Comparison of Randomized Multifocal Mapping and Temporal Phase Mapping of Visual Cortex for Clinical Use

fMRI is becoming an important clinical tool for planning and guidance of surgery to treat brain tumors, arteriovenous malformations, and epileptic foci. For visual cortex mapping, the most popular paradigm by far is temporal phase mapping, although random multifocal stimulation paradigms have drawn increased attention due to their ability to identify complex response fields and their random properties. In this study we directly compared temporal phase and multifocal vision mapping paradigms with respect to clinically relevant factors including: time efficiency, mapping completeness, and the effects of noise. Randomized, multifocal mapping accurately decomposed the response of single voxels to multiple stimulus locations and made correct retinotopic assignments as noise levels increased despite decreasing sensitivity. Also, multifocal mapping became less efficient as the number of stimulus segments (locations) increased from 13 to 25 to 49 and when duty cycle was increased from 25% to 50%. Phase mapping, on the other hand, activated more extrastriate visual areas, was more time efficient in achieving statistically significant responses, and had better sensitivity as noise increased, though with an increase in systematic retinotopic mis-assignments. Overall, temporal phase mapping is likely to be a better choice for routine clinical applications though random multifocal mapping may offer some unique advantages for selected applications

Free-floating planets from core accretion theory: microlensing predictions

We calculate the microlensing event rate and typical time-scales for the free-floating planet (FFP) population that is predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. The event rate is found to be ~$1.8\times 10^{-3}$ of that for the stellar population. While the stellar microlensing event time-scale peaks at around 20 days, the median time-scale for FFP events (~0.1 day) is much shorter. Our values for the event rate and the median time-scale are significantly smaller than those required to explain the \cite{Sum+11} result, by factors of ~13 and ~16, respectively. The inclusion of planets at wide separations does not change the results significantly. This discrepancy may be too significant for standard versions of both the core accretion theory and the gravitational instability model to explain satisfactorily. Therefore, either a modification to the planet formation theory is required, or other explanations to the excess of short-time-scale microlensing events are needed. Our predictions can be tested by ongoing microlensing experiment such as KMTNet, and by future satellite missions such as WFIRST and Euclid.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, MNRAS in pres

Invertibility in groupoid C*-algebras

Given a second-countable, Hausdorff, \'etale, amenable groupoid G with compact unit space, we show that an element a in C*(G) is invertible if and only if \lambda_x(a) is invertible for every x in the unit space of G, where \lambda_x refers to the "regular representation" of C*(G) on l_2(G_x). We also prove that, for every a in C*(G), there exists some x in G^{(0)} such that ||a|| = ||\lambda_x(a)||.Comment: 8 page

Correlations and Pairing Between Zeros and Critical Points of Gaussian Random Polynomials

We study the asymptotics of correlations and nearest neighbor spacings between zeros and holomorphic critical points of $p_N$, a degree N Hermitian Gaussian random polynomial in the sense of Shiffman and Zeldtich, as N goes to infinity. By holomorphic critical point we mean a solution to the equation $\frac{d}{dz}p_N(z)=0.$ Our principal result is an explicit asymptotic formula for the local scaling limit of \E{Z_{p_N}\wedge C_{p_N}}, the expected joint intensity of zeros and critical points, around any point on the Riemann sphere. Here $Z_{p_N}$ and $C_{p_N}$ are the currents of integration (i.e. counting measures) over the zeros and critical points of $p_N$, respectively. We prove that correlations between zeros and critical points are short range, decaying like e^{-N\abs{z-w}^2}. With \abs{z-w} on the order of $N^{-1/2},$ however, \E{Z_{p_N}\wedge C_{p_N}}(z,w) is sharply peaked near $z=w,$ causing zeros and critical points to appear in rigid pairs. We compute tight bounds on the expected distance and angular dependence between a critical point and its paired zero.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures. Some typos corrected and Introduction revise