RR Lyrae stars as standard candles and stellar population tracers with Gaia

The main goal of this thesis is to exploit the dual role of RRLs as stellar population tracers in our Galaxy and its LG companions, and primary standard candles for the definition of the cosmic distance ladder, to (i) investigate the stellar populations in a number of new stellar satellites recently discovered around the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) spiral galaxies; and (ii) study the luminosity - metallicity and period - luminosity - (metallicity) relations that RRLs conform to, based on the unprecedented astrometric and photometric dataset that is being collected by the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia. The thesis is organized in 5 Chapters and 3 Appendices

Simulation of hot carriers in semiconductor devices

Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113).Supported by the U.S. Navy. N00174-93-C-0035Khalid Rahmat