Electromigration-induced hydrostatic elastic stress in Pb-free SnCu solder joints was studied by in situ synchrotron X-ray white beam microdiffraction. The elastic stresses in two different grains with similar crystallographic orientation, one located at the anode end and the other at the cathode end, were analyzed based on the elastic anisotropy of the Beta-Sn crystal structure. The stress in the grain at the cathode end remained constant except for temperature fluctuations, while the compressive stress in the grain at the anode end was built-up as a function of time during electromigration until a steady state was reached. The measured compressive stress gradient between the cathode and the anode is much larger than what is needed to initiate Sn whisker growth. The effective charge number of Beta-Sn derived from the electromigration data is in good agreement with the calculated value.

Rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep are controlled by specific neuronal circuits. In this thesis, I show that galanin-expressing GABAergic neurons in the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH) comprise separate subpopulations with opposing effects on REM versus NREM sleep. Microendoscopic calcium imaging revealed diverse sleep-wake activity of DMH GABAergic neurons, but the galanin-expressing subset falls into two distinct groups, either selectively activated (REM-on) or suppressed (REM-off) during REM sleep. Retrogradely labeled, preoptic area (POA)-projecting galaninergic neurons are REM-off, whereas the raphe pallidus (RPA)-projecting neurons are primarily REM-on. Bidirectional optogenetic manipulations showed that the POA projectors promote NREM sleep and suppress REM sleep, while the RPA projectors have the opposite effects. Thus, REM/NREM switch is regulated antagonistically by galaninergic neurons with intermingled cell bodies but distinct axon projections.

An important milestone of the theory of knot invariants is the Reshetikhin-Turaev functor introduced in [RT]. This construction could generate tangle invariants from quantum groups. Later, Kashaev and Reshetikhin generalizes this construction [KR1] based on the idea of the holonomy braiding, the braiding defined for C-colored diagrams. The purpose of this work is to have some discussion of this construction. There are three parts in this thesis: first the full description of the construction is provided. Then in the second part, some examples computed via Mathematica are shown. And some properties and theorems are given in the end.

Combinatorial drugs have been used for decades to improve therapeutic efficacy in cancer treatments through drug synergistic mediation. Although they are believed to have good efficiency in killing cancer cells by simultaneously suppress multi-drug resistance through targeting different cellular mechanisms, its remedial effects is still limited when considering heterogeneity of cancer cells. Recently, nanosystem-based agents have become new drug delivery systems to improve therapeutic efficiency as well as safeness. However, it is still difficult in optimizing desired effects combinations and fails to enhance drug efficacy efficiently. Thus, feedback system control (FSC) platform has been introduced to circumvent limitations in optimizing drug combinations for either unmodified or nanotechnology driven therapeutics. The FSC platform provides an algorithm that integrally and swiftly produces an ideal combination consisting of three nanodiamond-modified anticancer drugs: doxorubicin, mitoxantrone, bleomycin and one unmodified anticancer drug- paclitaxel. Particularly, the therapeutic windows obtained from the FSC-based nanodiamond-drug combinations were significantly higher than the ones in optimized unmodified drug combinations, single nanodiamond and unmodified drug administration, and randomly sampled nanodiamond-drug combination treatment. Moreover, the FSC methodology intrinsically considers cancer cell heterogeneity and sophisticated intracellular mechanisms. This approach can be potentially applied in optimizing multi-therapeutic systems clinically, expressing a favorable candidate in personalized medication development in the future.

We report here an in-depth synchrotron radiation based white beam X-ray microdiffraction study of plasticity in individual grains of an Al (Cu) interconnect during the early stage of electromigration. The study shows a rearrangement of the geometrically necessary dislocations (GND) in bamboo typed grains during that stage. We find that about 90percent of the GNDs are oriented so that their line direction is the closest to the current flow direction. In non-bamboo typed grains, the Laue peak positions shift, indicating that the grains rotate. An analysis in terms of force directions has been carried out and is consistent with observed electromigration induced grain rotation and bending.