Enhancing the humidity response time of polymer optical fiber Bragg grating by using laser micromachining

The humidity sensors constructed from polymer optical fiber Bragg gratings (POFBG) respond to the water content change in the fiber induced by varying environmental condition. The water content change is a diffusion process. Therefore the response time of the POFBG sensor strongly depends on the geometry and size of the fiber. In this work we investigate the use of laser micromachining of D-shaped and slotted structures to improve the response time of polymer fiber grating based humidity sensors. A significant improvement in the response time has been achieved in laser micromachined D-shaped POFBG humidity sensors. The slotted geometry allows water rapid access to the core region but this does not of itself improve response time due to the slow expansion of the bulk of the cladding. We show that by straining the slotted sensor, the expansion component can be removed resulting in the response time being determined only by the more rapid, water induced change in core refractive index. In this way the response time is reduced by a factor of 2.5.

Humidity responsivity of poly(methyl methacrylate)-based optical fiber Bragg grating sensors

The humidity response of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-based optical fiber Bragg gratings (POFBGs) has been studied. The characteristic wavelength of the grating is modulated by water absorption-induced swelling and refractive index change in the fiber. This work indicates that anisotropic expansion may exist in PMMA optical fiber, reducing the humidity responsivity of the grating and introducing uncertainty in the responsivity from fiber to fiber. By pre-straining a grating, one can get rid of this uncertainty and simultaneously improve the POFBG response time. © 2014 Optical Society of America.

Highly sensitive temperature and strain sensors based on all-fiber 45°-TFG Lyot filter

We demonstrate highly sensitive temperature and strain sensors based on an all-fiber Lyot filter structure, which is formed by concatenating two 45°-TFGs (tilted fiber gratings) with a PM fiber cavity. The experiment results show the all-fiber 45°-TFG Lyot filter has very high sensitivity to strain and temperature. The 45°-TFG Lyot filters of two different cavity lengths (18cm and 40 cm) have been evaluated for temperature sensing by heating a section of the cavity from 10°C to 50°C. The experiment results have shown remarkably high temperature sensitivities of 0.616nm/°C for 18cm and 0.31nm/°C for 40cm long cavity filter, respectively. The 18cm long cavity filter has been subjected to strain variations up to around 550μ ε and the filter has exhibited strain sensitivities of 0.02499nm/μ ε and 0.012nm/μ ε for two straining situations, where its cavity middle section of 18cm and 9cm were stretched, respectively. © 2012 SPIE.

Enhancing the sensitivity of poly(methyl methacrylate) based optical fiber Bragg grating temperature sensors

In poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-based optical fiber gratings (POFBGs), the temperature response is determined by thermal expansion and the thermo-optic effect of the fiber. Because thermal expansion introduces a positive change and the thermo-optic effect introduces a negative change in the Bragg wavelength of the POFBG, they cancel out each other to some extent, leading to reduced and varying temperature sensitivity. By pre-straining a POFBG, the contribution of thermal expansion can be removed, and, consequently, the temperature sensitivity of POFBG can be greatly enhanced. Theoretical analysis also indicates a reduced thermo-optic coefficient of POFBG due to restrained linear expansion that matches experimental results.

Effects of pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation on PFM function and morphology in older women

Aims The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a pelvic floor muscle (PFM) rehabilitation program on incontinence symptoms, PFM function, and morphology in older women with SUI. Methods Women 60 years old and older with at least weekly episodes of SUI were recruited. Participants were evaluated before and after a 12-week group PFM rehabilitation intervention. The evaluations included 3-day bladder diaries, symptom, and quality of life questionnaires, PFM function testing with dynamometry (force) and electromyography (activation) during seven tasks: rest, PFM maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), straining, rapid-repeated PFM contractions, a 60 sec sustained PFM contraction, a single cough and three repeated coughs, and sagittal MRI recorded at rest, during PFM MVCs and during straining to assess PFM morphology. Results Seventeen women (68.9 ± 5.5 years) participated. Following the intervention the frequency of urine leakage decreased and disease-specific quality of life improved significantly. PFM function improved significantly: the participants were able to perform more rapid-repeated PFM contractions; they activated their PFMs sooner when coughing and they were better able to maintain a PFM contraction between repeated coughs. Pelvic organ support improved significantly: the anorectal angle was decreased and the urethrovescial junction was higher at rest, during contraction and while straining. Conclusions This study indicated that improvements in urine leakage were produced along with improvements in PFM co-ordination (demonstrated by the increased number of rapid PFM contractions and the earlier PFM activation when coughing), motor-control, pelvic organ support.

Other Than a Citizen: Vernacular Poetics in Postwar America

Few symbols of 1950s-1960s America remain as central to our contemporary conception of Cold War culture as the iconic ranch-style suburban home. While the house took center stage in the Nixon/Khrushchev kitchen debates as a symbol of modern efficiency and capitalist values, its popularity depended largely upon its obvious appropriation of vernacular architecture from the 19th century, those California haciendas and Texas dogtrots that dotted the American west. Contractors like William Levitt modernized the historical common houses, hermetically sealing their porous construction, all while using the ranch-style roots of the dwelling to galvanize a myth of an indigenous American culture. At a moment of intense occupational bureaucracy, political uncertainty and atomized social life, the rancher gave a self-identifying white consumer base reason to believe they could master their own plot in the expansive frontier. Only one example of America’s mid-century love affair with commodified vernacular forms, the ranch-style home represents a broad effort on the part of corporate and governmental interest groups to transform the vernacular into a style that expresses a distinctly homogenous vision of American culture. “Other than a Citizen” begins with an anatomy of that transformation, and then turns to the work of four poets who sought to reclaim the vernacular from that process of standardization and use it to countermand the containment-era strategies of Cold War America.

In four chapters, I trace references to common speech and verbal expressivity in the poetry and poetic theory of Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and Gwendolyn Brooks, against the historical backdrop of the Free-Speech Movement and the rise of mass-culture. When poets frame nonliterary speech within the literary page, they encounter the inability of writing to capture the vital ephemerality of verbal expression. Rather than treat this limitation as an impediment, the writers in my study use the poem to dramatize the fugitivity of speech, emphasizing it as a disruptive counterpoint to the technologies of capture. Where critics such as Houston Baker interpret the vernacular strictly in terms of resistance, I take a cue from the poets and argue that the vernacular, rooted etymologically at the intersection of domestic security and enslaved margin, represents a gestalt form, capable at once of establishing centralized power and sparking minor protest. My argument also expands upon Michael North’s exploration of the influence of minstrelsy and regionalism on the development of modernist literary technique in The Dialect of Modernism. As he focuses on writers from the early 20th century, I account for the next generation, whose America was not a culturally inferior collection of immigrants but an imperial power, replete with economic, political and artistic dominance. Instead of settling for an essentially American idiom, the poets in my study saw in the vernacular not phonetic misspellings, slang terminology and fragmented syntax, but the potential to provoke and thereby frame a more ethical mode of social life, straining against the regimentation of citizenship.

My attention to the vernacular argues for an alignment among writers who have been segregated by the assumption that race and aesthetics are mutually exclusive categories. In reading these writers alongside one another, “Other than a Citizen” shows how the avant-garde concepts of projective poetics and composition by field develop out of an interest in black expressivity. Conversely, I trace black radicalism and its emphasis on sociality back to the communalism practiced at the experimental arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina, where Olson and Duncan taught. In pressing for this connection, my work reveals the racial politics embedded within the speech-based aesthetics of the postwar era, while foregrounding the aesthetic dimension of militant protest.

Not unlike today, the popular rhetoric of the Cold War insists that to be a citizen involves defending one’s status as a rightful member of an exclusionary nation. To be other than a citizen, as the poets in my study make clear, begins with eschewing the false certainty that accompanies categorical nominalization. In promoting a model of mutually dependent participation, these poets lay the groundwork for an alternative model of civic belonging, where volition and reciprocity replace compliance and self-sufficiency. In reading their lines, we become all the more aware of the cracks that run the length of our load-bearing walls.

Effects of pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation on PFM function and morphology in older women

Aims The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a pelvic floor muscle (PFM) rehabilitation program on incontinence symptoms, PFM function, and morphology in older women with SUI. Methods Women 60 years old and older with at least weekly episodes of SUI were recruited. Participants were evaluated before and after a 12-week group PFM rehabilitation intervention. The evaluations included 3-day bladder diaries, symptom, and quality of life questionnaires, PFM function testing with dynamometry (force) and electromyography (activation) during seven tasks: rest, PFM maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), straining, rapid-repeated PFM contractions, a 60 sec sustained PFM contraction, a single cough and three repeated coughs, and sagittal MRI recorded at rest, during PFM MVCs and during straining to assess PFM morphology. Results Seventeen women (68.9 ± 5.5 years) participated. Following the intervention the frequency of urine leakage decreased and disease-specific quality of life improved significantly. PFM function improved significantly: the participants were able to perform more rapid-repeated PFM contractions; they activated their PFMs sooner when coughing and they were better able to maintain a PFM contraction between repeated coughs. Pelvic organ support improved significantly: the anorectal angle was decreased and the urethrovescial junction was higher at rest, during contraction and while straining. Conclusions This study indicated that improvements in urine leakage were produced along with improvements in PFM co-ordination (demonstrated by the increased number of rapid PFM contractions and the earlier PFM activation when coughing), motor-control, pelvic organ support.

GPS inferred velocity and strain rate fields in eastern Canada

La vallée du fleuve Saint-Laurent, dans l’est du Canada, est l’une des régions sismiques les plus actives dans l’est de l’Amérique du Nord et est caractérisée par de nombreux tremblements de terre intraplaques. Après la rotation rigide de la plaque tectonique, l’ajustement isostatique glaciaire est de loin la plus grande source de signal géophysique dans l’est du Canada. Les déformations et les vitesses de déformation de la croûte terrestre de cette région ont été étudiées en utilisant plus de 14 ans d’observations (9 ans en moyenne) de 112 stations GPS fonctionnant en continu. Le champ de vitesse a été obtenu à partir de séries temporelles de coordonnées GPS quotidiennes nettoyées en appliquant un modèle combiné utilisant une pondération par moindres carrés. Les vitesses ont été estimées avec des modèles de bruit qui incluent les corrélations temporelles des séries temporelles des coordonnées tridimensionnelles. Le champ de vitesse horizontale montre la rotation antihoraire de la plaque nord-américaine avec une vitesse moyenne de 16,8±0,7 mm/an dans un modèle sans rotation nette (no-net-rotation) par rapport à l’ITRF2008. Le champ de vitesse verticale confirme un soulèvement dû à l’ajustement isostatique glaciaire partout dans l’est du Canada avec un taux maximal de 13,7±1,2 mm/an et un affaissement vers le sud, principalement au nord des États-Unis, avec un taux typique de −1 à −2 mm/an et un taux minimum de −2,7±1,4 mm/an. Le comportement du bruit des séries temporelles des coordonnées GPS tridimensionnelles a été analysé en utilisant une analyse spectrale et la méthode du maximum de vraisemblance pour tester cinq modèles de bruit: loi de puissance; bruit blanc; bruit blanc et bruit de scintillation; bruit blanc et marche aléatoire; bruit blanc, bruit de scintillation et marche aléatoire. Les résultats montrent que la combinaison bruit blanc et bruit de scintillation est le meilleur modèle pour décrire la partie stochastique des séries temporelles. Les amplitudes de tous les modèles de bruit sont plus faibles dans la direction nord et plus grandes dans la direction verticale. Les amplitudes du bruit blanc sont à peu près égales à travers la zone d’étude et sont donc surpassées, dans toutes les directions, par le bruit de scintillation et de marche aléatoire. Le modèle de bruit de scintillation augmente l’incertitude des vitesses estimées par un facteur de 5 à 38 par rapport au modèle de bruit blanc. Les vitesses estimées de tous les modèles de bruit sont statistiquement cohérentes. Les paramètres estimés du pôle eulérien de rotation pour cette région sont légèrement, mais significativement, différents de la rotation globale de la plaque nord-américaine. Cette différence reflète potentiellement les contraintes locales dans cette région sismique et les contraintes causées par la différence des vitesses intraplaques entre les deux rives du fleuve Saint-Laurent. La déformation de la croûte terrestre de la région a été étudiée en utilisant la méthode de collocation par moindres carrés. Les vitesses horizontales interpolées montrent un mouvement cohérent spatialement: soit un mouvement radial vers l’extérieur pour les centres de soulèvement maximal au nord et un mouvement radial vers l’intérieur pour les centres d’affaissement maximal au sud, avec une vitesse typique de 1 à 1,6±0,4 mm/an. Cependant, ce modèle devient plus complexe près des marges des anciennes zones glaciaires. Basées selon leurs directions, les vitesses horizontales intraplaques peuvent être divisées en trois zones distinctes. Cela confirme les conclusions d’autres chercheurs sur l’existence de trois dômes de glace dans la région d’étude avant le dernier maximum glaciaire. Une corrélation spatiale est observée entre les zones de vitesses horizontales intraplaques de magnitude plus élevée et les zones sismiques le long du fleuve Saint-Laurent. Les vitesses verticales ont ensuite été interpolées pour modéliser la déformation verticale. Le modèle montre un taux de soulèvement maximal de 15,6 mm/an au sud-est de la baie d’Hudson et un taux d’affaissement typique de 1 à 2 mm/an au sud, principalement dans le nord des États-Unis. Le long du fleuve Saint-Laurent, les mouvements horizontaux et verticaux sont cohérents spatialement. Il y a un déplacement vers le sud-est d’une magnitude d’environ 1,3 mm/an et un soulèvement moyen de 3,1 mm/an par rapport à la plaque l’Amérique du Nord. Le taux de déformation verticale est d’environ 2,4 fois plus grand que le taux de déformation horizontale intraplaque. Les résultats de l’analyse de déformation montrent l’état actuel de déformation dans l’est du Canada sous la forme d’une expansion dans la partie nord (la zone se soulève) et d’une compression dans la partie sud (la zone s’affaisse). Les taux de rotation sont en moyenne de 0,011°/Ma. Nous avons observé une compression NNO-SSE avec un taux de 3.6 à 8.1 nstrain/an dans la zone sismique du Bas-Saint-Laurent. Dans la zone sismique de Charlevoix, une expansion avec un taux de 3,0 à 7,1 nstrain/an est orientée ENE-OSO. Dans la zone sismique de l’Ouest du Québec, la déformation a un mécanisme de cisaillement avec un taux de compression de 1,0 à 5,1 nstrain/an et un taux d’expansion de 1.6 à 4.1 nstrain/an. Ces mesures sont conformes, au premier ordre, avec les modèles d’ajustement isostatique glaciaire et avec la contrainte de compression horizontale maximale du projet World Stress Map, obtenue à partir de la théorie des mécanismes focaux (focal mechanism method).

MOLECULAR MASS MANIPULATION ENABLED BY GRAPHENE BASED NANOSTRUCTURES

The surge of interest in graphene, as epitomized by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010, is attributed to its extraordinary properties. Graphene is ultrathin, mechanically tough, and has amendable surface chemistry. These features make graphene and graphene based nanostructure an ideal candidate for the use of molecular mass manipulation. The controllable and programmable molecular mass manipulation is crucial in enabling future graphene based applications, however is challenging to achieve. This dissertation studies several aspects in molecular mass manipulation including mass transportation, patterning and storage. For molecular mass transportation, two methods based on carbon nanoscroll are demonstrated to be effective. They are torsional buckling instability assisted transportation and surface energy induced radial shrinkage. To achieve a more controllable transportation, a fundamental law of direction transport of molecular mass by straining basal graphene is studied. For molecular mass patterning, we reveal a barrier effect of line defects in graphene, which can enable molecular confining and patterning in a domain of desirable geometry. Such a strategy makes controllable patterning feasible for various types of molecules. For molecular mass storage, we propose a novel partially hydrogenated bilayer graphene structure which has large capacity for mass uptake. Also the mass release can be achieved by simply stretching the structure. Therefore the mass uptake and release is reversible. This kind of structure is crucial in enabling hydrogen fuel based technology. Lastly, spontaneous nanofluidic channel formation enabled by patterned hydrogenation is studied. This novel strategy enables programmable channel formation with pre-defined complex geometry.

Small strain elastic behaviour of unsaturated soil investigated by bender/extender element testing

The aim of this project was to investigate very small strain elastic behaviour of soils under unsaturated conditions, using bender/extender element (BEE) testing. The behaviour of soils at very small strains has been widely studied under saturated conditions, whereas much less work has been performed on very small strain behaviour under unsaturated conditions. A suction-controlled double wall triaxial apparatus for unsaturated soil testing was modified to incorporate three pairs of BEEs transmitting both shear and compression waves with vertical and horizontal directions of wave transmission and wave polarisation. Various different techniques for measuring wave travel time were investigated in both the time domain and the frequency domain and it was concluded that, at least for the current experimental testing programme, peak-to-first-peak in the time domain was the most reliable technique for determining wave travel time. An experimental test programme was performed on samples of compacted speswhite kaolin clay. Two different forms of compaction were employed (i.e. isotropic and anisotropic). Compacted kaolin soil samples were subjected to constant suction loading and unloading stages at three different values of suction, covering both unsaturated conditions (s= 50kPa and s= 300kPa) and saturated conditions (s=0). Loading and unloading stages were performed at three different values of stress ratio (η=0, η=1 and η=-1 ). In some tests a wetting-drying cycle was performed before or within the loading stage, with the wetting-drying cycles including both wetting-induced swelling and wetting-induced collapse compression. BEE tests were performed at regular intervals throughout all test stages, to measure shear wave velocity Vs and compression wave velocity Vp and hence to determine values of shear modulus G and constrained modulus M. The experimental test programme was designed to investigate how very small strain shear modulus G and constrained modulus M varied with unsaturated state variables, including how anisotropy of these parameters developed either with stress state (stress-induced anisotropy) or with previous straining (strain-induced anisotropy). A new expression has been proposed for the very small strain shear modulus G of an isotropic soil under saturated and unsaturated conditions. This expression relates the variation of G to only mean Bishop’s stress p* and specific volume v, and it converges to a well-established expression for saturated soils as degree of saturation approaches 1. The proposed expression for G is able to predict the variation of G under saturated and unsaturated conditions at least as well as existing expressions from the literature and it is considerably simpler (employing fewer state variables and fewer soil constants). In addition, unlike existing expressions from the literature, the values of soil constants in the proposed new expression can be determined from a saturated test. It appeared that, in the current project at least, any strain-induced anisotropy of very small strain elastic behaviour was relatively modest, with the possible exception of loading in triaxial extension. It was therefore difficult to draw any firm conclusion about evolution of strain-induced anisotropy and whether it depended upon the same aspects of soil fabric as evolution of anisotropy of large strain plastic behaviour. Stress-induced anisotropy of very small strain elastic behaviour was apparent in the experimental test programme. An attempt was made to extend the proposed expression for G to include the effect of stress-induced anisotropy. Interpretation of the experimental results indicated that the value of shear modulus was affected by the values of all three principal Bishop’s stresses (in the direction of wave transmission, the direction of wave polarisation and the third mutually perpendicular direction). However, prediction of stress-induced anisotropy was only partially successful, and it was concluded that the effect of Lode angle was also significant.

A "Greater Britain": colonial kin in fictions of settlement, 1850-1890

This dissertation traces the ways in which nineteenth-century fictional narratives of white settlement represent “family” as, on the one hand, an abstract theoretical model for a unified and relatively homogenous British settler empire and on the other, a fundamental challenge to ideas about imperial integrity and transnational Anglo-Saxon racial identification. I argue that representations of transoceanic white families in nineteenth-century fictions about Australian settler colonialism negotiate the tension between the bounded domesticity of an insular English nation and the kind of kinship that spans oceans and continents as a result of mass emigration from the British isles to the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the Australian colonies. As such, these fictions construct productive analogies between the familial metaphors and affective language in the political discourse of “Greater Britain”—-a transoceanic imagined community of British settler colonies and their “mother country” united by race and language—-and ideas of family, gender, and domesticity as they operate within specific bourgeois families. Concerns over the disruption of transoceanic families bear testament to contradictions between the idea of a unified imperial identity (both British and Anglo-Saxon), the proliferation of fractured local identities (such as settlers’ English, Irish Catholic, and Australian nationalisms), and the conspicuous absence of indigenous families from narratives of settlement. I intervene at the intersection of postcolonial literary criticism and gender theory by examining the strategic deployments of heteronormative kinship metaphors and metonymies in the rhetorical consolidation of settler colonial space. Settler colonialism was distinct from the “civilizing” domination of subject peoples in South Asia in that it depended on the rhetorical construction of colonial territory as empty space or as land occupied by nearly extinct “primitive” races. This dissertation argues that political rhetoric, travel narratives, and fiction used the image of white female bourgeois reproductive power and sentimental attachment as a technology for settler colonial success, embodying this technology both in the benevolent figure of the metropolitan “mother country” (the paternalistic female counter to the material realities of patriarchal and violent settler colonial practices) and in fictional juxtapositions of happy white settler fecund families with the solitary self-extinguishing figure of the black aboriginal “savage.” Yet even in the narratives where the continuity and coherence of families across imperial space is questioned—-and “Greater Britain” itself—-domesticity and heteronormative familial relations effectively rewrite settler space as white, Anglo-Saxon and bourgeois, and the sentimentalism of troubled European families masks the presence and genocide of indigenous aboriginal peoples. I analyze a range of novels and political texts, canonical and non-canonical, metropolitan and colonial. My introductory first chapter examines the discourse on a “Greater Britain” in the travel narratives of J.A. Froude, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and Anthony Trollope and in the Oxbridge lectures of Herman Merivale and J.R. Seeley. These writers make arguments for an imperial economy of affect circulating between Britain and the settler colonies that reinforces political connections, and at times surpasses the limits of political possibility by relying on the language of sentiment and feeling to build a transoceanic “Greater British” community. Subsequent chapters show how metropolitan and colonial fiction writers, including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Marcus Clarke, Henry Kingsley, and Catherine Helen Spence, test the viability of this “Greater British” economy of affect by presenting transoceanic family connections and structures straining under the weight of forces including the vast distances between colonies and the “mother country,” settler violence, and the transportation system.

Accidents at work by excessive efforts / inappropriate movements in nurses

Nurses continuously develop various activities that expose them to excessive force and inappropriate movements. Characterize the accidents reported by overexertion and inappropriate movements in Portuguese nurses during 2009 and 2010. Retrospective cross-sectional study, covering the period from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010. Were defined as inclusion criteria, be nurse and having notified by excessive straining and improper motion accident. The information was obtained by reference to the computer record of accidents at work General Administration of Health Services, relating to 672 nurses. There were 672 notifications of accidents by overexertion/ inappropriate moves in Portuguese nurses. The higher prevalence of these accidents was in nurses with over 10 years of service 277 (41.2%), 565 were female (42.6%) in the age group 25-29 (29.9%) and practice time for 555 shifts (82.6%). At admission there were 387 (57.3%) within 3 hours of work 330 (49.1%) and the third day after weekly rest 216 (32.1%). The Mobilization of patients was the most frequent cause of this accident 430 (64.0%). The main effects were the sprains and strains 321 (47.8%), mainly the trunk reached 367 (54.7%) and absenteeism caused 373 (55.5%). On average 17.7 days missed a total of 12.054 days. There was a high prevalence of accidents during the mobilization of prayer on patients so importante to invest in the implementation of mechanical equipment for the mobilization and transport of patients.

Clinical Practice Guideline: irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and functional constipation in the adult

In this Clinical Practice Guideline we discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic approach of adult patients with constipation and abdominal complaints at the confluence of the irritable bowel syndrome spectrum and functional constipation. Both conditions are included among the functional bowel disorders, and have a significant personal, healthcare, and social impact, affecting the quality of life of the patients who suffer from them. The first one is the irritable bowel syndrome subtype, where constipation represents the predominant complaint, in association with recurrent abdominal pain, bloating, and abdominal distension. Constipation is characterized by difficulties with or low frequency of bowel movements, often accompanied by straining during defecation or a feeling of incomplete evacuation. Most cases have no underlying medical cause, and are therefore considered as a functional bowel disorder. There are many clinical and pathophysiological similarities between both disorders, and both respond similarly to commonly used drugs, their primary difference being the presence or absence of pain, albeit not in an "all or nothing" manner. Severity depends not only upon bowel symptom intensity but also upon other biopsychosocial factors (association of gastrointestinal and extraintestinal symptoms, grade of involvement, and perception and behavior variants). Functional bowel disorders are diagnosed using the Rome criteria. This Clinical Practice Guideline has been made consistent with the Rome IV criteria, which were published late in May 2016, and discuss alarm criteria, diagnostic tests, and referral criteria between Primary Care and gastroenterology settings. Furthermore, all the available treatment options (exercise, fluid ingestion, diet with soluble fiber-rich foods, fiber supplementation, other dietary components, osmotic or stimulating laxatives, probiotics, antibiotics, spasmolytics, peppermint essence, prucalopride, linaclotide, lubiprostone, biofeedback, antidepressants, psychological therapy, acupuncture, enemas, sacral root neurostimulation, surgery) are discussed, and practical recommendations are made regarding each of them.

Modelagem analítica e experimental da filtração em meios porosos

Deep bed filtration occurs in several industrial and environmental processes like water filtration and soil contamination. In petroleum industry, deep bed filtration occurs near to injection wells during water injection, causing injectivity reduction. It also takes place during well drilling, sand production control, produced water disposal in aquifers, etc. The particle capture in porous media can be caused by different physical mechanisms (size exclusion, electrical forces, bridging, gravity, etc). A statistical model for filtration in porous media is proposed and analytical solutions for suspended and retained particles are derived. The model, which incorporates particle retention probability, is compared with the classical deep bed filtration model allowing a physical interpretation of the filtration coefficients. Comparison of the obtained analytical solutions for the proposed model with the classical model solutions allows concluding that the larger the particle capture probability, the larger the discrepancy between the proposed and the classical models

Análise da modelagem experimental da perda de injetividade

Injectivity decline, which can be caused by particle retention, generally occurs during water injection or reinjection in oil fields. Several mechanisms, including straining, are responsible for particle retention and pore blocking causing formation damage and injectivity decline. Predicting formation damage and injectivity decline is essential in waterflooding projects. The Classic Model (CM), which incorporates filtration coefficients and formation damage functions, has been widely used to predict injectivity decline. However, various authors have reported significant discrepancies between Classical Model and experimental results, motivating the development of deep bed filtration models considering multiple particle retention mechanisms (Santos & Barros, 2010; SBM). In this dissertation, inverse problem solution was studied and a software for experimental data treatment was developed. Finally, experimental data were fitted using both the CM and SBM. The results showed that, depending on the formation damage function, the predictions for injectivity decline using CM and SBM models can be significantly different