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Sonstige beteiligte Institutionen
- IZKF Nachwuchsgruppe Geweberegeneration für muskuloskelettale Erkrankungen (5)
- Bernhard-Heine-Centrum für Bewegungsforschung (4)
- Zentraleinheit Klinische Massenspektrometrie (3)
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Spin- and \(k\)-resolved hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) is a powerful tool to probe bulk electronic properties of complex metal oxides. Due to the low efficiency of common spin detectors of about \(10^{-4}\), such experiments have been rarely performed within the hard X-ray regime since the notoriously low photoionization cross sections further lower the performance tremendously. This thesis is about a new type of spin detector, which employs an imaging spin-filter with multichannel electron recording. This increases the efficiency by a factor of \(10^4\) and makes spin- and \(k\)-resolved photoemission at high excitation energies possible. Two different technical approaches were pursued in this thesis: One using a hemispherical deflection analyzer (HDA) and a separate external spin detector chamber, the other one resorting to a momentum- or \(k\)-space microscope with time-of-flight (TOF) energy recording and an integrated spin-filter crystal. The latter exhibits significantly higher count rates and - since it was designed for this purpose from scratch - the integrated spin-filter option found out to be more viable than the subsequent upgrade of an existing setup with an HDA. This instrumental development is followed by the investigation of the complex metal oxides (CMOs) KTaO\(_3\) by angle-resolved HAXPES (HARPES) and Fe\(_3\)O\(_4\) by spin-resolved HAXPES (spin-HAXPES), respectively.
KTaO\(_3\) (KTO) is a band insulator with a valence-electron configuration of Ta 5\(d^0\). By angle- and spin-integrated HAXPES it is shown that at the buried interface of LaAlO\(_3\)/KTO - by the generation of oxygen vacancies and hence effective electron doping - a conducting electron system forms in KTO. Further investigations using the momentum-resolution of the \(k\)-space TOF microscope show that these states are confined to the surface in KTO and intensity is only obtained from the center or the Gamma-point of each Brillouin zone (BZ). These BZs are furthermore square-like arranged reflecting the three-dimensional cubic crystal structure of KTO. However, from a comparison to calculations it is found that the band structure deviates from that of electron-doped bulk KTaO\(_3\) due to the confinement to the interface.
There is broad consensus that Fe\(_3\)O\(_4\) is a promising material for spintronics applications due to its high degree of spin polarization at the Fermi level. However, previous attempts to measure the spin polarization by spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy have been hampered by the use of low photon energies resulting in high surface sensitivity. The surfaces of magnetite, though, tend to reconstruct due to their polar nature, and thus their magnetic and electronic properties may strongly deviate from each other and from the bulk, dependent on their orientation and specific preparation. In this work, the intrinsic bulk spin polarization of magnetite at the Fermi level (\(E_F\)) by spin-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, is determined by spin-HAXPES on (111)-oriented thin films, epitaxially grown on ZnO(0001) to be \(P(E_F) = -80^{+10}_{-20}\) %.
Bacterial small RNAs (sRNAs) are widespread post-transcriptional regulators that control bacterial stress responses and virulence. Nevertheless, little is known about how they arise and evolve. Homologs can be difficult to identify beyond the strain level using sequence-based approaches, and similar functionalities can arise by convergent evolution. Here, we found that the virulence-associated CJnc190 sRNA of the foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni resembles the RepG sRNA from the gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori. However, while both sRNAs bind G-rich sites in their target mRNAs using a C/U-rich loop, they largely differ in their biogenesis. RepG is transcribed from a stand-alone gene and does not require processing, whereas CJnc190 is transcribed from two promoters as precursors that are processed by RNase III and also has a cis-encoded antagonist, CJnc180. By comparing CJnc190 homologs in diverse Campylobacter species, we show that RNase III-dependent processing of CJnc190 appears to be a conserved feature even outside of C. jejuni. We also demonstrate the CJnc180 antisense partner is expressed in C. coli, yet here might be derived from the 3’UTR (untranslated region) of an upstream flagella-related gene. Our analysis of G-tract targeting sRNAs in Epsilonproteobacteria demonstrates that similar sRNAs can have markedly different biogenesis pathways.
Comparative genomics provides structural and functional insights into Bacteroides RNA biology
(2022)
Bacteria employ noncoding RNA molecules for a wide range of biological processes, including scaffolding large molecular complexes, catalyzing chemical reactions, defending against phages, and controlling gene expression. Secondary structures, binding partners, and molecular mechanisms have been determined for numerous small noncoding RNAs (sRNAs) in model aerobic bacteria. However, technical hurdles have largely prevented analogous analyses in the anaerobic gut microbiota. While experimental techniques are being developed to investigate the sRNAs of gut commensals, computational tools and comparative genomics can provide immediate functional insight. Here, using Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron as a representative microbiota member, we illustrate how comparative genomics improves our understanding of RNA biology in an understudied gut bacterium. We investigate putative RNA-binding proteins and predict a Bacteroides cold-shock protein homolog to have an RNA-related function. We apply an in silico protocol incorporating both sequence and structural analysis to determine the consensus structures and conservation of nine Bacteroides noncoding RNA families. Using structure probing, we validate and refine these predictions and deposit them in the Rfam database. Through synteny analyses, we illustrate how genomic coconservation can serve as a predictor of sRNA function. Altogether, this work showcases the power of RNA informatics for investigating the RNA biology of anaerobic microbiota members.
In this thesis, I study entanglement in quantum field theory, using methods from operator algebra theory. More precisely, the thesis covers original research on the entanglement properties of the free fermionic field. After giving a pedagogical introduction to algebraic methods in quantum field theory, as well as the modular theory of Tomita-Takesaki and its relation to entanglement, I present a coherent framework that allows to solve Tomita-Takesaki theory for free fermionic fields in any number of dimensions. Subsequently, I use the derived machinery on the free massless fermion in two dimensions, where the formulae can be evaluated analytically. In particular, this entails the derivation of the resolvent of restrictions of the propagator, by means of solving singular integral equations. In this way, I derive the modular flow, modular Hamiltonian, modular correlation function, R\'enyi entanglement entropy, von-Neumann entanglement entropy, relative entanglement entropy, and mutual information for multi-component regions. All of this is done for the vacuum and thermal states, both on the infinite line and the circle with (anti-)periodic boundary conditions. Some of these results confirm previous results from the literature, such as the modular Hamiltonian and entanglement entropy in the vacuum state. The non-universal solutions for modular flow, modular correlation function, and R\'enyi entropy, however are new, in particular at finite temperature on the circle. Additionally, I show how boundaries of spacetime affect entanglement, as well as how one can define relative (entanglement) entropy and mutual information in theories with superselection rules. The findings regarding modular flow in multi-component regions can be summarised as follows: In the non-degenerate vacuum state, modular flow is multi-local, in the sense that it mixes the field operators along multiple trajectories, with one trajectory per component. This was already known from previous literature but is presented here in a more explicit form. In particular, I present the exact solution for the dynamics of the mixing process. What was not previously known at all, is that the modular flow of the thermal state on the circle is infinitely multi-local even for a connected region, in the sense that it mixes the field along an infinite, discretely distributed set, of trajectories. In the limit of high temperatures, all trajectories but the local one are pushed towards the boundary of the region, where their amplitude is damped exponentially, leaving only the local result. At low temperatures, on the other hand, these trajectories distribute densely in the region to either---for anti-periodic boundary conditions---cancel, or---for periodic boundary conditions---recover the non-local contribution due to the degenerate vacuum state. Proceeding to spacetimes with boundaries, I show explicitly how the presence of a boundary implies entanglement between the two components of the Dirac spinor. By computing the mutual information between the components inside a connected region, I show quantitatively that this entanglement decreases as an inverse square law at large distances from the boundary. In addition, full conformal symmetry (which is explicitly broken due to the presence of a boundary) is recovered from the exact solution for modular flow, far away from the boundary. As far as I know, all of these results are new, although related results were published by another group during the final stage of this thesis. Finally, regarding relative entanglement entropy in theories with superselection sectors, I introduce charge and flux resolved relative entropies, which are novel measures for the distinguishability of states, incorporating a charge operator, central to the algebra of observables. While charge resolved relative entropy has the interpretation of being a ``distinguishability per charge sector'', I argue that it is physically meaningless without placing a cutoff, due to infinite short-distance entanglement. Flux resolved relative entropy, on the other hand, overcomes this problem by inserting an Aharonov-Bohm flux and thus passing to a variant of the grand canonical ensemble. It takes a well defined value, even without putting a cutoff, and I compute its value between various states of the free massless fermion on the line, the charge operator being the total fermion number.
One consequence of the recent coronavirus pandemic is increased demand and use of online services around the globe. At the same time, performance requirements for modern technologies are becoming more stringent as users become accustomed to higher standards. These increased performance and availability requirements, coupled with the unpredictable usage growth, are driving an increasing proportion of applications to run on public cloud platforms as they promise better scalability and reliability.
With data centers already responsible for about one percent of the world's power consumption, optimizing resource usage is of paramount importance. Simultaneously, meeting the increasing and changing resource and performance requirements is only possible by optimizing resource management without introducing additional overhead. This requires the research and development of new modeling approaches to understand the behavior of running applications with minimal information.
However, the emergence of modern software paradigms makes it increasingly difficult to derive such models and renders previous performance modeling techniques infeasible. Modern cloud applications are often deployed as a collection of fine-grained and interconnected components called microservices. Microservice architectures offer massive benefits but also have broad implications for the performance characteristics of the respective systems. In addition, the microservices paradigm is typically paired with a DevOps culture, resulting in frequent application and deployment changes. Such applications are often referred to as cloud-native applications. In summary, the increasing use of ever-changing cloud-hosted microservice applications introduces a number of unique challenges for modeling the performance of modern applications. These include the amount, type, and structure of monitoring data, frequent behavioral changes, or infrastructure variabilities. This violates common assumptions of the state of the art and opens a research gap for our work.
In this thesis, we present five techniques for automated learning of performance models for cloud-native software systems. We achieve this by combining machine learning with traditional performance modeling techniques. Unlike previous work, our focus is on cloud-hosted and continuously evolving microservice architectures, so-called cloud-native applications. Therefore, our contributions aim to solve the above challenges to deliver automated performance models with minimal computational overhead and no manual intervention. Depending on the cloud computing model, privacy agreements, or monitoring capabilities of each platform, we identify different scenarios where performance modeling, prediction, and optimization techniques can provide great benefits. Specifically, the contributions of this thesis are as follows:
Monitorless: Application-agnostic prediction of performance degradations.
To manage application performance with only platform-level monitoring, we propose Monitorless, the first truly application-independent approach to detecting performance degradation. We use machine learning to bridge the gap between platform-level monitoring and application-specific measurements, eliminating the need for application-level monitoring. Monitorless creates a single and holistic resource saturation model that can be used for heterogeneous and untrained applications. Results show that Monitorless infers resource-based performance degradation with 97% accuracy. Moreover, it can achieve similar performance to typical autoscaling solutions, despite using less monitoring information.
SuanMing: Predicting performance degradation using tracing.
We introduce SuanMing to mitigate performance issues before they impact the user experience. This contribution is applied in scenarios where tracing tools enable application-level monitoring. SuanMing predicts explainable causes of expected performance degradations and prevents performance degradations before they occur. Evaluation results show that SuanMing can predict and pinpoint future performance degradations with an accuracy of over 90%.
SARDE: Continuous and autonomous estimation of resource demands.
We present SARDE to learn application models for highly variable application deployments. This contribution focuses on the continuous estimation of application resource demands, a key parameter of performance models. SARDE represents an autonomous ensemble estimation technique. It dynamically and continuously optimizes, selects, and executes an ensemble of approaches to estimate resource demands in response to changes in the application or its environment. Through continuous online adaptation, SARDE efficiently achieves an average resource demand estimation error of 15.96% in our evaluation.
DepIC: Learning parametric dependencies from monitoring data.
DepIC utilizes feature selection techniques in combination with an ensemble regression approach to automatically identify and characterize parametric dependencies. Although parametric dependencies can massively improve the accuracy of performance models, DepIC is the first approach to automatically learn such parametric dependencies from passive monitoring data streams. Our evaluation shows that DepIC achieves 91.7% precision in identifying dependencies and reduces the characterization prediction error by 30% compared to the best individual approach.
Baloo: Modeling the configuration space of databases.
To study the impact of different configurations within distributed DBMSs, we introduce Baloo. Our last contribution models the configuration space of databases considering measurement variabilities in the cloud. More specifically, Baloo dynamically estimates the required benchmarking measurements and automatically builds a configuration space model of a given DBMS. Our evaluation of Baloo on a dataset consisting of 900 configuration points shows that the framework achieves a prediction error of less than 11% while saving up to 80% of the measurement effort.
Although the contributions themselves are orthogonally aligned, taken together they provide a holistic approach to performance management of modern cloud-native microservice applications.
Our contributions are a significant step forward as they specifically target novel and cloud-native software development and operation paradigms, surpassing the capabilities and limitations of previous approaches.
In addition, the research presented in this paper also has a significant impact on the industry, as the contributions were developed in collaboration with research teams from Nokia Bell Labs, Huawei, and Google.
Overall, our solutions open up new possibilities for managing and optimizing cloud applications and improve cost and energy efficiency.
Efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation in people with multiple sclerosis: a review
(2022)
Background and purpose
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease causing a wide range of symptoms including motor and cognitive impairment, fatigue and pain. Over the last two decades, non-invasive brain stimulation, especially transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), has increasingly been used to modulate brain function in various physiological and pathological conditions. However, its experimental applications for people with MS were noted only as recently as 2010 and have been growing since then. The efficacy for use in people with MS remains questionable with the results of existing studies being largely conflicting. Hence, the aim of this review is to paint a picture of the current state of tDCS in MS research grounded on studies applying tDCS that have been done to date.
Methods
A keyword search was performed to retrieve articles from the earliest article identified until 14 February 2021 using a combination of the groups (1) ‘multiple sclerosis’, ‘MS’ and ‘encephalomyelitis’ and (2) ‘tDCS’ and ‘transcranial direct current stimulation’.
Results
The analysis of the 30 articles included in this review underlined inconsistent effects of tDCS on the motor symptoms of MS based on small sample sizes. However, tDCS showed promising benefits in ameliorating fatigue, pain and cognitive symptoms.
Conclusion
Transcranial direct current stimulation is attractive as a non-drug approach in ameliorating MS symptoms, where other treatment options remain limited. The development of protocols tailored to the individual's own neuroanatomy using high definition tDCS and the introduction of network mapping in the experimental designs might help to overcome the variability between studies.
The genetic modification of T cells for the expression a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) endows them with a new specificity for an antigen. Adoptive immunotherapy with CD19-CAR T cells has achieved high rates of sustained complete remissions in B cell malignancies. However, the downregulation or loss of the targeted antigen after mono-specific CAR T cell therapy, e.g. against CD19 or CD22, has been reported. Targeting multiple antigens on tumour cells, sequentially or simultaneously, could overcome this limitation. Additionally, targeting multiple antigens with CAR T cells could drive the translation from hematologic malignancies to prevalent solid cancers, which often express tumour-associated antigens heterogeneously. We hypothesised that expression of a universal CAR, which can be programmed with hapten-like molecules, could endow T cells with specificities for multiple antigens.
In this study we introduce a novel chemically programmable CAR (cpCAR) based on monoclonal antibody h38C2. Our data show, that cpCARs form a reversible chemical bond to molecules containing a diketone-group and therefore can be programmed to acquire multiple specificities. We programmed cpCAR T cells with hapten-like compounds against integrins αvβ3 and α4β1 as well as the folate receptor. We observed tumour cell lysis, IFN ɣ and IL-2 production and proliferation of programmed cpCAR T cells against tumour cells expressing the respective target antigen in vitro.
As a reference to cpCARs programmed against αvβ3, we further introduced novel conventional αvβ3-CARs. These CARs, based on humanised variants of monoclonal antibody LM609 (hLM609), directly bind to integrin αvβ3 via their scFv. The four αvβ3-CAR constructs comprised either an scFv with higher affinity (hLM609v7) or lower affinity (hLM609v11) against αvβ3 integrin and either a long (IgG4 hinge, CH2, CH3) or short (IgG4 hinge) extracellular spacer. We selected the hLM609v7-CAR with short spacer, which showed potent anti-tumour reactivity both in vitro and in a murine xenograft model, for comparison with the cpCAR programmed against αvβ3. Our data show specific lysis of αvβ3-positive tumour cells, cytokine production and proliferation of both hLM609-CAR T cells and cpCAR T cells in vitro. However, conventional hLM609-CAR T cells mediated stronger anti-tumour effects compared to cpCAR T cells in the same amount of time. In line with the in vitro data, complete destruction of tumour lesions in a murine melanoma xenograft model was only observed for mice treated with conventional αvβ3-CAR T cells.
Collectively, we introduce a cpCAR, which can be programmed against multiple tumour antigens, and hLM609-CARs specific for the integrin αvβ3. The cpCAR technology bears the potential to counteract current limitations, e.g. antigen loss, of current monospecific CAR T cell therapy. Targeting αvβ3 integrin with CAR T cells could have clinical applications in the treatment of solid malignancies, because αvβ3 is not only expressed on a variety of solid malignancies, but also on tumour-associated vasculature and fibroblast.
DNA damage occurs frequently during normal cellular progresses or by environmental factors. To preserve the genome integrity, DNA damage response (DDR) has evolved to repair DNA and the non-properly repaired DNA induces human diseases like immune deficiency and cancer. Since a large number of proteins involved in DDR are enzymes of ubiquitin system, it is critical to investigate how the ubiquitin system regulates cellular response to DNA damage. Hereby, we reveal a novel mechanism for DDR regulation via activation of SCF ubiquitin ligase upon DNA damage.
As an essential step for DNA damage-induced inhibition of DNA replication, Cdc25A degradation by the E3 ligase β-TrCP upon DNA damage requires the deubiquitinase Usp28. Usp28 deubiquitinates β-TrCP in response to DNA damage, thereby promotes its dimerization, which is required for its activity in substrate ubiquitination and degradation. Particularly, ubiquitination at a specific lysine on β-TrCP suppresses dimerization.
The key mediator protein of DDR, 53BP1, forms oligomers and associates with β-TrCP to inhibit its activity in unstressed cells. Upon DNA damage, 53BP1 is degraded in the nucleoplasm, which requires oligomerization and is promoted by Usp28 in a β-TrCP-dependent manner. Consequently, 53BP1 destruction releases and activates β-TrCP during DNA damage response.
Moreover, 53BP1 deletion and DNA damage promote β-TrCP dimerization and recruitment to chromatin sites that locate in the vicinity of putative replication origins. Subsequently, the chromatin-associated Cdc25A is degraded by β-TrCP at the origins. The stimulation of β-TrCP binding to the origins upon DNA damage is accompanied by unloading of Cdc45, a crucial component of pre-initiation complexes for replication. Loading of Cdc45 to origins is a key Cdk2-dependent step for DNA replication initiation, indicating that localized Cdc25A degradation by β-TrCP at origins inactivates Cdk2, thereby inhibits the initiation of DNA replication.
Collectively, this study suggests a novel mechanism for the regulation of DNA replication upon DNA damage, which involves 53BP1- and Usp28-dependent activation of the SCF(β-TrCP) ligase in Cdc25A degradation.
Articular cartilage is a highly specialized tissue which provides a lubricated gliding surface in joints and thereby enables low-friction movement. If damaged once it has a very low intrinsic healing capacity and there is still no treatment in the clinic which can restore healthy cartilage tissue. 3D biofabrication presents a promising perspective in the field by combining healthy cells and bioactive ink materials. Thereby, the composition of the applied bioink is crucial for defect restoration, as it needs to have the physical properties for the fabrication process and also suitable chemical cues to provide a supportive environment for embedded cells. In the last years, ink compositions with high polymer contents and crosslink densities were frequently used to provide 3D printability and construct stability. But these dense polymeric networks were often associated with restricted bioactivity and impaired cell processes like differentiation and the distribution of newly produced extracellular matrix (ECM), which is especially important in the field of cartilage engineering. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was the development of hyaluronic acid (HA)-based bioinks with a reduced polymer content which are 3D printable and additionally facilitate chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) and the homogeneous distribution of newly produced ECM. Starting from not-printable hydrogels with high polymer contents and restricted bioactivity, distinct stepwise improvements were achieved regarding stand-alone 3D printability as well as MSC differentiation and homogeneous ECM distribution. All newly developed inks in this thesis made a valuable contribution in the field of cartilage regeneration and represent promising approaches for potential clinical applications. The underlying mechanisms and established ink design criteria can further be applied to other biofabricated tissues, emphasizing their importance also in a more general research setting.
Lack of acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) activity, either through genetic deficiency or through pharmacological inhibition, is linked with increased activity and frequency of Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Treg) among cluster of differentiation (CD) 4+ T cells in mice in vivo and in vitro1. Thus, pharmacological blockade of ASM activity, which catalyzes the cleavage of sphingomyelin to ceramide and phosphocholine, might be used as a new therapeutic mechanism to correct numeric and/ or functional Treg de-ficiencies in diseases like multiple sclerosis or major depression.
In the present study, the effect of pharmacological inhibition of ASM in humans, in vitro and in vivo, was analyzed. In the in vitro experiments, peripheral blood mono-nuclear cells (PBMC) of healthy human blood donors were treated with two widely prescribed antidepressants with high (sertraline, Ser) or low (citalopram, Cit) capaci-ty to inhibit ASM activity. Similar to the findings in mice an increase in the frequency of Treg among human CD4+ T cells upon inhibition of ASM activity was observed. For the analysis in vivo, a prospective study of the composition of the CD4+ T cell com-partment of patients treated for major depression was done. The data show that pharmacological inhibition of ASM activity was superior to antidepressants with little or no ASM-inhibitory activity in increasing CD45RA- CD25high effector Treg (efTreg) frequencies among CD4+ T cells to normal levels. Independently of ASM inhibition, correlating the data with the clinical response, i.e. improvement of the Hamilton rat-ing scale for depression (HAMD) by at least 50 per cent (%) after four weeks of treatment, it was found that an increase in efTreg frequencies among CD4+ cells dur-ing the first week of treatment identified patients with a clinical response.
Regarding the underlying mechanism, it could be found that the positive effect of ASM inhibition on Treg required CD28 co-stimulation suggesting that enhanced CD28 co-stimulation was the driver of the observed increase in the frequency of Treg among human CD4+ T cells. Inhibition of ASM activity was further associated with changes in the expression and shuttling of CTLA-4, a key inhibitory molecule ex-pressed by Treg, between cellular compartments but the suppressive activity of CTLA-4 through its transendocytosis activity was unaffected by the inhibition of ASM activity.
In summary, the frequency of (effector) Treg among CD4+ T cells in mice and in hu-mans is increased after inhibition of ASM activity suggesting that ASM blockade might beneficially modulate autoimmune diseases and depression-promoting in-flammation.
Wilms tumor (WT) or nephroblastoma is the most common kidney tumor in childhood. Several genetic alterations have been identified in WT over the past years. However, a clear-cut underlying genetic defect has remained elusive. Growing evidence suggests that miRNA processing genes play a major role in the formation of pediatric tumors, including WT.
We and others have identified the microprocessor genes DROSHA and DGCR8 as key players in Wilms tumorigenesis. Exome sequence analysis of a cohort of blastemal-type WTs revealed the recurrent hotspot mutations DROSHA E1147K and DGCR8 E518K mapping to regions important for catalyic activity and RNA-binding. These alterations were expected to affect processing of miRNA precursors, ultimately leading to altered miRNA expression. Indeed, mutated tumor samples were characterized by distinct miRNA patterns. Notably, these mutations have been observed almost exclusively in WT, suggesting that they play a specific role in WT formation.
The aim of the present work was to first examine the mutation frequency of DROSHA E1147K and DGCR8 E518K in a larger cohort of WTs, and to further characterize these microprocessor gene mutations as potential oncogenic drivers for WT formation.
Screening of additional 700 WT samples by allele-specific PCR revealed a high frequency of DROSHA E1147K and DGCR8 E518K mutations, with the highest incidence found in tumors of high-risk histology. DROSHA E1147K was heterozygously expressed in all cases, which strongly implies a dominant negative effect. In contrast, DGCR8 E518K exclusively exhibited homozygous expression, suggestive for the mutation to act recessive.
To functionally assess the mutations of the microprocessor complex in vitro, I generated stable HEK293T cell lines with inducible overexpression of DROSHA E1147K, and stable mouse embryonic stem cell (mESC) lines with inducible overexpression of DGCR8 E518K. To mimic the homozygous expression observed in WT, DGCR8 mESC lines were generated on a DGCR8 knockout background. Inducible overexpression of wild-type or mutant DROSHA in HEK293T cells showed that DROSHA E1147K leads to a global downregulation of miRNA expression. It has previously been shown that the knockout of DGCR8 in mESCs also results in a significant downregulation of canonical miRNAs. Inducible overexpression of wild type DGCR8 rescued this processing defect. DGCR8 E518K on the other hand, only led to a partial rescue. Differentially expressed miRNAs comprised members of the ESC cell cycle (ESCC) and let-7 miRNA families whose antagonism is known to play a pivotal role in the regulation of stem cell properties. Along with altered miRNA expression, DGCR8-E518K mESCs exhibited alterations in target gene expression potentially affecting various biological processes.
We could observe decreased proliferation rates, most likely due to reduced cell viability. DGCR8-E518K seemed to be able to overcome the block of G1-S transition and to rescue the cell cycle defect in DGCR8-KO mESCs, albeit not to the full extent like DGCR8-wild-type. Moreover, DGCR8-E518K appeared to be unable to completely block epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Embryoid bodies (EBs) with the E518K mutation, however, were still able to silence the self-renewal program rescuing the differentiation defect in DGCR8-KO mESCs.
Taken together, I could show that DROSHA E1147K and DGCR8 E518K are frequent events in WT with the highest incidence in high-risk tumor entities. Either mutation led to altered miRNA expression in vitro confirming our previous findings in tumor samples. While the DROSHA E1147K mutation resulted in a global downregulation of canonical miRNAs, DGCR8 E518K was able to retain significant activity of the microprocessor complex, suggesting that partial reduction of activity or altered specificity may be critical in Wilms tumorigenesis.
Despite the significant differences found in the miRNA and mRNA profiles of DGCR8 E518K and DGCR8-wild-type mESCs, functional analysis showed that DGCR8 E518K could mostly restore important cellular functions in the knockout and only slightly differed from the wild-type situation. Further studies in a rather physiological environment, such as in a WT blastemal model system, may additionally help to better assess the subtle differences between DGCR8 E518K and DGCR8 wild-type observed in our mESC lines. Together with our findings, these model systems may thus contribute to better understand the role of these microprocessor mutations in the formation of WT.
Background
Epithelioid haemangioma (EH) arising from the skin is a benign vascular tumour with marked inflammatory cell infiltration, which exhibits a high tendency to persist and frequently recurs after resection. So far, the underlying pathogenesis is largely elusive.
Objectives
To identify genetic alterations by next-generation sequencing and/or droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) in cutaneous EH.
Methods
DNA and RNA from an EH lesion of an index patient were subjected to whole-genome and RNA sequencing. Multiplex PCR-based panel sequencing of genomic DNA isolated from archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue of 18 patients with cutaneous EH was performed. ddPCR was used to confirm mutations.
Results
We identified somatic mutations in genes of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway (MAP2K1 and KRAS) in cutaneous EH biopsies. By ddPCR we could confirm the recurrent presence of activating, low-frequency mutations affecting MAP2K1. In total, nine out of 18 patients analysed showed activating MAPK pathway mutations, which were mutually exclusive. Comparative analysis of tissue areas enriched for lymphatic infiltrate or aberrant endothelial cells, respectively, revealed an association of these mutations with the presence of endothelial cells.
Conclusions
Taken together, our data suggest that EH shows somatic mutations in genes of the MAPK pathway which might contribute to the formation of this benign tumour.
Background
Pemphigus vulgaris and pemphigus foliaceus are potentially life-threatening autoimmune disorders triggered by IgG autoantibodies against mucosal and epidermal desmogleins. There is an unmet need for fast-acting drugs that enable patients to achieve early sustained remission with reduced corticosteroid reliance.
Objectives
To investigate efgartigimod, an engineered Fc fragment that inhibits the activity of the neonatal Fc receptor, thereby reducing serum IgG levels, for treating pemphigus.
Methods
Thirty-four patients with mild-to-moderate pemphigus vulgaris or foliaceus were enrolled in an open-label phase II adaptive trial. In sequential cohorts, efgartigimod was dosed at 10 or 25 mg kg\(^{-1}\) intravenously with various dosing frequencies, as monotherapy or as add-on therapy to low-dose oral prednisone. Safety endpoints comprised the primary outcome. The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier NCT03334058).
Results
Adverse events were mostly mild and were reported by 16 of 19 (84%) patients receiving efgartigimod 10 mg kg\(^{-1}\) and 13 of 15 (87%) patients receiving 25 mg kg−1, with similar adverse event profiles between dose groups. A major decrease in serum total IgG and anti-desmoglein autoantibodies was observed and correlated with improved Pemphigus Disease Area Index scores. Efgartigimod, as monotherapy or combined with prednisone, demonstrated early disease control in 28 of 31 (90%) patients after a median of 17 days. Optimized, prolonged treatment with efgartigimod in combination with a median dose of prednisone 0·26 mg \(^{-1}\) per day (range 0·06–0·48) led to complete clinical remission in 14 of 22 (64%) patients within 2–41 weeks.
Conclusions
Efgartigimod was well tolerated and exhibited an early effect on disease activity and outcome parameters, providing support for further evaluation as a therapy for pemphigus.
Climate and land-use change are key drivers of environmental degradation in the Anthropocene, but too little is known about their interactive effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Long-term data on biodiversity trends are currently lacking. Furthermore, previous ecological studies have rarely considered climate and land use in a joint design, did not achieve variable independence or lost statistical power by not covering the full range of environmental gradients.
Here, we introduce a multi-scale space-for-time study design to disentangle effects of climate and land use on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The site selection approach coupled extensive GIS-based exploration (i.e. using a Geographic information system) and correlation heatmaps with a crossed and nested design covering regional, landscape and local scales. Its implementation in Bavaria (Germany) resulted in a set of study plots that maximise the potential range and independence of environmental variables at different spatial scales.
Stratifying the state of Bavaria into five climate zones (reference period 1981–2010) and three prevailing land-use types, that is, near-natural, agriculture and urban, resulted in 60 study regions (5.8 × 5.8 km quadrants) covering a mean annual temperature gradient of 5.6–9.8°C and a spatial extent of ~310 × 310 km. Within these regions, we nested 180 study plots located in contrasting local land-use types, that is, forests, grasslands, arable land or settlement (local climate gradient 4.5–10°C). This approach achieved low correlations between climate and land use (proportional cover) at the regional and landscape scale with |r ≤ 0.33| and |r ≤ 0.29| respectively. Furthermore, using correlation heatmaps for local plot selection reduced potentially confounding relationships between landscape composition and configuration for plots located in forests, arable land and settlements.
The suggested design expands upon previous research in covering a significant range of environmental gradients and including a diversity of dominant land-use types at different scales within different climatic contexts. It allows independent assessment of the relative contribution of multi-scale climate and land use on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Understanding potential interdependencies among global change drivers is essential to develop effective restoration and mitigation strategies against biodiversity decline, especially in expectation of future climatic changes. Importantly, this study also provides a baseline for long-term ecological monitoring programs.
Gazes are of central relevance for people. They are crucial for navigating the world and communicating with others. Nevertheless, research in recent years shows that many findings from experimental research on gaze behavior cannot be transferred from the laboratory to everyday behavior. For example, the frequency with which conspecifics are looked at is considerably higher in experimental contexts than what can be observed in daily behavior. In short: findings from laboratories cannot be generalized into general statements. This thesis is dedicated to this matter. The dissertation describes and documents the current state of research on social attention through a literature review, including a meta-analysis on the /gaze cueing/ paradigm and an empirical study on the robustness of gaze following behavior. In addition, virtual reality was used in one of the first studies in this research field. Virtual reality has the potential to significantly improve the transferability of experimental laboratory studies to everyday behavior. This is because the technology enables a high degree of experimental control in naturalistic research designs. As such, it has the potential to transform empirical research in the same way that the introduction of computers to psychological research did some 50 years ago. The general literature review on social attention is extended to the classic /gaze cueing/ paradigm through a systematic review of publications and a meta-analytic evaluation (Study 1). The cumulative evidence supported the findings of primary studies: Covert spatial attention is directed by faces. However, the experimental factors included do not explain the surprisingly large variance in the published results. Thus, there seem to be further, not well-understood variables influencing these social processes. Moreover, classic /gaze cueing/ studies have limited ecological validity. This is discussed as a central reason for the lack of generalisability. Ecological validity describes the correspondence between experimental factors and realistic situations. A stimulus or an experimental design can have high and low ecological validity on different dimensions and have different influences on behavior. Empirical research on gaze following behavior showed that the /gaze cueing/ effect also occurs with contextually embedded stimuli (Study 2). The contextual integration of the directional cue contrasted classical /gaze cueing/ studies, which usually show heads in isolation. The research results can thus be transferred /within/ laboratory studies to higher ecologically valid research paradigms. However, research shows that the lack of ecological validity in experimental designs significantly limits the transferability of experimental findings to complex situations /outside/ the laboratory. This seems to be particularly the case when social interactions and norms are investigated. However, ecological validity is also often limited in these studies for other factors, such as contextual embedding /of participants/, free exploration behavior (and, thus, attentional control), or multimodality. In a first study, such high ecological validity was achieved for these factors with virtual reality, which could not be achieved in the laboratory so far (Study 3). Notably, the observed fixation patterns showed differences even under /most similar/ conditions in the laboratory and natural environments. Interestingly, these were similar to findings also derived from comparisons of eye movement in the laboratory and field investigations. These findings, which previously came from hardly comparable groups, were thus confirmed by the present Study 3 (which did not have this limitation). Overall, /virtual reality/ is a new technical approach to contemporary social attention research that pushes the boundaries of previous experimental research. The traditional trade-off between ecological validity and experimental control thus becomes obsolete, and laboratory studies can closely inherit an excellent approximation of reality. Finally, the present work describes and discusses the possibilities of this technology and its practical implementation. Within this context, the extent to which this development can still guarantee a constructive classification of different laboratory tests in the future is examined.
Motoneurons are highly compartmentalized cells with very long extensions that separate their nerve terminals from cell bodies. To maintain their extensive morphological complexity and protect their cellular integrity from neurotoxic stresses, neurons rely on the functions of RNA-binding proteins. One such protein is hnRNP R, a multifunctional protein with a plethora of roles related to RNA metabolism that comes into play in the nervous system. hnRNP R is localized mainly in the nucleus but also exists in the cytoplasm and axons of motoneurons. Increasing in vitro evidence indicates a potential function of hnRNP R in the development and maintenance of motoneurons by regulating axon growth and axonal RNA transport. Additionally, hnRNP R interacts with several proteins involved in motoneuron diseases. Hnrnpr pre-mRNA undergoes alternative splicing to produce transcripts encoding two protein isoforms: a full-length protein (hnRNP R-FL) and a shorter form lacking the N-terminal acidic domain (hnRNP R-ΔN). While the neuronal defects produced by total hnRNP R depletion have been investigated before, the contribution of individual isoforms towards such functions has remained mostly unknown.
In this study, we showed that while both isoforms are expressed across multiple tissues, the full-length isoform is particularly abundant in the nervous system. We generated a mouse model for selective knockout of the full-length hnRNP R isoform (Hnrnprtm1a/tm1a) and found that the hnRNP R-∆N isoform remains expressed in these mice and is upregulated in a compensatory post-transcriptional process. We found that the truncated isoform is sufficient to support subcellular RNA transport related to axon growth in primary motoneurons. However, Hnrnprtm1a/tm1a mice show defects in DNA damage repair after exposure to γ-irradiation and etoposide. Knock down of both hnRNP R isoforms showed a similar extent of DNA damage as for motoneurons depleted of just full-length hnRNP R. Rescue experiments showed that expression of full-length hnRNP R but not of hnRNP R-ΔN can restore DNA damage repair when endogenous hnRNP R is depleted. By performing subcellular fractionation, we found that hnRNP R associates with chromatin independently from its association with pre-mRNA. Interestingly, we show that hnRNP R interacts with phosphorylated histone H2AX (γ-H2AX), following DNA damage. Proteomics analysis identifies the multifunctional protein Y-box binding protein 1 (Yb1) as one of the top interacting partners of hnRNP R. Similar to loss of full-length hnRNP R, DNA damage repair was impaired upon knockdown of Yb1 in motoneurons. Finally, we show that following exposure to γ-irradiation, Yb1 is recruited to the chromatin where it interacts with γ-H2AX, a mechanism that is dependent on the full-length hnRNP R.
Taken together, this study describes a novel function of the full-length isoform of hnRNP R in maintaining the genomic integrity of motoneurons and provides new mechanistic insights into its function in DNA damage response.
Pollen beetles (Brassicogethes spp.) are the main pests of oilseed rape (OSR, Brassica napus) in Europe and responsible for massive yield losses. Upcoming pesticide resistances highlight the need for other means of crop protection, such as natural pest control. Sown flower fields aim to counteract the decrease of insect biodiversity in agricultural landscapes by providing resources to ecosystem service providers. However, the optimal age and size of flower fields to increase natural pest control is still unclear.
We conducted experiments on 31 OSR fields located along a gradient of landscape-scale semi-natural habitat (SNH). OSR fields were located adjacent to flower fields which differed in age, continuity and size, or adjacent to crop fields or calcareous grasslands. Pesticide-free areas were established to examine interactive effects of pesticide use and flower field characteristics. The abundance of pollen beetle adults and larvae, parasitism and superparasitism rates in OSR were recorded at increasing distances to the adjacent sites.
Flower fields and calcareous grasslands increased pollen beetle parasitism when compared to OSR fields neighbouring crop fields. The threshold for effective natural pest control of 35% could be reached in the pesticide-free areas of OSR fields adjacent to calcareous grasslands and flower fields maintained continuously for at least 6 years. In pesticide-sprayed areas, pollen beetle parasitism and superparasitism declined with increasing distance to the adjacent field. Furthermore, flower fields larger than 1.5 ha were able to improve pollen beetle parasitism more than smaller fields.
Synthesis and applications. To promote natural pest control in oilseed rape (OSR), large flower fields should be maintained for several years, to create stable habitats for natural enemies. The continuous maintenance of flower fields should be preferred, as ploughing and resowing after 5–6 years decreased the positive effects of the flower fields on natural pest control in adjacent OSR fields. However, pesticide use can abrogate positive effects of flower fields on pollen beetle parasitism. This study highlights that sown flower fields have the potential to increase natural pest control in OSR, but this potential is depending on its age, continuity and size and can be hindered by pesticide use.
The Multiweek Thermal Stability of Medical-Grade Poly(ε-caprolactone) During Melt Electrowriting
(2022)
Melt electrowriting (MEW) is a high-resolution additive manufacturing technology that places unique constraints on the processing of thermally degradable polymers. With a single nozzle, MEW operates at low throughput and in this study, medical-grade poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) is heated for 25 d at three different temperatures (75, 85, and 95 °C), collecting daily samples. There is an initial increase in the fiber diameter and decrease in the jet speed over the first 5 d, then the MEW process remains stable for the 75 and 85 °C groups. When the collector speed is fixed to a value at least 10% above the jet speed, the diameter remains constant for 25 d at 75 °C and only increases with time for 85 and 95 °C. Fiber fusion at increased layer height is observed for 85 and 95 °C, while the surface morphology of single fibers remain similar for all temperatures. The properties of the prints are assessed with no observable changes in the degree of crystallinity or the Young's modulus, while the yield strength decreases in later phases only for 95 °C. After the initial 5-d period, the MEW processing of PCL at 75 °C is extraordinarily stable with overall fiber diameters averaging 13.5 ± 1.0 µm over the entire 25-d period.
Purpose
Image acquisition and subsequent manual analysis of cardiac cine MRI is time-consuming. The purpose of this study was to train and evaluate a 3D artificial neural network for semantic segmentation of radially undersampled cardiac MRI to accelerate both scan time and postprocessing.
Methods
A database of Cartesian short-axis MR images of the heart (148,500 images, 484 examinations) was assembled from an openly accessible database and radial undersampling was simulated. A 3D U-Net architecture was pretrained for segmentation of undersampled spatiotemporal cine MRI. Transfer learning was then performed using samples from a second database, comprising 108 non-Cartesian radial cine series of the midventricular myocardium to optimize the performance for authentic data. The performance was evaluated for different levels of undersampling by the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) with respect to reference labels, as well as by deriving ventricular volumes and myocardial masses.
Results
Without transfer learning, the pretrained model performed moderately on true radial data [maximum number of projections tested, P = 196; DSC = 0.87 (left ventricle), DSC = 0.76 (myocardium), and DSC =0.64 (right ventricle)]. After transfer learning with authentic data, the predictions achieved human level even for high undersampling rates (P = 33, DSC = 0.95, 0.87, and 0.93) without significant difference compared with segmentations derived from fully sampled data.
Conclusion
A 3D U-Net architecture can be used for semantic segmentation of radially undersampled cine acquisitions, achieving a performance comparable with human experts in fully sampled data. This approach can jointly accelerate time-consuming cine image acquisition and cumbersome manual image analysis.
Here, a postpolymerization modification method for an α-terminal functionalized poly-(N-methyl-glycine), also known as polysarcosine, is introduced. 4-(Methylthio)phenyl piperidine-4-carboxylate as an initiator for the ring-opening polymerization of N-methyl-glycine-N-carboxyanhydride followed by oxidation of the thioester group to yield an α-terminal reactive 4-(methylsulfonyl)phenyl piperidine-4-carboxylate polymer is utilized. This represents an activated carboxylic acid terminus, allowing straightforward modification with nucleophiles under mild reaction conditions and provides the possibility to introduce a wide variety of nucleophiles as exemplified using small molecules, fluorescent dyes, and model proteins. The new initiator yielded polymers with well-defined molar mass, low dispersity, and high end-group fidelity, as observed by gel permeation chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy. The introduced method can be of great interest for bioconjugation, but requires optimization, especially for protein conjugation.
3D bioprinting often involves application of highly concentrated polymeric bioinks to enable fabrication of stable cell-hydrogel constructs, although poor cell survival, compromised stem cell differentiation, and an inhomogeneous distribution of newly produced extracellular matrix (ECM) are frequently observed. Therefore, this study presents a bioink platform using a new versatile dual-stage crosslinking approach based on thiolated hyaluronic acid (HA-SH), which not only provides stand-alone 3D printability but also facilitates effective chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stromal cells. A range of HA-SH with different molecular weights is synthesized and crosslinked with acrylated (PEG-diacryl) and allylated (PEG-diallyl) polyethylene glycol in a two-step reaction scheme. The initial Michael addition is used to achieve ink printability, followed by UV-mediated thiol–ene reaction to stabilize the printed bioink for long-term cell culture. Bioinks with high molecular weight HA-SH (>200 kDa) require comparably low polymer content to facilitate bioprinting. This leads to superior quality of cartilaginous constructs which possess a coherent ECM and a strongly increased stiffness of long-term cultured constructs. The dual-stage system may serve as an example to design platforms using two independent crosslinking reactions at one functional group, which allows adjusting printability as well as material and biological properties of bioinks.
Energy-demanding organs like the heart are strongly dependent on oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria. Oxidative phosphorylation is governed by the respiratory chain located in the inner mitochondrial membrane. The inner mitochondrial membrane is the only cellular membrane with significant amounts of the phospholipid cardiolipin, and cardiolipin was found to directly interact with a number of essential protein complexes, including respiratory chain complexes I to V. An inherited defect in the biogenesis of cardiolipin causes Barth syndrome, which is associated with cardiomyopathy, skeletal myopathy, neutropenia and growth retardation. Energy conversion is dependent on reducing equivalents, which are replenished by oxidative metabolism in the Krebs cycle. Cardiolipin deficiency in Barth syndrome also affects Krebs cycle activity, metabolite transport and mitochondrial morphology. During excitation-contraction coupling, calcium (Ca\(^{2+}\)) released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum drives sarcomeric contraction. At the same time, Ca\(^{2+}\) influx into mitochondria drives the activation of Krebs cycle dehydrogenases and the regeneration of reducing equivalents. Reducing equivalents are essential not only for energy conversion, but also for maintaining a redox buffer, which is required to detoxify reactive oxygen species (ROS). Defects in CL may also affect Ca\(^{2+}\) uptake into mitochondria and thereby hamper energy supply and demand matching, but also detoxification of ROS. Here, we review the impact of cardiolipin deficiency on mitochondrial function in Barth syndrome and discuss potential therapeutic strategies.
The diorgano(bismuth)alcoholate [Bi((C\(_{6}\)H\(_{4}\)CH\(_{2}\))\(_{2}\)S)OPh] (1-OPh) has been synthesized and fully characterized. Stoichiometric reactions, UV/Vis spectroscopy, and (TD-)DFT calculations suggest its susceptibility to homolytic and heterolytic Bi−O bond cleavage under given reaction conditions. Using the dehydrocoupling of silanes with either TEMPO or phenol as model reactions, the catalytic competency of 1-OPh has been investigated (TEMPO=(tetramethyl-piperidin-1-yl)-oxyl). Different reaction pathways can deliberately be addressed by applying photochemical or thermal reaction conditions and by choosing radical or closed-shell substrates (TEMPO vs. phenol). Applied analytical techniques include NMR, UV/Vis, and EPR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, and (TD)-DFT calculations.
Mineralocorticoid-receptor antagonism and its metabolic consequences in haemodialysis patients
(2022)
Patients on haemodialysis are highly susceptible to different forms of heart failure. To date, the benefit of Mineralocorticoid-receptor antagonist (MRA) administration in haemodialysis patients remains subject to discussion. Biomarkers play an important role in therapy guidance and pose a promising tool to detect pathological processes of heart failure in an earlier stage. The randomised-controlled Mineralocorticoid-Receptor Antagonists in End-Stage Renal Disease (MiREnDa) trial was set up to investigate the effect of 50 mg of spironolactone once daily on left ventricular mass index in haemodialysis patients and several secondary endpoints. This dissertation reports findings from the MiREnDa trial on (a) the efficacy of spironolactone to influence serum levels of biomarkers of heart failure, fibrosis and inflammation and electrolytes and (b) the ability of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), Galectin-3 and soluble source of tumorigenicity 2 (sST2) to reflect left ventricular hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction assessed by imaging characteristics. Treatment of spironolactone over a 40-week period did not alter serum levels of biomarkers of heart failure, fibrosis and inflammation including NT-proBNP, Galectin-3 and sST2. A small but significant effect on serum sodium but not potassium was observed. NT-proBNP was significantly different in the presence or absence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) (normal vs. LVH (median [IQR]): 2,120 [810; 5,040] vs. 6,340 [2,410; 15,360] pg/ml, p<0.01) or moderate and severe diastolic dysfunction (DD) (normal diastolic function and DD grade I vs. DD grade II and DD grade III: 2,300 [850; 6,050] vs. 12,260 [3,340; 34,830] pg/ml, p=0.02). NT-proBNP further showed a significant correlation at baseline with LVMi (Spearman’s rho=0.41, p<0.001), LAVi (Spearman’s rho=0.55, p<0.001) and septal E/e’ (Spearman’s rho=0.45, p<0.001). No correlation was observed between Galectin-3 and the investigated functional and morphological parameters. sST2 was mildly correlated to LVMi at baseline (Spearman’s rho=0.21, p=0.05) and NT-proBNP at baseline (Spearman’s rho=0.37, p<0.001). In conclusion, spironolactone did not affect the investigated parameters but NT-proBNP proved to be significantly correlated to cardiac imaging measurements.
In modern medicine hip and knee joint replacement are common surgical procedures. However, about 11 % of hip implants and about 7 % of knee implants need re-operations. The comparison of implant registers revealed two major indications for re-operations: aseptic loosening and implant infections, that both severely impact the patients’ health and are an economic burden for the health care system. To address these problems, a calcium hydroxide coating on titanium was investigated in this thesis. Calcium hydroxide is a well-known antibacterial agent and used with success in dentistry. The coatings were applied with electrochemically assisted deposition, a versatile tool that combines easiness of process with the ability to coat complex geometries homogeneously. The pH-gradient during coating was investigated and showed the surface confinement of the coating process. Surface pre-treatment altered the surface morphology and chemistry of the titanium substrates and was shown to affect the morphology of the calcium hydroxide coatings. The influence of the coating parameters stirring speed and current pulsing were examined in various configurations and combinations and could also affect the surface morphology. A change in surface morphology results in a changed adhesion and behavior of cells and bacteria. Thus, the parameters surface pre-treatment, stirring speed and current pulsing presented a toolset for tailoring cellular response and antibacterial properties. Microbiological tests with S. aureus and S. epidermidis were performed to test the time-dependent antibacterial activity of the calcium hydroxide coatings. A reduction of both strains could be achieved for 13 h, which makes calcium hydroxide a promising antibacterial coating. To give insight into biofilm growth, a protocol for biofilm staining was investigated on titanium disks with S. aureus and S. epidermidis. Biofilm growth could be detected after 5 days of bacterial incubation, which was much earlier than the 3 weeks that are currently assumed in medical treatment. Thus, it should be considered to treat infections as if a biofilm were present from day 5 on. The ephemeral antibacterial properties of calcium hydroxide were further enhanced and prolonged with the addition of silver and copper ions. Both ionic modifications significantly enhanced the bactericidal potential. The copper modification showed higher antibacterial effects than the silver modification and had a higher cytocompatibility which was comparable to the pure calcium hydroxide coating. Thus, copper ions are an auspicious option to enhance the antibacterial properties. Calcium hydroxide coatings presented in this thesis have promising antibacterial properties and can easily be applied to complex geometries, thus they are a step in fighting aseptic loosening and implant infections.
Persistent room temperature phosphorescent (RTP) luminophores have gained remarkable interest recently for a number of applications in security printing, OLEDs, optical storage, time-gated biological imaging and oxygen sensors. We report the first persistent RTP with lifetimes up to 0.5 s from simple triarylboranes which have no lone pairs. We also have prepared 3 isomeric (o, m, p-bromophenyl)-bis(2,6-dimethylphenyl)boranes. Among the 3 isomers (o-, m- and p-BrTAB) synthesized, the ortho-one is the only one which shows dual phosphorescence, with a short lifetime of 0.8 ms and a long lifetime of 234 ms in the crystalline state at room temperature. At last, we checked the RTP properties from the boric acid. We found that the pure boric acid does not show RTP in the solid state.
Visual perception of surfaces is of utmost importance in everyday life. Therefore, it comes naturally, that different surface structures evoke different visual impressions in the viewer even if the material underlying these surface structures is the same. This topic is especially virulent for manufacturing processes in which more than one stakeholder is involved, but where the final product needs to meet certain criteria. A common practice to address such slight but perceivable differences in the visual appearance of structured surfaces is that trained evaluators assess the samples and assign a pass or fail. However, this process is both time consuming and cost intensive. Thus, we conducted two studies to analyze the relationship between physical surface structure parameters and participants visual assessment of the samples. With the first experiment, we aimed at uncovering a relationship between physical roughness parameters and visual lightness perception while the second experiment was designed to test participants' discrimination sensitivity across the range of stimuli. Perceived lightness and the measured surface roughness were nonlinearly related to the surface structure. Additionally, we found a linear relationship between the engraving parameter and physical brightness. Surface structure was an ideal predictor for perceived lightness and participants discriminated equally well across the entire range of surface structures.
Realization and Spectroscopy of the Quantum Spin Hall Insulator Bismuthene on Silicon Carbide
(2022)
Topological matter is one of the most vibrant research fields of contemporary solid state physics since the theoretical prediction of the quantum spin Hall effect in graphene in 2005. Quantum spin Hall insulators possess a vanishing bulk conductivity but symmetry-protected, helical edge states that give rise to dissipationless charge transport.
The experimental verification of this exotic state of matter in 2007 lead to a boost of research activity in this field, inspired by possible ground-breaking future applications.
However, the use of the quantum spin Hall materials available to date is limited to cryogenic temperatures owing to their comparably small bulk band gaps.
In this thesis, we follow a novel approach to realize a quantum spin Hall material with a large energy gap and epitaxially grow bismuthene, i.e., Bi atoms adopting a honeycomb lattice, in a \((\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3})\) reconstruction on the semiconductor SiC(0001). In this way, we profit both from the honeycomb symmetry as well as the large spin-orbit coupling of Bi, which, in combination, give rise to a topologically non-trivial band gap on the order of one electronvolt.
An in-depth theoretical analysis demonstrates that the covalent bond between the Si and Bi atoms is not only stabilizing the Bi film but is pivotal to attain the quantum spin Hall phase.
The preparation of high-quality, unreconstructed SiC(0001) substrates sets the basis for the formation of bismuthene and requires an extensive procedure in ultra-pure dry H\(_2\) gas. Scanning tunneling microscopy measurements unveil the (\(1\times1\)) surface periodicity and smooth terrace planes, which are suitable for the growth of single Bi layers by means of molecular beam epitaxy. The chemical configuration of the resulting Bi film and its oxidation upon exposure to ambient atmosphere are inspected with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy reveals the excellent agreement of probed and calculated band structure. In particular, it evidences a characteristic Rashba-splitting of the valence bands at the K point. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy probes signatures of this splitting, as well, and allows to determine the full band gap with a magnitude of \(E_\text{gap}\approx0.8\,\text{eV}\).
Constant-current images and local-density-of-state maps confirm the presence of a planar honeycomb lattice, which forms several domains due to different, yet equivalent, nucleation sites of the (\(\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}\))-Bi reconstruction.
Differential conductivity measurements demonstrate that bismuthene edge states evolve at atomic steps of the SiC substrate. The probed, metallic local density of states is in agreement with the density of states expected from the edge state's energy dispersion found in density functional theory calculations - besides a pronounced dip at the Fermi level.
By means of temperature- and energy-dependent tunneling spectroscopy it is shown that the spectral properties of this suppressed density of states are successfully captured in the framework of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory and most likely originate from enhanced electronic correlations in the edge channel.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), subsuming atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries and subsequent myocardial infarction, are the leading cause of death in the European Union (over 4 million deaths annually), with devastating individual and economic consequences.
Recent studies revealed that T cells play a crucial role in post-MI inflammation, healing and remodelling processes. Nevertheless, the specificity profile of adaptive immune responses in the infarcted myocardium has not yet been differentiated. The experiments portrayed in this thesis sought to assess whether post-MI CD4+ T cell responses in mice are triggered by heart specific antigens, and eventually identify relevant epitopes.
We were able to create a murine antigen atlas including a list of 206 epitopes for I-Ab and 193 epitopes for I-Ad presented on MHC-II in the context of MI. We sought to consecutively test this panel by in vitro T cell proliferation and antigen recall assays ex vivo. The elispot assay was used as a readout for antigen-specific stimulation by measurement of IL-2 and IFN-γ production, currently the most sensitive approach available to detect even small counts of antigen producing cells. Splenocytes as well as lymphocytes from mediastinal lymph nodes were purified from animals 7 days or 56 days after EMI conducted by ligation of the left anterior descending artery.
We were able to provide evidence that post-MI T cell responses in Balb/c mice are triggered by heart-specific antigens and that MYHCA, especially MYHCA614-628, is relevant for that response. Moreover, a significant specific T cell response after MI in C57BL/6J mice was observed for α actin, cardiac muscle 1 [ACTC1], myosin-binding protein C3 [MYBPC3] and myosin heavy chain α [MYHCA] derived heart specific antigens.
Generally, the epitopes of interest for Balb/c as well as C57BL/6J could be further investigated and may eventually be modulated in the future.
This dissertation focuses on the construct and criterion validity of integrity tests and aims to enhance both. To accomplish this goal, three approaches were adopted: First, an overview and systematic comparison of integrity tests was conducted with reference to the construction and application of the tests. Second, the nomological network of integrity tests was expanded with reference to honesty-humility and organizational citizenship behavior at their factor and facet level. Third, two promising methods to reduce faking on integrity tests were tested: the double rating method (Hui, 2001) and the indirect questioning technique. In line with previous research, the results of the overview and comparison of integrity measures confirmed that integrity tests are multidimensional and heterogenous. A clear definition of integrity is urgently needed. The personality trait of honesty-humility and its facets of fairness, and modesty revealed the most significant relationships to integrity. Moreover, organizational citizenship behavior and its facets of altruism, conscientiousness, and sportsmanship were found to significantly relate to integrity. Furthermore, integrity tests were able not only to predict organizational citizenship behavior but also to incrementally predict job performance and organizational citizenship behavior beyond the factor and facet level of the personality traits of conscientiousness and honesty-humility. In contrast to the indirect questioning technique, the double rating method, which includes an other rating and a self rating, was shown to be able to significantly reduce faking on integrity tests in an anonymous survey setting. This dissertation makes an important contribution to better explain the construct and nomological network of integrity, provide a more detailed view on integrity tests and their protection against faking, and expand the predictive and incremental validity of these tests. The implications for future research and practice are further discussed.
In the last decade continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo in the hybridization expansion (CTHYB) was one of the most successful Monte Carlo techniques to describe correlated quantum phenomena in conjunction with dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). The first part of the thesis consists of algorithmical developments regarding CTHYB and DMFT. I provide a complete derivation and an extensive discussion of the expansion formula. We generalized it to treat spin-orbit coupling, and invented the superstate sampling algorithm to make it efficient enough for describing systems with general interactions, crystal fields and spin-orbit coupling at low temperatures. But CTHYB is known to fail in the standard implementation for equal-time correlators, certain higher-order Green’s functions and the atomic limit; we discovered that its estimator for the Greens function is also inconsistent for Anderson impurities with finite, discrete baths. I focus then on further improvements of CTHYB that we have conceived and worked on, in particular for f-orbitals and for taking physical symmetries into account in the calculation of the Monte Carlo observables. The second part of the thesis presents selected physical applications of these methods. I show DMFT calculations of highest accuracy for elemental iron and nickel and discover a new mechanism of magnetic ordering in nickel: the ordering of band structure-induced local moments. Then we analyze the stability of this phenomenon under pressure and temperatures, that characterize in the Earth’s core. We find, that the mechanism survives these conditions and may give a significant contribution to the generation of the Earth’s magnetic field. The next topic is the stability of double Dirac fermions against electronic correlations. We find, that the Coulomb interaction in the corresponding material Bi2 CuO4 are strong enough to destroy the double Dirac cone, and substantial uniform pressure is necessary to restore them. In the last chapter I derive the properties of Higgs and Goldstone bosons from Ginzburg-Landau theory, and identify these excitations in a model of an excitonic magnet.
In terms of the need of environmentally benign renewable and storable energy sources, splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen by using sunlight is a promising approach. Hereby, water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) are required to perform the water oxidation comprising the transfer of four electrons to provide the reducing equivalents for producing hydrogen. The class of Ru(bda) (bda = 2,2'-bipyridine-6,6'-dicarboxylate) catalysts has proven to be efficient for this reaction.
In this thesis, ligand exchange processes in Ru(bda) complexes have been analyzed and the formation of multinuclear macrocyclic WOCs was studied. Based on the knowledge acquired by these studies, new multinuclear cyclic Ru(bda) complexes have been synthesized and their catalytic efficiencies in homogeneous water oxidation have been investigated. Going one step further for setting up functional devices, molecular WOCs have been immobilized on conducting or semiconducting supporting materials. Direct anchoring on carbon nanotubes generated a promising materials for further applications.
In the heart the β\(_1\)-adrenergic receptor (AR) and the β\(_2\)-AR, two prototypical G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), are both activated by the same hormones, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. Both receptors couple to stimulatory G\(_s\) proteins, mediate an increase in cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and influence the contractility and frequency of the heart upon stimulation. However, activation of the β\(_1\)-AR, not the β\(_2\)-AR, lead to other additional effects, such as changes in gene transcription resulting in cardiac hypertrophy, leading to speculations on how distinct effects can arise from receptors coupled to the same downstream signaling pathway.
In this thesis the question of whether this distinct behavior may originate from a differential localization of these two receptors in adult cardiomyocytes is addressed. Therefore, fluorescence spectroscopy tools are developed and implemented in order to elucidate the presence and dynamics of these endogenous receptors at the outer plasma membrane as well as on the T-tubular network of intact adult cardiomyocytes. This allows the visualization of confined localization and diffusion of the β\(_2\)-AR to the T-tubular network at endogenous expression. In contrast, the β\(_1\)-AR is found diffusing at both the outer plasma membrane and the T-tubules. Upon overexpression of the β\(_2\)-AR in adult transgenic cardiomyocytes, the receptors experience a loss of this compartmentalization and are also found at the cell surface. These data suggest that distinct signaling and functional effects can be controlled by specific cell surface targeting of the receptor subtypes.
The tools at the basis of this thesis work are a fluorescent adrenergic antagonist in combination of fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy to monitor the localization and dynamics of the lowly expressed adrenergic receptors. Along the way to optimizing these approaches, I worked on combining widefield and confocal imaging in one setup, as well as implementing a stable autofocus mechanism using electrically tunable lenses.
Purpose
Definitive fascial closure is an essential treatment objective after open abdomen treatment and mitigates morbidity and mortality. There is a paucity of evidence on factors that promote or prevent definitive fascial closure.
Methods
A multi-center multivariable analysis of data from the Open Abdomen Route of the European Hernia Society included all cases between 1 May 2015 and 31 December 2019. Different treatment elements, i.e. the use of a visceral protective layer, negative-pressure wound therapy and dynamic closure techniques, as well as patient characteristics were included in the multivariable analysis. The study was registered in the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform via the German Registry for Clinical Trials (DRK00021719).
Results
Data were included from 630 patients from eleven surgical departments in six European countries. Indications for OAT were peritonitis (46%), abdominal compartment syndrome (20.5%), burst abdomen (11.3%), abdominal trauma (9%), and other conditions (13.2%). The overall definitive fascial closure rate was 57.5% in the intention-to-treat analysis and 71% in the per-protocol analysis. The multivariable analysis showed a positive correlation of negative-pressure wound therapy (odds ratio: 2.496, p < 0.001) and dynamic closure techniques (odds ratio: 2.687, p < 0.001) with fascial closure and a negative correlation of intra-abdominal contamination (odds ratio: 0.630, p = 0.029) and the number of surgical procedures before OAT (odds ratio: 0.740, p = 0.005) with DFC.
Conclusion
The clinical course and prognosis of open abdomen treatment can significantly be improved by the use of treatment elements such as negative-pressure wound therapy and dynamic closure techniques, which are associated with definitive fascial closure.
Religion and social support along with trait emotional intelligence (EI) help individuals to reduce stress caused by difficult situations. Their implications may vary across cultures in reference to predicting health-related quality of life (HRQoL). A convenience sample of N = 200 chronic heart failure (CHF) patients was recruited at cardiology centers in Germany (n = 100) and Pakistan (n = 100). Results indicated that trait-EI predicted better mental component of HRQoL in Pakistani and German CHF patients. Friends as social support appeared relevant for German patients only. Qualitative data indicate an internal locus of control in German as compared to Pakistani patients. Strengthening the beneficial role of social support in Pakistani patients is one example of how the current findings may inspire culture-specific treatment to empower patients dealing with the detrimental effects of CHF.
Nucleic acids are not only one of the most important classes of macromolecules in biochemistry but also a promising platform for the defined arrangement of chromophores. Thanks to their precise organization by directional polar and hydrophobic interactions, oligonucleotides can be exploited as suitable templates for multichromophore assemblies with predictable properties. To expand the toolbox of emissive, base pairing nucleobase analogs several barbituric acid merocyanine (BAM) chromophores with tunable spectroscopic properties were synthesized and incorporated into RNA, DNA and glycol nucleic acid (GNA) oligonucleotides. A multitude of duplexes containing up to ten BAM chromophores was obtained and analysis by spectroscopic methods revealed the presence of dipolarly coupled merocyanine aggregates with properties
strongly dependent on the chromophore orientation toward each other and the backbone conformation. These characteristics were exploited for various applications such as FRET pair formation and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) experiments. The observed formation of higher-order aggregates implies future applications of these new oligonucleotide-chromophore systems as light-harvesting DNA nanomaterials. Besides oligonucleotide templated covalent assembly of chromophores also non-covalent nucleic acid-chromophore complexes are a broad field of research. Among these, fluorogenic RNA aptamers are of special interest with the most versatile ones based on derivatives of the GFP chromophore hydroxybenzylidene imidazolone (HBI). Therefore, new HBI-derived chromophores with an expanded conjugated system and an additional exocyclic amino group for an enhanced binding affinity were synthesized and analyzed in complex with the Chili aptamer. Among these, structurally new fluorogenes with strong fluorescence activation upon binding to Chili were identified which are promising for further derivatization and application as color-switching sensor devices for example.
A practical and direct method was developed for the production of versatile alkyl boronate esters via transition metal-free borylation of primary and secondary alkyl sulfones. The key to the success of the strategy is the use of bis(neopentyl glycolato) diboron (B\(_{2}\)neop\(_{2}\)), with a stoichiometric amount of base as a promoter. The practicality and industrial potential of this protocol are highlighted by its wide functional group tolerance, the late-stage modification of complex compounds, no need for further transesterification, and operational simplicity. Radical clock, radical trap experiments, and EPR studies were conducted which show that the borylation process involves radical intermediates.
The thesis at hand is concerned with improving our understanding of and our control over transport properties of the three-dimensional topological insulator HgTe. Topological insulators are characterized by an insulating bulk and symmetry-protected metallic surface states. These topological surface states hold great promise for research and technology; at the same time, many properties of experimentally accessible topological insulator materials still need to be explored thoroughly. The overall aim of this thesis was to experimentally investigate micrometer-sized HgTe transport devices to observe the ballistic transport regime as well as intercarrier scattering and possibly identify special properties of the topological surface states.
Part I of the thesis presents lithographic developments concerned with etching small HgTe devices. The aim was to replace existing processes which relied on dry etching with high-energy \(\text{Ar}^+\) ions and an organic etch mask. This etching method is known to degrade the HgTe crystal quality. In addition, the etch mask turned out to be not durable for long etching processes and difficult to remove completely after etching. First, \(\text{BaF}_2\) was introduced as a new etch mask for dry etching to replace the organic etch mask. With common surface characterization techniques like SEM and XPS it was shown that \(\text{BaF}_2\) etch masks are easy to deposit, highly durable in common dry etching processes for \(\text{Hg}_{1-x}\text{Cd}_x\text{Te}\), and easy to remove in deionized water. Transport results of HgTe devices fabricated with the new etch mask are comparable to results obtained with the old process. At the same time, the new etch mask can withstand longer etching times and does not cause problems due to incomplete removal. Second, a new inductively coupled plasma dry etching process based on \(\text{CH}_4\) and Ar was introduced. This etching process is compatible with \(\text{BaF}_2\) etch masks and yields highly reproducible results. Transport results indicate that the new etching process does not degrade the crystal quality and is suitable to produce high-quality transport devices even in the micrometer range. A comparison with wet-etched samples shows that inductively coupled plasma etching introduces a pronounced edge roughness. This - usually undesirable - property is actually beneficial for some of the experiments in this study and mostly irrelevant for others. Therefore, most samples appearing in this thesis were fabricated with the new process.
Part II of the thesis details the advancements made in identifying topological and trivial states which contribute to transport in HgTe three-dimensional topological insulators. To this end, macroscopic Hall bar samples were fabricated from high-quality tensilely strained HgTe layers by means of the improved lithographic processes. All samples were equipped with a top gate electrode, and some also with a modulation doping layer or a back gate electrode to modify the carrier density of the surface states on both sides of the HgTe layer. Due to the high sample quality, Landau levels could be well-resolved in standard transport measurements down to magnetic fields of less than 0.5T. High-resolution measurements of the Landau level dispersion with gate voltage and magnetic field allowed disentangling different transport channels. The main result here is that the upper (electron) branches of the two topological surface states contribute to transport in all experimentally relevant density regimes, while the hole branch is not accessible. Far in n-regime bulk conduction band states give a minor contribution to transport. More importantly, trivial bulk valence band holes come into play close to the charge neutrality point. Further in p-regime, the strong applied gate voltage leads to the formation of two-dimensional, massive hole states at the HgTe surface. The interplay of different states gives rise to rich physics: Top gate-back gate maps revealed that an anticrossing of Landau levels from the two topological surface states occurs at equal filling. A possible explanation for this effect is a weak hybridization of the surface states; however, future studies need to further clarify this point. Furthermore, the superposition of n-type topological and p-type trivial surface states leads to an intriguing Landau level dispersion. The good quantization of the Hall conductance in this situation indicates that the counterpropagating edge states interact with each other. The nature of this interaction will be the topic of further research.
Part III of the thesis is focused on HgTe microstructures. These "channel samples" have a typical width of 0.5 to 4µm and a typical length of 5 to 80µm. The quality of these devices benefits particularly from the improved lithographic processes. As a result, the impurity mean free path of the topological surface state electrons is on the order of the device width and transport becomes semiballistic. This was verified by measuring the channel resistance in small magnetic fields in n-regime. The deflection of carriers towards the dissipative channel walls results in a pronounced peak in the magnetoresistance, which scales in a predictable manner with the channel width. To investigate transport effects due to mutual scattering of charge carriers, the differential resistance of channel samples was measured as a function of carrier temperature. Selective heating of the charge carriers - but not the lattice - was achieved by passing a heating current through the channel. Increasing the carrier temperature has two pronounced effects when the Fermi level is situated in proximity to the bulk valence band maximum where the density of states is large. First, when both topological surface state electrons and bulk holes are present, electron-hole scattering leads to a pronounced increase in resistance with increasing carrier temperature. Second, a thermally induced increase of the electron and hole carrier densities reduces the resistance again at higher temperatures. A model considering these two effects was developed, which can well reproduce the experimental results. Current heating experiments in zero-gap HgTe quantum wells and compressively strained HgTe layers are consistent with this model. These observations raise the question as to how electron-hole scattering may affect other transport properties of HgTe-based three-dimensional topological insulators, which is briefly discussed in the outlook.
Microorganisms that colonize the human body face large fluctuations in their surroundings. Therefore, those microbes developed sophisticated mechanisms that allow them to adapt their cell biology and maintain cellular homeostasis. One organelle vital to preserve cell physiology is the vacuole. The vacuole exhibits a wide range of functions and is able to adjust itself in response to both external and internal stimuli. Moreover, it plays an important role in host interaction and virulence in fungi such as Candida albicans. Despite this connection, only a few regulatory proteins have been described to modulate vacuolar biology in fungal pathogens. Furthermore, whether such regulation alters fungus-host interplay remains largely unknown.
This thesis focuses on the characterization of ZCF8, a fungus-specific transcription regulator in the human-associated yeast C. albicans. To this end, I combined genome-wide protein-DNA interaction assays and gene expression analysis that identified genes regulated by Zcf8p. Fluorescence microscopy uncovered that several top targets of Zcf8p localize to the fungal vacuole. Moreover, deletion and overexpression of ZCF8 resulted in alterations in vacuolar morphology and in luminal pH and rendered the fungus resistant or susceptible to a vacuole-disturbing drug. Finally, in vitro adherence assays showed that Zcf8p modulates the attachment of C. albicans to human epithelial cells in a vacuole-dependent manner.
Given those findings, I posit that the previously uncharacterized transcription regulator Zcf8p modulates fungal attachment to epithelial cells in a manner that depends on the status of the fungal vacuole. Furthermore, the results highlight that vacuolar physiology is a substantial factor influencing the physical interaction between Candida cells and mammalian mucosal surfaces.
Photosynthetic plants have a remarkable ability to modify their metabolism and development according to ever changing environmental conditions. The root system displays continuous growth of the primary root and formation of lateral roots enabling efficient water and nutrient uptake and anchorage of the plant in soil. With regard to lateral roots, development is post-embryonic, originating from the pericycle of the primary root. Coordinated activity of several molecular signalling pathways controlled by the hormone auxin is important throughout all stages of lateral root development.At first, two adjacent Xylem Pole Pericycle (XPP) cells are activated and the nuclei of these cells migrate towards a common cell wall.This is followed by XPP cells acquiring volume thus swelling up.The XPP cells then undergo anticlinal cell division, followed by a series of periclinal and anticlinal divisions,leading to lateral root primordia.These break through the radial cell layers and emerge out the primary root.
Although root system plasticity is well-described in response to environmental cues such as ion nutrition in the soil, little is known on how root development is shaped according to the endogenous energy status of the plant.In this study, we were able to connect limited perturbations in photosynthetic energy supply to lateral root development.We established two experimental systems – treatment with low light and unexpected darkness which led to short-term energy imbalance in the plant.These short perturbations administered, showed an increase in the emerged lateral root density and decrease in root hexose availability and activation of the low energy marker gene ASN1 (ASPARAGINE SYNTHETASE 1).Although not demonstrated, presumably, these disturbances in the plant energy homeo-stasis activates SnRK1 (SNF1 RELATED KINASE 1),an evolutionary conserved kinase mediat-ing metabolic and transcriptional responses towards low energy conditions. In A. thaliana, two catalytic α-subunits of this kinase (SnRK1.α1 and SnRK1.α2) are functionally active and form ternary complexes with the regulatory β- and γ- subunits. Whereas unexpected darkness results in an increase in emerged lateral root density, the snrk1.α1 loss-of-function mutant displayed decrease in emerged lateral root density. As this effect is not that pronounced in the snrk1.α2 loss-of-function mutant, the α1 catalytic subunit is important for the observed lateral root phenotype under short-term energy perturbations. Moreover, root expression patterns of SnRK1.α1:GFP supports a role of this catalytic subunit in lateral root development. Furthermore, the lateral root response during short-term perturbations requires the SnRK1 downstream transcriptional regulator bZIP63 (BASIC LEU-CINE ZIPPER 63), as demonstrated here by a loss-of-function approach. Phenotypic studies showed that in comparison to wild-type, bzip63 mutants displayed decreased lateral root density upon low-light and unexpected darkness conditions. Previous work has demonstrat-ed that SnRK1 directly phosphorylates bZIP63 at three serine residues. Alanine-exchange mutants of the SnRK1 dependent bZIP63 phosphorylation sites behave similarly to bzip63 loss-of-function mutants and do not display increased lateral root density upon short-term unexpected darkness. This data strongly supports an impact of SnRK1-bZIP63 signalling in mediating the observed lateral root density phenotype. Plants expressing a bZIP63:YFP fu-sion protein showed specific localization patterns in primary root and in all developmental stages of the lateral root. bzip63 loss-of-function mutant lines displayed reduced early stage lateral root initiation events under unexpected darkness as demonstrated by Differen-tial Interference Contrast microscopy (DIC) and the use of a GATA23 reporter line. This data supports a role of bZIP63 in early lateral root initiation.
Next, by employing Chromatin Immunoprecitation (ChIP) sequencing, we were able to iden-tify global binding targets of bZIP63, including the auxin-regulated transcription factor (TF) ARF19 (AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 19), a well-described central regulator of lateral root development. Additional ChIP experiments confirmed direct binding of bZIP63 to an ARF19 promoter region harboring a G-Box cis-element, a well-established bZIP63 binding site. We also observed that short-term energy perturbation upon unexpected darkness induced tran-scription of ARF19, which was impaired in the bzip63 loss-of-function mutant. These results propose that bZIP63 mediates lateral root development under short-term energy perturba-tion via ARF19.
In conclusion, this study provides a novel mechanistic link between energy homeostasis and plant development. By employing reverse genetics, confocal imaging and high-throughput sequencing strategies, we were able to propose a SnRK1-bZIP63-ARF19 signalling module in integrating energy signalling into lateral root developmental programs.
Overview of the Organolead Trihalide Perovskite Crystal Area
Studies of perovskite single crystals with high crystallographic quality is an important technological area of the perovskite research, which enables to estimate their full optoelectronic potential, and thus to boost their future applications [26]. It was therefore essential to grow high-quality single crystals with lowest structural as well as chemical defect densities and with a stoichiometry relevant for their thin-film counterparts [26]. Optoelectronic devices, e.g. solar cells, are highly complex systems in which the properties of the active layer (absorber) are strongly influenced by the adjacent layers, so it is not always easy to define the targeted properties and elaborate the design rules for the active layer. Currently, organolead trihalide perovskite (OLTP) single crystals with the structure ABX3 are one of the most studied crystalline systems. These hybrid crystals are solids composed of an organic cation such as methylammonium (A = MA+) or formamidinium (A = FA+) to form a three-dimensional periodic lattice together with the lead cation (B = Pb2+) and a halogen anion such as chloride, bromide or iodide (X = Cl-, Br- or I-) [23]. Among them are methylammonium lead tribromide (MAPbBr3), methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3), as well as methylammonium lead trichloride (MAPbCl3) [62, 63]. Important representatives with the larger cation FA+ are formamidinium lead tribromide (FAPbBr3) and formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI3) [23, 64]. Besides the exchange of cations as well as anions, it was possible to grow crystals containing two halogens to obtain mixed crystals with different proportions of chlorine to bromine and bromine to iodine, as it is shown in Figure 70. By varying the mixing ratio of the halogens, it was therefore possible to vary the colour and thus the absorption properties of the crystals [85], as it can be done with thin polycrystalline perovskite films. In addition, since a few years it is also doable to grow complex crystals that contain several cations as well as anions [26, 80, 81]. These include the perovskites double cation – double halide formamidinium lead triiodide – methylammonium lead tribromide (FAPbI3)0.9(MAPbBr3)0.1 (FAMA) [26, 80] and formamidinium lead triiodide – methylammonium lead tribromide – caesium lead tribromide (FAPbI3)0.9(MAPbBr3)0.05(CsPbBr3)0.05 (CsFAMA) [81], which have made a significant contribution to increase the power conversion efficiency (PCE) in thin-film photovoltaics [47, 79, 182]. The growth of crystals to this day is performed exclusively from solution [23, 26, 56, 62]. Important preparation methods are the cooling acid-based precursor solution crystallisation [22], the inverse temperature crystallisation (ITC) [62], and the antisolvent vapour-assistant crystallisation (AVC) [137]. In the cooling crystallisation, the precursor salts AX and PbX2 are dissolved in an aqueous halogen-containing acid at high temperatures [56]. Controlled and slow cooling finally results in a supersaturated precursor solution, which leads to spontaneous nucleation of crystal nuclei, followed by subsequent crystal growth. The ITC method is based on the inverse or retrograde solubility of a dissociated perovskite in an organic solvent [23, 64]. With increasing temperature, the solubility of the perovskite decreases and mm-sized crystals can be grown within a few hours [23]. In the AVC method, the precursors are also dissolved in an organic solvent as well [137]. By slow evaporation of a so-called antisolvent [137], the solubility of the perovskite in the now present solvent mixture decreases and it finally precipitates. In addition, there are many other methods with the goal of growing high quality and large crystals in a short period of
time [60, 61, 233, 310].
Innovative possibilities for data collection, networking, and evaluation are unleashing previously untapped potential for industrial production. However, harnessing this potential also requires a change in the way we work. In addition to expanded automation, human-machine cooperation is becoming more important: The machine achieves a reduction in complexity for humans through artificial intelligence. In fractions of a second large amounts of data of high decision quality are analyzed and suggestions are offered. The human being, for this part, usually makes the ultimate decision. He validates the machine’s suggestions and, if necessary, (physically) executes them.
Both entities are highly dependent on each other to accomplish the task in the best possible way. Therefore, it seems particularly important to understand to what extent such cooperation can be effective. Current developments in the field of artificial intelligence show that research in this area is particularly focused on neural network approaches. These are considered to be highly powerful but have the disadvantage of lacking transparency. Their inherent computational processes and the respective result reasoning remain opaque to humans. Some researchers assume that human users might therefore reject the system’s suggestions. The research domain of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) addresses this problem and tries to develop methods to realize systems that are highly efficient and explainable.
This work is intended to provide further insights relevant to the defined goal of XAI. For this purpose, artifacts are developed that represent research achievements regarding the systematization, perception, and adoption of artificially intelligent decision support systems from a user perspective. The focus is on socio-technical insights with the aim to better understand which factors are important for effective human-machine cooperation. The elaborations predominantly represent extended grounded research. Thus, the artifacts imply an extension of knowledge in order to develop and/ or test effective XAI methods and techniques based on this knowledge. Industry 4.0, with a focus on maintenance, is used as the context for this development.
Impacts of climate variability and change on Maize (\(Zea\) \(mays\)) production in tropical Africa
(2022)
Climate change is undeniable and constitutes one of the major threats of the 21st century. It impacts sectors of our society, usually negatively, and is likely to worsen towards the middle and end of the century. The agricultural sector is of particular concern, for it is the primary source of food and is strongly dependent on the weather. Considerable attention has been given to the impact of climate change on African agriculture because of the continent’s high vulnerability, which is mainly due to its low adaptation capac- ity. Several studies have been implemented to evaluate the impact of climate change on this continent. The results are sometimes controversial since the studies are based on different approaches, climate models and crop yield datasets. This study attempts to contribute substantially to this large topic by suggesting specific types of climate pre- dictors. The study focuses on tropical Africa and its maize yield. Maize is considered to be the most important crop in this region. To estimate the effect of climate change on maize yield, the study began by developing a robust cross-validated multiple linear regression model, which related climate predictors and maize yield. This statistical trans- fer function is reputed to be less prone to overfitting and multicollinearity problems. It is capable of selecting robust predictors, which have a physical meaning. Therefore, the study combined: large-scale predictors, which were derived from the principal component analysis of the monthly precipitation and temperature; traditional local-scale predictors, mainly, the mean precipitation, mean temperature, maximum temperature and minimum temperature; and the Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI), derived from the specific crop (maize) water balance model. The projected maize-yield change is forced by a regional climate model (RCM) REMO under two emission scenarios: high emission scenario (RCP8.5) and mid-range emission scenario (RCP4.5). The different effects of these groups of predictors in projecting the future maize-yield changes were also assessed. Furthermore, the study analysed the impact of climate change on the global WRSI. The results indicate that almost 27 % of the interannual variability of maize production of the entire region is explained by climate variables. The influence of climate predictors on maize-yield production is more pronounced in West Africa, reaching 55 % in some areas. The model projection indicates that the maize yield in the entire region is expected to decrease by the middle of the century under an RCP8.5 emission scenario, and from the middle of the century to the end of the century, the production will slightly recover but will remain negative (around -10 %). However, in some regions of East Africa, a slight increase in maize yield is expected. The maize-yield projection under RCP4.5 remains relatively unchanged compared to the baseline period (1982-2016). The results further indicate that large-scale predictors are the most critical drivers of the global year-to-year maize-yield variability, and ENSO – which is highly correlated with the most important predictor (PC2) – seems to be the physical process underlying this variability. The effects of local predictors are more pronounced in the eastern parts of the region. The impact of the future climate change on WRSI reveals that the availability of maize water is expected to decrease everywhere, except in some parts of eastern Africa.
The fascination of microcavity exciton-polaritons (polaritons) rests upon the combination of advanced technological control over both the III-V semiconductor material platform as well as the precise spectroscopic access to polaritonic states, which provide access to the investigation of open questions and complex phenomena due to the inherent nonlinearity and direct spectroscopic observables such as energy-resolved real and Fourier space information, pseudospin and coherence. The focus of this work was to advance the research area of polariton lattice simulators with a particular emphasis on their lasing properties. Following the brief introduction into the fundamental physics of polariton lattices in chapter 2, important aspects of the sample fabrication as well as the Fourier spectroscopy techniques used to investigate various features of these lattices were summarized in chapter 3. Here, the implementation of a spatial light modulator for advanced excitation schemes was presented.
At the foundation of this work is the capability to confine polaritons into micropillars or microtraps resulting in discrete energy levels. By arranging these pillars or traps into various lattice geometries and ensuring coupling between neighbouring sites, polaritonic band structures were engineered. In chapter 4, the formation of a band structure was visualised in detail by investigating ribbons of honeycomb lattices. Here, the transition of the discrete energy levels of a single chain of microtraps to the fully developed band structure of a honeycomb lattice was observed. This study allows to design the size of individual domains in more complicated lattice geometries such that a description using band structures becomes feasible, as it revealed that a width of just six unit cells is sufficient to reproduce all characteristic features of the S band of a honeycomb lattice. In particular in the context of potential technological applications in the realms of lasing, the laser-like, coherent emission from polariton microcavities that can be achieved through the excitation of polariton condensates is intriguing. The condensation process is significantly altered in a lattice potential environment when compared to a planar microcavity. Therefore, an investigation of the polariton condensation process in a lattice with respect to the characteristics of the excitation laser, the exciton-photon detuning as well as the reduced trap distance that represents a key design parameter for polaritonic lattices was performed. Based on the demonstration of polariton condensation into multiple bands, the preferred condensation into a desired band was achieved by selecting the appropriate detuning. Additionally, a decreased condensation threshold in confined systems compared to a planar microcavity was revealed.
In chapter 5, the influence of the peculiar feature of flatbands arising in certain lattice geometries, such as the Lieb and Kagome lattices, on polaritons and polariton condensates was investigated. Deviations from a lattice simulator described by a tight binding model that is solely based on nearest neighbour coupling cause a remaining dispersiveness of the flatbands along certain directions of the Brillouin zone. Therefore, the influence of the reduced trap distance on the dispersiveness of the flatbands was investigated and precise technological control over the flatbands was demonstrated. As next-nearest neighbour coupling is reduced drastically by increasing the distance between the corresponding traps, increasing the reduced trap distance enables to tune the S flatbands of both Lieb and Kagome lattices from dispersive bands to flatbands with a bandwidth on the order of the polariton linewidth. Additionally to technological control over the band structures, the controlled excitation of large condensates, single compact localized state (CLS) condensates as well as the resonant excitation of polaritons in a Lieb flatband were demonstrated. Furthermore, selective condensation into flatbands was realised. This combination of technological and spectroscopic control illustrates the capabilities of polariton lattice simulators and was used to study the coherence of flatband polariton condensates. Here, the ability to tune the dispersiveness from a dispersive band to an almost perfect flatband in combination with the selectivity of the excitation is particularly valuable. By exciting large flatband condensates, the increasing degree of localisation to a CLS with decreasing dispersiveness was demonstrated by measurements of first order spatial coherence. Furthermore, the first order temporal coherence of CLS condensates was increased from τ = 68 ps for a dispersive flatband, a value typically achieved in high-quality microcavity samples, to a remarkable τ = 459 ps in a flatband with a dispersiveness below the polarion linewidth. Corresponding to this drastic increase of the first order coherence time, a decrease of the second order temporal coherence function from g(2)(τ =0) = 1.062 to g(2)(0) = 1.035 was observed. Next to laser-like, coherent emission, polariton condensates can form vortex lattices. In this work, two distinct vortex lattices that can form in polariton condensates in Kagome flatbands were revealed. Furthermore, chiral, superfluid edge transport was realised by breaking the spatial symmetry through a localised excitation spot. This chirality was related to a change in the vortex orientation at the edge of the lattice and thus opens the path towards further investigations of symmetry breaking and chiral superfluid transport in Kagome lattices.
Arguably the most influential concept in solid-state physics of the recent decades is the idea of topological order that has also provided a new degree of freedom to control the propagation of light. Therefore, in chapter 6, the interplay of topologically non-trivial band structures with polaritons, polariton condensates and lasing was emphasised. Firstly, a two-dimensional exciton-polariton topological insulator based on a honeycomb lattice was realised. Here, a topologically non-trivial band gap was opened at the Dirac points through a combination of TE-TM splitting of the photonic mode and Zeeman splitting of the excitonic mode. While the band gap is too small compared to the linewidth to be observed in the linear regime, the excitation of polariton condensates allowed to observe the characteristic, topologically protected, chiral edge modes that are robust against scattering at defects as well as lattice corners. This result represents a valuable step towards the investigation of non-linear and non-Hermitian topological physics, based on the inherent gain and loss of microcavities as well as the ability of polaritons to interact with each other. Apart from fundamental interest, the field of topological photonics is driven by the search of potential technological applications, where one direction is to advance the development of lasers. In this work, the starting point towards studying topological lasing was the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, since it combines a simple and well-understood geometry with a large topological gap. The coherence properties of the topological edge defect of an SSH chain was studied in detail, revealing a promising degree of second order temporal coherence of g(2)(0) = 1.07 for a microlaser with a diameter of only d = 3.5 µm. In the context of topological lasing, the idea of using a propagating, topologically protected mode to ensure coherent coupling of laser arrays is particularly promising. Here, a topologically non-trivial interface mode between the two distinct domains of the crystalline topological insulator (CTI) was realised. After establishing selective lasing from this mode, the coherence properties were studied and coherence of a full, hexagonal interface comprised of 30 vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) was demonstrated. This result thus represents the first demonstration of a topological insulator VCSEL array, combining the compact size and convenient light collection of vertically emitting lasers with an in-plane topological protection.
Finally, in chapter 7, an approach towards engineering the band structures of Lieb and honeycomb lattices by unbalancing the eigenenergies of the sites within each unit cell was presented. For Lieb lattices, this technique opens up a path towards controlling the coupling of a flatband to dispersive bands and could enable a detailed study of the influence of this coupling on the polariton flatband states. In an unbalanced honeycomb lattice, a quantum valley Hall boundary mode between two distinct, unbalanced honeycomb domains with permuted sites in the unit cells was demonstrated. This boundary mode could serve as the foundation for the realisation of a polariton quantum valley Hall effect with a truly topologically protected spin based on vortex charges. Modifying polariton lattices by unbalancing the eigenenergies of the sites that comprise a unit cell was thus identified as an additional, promising path for the future development of polariton lattice simulators.
Thermoplastic polymers have a history of decades of safe and effective use in the clinic as implantable medical devices. In recent years additive manufacturing (AM) saw increased clinical interest for the fabrication of customizable and implantable medical devices and training models using the patients’ own radiological data. However, approval from the various regulatory bodies remains a significant hurdle. A possible solution is to fabricate the AM scaffolds using materials and techniques with a clinical safety record, e.g. melt processing of polymers. Melt Electrowriting (MEW) is a novel, high resolution AM technique which uses thermoplastic polymers. MEW produces scaffolds with microscale fibers and precise fiber placement, allowing the control of the scaffold microarchitecture. Additionally, MEW can process medical-grade thermoplastic polymers, without the use of solvents paving the way for the production of medical devices for clinical applications. This pathway is investigated in this thesis, where the layout is designed to resemble the journey of a medical device produced via MEW from conception to early in vivo experiments. To do so, first, a brief history of the development of medical implants and the regenerative capability of the human body is given in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, a review of the use of thermoplastic polymers in medicine, with a focus on poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), is illustrated, as this is the polymer used in the rest of the thesis. This review is followed by a comparison of the state of the art, regarding in vivo and clinical experiments, of three polymer melt AM technologies: melt-extrusion, selective laser sintering and MEW. The first two techniques already saw successful translation to the bedside, producing patient-specific, regulatory-approved AM implants. To follow in the footsteps of these two technologies, the MEW device parameters need to be optimized. The MEW process parameters and their interplay are further discussed in Chapter 3 focusing on the importance of a steady mass flow rate of the polymer during printing. MEW reaches a balance between polymer flow, the stabilizing electric field and moving collector to produce reproducible, high-resolution scaffolds. An imbalance creates phenomena like fiber pulsing or arcing which result in defective scaffolds and potential printer damage. Chapter 4 shows the use of X-ray microtomography (µCT) as a non-destructive method to characterize the pore-related features: total porosity and the pore size distribution. MEW scaffolds are three-dimensional (3D) constructs but have long been treated in the literature as two-dimensional (2D) ones and characterized mainly by microscopy, including stereo- and scanning electron microscopy, where pore size was simply reported as the distance between the fibers in a single layer. These methods, together with the trend of producing scaffolds with symmetrical pores in the 0/90° and 0/60/120° laydown patterns, disregarded the lateral connections between pores and the potential of MEW to be used for more complex 3D structures, mimicking the extracellular matrix. Here we characterized scaffolds in the aforementioned symmetrical laydown patterns, along with the more complex 0/45/90/135° and 0/30/60/90/120/150° ones. A 2D pore size estimation was done first using stereomicroscopy, followed by and compared to µCT scanning. The scaffolds with symmetrical laydown patterns resulted in the predominance of one pore size, while those with more complex patterns had a broader distribution, which could be better shown by µCT scans. Moreover, in the symmetrical scaffolds, the size of 3D pores was not able to reach the value of the fiber spacing due to a flattening effect of the scaffold, where the thickness of the scaffold was less than the fiber spacing, further restricting the pore size distribution in such scaffolds. This method could be used for quality assurance of fabricated scaffolds prior to use in in vitro or in vivo experiments and would be important for a clinical translation. Chapter 5 illustrates a proof of principle subcutaneous implantation in vivo experiment. MEW scaffolds were already featured in small animal in vivo experiments, but to date, no analysis of the foreign body reaction (FBR) to such implants was performed. FBR is an immune reaction to implanted foreign materials, including medical devices, aimed at protecting the host from potential adverse effects and can interfere with the function of some medical implants. Medical-grade PCL was used to melt electrowrite scaffolds with 50 and 60 µm fiber spacing for the 0/90° and 0/60/120° laydown patterns, respectively. These implants were implanted subcutaneously in immunocompetent, outbred mice, with appropriate controls, and explanted after 2, 4, 7 and 14 days. A thorough characterization of the scaffolds before implantation was done, followed by a full histopathological analysis of the FBR to the implants after excision. The scaffolds, irrespective of their pore geometry, induced an extensive FBR in the form of accumulation of foreign body giant cells around the fiber walls, in a manner that almost occluded available pore spaces with little to no neovascularization. This reaction was not induced by the material itself, as the same reaction failed to develop in the PCL solid film controls. A discussion of the results was given with special regard to the literature available on flat surgical meshes, as well as other hydrogel-based porous scaffolds with similar pore sizes. Finally, a general summary of the thesis in Chapter 6 recapitulates the most important points with a focus on future directions for MEW.
While the field of electrochromic (EC) materials and devices (ECDs) continues to advance in terms of color palette and understanding the underlying mechanism, several scientific and technological challenges need to be addressed by optimizing the materials and understanding the electrochemical interplay of these materials in full cells. The main issue here is to further improve the EC profile for color neutrality and cycling stability in order to commercialize dimmable EC products. The transparent conductive substrates used in this work (FTO and ultra-thin ITO glass) have high visible light transmittance (τv > 85%) and low sheet resistance (< 25 Ω·sq-1). In addition, the Li+-containing gel electrolyte has sufficient ionic conductivity (2.8·10-4 S·cm-1 at 25 °C), so the investigated ECDs could achieve a fast response (required ionic conductivity is between 10−3 and 10−7 S·cm-1).
This work shows that the combination of cathodically-coloring Fe-MEPE with anodically-coloring non-stoichiometric nickel oxide (Ni1-xO) electrodes (prepared by the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana, Slovenia) can be used in neutral-coloring type III ECDs. The Fe-MEPE/Ni1-xO ECD with the underbalanced CE (ECD1-1, 2: 1) and the balanced configuration (ECD1-2, 1: 1) are both nearly neutrally-colored (ECD1-1: a* = -6.7, b* = 8.8; ECD1-2: a* = -9.0, b* = 10.1) in the bright state with a τv of almost 70%. Due to the overbalancing of the CE (ECD1-3, 1:3), a deviation (a* = -2.8, b* = 19.9) from the neutral coloration occurred here. The balanced as well as the overbalanced ECD configurations show high electrochemical cycling stability (over 1,000 potentiostatic switching cycles). In general, the overbalanced configuration offers the advantage of a smaller operating voltage range (-1 V ↔ 2.5 V to -1 V ↔ 1.5 V), i.e., avoiding possible electrochemical degradation of the EC materials, electrolyte, or conductive layers. By using a Li RE in the full cell, insights into the optimal matching of electrochemical and optical properties between the two electrodes are obtained to achieve more stable ECDs. Thereby, the redox potentials of both EC electrodes (Fe-MEPE and Ni1-xO) can be measured during operation. The incomplete decolorization of ECD1-1 can be explained by the measured electrode potentials (below the required 4 V vs. Li/Li+), excluding side reactions and degradation at both electrodes. The results demonstrate the importance of using balanced and (slightly) overbalanced ECD configurations with complementary-coloring EC electrodes to achieve high cycling stability and fast switching at low operating voltages. Therefore, this three-electrode configuration provides an excellent method for in situ electrochemical characterization of the individual EC electrodes to better understand the redox processes during device operation and to further improve the optical contrast and cycle stability of ECDs.
The Fe-MEPE/Ni1-xO combination was tested on flexible ultrathin ITO glass (ECD1-4). Here, by applying a low voltage of -1 V ↔ 2.5 V, the MEPE/Ni1-xO ECDs can be reversibly switched from a colored (L* = 35.6, a* = 19.4, b* = -26.7) to a nearly colorless (L* = 78.5, a* = -14.0, b* = 21.3) state. This is accompanied by a change in τv from 6% to 53%. The ECDs exhibit fast response and good cycling stability (5% loss of optical contrast over 100 switching cycles).
To further improve color neutrality and cycling stability, ECDs combining Fe-MEPE and mixed metal oxides as ion storage layers were investigated. Titanium manganese oxide (TMO, Fraunhofer IST) and titanium vanadium oxide (TiVOx, EControl-Glas GmbH & Co. KG) electrodes are compared for use as optically-passive ion storage layers. TiVOx with a maximum charge density of approx. 27 mC·cm-2 and a coloration efficiency of η = 2 cm·C-1 at 584 nm shows a color change from yellow to light gray at 2 V vs. Ag/AgCl, while the slightly anodically-coloring Ti-rich TMO (10.5 mC·cm-², η584 nm = -4 cm·C-1) switches from light yellow to colorless at -2.5 V vs. Ag/AgCl. These materials show only a slight change in τv value from 85% to 75% and from 72% to 81%, respectively, thus reaching the requirements for highly transmissive optical-passive ion storage layers. The ECDs with Fe-MEPE in combination with TiVOx (ECD2-1) and TMO-1 (ECD2-2) are blue-purple in the dark state (0 V) and turn colorless by applying a voltage of 1.5 V, changing the τv value from 28% to 69% and from 21% to 57% in 3 s and 13 s, respectively. The ECDs show fast responses and high cyclability over more than 100 cycles.
In the last section, the simplification of cell architecture by using redox mediators shows that different redox mediators (KHCF(III), Fc-PF6, Fc-BF4, and TMTU) can be used in type II ECDs (4 instead of 5 layers) consisting of Fe-MEPE or Ni1-xO thin film electrodes. The combination of KHCF(III) with Fe-MEPE has a low cycling stability due to the electrochemical formation of Prussian blue (PB). This side reaction is undesirable as it decreases the optical contrast. It can be avoided by using Fc+- (ECD3-5/6) or TMTU-based (ECD3-7) redox mediators, which exhibit reversible redox behavior. A high τv value of 72% is obtained for the use of TMTU. Low concentrations (<0.1 M) of redox mediators decrease the cell voltage for complete switching without affecting the optical properties of the ECDs. The redox couple TMTU/TMFDS2+ (molar ratio of 1:0.1 in 1 M LiClO4/PC as electrolyte) works well in combination with
Ni1-xO electrodes (ECD3-10), with a change in τv value from 38% (colored at 2 V, L* = 67.1, a* = 3.9, b* = 17.2) to 70% at (decolored at -2 V, L* = 86.6, a* = -0.6, b* = 17.2). This result implies that incorporating redox mediators into the electrolyte is an effective means to simplify the cell assembly and color neutrality can be obtained with one optically active WE and a color-neutral redox mediator. Moreover, the combination of Ni1-xO and the colorless TMTU/TMFDS2+ redox mediator is a potential candidate to obtain neutrally colored ECDs.
It is shown that the lab-sized FTO- and ultra-thin ITO-glass-based ECDs are very attractive for energy-efficient EC applications, e.g., in architectural or automotive glazing, aircraft, ships, home appliances and displays. To monitor the EC performance and to prevent diverging electrode potentials during the switching process, the studied three-electrode configuration can help to extend the cycle stability as well as to improve the charge balancing of dimmable applications. The studied ECDs display a route towards neutral tint, e.g., EC active Ni1-xO, optically-inactive mixed metal oxides, and colorless redox mediators. Nevertheless, color neutrality should be further improved to meet the requirements for industrial applications. For future work, a scale-up process from lab-sized (few cm²) to prototype (few m²) ECDs will be necessary.
RNA-cleaving deoxyribozymes have found broad application as useful tools for RNA biochemistry. However, tedious in vitro selection procedures combined with laborious characterization of individual candidate catalysts hinder the discovery of novel catalytic motifs. Here, we present a new high-throughput sequencing method, DZ-seq, which directly measures activity and localizes cleavage sites of thousands of deoxyribozymes. DZ-seq exploits A-tailing followed by reverse transcription with an oligo-dT primer to capture the cleavage status and sequences of both deoxyribozyme and RNA substrate. We validated DZ-seq by conventional analytical methods and demonstrated its utility by discovery of novel deoxyribozymes that allow for cleaving challenging RNA targets or the analysis of RNA modification states.
Human-computer interfaces have the potential to support mental health practitioners in alleviating mental distress.
Adaption of this technology in practice is, however, slow.
We provide means to extend the design space of human-computer interfaces for mitigating mental distress.
To this end, we suggest three complementary approaches: using presentation technology, using virtual environments, and using communication technology to facilitate social interaction.
We provide new evidence that elementary aspects of presentation technology affect the emotional processing of virtual stimuli, that perception of our environment affects the way we assess our environment, and that communication technologies affect social bonding between users.
By showing how interfaces modify emotional reactions and facilitate social interaction, we provide converging evidence that human-computer interfaces can help alleviate mental distress.
These findings may advance the goal of adapting technological means to the requirements of mental health practitioners.
This thesis deals with the first part of a larger project that follows the ultimate goal of implementing a software tool that creates a Mission Control Room in Virtual Reality. The software is to be used for the operation of spacecrafts and is specially developed for the unique real-time requirements of unmanned satellite missions. Beginning from launch, throughout the whole mission up to the recovery or disposal of the satellite, all systems need to be monitored and controlled in continuous intervals, to ensure the mission’s success. Mission Operation is an essential part of every space mission and has been undertaken for decades. Recent technological advancements in the realm of immersive technologies pave the way for innovative methods to operate spacecrafts. Virtual Reality has the capability to resolve the physical constraints set by traditional Mission Control Rooms and thereby delivers novel opportunities. The paper highlights underlying theoretical aspects of Virtual Reality, Mission Control and IP Communication. However, the focus lies upon the practical part of this thesis which revolves around the first steps of the implementation of the virtual Mission Control Room in the Unity Game Engine. Overall, this paper serves as a demonstration of Virtual Reality technology and shows its possibilities with respect to the operation of spacecrafts.
One of the pronounced global challenges facing ecologists is how to feed the current growing human population while sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. To shed light on this, I investigated the impact of human land use on bee diversity and plant-pollinator interactions in Tanzania Savannah ecosystems. The thesis comprises the following chapters:
Chapter I: General Introduction
This chapter provides the background information including the study objectives and hypotheses. It highlights the ecological importance of bees and the main threats facing bee pollinators with a focus on two land-use practices namely livestock grazing and agriculture. It also highlights the diversity and global distribution of bees. It further introduces the tropical savannah ecosystem, its climate, and vegetation characteristics and explains spectacular megafauna species of the system that form centers of wildlife tourism and inadequacy knowledge on pollinators diversity of the system. Finally, this chapter describes the study methodology including, the description of the study area, study design, and data collection.
Chapter II: Positive effects of low livestock grazing intensity on East African bee assemblages mediated by increases in floral resources
The impact of livestock grazing intensity on bee assemblage has been subjected to research over decades. Moreover, most of these studies have been conducted in temperate Europe and America leaving the huge tropical savannah of East Africa less studied. Using sweep netting and pan traps, a total of 183 species (from 2,691 individuals) representing 55 genera and five families were collected from 24 study sites representing three levels of livestock grazing intensity in savannah ecosystem of northern Tanzania. Results have shown that moderate livestock grazing slightly increased bee species richness. However, high livestock grazing intensity led to a strong decline. Besides, results revealed a unimodal distribution pattern of bee species richness and mean annual temperature. It was also found that the effect of livestock grazing and environmental temperature on bee species richness was mediated by a positive effect of moderate grazing on floral resource richness. The study, therefore, reveals that bee communities of the African savannah zone may benefit from low levels of livestock grazing as this favors the growth of flowering plant species. A high level of livestock grazing intensity will cause significant species losses, an effect that may increase with climatic warming.
Chapter III: Agricultural intensification with seasonal fallow land promotes high bee diversity in Afrotropical drylands
This study investigated the impact of local agriculture intensification on bee diversity in the Afro tropical drylands of northern Tanzania. Using sweep netting and pan traps, a total of 219 species (from 3,428 individuals) representing 58 genera and six families were collected from 24 study sites (distributed from 702 to 1708 m. asl) representing three levels of agriculture intensity spanning an extensive gradient of mean annual temperature. Results showed that bee species richness increased with agricultural intensity and with increasing temperature. However, the effects of agriculture intensity and temperature on bee species richness were mediated by the positive effects of agriculture and temperature on floral resource richness used by bee pollinators. Moreover, results showed that variation of bee body sizes increases with agricultural intensification, “that effect”, however, diminished in environments with higher temperatures. This study reveals that bee assemblages in Afrotropical drylands benefit from agriculture intensification in the way it is currently practiced. Further intensification, including year-round irrigated crop monocultures and extensive use of agrochemicals, is likely to exert a negative impact on bee diversity and pollination services, as reported in temperate regions. Moreover, several bee species were restricted to natural savannah habitats. Therefore, to conserve bee communities in Afro tropical drylands and guarantee pollination services, a mixture of savannah and agriculture, with long periods of fallow land should be maintained.
Chapter IV: Impact of land use intensification and local features on plants and pollinators in Sub-Saharan smallholder farms
For the first time in the region, this study explores the impact of land-use intensification on plants and pollinators in Sub-Saharan smallholder farms. The study complemented field surveys of bees with a modern DNA metabarcoding approach to characterize the foraged plants and thus built networks describing plant-pollinator interactions at the individual insect level. This information was coupled with quantitative traits of landscape composition and floral availability surrounding each farm. The study found that pollinator richness decreased with increasing impervious and agricultural cover in the landscape, whereas the flower density at each farm correlated with pollinator richness. The intensification of agricultural land use and urbanization correlated with a higher foraging niche overlap among pollinators due to the convergence of individuals' flower-visiting strategies. Furthermore, within farms, the higher availability of floral resources drove lower niche overlap among individuals, greater abundance of flower visitors shaped higher generalization at the networks level (H2I), possibly due to increased competition. These mechanistic understandings leading to individuals’ foraging niche overlap and generalism at the network level, could imply stability of interactions and the pollination ecosystem service. The integrative survey proved that plant-pollinator systems are largely affected by land use intensification and by local factors in smallholder farms of Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, policies promoting nature-based solutions, among which the introduction of more pollinator-friendly practices by smallholder farmers, could be effective in mitigating the intensification of both urban and rural landscapes in this region, as well as in similar Sub-Saharan contexts.
Chapter V: A synopsis of the Bee occurrence data of northern Tanzania
This study represents a synopsis of the bee occurrence data of northern Tanzania obtained from a survey in the Kilimanjaro, Arusha, and Manyara regions. Bees were sampled using two standardized methods, sweep netting and colored pan traps. The study summed up 953 species occurrences of 45 species belonging to 20 genera and four families (Halictidae, Apidae, Megachilidae, and andrenidae) A. This study serves as the baseline information in understanding the diversity and distribution of bees in the northern parts of the country. Understanding the richness and distribution of bees is a critical step in devising robust conservation and monitoring strategies for their populations since limited taxonomic information of the existing and unidentified bee species makes their conservation haphazard.
Chapter VI: General discussion
In general, findings obtained in these studies suggest that livestock grazing and agriculture intensification affects bee assemblages and floral resources used by bee pollinators. Results have shown that moderate livestock grazing intensity may be important in preserving bee diversity. However, high level of livestock grazing intensity may result in a strong decline in bee species richness and abundance. Moreover, findings indicate that agriculture intensification with seasonal fallow lands supports high floral resource richness promoting high bee diversity in Afrotropical drylands. Nonetheless, natural savannahs were found to contain unique bee species. Therefore, agriculture intensification with seasonal fallow should go in hand with conserving remnant savannah in the landscapes to increase bee diversity and ensure pollination services. Likewise, findings suggest that increasing urbanization and agriculture cover at the landscape level reduce plant and pollinator biodiversity with negative impacts on their complex interactions with plants. Conversely, local scale availability of floral resources has shown the positive effects in buffering pollinators decline and mitigating all detrimental effects induced by land-use intensification. Moreover, findings suggest that the impact of human land use (livestock grazing and agriculture) do not act in isolation but synergistically interacts with climatic factors such as mean annual temperature, MAT. The impact of MAT on bee species richness in grazing gradient showed to be more detrimental than in agriculture habitats. This could probably be explained by the remaining vegetation cover following anthropogenic disturbance. Meaning that the remaining vegetation cover in the agricultural gradient probably absorbs the solar radiations hence reducing detrimental effect of mean annual temperature on bee species richness. This one is not the case in grazing gradient since the impact of livestock grazing is severe, leaving the bare land with no vegetation cover. Finally, our findings conclude that understanding the interplay of multiple anthropogenic activities and their interaction with MAT as a consequence of ongoing climate change is necessary for mitigating their potential consequences on bee assemblages and the provision of ecosystem services. Morever, future increases in livestock grazing and agriculture intensification (including year-round crop irrigated monocultures and excessive use of agrochemicals) may lead to undesirable consequences such as species loss and impair provision of pollination services.