Adopting the euro in Hungary: expected costs, benefits and timing

Accession to the Economic and Monetary Union is one of the most important steps in Hungary's European integration, which will entail abandoning the national currency and adopting the euro as domestic legal tender. For Hungary as a new member state in the EU, introduction of the euro will not be an option but an obligation. Nevertheless, new EU members will have some leeway to set the date of adopting the euro1. Therefore, it is useful to analyse the likely costs and benefits of joining the euro area for Hungary and to define the choice of medium-term economic policy strategy in the light of the results of this analysis. The National Bank of Hungary would like to contribute to the formulation of an economic policy strategy by issuing this volume, which contains a cost-benefit analysis of the likely effects of the country's joining the euro area. This analysis is confined strictly to the economic benefits and costs of introducing the euro and is not intended to examine its other possible impacts, including, for example, the implications for politics and national security. Adopting the euro will likely have a permanent impact on Hungarian economic growth. This impact will become evident through numerous channels. Bank staff have attempted to quantify and sum up the extent of this impact transmitted through the various channels. The findings of this analysis suggest that the introduction of the euro will bring about significant net gains in growth. However, welfare is influenced not only by the level and rate of GDP growth, but their stability as well. A widely fluctuating national income will produce lower welfare than a more stable one, even if on average the two income levels are identical. For this reason, it is important to examine whether joining the euro area will increase or mitigate the volatility of business cycles. In other words, the key question is whether Hungary and the euro area form an optimum currency area, that is whether the monetary policy of the euro area is capable of adequately substituting independent Hungarian monetary policy in smoothing out cyclical fluctuations. In the findings of this analysis, the euro area seems to be in most respects at least as optimal a currency area for Hungary as for less developed euro area member countries.currency union, convergence, monetary policy, fiscal policy.

Komplex rendszer biológiai anyagokban összetett energiaközlés hatására lejátszódó folyamatok vizsgálatára = Complete system for examinations of processes caused by complex energy transfer in biological materials

A pályázat keretében elsősorban a mikrohullámú besugárzás nem termikus hatását vizsgáltuk különböző biológiai eredetű anyagokban fellelhető enzimek tevékenységére vonatkozóan. A mikrohullám mellett ultrahangos kezeléseket is alkalmaztunk, azonban ebben az esetben nem tapasztaltunk jelentős változásokat. A vizsgálatokat konvektív szárítócsatorna és különböző mikrohullámú kezelőegységekkel végeztük. Kísérleteink alapja egy másik OTKA pályázat keretében megvalósuló kutatási eredmény volt, miszerint a mikrohullámmal kezelt fogyasztó és nyerstej fizikai-kémia paraméterei megváltoznak a hagyományos módon kezelt tejmintákhoz képest. A tapasztalt változások hátterében az állhat, hogy a mikrohullámú besugárzás miatt megváltozik a tejben lévő enzimek aktivitása. Kezdetben a tej lipáz és xantin-oxidáz enzimjeinek aktivitásában bekövetkező változást vizsgáltuk. A mikrohullám nem termikus hatását ebben az esetben bizonyítottuk. Ezek után a kutatások irányvonala a cellulázbontó enzimek vizsgálata felé fordult. Elsőként tiszta enzimpreparátumokat használtunk. Az eredmények alapján a mikrohullámú besugárzás közel 20%-kal növelte meg az enzim aktivitását. A tiszta enzimpreparátumok magas bekerülési költsége miatt a pályázat harmadik évében az élesztőgombákkal (Sacchaomyces cerevisiae) dolgoztunk. Az eredmények alapján kijelenthető, hogy a mikrohullám megnöveli az enzimek illetve a mikroorganizmusok aktivitását, ami megfelelő és kontrolált körülmények között ipari alkalmazást is lehetővé tesz. | During this project the non-thermal effect of microwave radiation was investigated in case of enzyme activities of biological materials. Ultrasonic treatments were also initiated beside microwave, but significant differences were not measured in this case. The investigations were carried out in a convective drying chamber and microwave units. The bases of our experiments were a previous OTKA project resulted that is the physical chemical properties of skimmed and raw milk are changing after microwave treatment. The reason of this is that the microwave influences the activity of enzymes. Initially the activities of lipase and xanthine-oxidase were measured. The non-thermal effect of microwave was proved in these cases. After that the cellulase enzyme activity was studied. The first measurements were carried out by using pure enzyme preparations. In this case the enzyme activity increased by 20%. In the third year of this project yeast (Sacchaomyces cerevisiae) was used instead of pure enzymes because of financial reasons. It was proved that the microwave increased the activities of microorganisms that can be used in industrial applications under special circumstances

Signal Integration of IFN-I and IFN-II With TLR4 Involves Sequential Recruitment of STAT1-Complexes and NFkB to Enhance Pro-inflammatory Transcription

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Specific enhancer selection by IRF3, IRF5 and IRF9 is determined by ISRE half-sites, 5' and 3' flanking bases, collaborating transcription factors and the chromatin environment in a combinatorial fashion

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Self-organization towards optimally interdependent networks by means of coevolution

Coevolution between strategy and network structure is established as a means to arrive at the optimal conditions needed to resolve social dilemmas. Yet recent research has highlighted that the interdependence between networks may be just as important as the structure of an individual network. We therefore introduce the coevolution of strategy and network interdependence to see whether this can give rise to elevated levels of cooperation in the prisonerʼs dilemma game. We show that the interdependence between networks self-organizes so as to yield optimal conditions for the evolution of cooperation. Even under extremely adverse conditions, cooperators can prevail where on isolated networks they would perish. This is due to the spontaneous emergence of a two-class society, with only the upper class being allowed to control and take advantage of the interdependence. Spatial patterns reveal that cooperators, once arriving at the upper class, are much more competent than defectors in sustaining compact clusters of followers. Indeed, the asymmetric exploitation of interdependence confers to them a strong evolutionary advantage that may resolve even the toughest of social dilemmas

Emergence of Collective Territorial Defense in Bacterial Communities: Horizontal Gene Transfer Can Stabilize Microbiomes

Multispecies bacterial communities such as the microbiota of the gastrointestinal tract can be remarkably stable and resilient even though they consist of cells and species that compete for resources and also produce a large number of antimicrobial agents. Computational modeling suggests that horizontal transfer of resistance genes may greatly contribute to the formation of stable and diverse communities capable of protecting themselves with a battery of antimicrobial agents while preserving a varied metabolic repertoire of the constituent species. In other words horizontal transfer of resistance genes makes a community compatible in terms of exoproducts and capable to maintain a varied and mature metagenome. The same property may allow microbiota to protect a host organism, or if used as a microbial therapy, to purge pathogens and restore a protective environment

Membrane-Lipid Therapy in Operation: The HSP Co-Inducer BGP-15 Activates Stress Signal Transduction Pathways by Remodeling Plasma Membrane Rafts

Aging and pathophysiological conditions are linked to membrane changes which modulate membrane-controlled molecular switches, causing dysregulated heat shock protein (HSP) expression. HSP co-inducer hydroxylamines such as BGP-15 provide advanced therapeutic candidates for many diseases since they preferentially affect stressed cells and are unlikely have major side effects. In the present study in vitro molecular dynamic simulation, experiments with lipid monolayers and in vivo ultrasensitive fluorescence microscopy showed that BGP-15 alters the organization of cholesterol-rich membrane domains. Imaging of nanoscopic long-lived platforms using the raft marker glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored monomeric green fluorescent protein diffusing in the live Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell plasma membrane demonstrated that BGP-15 prevents the transient structural disintegration of rafts induced by fever-type heat stress. Moreover, BGP-15 was able to remodel cholesterol-enriched lipid platforms reminiscent of those observed earlier following non-lethal heat priming or membrane stress, and were shown to be obligate for the generation and transmission of stress signals. BGP-15 activation of HSP expression in B16-F10 mouse melanoma cells involves the Rac1 signaling cascade in accordance with the previous observation that cholesterol affects the targeting of Rac1 to membranes. Finally, in a human embryonic kidney cell line we demonstrate that BGP-15 is able to inhibit the rapid heat shock factor 1 (HSF1) acetylation monitored during the early phase of heat stress, thereby promoting a prolonged duration of HSF1 binding to heat shock elements. Taken together, our results indicate that BGP-15 has the potential to become a new class of pharmaceuticals for use in ‘membrane-lipid therapy’ to combat many various protein-misfolding diseases associated with aging

Alkalmazásfejlesztés Kinect szenzor felhasználásával

A szakdolgozatomban a Kinect mozgásérzékelő szenzor segítségével készített program leírása szerepel. Ez a program egy ízületi szögmérő feladatát látja el, melyet a gyógytornászok tudnak hasznosítani. Leírásra kerül a program felépítése, és a megvalósításához használt eszközök. A kész program összehasonlításra került a hagyományos módszerrel. Ennek a konklúziójával, és a további teendők felsorolásával zárul a dolgozat.BSc/BAProgramtervező informatiku

System level mechanisms of adaptation, learning, memory formation and evolvability: the role of chaperone and other networks

During the last decade, network approaches became a powerful tool to describe protein structure and dynamics. Here, we describe first the protein structure networks of molecular chaperones, then characterize chaperone containing sub-networks of interactomes called as chaperone-networks or chaperomes. We review the role of molecular chaperones in short-term adaptation of cellular networks in response to stress, and in long-term adaptation discussing their putative functions in the regulation of evolvability. We provide a general overview of possible network mechanisms of adaptation, learning and memory formation. We propose that changes of network rigidity play a key role in learning and memory formation processes. Flexible network topology provides ‘learning- competent’ state. Here, networks may have much less modular boundaries than locally rigid, highly modular networks, where the learnt information has already been consolidated in a memory formation process. Since modular boundaries are efficient filters of information, in the ‘learning-competent’ state information filtering may be much smaller, than after memory formation. This mechanism restricts high information transfer to the ‘learning competent’ state. After memory formation, modular boundary-induced segregation and information filtering protect the stored information. The flexible networks of young organisms are generally in a ‘learning competent’ state. On the contrary, locally rigid networks of old organisms have lost their ‘learning competent’ state, but store and protect their learnt information efficiently. We anticipate that the above mechanism may operate at the level of both protein-protein interaction and neuronal networks