Alpha-Synuclein-Nanoparticle Interactions: Understanding, Controlling and Exploiting Conformational Plasticity

Alpha-synuclein (alpha S) is an extensively studied protein due to its involvement in a group of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson ' s disease, and its documented ability to undergo aberrant self-aggregation resulting in the formation of amyloid-like fibrils. In dilute solution, the protein is intrinsically disordered but can adopt multiple alternative conformations under given conditions, such as upon adsorption to nanoscale surfaces. The study of alpha S-nanoparticle interactions allows us to better understand the behavior of the protein and provides the basis for developing systems capable of mitigating the formation of toxic aggregates as well as for designing hybrid nanomaterials with novel functionalities for applications in various research areas. In this review, we summarize current progress on alpha S-nanoparticle interactions with an emphasis on the conformational plasticity of the biomolecule

Control Systems in Engineering and Optimization Techniques

The portfolio diversification strategy study is useful to help investors to plan for the best investment strategy in maximizing return with the given level of risk or minimizing risk. Further, a new set of generalized sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the solution and finite-time stability has been achieved by using Generalized Gronwall-Bellman inequality. Moreover, a novel development is proposed to solve classical control theory’s difference diagrams and transfer functions. Advanced TCP strategies and free parametrization for continuous-time LTI systems and quality of operation of control systems are presented

The Design and Implementation of a High-Performance Polynomial System Solver

This thesis examines the algorithmic and practical challenges of solving systems of polynomial equations. We discuss the design and implementation of triangular decomposition to solve polynomials systems exactly by means of symbolic computation. Incremental triangular decomposition solves one equation from the input list of polynomials at a time. Each step may produce several different components (points, curves, surfaces, etc.) of the solution set. Independent components imply that the solving process may proceed on each component concurrently. This so-called component-level parallelism is a theoretical and practical challenge characterized by irregular parallelism. Parallelism is not an algorithmic property but rather a geometrical property of the particular input system’s solution set. Despite these challenges, we have effectively applied parallel computing to triangular decomposition through the layering and cooperation of many parallel code regions. This parallel computing is supported by our generic object-oriented framework based on the dynamic multithreading paradigm. Meanwhile, the required polynomial algebra is sup- ported by an object-oriented framework for algebraic types which allows type safety and mathematical correctness to be determined at compile-time. Our software is implemented in C/C++ and have extensively tested the implementation for correctness and performance on over 3000 polynomial systems that have arisen in practice. The parallel framework has been re-used in the implementation of Hensel factorization as a parallel pipeline to compute roots of a polynomial with multivariate power series coefficients. Hensel factorization is one step toward computing the non-trivial limit points of quasi-components

Izaña Atmospheric Research Center. Activity Report 2019-2020

Editors: Emilio Cuevas, Celia Milford and Oksana Tarasova.[EN]The Izaña Atmospheric Research Center (IARC), which is part of the State Meteorological Agency of Spain (AEMET), is a site of excellence in atmospheric science. It manages four observatories in Tenerife including the high altitude Izaña Atmospheric Observatory. The Izaña Atmospheric Observatory was inaugurated in 1916 and since that date has carried out uninterrupted meteorological and climatological observations, contributing towards a unique 100-year record in 2016. This reports are a summary of the many activities at the Izaña Atmospheric Research Center to the broader community. The combination of operational activities, research and development in state-of-the-art measurement techniques, calibration and validation and international cooperation encompass the vision of WMO to provide world leadership in expertise and international cooperation in weather, climate, hydrology and related environmental issues.[ES]El Centro de Investigación Atmosférica de Izaña (CIAI), que forma parte de la Agencia Estatal de Meteorología de España (AEMET), representa un centro de excelencia en ciencias atmosféricas. Gestiona cuatro observatorios en Tenerife, incluido el Observatorio de Izaña de gran altitud, inaugurado en 1916 y que desde entonces ha realizado observaciones meteorológicas y climatológicas ininterrumpidas y se ha convertido en una estación centenaria de la OMM. Estos informes resumen las múltiples actividades llevadas a cabo por el Centro de Investigación Atmosférica de Izaña. El liderazgo del Centro en materia de investigación y desarrollo con respecto a las técnicas de medición, calibración y validación de última generación, así como la cooperación internacional, le han otorgado una reputación sobresaliente en lo que se refiere al tiempo, el clima, la hidrología y otros temas ambientales afines

Comparative investigation of erythemal ultraviolet radiation in the tropics and mid-latitudes

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation has several effects on human health as well as other biological and chemical systems. The radiation can be weighted with the erythemal action spectrum and then converted to the dimensionless UV Index, which is designed to indicate the detrimental 'sunburning power' of the radiation for public heath purposes. A global view of the erythemally weighted irradiance from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board the Aura spacecraft has been available since July, 2004. However, ground-based validation and correction of the satellite data are still required. In this thesis, the erythemal dose rates at local solar noon taken from the satellite were compared to ground-based data measured by spectroradiometers or broadband radiometers in two different climate areas: the Tropics and midlatitudes. This seeks to redress the lack of data and satellite validation for the Tropics, and also allows comparison with previous work in midlatitudes. The validation results show that the satellite data overestimates the ground-based data by 9%-32% at the cleanest site, with a much higher discrepancy at polluted sites. Using a radiative transfer model confirmed that the positive bias in the satellite data was mainly caused by aerosol absorption that is not taken into account in the satellite retrieval algorithm. Therefore, two empirical methods were introduced in order to correct the OMI UV data for absorbing aerosols under clear sky conditions. These methods required aerosol optical depth and aerosol single scattering, or aerosol absorption optical depth, as input parameters. The methods improved the OMI UV data by up to 30% depending on site and input data source. For cloudy conditions aerosol data is usually not available either from ground-based or satellite-based measurements; however, the effect of cloud is usually far greater than that of aerosol, and some of the aerosol effect (scattering) is intrinsically included in the cloud correction. A further empirical model for cloudy conditions was derived to reduce bias of the OMI UV data with respect to ground-based data. The method only requires the OMI UV data as an input. The cloudy model reduced the bias by about 13%-30% depending on site, and gave similar results even when used with clear sky data. Since ground-based data is sparse, the final goal of the work was to produce a corrected map of UV index for the whole of Thailand, based only on data available from satellite, which gives full regional coverage. Issues with availability and quality of satellite data meant that the best results were achieved by using only the cloudy sky correction, for all conditions. The resulting daily noontime UV Index maps of Thailand were assessed against ground-based data for independent years. The corrected UV Index was within ±2 compared with ground-based data for all sites, compared to discrepancies of up to 4 UV Index for uncorrected data.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceThe Royal Thai GovermentGBUnited Kingdo

Atomic force microscopy for single molecule characterisation of protein aggregation.

The development of atomic force microscopy (AFM) has opened up a wide range of novel opportunities in nanoscience and new modalities of observation in complex biological systems. AFM imaging has been widely employed to resolve the complex and heterogeneous conformational states involved in protein aggregation at the single molecule scale and shed light onto the molecular basis of a variety of human pathologies, including neurodegenerative disorders. The study of individual macromolecules at nanoscale, however, remains challenging, especially when fully quantitative information is required. In this review, we first discuss the principles of AFM with a special emphasis on the fundamental factors defining its sensitivity and accuracy. We then review the fundamental parameters and approaches to work at the limit of AFM resolution in order to perform single molecule statistical analysis of biomolecules and nanoscale protein aggregates. This single molecule statistical approach has proved to be powerful to unravel the molecular and hierarchical assembly of the misfolded species present transiently during protein aggregation, to visualise their dynamics at the nanoscale, as well to study the structural properties of amyloid-inspired functional nanomaterials

Real-time Dynamic Simulation of Constrained Multibody Systems using Symbolic Computation

The main objective of this research is the development of a framework for the automatic generation of systems of kinematic and dynamic equations that are suitable for real-time applications. In particular, the efficient simulation of constrained multibody systems is addressed. When modelled with ideal joints, many mechanical systems of practical interest contain closed kinematic chains, or kinematic loops, and are most conveniently modelled using a set of generalized coordinates of cardinality exceeding the degrees-of-freedom of the system. Dependent generalized coordinates add nonlinear algebraic constraint equations to the ordinary differential equations of motion, thereby producing a set of differential-algebraic equations that may be difficult to solve in an efficient yet precise manner. Several methods have been proposed for simulating such systems in real time, including index reduction, model simplification, and constraint stabilization techniques. In this work, the equations of motion are formulated symbolically using linear graph theory. The embedding technique is applied to eliminate the Lagrange multipliers from the dynamic equations and obtain one ordinary differential equation for each independent acceleration. The theory of Gröbner bases is then used to triangularize the kinematic constraint equations, thereby producing recursively solvable systems for calculating the dependent generalized coordinates given values of the independent coordinates. For systems that can be fully triangularized, the kinematic constraints are always satisfied exactly and in a fixed amount of time. Where full triangularization is not possible, a block-triangular form can be obtained that still results in more efficient simulations than existing iterative and constraint stabilization techniques. The proposed approach is applied to the kinematic and dynamic simulation of several mechanical systems, including six-bar mechanisms, parallel robots, and two vehicle suspensions: a five-link and a double-wishbone. The efficient kinematic solution generated for the latter is used in the real-time simulation of a vehicle with double-wishbone suspensions on both axles, which is implemented in a hardware- and operator-in-the-loop driving simulator. The Gröbner basis approach is particularly suitable for situations requiring very efficient simulations of multibody systems whose parameters are constant, such as the plant models in model-predictive control strategies and the vehicle models in driving simulators

Storage of Short Light Pulses in a Fiber-Based Atom-Cavity System

In this work I theoretically investigate and experimentally realize the storage of short light-pulses in a fiber-based atom-cavity system. Our miniaturized optical resonator - with seven times the natural atomic linewidth and a small mode volume - simultaneously ensures a high bandwidth and operation in the strong-coupling regime. In particular, it enables the storage of light pulses with on average one photon and a temporal extent of less than 10 ns, which is more than a factor of two shorter than the atomic excited state lifetime of rubidium. We obtain a storage efficiency of 8 %, consistent with both cavity losses and the employed level scheme. In order to improve the coupling and number of measurements for which a single atom can be recycled, we use dipole-trap assisted, degenerate Raman sideband cooling and a further development of our carrier-free Raman sideband cooling scheme, which permits a three-dimensional ground state population of 70 %. The new techniques increase the measurement repetition rate by two orders of magnitude to ~ 2 kHz. Moreover, for the first time we achieve a Zeeman state preparation fidelity above 95 % in our experiment. On this basis, I present the deterministic generation of single photons in the near-adiabatic limit. By shaping the control laser pulse, we do not only show that we can control the temporal waveform of retrieved photons, but also reach a faster extraction from the cavity-coupled atom than possible in free-space. The quantum nature of the retrieved light is verified by measuring a second-order correlation function, which yields the expected antibunching. Moreover, the generation of photons in the cavity mode with an efficiency exceeding 66 % is used as a fast hyperfine-state detection method, since our traditional, non-destructive state detection via a probe laser is no longer applicable in a Raman configuration due to the absence of a cycling transition. In order to realize Raman coupling between the two hyperfine ground states, we develop a scheme for shifting the cavity resonance frequency between two hyperfine transitions. During the scan, we are furthermore able to determine the atom-cavity coupling strength via the vacuum Rabi splitting in each individual measurement - a useful tool for post-selection of acquired data sets. By employing a numerical simulation based on a full quantum-mechanical master equation, I find the strategy to store a coherent laser pulse with the maximum possible efficiency for a given system. Although the cavity input field is treated classically, our simulation model is able to calculate efficiencies for a pure single-photon Fock-state input. Moreover, numerical optimal control methods enable us to find control pulses with storage efficiencies slightly above those achieved for temporally-scaled adiabatic control pulses. For our specific system, we finally demonstrate the non-adiabatic storage of a short, coherent light pulse. The ability to interact with pulses of high bandwidths encourages quantum hybrid experiments with quantum dots as single-photon sources. In this context, the stabilization of their emission frequency to an atomic transition is required. In collaboration with the IFW Dresden, I present a technique to counteract long-term frequency drifts by applying rate-based feedback to a strain-tunable quantum dot, which results in frequency deviations smaller than 1.5 % of its emission linewidth. By simultaneously stabilizing the emission frequency of two quantum dots in separate cryostats, we enhance their two-photon interference visibility in a Hong-Ou-Mandel measurement from 31 % to 41 %, which corresponds to the maximum reachable visibility for the given emitters. Frequency-stable, efficient photon sources together with atom-cavity based quantum memories may facilitate the realization of quantum networks