In this thesis we present measurements on several different devices, including the single-Cooper-pair box (SCB), the single-electron box, tunable superconducting resonators and so called transmon qubits. By exploiting the quantum capacitance of the SCB, its state was measured by embedding the box in a radio-frequency resonator. The state dependent change in the quantum capacitance then leads to...

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of the United States was enacted in 1973 to prevent the extinction of species. Recovery plans, required by 1988 amendments to the ESA, play an important role in organizing these efforts to protect and recover species. To improve the use of science in the recovery planning process, the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) commissioned an independent review of e...

OBJECTIVES This paper aims to identify the mediating mechanisms of a school-based obesity prevention program (DOiT). METHODS The DOiT-program was implemented in Dutch prevocational secondary schools and evaluated using a controlled, cluster-randomised trial (September 2003 to May 2004). We examined mediators of effects regarding (1) consumption of sugar containing beverages (SCB); (2) consump...

The present study aimed to investigate the protective effect of a modified p5 peptide, TFP5, on 1-methyl-4-phenyl pyridine ion (MPP+)-induced neurotoxicity in cortical neurons and explore the therapeutic effect of TFP5 on Parkinson's disease (PD). MPP+ was applied to a primary culture of mouse cortical neurons to establish the cell model of PD. Neurons were divided into four groups: Control, mo...

The influences of short chain branching (SCB) and molecular weight (Mw) of low density polyethylene (LDPE) on its melt miscibility with polypropylene (PP) were investigated by rheological techniques. Rheological measurement and different data-treatment techniques as well as rheological models suggest that blends of PP with LDPE of high SCB (22 CH3/1000 C) are miscible at all compositions. Howev...

The primary objective of this research is to develop predictive, year-round habitat models of the presence of calling blue and fin whales in the Southern California Bight (SCB). We will also investigate the scales over which blue and fin whales respond to their environment to better understand the functionality of the predictive relationships in those models. We will base our models on the avai...

The two-system hypothesis states that there are two kinds of reasoning systems, the first of which is evolutionarily old, heuristically (or associatively) based, automatic, fast, and is a collection of independent systems. The second is evolutionarily new, perhaps peculiar to humans, is rule-based, controlled, slow, and is a single token system. Advocates of the two-system hypothesis generally ...

Cancellation of clutter and multipath is an important problem in passive bistatic radars. Some important recent algorithms such as the ECA, the SCA and the ECA-B project the received signals onto a subspace orthogonal to both clutter and pre-detected target subspaces. In this paper, we generalize the SCA algorithm and propose a novel sequential algorithm for clutter and multipath cancellation i...

The optimization of an alkaline pretreatment process for the delignification of sugarcane bagasse (SCB) to enhance the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis was performed according to the Doehlert uniform shell design. In this experimental design, the effect of two factors—potassium hydroxide (KOH) concentration and autoclaving time at 121 C (1 atm)—on cellulose, hemicellulose, or the total polysacch...