In this work the influence of Under Sleeper Pads on the dynamic forces on a railway track is investigated. A special interest is devoted to the effect of using Under Sleeper Pads in a railway track with changing vertical stiffness. The contact force between wheel and rail and the ballast contact forces are examined. For the investigation a finite element model with the length of thirty sleepers is created and calculations are performed with the software LS-DYNA. Three different cases of varying vertical track stiffness are studied: the transition from an embankment to a bridge, a randomly varying track stiffness along the railway track and hanging sleepers.

In the biopharmaceutical industry, identification of glycans in a glycoprotein is a regulatory requirement and is a part of the characterization of the protein. Glycans are constructed of several monosaccharides linked together. N-linked glycans, which have been studied in this project, are attached to the nitrogen atom in asparagine. A method for separating N-linked glycans by high performance anion exchange chromatography had already been developed at the department. To develop a method for identification of the N-glycans by mass spectrometry, a desalting method on porous graphitic carbon (PGC) columns was used and optimized resulting in the eluents A (0,05% TFA in ACN:water 5:95 v/v) and B (0,05% TFA in ACN:water 50:50 v/v). Also the sample introduction on the mass spectrometer was optimized and resulted in a sensitive on-line liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) approach which gave mass spectrometric peaks with high signal to noise ratios and with high mass accuracy. The developed procedure was then successfully used on glycans cleaved from a glycoprotein separated by high performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detector.

This study aims to develop a precision polishing system with high machining rate efficiency. The system is mainly composed of a loading mechanism, a work piece and a polishing pad with belt-shape. The loading mechanism is to generate a specific pressure distribution between the pad and the work surface.¡@Such a pressure distribution is to render the machining rate distribution, along the contact zone between pad and work surface, capable of compensating the work surface error.¡@With the capability of accurately removing the work surface error left by the previous machining method, this polishing system can improve the form precision of work and become an effective high precision machining tool. In this thesis, the relation between the applied loadings and the pressure distribution were established by the finite element method.¡@A linear model described this relation with the applied loading as the input and the desired pressure distribution as the output. The unknown coefficients of the model were then derived from the simulation data by the finite element method. When a desired pressure distribution was given, the applied loadings could be solved from the model by either the simultaneous equation method or the least squared error method.¡@A main issue to investigate in the study was to examine whether a pressure distribution with an arbitrary wavelength spectrum could be obtained by the proposed scheme. A detailed analysis about the effect of wavelength in pressure distribution on the precision of loading estimation was done. Four conclusions could be made from the study. 1.The proposed polishing system can be applied to a free surface with either concave or convex geometrical features 2.The proposed linear model can suggest proper loadings to generate desired pressure distribution with good precision if the wavelength of pressure distribution is large enough. 3.The Shannon sampling theorem can be used to give a qualitative description of the properness of the model in generating a desired pressure distribution. 4.The proposed polishing method has a high machining repeatability when the operating condition is well controlled.

<p>Målet med projektet var att skapa en applikation för Ericsson AB R&D som kan hjälpa till att analysera datatrafiken i deras nätverk (ECN). Det finns tre stycken accesspunkter till ECN som skyddas av brandväggar. Alla datauppkopplingar genom brandväggarna lagras dygnvis i loggar. Genom loggarna kan obehörig trafik upptäckas. Ett verktyg som analyserar brandväggsloggarna underlättar arbetet.</p><p>Resultatet av mitt examensarbete är en applikation som är skriven i Perl. Programmeringsspråket Perl valdes för dess effektiva texthantering. Programmet exekveras genom terminalen (Solaris) / kommandoraden (Windows). De två viktigaste funktionerna är Searchlog och Check. Searchlog hanterar sökning av IP-adresser och Check kontrollerar att det inte finns några säkerhetsöverträdelser i brandväggsloggarna. Funktionerna har konstruerats så att största vikt är lagd på exekveringstiden och korrekt utdata.</p><p>Slutsatsen av arbetet med brandväggsloggar är att det kräver testning för att få programmet att uppnå optimalt resultat. Perls reguljära uttryck var till stor hjälp i mitt arbete. De är bra vid behandling av stora mängder text. Minnesanvändningen kanske kan göras effektivare. Eftersom att exekveringstiden prioriterades kom det i andra hand.</p> / <p>The goal of this project was to construct an application that can analyze the traffic through the network (ECN) at Ericsson. There are three accesspoints to ECN protected by firewalls. The connections through the firewalls are logged daily. With the help from firewall logs unauthorized access can be found. A tool which analyzes the logs is therefore needed.</p><p>The program is made in the computer language Perl. Perl was chosen because of its superior text handling capabilities. The application is executed through the terminal/command line. The two most important functions are Searchlog and Check. Searchlog handles the IP-searching and the Check function searches for unauthorized connections in the firewall logs. Execution time and data integrity were the main goals that were strived for.</p><p>My conclusion is that working with firewall logs requires a lot of testing to achieve the best result. I realized that regular expressions is the easiest and most powerful tool to use when working with large amounts of text. Since the speed was prioritized and not memory usage there is room for memory improvement.</p>

<p>In this work the influence of Under Sleeper Pads on the dynamic forces on a railway track is investigated. A special interest is devoted to the effect of using Under Sleeper Pads in a railway track with changing vertical stiffness. The contact force between wheel and rail and the ballast contact forces are examined. For the investigation a finite element model with the length of thirty sleepers is created and calculations are performed with the software LS-DYNA. Three different cases of varying vertical track stiffness are studied: the transition from an embankment to a bridge, a randomly varying track stiffness along the railway track and hanging sleepers.</p>

Introduction: Asbestos has been employed in a myriad of industrial applications for more than a century. Of the 181 Mt of asbestos produced worldwide, over 31 Mt was consumed in the U.S. The production and consumption of this mineral eventually was found to cause asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. While the brunt of the human exposure to asbestos occurred in insulation work, many more workers in other jobs were expose to asbestos fibers. Very little is known about the potential exposure to asbestos in research labs. Goal: In order to investigate potential research lab work exposures, we simulated lab work with various asbestos-containing items commonly found in research laboratories: 6 wire gauze pads, 3 gloves, 3 beaker tongs, and 3 Transite boards. All samples were analyzed by Phase Contrast Microscopy and, when appropriate, by Transmission Electron Microscopy and Polarized Light Microscopy. Results: All tested items were confirmed by bulk sampling to have asbestos fibers in their composition. Exposures from the 7 wire gauze pads were significantly lower than the PEL and the excursion limit, the highest exposure concentration measuring 0.029 f/cc. For the 3 beaker tongs with asbestos sleeves, exposure was below the PEL for 2 of the 3, with one resulting in an exposure of 0.160 f/cc (8-h TWA = 0.01 f/cc). For the Transite boards had the highest exposures of all tested items, with a maximum concentration of 0.320 f/cc (8-h TWA = 0.02 f/cc). Conclusion: Asbestos exposure in our simulated research lab work was significantly lower than any of the historical exposures associated with asbestos-related disease including cancer.

Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) is one of the most critical processing steps that enables fabrication of multilevel interconnects. The success of CMP process is limited by the implementation of an optimized process and reduction of process generated defects along with post CMP surface characteristics such as dishing and erosion. This thesis investigates to identify various sources of defects and studies the effect of factors that can be used to optimize the process. The major contributions of this work are: Understanding the effect of temperature rise on surface tribology, electrochemistry and post CMP pattern effects during the CMP process; investigating the effect of pad conditioning temperature and slurry flow rate on tribology and post CMP characteristics; development of novel slurries using polymer hybrid particles and improvement in slurry metrology to reduce surface damage during CMP. From the current research, it was shown that the effect of temperature on CMP tribology is predominantly affected by the polishing parameters and the polishing pad characteristics more than the chemical nature of the slurry. The effect of temperature is minimal on the resulting surface roughness but the with-in die non-uniformity is significantly affected by the temperature at the interface. Secondly, in this research it was shown that the effectiveness and aggressiveness of the pad conditioning process is highly influenced by the conditioning temperature. This aspect can be utilized to optimize the parameters for the pad conditioning process. Further, post CMP characteristics such as dishing, erosion and metal loss on patterned samples were shown to decrease with increase in slurry flow rate. This research then concentrates on the development of novel low defect slurry using polymer hybrid abrasive particles. Several varieties of surface functionalized polymer particles were employed to make oxide CMP slurries. These novel slurries proved to be potential candidates to reduce surface damage during CMP as they resulted in low coefficient of friction and much less surface scratches as compared to conventional abrasives. Thus, this research helps to reduce defects and non-planarity issues during CMP process thereby improving yield and reducing the cost of ownership.

Intensive care delirium prevention is currently a practice improvement goal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Delirium increases morbidity, mortality, time mechanically ventilated, length of stay, and health care spending. The Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Pain, Agitation, and Delirium in Adult Patients in the Intensive Care Unit (PAD guidelines) were revised and published in 2013. The ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group at Vanderbilt University have developed the ABCDEF Bundle protocol as a way of operationalizing the 2013 PAD guidelines. Implementation of the ABCDEF Bundle protocol has been shown to decrease occurrence and duration of delirium while improving morbidity and mortality therefore decreasing length of stay. The purpose of this project is to develop an implementation and evaluation plan of the ABCDEF Bundle for a community hospital's TSICU in Arizona. The Squire guidelines for quality improvement reporting are followed for this project. Implementation and evaluation of the ABCDEF bundle are explained in detail.

This dissertation presents a series of studies related to the study and control of slurry flow, process temperature, and aggressive diamonds in Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP). The purpose of these studies is to better understand the fundamentals of CMP and to explore solutions to some of CMP’s greatest challenges. Within-wafer removal rate non-uniformity (WIWRRNU) is a critical parameter to determine film thickness planarity on a wafer-scale level and it grossly impacts yield. Resolving this issue continues to be an area of intense focus in the industry. The first study in this dissertation shows the feasibility of adopting a new method to improve WIWRRNU during copper CMP that is solely based on intentional local temperature manipulation of the pad. A pad surface thermal management system is developed to locally change pad surface temperature. This system consists of one or more thermal transfer modules contacting the pad surface. In this study, the system is employed to adjust the "center-fast" copper removal rate profile to illustrate its effect during the process. Results shows that, when two thermal transfer modules are employed, local removal rates in the wafer center region decrease significantly while maintaining the removal rates near the wafer edge thereby significantly improving WIWRRNU. Another contribution of this dissertation is the investigation of the effect of pad groove design on slurry injection scheme during interlayer dielectric CMP. A novel slurry injector with multiple slurry outlets is designed, which provides optional slurry injection schemes (i.e. one injection point scheme and multi-injection point scheme). These schemes are compared with the standard slurry application method on a concentrically grooved pad and an xy-groove pad, respectively. On the concentrically grooved pad, the one injection point scheme generates significantly higher oxide removal rates (ranging from 22 to 35 percent) compared to the standard slurry application method at different slurry flow rates. On the xy-groove pad, the one injection point scheme still results in higher removal rates (ranging from 3 to 9 percent), however, its removal rate enhancement is not as high as that of the concentrically grooved pad. In order to further improve slurry availability on the xy-groove pad, the multi-injection point scheme is tested. Results show that the multi-injection point scheme results in significantly higher removal rates (ranging from 17 to 20 percent) compared to the standard slurry application method. This work underscores the importance of optimum slurry injection schemes for accommodating particular groove designs. The last contribution of this dissertation involves a study regarding aggressive diamond characterization and wear analysis during CMP. A 3M A3700 diamond disk is used to condition a Cabot Microelectronics Corporation (CMC) D100 pad for 30 hours. The top 20 aggressive diamonds for two perpendicular disk orientations are identified before the polishing, as well as after 15- and 30-hour polishing. The furrow surface area generated by these top 20 aggressive diamonds and their evolution are analyzed and compared. Results show that the original top 20 aggressive diamonds identified before polishing are subjected to wear after the first 15-hour polishing as the furrow surface area that they generate decreases dramatically (by 47%). As these original aggressive diamonds are worn, seven new aggressive diamonds are "born" and join the new top 20 list for both disk orientations. After the second 15-hour wafer polishing, the furrow surface area of these new top 20 aggressive diamonds do not change significantly. The furrow surface area created by all the active diamonds exhibits the same trend as the top 20 aggressive diamonds, confirming that most pad conditioning work is performed by these aggressive diamonds and that the disk loses its aggressiveness in the first 15 hours of polishing and then maintains its aggressiveness during the second 15 hours, albeit to a lesser extent.

Since the investigation of wear particles from rail transport started in the late 1910s, the high mass concentrations of these particles have prompted concern among researchers interested in air quality. However, effective action has yet to be taken because relevant knowledge is still missing. This thesis provides knowledge of airborne wear particles originating from rail transport. Some aspects of their characteristic parameters, such as size, mass concentration, number concentration, and morphology, were investigated in the field and in laboratory tests. We also discuss means to mitigate non-exhaust emissions, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various test set-ups in the seven appended journal papers:Paper A reviews recent studies of exhaust and non-exhaust emissions from rail vehicles. The results, measurements, adverse health effects, and proposed or applied solutions presented in this literature are summarized in this paper.Paper B summarizes the results of field tests we conducted. The effects of curve negotiation and braking under different real conditions were investigated in a field test in which on-board measurements were made. The elemental composition and morphology of the particles emitted and their potential sources were also investigated.Paper C describes how a pin-on-disc machine can be used to reproduce real operating conditions during mechanical train braking in a controlled laboratory setting. The results were validated by comparing the field test results with the results of laboratory studies.Paper D presents comprehensive results of laboratory studies of airborne particles from different braking materials. A new index is introduced in this paper, which can be used as a quantitative metric for assessing airborne wear particle emission rates.Paper E describes the effects of using various friction modifiers and lubricants on the characteristics of airborne particles from wheel–rail contact under lubricated and unlubricated conditions.Paper F reports work to simulate thermoelastic instability in the cast-iron braking material. We simulated the fluctuation of the flash temperature by considering the temperature dependency of the material properties and the transformation of the contact state due to thermomechanical phenomena and wear.Paper G reviews new full- and sub-scale measurements of non-exhaust emissions from ground transport. The advantages and disadvantages of on-board measurements, pin-on-disc tests, dynamometer tests, and test rig studies are discussed in this paper. / <p>QC 20131025</p>