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The aim of this work is to research milk and kefir microbiological indicators according to microbiological risk factors in the milk processing company A. Work tasks: to analyze drinking milk, ultra high temperature pasteurized milk and kefir descriptions and factors of the risk in technological process schemes; microbiological factors of the risk control schemes; samples of these products microbiological indicators according to company’s self-control plan. Conclusion: The main microbiological risk factors in drinking milk is total bacterial count, coliform bacteria, Salmonella; in the kefir – coliform bacteria, yeasts and moulds. Principals control points in drinking milk, ultra high temperature pasteurized milk and kefir technological schemes are: reception of the raw cow’s milk; freezing of the raw cow’s milk, storage and keeping; pasteurization of milk and freezing, pasteurized milk compound storage and keeping; milk warming, deaeration, homogenization, sterilization and refreshing (only for ultra high temperature pasteurized milk); repeated thermal treatment, cooling up to inoculation temperature (only for kefir); inoculation and incubation (only for kefir); storage. In the company’s A self-control plan preview principal control points microbiological risk factors are controlled by keeping a check of heating and freezing stages temperature and duration, monitoring of microbiological parameters are made not less than 4 times per year. Coliform bacteria and total bacteria... [to full text]

Surface topography is, generally, composed of many length scales starting from its physical geometry, to its microscopic or atomic scales known by roughness. The spatial and geometrical evolution of the roughness topography of engineering surfaces avail comprehensive understanding, and interpretation of many physical and engineering problems such as friction, and wear mechanisms during the mechanical contact between adjoined surfaces. Obviously, the topography of rough surfaces is of random nature. It is composed of irregular hills/valleys being spatially correlated. The relation between their densities and their geometric properties are the fundamental topics that have been developed, in this research study, using the theory of random fields and the integral geometry.An appropriate random field model of a rough surface has been defined by the most significant parameters, whose changes influence the geometry of its excursion. The excursion sets were quantified by functions known as intrinsic volumes. These functions have many physical interpretations, in practice. It is possible by deriving their analytical formula to estimate the parameters of the random field model being applied on the surface, and for statistical analysis investigation of its excursion sets. These subjects have been essentially considered in this thesis. Firstly, the intrinsic volumes of the excursion sets of a class of mixture models defined by the linear combination of Gaussian and t random fields, then for the skew-t random fields are derived analytically. They have been compared and tested on surfaces generated by simulations. In the second stage, these random fields have been applied to real surfaces measured from the UHMWPE component, involved in application of total hip implant, before and after wear simulation process. The primary results showed that the skew-t random field is more adequate, and flexible for modelling the topographic roughness. Following these arguments, a statistical analysis approach, based on the skew-t random field, is then proposed. It aims at estimating, hierarchically, the significant levels including the real hills/valleys among the uncertain measurements. The evolution of the mean area of the hills/valleys and their levels enabled describing the functional behaviour of the UHMWPE surface over wear time, and indicating the predominant wear mechanisms.

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Recently a powerful electron accelerator, 50 MeV race-track microtron, has been taken into clinical use. This gives the opportunity to treat patients with higher x-ray and electron energies than before. Furthermore, treatments can be performed were the entire fractional dose can be delivered in parts of a second. The relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of high energy photons (up to 50 MV) was studied in vitro and in vivo. Oxygen enhancement ratio (OER) of 50 MV photons and RBE of 50 MeV electrons were investigated in vitro. Single-fraction experiments, in vitro, using V-79 Chinese hamster fibroblasts showed an RBE for 50 MV x-rays of approximately 1.1 at surviving fraction 0.01, with reference to the response to 4 MV x- rays. No significant difference in OER could be demonstrated. Fractionation experiments were carried out to establish the RBE at the clinically relevant dose level, 2 Gy. The RBE calculated for the 2 Gy/fraction experiments was 1.17. The RBEs for 20 MV x-rays and 50 MeV electrons were equal to one. In order to investigate the validity of these results, the jejunal crypt microcolony assay in mice was used to determine the RBE of 50 MV x-rays. The RBE for 50 MV x-rays in this case was estimated to be 1.06 at crypt surviving fraction 0.1. Photonuclear processes are proposed as one possible explanation to the higher RBE for 50 MV x-rays. Several studies of biological response to ionizing radiation of high absorbed dose rates have been performed, often with conflicting results. With the aim of investigating whether a difference in effect between irradiation at high dose rates and at conventional dose rates could be verified, pulsed 50 MeV electrons from a clinical accelerator were used for experiments with ultra high dose rates (mean dose rate: 3.8 x 10^ Gy/s) in comparison to conventional (mean dose rate: 9.6 x 10"^ Gy/s). V-79 cells were irradiated in vitro under both oxic and anoxic conditions. No significant difference in relative biological effectiveness (RBE) or oxygen enhancement ratio (OER) was observed for ultra high dose rates compared to conventional dose rates. A central issue in clinical radiobiological research is the prediction of responses to different radiation qualities. The choice of cell survival and dose response model greatly influences the results. In this context the relationship between theory and model is emphasized. Generally, the interpretations of experimental data are dependent on the model. Cell survival models are systematized with respect to their relations to radiobiological theories of cell kill. The growing knowledge of biological, physical, and chemical mechanisms is reflected in the formulation of new models. This study shows that recent modelling has been more oriented towards the stochastic fluctuations connected to radiation energy deposition. This implies that the traditional cell survival models ought to be complemented by models of stochastic energy deposition processes at the intracellular level. / <p>S. 1-44: sammanfattning, s. 47-130: 5 uppsatser</p> / digitalisering@umu

The focus of this thesis lies on the development, and implementation, of parallel transmission (pTx) techniques in magnetic resonance imaging for flip-angle homogenization throughout the human brain at ultra-high field. In order to allow in-vivo demonstrations, a conservative yet viable safety concept is introduced to control the absorbed radiofrequency (RF) power . Subsequently, novel methods for local SAR control and non-selective RF pulse-design are investigated. The impact of these short and energy-efficient waveforms, referred to as kT-points, is first demonstrated in the context of the small-tip-angle domain. Targeting a larger scope of applications, the kT-points design is then generalized to encompass large flip angle excitations and inversions. This concept is applied to one of the most commonly used T1-weighted sequences in neuroimaging. Results thus obtained at 7 Tesla are compared to images acquired with a clinical setup at 3 Tesla, validating the principles of the kT-points method and demonstrating that pTx-enabled ultra-high field systems can also be competitive in the context of T1-weighted imaging. Finally, simplifications in the global design of the pTx-implementation are studied in order to obtain a more cost-effective solution.

A new mesoporous MOF, Zn4O(bpdc)(btctb)4/3 (DUT-32), containing linear ditopic (bpdc2−; 4,4′-biphenylenedicarboxylic acid) and tritopic (btctb3−; 4,4′,4′′-[benzene-1,3,5-triyltris(carbonylimino)]tris-benzoate) linkers, was synthesised. The highly porous solid has a total pore volume of 3.16 cm3 g−1 and a specific BET surface area of 6411 m2 g−1, adding this compound to the top ten porous materials with the highest BET surface area.

Ultra-high strength steels is known to be susceptible for hydrogen embrittlement at very low concentrations of hydrogen. In this thesis three methods to prevent or reduce the hydrogen embrittlement in martensitic steel, with tensile strength of 1500 MPa, were studied. First, a barrier layer of aluminium designed to prevent hydrogen to enter the steel, which were deposited by vacuum evaporation. Second, a decarburization process of the steels surface designed to mitigate the induced stresses from cutting. Last, a hydrogen relief treatment at 150°C for 11 days and 200°C for 4 days, to reduce the hydrogen concentration in the steel. The effect of the hydrogen embrittlement was analyzed by manual measurements of the elongations after a slow strain rate testing at 5*10-6 mm/s, and the time to fracture in an in-situ constant load test with a current density of 1.92 mA/cm2 in a 0.5 M Na2SO4 solution. The barrier layer showed an increase in time to fracture, but also a decrease in elongations. The decarburized steel had a small increase in the time to fracture, but not enough to make it a feasible process. The hydrogen relief treatment showed a general decrease in hydrogen concentrations, but the elongation measurements was irregular although with a tendency for improvement. The simplicity of the hydrogen relief treatment makes it an interesting process to reduce the influence of hydrogen embrittlement. However, more investigations are necessary.

In this thesis, new design concepts for arch bridges using ultra high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete are developed for spans of 50 to 400 m. These concepts are light-weight and efficient, and thus have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of construction. Lightness is achieved by the thinning of structural components and the efficient use of precompression in the arch, rather than by the decrease of bending stiffness. Using the advanced properties of the material, the design concepts were shown to reduce the consumption of concrete in arch bridges by more than 50% relative to arches built using conventional concrete technology. In addition to span length, other design parameters including span-to-rise ratio and deck-stiffening were considered, resulting in a total of seventy-two design concepts. Other important contributions made in this thesis include: (1) the development of a simple analytical model that describes the transition of shallow arches between pure arch behaviour and pure beam behaviour, (2) a comprehensive comparative study of 58 existing concrete arch bridges that characterizes the current state-of-the-art and serves as a valuable reference design tool, and (3) the development and experimental validation of general and simplified methods for calculating the capacity of slender ultra high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete members under compression and bending. The research presented in this thesis provides a means for designers to take full advantage of the high compressive and tensile strengths of the concrete and hence to exploit the economic potential offered by the material.

The thesis "Four Essays on the Econometric Modelling of Volatility and Durations" consists of four research papers in the area of financial econometrics on topics of the modelling of financial market volatility and the econometrics of ultra-high-frequency data. The aim of the thesis is to develop new econometric methods for modelling and hypothesis testing in these areas. The second chapter introduces a new model, the time-varying GARCH (TV-GARCH) model, in which volatility has a smooth time-varying structure of either additive or multiplicative type. To characterize smooth changes in the (un)conditional variance we assume that the parameters vary smoothly over time according to the logistic transition function. A data-based modelling technique is used for specifying the parametric structure of the TV-GARCH models. This is done by testing a sequence of hypotheses by Lagrange multiplier tests presented in the chapter. Misspecification tests are also provided for evaluating the adequacy of the estimated model. The third chapter addresses the issue of modelling deterministic changes in the unconditional variance over a long return series. The modelling strategy is illustrated with an application to the daily returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index from 1920 until 2003. The empirical results sustain the hypothesis that the assumption of constancy of the unconditional variance is not adequate over long return series and indicate that deterministic changes in the unconditional variance may be associated with macroeconomic factors. In the fourth chapter we propose an extension of the univariate multiplicative TV-GARCH model to the multivariate Conditional Correlation GARCH (CC-GARCH) framework. The variance equations are parameterized such that they combine the long-run and the short-run dynamic behaviour of the volatilities. In this framework, the long-run behaviour is described by the individual unconditional variances, and it is allowed to vary smoothly over time according to the logistic transition function. The effects of modelling the nonstationary variance component are examined empirically in several CC-GARCH models using pairs of seven daily stock return series from the S&amp;P 500 index. The results show that the magnitude of such effect varies across different stock series and depends on the structure of the conditional correlation matrix. An important feature of financial durations is the evidence of a strong diurnal variation over the trading day. In the fifth chapter we propose a new parameterization for describing the diurnal pattern of trading activity. The parametric structure of the diurnal component allows the duration process to change smoothly over the time-of-day according to the logistic transition function. The empirical results suggest that the diurnal variation may not always have the inverted U-shaped pattern for the trade durations as documented in earlier studies.