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Shape stability, the ability of the wood to retain its shape, is one of the most important parameters when using timber as a building material and for other applications. Generally, timber undergoes changes in dimensions and shape when its moisture content is changed. However, this can often not be tolerated in constructions and thus, methods to improve the shape stability have to be found. In th
The simulation of physical phenomena occurring in chemical reactors requires the description of the kinetics involved in the underlying combustion process. Kinetic models are developed for this purpose. A software package, BlueBellMouse, has been developed to facilitate a deeper automatization and ease of simulation, reduction and optimization of kinetic models. A kinetic model is made of a list o
In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in the indoor environment and its connections with public health. One important topic discussed has been the relation between the moisture in buildings and health.
Cementitious materials, when cast, contain excess water since this is necessary for workability and for flow properties. The pore solutions in cementitious materials, besid
Abstract: The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate ProstaLund Feedback Treatment® (PLFT®) and the CoreTherm® device with regard to biophysics, mechanisms of action, treatment indications, additional techniques, efficacy and safety in the treatment of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The application of two biophysical equations in the PLFT software is explained. The calculations
Politics induce economic agents to organise into special interest groups (SIGs) and act strategically to adjust their economic decisions and to conduct rent-seeking activities in order do improve the situation inflicted on them by policy. This thesis examines, in four essays, different forms of SIG influence on public policy in different institutional contexts. The two first essays examine two rel
Nearly one million new cases of gastric cancer are diagnosed annually throughout the world. Even though the incidence has fallen dramatically in recent decades, this disease is still the second leading cause of cancer death in a global perspective. The geographic distribution of gastric cancer varies markedly, with the highest rates in Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and China. This variatio
The price of a good is said to be nonlinear if the unit price not is constant but depends on some aspect of the quantity (or quality) purchased. This form of pricing is commonly used in many industries, e.g. the electricity and water industries, and has many desirable properties. For example, nonlinear pricing is often necessary for (Pareto) efficiency and nonlinear pricing can be used as an instr
One month and one year after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (n=296), coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) (n=99) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (n=18) patients completed a questionnaire for self-assessment of quality of life (QoL) during the period 1989?1991. Patients differed from age- and sex-matched controls (n=88) in both somatic and emotional dimensions, but less after one
Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs) have been defined to have abilities of both self-renewal and multi-lineage differen-tiation. The balance between these abilities is rigorously controlled under steady-state status (homeostasis) and when the normal processes of self-renewal and differentiation become deregulated, a disorder of blood system (such as leukemias) can occur. HSCs are enriched in lineage n
The C1 subcomponent C1q and the mannan-binding lectin (MBL) are recognition proteins of the complement system, and have similar structure. C1q binds to IgG and IgM and activates the classical pathway. MBL binds to carbohydrate structures and activates the lectin pathway. Autoantibodies to C1q are frequently found in severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and are present in virtually all patient
This dissertation, which is an analysis of the entrepreneur at the micro level, supplements and underpins the understanding and use of the entrepreneur as an agent of social change in the analysis of economic change at the macro level. The aim of the thesis is firstly to seek out and identify businessmen of our time who claim to be innovative, and secondly to un-dertake a qualitative study and ana
The problem of fluid-structure interaction, occurring in many industrial and engineering applications, are of great importance, since interaction of a flow and a structure in it can lead to serious damages of the structure. The fluid-structure interaction gives rise to a variety of different physical phenomena such as flow-induced vibration, noise generation, etc. As an alternative to experimental
The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three essays, considering sickness insurance, social norms and absence certification. The first essay, Group-Specific Social Norms and Economic Incentives in a General Welfare System, investigates the interaction between economic incentives and social influences in a general welfare system. We relate the results to sickness insurance. The model i
This thesis develops new techniques for analyzing cointegrated relationships in panel data. The first chapter is introductory while the remaining six contain the main contributions. The second chapter is concerned with the estimation of a cointegrated panel relation with endogenous regressors, in which case the least squares estimator is biased unless it is conditioned on the lags and leads of th
A contemporary challenge when designing interactive artifacts is to take into account the wealth of devices, systems, and tools people use every day - here termed an 'interaction ecology'. This thesis addresses three research issues. Firstly, the character of sound perception, and how auditory interaction can be applied to ubiquitous computing. Secondly, how everyday sounds make people aware of su
This thesis presents a new method that can handle a general thick Frequency Selective Structure (FSS), that consists of an arbitrary number of aperture layers and dielectric layers. The method is based on the Mode Matching Technique (MMT) and the finite element method (FEM). The thesis consists of a General Introduction and five scientific papers. The General Introduction gives an overview of fil
Speaker age is an important paralinguistic feature in speech which has to be considered in the study of phonetic variation. Knowledge about this feature may be used to improve speech technology applications, e.g. automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis. The present thesis describes six studies of several phonetic aspects of age-related variation in speech. As the speech production mecha
The global expansion of democratic rule in the developing world has attracted much scholarly interest. The societal implications of the democratisation process, i.e. what democratisation actually means for the citizens in terms of opportunities for participation and influence, have not received as much attention though. This study makes a contribution to redressing the imbalance. Drawing on normat
The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four independent research papers, summarized as follows. The introductory chapter discusses the role of economics in international health and the policy contributions of each of the particular papers. In addition, the data and the methods that have been used are discussed. Paper I, entitled Community-based health insurance in low-income countries:
In this thesis, the usability of Virtual Reality (VR) has been investigated and developed within two applications: participatory design of workplaces and brain injury rehabilitation. In the first application, VR is used in combination with full scale modelling, drama and democratic meetings in an Envisionment Workshop. This workshop has been developed and tested through several real workplace int
