Polymersomes are at the leading edge of biomedical and nanoparticle research. In order to get closer insights into their mechanical properties, the bilayer forming them needs to be studied thoroughly. Here, we report on the bilayer formation, swelling behaviour, rigidity and fluidity of our membranes derived from pH sensitive and photo-cross-linkable polymersomes.

El Perú es un país altamente sísmico, pues se encuentra dentro del cinturón de fuego del océano pacifico. Debido a ello, es indispensable que las estructuras construidas y por construir, no colapsen frente a sismos severos. Sin embargo, en un país con una gran cantidad de informalidad y una gran existencia de viviendas autoconstruidas, el riesgo por colapso es elevado. Esto principalmente es causado debido a la mano de obra poco capacitada y, en algunos casos, la poca calidad de los materiales empleados en la construcción. No obstante, en un país con gran cantidad de habitantes dependientes de la informalidad, no siempre existe la posibilidad económica de demoler sus viviendas y construir nuevas viviendas que cumplan los requisitos sísmicos necesarios. Debido a ello, el reforzamiento de edificaciones, en muchos casos, es una alternativa económica y eficiente para asegurar que las construcciones no colapsen frente a un sismo severo. Por todos los motivos anteriormente mencionados, la investigación que realizamos en esta tesis consiste redactar un adecuado procedimiento constructivo de reforzamiento de viviendas autoconstruidas de albañilería confinada con placas de concreto prefabricadas, las cuales incrementan la resistencia al corte de las edificaciones en al menos 10 % y disminuye considerablemente los desplazamientos inelásticos máximos que se producen en las construcciones. / Perú is a highly seismic country, as it is within the Pacific Ocean Fire Belt. Due to this, it is essential that the structures built and to be built do not collapse in the face of severe earthquakes. However, in a country with a large amount of informality and a large stock of self-built housing, the risk of collapse is high. This is mainly due to the low-skilled workforce and, in some cases, the poor quality of the materials used in construction. However, in a country with a large number of inhabitants dependent on informality, there is not always the economic possibility to demolish their houses and build new houses that meet the necessary seismic requirements. Due to this, the reinforcement of buildings, in many cases, is an economical and efficient alternative to ensure that buildings do not collapse in the face of a severe earthquake. For all the reasons mentioned above, the research we carry out in this thesis consists of writing an adequate constructive procedure for the reinforcement of self-built houses with masonry confined with precast concrete plates, which increase the resistance to cutting of buildings by at least 10% and they considerably decrease the maximum inelastic displacements that occur in constructions. / Tesis

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As the CTC (transposed continuously conductor) is widely accepted as the cable used in transformers, mechanical analysis of CTC under different load cases is in need. This paper introduces a new method of creating detailed CTC models automatically in Comsol Multiphysics and the models are applied for conducting FEA (Finite Element Analysis) for different load cases of practical importance. The numerical analysis is verified by comparing the FEA results and the analytical results for the response of the CTC. The difference between the FEA of simplified models (bare straight strands conductor models) and detailed models (transposed strand conductor models), is also evaluated. Finally, the detailed model with an epoxy coating is evaluated. The detailed CTC model is found to be more compliant when subjected to radial bending compared to the simplified model, but it is stiffer than the simplified model when subjected to an axial bending load. In torsion, the detailed CTC models have much lower torsional rigidity than the simplified models. The epoxy coating makes the whole structure much more compliant and largely decreases the torsional rigidity of the CTC structure. The research shows that the difference between the simplified model and the detailed model is not negligible in many load cases. However, for an analysis that does not strictly require accuracy when doing axial loading analysis, the simplified model is a good option since it is easier to model, computationally cheaper, and the result is close to the detailed model result. In other cases, the detailed model is to be preferred. / CTC-kablar som används i högspänningstransformatorer utsätts under drift för olika typer av mekaniska laster och det finns ett behov att kunna analysera mekaniska egenskaper vid olika typer av lastfall. I denna rapport introduceras en ny metod för att automatiskt skapa detaljerade modeller av CTC i Comsol Multiphysics. Dessa modeller används sedan för analys med finita element-metoden (FEM) av några praktiskt viktiga belastningsfall. Den numeriska analysen verifieras genom att jämföra FE-resultaten med analytiska resultat för enkla idealiserade balkgeometrier. Vidare analyseras skillnaden mellan FEA för de förenklade modellerna och geometriskt detaljerade modeller CTC både med och utan isolerande epoxiskikt kring ledarna. Den detaljerade CTC-modellen visade sig vara mindre styv, jämfört med den förenklade modellen, när den utsätts för radiell böjning, men styvare när den utsattes för en axiell böjning, där radiell och axiell avser riktningarna CTC har i en högspänningstransformator. I torsion har de detaljerade CTC-modellerna mycket lägre vridstyvhet än de förenklade modellerna. Epoxibeläggningen gör hela strukturen mycket mer kompliant och minskar till stor del torsionsstyvheten hos CTC strukturerna. Vidare visar resultaten att skillnaden mellan den förenklade modellen och den detaljerade modellen inte är försumbar i många belastningsfall. Men för en analys som inte strikt kräver noggrannhet när man utför axiell belastningsanalys, är den förenklade modellen ett bra alternativ eftersom den är avsevärt lättare att modellera, beräkningarna är mycket snabbare och resultaten ligger nära de för den detaljerade modellen. I andra fall är den detaljerade modellen att föredra.

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Abstract Rule-governed behavior is a unique form of human behavior that comes with many advantages. Rule-following can however become problematic when it makes us insensitive to the consequences of our behavior and undermines our ability to adapt to changes in contingencies. This phenomenon has been hypothesized to play a central role in different psychological problems. In this thesis project, we investigated whether a mindfulness exercise from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) could improve people's ability to adapt to changes in contingencies, as measured with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). We also explored whether recently developed self-report questionnaires of rule-governed behavior, the Generalized Pliance Questionnaire (GPQ-9) and the Generalized Tracking Questionnaire (GTQ) could predict the participants' performance on the WCST. In addition, we looked at the association between intolerance of uncertainty (IUS-12) and generalized pliance (GPQ-9). The sample consisted of 45 university students at Örebro university in Sweden. The results revealed that the brief mindfulness exercise did not improve the participants ability to adapt to contingency changes. The questionnaires of rule-governed behavior also did not predict this performance on the WCST. However, we found a novel association between generalized pliance and intolerance of uncertainty, which could be a future research path. Further, generalized pliance and generalized tracking displayed a moderate negative correlation, in line with previous research. Despite limited significant findings in this study, it was an effort to investigate central claims from the ACTand behavioral literature, centered around psychological flexibility and rule-governed behavior.

In dieser Arbeit werden die Folgen der Calvo-Annahme in dynamischen makroökonomischen Modellen untersucht. Dafür wird die Calvo-Annahme unter Anwendung des Konzepts der statistischen Hazardfunktion verallgemeinert. Ich untersuche zwei mögliche Anwendungen dieses Ansatzes innerhalb von DSGE-Modellen. Im ersten Artikel zeige ich, dass der Zugewinn an Handhabbarkeit, der aus der Calvo-Annahme für Neu-Keynesianische Modelle folgt, mit unerwünschten Folgen in Bezug auf die Inflationsdynamiken einher geht. Der zweite Artikel schätzt die aggregierte Hazardfunktion unter Verwendung des theoretischen Rahmens des ersten Artikels. Es zeigt sich, dass die Annahme einer konstanten Hazardfunktion, die aus der Calvo-Annahme folgt, von den Daten eindeutig abgelehnt wird. Im dritten Artikel analysiere ich die Implikationen der empirisch geschätzten Hazardfunktion für die Persistenz von Inflation und die Geldpolitik. Die Untersuchungen zeigen, dass mittels der empirisch plausiblen aggregierten Hazardfunktion Zeitreihen simuliert werden können, die mit der Persistenz der inflatorischen Lücke im US Verbraucherpreisindex konsistent sind. Anhand dieser Ergebnisse komme ich zu dem Schluss, dass die Hazardfunktion eine entscheidende Rolle für die dynamischen Eigenschaften von Inflation spielt. Der letzte Artikel wendet den selben Modellierungsansatz auf ein Real-Business-Cycle Model mit rigidem Arbeitsmarkt an. Unter Verwendung eines allgemeineren stochastischen Anpassungsprozess stelle ich fest, dass die Arbeitsmarktdynamiken von einem Parameter beinflusst werden, der das Monotonieverhalten der Hazardfunktion bestimmt. Insbesondere steigt die Volatilität des Beschäftigungsniveaus, wohingegen dessen Persistenz mit zunehmendem Parameterwert abnimmt. / The Calvo assumption (Calvo, 1983) is widely used in the macroeconomic literature to model market frictions that limit the ability of economic agents to re-optimize their control variables. In spite of its virtues, the Calvo assumption also implies singular adjustment behavior at the firm level as well as a restrictive aggregation mechanism for the whole economy. In this study, I examine implications of the Calvo assumption for macroeconomic dynamics. To do so, I extend the Calvo assumption to a more general case based on the concept of the statistical hazard function. Two applications of this approach are studied in the DSGE framework. In the first essay, I apply this approach to a New Keynesian model, and demonstrate that tractability gained from the Calvo pricing assumption is costly in terms of inflation dynamics. The second essay estimates aggregate price reset hazard function using the theoretical framework constructed in the first essay, and shows that the constant hazard function implied by the Calvo assumption is strongly rejected by the aggregate data. In the third essay, I further explore implications of the empirically based hazard function for inflation persistence and monetary policy. I find that the empirically plausible aggregate price reset hazard function can generate simulated data that are consistent with inflation gap persistence found in the US CPI data. Based on these results, I conclude that the price reset hazard function plays a crucial role for generating inflation dynamics. The last essay applies the same modeling approach to a RBC model with employment rigidity. I find that, when introducing a more general stochastic adjustment process, the employment dynamics vary with a parameter, which determines the monotonic property of the hazard function. In particular, the volatility of employment is increasing, but the persistence is decreasing in the value of the parameter.

In a quest to design novel deployable structures, flexible polyhedra provide interesting insights. This work follows the discovery of flexible polyhedra and aims to make flexible polyhedra more useful. The dissertation describes how flexible polyhedra can be made. The flexible polyhedra first considered in this dissertation have a rotational degree of freedom. The range of this rotational movement is measured and maximised in this work by numerical maximisation. All polyhedra are established computationally: an iterative solution method is used to find vertex coordinates; several clash detecting methods are described to define whether each rotational position of a flexible polyhedron is physically possible; then a range of motion is defined between occurrences of clashes at the two ends; finally, an optimisation tool is used to maximise the range of motion. By using these tools, the range of motion of two types of simplest flexible polyhedra are maximised. The first type is a series of flexible polyhedra generalised from the Steffen flexible polyhedron. The range of motion of this type is improved to double that of Steffen’s original, from 27° to 59°. Another type of flexible polyhedron is expanded from a model provided by Tachi. Based on the understanding of Steffen’s flexible polyhedron, optimisation parameters are carefully given. This new type has achieved a wider range of motion, so now the range of motion of flexible polyhedron is tripled to 80°. After enlarging the range of motion of the degree of freedom in the 1-dof systems, the dissertation found multiple degrees of freedom in one polyhedron. The multiple mechanisms can be even repetitive, so that an n-dof polyhedron is found. A polyhedron of two degrees of freedom is first presented. Then, a unit cell for any number of mechanisms is found. As a repetitive structure, a 3-dof polyhedron is presented. Finally, this work presents the possibility of configuring a flexible polyhedral torus and a closed polyhedral surface that is able to flex without the need to stop.