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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
Background - The effects of intervention can be evaluated in different ways, and objective measurements of changes in lung function are commonly used as the outcome measure. Patient-reported outcome (PRO) is an umbrella term used for all patient-based assessments. One important PRO is health-related quality of life (HRQL), which may be used as an evaluative or discriminative measure. Objectives -
Proteins carry out the instructions encoded in genes and are crucial for many important tasks in the living organism. Often the specific three dimensional structure, or fold, of a protein enables it to carry out a given task. It is an open question whether protein folds have arisen independently or whether mutations to existing protein sequences have caused switches to new folds. In the main part
This thesis deals with different aspects of fatigue crack propagation in IN718. The ultimate objective of the work is to gain understanding of the fatigue process, from the macroscopic stress-strain relations to microscopic fatigue crack growth mechanisms. First, the stress-strain relations, which are fundamental in order to understand what the material encounter, are dealt with. The high temperat
Engagement in daily activities is central for people’s health and well-being. Today, our activity arenas mostly cover great geographical areas, and to reach different activities we must travel. However, people with functional limitations are sometimes restricted in their travelling. In order to investigate accessibility problems in different travel chains, the overarching objective of this thesis
Streptomycetes are Gram-positive bacteria with a complex developmental life cycle. They form spores on specialized cells called aerial hyphae, and this sporulation involves alterations in growth, morphogenesis and cell cycle processes like cell division and chromosome segregation. Understanding the developmental mechanisms that streptomycetes have evolved for regulating for example cell division i
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) are omega-3 fatty acids, which have health promoting effects. Since they are highly prone to oxidation, they should be protected, in particular DHA. Several lipids containing DHA were evaluated with respect to the ability of the lipids to protect DHA against peroxidation using an HPLC method developed as part of this research. Furthermore,
Under Indonesia's authoritarian New Order regime of President Suharto, the role envisaged for the small nationalist-Christian coalition the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) was that of a pliant state corporatist party, the existence of which was meant to demonstrate the ostensibly democratic character of the regime. From the second half of the 1980s, however, the party began to develop in a criti
An efficient transfer of energy in molecular systems has proven to be of fundamental importance both in nature and industrial applications. The ability of molecules to work together forming collective excitations, so-called excitons, plays a key role in for example the extraordinary fast energy transfer involved in the first steps of photosynthesis. The characterization of excitonic states in conj
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is probably the most common source of treatable disability in the Western world. There are several disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), which have proven to be of therapeutic efficacy in RA, but the lack of a potent, reliable treatment for early RA is a major problem in modern medicine. An obvious line of approach in the quest for better antirheumatic drugs is
Volatile agents are economically and ecologically acceptable only when administered via low-flow systems. However, sevoflurane degrades during low-flow anaesthesia to compound A, and a high carbon dioxide absorber temperature increases this degradation. This thesis suggests that there is a correlation between apparatus dead-space volume and absorber temperature during low- and minimal-flow sevoflu
Most cells are crowded with solutes, enzymes, nucleic acids, structural proteins and membranes. Crowding promotes macromolecular interactions and determines major properties of the cellular environment such as viscosity, diffusion and inhomogeneity. Macromolecular interactions that involve enzymes can affect the kinetic and regulatory properties of these, hence the interactions are part of the met
This thesis presents results from experimental studies of the interfacial behaviour of surfactants and enzymes at model surfaces. The main technique used throughout the work was ellipsometry. Studies of surfactant adsorption in static and dynamic wetting situations were performed to investigate adsorption behaviour close to the three-phase contact line (tpl) during dynamic wetting. It was demonst
The oxidation of Rh, Pd and Pt is studied under conditions ranging from ultra high vacuum to ambient pressures, with emphasis on a complete understanding of the geometry of the various oxide structures found. The investigations use a combination of various experimental methods, including high resolution core level spectroscopy, low energy electron diffraction, surface x-ray diffraction and scannin
Under aerobic conditions, most yeasts such as Kluyveromyces lactis, prefer the respiratory pathway and some, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae prefer less energy efficient fermentative pathway for their energy metabolism. These two metabolic strategies are also known as Crabtree negative and Crabtree positive respectively, and the evolution of the latter has lately been explained by the “make-accum
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
