2002, Diebold, Steffen M.

Für die Auflösungsgeschwindigkeit von schwer wasserlöslichen Arzneistoffpartikeln spielt die Hydrodynamik an den Partikel-Oberflächen eine große Rolle. Diese ist ihrerseits beeinflußt von der Geometrie und der Oberflächenmorphologie der Partikel. In dieser Arbeit wurde gezeigt, dass sich zur Charakterisierung dieser Parameter die Rasterelektronenmikroskopie (SEM) auch für die Untersuchung von Arzneistoffen gut eignet. Am Beispiel von Felodipin-Kristallen wurde nachgewiesen, dass reale Arzneistoffpulver auch an scheinbar „glatten“ Oberflächen Protrusionen, Kanten und Kavitäten aufweisen. Deren Größenordnungen lassen sich mit Hilfe der Elektronenmikroskopie abschätzen. Die Oberflächenmorphologie von Arzneistoffpartikeln ist ein Kriterium für die Auflösungsgeschwindigkeit oral verabreichter Arzneistoffe. Die Rasterelektronenmikroskopie leistet dabei wertvolle Dienste zur Charakterisierung der Oberflächen von Arzneistoffpartikeln.

2009, Koseska, A., Zaikin, A., Kurths, J., García-Ojalvo, J.

Many cellular processes require decision making mechanisms, which must act reliably even in the unavoidable presence of substantial amounts of noise. However, the multistable genetic switches that underlie most decision-making processes are dominated by fluctuations that can induce random jumps between alternative cellular states. Here we show, via theoretical modeling of a population of noise-driven bistable genetic switches, that reliable timing of decision-making processes can be accomplished for large enough population sizes, as long as cells are globally coupled by chemical means. In the light of these results, we conjecture that cell proliferation, in the presence of cell-cell communication, could provide a mechanism for reliable decision making in the presence of noise, by triggering cellular transitions only when the whole cell population reaches a certain size. In other words, the summation performed by the cell population would average out the noise and reduce its detrimental impact.

2005, Reichstein, M., Kätterer, T., Andrén, O., Ciais, P., Schulze, E.-D., Cramer, W., Papale, D., Valentini, R.

Knorr et al. (2005) concluded that soil organic carbon pools with longer turnover times are more sensitive to temperature. We show that this conclusion is equivocal, largely dependent on their specific selection of data and does not persist when the data set of Kätterer et al. (1998) is analysed in a more appropriate way. Further, we analyse how statistical properties of the model parameters may interfere with correlative analyses that relate the Q 10 of soil respiration with the basal rate, where the latter is taken as a proxy for soil organic matter quality. We demonstrate that negative parameter correlations between Qio-values and base respiration rates are statistically expected and not necessarily provide evidence for a higher temperature sensitivity of low quality soil organic matter. Consequently, we propose it is premature to conclude that stable soil carbon is more sensitive to temperature than labile carbon.