In this review the well-being of post-sexual reassignment individuals will be discussed. Gender dysphoria (GD) and sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) continues to be a research process for the scientific community on evaluating the health statuses of transitioned individuals. Though researchers consider this subject in its primitive stage of investigation, the literature available gives ideas in assessing whether these sexual reassignment procedures work for gender dysphoric individuals. There is a diverse amount of material on GD and SRS that detail both similar and differing results depending on the type of methodologies used by researchers. Reviewing the style of research, methods, and results within studies can bring more knowledge and spring new ideas to form better conclusions on the health statuses of individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria and their post-operative self.

MRI examinations for patients with active implantable medical devices (AIMDs) pose significant safety concerns. Among them, induced currents by the radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic field can result in tissue damage. While the magnetic component of the RF field (B1) is necessary for spin excitation, the electric component does not have a significant role during an MRI exam but it is mostly responsible of the induction of currents that get concentrated by the AIMD. The induced current propagates in the AIMD lead and when it reaches the end of the lead, a temperature increase is observed at the lead,

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commonly known as lead-tio heating (LTH), which can damage the surrounding tissue. A large number of factors impact the magnitude of the induced currents. Therefore, the analysis can be extremely complex, which contributes to difficulty associated with understanding how to safely examine patients with an AIMD using MRI. Consequently, and unfortunately, MRI examinations for patients with AIMDs are often denied. To reduce safety risks, device manufacturers have created MR-conditional AIMDs which under specific conditions safety risks are reduced. The conditions often include the specific absorption rate (SAR). SAR is a measure to estimate RF exposure measured by the MRI scanner which is often limited to a certain value to mitigate temperature increase. However, meeting SAR conditions can be challenging. In this dissertation, a thorough examination of the parameters that affect RF-induced AIMD heating is performed. Novel techniques for mitigating device heating are addressed including a workflow that provides guidance for modifying protocols to reduce the applied RF power with limited impact on diagnostic image quality. Additional work provides an analysis of the magnitude of the RF electric fields with the aim of reducing the induced device heating.

The motivation behind this thesis is provided in Chapter 2. A review of the risks associated with MRI exams for patients with MR-conditional and non-conditional cardiac AIMDs. The current clinical practice for performing MRI examinations is provided in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is a brief introduction to the physics behind the static magnetic and time varying electromagnetic fields used in MRI. A brief introduction to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is also provided.

Chapter 5 main goal is to find a method to allow MRI clinics to modify standard protocols while limiting the effect on image quality and scan time. To do so, a workflow

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that modifies SAR dependent sequence parameters in a specific order was suggested and tested for head, C-spine, L-spine and T-spine vendor provided protocols. The protocols were modified to meet SAR levels as low as 0.1 W/kg which is ~95% less than SAR for conventional examinations. We believe that the proposed workflow will solve the potential examination denials of MR-conditional devices due to the lack of guidance to meet really low SAR conditions.

Chapter 6 presents a simple method for reducing RF induced lead-tip heating (LTH) for patients with MRI unsafe cardiac AIMDs. LTH is known to depend on the lead-path and distance to isocenter. Herein we suggest that by simply changing patient orientation from a head-first to a feet-first orientation LTH can be mitigated. The principle behind this is steeped in the fact that the RF electric field is spatially asymmetric and temperature increase is proportional to the magnitude of the electric field. Thus, by moving to a lower E-field magnitude, LTH can be reduced. Hence, for MR-unsafe cardiac AIMDs implanted on a left side switching from a head-first to a feet-first orientation was then suggested. To do so temperature data was acquired for MR-unsafe cardiac devices following different lead paths and at nine positions within the human body. The results show that changing orientation can reduce LTH. There was no scenario in which LTH was significantly worse in a feet-first orientation.

In Chapter 7 a comparison of LTH at 1.5T and 3T is provided. With 1.5T being the standard field strength used for scanning patients with cardiac AIMDs, examinations at 3T are generally contraindicated. The principal motivation is that SAR increases with the square of field strength, thus the rationale suggests that for patients with cardiac AIMDs, RF-induced device heating will increase as well. Notably, however, the interactions

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between the cardiac AIMD and the RF-electromagnetic field are subject to resonant length effects, hence LTH may not be worse. In addition to resonant effects, LTH depends

In response to climate change and sustainability challenges, various incentive programs have promoted solar photovoltaic (PV) economic feasibility and interconnection into the low voltage electrical distribution system. However, the existing power system infrastructure can only accommodate a limited amount of PV generation before reverse power flow (PV generation flowing back into the distribution network) becomes an issue. This limits the ability to achieve Zero Net Energy (ZNE) behind individual meters and in whole communities since ZNE communities typically require large PV deployments. In parallel, district-level energy systems, such as Advanced Energy Communities (AEC) microgrids— electrically contiguous areas that leverage the clustering of load and generation by integrating multiple utility customer-owned Distributed Energy Resources (DER) — that include battery storage, offer a great prospect for integrating high levels of solar PV into the built environment.

Designing the least-cost and technically feasible system to serve a district load has been a challenge to utilities and city planners. Battery energy storage and smart-inverter technologies emerge in this context to enable higher penetration of solar PV by locally regulating voltage and controlling active and reactive power flows. However, there is no straight forward way nor a practical rule or consensus on how to size such assets optimally.

This work proposes a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) optimization to determine the least-cost DER portfolio consisting of inverter-connected solar PV and battery storage. It also allocates it in a multi-node electrical grid and dispatches it considering the existing electric infrastructure limits (transformer capacities and nodal voltage magnitudes). Novel linearization techniques such as polygon relaxations are used to limit otherwise non-linear apparent power flows at transformers. A novel Alternating Current (AC) decoupled linearized power flow is also integrated into the MILP optimization. Moreover, for the first time, smart-inverter droop-control functions are included in the DER optimal allocation problem. Results show that such comprehensive MILP is achievable and tractable for a 115-node AEC.

The advent of efficient light-confining platforms marked the burgeoning of the field of Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics (Cavity QED), which brought along the realization of exotic phenomena that emerges under extreme light-matter interaction regimes.On the other hand, in chemistry, the interaction between light and matter is at the core of invaluable spectroscopic techniques and a number of photo-induced chemical processes. From a theoretical standpoint, light-matter interaction in those scenarios can be treated perturbatively, such that molecules and light preserve their individual identity. This picture breaks down when we consider one photonic mode interacting with molecules such that the energy of this interaction surpasses their respective linewidths. This so-called strong coupling (SC) regime has been accomplished in microsetups which can sustain confinement comparable to the wavelength of light that promotes molecular excitations. Under the SC regime, the excitations sustained by the device are no longer of purely material character but rather exhibit a hybrid molecular and photonic nature, and are usually known as polaritons. The recent observation of the slowing down of chemical reactions in the SC regime has incentivized communities of different backgrounds to converge in order to understand the range of possibilities the regime has to offer on the control of molecular processes. In this dissertation, a combination of quantum optics and chemical rate theory is used to understand the emergent dynamics of molecules embedded in an strongly confined electromagnetic environment. More specifically, an analysis of the tunability of chemical reactivity of realistic polariton setups in the dark (i.e. in the absence of any driving source) is presented. Later on, it is shown that Singlet Fission and Reverse-Intersystem Crossing, two photophysical processes of technological relevance, represent an ideal testing ground to explore the rich dynamics afforded under the polariton regime. In the latter phenomena, special emphasis is cast upon the fleeting nature of the electro- magnetic environment, as well as on its implications on the degree of control on molecular processes.