On some design aspects of rotary vane pumps

A simple graphical design procedure is established for designing rotary vane vacuum pumps with capacities ranging from 20 litre/min to 500 litre/min, normally used in small laboratories. A new term called the idle angle is defined and its influence on the volumetric efficiency of some commercially available pumps is discussed.

Aspects of tautomerism 12-Some causes and consequences of participation in the solvolysis of acid chlorides

Solvolysis of nine representative half ester acid chlorides in aqueous acetone have been studied. Isomers solvolyse at distinctly different rates and furnish the original acids. Contrary to the well accepted views, no evidence for tautomerism or isomerism between the isomeric pairs of acid chlorides could be detected. In a number of cases alkoxy group participates in the solvolysis of neighbouring acid chlorides. This results in (a) rate enhancement and (b) partial or total shift of the reaction pattern from SN2 to SN1. Isomeric half ester acid chlorides, in the presence of a sufficiently strong Lewis acid, could give the same oxonium salt. Rearrangements observed in the reactions of unsymmetrical 1,2- and 1,3-dicarboxylic acid derivatives could be ascribed to the prior formation of common oxonium salt intermediates in the presence of Lewis acids.

Aspects and Applications of Pulse Sequence Design for Solution-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

NMR spectroscopy enables the study of biomolecules from peptides and carbohydrates to proteins at atomic resolution. The technique uniquely allows for structure determination of molecules in solution-state. It also gives insights into dynamics and intermolecular interactions important for determining biological function. Detailed molecular information is entangled in the nuclear spin states. The information can be extracted by pulse sequences designed to measure the desired molecular parameters. Advancement of pulse sequence methodology therefore plays a key role in the development of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy. A range of novel pulse sequences for solution-state NMR spectroscopy are presented in this thesis. The pulse sequences are described in relation to the molecular information they provide. The pulse sequence experiments represent several advances in NMR spectroscopy with particular emphasis on applications for proteins. Some of the novel methods are focusing on methyl-containing amino acids which are pivotal for structure determination. Methyl-specific assignment schemes are introduced for increasing the size range of 13C,15N labeled proteins amenable to structure determination without resolving to more elaborate labeling schemes. Furthermore, cost-effective means are presented for monitoring amide and methyl correlations simultaneously. Residual dipolar couplings can be applied for structure refinement as well as for studying dynamics. Accurate methods for measuring residual dipolar couplings in small proteins are devised along with special techniques applicable when proteins require high pH or high temperature solvent conditions. Finally, a new technique is demonstrated to diminish strong-coupling induced artifacts in HMBC, a routine experiment for establishing long-range correlations in unlabeled molecules. The presented experiments facilitate structural studies of biomolecules by NMR spectroscopy.

TlBr raw material purification, crystal growth, annealing, detector fabrication and characterisation for gamma-ray detector applications

The research reported in this thesis dealt with single crystals of thallium bromide grown for gamma-ray detector applications. The crystals were used to fabricate room temperature gamma-ray detectors. Routinely produced TlBr detectors often are poor quality. Therefore, this study concentrated on developing the manufacturing processes for TlBr detectors and methods of characterisation that can be used for optimisation of TlBr purity and crystal quality. The processes under concern were TlBr raw material purification, crystal growth, annealing and detector fabrication. The study focused on single crystals of TlBr grown from material purified by a hydrothermal recrystallisation method. In addition, hydrothermal conditions for synthesis, recrystallisation, crystal growth and annealing of TlBr crystals were examined. The final manufacturing process presented in this thesis deals with TlBr material purified by the Bridgman method. Then, material is hydrothermally recrystallised in pure water. A travelling molten zone (TMZ) method is used for additional purification of the recrystallised product and then for the final crystal growth. Subsequent processing is similar to that described in the literature. In this thesis, literature on improving quality of TlBr material/crystal and detector performance is reviewed. Aging aspects as well as the influence of different factors (temperature, time, electrode material and so on) on detector stability are considered and examined. The results of the process development are summarised and discussed. This thesis shows the considerable improvement in the charge carrier properties of a detector due to additional purification by hydrothermal recrystallisation. As an example, a thick (4 mm) TlBr detector produced by the process was fabricated and found to operate successfully in gamma-ray detection, confirming the validity of the proposed purification and technological steps. However, for the complete improvement of detector performance, further developments in crystal growth are required. The detector manufacturing process was optimized by characterisation of material and crystals using methods such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), polarisation microscopy, high-resolution inductively coupled plasma mass (HR-ICPM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), ultraviolet and visual (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), current-voltage (I-V) and capacity voltage (CV) characterisation, and photoconductivity, as well direct detector examination.

Electrophoretic mobility of cell nuclei (EMN index) as a biomarker of the biological aging process: Considering the association between EMN index and age

The present study examined whether a specific property of cell microstructures may be useful as a biomarker of aging. Specifically, the association between age and changes of cellular structures reflected in electrophoretic mobility of cell nuclei index (EMN index) values across the adult lifespan was examined. This report considers findings from cross sections of females (n = 1273) aged 18–98 years, and males (n = 506) aged 19–93 years. A Biotest apparatus was used to perform intracellular microelectrophoresis on buccal epithelial cells collected from each individual. EMN index was calculated on the basis of the number of epithelial cells with mobile nuclei in reference to the cells with immobile nuclei per 100 cells. Regression analyses indicated a significant negative association between EMN index value and age for men (r = −0.71, p < 0.001) and women (r = −0.60, p < 0.001); demonstrating a key requirement that must be met by a biomarker of aging. The strength of association observed between EMN index and age for both men and women was encouraging and supports the potential use of EMN index for determining a biological age of an individual (or a group). In this study, a new attempt of complex explanation of cellular mechanisms contributing to age related changes of the EMN index was made. In this study, a new attempt of complex explanation of cellular mechanisms contributing to age related changes of the EMN index was made. EMN index has demonstrated potential to meet criteria proposed for biomarkers of aging and further investigations are necessary.

Aspects of Austrian Antisemitism at the Decline of the Habsburg Empire 1975

Manuscript: "Aspects of Austrian Antisemitism at the Decline of the Habsburg Empire". Background of political anti-Semitism in Austria and the internal conditions which fostered its development.

Perceived maternal psychological control and school adjustment in Chinese adolescents: Associations, mediations and moderations

This study aimed to examine the complicated process involved in the influence of parental psychological control on academic self-concept and academic performance in Chinese adolescents. The study considered possible mediating and moderating factors that might influence the relationships of interest. Findings of this study suggested that perceived maternal psychological control was related to adolescents' academic self-concept, and the relationship was mediated by adolescents' satisfaction on basic psychological needs. No statistically significant association was found between perceived maternal psychological control and adolescents' academic performance, instead, the relationship was moderated by adolescent age.

Patient Safety - A Psychological Perspective

This comprehensive book takes a psychological perspective on patient safety. It is based on the most recent theoretical and empirical research evidence from psychology (including clinical, work, and organizational psychology) and adjacent social and behavioral sciences such as human factors. Factors that influence safety-related experiences, behaviors, and outcomes of patients and professionals working in clinical settings such as medical practices and hospitals are reviewed, structured, and critically evaluated. Consistent with the complexity of the topic, the author takes a multi-level approach to patient safety, which includes a review of individual, team, and organizational factors and outcomes. The book describes how these factors, by themselves and in combination, can facilitate or impede patient safety. Individual factors include safety-relevant knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability. Team factors include group communication, training, and leadership. Finally, organizational factors include the safety culture and climate. Throughout the book, different evidence-based intervention programs are described that can help practitioners promote patient safety and prevent accidents. The book is a valuable resource for both researchers and practitioners interested in understanding, maintaining, and improving patient safety in a variety of applied settings. It is based on the most up-to-date research evidence from psychology and neighboring disciplines, and it is written in a clear and non-technical language understandable for a wide audience.

Aspects of atomic decompositions and Bergman projections

The concept of an atomic decomposition was introduced by Coifman and Rochberg (1980) for weighted Bergman spaces on the unit disk. By the Riemann mapping theorem, functions in every simply connected domain in the complex plane have an atomic decomposition. However, a decomposition resulting from a conformal mapping of the unit disk tends to be very implicit and often lacks a clear connection to the geometry of the domain that it has been mapped into. The lattice of points, where the atoms of the decomposition are evaluated, usually follows the geometry of the original domain, but after mapping the domain into another this connection is easily lost and the layout of points becomes seemingly random. In the first article we construct an atomic decomposition directly on a weighted Bergman space on a class of regulated, simply connected domains. The construction uses the geometric properties of the regulated domain, but does not explicitly involve any conformal Riemann map from the unit disk. It is known that the Bergman projection is not bounded on the space L-infinity of bounded measurable functions. Taskinen (2004) introduced the locally convex spaces LV-infinity consisting of measurable and HV-infinity of analytic functions on the unit disk with the latter being a closed subspace of the former. They have the property that the Bergman projection is continuous from LV-infinity onto HV-infinity and, in some sense, the space HV-infinity is the smallest possible substitute to the space H-infinity of analytic functions. In the second article we extend the above result to a smoothly bounded strictly pseudoconvex domain. Here the related reproducing kernels are usually not known explicitly, and thus the proof of continuity of the Bergman projection is based on generalised Forelli-Rudin estimates instead of integral representations. The minimality of the space LV-infinity is shown by using peaking functions first constructed by Bell (1981). Taskinen (2003) showed that on the unit disk the space HV-infinity admits an atomic decomposition. This result is generalised in the third article by constructing an atomic decomposition for the space HV-infinity on a smoothly bounded strictly pseudoconvex domain. In this case every function can be presented as a linear combination of atoms such that the coefficient sequence belongs to a suitable Köthe co-echelon space.

Mathematical Aspects of Financial Markets with Frictions

Frictions are factors that hinder trading of securities in financial markets. Typical frictions include limited market depth, transaction costs, lack of infinite divisibility of securities, and taxes. Conventional models used in mathematical finance often gloss over these issues, which affect almost all financial markets, by arguing that the impact of frictions is negligible and, consequently, the frictionless models are valid approximations. This dissertation consists of three research papers, which are related to the study of the validity of such approximations in two distinct modeling problems. Models of price dynamics that are based on diffusion processes, i.e., continuous strong Markov processes, are widely used in the frictionless scenario. The first paper establishes that diffusion models can indeed be understood as approximations of price dynamics in markets with frictions. This is achieved by introducing an agent-based model of a financial market where finitely many agents trade a financial security, the price of which evolves according to price impacts generated by trades. It is shown that, if the number of agents is large, then under certain assumptions the price process of security, which is a pure-jump process, can be approximated by a one-dimensional diffusion process. In a slightly extended model, in which agents may exhibit herd behavior, the approximating diffusion model turns out to be a stochastic volatility model. Finally, it is shown that when agents' tendency to herd is strong, logarithmic returns in the approximating stochastic volatility model are heavy-tailed. The remaining papers are related to no-arbitrage criteria and superhedging in continuous-time option pricing models under small-transaction-cost asymptotics. Guasoni, Rásonyi, and Schachermayer have recently shown that, in such a setting, any financial security admits no arbitrage opportunities and there exist no feasible superhedging strategies for European call and put options written on it, as long as its price process is continuous and has the so-called conditional full support (CFS) property. Motivated by this result, CFS is established for certain stochastic integrals and a subclass of Brownian semistationary processes in the two papers. As a consequence, a wide range of possibly non-Markovian local and stochastic volatility models have the CFS property.

Exploring privacy for ubiquitous computing: Tools, methods and experiments

Ubiquitous computing is about making computers and computerized artefacts a pervasive part of our everyday lifes, bringing more and more activities into the realm of information. The computationalization, informationalization of everyday activities increases not only our reach, efficiency and capabilities but also the amount and kinds of data gathered about us and our activities. In this thesis, I explore how information systems can be constructed so that they handle this personal data in a reasonable manner. The thesis provides two kinds of results: on one hand, tools and methods for both the construction as well as the evaluation of ubiquitous and mobile systems---on the other hand an evaluation of the privacy aspects of a ubiquitous social awareness system. The work emphasises real-world experiments as the most important way to study privacy. Additionally, the state of current information systems as regards data protection is studied. The tools and methods in this thesis consist of three distinct contributions. An algorithm for locationing in cellular networks is proposed that does not require the location information to be revealed beyond the user's terminal. A prototyping platform for the creation of context-aware ubiquitous applications called ContextPhone is described and released as open source. Finally, a set of methodological findings for the use of smartphones in social scientific field research is reported. A central contribution of this thesis are the pragmatic tools that allow other researchers to carry out experiments. The evaluation of the ubiquitous social awareness application ContextContacts covers both the usage of the system in general as well as an analysis of privacy implications. The usage of the system is analyzed in the light of how users make inferences of others based on real-time contextual cues mediated by the system, based on several long-term field studies. The analysis of privacy implications draws together the social psychological theory of self-presentation and research in privacy for ubiquitous computing, deriving a set of design guidelines for such systems. The main findings from these studies can be summarized as follows: The fact that ubiquitous computing systems gather more data about users can be used to not only study the use of such systems in an effort to create better systems but in general to study phenomena previously unstudied, such as the dynamic change of social networks. Systems that let people create new ways of presenting themselves to others can be fun for the users---but the self-presentation requires several thoughtful design decisions that allow the manipulation of the image mediated by the system. Finally, the growing amount of computational resources available to the users can be used to allow them to use the data themselves, rather than just being passive subjects of data gathering.

Spatiotemporal aspects of Hendra Virus infection in Pteropid Bats (Flying-Foxes) in Eastern Australia

Hendra virus (HeV) causes highly lethal disease in horses and humans in the eastern Australian states of Queensland (QLD) and New South Wales (NSW), with multiple equine cases now reported on an annual basis. Infection and excretion dynamics in pteropid bats (flying-foxes), the recognised natural reservoir, are incompletely understood. We sought to identify key spatial and temporal factors associated with excretion in flying-foxes over a 2300 km latitudinal gradient from northern QLD to southern NSW which encompassed all known equine case locations. The aim was to strengthen knowledge of Hendra virus ecology in flying-foxes to improve spillover risk prediction and exposure risk mitigation strategies, and thus better protect horses and humans. Monthly pooled urine samples were collected from under roosting flying-foxes over a three-year period and screened for HeV RNA by quantitative RT-PCR. A generalised linear model was employed to investigate spatiotemporal associations with HeV detection in 13,968 samples from 27 roosts. There was a non-linear relationship between mean HeV excretion prevalence and five latitudinal regions, with excretion moderate in northern and central QLD, highest in southern QLD/northern NSW, moderate in central NSW, and negligible in southern NSW. Highest HeV positivity occurred where black or spectacled flying-foxes were present; nil or very low positivity rates occurred in exclusive grey-headed flying-fox roosts. Similarly, little red flying-foxes are evidently not a significant source of virus, as their periodic extreme increase in numbers at some roosts was not associated with any concurrent increase in HeV detection. There was a consistent, strong winter seasonality to excretion in the southern QLD/northern NSW and central NSW regions. This new information allows risk management strategies to be refined and targeted, mindful of the potential for spatial risk profiles to shift over time with changes in flying-fox species distribution.

Mechanistic Aspects of Shape Selection and Symmetry Breaking during Nanostructure Growth by Wet Chemical Methods

The control of shapes of nanocrystals is crucial for using them as building blocks for various applications. In this paper, we present a critical overview of the issues involved in shape-controlled synthesis of nanostructures. In particular, we focus on the mechanisms by which anisotropic structures of high-symmetry materials (fcc crystals, for instance) could be realized. Such structures require a symmetry-breaking mechanism to be operative that typically leads to selection of one of the facets/directions for growth over all the other symmetry-equivalent crystallographic facets. We show how this selection could arise for the growth of one-dimensional structures leading to ultrafine metal nanowires and for the case of two-dimensional nanostructures where the layer-by-layer growth takes place at low driving forces leading to plate-shaped structures. We illustrate morphology diagrams to predict the formation of two-dimensional structures during wet chemical synthesis. We show the generality of the method by extending it to predict the growth of plate-shaped inorganics produced by a precipitation reaction. Finally, we present the growth of crystals under high driving forces that can lead to the formation of porous structures with large surface areas.