Identifying lipid traces of atherogenic mechanisms in human carotid plaque

Background and aims: Lipids play an important role in atherosclerotic plaque development and are interesting candidate predictive biomarkers. However, the link between circulating lipids, accumulating lipids in the vessel wall, and plaque destabilization processes in humans remains largely unknown. This study aims to provide new insights into...

Observation and Modeling of Near-Bistable Dark-Mode Current-Voltage Characteristics in Semi-Insulating Gallium Arsenide with Implications for Photoconductors

In this work, we demonstrate and model the deep-level defect physics of semi-insulating gallium arsenide bulk photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) with gap size of 10 μ and 25 μ in dark-mode operation. Experimental measurements up to biasing field of 10 kV/cm show near-bistable characteristics in the dark-mode current-voltage...

Introducing Gold Nanoparticles to Polymeric Nanoclusters containing Chlorin e6 and Doxorubicin: evaluation of influence on release by Ionizing Radiation

Cancer remains responsible for a large part of deaths worldwide. At present most treatments for cancer still give rise to unwanted side-effects. In this thesis, a treatment that combines both chemo- and radiotherapy to reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy is reported. Instead of allowing the drug to spread through the whole body and also...

Ionizing Radiation-Induced Release from Poly(ϵ-caprolactone- b-ethylene glycol) Micelles

Polymeric micelles, due to their easy preparation and versatile properties, have been widely applied as one of the most popular carriers for chemotherapeutic agents. Such micelles primarily prevent the leakage of drugs during transportation and thus protect healthy tissue. Controlled drug release, which releases the drugs at the site of...

Potential of MRI in radiotherapy mediated by small conjugates and nanosystems

Radiation therapy has made tremendous progress in oncology over the last decades due to advances in engineering and physical sciences in combination with better biochemical, genetic and molecular understanding of this disease. Local delivery of optimal radiation dose to a tumor, while sparing healthy surrounding tissues, remains a great...

Fast and accurate enzyme activity measurements using a chip-based microfluidic calorimeter

Recent developments in microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies have resulted in development of new chip-based microfluidic calorimeters with potential use in different fields. One application would be the accurate high-throughput measurement of enzyme activity. Calorimetry is a generic way to measure activity of enzymes, but unlike...

Electron beam induced deposition of silacyclohexane and dichlorosilacyclohexane: The role of dissociative ionization and dissociative electron attachment in the deposition process

We present first experiments on electron beam induced deposition of silacyclohexane (SCH) and dichlorosilacyclohexane (DCSCH) under a focused high-energy electron beam (FEBID). We compare the deposition dynamics observed when growing pillars of high aspect ratio from these compounds and we compare the proximity effect observed for these...

Compact Modeling of Physical Mechanisms Present in the Weak Breakdown Regime of Advanced Si and SiGe Bipolar Transistors

With the current increasing demand for faster and more reliable communication and computing electronic devices such as faster wireless communication networks, circuit designers are forced to carry out device optimization in order to achieve the maximum possible performance. To enable full circuit optimization, designers depend on compact models...

Energy resolution and related charge carrier mobility in LaBr3:Ce scintillators

The scintillation response of LaBr3:Ce scintillation crystals was studied as function of temperature and Ce concentration with synchrotron X-rays between 9?keV and 100?keV. The results were analyzed using the theory of carrier transport in wide band gap semiconductors to gain new insights into charge carrier generation, diffusion, and capture...

Nonproportionality of inorganic scintillators

A scintillator is a transparent material that emits a flash of light when it absorbs a ?-ray photon or an energetic particle. Scintillation crystals are widely used as spectroscopic detectors of ionizing radiation in nuclear science, space exploration, medical imaging, homeland security, etc. This thesis is about nonproportional response of...

Laplacian Instability of Planar Streamer Ionization Fronts: An Example of Pulled Front Analysis

Streamer ionization fronts are pulled fronts that propagate into a linearly unstable state; the spatial decay of the initial condition of a planar front selects dynamically one specific long-time attractor out of a continuous family. A stability analysis for perturbations in the transverse direction has to take these features into account. In...

The online chemical analysis of single particles using aerosol beams and time of flight mass spectroscopy

This paper describes an on-line instrument, capable of measuring the size and chemical composition of single aerosol particles. Possible applications include monitoring aerosol reactors and studying atmospheric chemistry. The main conclusion is that a working prototype has been built and tested. It uses a three stage vacuum system to generate an...