akin type (asymmetric) reverse osmosis membranes undergo an irreversible osmotic dehydration upon coming into contact (skin side) with salt solutions. the extent of consequent changes (in appearance; decrease in linear dimension, water flux and salt rejection) are dependent on the salt concentration. these observations are correlated with the expected morphological changes taking place during d...

BACKGROUND When a drug is applied on the skin surface, the concentration of the drug accumulated in the skin and the amount of the drug eliminated into the blood vessel depend on the value of a parameter, r. The values of r depend on the amount of diffusion and the normalized skin-capillary clearance. It is defined as the ratio of the steady-state drug concentration at the skin-capillary bounda...

The research described in this thesis represents a significant advancement in the current mechanistic understanding of low-frequency ultrasound-mediated transdermal drug delivery. Specifically, while prior research has focused on a more general understanding of the mechanisms associated with low-frequency sonophoresis (LFS), this thesis directly investigates the mechanisms associated with pheno...

The laser speckle contrast imager (LSCI) provides a powerful yet simple technique for measuring microcirculatory blood flow. Ideal for blood dynamic responses, the LSCI is used in the same way as a conventional Laser Doppler Imager (LDI). However, with a maximum skin depth of approximately 1 mm, the LSCI is designed to focus on mainly superficial blood flow. It is used to measure skin surface a...

Due to computational expense, the radiation schemes in many weather and climate models are called infrequently in time and/or on a reduced spatial grid. The former can lead to a lag in the diurnal cycle of surface temperature, while the latter can lead to large surface temperature errors at coastal land points due to surface fluxes computed over the ocean being used where the skin temperature a...

Transdermal drug delivery using microneedles (MNs) depends on the rate of drug transport through the viable epidermis. Therefore, minimising the distance between the drug-loaded surface and the microcirculation in the dermis where the drug is absorbed into the body is significant in improving drug delivery efficiency. A quantifiable relationship between MN design parameters and skin diffusion p...

Excised human skin has so far been considered to be one of the most suitable in vitro methods to evaluate the penetration of dermatologically applied substances. The limited supply and the relatively high donor variability stimulated many research groups to use animal skin as a substitute for human skin. Since nowadays reconstructed skin equivalents are commercially available, we examined these...

Cryogen spray cooling is used to prevent epidermal thermal damage during port-wine stain laser therapy, despite the limited understanding of the fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and heat transfer characteristics of cryogen sprays. In recent studies, it has been suggested that the heat flux through human skin could be increased by changing physical parameters such as nozzle-to-skin distance, nozz...

Akin type (asymmetric) reverse osmosis membranes undergo an irreversible osmotic dehydration upon coming into contact (skin side) with salt solutions. The extent of consequent changes (in appearance; decrease in linear dimension, water flux and salt rejection) are dependent on the salt concentration. These observations are correlated with the expected morphological changes taking place duri...