This dissertation is organised into three parts, each addressing a distinct research area related to Gibbs measures.

This thesis investigates how cell shape and collective behavior influence the dynamics and structure of biological tissues, which are crucial for understanding processes like embryonic development, tissue regeneration, and metastasis.

This thesis consists of two main parts. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3) deals with a class of Markov process called Quasi-Skipfree (QSF) processes.

The haplolepideous mosses (Dicranidae) comprise about 4000 species distributed over a wide range of habitats, with great gametophytic and sporophytic morphological variation. Their monophyly is well supported by the results of several molecular phylogenetic studies, which shed light on their relationships…

Promotores: R. Cramer, A.K. Lenstra, Co-Promotor: B.M.M. de Weger

Combinatorial games are games for two competing players, moving in a turn-by-turn fashion, in which there is no chance nor hidden information⁠. Chess, checkers and the simpler tic tac toe are well-known examples of this class of games, as well as game of go⁠.

This thesis investigates opinion dynamics on random graphs through the lens of the voter model, a classical interacting particle system used to describe how consensus emerges in networks.

Neurodegenerative diseases pose a large medical and societal challenge. The etiology of these diseases is still poorly understood, which makes drug discovery for these diseases difficult.

This thesis examines the link between simple molecules and the underlying structure and chemistry within protoplanetary disks - the birthplaces of planets.

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.T.F. den Hollander

A management strategy has been developed for field margins to reduce pesticide drift to non-target areas and to promote biodiversity on arable land. To this end, 3 and 6 m wide strips along the edges of winter wheat, sugar beet and potato crops have been left unsprayed with herbicides and insecticides…

In this thesis we study bistable reaction-diffusion equations on lattice domains.

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

Ethiopian wolves are endangered diurnal Afroalpine rodent hunters. I investigated the interaction between wolves, rodents and human land use in Borena Sayint National Park (BSNP), Abune Yosef and Aboi Gara in Ethiopia.

One of the effects of climate change is the phenomenon of desertification, a process that occurs in semi-arid and arid areas and causes land degradation as well as vegetation loss. Due to the lack of resources, vegetation self-organizes to sustain itself by forming large-scale spatial patterns.

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, Co-Promotores: N.R. Mustafa, A.E. Schulte

Promotor: H.J. van den Herik, B.R. Katzy, Co-promotor: K. Sailer

De programmagroep Leer- en Gedragsproblemen in het Onderwijs doet onderzoek naar stagnaties die kunnen optreden in de cognitieve ontwikkeling.

This thesis mainly extends the theory of positive operators on Riesz spaces to a setting of pre-Riesz spaces.

Plant-microbe interaction resulted in different physio/chemical responses by host plant and interacting rhizobacteria.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. C.A. Mandemakers, Co-Promotor: G. Bloothooft

Endothelial dysfunction and microvascular diseases are key drivers of cardiovascular disease, the world's leading cause of death.

The investigation into the bidirectional communication between the gut and its host is a rapidly growing area of research, attracting considerable attention for its potential to provide crucial insights into health and disease.

We consider the propagation of electrical signals through nerve fibres.

Promotor: Prof.dr. T. Hankemeier, Co-promotor: Theo Reijmers

This thesis examines enzyme domain architecture and engineering to improve the breakdown of lignocellulose and starch, abundant biopolymers crucial for sustainable biofuel and biochemical production. Carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) facilitate this degradation, but the structural complexity of…

A tidal basin is an inland sea which is almost entirely enclosed by land and connected to the open sea by a tidal inlet. Through the tidal inlets interaction takes place between the tidal basin and the open sea.

This thesis considers multi-prover commitment schemes whose security is based on restrictions on the communication between the provers.

Promotor: P.D. Grünwald

Promotor: H.P. Spaink, A.H. Meijer Co-promotor: R. Marin-Juez

During my PhD research, I studied the photon statistics of light emitted by a microcavity that contains a single quantum dot (QD) on resonance.

Promotores: W. Th. F. den Hollander, M.O. Heydenreich

High-angular-resolution observations of the circumstellar material have uncovered numerous and very diverse substructures in protoplanetary discs, raising the question of whether they are caused by forming planets or other mechanisms.

Fungal food spoilage often starts with a contamination with spores. Experimental data strongly indicate the existence of subpopulations of spores with different levels of resistance to preservation methods.

Promotor: H.P. Spaink, Co-Promotor: A.H. Meijer

Promotor: Jan van der Greef; Co-promotors: Mei Wang; Eduard van Wijk

The sequence-dependence of biomolecular interactions involving nucleic acids and proteins is essential for numerous processes inside the cell. Insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms have been obtained using various biochemical and biophysical methods on two different levels — bulk and sin…

To an algebraic curve C over the complex numbers one can associate a non-negative integer g, the genus, as a measure of its complexity.

This thesis describes the genetic and prokaryotic diversity of giant barrel sponges.

Glycoside hydrolases (glycosidases/GHs) are widely abundant enzymes in all kingdoms of life and are important biocatalysts that catalyze the hydrolysis of glycosidic linkages in oligo/polysaccharides, glycoproteins and glycolipids with tremendous efficiency

Why do black holes emit thermal radiation? And how does a closed quantum system thermalize?

This thesis focuses on the X-ray spectral analysis of merging galaxy clusters and the plasma code development for future high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy observations.

With the advent of multicore processors and data centers, computer hardware has become increasingly parallel, allowing one to run multiple pieces of software at the same time on different machines. Coordination of these pieces is best expressed in a coordination language as an explicit interaction protocol…

The PID-directed shift in PIN polarity has been broadly accepted as one of the essential mechanisms for the regulation of auxin transport polarity.

The ultimate goal of cosmologists is to find a cosmological model able to explain the current observational data.

In this thesis, the focus lies on studying glucocorticoid receptor dynamics in living cells with the aim of understanding how this transcription factor finds its DNA target sites to regulate transcription.

Hot astrophysical plasma is ubiquitous in the Universe, from comets in our Solar system to the largest scale structures -- the cosmic web filaments. These hot plasmas, with the temperature of a few millions of degrees, are often observed in the X-ray wavelength range.

Hoe verandert generatieve AI de manier waarop we leren, communiceren en de wereld van vandaag begrijpen? Nu AI-tools deel uitmaken van het dagelijks leven, produceren ze niet alleen tekst, maar geven ze ook betekenis, beïnvloeden ze vertrouwen en hebben ze invloed op hoe we informatie vinden en delen.…

Several single-stranded RNA viruses make use of Xrn1-resistant RNAs in their 3’ untranslated regions of their genome RNAs in order to increase their pathogenicity.

The recently introduced nature-originated deep eutectic solvents, so-called natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) are considered as truly green solvents, which composed of natural ingredients found abundantly in organisms.