Pericytes, the mural cells of blood microvessels, are important regulators of vascular morphogenesis and function that have been postulated to mechanically control microvascular diameter through as yet unknown mechanisms.

The Sun and all the stars in the night sky reside in the Milky Way galaxy. In the at-rest reference frame of the Galaxy, typical stars travel with velocities of about 100-200 kilometres per second.

In the traditional theory of linear elasticity, superposition dictates that the response of a material does not depend on the sequence of the applied mechanical actuations.

In the past decade many population studies have been performed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to understand the bulk properties of protoplanetary disks around young stars. These population studies mostly consisted of low mass stars, with relatively few of the disks around…

Supply risks are not new. But the aggravation of power conflicts on the international stage coupled with global shifts towards energy transition and digitalization has triggered the next supply risk research era.

In this thesis, we have studied cell images from two types of cells, including pollen grains and the immune cells, neutrophils. These images are captured using a bright field microscope and a confocal microscope.

The work in this thesis demonstrates how to obtain an atomic-scale picture of a diverse set of complex surface structures observed using STM, under disparate conditions.

Detecting nanoscopic objects plays an important role in nanoscience in particular, in the rapidly growing field of nanobiology. The forebear to modern super-resolution microscopy for single molecule investigation, is fluorescence microscopy.

This thesis focuses on the synthesis, characterization and performance towards CO2 electroreduction of mono and bi-metallic particles based on p-block metals

A structural investigation of coiled coil peptides used as membrane fusogens, mimicing naturally occuring coiled-coil fusion proteins. Synthetic modifications have been made to alter lipid attachment, secondary structure and to insert photoactive azobenzene moieties for active control over coiled coil…

Soil biodiversity is of great importance for the maintenance of multifunctionality in terrestrial ecosystems.

Metabolomics has the potential to play a pivotal role in understanding disease onset and progression, and ultimately personalized treatments. One of its major challenges is its large-scale implementation, which is necessary to deal with the high variability of the metabolome. In this work we have developed…

In the era of big data, extracting insights from complex datasets is a key challenge. This thesis demonstrates the superiority of graph-based methods over traditional clustering (e.g., k-means, DBSCAN) and outlier detection for analyzing high-dimensional and noisy data.

Patients share valuable advice and experiences with their peers in online patient discussion groups.

Metabolomics is a powerful tool that can provide a comprehensive insight into the complexity of human biology and the pathophysiology of diseases. By analyzing the metabolome, which refers to the complete set of small (endogenous) molecules (with a mass <1500 Da) present within a given biological system,…

Quantum computers are a proposed fundamentally new type of computer. They aim to perform some computations much faster than previously possible by exploiting phenomena at the quantum scale, called superposition and entanglement.

In this thesis, I investigated the neurogenetic properties of Neotropical bat species. Bats represent the second largest mammalian order (Chiroptera) in the world, with Neotropical bats constituting about 13% of the total number of bat species.

Carbohydrates, alongside proteins and nucleic acids, constitute a crucial and versatile family of biomolecules present in all life forms. They manifest as monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides, covalently bonded to proteins and fats. Carbohydrates are integral to plant and arthropod…

Galaxies in the Universe are distributed along the intricate framework of the Cosmic Web. Groups and clusters of galaxies comprise the densest regions in this network, and therefore, are excellent cosmic laboratories to study different aspects of galaxy evolution in extreme environments.

This thesis investigates the evolution and fate of gaseous exoplanets, which are continuously shaped by stellar activity across both short and long timescales.

When a star is born in our Galaxy, it is quite likely that it has formed within a massive cluster, which hosts numerous high-mass stars bathing their lower mass neighbours in UV radiation.

This thesis advance our understanding and the application of molecular catalysts relevant to the reduction of oxygen as well as reduction of nitrite.

This thesis explored the molecular pharmacological mechanisms of targeting CB2R via investigation of novel drug discovery concepts such as target binding kinetics, allosteric modulation and biased signaling.

This work has described synthetic strategies towards well-defined structures resembling capsular polysaccharide (CPS) fragments, CPS mimics, teichoic acid (TA) fragments as well as a third-generation ring-closing tandem metathesis (RCM) linker to better exploit the potential of automated synthesis.

In this thesis, we address two problems concerning the tautological rings of the moduli space of curves.

This thesis tackles the urgent challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through the design of novel antibacterial agents.

N-acylethanolamines (NAEs), including N-arachidonoylethanolamine (anandamide, AEA), N-palmitoylethanolamine (PEA) and N-oleoylethanolamine (OEA), are signaling lipids that play an important role in different physiological process.

This thesis explores squaramide-based supramolecular polymers and hydrogels, enhancing their mechanical strength for 3D cell culture.

The primary goal of this research is to deepen our understanding of substrate-enzyme interactions in Glycoside hydrolases. For this purpose, Bacillus circulans xylanase (BcX) has been selected as a well-established model to examine the Michaelis complex and glycosyl-enzyme adduct.

Plastics are an intrinsic part of our society. Annually, 400Mt of plastics are produced of which roughly 40% is discarded within a year.

This dissertation focuses on investigating the public communication around quantum science and technology that may affect public engagement.

This thesis aims to test in vitro pipelines to rapidly and cost-effectively identify molecular mechanisms that drive adverse outcomes in clinical use.

Exoplanets close in to their host star receive high levels of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) irradiation, capable of heating and ultimately driving the hydrodynamic escape of their atmospheres.

The main theme of this thesis is the theoretical study of Gaussian processes as a tool in Bayesian nonparametric statistics.

Search and conversational systems have become central to how people access information and perform tasks.

In Chapter 1 we provide some background information about modular forms, describe the correspondence between half-integral and integer weight modular forms and explain how the coefficients of half-integral weight modular forms encode the central values of L-functions of twisted modular forms.

In cryptography, generic transformations are often used to strengthen simpler but weaker schemes, into more sophisticated and stronger ones.

Cell-based medicinal products (CBMPs), such as CAR T cells, are highly complex biopharmaceutical products offering various treatment options for serious illnesses such as cancer or autoimmune diseases.

To contribute to the body of knowledge aiming at a better coverage of ecosystem service assessment in LCA studies, this thesis dives into the challenges of incorporating existing ecosystem service methods within the impact assessment phase of the conventional LCA framework.

This dissertation revolves around the design and implementation of novel instrumentation and related measurement techniques, at the single molecule level, for use in biophysical research. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the field of fluorescence-based single molecule measurements. In particular,…

Early time-resolved experiments by Frauenfelder on the ensemble of the kinetic rebinding of CO to myoglobin molecules resulted in a stretched exponential relaxa-tion due to a very large spread of the reaction rates of individual molecules.

This research delves into a region of space known as the interstellar medium (ISM), which is essentially the area between the stars filled with gas and dust.

Carbohydrates, or sugars, are the most diverse and most abundant biomolecules known. However, the isolation of carbohydrate samples in sufficient amounts and purity is often impractical or even impossible, so the chemical synthesis of glycosides becomes relevant. The glycosylation reaction, in which…