Physics Commons^™

Effects Of The Cardioprotective Drugs Dexrazoxane And Adr-925 On Doxorubicin Induced Ca2+-Release From The Sarcoplasmic Reticulum, Thomas Andreas Herzinger

Dissertations and Theses

The sarcoplasmic reticulum is the intramuscular organelle responsible for the regulation of cytoplasmic calcium levels in muscle. This thesis investigates the effects of the cardioprotective drug, dexrazoxane, and its metabolite ADR-925 on doxorubicin induced calcium release from skeletal sarcoplasmic reticulum. Doxorubicin is a widely used antineoplastic agent. One of the major side effects of doxorubicin usage is chronic cardiotoxicity. Doxorubicin is a potent activator of the calcium release mechanism from the SR. The interaction between doxorubicin and the calcium release channel has been proposed as the possible underlying mechanism behind cardiotoxicity. A short overview of different hypotheses describing doxorubicin induced …

Design Of A Two-Chamber-No₂-Fluorescence-Cell, Volker Schmid

Dissertations and Theses

Nitrogen oxides control the photochemical production of ozone O₃ in the lower atmosphere and influence the concentration of the hydroxyl radical HO in the troposphere. As an important member of the nitrogen oxide family, NO₂ plays a significant role in serving as the only known source of ozone (through photolysis) in the lower atmosphere and as sink for HO via formation of nitric acid. Therefore, accurate measurements of nitrogen dioxide are essential for the understanding of the processes that determine the distribution of tropospheric ozone and for assessing the impact of human activity on the troposphere.

Although reliable and …

Calibration Of A Ccd Camera And Correction Of Its Images, Armin Rest

Dissertations and Theses

Charge-Coupled-Device (CCD) cameras have opened a new world in astronomy and other related sciences with their high quantum efficiency, stability, linearity, and easy handling. Nevertheless, there is still noise in raw CCD images and even more noise is added through the image calibration process. This makes it essential to know exactly how the calibration process impacts the noise level in the image. The properties and characteristics of the calibration frames were explored. This was done for bias frames, dark frames and flat-field frames at different temperatures and for different exposure times.

At first, it seemed advantageous to scale down a …

Independent Center, Independent Electron Approximation For Dynamics Of Molecules And Clusters, James H. Mcguire, Jack C. Straton, J. Wang, Y. D. Wang, O. L. Weaver, S. E. Corchs, R. D. Rivarola

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A formalism is developed for evaluating probabilities and cross sections for multiple-electron transitions in scattering of molecules and clusters by charged collision partners. First, the molecule is divided into subclusters each made up of identical centers (atoms). Within each subcluster coherent scattering from identical centers may lead to observable phase terms and a geometrical structure factor. Then, using a mean field approximation to describe the interactions between centers we obtain {ital A}{sub {ital I}}{approximately}{summation}{sub {ital k}}{product}{sub {ital ke}}{sup {ital i}{delta}{sup {ital k}}{sub {ital I}}}{ital A}{sub {ital Ik}}. Second, the independent electron approximation for each center may be obtained by neglecting …

Distribution Coefficients Of Ionized And Un-Ionized Halogenated Phenols In An Octanol-Water System And Their Relationship To Molecular Structure, Sven Hensler

Dissertations and Theses

Life supporting biological membranes are barriers to toxic chemicals. One of the factors determining the toxicity of chemical compounds is their distribution between membranes and their an environment. An octanol-water system is frequently used as a model for biological membranes to estimate the toxic potency of environmental pollutants. The distribution of a chemical between the octanol and the water phase is described by the octanol-water partition coefficient K_OW. This study is concerned with the relationship between K_OW and the molecular structure of the toxic chemical.

In the study the following trihalophenols were included: 2,4,6-trifluorophenol (TriFP), 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (TriCP); …

Structure, Dynamics, And Phase Transitions In The Fullerene Derivatives C_{60}O And C_{61}H_{2}, C. Meingast, G. Roth, L. Pintschovius, R. H. Michel, C. Stoermer, M. M. Kappes, Paul A. Heiney, Laurent Brard, Robert M. Strongin, Amos B. Smith Iii

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The effect of perturbing the icosohedral symmetry of C₆₀ by the addition of the side groups -O and -CH₂ upon orientational order-disorder and glass transitions in solid C₆₀ has been studied by a combination of high-resolution capacitance dilatometry and single-crystal x-ray and powder inelastic neutron scattering. Both fullerene derivatives C₆₀O (epoxide) and C₆₁H₂ (6,5-annulene) are shown to undergo a sequence of transitions similar to that found in pure C₆₀, i.e., a first-order orientational ordering transition just below room temperature followed by an orientational glass transition at lower temperatures. Although the …

Multicomponent Diffusion In Two-Temperature Magnetohydrodynamics, John D. Ramshaw, C. H. Chang

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A recent hydrodynamic theory of multicomponent diffusion in multitemperature gas mixtures [J. D. Ramshaw, J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. 18, 121 (1993)] is generalized to include the velocity-dependent Lorentz force on charged species in a magnetic field B. This generalization is used to extend a previous treatment of ambipolar diffusion in two-temperature multicomponent plasmas [J. D. Ramshaw and C. H. Chang, Plasma Chem. Plasma Process. 13, 489 (1993)] to situations in which B and the electrical current density are nonzero. General expressions are thereby derived for the species diffusion fluxes, including thermal diffusion, in both single- and two-temperature multicomponent magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). It …

Distribution Of Ionized And Neutral Halogenated Phenols In An Octanol-Water Membrane Model System, Robert Word

Dissertations and Theses

The accumulation of xenobiotics, such as halogenated phenols, in soils, sediments, and living organisms is primarily a partitioning process between an aquatic and organic phase. It is traditional to use a bulk octanol-water system to model the partitioning of a compound between complex biological lipid membranes and aqueous media. The octanol-water partition coefficient K_OW successfully approximates the lipid membrane-water partition coefficient K_LipW of neutral compounds. However, the ionized species of substituted phenols were shown to have a higher affinity for lipid membranes than predicted from octanol-water results.

Data on the octanol-water partition coefficients of molecular ions is limited. …

Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering At Elevated Temperatures, P.T. Leung, M. H. Hider, Erik J. Sánchez

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The effect on surface-enhanced Raman scattering due to the increase in temperature of the metallic substrate is studied via a simple model for physisorbed molecules. Surface roughness is represented by a spherical or spheroidal island, and the temperature effects on the surface plasmon are accounted for via a slightly modified Ujihara model. It is found that the enhancement ratio in general decreases as substrate temperature increases. For noble metals like silver, this temperature effect is particularly pronounced at scattering frequencies close to that of the surface-plasmon resonance; and for frequencies well below the surface plasmon frequency, the enhancement ratio is …

The Genetic Algorithm And Maximum Entropy Dice, Laura Suzanne Fellman

Dissertations and Theses

The Brandeis dice problem, originally introduced in 1962 by Jaynes as an illustration of the principle of maximum entropy, was solved using the genetic algorithm, and the resulting solution was compared with that obtained analytically. The effect of varying the genetic algorithm parameters was observed, and the optimum values for population size, mutation rate, and mutation interval were determined for this problem. The optimum genetic algorithm program was then compared to a completely random method of search and optimization. Finally, the genetic algorithm approach was extended to several variations of the original problem for which an analytical approach would be …

Friction-Weighted Self-Consistent Effective Binary Diffusion Approximation, John D. Ramshaw, C. H. Chang

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The self-consistent effective binary diffusion (SCEBD) approximation for multicomponent diffusion in gas mixtures is reconsidered and reformulated. The new formulation is based on the fact that a suitable rearrangement of the Stefan-Maxwell equations provides an exact expression for the complementary mean velocity a_i for species i as a weighted average of the velocities of all the other species. The coefficients in a_i are normalized friction coefficients which are simply related to the true binary diffusion coefficients. A simple factorized bilinear approximation to the friction coefficients then yields approximate species diffusion fluxes identical in form to those of a …

Simple Approximation For Thermal Diffusion In Ionized Gas Mixtures, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A simple approximation for thermal diffusion in gas mixtures was recently proposed [1]. This approximation was based upon relations valid for rigid spheres. It is therefore appropriate for molecules with steep repulsive potentials, but not for ionized species interacting via the Coulomb potential. Here we formulate an analogous approximation for ionized species and free electrons. The resulting thermal diffusion coefficients differ in sign from those for hard molecules.