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Even short-time storage in PSS significantly impairs endothelial vascular function. Concerning the essential role of a faultless endothelial layer, the quite common use of PSS as a storage solution for SVSs in CABG surgery has to be discussed critically.

The new storage solution is superior to traditional HTK and PSS cold storage with respect to: (1) preservation of vessel structure and function; (2) the presence of iron chelators significantly improved protection of endothelial function; and (3) the new solution permits cold vessel storage for a minimum of 4 days with full maintenance of endothelial function and its coupling to smooth muscle.

The GERmanium Detector Array (Gerda) experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) of INFN is searching for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay of 76 Ge. The technological challenge of Gerda is to operate in a "backgroundfree" regime in the region of interest (ROI) after analysis cuts for the full 100 kg·yr target exposure of the experiment. A careful modeling and decomposition of the full-range energy spectrum is essential to predict the shape and composition of events in the ROI around Q ββ for the 0νββ search, to extract a precise measurement of the half-life of the doublebeta decay mode with neutrinos (2νββ) and in order to identify the location of residual impurities. The latter will permit future experiments to build strategies in order to further lower the background and achieve even better sensitivities. In this article the background decomposition prior to analysis cuts is presented for Gerda Phase II. The background model fit yields a flat spectrum in the ROI with a background index (BI) of 16.04 +0.78 −0.85 · 10 −3 cts/(keV·kg·yr) for the enriched BEGe data set and 14.68 +0.47 −0.52 · 10 −3 cts/(keV·kg·yr) for the enriched coaxial data set. These values are similar to the one of Phase I despite a much larger number of detectors and hence radioactive hardware components.