Physical processes are often modeled as input-output systems. Many such systems obey passivity, which means that power is dissipated in the process. This thesis deals with the inevitable constraints imposed on physical systems due to passivity. A general approach to derive sum rules and physical limitations on passive systems is presented. The sum rules relate the dynamical behaviour of a system

Gefitinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has shown both anti-proliferative and anti-tumoral activity in breast cancer. This study was designed to determine the effect of adding gefitinib to neoadjuvant epirubicin and cyclophosphamide (EC) on tumor response rates. Women with unilateral, primary operable, estrogen receptor negative invasive breast cancer a parts per

Popular Abstract in Swedish De senaste ca trettio åren har man observerat en kraftig ökning av löst organiskt kol i sjöar, vattendrag och kustnära vatten i olika delar av det norra halvklotet, bl.a. i delar av Nordamerika, Storbritannien, Baltikum, centrala Europa och Skandinavien. I Sverige har ökningen främst varit koncentrerad till de södra delarna av landet. Löst organiskt kol i sjöar belägna During the past three decades, increases have been observed in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and colour in the surface waters of lakes and rivers in parts of Europe and North America, raising concern about the effects on the quality of aquatic environments with consequences for biodiversity, resource availability and recreational use. Various hypotheses have been put forward to exp

Adenosine triphosphatases (ATPases) of double-stranded (ds) DNA archaeal viruses are structurally related to the AAA+ hexameric helicases and translocases. These ATPases have been implicated in viral life cycle functions such as DNA entry into the host, and viral genome packaging into preformed procapsids. We summarize bioinformatical analyses of a wide range of archaeal ATPases, and review the bi

The quinoline-3-carboxamides (Q compounds) are a family of small molecules that ameliorate various types of murine inflammatory autoimmune disease. One such compound has also demonstrated anti-tumor effects in murine tumor models. Several Q compounds have reached clinical trials and one compound, laquinimod, is currently in phase III clinical trial for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. The Q

We report on a single-molecule readout scheme on total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) demonstrating a detection limit in the low fM regime for short (30-mer) unlabeled DNA strands. Detection of unlabeled DNA targets is accomplished by letting them mediate the binding of suspended fluorescently labeled DNA-modified small unilamellar vesicles (Ø approximately 100 nm) to a DNA-mo

Abstract Preeclampsia is a serious pregnancy complication that affects 3-8% of all pregnancies leading to maternal- and fetal morbidity and mortality. The etiology is still not known in detail. Previous findings have shown an up regulation of the genes coding for fetal hemoglobin (HbF) in preeclamptic placentas. The cell-free HbF protein was shown to be accumulating in the vascular lumen, to induc

Beamforming is an important feature of 60 GHz communications. We present an analysis of the influence of beamforming in indoor ultrawideband radio channels measured in the mm-wave 60 GHz band. The performance of narrowband and wideband direction-based beamformers is investigated in terms of improving channel metrics such as the delay spread, excess delay, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The p

A constitutive model for ductile porous material is formulated within the thermodynamic framework. A yield function based on the lower-bound solution for a cylindrical void model embedded in a plastic matrix is proposed. The new yield function is compared to the classical Gurson yield function using cell model calculations. The results reveal that the proposed yield function agreed well with the p

BackgroundRetinal ischemia results in a progressive degeneration of neurons and a pathological activation of glial cells, resulting in vision loss. In the brain, progressive damage after ischemic insult has been correlated to neuroinflammatory processes involving microglia. Galectin-3 has been shown to mediate microglial responses to ischemic injury in the brain. Therefore, we wanted to explore th

Regular physical activity is understood to be an essential prerequisite for human health for both psychological and physiological well-being. However, there are differences in participation in physical activity among different groups in society, and participation in physical activity can also change over a lifetime. The general aim of this thesis was to investigate how different life-change events

Probing molecules using perdeuteration (i.e deuteration in which all hydrogen atoms are replaced by deuterium) is extremely useful in a wide range of biophysical techniques. In the case of lipids, the synthesis of the biologically relevant unsaturated perdeuterated lipids is challenging and not usually pursued. In this work, perdeuterated phospholipids and sterols from the yeast Pichia pastoris gr

Water-soluble chlorophyll-binding proteins (WSCPs) are interesting model systems for the study of pigment-pigment and pigment-protein interactions. While class IIa WSCP has been extensively studied by spectroscopic and theoretical methods, a comprehensive spectroscopic study of class IIb WSCP was lacking so far despite the fact that its structure was determined by X-ray crystallography. In this pa

Silicon dimer-containing reconstructions on Si(100) can be induced by submonolayer amounts of rare earth (RE) metals. The tilt of dimer bonds in such reconstructions can be controlled by the coverage and electronic properties of RE adsorbates. In this study, we have utilized improved high-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy with the synchrotron radiation and density functional theory (DFT) calcu

Background: We recently demonstrated that increased expression of the RNA-binding protein RBM3 is associated with a favourable prognosis in breast cancer. The aim of this study was to examine the prognostic value of RBM3 mRNA and protein expression in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) and the cisplatin response upon RBM3 depletion in a cisplatin-sensitive ovarian cancer cell line. Methods: RBM3 mRNA