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SAMMANFATTNING Bakgrund:   Läkemedelsbiverkningar utgör ett stort problem för den enskilde som drabbas och för samhället. Distriktssköterskor med förskrivningsrätt har ett ansvar att rapportera misstänkta läkemedelsbiverkningar och spontanrapportering är grunden för läkemedelssäkerhet. Studier visar att det finns en hög grad av underrapportering. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att undersöka distriktssköterskors kunskap och förståelse om läkemedelsbiverkningar samt deras handlingsberedskap för, och syn på att rapportera dessa. Metod: Semistrukturerade intervjuer med kvalitativ ansats användes, sju distriktssköterskor i Jämtlands län deltog. Innehållet bearbetades med hjälp av manifest innehållsanalys och resulterade i tre områden; Kunskap och förståelse, Syn på ansvarfördelning samt Handlingsberedskap. Sju kategorier identifierades. Resultat: Distriktssköterskorna hade kunskap och förståelse om läkemedelsbiverkningar men inhämtande av ny kunskap hade låg prioritet. Ansvaret för rapportering diskuterades inte på arbetsplatserna. Distriktssköterskorna ansåg att de hade rapporterat då de meddelat läkaren om en misstänkt läkemedelsbiverkning. Rapportering av läkemedelsbiverkningar ansågs vara hanterbara men kunde ibland leda till stora bekymmer. Rapporteringen beskrevs som undermålig och skulle kunna göras i större utsträckning. Slutsats: Problemområdet måste synliggöras. Fortbildning inom området kan förhoppningsvis leda till ökad rapportering och förbättrad läkemedelsäkerhet. På sikt ger det ett minskat lidande för den enskilde patienten och en ekonomisk vinst för samhället. / ABSTRACT Background:   Adverse drug reactions are a major problem for the individual affected and to society. District nurses with prescribing rights have a responsibility to report suspected adverse drug reactions and spontaneous reporting is the basis for drug safety. Studies show that there is a high degree of underreporting. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore district nurses' knowledge and understanding of adverse drug reactions and their preparedness for, and approach to reporting them. Method: Semi-structured interviews with a qualitative approach was used, seven district nurses in Jämtland county attended. The contents were processed using manifest content analysis and resulted in three domains: Knowledge and understanding, vision for sharing responsibility and readiness to act. Seven categories was identified. Results: District nurses had knowledge and understanding of drug side effects, but acquire new knowledge had low priority. Responsibility for reporting were not discussed in the workplace. District nurses felt that they had reported when they informed the doctor about a suspected adverse drug reaction. Reporting of adverse drug reactions were considered to be manageable but could sometimes lead to big trouble. The reporting was described as poor and could be made more widely. Conclusion: The problem area must be made visible. Training in the field will hopefully lead to increased reporting and improved drug safety. Eventually, it gives a less suffering for the individual patient and an economic benefit for society.

No description available.

This thesis presents a Hamiltonian formulation of the electromagnetic fields in structured (inhomogeneous) media of arbitrary dimensionality, with arbitrary material dispersion and absorption consistent with causality. The method is based on an identification of the photonic component of the polariton modes of the system. Although the medium degrees of freedom are introduced in an oscillator model, only the macroscopic response of the medium appears in the derived eigenvalue equation for the polaritons. For both the discrete transparent-regime spectrum and the continuous absorptive-regime spectrum, standard codes for photonic modes in nonabsorptive systems can easily be leveraged to calculate polariton modes. Two applications of the theory are presented: pulse propagation and spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). In the propagation study, the dynamics of the nonfluctuating part of a classical-like pulse are expressed in terms of a Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a polariton effective field. The complex propagation parameters of that equation can be obtained from the same generalized dispersion surfaces typically used while neglecting absorption, without incurring additional computational complexity. As an example I characterize optical pulse propagation in an Au/MgF$_2$ metallodielectric stack, using the empirical response function, and elucidate the various roles of Bragg scattering, interband absorption and field expulsion. Further, I derive the Beer coefficient in causal structured media. The SPDC calculation is rigorous, captures the full 3D physics, and properly incorporates linear dispersion. I obtain an expression for the down-converted state, quantify pair-production properties, and characterize the scaling behavior of the SPDC energy. Dispersion affects the normalization of the polariton modes, and calculations of the down-conversion efficiency that neglect this can be off by 100$\%$ or more for common media regardless of geometry if the pump is near the band edge. Furthermore, I derive a 3D three-wave group velocity walkoff factor; due to the interplay of a topological property with a symmetry property, I show that even if down-conversion is into a narrow forward cone, neglect of the transverse walkoff can lead to an overestimate of the SPDC energy by orders of magnitude.

This thesis presents a Hamiltonian formulation of the electromagnetic fields in structured (inhomogeneous) media of arbitrary dimensionality, with arbitrary material dispersion and absorption consistent with causality. The method is based on an identification of the photonic component of the polariton modes of the system. Although the medium degrees of freedom are introduced in an oscillator model, only the macroscopic response of the medium appears in the derived eigenvalue equation for the polaritons. For both the discrete transparent-regime spectrum and the continuous absorptive-regime spectrum, standard codes for photonic modes in nonabsorptive systems can easily be leveraged to calculate polariton modes. Two applications of the theory are presented: pulse propagation and spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). In the propagation study, the dynamics of the nonfluctuating part of a classical-like pulse are expressed in terms of a Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a polariton effective field. The complex propagation parameters of that equation can be obtained from the same generalized dispersion surfaces typically used while neglecting absorption, without incurring additional computational complexity. As an example I characterize optical pulse propagation in an Au/MgF$_2$ metallodielectric stack, using the empirical response function, and elucidate the various roles of Bragg scattering, interband absorption and field expulsion. Further, I derive the Beer coefficient in causal structured media. The SPDC calculation is rigorous, captures the full 3D physics, and properly incorporates linear dispersion. I obtain an expression for the down-converted state, quantify pair-production properties, and characterize the scaling behavior of the SPDC energy. Dispersion affects the normalization of the polariton modes, and calculations of the down-conversion efficiency that neglect this can be off by 100$\%$ or more for common media regardless of geometry if the pump is near the band edge. Furthermore, I derive a 3D three-wave group velocity walkoff factor; due to the interplay of a topological property with a symmetry property, I show that even if down-conversion is into a narrow forward cone, neglect of the transverse walkoff can lead to an overestimate of the SPDC energy by orders of magnitude.

Spontaneous vertebral fractures are a large and growing health care problem. Biomechanical factors, specifically, abnormal posture or gait‐related spinal motion may interact with age‐weakened bone to induce altered spinal biomechanics that in turn increase the likelihood of vertebral body fracture. This research takes steps towards the goal of reducing the number of vertebral fractures in two phases: 1) Validation of a noninvasive spinal motion measurement system in cadaver torsos and 2) Application of the measurement system in human subjects. The cadaver study compared vertebral motion at 4 levels (T7,T12,L3,L5) as measured by adhesive skin markers versus motion measured by bone pins implanted into the vertebrae. Cadaver torsos were tested in lateral‐bending, flexion and axialrotation. Mean differences in vertebral body angular motion between skin markers and bone pin markers were <0.5° around the anterior‐posterior and medial‐lateral axes and <0.9° around the superior‐inferior axis. This measurement method was able to accurately quantify vertebral body motion in cadaver torsos thus allowing for application to human subject testing. X‐rays and 3D motion capture were employed to quantify spinal posture and motion parameters during gait in 12 older and 12 younger normal, females. Vertebral motion around 3 axes was measured at 4 levels (T7,T10,T12,L2) using noninvasive retroreflective markers during treadmill gait at 3 speeds (0.5,0.7,0.9m/s). The average angular motion of all gait cycles at each speed was determined for each level. The triplanar ranges of motion and variability of motion were compared as a function of age. Older subjects had 31.7% larger frontal Cobb angles and up to 30.9% and 33.5% smaller ranges of spinal motion in the frontal and sagittal planes. Variability of motion in the sagittal plane was up to 42.9% less in older subjects. Decreased ranges of motion and variability of spinal motion observed in older subjects may imply that vertebral loading in these subjects may not be as uniformly distributed across the vertebrae as in younger subjects. Greater stresses may result from the abnormal motion, thus increasing fracture risk. Confirmation of this hypothesis requires a longitudinal study, but if verified, may lead to the development of inexpensive countermeasures to prevent fractures.

This thesis focuses on acoustic and prosodic (fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity) analyses of French from large-scale audio corpora portraying different speaking styles: prepared and spontaneous speech. We are interested in particularities of segmental phonetics and prosody that may characterize pronunciation. In French, many errors caused by automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems arise from frequent homophone words, for which ASR systems depend on language model weights. Automatic classification (AC) was conducted to discriminate homophones by only acoustic and prosodic properties depending on their part-of-speech function or their position within prosodic words. Results from AC of two homophone pairs, et/est (and/is) and à/a (ton/has), revealed that the et/est pair was more discriminable. A selection of prosodic and inter-phoneme attributes, that is 15 attributes, performed as good results as with 62 attributes. Then corresponding perceptual tests have been conducted to verify if humans also use acoustico-prosodic parameters for the discrimination. Results suggested that acoustic and prosodic information might help in operating the correct choice in similar ambiguous syntactic structures. From the hypothesis that pronunciation variants were due to varying prosodic constraints, we examined overall prosodic properties of French on a lexical and phrase level. The comparison between lexical and grammatical words revealed F0 rise and lengthening at the end of final syllable on lexical words, while these phenomena were not observed for grammatical words. Analyses also revealed that the mean profile of a n length noun phrase could be different from that of a n length noun with a low F0 at the beginning of a noun phrase. The prosodic profiles can be helpful to locate word boundaries. Findings in this thesis will lead to localize focus and named-entity using discriminative classifiers, and to improve word boundary locations by an ASR post-processing step.

Surface plasmon-polaritons are optical surface waves formed through the interaction of photons with free electrons at the surface of metals. They offer interesting applications in a broad range of scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, and material science. However, many of such applications face limitations imposed by the high propagation losses of these waves at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, which result mainly from power dissipation in the metal. In principle, the propagation losses of surface plasmon-polaritons can be compensated through optical amplification. The objective of this thesis is to provide deeper insights on the physics of surface plasmon-polariton amplification and spontaneous emission in surface plasmon-polariton amplifiers through theoretical and experimental vehicles applied (but not necessarily restricted) to a particular plasmonic mode termed long-range surface plasmon-polariton. On the theoretical side, the objective is approached by developing a realistic theoretical model to describe the small-signal amplification of surface plasmon-polaritons in planar structures incorporating dipolar gain media such as organic dye molecules, rare-earth ions, and quantum dots. This model takes into account the inhomogeneous gain distribution formed near the metal surface due to a non-uniform excitation of dipoles and due to a position-dependent excited-state dipole lifetime that results from near-field interactions between the excited dipoles and the metal. Also, a theoretical model to describe the amplified spontaneous emission of surface plasmon-polaritons supported by planar metallic structures is developed. This model takes into account the different energy decay channels into which an exited dipole located in the vicinity of the metal can relax. The validity of this model is confirmed through experimentation. On the experimental side, the objective is approached by providing a direct experimental demonstration of complete loss compensation in a plasmonic waveguide. The experiments are conducted using the long-range surface plasmon-polariton supported by a symmetric thin gold waveguide incorporating optically pumped organic dye molecules in solution as the gain medium. Also, an experimental study of spontaneous emission in a long-range surface plasmon-polariton amplifier is presented. It is shown that this amplifier benefits from a low spontaneous emission into the amplified mode, which leads to an optical amplifier with low noise characteristics. The experimental setup and techniques are explained in detail.

This thesis describes various methods for producing photon pairs from waveguides. It covers relevant topics such as waveguide coupling and phase matching, along with the relevant measurement techniques used to infer photon pair production. A new proposal to solve the phase matching problem is described along with two conceptual methods for generating entangled photon pairs. Photon pairs are also experimentally demonstrated from a third novel structure called a Bragg Reflection Waveguide (BRW). The new proposal to solve the phase matching problem is called Directional Quasi-Phase Matching (DQPM). It is a technique that exploits the directional dependence of the non-linear susceptiblity ($\chi^{(2)}$) tensor. It is aimed at those materials that do not allow birefringent phase-matching or periodic poling. In particular, it focuses on waveguides in which the interplay between the propagation direction, electric field polarizations and the nonlinearity can change the strength and sign of the nonlinear interaction periodically to achieve quasi-phasematching. One of the new conceptual methods for generating entangled photon pairs involves a new technique that sandwiches two waveguides from two differently oriented but similar crystals together. The idea stems from the design of a Michelson interferometer which interferes the paths over which two unique photon pair processes can occur, thereby creating entanglement in any pair of photons created in the interferometer. By forcing or sandwiching the two waveguides together, the physical space that exists in the standard Micheleson type interferometer is made non-existent, and the interferometer is effectively squashed. The result is that the two unique photon pair processes actually occupy the same physical path. This benefits the stability of the interferometer in addition to miniaturizing it. The technical challenges involved in sandwiching the two waveguides are briefly discussed. The main result of this thesis is the observation of photon pairs from the BRW. By analyzing the time correlation between two single photon detection events, spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) of a picosecond pulsed ti:sapph laser is demonstrated. The process is mediated by a ridge BRW. The results show evidence for type-0, type-I and type-II phase matching of pump light at 783nm, 786nm and 789nm to down converted light that is strongly degenerate at 1566nm, 1572nm, and 1578nm respectively. The inferred efficiency of the BRW was 9.8$\cdot$10$^{-9}$ photon pairs per pump photon. This contrasts with the predicted type-0 efficiency of 2.65$\cdot$10$^{-11}$. This data is presented for the first time in such waveguides, and represents significant advances towards the integration of sources of quantum information into the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

A certain architectural &quot / ethos&quot / come into being as a result of the specific training which architects receive as producers of space, of their dual status as artists and professionals, of the conditions in which they live and the social status of their profession. This ethos is a product of the architects&#039 / collective habitus. The attitudes of architects regarding their position in the building industry, their role in society and their self-image (or its lack of) as artists determine the transformation within the architectural profession under the impact of the changes in society. This study investigates architects&#039 / professional practice by focusing only on those architects working independently and mostly having their on offices. Thirty-one architects were grouped by age, gender, the faculties from which they graduated and province of residence and work. The international influence on architectural discourse, the effects of architects&#039 / organisations and their professional ideology were introduced as additional variables for investigating the nature of their habitus. The interviews revealed that the architects&#039 / &quot / spontaneous professional ideology&quot / (SPI) is the main adhesive of their collective habitus and ethos, and it force architects to think in a specific way about space, the sovereignty of architecture, its art component, its legitamacy, architects&#039 / devotion to their profession, their feelings of superiority over clients and users as well as their overall code of conduct.