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The development of recombinant DNA techniques opened a new era for protein production both in scientific research and industrial application. However, the purification of recombinant proteins is very often quite difficult and inefficient. Therefore, we tried to employ novel techniques for the expression and purification of three pharmacologically interesting proteins: the plant toxin gelonin; a fusion protein of gelonin and the extracellular domain of the subunit of the acetylcholine receptor (gelonin-AchR) and human neurotrophin 3 (hNT3). Recombinant gelonin, acetylcholine receptor a subunit and their fusion product, gelonin-AchR were constructed and expressed. The gelonin gene, a 753 bp polynucleotide was chemically synthesized by Ya-Wei Shi et al. and was kindly provided to us. The gene was first inserted into the vector pUC118 yielding pUC-gel. It was subsequently transferred into pET28a and pET-gel was expressed in E. coli. The product, gelonin was soluble and was purified in two steps showing a homogeneous band corresponding to 28 kD on SDS-PAGE. The expression of the extracellular domain of the -subunit of AchR always led to insoluble aggregates and even upon coexpression with the chaperonin GroESL, very small and hardly reproducible amounts of soluble material were formed, only. Therefore, recombinant AchR- gelonin was cloned and expressed in the same host. The corresponding fusion protein, gelonin-AchR, again formed aggregates and it had to be solubilized in 6 M Gu-HCl for further purification and refolding. The final product, however, was recognized by several monoclonal antibodies directed against the extracellular domain of the -subunit of AchR as well as a polyclonal serum against gelonin. Expression and purification of recombinant hNT3 was achieved by the use of a protein self-splicing system. Based on the reported hNT3 DNA sequence, a 380 bp fragment corresponding to a 14 kD protein was amplified from genomal DNA of human whole blood by PCR. The DNA fragment was cloned into the pTXB1 vector, which contains a DNA fragment of intein and chintin binding domain (CBD). A further construct, pJLA-hNT3, is temperature-inducible. Both constructs expressed the target protein, hNT3-intein-CBD in E. coli by the induction with IPTG or temperature, however, as aggregates. After denaturation and renaturation, the soluble fusion protein was slowly loaded on an affinity column of chitin beads. A 14 kD hNT3 could be isolated after cleavage with DTT either at 4 °C or 25 °C for 48 h. Based on nerve fiber out-growth of the dorsal root ganglia of chicken embryos, both, hNT-3-intein-CBD and hNT3 itself exhibit almost the same biological activity.
Contributions to the application of adaptive antennas and CDMA code pooling in the TD CDMA downlink
(2002)
TD (Time Division)-CDMA is one of the partial standards adopted by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) for 3rd Generation (3G) mobile radio systems. An important issue when designing 3G mobile radio systems is the efficient use of the available frequency spectrum, that is the achievement of a spectrum efficiency as high as possible. It is well known that the spectrum efficiency can be enhanced by utilizing multi-element antennas instead of single-element antennas at the base station (BS). Concerning the uplink of TD- CDMA, the benefits achievable by multi-element BS antennas have been quantitatively studied to a satisfactory extent. However, corresponding studies for the downlink are still missing. This thesis has the goal to make contributions to fill this lack of information. For near-to-reality directional mobile radio scenarios TD-CDMA downlink utilizing multi-element antennas at the BS are investigated both on the system level and on the link level. The system level investigations show how the carrier-to-interference ratio can be improved by applying such antennas. As the result of the link level investigations, which rely on the detection scheme Joint Detection (JD), the improvement of the bit er- ror rate by utilizing multi-element antennas at the BS can be quantified. Concerning the link level of TD-CDMA, a number of improvements are proposed which allow considerable performance enhancement of TD-CDMA downlink in connection with multi-element BS antennas. These improvements include * the concept of partial joint detection (PJD), in which at each mobile station (MS) only a subset of the arriving CDMA signals including those being of interest to this MS are jointly detected, * a blind channel estimation algorithm, * CDMA code pooling, that is assigning more than one CDMA code to certain con- nections in order to offer these users higher data rates, * maximizing the Shannon transmission capacity by an interleaving concept termed CDMA code interleaving and by advantageously selecting the assignment of CDMA codes to mobile radio channels, * specific power control schemes, which tackle the problem of different transmission qualities of the CDMA codes. As a comprehensive illustration of the advantages achievable by multi-element BS anten- nas in the TD-CDMA downlink, quantitative results concerning the spectrum efficiency for different numbers of antenna elements at the BS conclude the thesis.
The dissertation is concerned with the numerical solution of Fokker-Planck equations in high dimensions arising in the study of dynamics of polymeric liquids. Traditional methods based on tensor product structure are not applicable in high dimensions for the number of nodes required to yield a fixed accuracy increases exponentially with the dimension; a phenomenon often referred to as the curse of dimension. Particle methods or finite point set methods are known to break the curse of dimension. The Monte Carlo method (MCM) applied to such problems are 1/sqrt(N) accurate, where N is the cardinality of the point set considered, independent of the dimension. Deterministic version of the Monte Carlo method called the quasi Monte Carlo method (QMC) are quite effective in integration problems and accuracy of the order of 1/N can be achieved, up to a logarithmic factor. However, such a replacement cannot be carried over to particle simulations due to the correlation among the quasi-random points. The method proposed by Lecot (C.Lecot and F.E.Khettabi, Quasi-Monte Carlo simulation of diffusion, Journal of Complexity, 15 (1999), pp.342-359) is the only known QMC approach, but it not only leads to large particle numbers but also the proven order of convergence is 1/N^(2s) in dimension s. We modify the method presented there, in such a way that the new method works with reasonable particle numbers even in high dimensions and has better order of convergence. Though the provable order of convergence is 1/sqrt(N), the results show less variance and thus the proposed method still slightly outperforms standard MCM.
Matrix Compression Methods for the Numerical Solution of Radiative Transfer in Scattering Media
(2002)
Radiative transfer in scattering media is usually described by the radiative transfer equation, an integro-differential equation which describes the propagation of the radiative intensity along a ray. The high dimensionality of the equation leads to a very large number of unknowns when discretizing the equation. This is the major difficulty in its numerical solution. In case of isotropic scattering and diffuse boundaries, the radiative transfer equation can be reformulated into a system of integral equations of the second kind, where the position is the only independent variable. By employing the so-called momentum equation, we derive an integral equation, which is also valid in case of linear anisotropic scattering. This equation is very similar to the equation for the isotropic case: no additional unknowns are introduced and the integral operators involved have very similar mapping properties. The discretization of an integral operator leads to a full matrix. Therefore, due to the large dimension of the matrix in practical applcation, it is not feasible to assemble and store the entire matrix. The so-called matrix compression methods circumvent the assembly of the matrix. Instead, the matrix-vector multiplications needed by iterative solvers are performed only approximately, thus, reducing, the computational complexity tremendously. The kernels of the integral equation describing the radiative transfer are very similar to the kernels of the integral equations occuring in the boundary element method. Therefore, with only slight modifications, the matrix compression methods, developed for the latter are readily applicable to the former. As apposed to the boundary element method, the integral kernels for radiative transfer in absorbing and scattering media involve an exponential decay term. We examine how this decay influences the efficiency of the matrix compression methods. Further, a comparison with the discrete ordinate method shows that discretizing the integral equation may lead to reductions in CPU time and to an improved accuracy especially in case of small absorption and scattering coefficients or if local sources are present.
Different aspects of geomagnetic field modelling from satellite data are examined in the framework of modern multiscale approximation. The thesis is mostly concerned with wavelet techniques, i.e. multiscale methods based on certain classes of kernel functions which are able to realize a multiscale analysis of the funtion (data) space under consideration. It is thus possible to break up complicated functions like the geomagnetic field, electric current densities or geopotentials into different pieces and study these pieces separately. Based on a general approach to scalar and vectorial multiscale methods, topics include multiscale denoising, crustal field approximation and downward continuation, wavelet-parametrizations of the magnetic field in Mie-representation as well as multiscale-methods for the analysis of time-dependent spherical vector fields. For each subject the necessary theoretical framework is established and numerical applications examine and illustrate the practical aspects.
Utilization of Correlation Matrices in Adaptive Array Processors for Time-Slotted CDMA Uplinks
(2002)
It is well known that the performance of mobile radio systems can be significantly enhanced by the application of adaptive antennas which consist of multi-element antenna arrays plus signal processing circuitry. In the thesis the utilization of such antennas as receive antennas in the uplink of mobile radio air interfaces of the type TD-CDMA is studied. Especially, the incorporation of covariance matrices of the received interference signals into the signal processing algorithms is investigated with a view to improve the system performance as compared to state of the art adaptive antenna technology. These covariance matrices implicitly contain information on the directions of incidence of the interference signals, and this information may be exploited to reduce the effective interference power when processing the signals received by the array elements. As a basis for the investigations, first directional models of the mobile radio channels and of the interference impinging at the receiver are developed, which can be implemented on the computer at low cost. These channel models cover both outdoor and indoor environments. They are partly based on measured channel impulse responses and, therefore, allow a description of the mobile radio channels which comes sufficiently close to reality. Concerning the interference models, two cases are considered. In the one case, the interference signals arriving from different directions are correlated, and in the other case these signals are uncorrelated. After a visualization of the potential of adaptive receive antennas, data detection and channel estimation schemes for the TD-CDMA uplink are presented, which rely on such antennas under the consideration of interference covariance matrices. Of special interest is the detection scheme MSJD (Multi Step Joint Detection), which is a novel iterative approach to multi-user detection. Concerning channel estimation, the incorporation of the knowledge of the interference covariance matrix and of the correlation matrix of the channel impulse responses is enabled by an MMSE (Minimum Mean Square Error) based channel estimator. The presented signal processing concepts using covariance matrices for channel estimation and data detection are merged in order to form entire receiver structures. Important tasks to be fulfilled in such receivers are the estimation of the interference covariance matrices and the reconstruction of the received desired signals. These reconstructions are required when applying MSJD in data detection. The considered receiver structures are implemented on the computer in order to enable system simulations. The obtained simulation results show that the developed schemes are very promising in cases, where the impinging interference is highly directional, whereas in cases with the interference directions being more homogeneously distributed over the azimuth the consideration of the interference covariance matrices is of only limited benefit. The thesis can serve as a basis for practical system implementations.
Based on the framework of continuum mechanics two different concepts to formulate phenomenological anisotropic inelasticity are developed in a thermodynamically consistent manner. On the one hand, special emphasis is placed on the incorporation of structural tensors while on the other hand, fictitious configurations are introduced. Substantial parts of this work deal with the numerical treatment of the presented theory within the finite element method.
This thesis builds a bridge between singularity theory and computer algebra. To an isolated hypersurface singularity one can associate a regular meromorphic connection, the Gauß-Manin connection, containing a lattice, the Brieskorn lattice. The leading terms of the Brieskorn lattice with respect to the weight and V-filtration of the Gauß-Manin connection define the spectral pairs. They correspond to the Hodge numbers of the mixed Hodge structure on the cohomology of the Milnor fibre and belong to the finest known invariants of isolated hypersurface singularities. The differential structure of the Brieskorn lattice can be described by two complex endomorphisms A0 and A1 containing even more information than the spectral pairs. In this thesis, an algorithmic approach to the Brieskorn lattice in the Gauß-Manin connection is presented. It leads to algorithms to compute the complex monodromy, the spectral pairs, and the differential structure of the Brieskorn lattice. These algorithms are implemented in the computer algebra system Singular.
In the present work, we investigated how to correct the questionable normality, linear and quadratic assumptions underlying existing Value-at-Risk methodologies. In order to take also into account the skewness, the heavy tailedness and the stochastic feature of the volatility of the market values of financial instruments, the constant volatility hypothesis widely used by existing Value-at-Risk appproches has also been investigated and corrected and the tails of the financial returns distributions have been handled via Generalized Pareto or Extreme Value Distributions. Artificial Neural Networks have been combined by Extreme Value Theory in order to build consistent and nonparametric Value-at-Risk measures without the need to make any of the questionable assumption specified above. For that, either autoregressive models (AR-GARCH) have been used or the direct characterization of conditional quantiles due to Bassett, Koenker [1978] and Smith [1987]. In order to build consistent and nonparametric Value-at-Risk estimates, we have proved some new results extending White Artificial Neural Network denseness results to unbounded random variables and provide a generalisation of the Bernstein inequality, which is needed to establish the consistency of our new Value-at-Risk estimates. For an accurate estimation of the quantile of the unexpected returns, Generalized Pareto and Extreme Value Distributions have been used. The new Artificial Neural Networks denseness results enable to build consistent, asymptotically normal and nonparametric estimates of conditional means and stochastic volatilities. The denseness results uses the Sobolev metric space L^m (my) for some m >= 1 and some probability measure my and which holds for a certain subclass of square integrable functions. The Fourier transform, the new extension of the Bernstein inequality for unbounded random variables from stationary alpha-mixing processes combined with the new generalization of a result of White and Wooldrige [1990] have been the main tool to establich the extension of White's neural network denseness results. To illustrate the goodness and level of accuracy of the new denseness results, we were able to demonstrate the applicability of the new Value-at-Risk approaches by means of three examples with real financial data mainly from the banking sector traded on the Frankfort Stock Exchange.
thesis deals with the investigation of the dynamics of optically excited (hot) electrons in thin and ultra-thin layers. The main interests concern about the time behaviour of the dissipation of energy and momentum of the excited electrons. The relevant relaxation times occur in the femtosecond time region. The two-photon photoemission is known to be an adequate tool in order to analyse such dynamical processes in real-time. This work expands the knowledge in the fields of electron relaxation in ultra-thin silver layers on different substrates, as well as in adsorbate states in a bandgap of a semiconductor. It contributes facts to the comprehension of spin transport through an interface between a metal and a semiconductor. The primary goal was to prove the predicted theory by reducing the observed crystal in at least one direction. One expects a change of the electron relaxation behaviour while altering the crystal’s shape from a 3d bulk to a 2d (ultra-thin) layer. This is due to the fact that below a determined layer thickness, the electron gas transfers to a two-dimensional one. This behaviour could be proven in this work. In an about 3nm thin silver layer on graphite, the hot electrons show a jump to longer relaxation time all over the whole accessible energy range. It is the first time that the temporal evolution of the relaxation of excited electrons could be observed during the transition from a 3d to a 2d system. In order to reduce or even eliminate the influence coming from the substrate, the system of silver on the semiconductor GaAs, which has a bandgap of 1.5eV at the Gamma-point, was investigated. The observations of the relaxation behaviour of hot electron in different ultra-thin silver layers on this semiconductor could show, that at metal-insulator-junctions, plasmons in the silver and in the interface, as well as cascading electrons from higher lying energies, have a huge influence to the dissipation of momentum and energy. This comes mainly from the band bending of the semiconductor, and from the electrons, which are excited in GaAs. The limitation of the silver layer on GaAs in one direction led to the expected generation of quantum well states (QWS) in the bandgap. Those adsorbate states have quantised energy- and momentum values, which are directly connected to the layer thickness and the standing electron wave therein. With the experiments of this work, published values could not only be completed and proved, but it could also be determined the time evolution of such a QWS. It came out that this QWS might only be filled by electrons, which are moving from the lower edge of the conduction band of the semiconductor to the silver and suffer cascading steps there. By means of the system silver on GaAs, and of the known fact that an excitation of electrons in GaAs with circularly polarised light of the energy 1.5eV does produce spin polarised electrons in the conduction band, it became possible to bring a contribution to the hot topic of spin injection. The main target of spin injection is the transfer of spin polarised electrons out of a ferromagnet into a semiconductor, in order to develop spin dependent switches and memories. It could be demonstrated here that spin polarised electrons from GaAs can move through the interface into silver, could be photoemitted from there and their spin was still being detectable. As a third investigation system, ultra-thin silver layers were deposited on the insulator MgO, which has a bandgap of 7.8eV. Also in this system, one could recognize a change in the relaxation time while reducing the dimension of the silver layer from thick to ultra-thin. Additionally, it came out an extreme large relaxation time at a layer thickness of 0.6 – 1.2nm. This time is an order of magnitude longer than at thick films, and this is a consequence of two factors: first, the reduction of the phase space due to the confined electron gas in the z-direction, and second, the slowlier thermalisation of the electron gas due to less accessible scattering partners.