Interview: International University Projects between Luxemburg and Tambov, Russia

Speeches/Talks (2019)

The interview treats two main topics: 1. the interdisciplinary student project between Universities of Luxembourg and University of Tambov, Russia, dedicated to the Luxembourgish-Russian crossroads of ... [more ▼]

The interview treats two main topics: 1. the interdisciplinary student project between Universities of Luxembourg and University of Tambov, Russia, dedicated to the Luxembourgish-Russian crossroads of history and 2. the meaning of the city of Tambov in the contemporary history of Luxembourg, connected to the Luxembourger forcibly recruited soldiers in the soviet captivity. [less ▲]

Interview: Who were "the first Russians" in Luxembourg?

Speeches/Talks (2019)

"The first Russian" in Luxembourg, which arrived in the 1920ths, were not the first ones. The pre-history of the Russian presence in the Grand Duchy before WWI and the further development regarding the ... [more ▼]

"The first Russian" in Luxembourg, which arrived in the 1920ths, were not the first ones. The pre-history of the Russian presence in the Grand Duchy before WWI and the further development regarding the two world wars and the post-war situation were the topic of this radio interview. [less ▲]

Interweave/Underlay Cognitive Radio Techniques and Applications in Satellite Communication Systems

Doctoral thesis (2014)

The demand for precious radio spectrum is continuously increasing while the available radio frequency resource has become scarce due to spectrum segmentation and the dedicated frequency allocation of ... [more ▼]

The demand for precious radio spectrum is continuously increasing while the available radio frequency resource has become scarce due to spectrum segmentation and the dedicated frequency allocation of standardized wireless systems. This scarcity has led to the concept of cognitive radio communication which comprises a variety of techniques capable of allowing the coexistence of licensed and unlicensed systems over the same spectrum. In this context, this thesis focuses on interweave and underlay cognitive radio paradigms which are widely considered as important enablers for realizing cognitive radio technology. In the interweave paradigm, an unlicensed user explores the spectral holes by means of some spectrum awareness methods and utilizes the available spectral availabilities opportunistically while in the underlay paradigm, an unlicensed user is allowed to coexist with the licensed user only if sufficient protection to the licensed user can be guaranteed. Starting with a detailed overview of the existing techniques, this thesis provides contributions in both theoretical and the practical aspects of these paradigms. This thesis is structured into two main parts as described below. One of the important capabilities required for a cognitive radio transceiver is to be able to acquire the knowledge of its surrounding radio environment in order to utilize the available spectral opportunities efficiently. The higher the level of information it can acquire, the better becomes the spectrum utilization. In this context, the first part of this thesis focuses on spectrum awareness techniques such as spectrum sensing, signal to noise ratio estimation and sparsity order estimation which are useful for realizing interweave and underlay based cognitive transceivers as well as a hybrid cognitive transceiver, which overcomes the drawbacks of both the above approaches. The effects of noise and channel correlations, which are often neglected in the existing literature, are considered in our analysis. In the above context, firstly, we propose new sensing thresholds for the eigenvalue based sensing approach using recent results from random matrix theory in order to achieve the improved sensing in correlated scenarios. Then we study the signal to noise ratio estimation problem for both narrowband and wideband transceivers with the help of a detailed theoretical analysis under the signal plus noise hypothesis for a range of correlated scenarios. Subsequently, we study the problem of compressive sparsity order estimation in order to estimate the sparsity order of the carrier occupancy over the wide spectrum using a compressive sensing approach. In addition, we carry out the performance analysis of a hybrid cognitive transceiver which combines the spectrum sensing approach with a power control-based underlay approach. The second part of this thesis introduces the concept of cognitive satellite communications which is a rather unexplored area in the literature despite its significant benefits to both satellite and terrestrial operators. This concept has been motivated due to the limited availability of the satellite spectrum as well as the continuously increasing demand of broadband multimedia, broadcast and interactive satellite services. Subsequently, we study the applications of various cognitive radio techniques in satellite communication systems focusing on the following two scenarios: (i) Hybrid cognitive satellite communication which deals with the spectral coexistence of satellite systems with the terrestrial systems, and (ii) Dual cognitive satellite communication which deals with the spectral coexistence of two satellite systems operating over the same coverage area. Understanding the characteristics of coexisting systems is of great importance while applying a suitable cognitive radio technique. In this context, this thesis exploits the specific characteristics of satellite systems in order to map a suitable cognitive radio technique to a specific scenario. For hybrid cognitive scenarios, we propose the following enabling techniques: (a) Interference modeling, (b) Harmful interference detection, (c) Cognitive beamforming including both transmit and receive beamforming, and (d) Dual-polarized spectrum sensing. Similarly, for dual cognitive scenarios, we propose the following techniques: (i) Cognitive interference alignment, (ii) Cognitive beamhopping, and (iii) Dual-polarized spectrum sensing. Finally, we provide interesting open research issues in the considered domain. [less ▲]

Intestinal-Cell Kinase and Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy.

in New England Journal of Medicine (2019), 380(16), 24

With regard to the article by Bailey et al. (March 15, 2018, issue) on the potential role of variants in the gene encoding intestinal cell kinase (ICK) in genetic generalized epilepsies, including ... [more ▼]

With regard to the article by Bailey et al. (March 15, 2018, issue) on the potential role of variants in the gene encoding intestinal cell kinase (ICK) in genetic generalized epilepsies, including juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: We attempted replication by rechecking for enrichment of ICK variants in two previously published analyses of mainly familial cases of genetic generalized epilepsy, which included a total of 1149 cases of genetic generalized epilepsy and 5911 ethnically matched controls. We analyzed the burden of single-gene rare variants with the use of whole exome sequencing data, applying population stratification and both sample and variant quality control. We found no evidence of an enrichment of ICK variants in genetic generalized epilepsies or juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. Specifically, we did not detect a nonsynonymous variant in 357 persons with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy at a minor allele frequency at or below 0.1%. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that ICK variants may be population-specific risk factors for juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, the lack of validation in our cohorts does not support a true disease association but rather suggests that the authors’ results may be due to chance, possibly owing to methodologic issues (see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at NEJM.org). [less ▲]

Into the ground

in Arch + (2018), (231), 78-83

How the financialization of property markets and land use puts cities under pressure.

Into the Μaze of Legitimacy and Efficiency; the Single Resolution Board as a Necessity

in Dogaru, Tatiana-Camelia (Ed.) (Re)forming Public Administration Paradigms in Global Governance Context (2018)

Die Intonation final fallender Nuklei. Eine kontrastive Untersuchung zum Hamburgischen und Berlinischen

in Germanistische Linguistik (2001), 157-158

Intorno al-i concetto-i di datore di lavoro. A proposito di The Concept of The Employer di Jeremias Prassl

in Giornale di Diritto del Lavoro e di Relazioni Industriali (2016)

The Intra-Party Effects of Open List Design

Doctoral thesis (2021)

Intracellular metabolite profiling of platelets: evaluation of extraction processes and chromatographic strategies.

in Journal of Chromatography. B, Analytical Technologies in the Biomedical and Life Sciences (2012), 898

An extraction method for intracellular metabolite profiling should ideally be able to recover the broadest possible range of metabolites present in a sample. However, the development of such methods is ... [more ▼]

An extraction method for intracellular metabolite profiling should ideally be able to recover the broadest possible range of metabolites present in a sample. However, the development of such methods is hampered by the diversity of the physico-chemical properties of metabolites as well as by the specific characteristics of samples and cells. In this study, we report the optimization of an UPLC-MS method for the metabolite analysis of platelet samples. The optimal analytical protocol was determined by testing seven different extraction methods as well as by employing two different LC-MS methods, in which the metabolites were separated by using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) and reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC). The optimal conditions were selected using the coverage of the platelets' metabolome, the response of the identified metabolites, the reproducibility of the analytical method, and the time of the analysis as main evaluation criteria. Our results show that methanol-water (7:3) extraction coupled with HILIC-MS method provides the best compromise, allowing identification of 107 metabolites in a platelet cell extract sample, 91% of them with a RSD% lower than 20. A higher number of metabolites could be detected when analyzing the platelet samples with two different LC-MS methods or when using complementary extraction methods in parallel. [less ▲]