Sub-cortical sources of the somatosensory pathway are hypoactive in migraine interictally:a Functional Source Separation analysis

Background: Recent morpho-functional evidence pointed out that abnormalities in the thalamus could play a major role in the expression of migraine neurophysiological and clinical correlates. Whether this phenomenon is primary or secondary to its functional disconnection from the brainstem remains to be determined. We used a Functional Source Separation algorithm of EEG signal to extract the activity of the different neuronal pools recruited at different latencies along the somatosensory pathway in interictal migraine without aura (MO) patients. Methods: Twenty MO patients and 20 healthy volunteers (HV) underwent EEG recording. Four ad-hoc functional constraints, two sub-cortical (FS14 at brainstem and FS16 at thalamic level) and two cortical (FS20 radial and FS22 tangential parietal sources), were used to extract the activity of successive stages of somatosensory information processing in response to the separate left and right median nerve electric stimulation. A band-pass digital filter (450-750 Hz) was applied offline in order to extract high-frequency oscillatory (HFO) activity from the broadband EEG signal. Results: In both stimulated sides, significant reduced sub-cortical brainstem (FS14) and thalamic (FS16) HFO activations characterized MO patients when compared with HV. No difference emerged in the two cortical HFO activations between the two groups. Conclusions: Present results are the first neurophysiological evidence supporting the hypothesis that a functional disconnection of the thalamus from the subcortical monoaminergic system may underline the interictal cortical abnormal information processing in migraine. Further studies are needed to investigate the precise directional connectivity across the entire primary subcortical and cortical somatosensory pathway in interictal MO. Written informed consent to publication was obtained from the patient(s).

Optimisation of chromatographic separation of oxidised phospholipids and detection with targeted approaches provides greater coverage of the oxidised lipidome

Phospholipid oxidation by adventitious damage generates a wide variety of products with potentially novel biological activities that can modulate inflammatory processes associated with various diseases. To understand the biological importance of oxidised phospholipids (OxPL) and their potential role as disease biomarkers requires precise information about the abundance of these compounds in cells and tissues. There are many chemiluminescence and spectrophotometric assays available for detecting oxidised phospholipids, but they all have some limitations. Mass spectrometry coupled with liquid chromatography is a powerful and sensitive approach that can provide detailed information about the oxidative lipidome, but challenges still remain. The aim of this work is to develop improved methods for detection of OxPLs by optimisation of chromatographic separation through testing several reverse phase columns and solvent systems, and using targeted mass spectrometry approaches. Initial experiments were carried out using oxidation products generated in vitro to optimise the chromatography separation parameters and mass spectrometry parameters. We have evaluated the chromatographic separation of oxidised phosphatidylcholines (OxPCs) and oxidised phosphatidylethanolamines (OXPEs) using C8, C18 and C30 reverse phase, polystyrene – divinylbenzene based monolithic and mixed – mode hydrophilic interaction (HILIC) columns, interfaced with mass spectrometry. Our results suggest that the monolithic column was best able to separate short chain OxPCs and OxPEs from long chain oxidised and native PCs and PEs. However, variation in charge of polar head groups and extreme diversity of oxidised species make analysis of several classes of OxPLs within one analytical run impractical. We evaluated and optimised the chromatographic separation of OxPLs by serially coupling two columns: HILIC and monolith column that provided us the larger coverage of OxPL species in a single analytical run.

The Filippov-Wazewski relaxation theorem revisited

The converse statement of the Filippov-Wazewski relaxation theorem is proven, more precisely, two differential inclusions have the same closure of their solution sets if and only if the right-hand sides have the same convex hull. The idea of the proof is examining the contingent derivatives to the attainable sets.

An Elementary Core Equivalence Theorem in a Countable Economy

We consider an infinite exchange economy with countably many traders, which can be regarded as a natural extension of finite exchange economies to an infinite one. In our countable economy the core defined in the traditional manner would be empty. To avoid this unwanted situation we have to strengthen the notion of “improves upon”. We will achieve this based on the idea that forming coalitions involve costs.

A Dalang, Morton, Willinger tétel (On the theorem of Dalang-Morton-Willinger)

In the article we shortly discuss the proof of the theorem of Dalang-Morton-Willinger. We show that the proof of the theorem depends on some interesting general properties of the stochastic convergence.

A pénzügyi eszközök árazásának alaptétele, lokálisan korlátos szemimartingál árfolyamok esetén (The fundamental theorem of asset pricing for locally bounded semimartingales)

A pénzügyi eszközök árazásának alaptétele - kissé pongyolán megfogalmazva - azt állítja, hogy egy értékpapírpiacon akkor nincs arbitrázs, ha létezik egy az eredetivel ekvivalens valószínűségi mérték, amelyre vonatkozóan az értékpapírok árait leíró folyamat egy bizonyos értelemben "martingál". Az első ilyen jellegű állítást M. Harrison és S. R. Pliska bizonyították arra esetre, amikor a valószínűségi mező végesen generált. Azóta a tételnek számos általánosítása született. Ezek közül az egyik legismertebb a Dalang{Morton{ Willinger-tétel, ami már teljesen általános valószínűségi mezőből indul ki, de felteszi, hogy az időparaméter diszkrét, és az időhorizont véges. Időközben a tételnek számos folytonos időparaméterű folyamatokra vonatkozó változata is született. Az alaptételt általános esetben, vagyis amikor valószínűségi mező teljesen általános, és az értékpapírok piaci árait leíró folyamat lokálisan korlátos szemimartingál, Delbaen és W. Schachermayer bizonyították be. A Delbaen{Schachermayer-féle alaptétel a maga nemében egy igen általános áll ítás. A tétel bizonyítása igen hosszadalmas, és a funkcionálanalízis valamint a sztochasztikus folyamatok általános elméletének mély eredményeit használja. Utóbbi tudományterület nagy részét P. A. Meyer és a francia strassbourgi iskola matematikusai dolgozták ki a 60-as évek végétől kezdve. A terület megértését tehát alaposan megnehezíti, hogy a felhasznált matematikai apparátus viszonylag friss, egy része pedig csak francia nyelven érhető el. Meggyőződésünk szerint az eredeti, 1994-es Delbaen és Schachermayer-féle bizonyítás csak kevesek által hozzáférhető. A tételnek tudomásunk szerint azóta sem született tankönyvi feldolgozása, annak ellenére, hogy maga az állítás közgazdász körökben is széles körben ismerté vált, és az eredeti cikket számos szerző idézi. Az itt bemutatott bizonyítás Delbaen és Schachermayer 1992 és 2006 közötti írásain alapul. ______ The Delbaen and Schachermayer's theorem is one of the deepest results of mathematical finance. In this article we tried to rethink and slightly simplify the original proof of the theorem to make understandable for nonspecialists who are familiar with general theory of stochastic processes. We give a detailed proof of the theorem and we give new proofs for some of the used statements.

Az eszközárazás második alaptétele (The second fundamental theorem of asset pricing)

A dolgozatban röviden bemutatjuk az eszközárazás második alaptételét. A bizonyítás során felhasználjuk a Dalang-Morton-Wilinger tétel bizonyításában használt állításokat. ______ In the article we summarize the results about the second fundamental theorem of asset pricing.

Centrifugal separation of molten steel and glass mixtures

A lot of mixed vitrified waste exists at DOE sites, which contain valuable metal having great potential for being reused in industry. Of these useful metals, steel constitutes more than 45% of the volume. Using the differential centrifugal separation technology, steel is separated by using remote melting of the mixed waste. The high costs involved are directly proportional to the time involved in separation of the steel from the mixed waste. This is determined by using similitude principles. Having obtained a solidified steel ingot by melting, it is essential to determine the decontaminated portions of the ingot that can be released to industry. Two parameters representing measures of separation are proposed—the Centrifugal Fluid Separation Number and the Thermal Separation Number. Regression correlations are determined to express the estimated time of separation. Experimental analysis of solidified ingots has shown that when the Thermal Separation Number is less than 1700 the steel contains little or no trace of glass. This result can be used to recycle steel back to industry. ^

Color-based surface reflectance separation for scene illumination estimation and rendering

Given the importance of color processing in computer vision and computer graphics, estimating and rendering illumination spectral reflectance of image scenes is important to advance the capability of a large class of applications such as scene reconstruction, rendering, surface segmentation, object recognition, and reflectance estimation. Consequently, this dissertation proposes effective methods for reflection components separation and rendering in single scene images. Based on the dichromatic reflectance model, a novel decomposition technique, named the Mean-Shift Decomposition (MSD) method, is introduced to separate the specular from diffuse reflectance components. This technique provides a direct access to surface shape information through diffuse shading pixel isolation. More importantly, this process does not require any local color segmentation process, which differs from the traditional methods that operate by aggregating color information along each image plane. ^ Exploiting the merits of the MSD method, a scene illumination rendering technique is designed to estimate the relative contributing specular reflectance attributes of a scene image. The image feature subset targeted provides a direct access to the surface illumination information, while a newly introduced efficient rendering method reshapes the dynamic range distribution of the specular reflectance components over each image color channel. This image enhancement technique renders the scene illumination reflection effectively without altering the scene’s surface diffuse attributes contributing to realistic rendering effects. ^ As an ancillary contribution, an effective color constancy algorithm based on the dichromatic reflectance model was also developed. This algorithm selects image highlights in order to extract the prominent surface reflectance that reproduces the exact illumination chromaticity. This evaluation is presented using a novel voting scheme technique based on histogram analysis. ^ In each of the three main contributions, empirical evaluations were performed on synthetic and real-world image scenes taken from three different color image datasets. The experimental results show over 90% accuracy in illumination estimation contributing to near real world illumination rendering effects. ^

Acoustic Manipulation and Alignment of Particles for Applications in Separation, Micro-Templating, and Device Fabrication

This dissertation studies the manipulation of particles using acoustic stimulation for applications in microfluidics and templating of devices. The term particle is used here to denote any solid, liquid or gaseous material that has properties, which are distinct from the fluid in which it is suspended. Manipulation means to take over the movements of the particles and to position them in specified locations. Using devices, microfabricated out of silicon, the behavior of particles under the acoustic stimulation was studied with the main purpose of aligning the particles at either low-pressure zones, known as the nodes or high-pressure zones, known as anti-nodes. By aligning particles at the nodes in a flow system, these particles can be focused at the center or walls of a microchannel in order to ultimately separate them. These separations are of high scientific importance, especially in the biomedical domain, since acoustopheresis provides a unique approach to separate based on density and compressibility, unparalleled by other techniques. The study of controlling and aligning the particles in various geometries and configurations was successfully achieved by controlling the acoustic waves. Apart from their use in flow systems, a stationary suspended-particle device was developed to provide controllable light transmittance based on acoustic stimuli. Using a glass compartment and a carbon-particle suspension in an organic solvent, the device responded to acoustic stimulation by aligning the particles. The alignment of light-absorbing carbon particles afforded an increase in visible light transmittance as high as 84.5%, and it was controlled by adjusting the frequency and amplitude of the acoustic wave. The device also demonstrated alignment memory rendering it energy-efficient. A similar device for suspended-particles in a monomer enabled the development of electrically conductive films. These films were based on networks of conductive particles. Elastomers doped with conductive metal particles were rendered surface conductive at particle loadings as low as 1% by weight using acoustic focusing. The resulting films were flexible and had transparencies exceeding 80% in the visible spectrum (400-800 nm) These films had electrical bulk conductivities exceeding 50 S/cm.

Centralizers of normal subgroups and the Z*-theorem

Peer reviewed

Ecohydrological separation in wet, low energy northern environments? A preliminary assessment using different soil water extraction techniques

Funded by European Research Council ERC. Grant Number: project GA 335910 VEWA

Centralizers of normal subgroups and the Z*-theorem

Peer reviewed

Ecohydrological separation in wet, low energy northern environments? A preliminary assessment using different soil water extraction techniques

Funded by European Research Council ERC. Grant Number: project GA 335910 VEWA

Centralizers of normal subgroups and the Z*-theorem

Peer reviewed