s'agit de la supergravité maximale avec groupe de jauge SO(9). Cette théorie décrit de manière effective la supergravité de type IIA sur un espace-temps produit AdS_2 x S^8. Elle joue ainsi un rôle important dans la correspondance Gravité / Théorie de Jauge appliquée au cas de la D0-brane. Afin de préparer la construction de la supergravité maximale jaugée SO(9), nous nous intéressons aux supergravités maximales en dimension onze et trois, puisqu'elles donnent lieu à différentes formulations non équivalentes de la théorie bidimensionnelle non jaugée. Le formalisme d' « Embedding tensor » est ensuite présenté. Il permet de déterminer l'ensemble des groupes de jauges compatibles avec la supersymétrie maximale. La supergravité SO(9) est dès lors explicitement construite et ouvre la voie à deux applications importantes. P our commencer, nous avons réalisé l'inclusion d'un sous-secteur bosonique de la théorie SO(9), la troncature de Cartan, dans la supergravité de type IIA à dix dimensions d'espace-temps. Il s'agit d'une inclusion cohérente. Cela a motivé la deuxième application, de nature holographique. Ainsi, à partir du sous-secteur de Cartan de la supergravité SO(9), et en particulier de la découverte d'états fondamentaux de type « half-BPS », nous avons calculé un ensemble de fonctions de corrélation à un et deux points associées à des opérateurs de modèles de matrice duaux. Nous avons conclu en un résumé de nos travaux et en la présentation d'intéressantes perspectives. / A complete non trivial supersymmetric deformation of the maximal supergravity in two dimensions is achieved by the gauging of a SO(9) group. The resulting theory describes the reduction of type IIA supergravity on an AdS_2 x S^8 background and is of first importance in the Domain-Wall / Quantum Field theory correspondence for the D0-brane case. To prepare the construction of the SO(9) gauged maximal supergravity, we focus on the eleven dimensional supergravity and the maximal supergravity in three dimensions since they give rise to important off-shell inequivalent formulations of the ungauged theory in two dimensions. The embedding tensor formalism is presented, allowing for a general desciption of the gaugings consistent with supersymmetry. The SO(9) supergravity is explicitly constructed and applications are considered. In particular, an embedding of the bosonic sector of the two-dimensional theory into type IIA supergravity is obtained. Hence, the Cartan truncation of the SO(9) supergravity is proved to be consistent. This motivated holographic applications. Therefore, correlation functions for operators in dual Matrix models are derived from the study of gravity side excitations around half BPS backgrounds. These results are fully discussed and outlooks are presented.

Flow of granular materials is usually initiated when the shear stress is large enough and exceeds certain critical value. This can result in the presence of the dead-zones in which the flow itself does not take place. Motions of such materials are frequently described by Bingham model. Flows of granular fluids are frequently connected with the presence of free surface. In the thesis Bingham model is incorporated into a more general framework of Bingham-Korteweg fluids, which is a suitable way how to transfer free- boundary problems into the problems on fixed domains. A part of the thesis concerns mathematical analysis of interesting relevant problems for incompressible fluids. 1