Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Confined Mesoscopic Fluid-Like Films Analyzed With Frequency Modulation And Acoustic Detection, Rodolfo Fernandez Rodriguez

Dissertations and Theses

Complete understanding of the physics underlying the changes in viscoelasticity, relaxation time, and phase transitions that mesoscopic fluid-like systems undergo at solid-liquid interfaces or under confinement remains one of the major challenges in condensed matter physics. Moreover, studies of confined mesoscopic fluid films are relevant to technological areas like adhesion, wetting processes and nanotribology.

This thesis addresses the interaction between two sliding solids interfaces separated by a nanometer sized gap, with emphasis on the role of the mesoscopic fluid film trapped between them. For this purpose we integrated two acoustic techniques, recently introduced by our group, into a sub-nanometer precision …

Modulation Of The Cardiac Calcium Release Channel By Homocysteine Thiolactone, Laura Jean Owen

Dissertations and Theses

Elevated levels in blood serum (≥10μmol/L) of the amino acid homocysteine is strongly correlated with the incidence of heart failure (HF). We present evidence that the cyclic thioester, homocysteine thiolactone (HTL), a metabolic product of homocysteine, irreversibly modifies proteins that regulate the contractile process in cardiac muscle. Two proteins found in the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR), the Ca²⁺ pump (SERCA2), and the ryanodine receptor (RyR2), are responsible for controlling the cytosolic Ca²⁺ concentration and hence the contractile state of the heart. While both improper Ca²⁺ handling and elevated homocysteine levels have been considered bio-markers in HF, a direct …

Characterization And Modeling Of Nonlinear Dark Current In Digital Imagers, Justin Charles Dunlap

Dissertations and Theses

Dark current is an unwanted source of noise in images produced by digital imagers, the de facto standard of imaging. The two most common types of digital imager architectures, Charged-Coupled Devices (CCDs) and Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS), are both prone to this noise source. To accurately reflect the information from light signals this noise must be removed. This practice is especially vital for scientific purposes such as in astronomical observations.

Presented in this dissertation are characterizations of dark current sources that present complications to the traditional methods of correction. In particular, it is observed that pixels in both CCDs and CMOS …

Slm-Based Fourier Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy, Sahand Noorizadeh

Dissertations and Theses

Optical phase microscopy provides a view of objects that have minimal to no effect on the detected intensity of light that are unobservable by standard microscopy techniques. Since its inception just over 60 years ago that gave us a vision to an unseen world and earned Frits Zernike the Nobel prize in physics in 1953, phase microscopy has evolved to find various applications in biological cell imaging, crystallography, semiconductor failure analysis, and more. Two common and commercially available techniques are phase contrast and differential interference contrast (DIC). In phase contrast method, a large portion of the unscattered light that accounts …