My PhD thesis investigates the ecological significance of resistance against drought-induced air bubble formation inside the water conduits of plants (embolism), and the plasticity and functional aspects of stem anatomical traits in woody and herbaceous species.

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel

Green infrastrucuture (GI) like urban farm and green roofs could provide many beneficial functions in cities. These include for example food production, flood prevention or increasing biodiversity. MultiGreen project aims at developing an integrated modelling tool to support…

The skin protects the body from unwanted influences from the environment as well as excessive water loss. The barrier function of the skin is located in the stratum corneum (SC).

On the 20th of June, Camil Staps successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Camil on this achievement!

Integrins play an essential role in multicellular life by connecting cells to the extracellular matrix.

If X is a locally compact Hausdorff space, then a representation of the complex C* algebra C_0(X) on a Hilbert space $H$ is given by a spectral measure that takes its values in the orthogonal projections on $H$.

PhD defence

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a major cereal crop that millions of subsistence farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rely on. However, the scourging impact of the root parasitic weed Striga (Striga hermonthica, a.k.a. “witch-weed”) has remained a major constraint hampering the productivity of sorghum in…

In the current global context, there is a pressing need to address sustainable energy supplies to safeguard our Planet and its ecosystems. The choices made by human society have a significant impact on genetic evolution and climate.

Understanding individual differences in self-regulation in boys with ODD/CD on the level of brain, cognition and behavior

Psychoeducational Assessment, Intervention and Rehabilitation (PAIR) publishes high quality articles on theoretical and empirical research regarding psychological and psychoeducational assessment, intervention, and rehabilitation in all areas related to cognitive and socio-emotional development.

The recently published book ‘Avian Cognition’ is the first multi-author book to provide a comprehensive treatment of the cognitive abilities of birds and how they compare to those of other animals. Carel ten Cate, professor of animal behavior at the Institute of Biology, and Susan D. Healy (StAndrews…

This study presents the findings of a laboratory-based experiment testing hypothesised processes implicated in the prevention of violent radicalisation through counter-narratives. The central aims of the study were to contribute to counter-narrative theory, whilst highlighting the value of experimental…

The research described in this thesis focused on the preparation of S/N functionalized carbene ligands and their transition metal complexes, and the exploration of their application as electrocatalysts for proton reduction.

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

Morality, mathematics, geometry, geography, music, navigation, and language are traditionally viewed as uniquely human cultural achievements and abilities. The study of their development and variation is classified as part of the humanities and social sciences. These fields have been mainly studied…

The Directorate-General Police, Sanctions, and Protection has initiated this research project in order to gain insight in the nature and, if possible, the extent of the developments with regards to the pluralization of policing functions in the Netherlands in support of future policies for the benefit…

During the course of drug discovery translational steps are made.

In Chapter 1 we provide some background information about modular forms, describe the correspondence between half-integral and integer weight modular forms and explain how the coefficients of half-integral weight modular forms encode the central values of L-functions of twisted modular forms.

Fred Janssen is curious about how best to teach students and students to gain a good understanding of complex ‘swamp situations’. This is the subject of his inaugural lecture as Professor of Science Education at the ICLON and the Faculty of Science. Inaugural address 19 June 2017.

Promotor: P.J.J. Hooykaas, Co-Promotores: P.B.F. Ouwerkerk, M. Wang

We will study how inoculation of former arable land with soil (including the microbiome, soil fauna and seeds/rhizomes of ground flora) from old forests along with planting targeted tree species mixtures will improve productivity and more rapidly restore forest-adapted communities and ulttimately result…

Promotor: J.M. van Ruitenbeek, Co-Promotor: S.J. van der Molen

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether the lipid/protein ratio and the total dry SC mass per surface area are related with the skin barrier function of controls and AE patients.

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How is social cognition shaped by our knowledge of language and stories?

An important feature of atopic eczema (AE) is a decreased skin barrier function. The stratum corneum (SC) lipids - comprised of ceramides (CERs), free fatty acids (FFAs) and cholesterol - fulfill a predominant role in the skin barrier function.

The barrier function of the skin is primarily provided by the stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the skin. Skin barrier impairment is thought to be a primary factor in the pathogenesis of atopic eczema (AE).

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are central components of the innate immune system, functioning as pattern recognition receptors that detect microbial- and damage-associated molecular patterns and initiate antimicrobial and inflammatory responses.

In this Ph.D. thesis, we characterized two novel upstream regulators of JUB1, HB40, and HB22, in Arabidopsis thaliana. In Chapter 2, we described functions of HB40 in modulating growth and development via the regulation of JUB1 and GA inactivation genes GA2OXs.

Fatemeh (Simin) Tabassi Mofrad has recently received a project grant (€ 25,000) from LUF/Gratama Foundation for her ideas in investigating sex-by-genotype interactions in brain functions. She has a multidisciplinary research perspective which enables her to look at research issues from different angles.…

On 4 and 5 November 2021 an ICOG-workshop will be held on the cognitive turn in history. It is possible to attend this workshop online. The participants of the workshop are cultural and intellectual historians of the pre-modern periods and/or of the historiography of academia from a long-term perspective,…

In September 2019, Manon Mulckhuyse will start a position as assistant professor in the Cognitive Psychology Unit.

The updated MRI scanner at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) will become operational on 29 September. The new version is faster and better than the current model.

We prove a p-adic version of the work by Gross and Zagier on the differences between singular moduli by proving a set of conjectures by Giampietro and Darmon, who investigated the factorisation of a rational invariant associated to a pair of CM-points on a genus zero Shimura curve, obtained as the ratio…

Assuming everywhere good reduction we generalize the class number formula of Taelman to Drinfeld modules over arbitrary coefficient rings.