The \u3cem\u3eTemascal\u3c/em\u3e and Humoral Medicine in Santa Cruz Mixtepec, Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, Mexico

This investigation reports on the present day use of the sweatbath among an indigenous people in Mexico. The purpose of this thesis was to provide evidence that aboriginal medicine in Mexico contained elements which were based on sets of opposing forces, and that these elements are present in the curing rites of the people of Santa Cruz Mixtepec. Traditional views of the disease causation and curing are described with particular attention given to the postpartum sweatbath ritual or temascal. A comparison of this ritual in Santa Cruz Mixtepec to that seen in neighboring communities suggests that humoral medicine is aboriginal in nature, not solely an introduced trait resulting from acculturation to Spanish culture. It is recommended that because of the ubiquitous nature of the sweatbath in Mexico, future investigations should consider this trait for studying the amount of aboriginal views that remain in a community\u27s curing techniques and also the amount of acculturation that the community has undergone

Hillock formation of Pt thin films on Yttria stabilized Zirconia single crystals

The stability of a metal thin films on a dielectric substrate is conditioned by the magnitude of the interactive forces at the interface. In the case of a non-reactive interface and weak adhesion, the minimization of free surface energy gives rise to an instability of the thin film. In order to study these effects, Pt thin films with a thickness of 50 nm were deposited via ion-beam sputtering on yttria stabilized zirconia single crystals. All Pt films were subjected to heat treatments up to 973 K for 2 h. The morphological evolution of Pt thin films has been investigated by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and standard image analysis techniques. Three main observations have been made: i) the deposition method has a direct impact on the morphological evolution of the film during annealing. Instead of hole formation, that is typically observed as response to a thermal treatment, anisotropic pyramidal shaped hillocks are formed on top of the film. ii) It is shown by comparing the hillocks' aspect ratio with finite element method (FEM) simulations that the hillock formation can be assigned to a stress relaxation process inside the thin film. iii) By measuring the equilibrium shapes and the shape fluctuations of the formed Pt hillocks the anisotropy of the step free energy and its stiffness have been derived in addition to the anisotropic kink energy of the hillock's edges.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure