Owner groups and Facility Managers of health care facilities interested in reducing operation and maintenance (O&M) expenses for new facilities have often been placed in the difficult position of making cost-benefit assessments without a complete understanding of the cumulative impact of building systems selection on their internal rate of return. This is particularly true when owners are evaluating the initial cost and operational benefit (if any) of obtaining various levels of "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" (LEED) certifications for their buildings. Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning, and Lighting (HVAC&L) loads comprise 51% of the total energy demand in the typical outpatient facility; however, in order to estimate the likelihood of achieving a particular LEED rating for a new building, a "Whole Building Energy Simulation" is necessary to evaluate HVAC&L system performance. The conventional of requiring a design upon which to base an analysis presents owner operators attempting to perform a Lifecycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) early in the concept phase with two unique problems - how to estimate energy use without an actual "design" to model, and how to estimate a system's first cost without knowing its performance requirements. This study outlines a process by which existing energy metrics from the Department of Energy (DOE), Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), and Energy Star, can be made early during the developer's pro forma phase - without the need for a building design. Furthermore, preliminary business decisions targeted at determining the likelihood of obtaining a particular LEED rating, and specifying the corresponding building systems, can be estimated without the cost required to employ an Architect and Engineer (A&E) team, or the time necessary to develop a design. This paper concludes that regional factors can dramatically affect a building's required level of energy performance, and that the highest performing HVAC&L system, irrespective of cost, will not always provide the best return on investment. Accordingly, the national averages utilized to establish LEED EA1 thresholds do not reflect the cost particularities owners may encounter when developing in various climate zones, and therefor may be less relevant to lifecycle considerations that previously believed.

Ce mémoire a pour but de faire un diagnostic et des recommandations en vue de l’amélioration de la performance du système d’entreposage de l’usine IPL située à St-Damien. Ces recommandations devraient permettre d’améliorer la qualité de service de l’entrepôt en optimisant l’espace disponible, ce qui diminuera le temps de préparation des commandes et facilitera le réapprovisionnement. Ce travail s’est déroulé en plusieurs étapes. Nous avons commencé par une analyse de l’existant. Nous avons ensuite identifié les critères pouvant influencer les scénarios tels que l’optimisation du système de travail actuel, l’état actuel de l’entrepôt de St-Damien (avec moins d’étagères), et la situation dans laquelle il y aurait des étagères sur l’ensemble de l’espace disponible. Ensuite, nous avons évalué les enjeux économiques de chaque scénario que nous avons alors comparé avec la solution existante. Sur la base des besoins de l’entreprise, nous proposons le scénario répondant le mieux aux objectifs de l'entreprise.

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A new manufacturing paradigm may lower the cost and environmental impact of existing products, as well as enable completely new products. Large scale, roll-to-roll manufacturing of flexible electronics and other functionality has great potential. However, a commercial breakthrough depends on a lower consumption of materials and energy compared with competing alternatives, and that sufficiently high performance and reliability of the products can be maintained. The substrate constitutes a large part of the product, and therefore its cost and environmental sustainability are important. Electrically conducting thin films are required in many functional devices and applications. In demanding applications, metal films offer the highest conductivity.   In this thesis, paper substrates of various type and construction were characterized, and the characteristics were related to the performance of inkjet-printed metal patterns. Fast absorption of the ink carrier was beneficial for well-defined pattern geometry, as well as high conductivity. Surface roughness with topography variations of sufficiently large amplitude and frequency, was detrimental to the pattern definition and conductivity. Porosity was another important factor, where the characteristic pore size was much more important than the total pore volume. Apparent surface energy was important for non-absorbing substrates, but of limited importance for coatings with a high absorption rate. Applying thin polymer–based coatings on flexible non-porous films to provide a mechanism for ink solvent removal, improved the pattern definition significantly. Inkjet-printing of a ZnO-dispersion on uncoated paper provided a thin spot-coating, allowing conductivity of silver nanoparticle films. Conductive nanoparticle films could not form directly on the uncoated paper.   The resulting performance of printed metal patterns was highly dependent on a well adapted sintering methodology. Several sintering methods were examined in this thesis, including conventional oven sintering, electrical sintering, microwave sintering, chemical sintering and intense pulsed light sintering. Specially designed coated papers with modified chemical and physical properties, were utilized for chemical low-temperature sintering of silver nanoparticle inks. For intense pulsed light sintering and material conversion of patterns, custom equipment was designed and built. Using the equipment, inkjet-printed copper oxide patterns were processed into highly conducting copper patterns. Custom-designed papers with mesoporous coatings and porous precoatings improved the reliablility and performance of the reduction and sintering process.         The thesis aims to clarify how ink-substrate interactions and sintering methodology affect the performance and reliability of inkjet-printed nanoparticle patterns on flexible substrates. This improves the selection, adaptation, design and manufacturing of suitable substrates for inkjet-printed high conductivity patterns, such as circuit boards or RFID antennas.

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is a way to make students in healthcare professions equipped with the collaborative skills required for today’s complex healthcare. In clinical placements students from health profession programs can learn with, from and about each other so that they can collaborate effectively and deliver high-quality healthcare. The interprofessional education is possible through supervision from health professions who collaborate around the student learning and the patient healthcare.  Aim: The aim of this study is to gain knowledge about the learning process in IPE that take place in an Interprofessional Training ward (IPTW) from the supervisor teams’ perspective.  Method: In an IPTW students from occupational therapist-, physiotherapist-, medical- and nursing programs form teams for IPE in periods of two weeks with supervisor teams. With an inductive method, interviews with focus groups consisting of supervisor teams have been conducted and analyzed through thematic analysis.  Results: Based on the supervisor teams' experiences of creating interprofessional learning with student teams in the daily work with the care of patients, a learning process has been made visible. This learning process has been written out as a model and analyzed using known obstacles and enablers for IPE from supervisor perspective. The model has also been interpreted through pedagogical theory that has been used in IPE. Conclusion: The supervisor teams use a learning process with pedagogical models and strategies to handle obstacles and enablers to create understanding and change towards an interprofessional collaboration among the students. These models and strategies are supported by pedagogical theory. There is a gap in research on how IPE is carried out by interprofessional supervisor teams’, however the findings of this study contribute with new knowledge about how a learning process can be used in IPE.