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Publicações

Publicações por Alberto Pinto

2012

Stationarity in moment closure and quasi-stationarity of the SIS model

Autores
Martins, J; Pinto, A; Stollenwerk, N;

Publicação
MATHEMATICAL BIOSCIENCES

Abstract
Previous epidemiological studies on SIS model have only considered the dynamic evolution of the mean value and the variance of the infected individuals. In this paper, through cumulant neglection, we use the dynamic equations of all the moments of infected individuals to develop a recursive method to compute the equilibria manifold of the moment closure ODE's. Specifically, we use the stable equilibria of the moment closure ODE's to obtain good approximations of the quasi-stationary states of the SIS model. This is a crucial step when the quasi-stationary distribution is highly skewed.

2006

Regulatory T cell adjustment of quorum growth thresholds and the control of local immune responses

Autores
Burroughs, NJ; de Oliveira, BMPM; Pinto, AA;

Publicação
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

Abstract
The consequences of regulatory T cell (Treg) inhibition of interleukine 2 secretion is examined by mathematical modelling. We demonstrate that cytokine dependent growth exhibits a quorum T cell population threshold that determines if immune responses develop on activation. Secretion inhibition manipulates the growth dynamics and effectively increases the quorum threshold, i.e. to develop immune responses a higher number of T cells need to be activated. Thus Treg induced secretion inhibition can provide a mechanism for tissue specific regulation of the balance between suppression (control) and immune responses, a balance that can be varied at the local tissue level through the regulation of the local active Treg population size. However, nonspecific inhibition is prone to escape of initially controlled autoimmune T cells through cross reactivity to pathogens and bystander proliferation on unrelated immune responses.

2007

Hausdorff dimension bounds for smoothness of holonomies for codimension 1 hyperbolic dynamics

Autores
Pinto, AA; Rand, DA; Ferreira, E;

Publicação
JOURNAL OF DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Abstract
We prove that the stable holonomies of a proper codimension 1 attractor Lambda, for a C-r diffeomorphism f of a surface, are not C1+theta for theta greater than the Hausdorff dimension of the stable leaves of f intersected with Lambda. To prove this result we show that there are no diffeomorphisms of surfaces, with a proper codimension 1 attractor, that are affine on a neighbourhood of the attractor and have affine stable holonomies on the attractor.

2010

Dynamics of Immunological Models

Autores
Pinto, AA; Burroughs, NJ; Ferreira, M; Oliveira, BMPM;

Publicação
ACTA BIOTHEORETICA

Abstract
We analyse the effect of the regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the local control of the immune responses by T cells. We obtain an explicit formula for the level of antigenic stimulation of T cells as a function of the concentration of T cells and the parameters of the model. The relation between the concentration of the T cells and the antigenic stimulation of T cells is an hysteresis, that is unfold for some parameter values. We study the appearance of autoimmunity from cross-reactivity between a pathogen and a self antigen or from bystander proliferation. We also study an asymmetry in the death rates. With this asymmetry we show that the antigenic stimulation of the Tregs is able to control locally the population size of Tregs. Other effects of this asymmetry are a faster immune response and an improvement in the simulations of the bystander proliferation. The rate of variation of the levels of antigenic stimulation determines if the outcome is an immune response or if Tregs are able to maintain control due to the presence of a transcritical bifurcation for some tuning between the antigenic stimuli of T cells and Tregs. This behavior is explained by the presence of a transcritical bifurcation.

2010

Dynamics of Epidemiological Models

Autores
Pinto, A; Aguiar, M; Martins, J; Stollenwerk, N;

Publicação
ACTA BIOTHEORETICA

Abstract
We study the SIS and SIRI epidemic models discussing different approaches to compute the thresholds that determine the appearance of an epidemic disease. The stochastic SIS model is a well known mathematical model, studied in several contexts. Here, we present recursively derivations of the dynamic equations for all the moments and we derive the stationary states of the state variables using the moment closure method. We observe that the steady states give a good approximation of the quasi-stationary states of the SIS model. We present the relation between the SIS stochastic model and the contact process introducing creation and annihilation operators. For the spatial stochastic epidemic reinfection model SIRI, where susceptibles S can become infected I, then recover and remain only partial immune against reinfection R, we present the phase transition lines using the mean field and the pair approximation for the moments. We use a scaling argument that allow us to determine analytically an explicit formula for the phase transition lines in pair approximation.

2012

On the convergence to Walrasian prices in random matching Edgeworthian economies

Autores
Pinto, AA; Ferreira, M; Finkenstaedt, BF; Oliveira, B; Yannacopoulos, AN;

Publicação
CENTRAL EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Abstract
We show that for a specific class of random matching Edgeworthian economies, the expectation of the limiting equilibrium price coincides with the equilibrium price of the related Walrasian economies. This result extends to the study of economies in the presence of uncertainty within the multi-period Arrow-Debreu model, allowing to understand the dynamics of how beliefs survive and propagate through the market.

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