In this article we unpack the organizational effects of the valuation practices enacted by nation branding rankings in a contemporary case where the Danish government employed branding-inspired methods. Our main argument is that the use of nation branding was enabled by the Nation Brands Index via its efficient translation of fuzzy political goals into understandable numerical objectives. The Nati

Nation branding is a remarkable phenomenon. In less than two decades, it has established itself as the preferred framework for interstate strategic communication and as an emerging academic field. The paper describes how this extraordinary expansion was possible by showing how nation branding presents itself as a theoretical possibility and a practical necessity. We propose that what made a travel

According to the Swedish higher ordinance of education the development of autonomy of PhD students is of high importance. Graduates should be able to formulate new ideas and to independently assess and evaluate scientific results. Therefore it is interesting to investigate how the relationship between student and supervisor impacts the development of autonomy. In this work, we have evaluated the i

The paper investigates the effect of bankruptcy risk on firms’ financing decisions. More specifically, we analyze if a higher probability of bankruptcy reduces incentives for debt financing due to an increase in expected bankruptcy cost. We argue that an increase in bankruptcy risk affects financial decisions only when the probability of bankruptcy is sufficiently high. We therefore model a nonlin

Everyday millions of bioanalyses are performed in clinical laboratories, hospitals and research centers, where technicians and bio-analysts utilize analytical chemistry principles and instruments to serve medicine and biomedical research. A method routinely used for sample preparation in bioanalysis is solid-phase extraction (SPE). SPE is a simple method to extract an analyte from a sample matrix

This paper demonstrates a new acoustofluidic approach to enrich extremely dilute cell suspensions 1000 times and higher, at flow rates of ≥0.5 mL/min and higher, addressing some of the needs in rare cell processing and water quality monitoring.

Heat loss is one of the greatest energy losses in engines. More than half of the heat is lost to cooling media and exhaust losses, and they thus dominate the internal combustion engine energy balance. Complex processes affect heat loss to the cylinder walls, including gas motion, spray-wall interaction and turbulence levels. The aim of this work was to study and improve the heat transfer character

Thisarticle deals with a comparison between Matilde Serao’s short story“Checchina’s Virtue” (1884) and the homonymous unpublished theatrical scriptwritten by Massimo Franciosa (1995), of which a summary is provided. Thecomparison between the source text and the adaptation draws on the debate aboutthe narrativity of drama in which many scholars have engaged in the lastdecades: Richardson (1987), ChThis article deals with a comparison between Matilde Serao’s short story “Checchina’s Virtue” ( 1884 ) and the homonymous unpublished theatrical script written by Massimo Franciosa ( 1995 ), of which a summary is provided. The comparison between the source text and the adaptation draws on the debate about the narrativity of drama in which many scholars have engaged in the last decades: Richardson

We report a novel size-insensitive method, iso-acoustic focusing (IAF), that can, for the first time, analyze and separate cells based on their intrinsic acoustic properties. We characterize the IAF system using two different cell lines and apply it to measuring the acoustic impedance of two subgroups of white blood cells (WBC): neutrophils and lymphocytes. We find cell type specific differences i

The UNESCO Post-2015 Development Agenda proposes equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all as its overarching goals for education. A holistic quality approach is espoused to encourage lifelong learning and thereby build inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous societies. Their quality goals are particularly ambitious given that the practical recommendations for inclusive education ne

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) have been widely used for the simulations of dynamics of both simple and complex fluids at nano/micro scales. In these simulations, periodic boundaries are usually employed in the main flow direction and the characterization of the flow and heat transfer is based on fully developed conditions. In the real nano/micro-fluidic devices, however, there are entrances

This paper presents the characterization and optimization of acoustic capture of platelet-derived microparticles (PMPs) from human plasma. The technique is compared to a standard preparation protocol using differential centrifugation on biobank samples from patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). The main advantages of this new method are the capability of rapidly capturing micro

Due to their direct coupling to the physiology of the cells, the physical properties are especially attractive as markers for sorting and characterization of cancer cells. Where molecular surface markers are lacking, the physical properties can instead serve as inherent markers for separation. This is especially interesting for cancer cells where there are indications that soft cells are more meta

We have created devices that are extremely simple to fabricate, function without pumps, are reusable and capable of dealing with very large differences in particle sizes without clogging. Our new approach to microfluidic particle sorting is precise enough for applications in blood fractionation, cancer cell sorting, parasite detection and sample decomplexing in general. We achieve this using Deter

We discuss some of the effects of twisted boundary conditions in finite volume using continuum SU(3) Chiral Perturbation Theory. We point out how broken cubic symmetry affects the definitions of quantities such as form-factors. Using the π+ as an example, we give one loop results for the mass, decay constants and electromagnetic form-factor and illustrate how the relevant Ward identities are satis

Flexible multibody dynamics (FMD) has found many applications in control, analysis and design of mechanical systems. FMD together with the theory of structural optimization can be used for designing multibody systems with bodies which are lighter, but stronger. Topology optimization of static structures is an active research topic in structural mechanics. However, the extension to the dynamic case