GEFCOM 2014 - Probabilistic Electricity Price Forecasting

Energy price forecasting is a relevant yet hard task in the field of multi-step time series forecasting. In this paper we compare a well-known and established method, ARMA with exogenous variables with a relatively new technique Gradient Boosting Regression. The method was tested on data from Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2014 with a year long rolling window forecast. The results from the experiment reveal that a multi-model approach is significantly better performing in terms of error metrics. Gradient Boosting can deal with seasonality and auto-correlation out-of-the box and achieve lower rate of normalized mean absolute error on real-world data.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, KES-IDT 2015 conference. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19857-6_

Proper motion measurements as indicators of binarity in open clusters

We analyze 9 open clusters with ages in the range 70 Myr to 3.2 Gyr using UCAC2 proper motion data and 2MASS photometry. For each cluster we consider the projected velocity distributions in the core and off-core regions separately. In the projected velocity distribution of all sample clusters we find a well-defined low-velocity peak, as well as an excess in the number of stars at larger velocities. The low-velocity peak is accounted for by the random motion of the single stars, while the high-velocity excess can be attributed to the large velocity changes produced by a significant fraction of unresolved binaries in a cluster. We derive kinematic parameters of the single-star distribution, in particular the projected velocity dispersion. The relatively large velocity dispersions derived in this work may reflect the non-virialized state of the clusters. Based on the relative number of high-velocity (binary) and single stars, we inferred for the sample clusters unresolved binary fractions in the range $15$, for both core and off-core regions. The present results suggest that care must be taken when applying proper-motion filters to sort out members, especially binaries in a star cluster. This paper shows that proper motions turn out to be a useful tool for identifying high-velocity stars as unresolved binary cluster members, and as a consequence, map and quantify the binary component in colour-magnitude diagrams.Comment: 9 pages and 9 figures. Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepted (25/10/2004

Effects of mutation and some environmental factors on the physiology and pathogenicity of selected bacteria

Studies with mutants of Staphylococcus aureus lacking some virulence factors suggest that the presence of deoxyribonuclease correlates with mouse pathogenicity of S. aureus, while the ability to ferment mannitol or the possession of coagulases are not required for virulence. Autotrophy investigations on mycobacteria demonstrate a complete correlation between the ability to grow with hydrogen and the species of scotochromogenic mycobacterium tested. All tested strains of M. gordonae, a saprophyte, could grow autotrophically while none of the tested strains of M. scrofulaceum, a clinically important species, possessed this ability. A series of heat tolerant mutants of Pseudomonas fluorescences were obtained which can grow at temperatures up to 54 C, in contrast to a maximum growth temperature of 37 C for the wild type

The smallest Moufang loop revisited

We derive presentations for Moufang loops of type $M(G,2)$, defined by Chein, with $G$ finite, two-generated. We then use $G=S_3$ to visualize the smallest non-associative Moufang loop.Comment: 5 page

A non-commutative algorithm for multiplying 5x5 matrices using 99 multiplications

We present a non-commutative algorithm for multiplying 5x5 matrices using 99 multiplications. This algorithm is a minor modification of Makarov's algorithm which exhibit the previous best known bound with 100 multiplications