University of Groningen

A fundamental precondition for the operation of district heating networks (DHNs) is a stable hydraulic behavior. However, the ongoing transition toward a sustainable heat supply, especially the rising integration of distributed heat sources and the increasingly meshed topologies, introduces complex and potentially destabilizing hydraulic dynamics. In this work, we propose a unifying, equilibrium-independent passivity (EIP)-based control framework, which guarantees asymptotic stability of any feasible, hydraulic DHN equilibrium for a wide range of DHN setups covering different DHN generations, meshed, time-varying topologies, and multiple, dynamically interacting distributed heat sources. The obtained results hold for the state of the art as well as future DHN generations featuring, for example, multiple distributed heat sources, asymmetric pipe networks, and multiple temperature layers.

Nanopores are powerful tools for single‐molecule sensing of biomolecules and nanoparticles. The signal coming from the molecule to be analyzed strongly depends on its interaction with the narrower section of the nanopore (constriction) that may be tailored to increase sensing accuracy. Modifications of nanopore constriction have also been commonly used to induce electroosmosis, that favors the capture of molecules in the nanopore under a voltage bias and independently of their charge. However, engineering nanopores for increasing both electroosmosis and sensing accuracy is challenging. Here it is shown that large electroosmotic flows can be achieved without altering the nanopore constriction. Using continuum electrohydrodynamic simulations, it is found that an external charged ring generates strong electroosmosis in cylindrical nanopores. Similarly, for conical nanopores it is shown that moving charges away from the cone tip still results in an electroosmotic flow (EOF), whose intensity reduces increasing the diameter of the nanopore section where charges are placed. This paradigm is applied to engineered biological nanopores showing, via atomistic simulations and experiments, that mutations outside the constriction induce a relatively intense electroosmosis. This strategy provides much more flexibility in nanopore design since electroosmosis can be controlled independently from the constriction, which can be optimized to improve sensing accuracy.

The light-induced photocycloaddition of 9,10-phenanthrenequinone (PQ) with electron-rich alkenes (ERA), known as the PQ-ERA reaction, is a highly attractive photoclick reaction characterized by its operational simplicity and high biocompatibility. One essential aspect of photoclick reactions is their high rate, however the limited solubility of PQs often requires the use of a co-solvent. Evaluating the effect of different co-solvents on the PQ-ERA reaction and their influence on the reaction rate, we discovered that sulfur-containing compounds, in particular the frequently used solubilizing co-solvent DMSO, quench the triplet state of the PQ. These experimental results, supported by nanosecond-microsecond and ultrafast transient absorption data, show that even minimal amounts of DMSO result in a decreased lifetime of the reactive triplet state, essential for the photoclick reaction. Without DMSO as co-solvent, exceptionally high photoreaction quantum yields (ΦP up to 93% with only 1 equivalent ERA) and complete conversion in seconds can be achieved. With these outstanding efficiencies, the PQ-ERA reaction can be used without excess ERA and at low light intensities, facilitating photoclick transformations in various future applications.

The Kyrenia Ship, found off the north coast of Cyprus, is a key vessel in the history of scientific underwater excavations and in the history of Greek shipbuilding. The first volume of the site’s final publication appeared in 2023 and provides detailed archaeological information tightly constraining the dating of the ship. A very specific date range is proposed: ca. 294–290 BCE, but is based on a less than certain reading of one coin recovered from the ship. While there is clear benefit to finding high-precision dates for the Kyrenia Ship and its rich assemblage using independent scientific dating (combined with Bayesian chronological modeling), efforts to do so proved more challenging and complex than initially anticipated. Strikingly, extensive radiocarbon dating on both wooden materials from the ship and on short-lived contents from the final use of the ship fail to offer dates using the IntCal20 calibration curve—the current Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon calibration curve at the time of writing—that correspond with the archaeological constraints. The issue rests with a segment of IntCal20 ca. 350–250 BCE reliant on legacy pre-AMS radiocarbon data. We therefore measured new known-age tree-ring samples 350–250 BCE, and, integrating another series of new known-age tree-ring data, we obtained a redefined and more accurate calibration record for the period 433–250 BCE. These new data permit a satisfactory dating solution for the ship and may even indicate a date that is a (very) few years more recent than current estimations. These new data in addition confirm and only very slightly modify the dating recently published for the Mazotos ship, another Greek merchant ship from the southern coast of Cyprus. Our work further investigated whether ship wood samples impregnated with a common preservative, polyethylene glycol (PEG), can be cleaned successfully, including a known-age test.

Ferroptosis is a form of regulated cell death that can be modulated by small molecules and has the potential for the development of therapeutics for oncology. Although excessive lipid peroxidation is the defining hallmark of ferroptosis, DNA damage may also play a significant role. In this study, a potential mechanistic role for MIF in homologous recombination (HR) DNA repair is identified. The inhibition or genetic depletion of MIF or other HR proteins, such as breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein (BRCA1), is demonstrated to significantly enhance the sensitivity of cells to ferroptosis. The interference with HR results in the translocation of the tumor suppressor protein p53 to the mitochondria, which in turn stimulates the production of reactive oxygen species. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that MIF‐directed small molecules enhance ferroptosis via a putative MIF‐BRCA1‐RAD51 axis in HR, which causes resistance to ferroptosis. This suggests a potential novel druggable route to enhance ferroptosis by targeted anticancer therapeutics in the future.

An influx of southern Dutch (‘Belgian’) refugees around 1590 into especially Amsterdam fueled a booming atmosphere in The Netherlands. The city council regulated the markets but else let things go. The Amsterdam Bank of Exchange could accept bills of exchange, transfer money and lend to governmental bodies and the Dutch East India Company. It provided bank money to private customers backed by gold and silver deposits. With also the world’s first large securities exchange, the stable Amsterdam financial market became exemplary and a multi-faced cooperation model served the Dutch expansion into the world. While still existing, the Bank’s financial innovation role was quietly taken over by private banks.

For a flourishing society, it is necessary to settle and pay transactions with money, created by banks doing their regular business of taking deposits and making loans. Roman banking already went beyond money exchange in the beginning of the first millennium and also Middle East early medieval trade banking could inspire later bankers, whereas rather the Knights Templar, a congregation of monks supporting the Crusades, developed much useful practices. The Templars stretched the view of the Church on taking interest by way of service fee, but went under in a dispute with the French King. Banking went on like this. We view it in terms of a power game between bankers and rulers, during which “banking secrets” by way of individual leading bank innovations helped to further practices.

The ‘Nixon shock’ of 1971 made an end to the post World War 2 U.S. dollar based monetary system, enabling banks to benefit from uncertainties with innovations going beyond obvious ones, and putting the system itself at risk. Citibank’s Charles Prince is the unfortunate person who said that one has got to get up as long as the music plays, but his bank was one that had to be quickly saved by the U.S. Fed when the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and beyond spread around, following the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008. Citibank was cut down, as were other National Champions, whereas also stricter controls and new market developments in e.g., central banking may make their roles less outspoken than before. In the power game between banks and rulers, the narrow corridor in which economic freedom flourishes, takes benefit from a liberal democracy providing guidance.

England (and Scotland) also fell out of the Middle Ages quite abruptly, with a Civil War (1642–1651), increasing the role of Parliament. War debts had eroded the financial system, and this is how London goldsmiths became trusted custodians. The Goldsmiths used their role to create paper money with banknotes and bills of exchange, above deposit levels, thereby introducing ‘fractional banking’. A lofty person was Edward Blackwell. British financial policy improved and opened up, but government debts remained an issue. Enter the Bank of England (1691), the world’s first genuine large central bank, also issuing banknotes. The U.K. had soon become the world’s leading nation.

John Law was not just a Scottish adventurer who dueled for the sake of the honor of a woman and thereby killed his opponent, causing him to fly out of London, but also an economist who exploited paper money while using the Royal Bank and the Mississippi company, to recover state finances and to fuel the French economy. Alas, the associated money creation ended in the Mississippi Company bubble around a state-led investment project in North America, in 1720, much akin to a comparable failed British project, the South Sea Company bubble. It made the bankers distrusted in France.

Meyer Amschel Rothschild was the founding father of an originally Jewish-German banking dynasty with five sons networking from major European cities, with the workaholic Nathan in London perhaps being the most influential one. The virtually untouchable brothers circulated as a global financial empire money across borders to states and corporations in the Napoleonic period. The Rothschilds were e.g., forceful during the French-British Suez Canal Incident of 1852, but failed to become strong in the United States of America.

As it matters, many of the leading banks in western countries became large in their home base and beyond, because of their colonial or other historical heritage, including the Bank of Montreal (Canada), the British HSBC, Credit Suisse of Switzerland, the Dutch ABN AMRO and Deutsche Bank (Germany). Salient is the latter’s 2002–2012 CEO, the Swiss Josef Ackermann—a moneymaker and a diplomat in one. Especially after World War II and before the Global Financial Crisis of around 2010, banks were juggling on thin lines between creative deal making and unethical tactics, growing too big and making desperate central bankers having to save and slash many of them.

The most exciting national banking champion of the 20th century might have been Citibank. Originally being a kind of private New York central bank and investment bank in one, the Bank grew its business both abroad and in terms of products, being limited by restrictive U.S. regulation from the 1930s, but readily finding ways to work with it creatively and pressing for its release, while at the same time serving interests of ‘America Inc’. A merger with Travelers Group, announced in 1998, appeared to be a too big step and was partially unwound already before the Global Financial Crisis hit the banking world, making ‘Citi’ even smaller. As to striking persons in the Citibank history, the names of the visionary Walter Wriston, the operations and consumer-interested John Reed and finally the aggressive dealmaker Stanford Weil come to the fore.

In being originally a semi-colonial bank with much British and French capital, the Ottoman Bank brought western banking to a region that was still much in the Middle Ages. It acted as a central bank, financed state debt but also economic modernisation and weathered political crises, e.g., when Turkey did away with the Ottoman sultans—becoming a republic in the 1920s. Interestingly, politicians such as the well-equipped Minister Cavid Bey had a big say in the Bank’s hey days, but the Bank remained fairly independent throughout until a merger in 2001.

Extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling has been implicated in the irreversible obstruction of airways and destruction of alveolar tissue in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Studies investigating differences in the lung ECM in COPD have mainly focused on some collagens and elastin, leaving an array of ECM components unexplored. We investigated the differences in the ECM landscape comparing severe-early onset (SEO-) COPD and moderate COPD to control lung tissue for collagen type I α chain 1 (COL1A1), COL6A1, COL6A2, COL14A1, fibulin 2 and 5 (FBLN2, FBLN5), latent transforming growth factor-beta binding protein 4 (LTBP4), lumican (LUM), versican (VCAN), decorin (DCN), and elastin (ELN) using image analysis and statistical modelling. Percentage area and/or mean intensity of expression of LUM in the parenchyma, and COL1A1, FBLN2, LTBP4, DCN, and VCAN in the airway walls, was proportionally lower in COPD compared to controls. Lowered levels of most ECM proteins were associated with decreasing FEV 1 measurements, indicating a relationship with disease severity. Furthermore, we identified six unique ECM signatures where LUM and COL6A1 in parenchyma and COL1A1, FBLN5, DCN, and VCAN in airway walls appear essential in reflecting the presence and severity of COPD. These signatures emphasize the need to examine groups of proteins to represent an overall difference in the ECM landscape in COPD, that are more likely to be related to functional effects, than individual proteins. Our study revealed differences in the lung ECM landscape between control and COPD and between SEO and moderate COPD signifying distinct pathological processes in the different subgroups.

With his British roots and even having worked as a banker in London and with a strong personality, the ‘Gilded Age’ industrialist (cf. U.S. Steel) and banking tycoon John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan was an ideal person to ‘save America’ during banking crises in 1895 and especially 1907, using forceful negotiation tactics. He was also said to be a prime moulder of the U.S. Federal Reserve System ‘Fed’ as a sort of central bank. J.P. Morgan’s bank survived its leader, carve outs, crises as well as a merger into JPMorgan Chase.

The renaissance Italian Medici family, were entrepreneurs with a focus on financing. The Medici’s further stretch Church rules on interest taking, using their books to see where business could be developed or had to be halted. Entities throughout Western Europe acted as profit centers. Under prosperous conditions with moderate warfare and maintaining sound relations with the Church and city states governed by open-minded local upper classes, operations grew. Fascinating is the position taken by Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464). He was a strategist, networker and administrator. He grew and reorganised the Bank. Being briefly expelled, he could eliminate his enemies in the home base Florence. However, the Medici’s policies waned later.

This observational study aimed to evaluate the intra- and inter-operator reliability of a digital palpation device in measuring compressive stiffness of the patellar tendon at different knee angles in talent and elite volleyball players. Second aim was to examine differences in reliability when measuring at different knee angles, between dominant and non-dominant knees, between sexes, and with age. Two operators measured stiffness at the midpoint of the patellar tendon in 45 Dutch volleyball players at 0°, 45° and 90° knee flexion, on both the dominant and non-dominant side. We found excellent intra-operator reliability (ICC>0.979). For inter-operator reliability, significant differences were found in stiffness measured between operators (p<0.007). The coefficient of variance significantly decreased with increasing knee flexion (2.27% at 0°, 1.65% at 45° and 1.20% at 90°, p<0.001). In conclusion, the device appeared to be reliable when measuring compressive stiffness of the patellar tendon in elite volleyball players, especially at 90° knee flexion. Inter-operator reliability appeared to be questionable. More standardized positioning and measurement protocols seem necessary.

Previous research on the relationship between geographical distance and the frequency of contact between family members has shown that the strength of family ties differs between Northern and Southern Europe. However, little is known about how family ties are reflected in peoples’ conversations on social media, despite research showing the relevance of social media data for understanding users’ daily expressions of emotions and thoughts based on their immediate experiences. This work investigates the question of whether Twitter use patterns in Europe mirror the North–South divide in the strength of family ties by analyzing potential differences in family-related tweets between users in Northern and Southern European countries. This study relies on a longitudinal database derived from Twitter collected between January 2012 and December 2016. We perform a comparative analysis of Southern and Northern European users’ tweets using Bayesian generalized multilevel models together with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software. We analyze the association between regional differences in the strength of family ties and patterns of tweeting about family. Results show that the North–South divide is reflected in the frequency of tweets that are about family, that refer to family in the past versus in the present tense, and that are about close versus extended family.