Background -- Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a primary premature killer of adults and risk of CVD has been linked to modifiable risk factors including dietary intake. Many diet assessment tools are costly, time consuming, and complicated. This study investigated the relationship between diet quality and cardiovascular disease risk as indicated by carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) using a validated, simple, self-administered rapid food screener. Methods -- Participants were 51 male and 33 female older adults with an average age of 67 years. Carotid intima-media thickness was assessed using B-mode high resolution diagnostic ultrasound. Unhealthy and healthy diet intake was assessed using a validated 22-item rapid food screener. Data on other potentially confounding variables were also collected and included blood lipid profile, BMI, and resting blood pressure. Results -- Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant relationship for the unhealthy diet pattern and cIMT for both average and maximum region cIMT (r = 0.218, p = .023; r = 0.197, p = .037 respectively). There were no significant correlations related to the healthy diet pattern. ANOVA results did indicate significant differences in cIMT means (average cIMT and maximum region cIMT) when highest intakes of fruits and vegetables were compared with lowest intakes (average cIMT, (F (1,30) 4.54, p = .041; maximum region cIMT, (F (1,30) 5.41, p = .027). Average cIMT was 0.729mm vs 0.853mm respectively for highest vs lowest fruit and vegetable intake. Maximum region cIMT was 0.864mm vs 1.023mm when comparing highest vs lowest fruit and vegetable consumers. Conclusion -- Results of this study are similar to other studies that have indicated a relationship between diet and CVD/cIMT. Dietary intakes in the present study were assessed with an easy to use, self-administered rapid food screener. This is an important aspect of the study considering previous studies have used lengthier, complicated, time intensive tools. Because the rapid food screener can be self-administered and is inexpensive it may be used as an indicator of CVD /cIMT risk by health promotion professionals and even individuals themselves.

Designers are constantly searching for new sourcing of inspiration for innovative design. Recently, origami has gained interest as one of these potential sources. Origami literally translated from Japanese means “paper folding” where “oru” means “to fold” and “kami” means “paper”. Since paper is insufficient to solve many engineering design problems, designers must turn to other materials. These materials will inevitably be thicker than paper and will often require different folding techniques and considerations. This thesis provides background information describing previous methods to accommodate thickness in origami-inspired design, presents a newly developed technique to address limitations of other methods, and explores the application of the technique. The newly developed technique allows designers to identify a desired motion behavior in an origami model and implement it into a thick mechanism. Many previous methods were incapable of preserving the kinematics and/or restricted usable range of motion. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of thickness accommodation methods empowers designers to better implement inspiration from origami into engineering design. The offset panel technique is further extended to include arbitrary thickness and arbitrary folding plane locations. The technique is verified through creation and testing of hardware, showcasing capabilities and limitations. Demonstration of these capabilities will serve as inspiration for furthering application of thick origami in engineering design. Preliminary work in thick origami led to the design of a thick origami-inspired medical gripper. These origami-inspired forceps, Oriceps, were designed by starting with an origami model exhibiting desired motion, grasping. The Oriceps show some challenges faced with accommodating thickness in adapting an origami model for application.

Yes / An approximation to the Phan-Thien Tanner (PTT) constitutive model is developed with the aim of giving low-cost simulation of Gas Assisted Injection Moulding (GAIM) while incorporating important viscoelastic characteristics. It is shown that the developed model gives a response typical of full viscoelastic models in transient and steady state uniaxial and constant shear rate deformations. The model is incorporated into a 3D finite element GAIM simulation which uses the ‘pseudo-concentration’ method to predict residual polymer, and applied to published experimental results for a Boger fluid and a shear-thinning polystyrene melt. It is shown that the simulation gives a very good match to published results for the Boger fluid which show increasing Residual Wall Thickness (RWT) with increasing Deborah number. Against the shear-thinning polymer, the quality of match depends upon which of two ‘plausible’ relaxation times is chosen; qualitatively different results arise from two different means of estimating a single relaxation time. A ‘multi-mode’ approach is developed to avoid this uncertainty. It is shown that the multi-mode approach gives decreasing RWT with increasing Deborah number in agreement with the published experimental results, and avoids the issues that arise from estimating a single relaxation time for a molten polymer.

No description available.

Laser lithography was used to create novel patterns in thin diblock copolymer films. These patterns were characterized and an examination of their formation and growth was conducted. The patterns occurred only in diblock films, due to the interaction between thermal gradient induced Marangoni flow and the self assembly of the molecules. Growth of the patterns was found to be strongly dependent on absorbed power. The impact of film thickness on pattern growth was mainly due to the corresponding changes in sample reflectance, however a periodic patterning was observed suggesting that growth is also dependent on the amount of 'excess' material (over that required to form complete lamella) available. It was also shown that the pattern growth can occur independently of laser lithography and the Marangoni effect, though laser lithography was required to direct this growth. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

<p> The problem of a thin, orthotropic skew plate of linearly varying thickness for vibration and buckling analyses is formulated under the assumptions of small-deflection theory of plates. Using the dimensionless oblique coordinates, the deflection surface of the plate is expressed as a polynomial series, each term of which satisfying the required polar symmetry conditions, and the natural frequencies are computed using Galerkin method. As is required in Galerkin method, the assumed deflection function satisfies all the boundary conditions on all the edges of the plate. For the skew plate, clamped on all the four edges, numerical results for the first few natural frequencies are presented for various combinations of aspect ratio, skew angle and taper parameter. Convergence study has been made for typical configuration of the plate and the limited available data is inserted therein along with the computed results, for comparison.</p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第19265号 / 理博第4120号 / 新制||理||1593(附属図書館) / 32267 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科生物科学専攻 / (主査)教授 濱田 穣, 准教授 平﨑 鋭矢, 教授 中村 克樹 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Silver-gold nanocages have attracted considerable research interest recently due to their excellent performance in the fields of biomedicine and photocatalysis. These applications oftentimes manipulate at elevated temperatures and therefore impose demands on the thermal stability of the cage structures. To better understand this subject, in this work, we systematically evaluated the thermal stability of two nanocages with different wall thicknesses of 3.8 nm and 13 nm, both in the solution-phase (diethylene glycol) and solid-phase (in-situ STEM). The results revealed that the nanocages with thicker walls exhibited better thermal stabilities in both phases. By monitoring and analyzing the morphology changes of the nanocages, we determined that the nanocages with thin and thick walls undergo deformation processes differently. Nevertheless, they both deformed into more thermodynamically stable structures eventually. The plasmonic properties of the nanocages were also examined.

No description available.

No description available.