Genetic Determinants of Macrovascular Complications and Mortality in Type 2 Diabetes

Evidence is accumulating that there is a genetic predisposition for the development of vascular complications of type 2 diabetes. There is a large variation in the risk and onset of complication in patients, which may partly be explained by genetic susceptibility. Most likely multiple genes are involved which interact with non-genetic factors including diet, physical activity and treatment. The aim of this thesis was to study genes implicated in the susceptibility to macrovascular complications. chapter 1 is a general introduction on known aspects of complications of type 2 diabetes and on the several candidate genes in compilations of type 2 diabetes that have been used in this thesis.The full text of this item cannot yet be made available, due to a publisher's embarg

Low Q2Q^2 proton structure function, using gluon and pseudoscalar meson clouds in the constituent quark framework

The idea of the meson cloud approach in the chiral quark model has been extended to include gluon cloud in order to achieve the parton densities in the nucleon, based on the constitute quark framework. The splitting function of the quark to the quark-meson and quark-gluon at low $Q^2$ value are used to obtain parton densities in the constituent quark. The phenomenological constituent model is employed to extract the parton distributions in the proton at low $Q^2$ value. Since we have access to the parton densities at low $Q^2$, we are able to obtain $F_{2}(x,Q^2)$ structure function at low $Q^2$ value. The result is in good agreement with available experimental data and some theoretical models. To confirm the validity of our calculations, the fraction of total momentum of proton which is carried by gluon at high $Q^2$ and also the Gottfried sum rule are computed. The results are in good agreement with what are expected.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Near room temperature self-assembly of nanostructures by reaction of gallium with metal thin films.

Liquid gallium (Ga) spontaneously alloys with thin films of metals such as Ag, Au, Pt Al, and Cu at near or even below room temperature resulting in rapid self-assembly of nanostructures. In this dissertation, studies of the formation of these nanostructures are reported together with application of the processes towards device fabrication. Ag 2 Ga needles, CoGa 3 rods, and Ga 6 Pt plates self-assemble at room temperature at the interface of Ga and thin films of Ag Co, and Pt. The Ag 2 Ga needles orient nearly vertical to the interface which suggests that an individual needle can be directed to grow in a desired direction by drawing a silver-coated surface from the Ga droplet. Needles from 25 nm to microns in diameter and up to 33 microns long were grown by this method. Needle-tipped cantilevers have been used to perform atomic force microscopy (AFM) and voltage lithography. Mechanical properties of the Ag 2 Ga needles are measured during bending, buckling, yielding, and AC electric excitation of vibrational modes. The rates of reactive spreading of Ga through thin films of Au and Ag from room temperature to 200°C are measured. A model of the reduction in spreading rate of Au-Ga over time describes the reduction in area for inter granular flow as the Ga 2 Au crystallites precipitates and grow together. Ga spreading on Au microelectrodes is used to perform time-resolved measurement of changes in the contact resistance of multiwall carbon nanotubes. Networks of Au-Ga nanowires form when a liquid Ga drop spreads and reacts on 10- to 100- nm-thick Au thin film at temperatures between 310°C and 400°C. Au suspended nanowires were fabricated by etching these networks in HCl followed by anisotropic etching of the Si substrate. Suspended nanowires as long as 6 Ìm and as narrow as 35 nm diameters have been produced. Superporous Au and Pt thin films with feature size as small as 5 nm are formed after HCI etching of metal thin films that have been reacted with gallium. Superporous Pt formed on a set of microelectrodes was evaluated for electrochemical sensing. These electrodes showed a 6 fold improvement in its limit of detection for H 2 O 2 over the nonporous Pt electrodes

Impacts of Energy Transition in Iran on Vulnerability of Infrastructure to Natural Hazards

Energy, as a fundamental component of modern society and life, has a direct impact on each human activity and plays a critical role in socio-economic development. Indeed, energy is deeply embedded in each component of mankind development: economic, social and environmental ones. Energy is a crucial element for functioning of modern society and any break down in the energy sector, which affects energy supply, has negative impacts on all other economic sectors and spheres of human activity. Iran is an energy superpower, which has the fourth largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves in the world. Energy consumption in Iran is significantly higher than international standards and continues to grow. Iran has the third highest level of consumption of natural gas in the world and its domestic consumption is projected to grow by making Iran the largest natural gas consumer in the world. Despite abundance of fossil fuels, Iran is considering deployment of renewable energies sources and these plans are driving energy transition in the country

Impacts of Human Factors on Willingness to Use Renewable Energy Sources in Iran and Morocco

Currently Iran and Morocco are going through an energy transition. Ambitious plans exist at international, regional and national governance levels to deploy renewable energy sources (RES), such as concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) solar power. These plans foresee deployment of RES to cover local growing energy needs, to diversify energy supply and to benefit from electricity trade. Even though the majority of MENA countries have favorable geographic conditions, namely, the level of solar irradiance, for deployment of solar projects, they are very diverse in terms of availability of fossil fuels, which might hinder deployment of RES projects. For instance, Morocco is covering almost 95% of its energy needs by imports at the same time as Iran is not only benefiting from availability of fossil fuels for local consumption but are also exporting fossil fuels to the global markets. The first question of this paper is trying to answer is how availability of fossil fuels for domestic consumption might impact the willingness of people in Iran and Morocco to use RES. And secondly how public acceptance of RES in general, and solar projects in particular effects the development of RES projects in this region. The methodological basis of this paper is formed by the case study method of two countries. It also includes different methods of elicitation of opinions and views to understand public acceptance and willingness to use renewable energy. By comparing Iran and Morocco we aim to understand to which extent availability of non-renewable energy sources in in these two countries influence perceptions of its inhabitants regarding RES energy