Guest lectures and seminars - Page 20

The human brain has no lymphatic vessels, so how does the brain clear metabolic waste? In 2012, Iliff et al. proposed a theory about waste clearance of the brain, called the "glymphatic" theory. The theory suggest that the waste clearances is bio-mechanical, and that impaired clearance may be the cause of some neurodegenerative diseases and disorders. The inaccessibility of the human brain have been a hurdle in the research, as experiments on rat brains do not translate to the human brain. Researchers at Oslo university hospital Rikshospitalet have shown clearance using tracers visible in magnetic resonance images (MRI). However, the MRI only provide snapshots of different states in time, therefore computational modeling is needed to fill in the gaps. In this presentation, we will look at computational modeling with the MRI to infer material parameters in the brain.

Stalagmites grow on the floor of caves by precipitation of calcium ions found in the residual water film covering the top of the stalagmite, which is progressively drained away. Drops dripping from stalactites ensure the renewal of these ions.
Previous models of stalagmite growth assumed that drops fall on a straight vertical line from stalactites. Through high-speed imaging during field experiments in caves, we however observe that the impact point position of the drops is scattered. Using a Langevin-like equation to describe the fall of drops in response to gravity and aerodynamic forces, we then propose a prediction of the impact point dispersal. We show that measured stalagmite widths are correlated to the impact point dispersal of the drops.
In a second time, we focus on the mixing of calcium ions between the drop and the film during impact. The drop produces a crown when impacting the film, accompanied by a large amount of secondary droplet ejections. This is at the very heart of the film thickness variability post-impact. We record high-speed imaging of drop impacts on films of controlled thickness in a lab environment and assess the mixing between the drop and the film. We deduce how much liquid coming from the initial drop remains in the film.

A flexible predictive density combination is introduced for large financial data sets which allows for model set incompleteness. Dimension reduction procedures that include learning allocate the large sets of predictive densities and combination weights to relatively small subsets.  Given the representation of the probability model in extended nonlinear state-space form, efficient simulation-based Bayesian inference is proposed using parallel dynamic clustering as well as nonlinear filtering, implemented on graphics processing units. The approach is applied to combine predictive densities based on a large number of individual US stock returns of daily observations over a period that includes the Covid-19 crisis period.  Evidence on dynamic cluster composition, weight patterns and model set incompleteness gives valuable signals for improved modelling. This enables higher predictive accuracy and better assessment of uncertainty and risk for investment fund management.

Hilbert schemes of points on a smooth projective curve are simply symmetric powers of the curve itself; they are smooth and we know essentially everything about them. We propose a variation by studying double nested Hilbert schemes of points, which parametrize flags of 0-dimensional subschemes satisfying certain nesting conditions dictated by Young diagrams. These moduli spaces are almost never smooth but admit a virtual structure à la Behrend-Fantechi. We explain how this virtual structure plays a key role in (re)proving the correspondence between Gromov-Witten invariants and stable pair invariants for local curves, and say something on their K-theoretic refinement.