Innovative in silico approaches to address avian flu using grid technology

The recent years have seen the emergence of diseases which have spread very quickly all around the world either through human travels like SARS or animal migration like avian flu. Among the biggest challenges raised by infectious emerging diseases, one is related to the constant mutation of the viruses which turns them into continuously moving targets for drug and vaccine discovery. Another challenge is related to the early detection and surveillance of the diseases as new cases can appear just anywhere due to the globalization of exchanges and the circulation of people and animals around the earth, as recently demonstrated by the avian flu epidemics. For 3 years now, a collaboration of teams in Europe and Asia has been exploring some innovative in silico approaches to better tackle avian flu taking advantage of the very large computing resources available on international grid infrastructures. Grids were used to study the impact of mutations on the effectiveness of existing drugs against H5N1 and to find potentially new leads active on mutated strains. Grids allow also the integration of distributed data in a completely secured way. The paper presents how we are currently exploring how to integrate the existing data sources towards a global surveillance network for molecular epidemiology.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Infectious Disorders - Drug Target

Legacies of a Past Modernism Discourses of Development and the Shaping of Centralized Electricity Infastructures in Late- and Postcolonial Tanzania

As the UN has declared the years 2014-2024 the “Decade of Sustainable Energy for All”, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa struggle with the transition towards more sustainable and more inclusive energy infrastructures. In many rural areas, electrification rates remain as low as 1-2%. For many countries, one of the main barriers for rural electrification is the legacy of a model of top-down planning, large-scale power generation and a centralized topology of the electricity infrastructure. Nonetheless, historiography on electricity infrastructures in Africa is nearly non-existent. At the example of Tanzania this paper shows, that the centralized power models which dominate the continent today were shaped by modernization and development discourses during the late colonial and post-independence period. Because of its particular characteristics, electricity lent itself perfectly to the goal of making development measurable — a goal which was essential to a “high modernist” vision of development, advocated by new nation states as well as international funders. The paper illustrates how large hydropower projects proved successful in expanding generation capacities and urban electrification rates, but failed in providing electricity to rural areas and created pathdependencies which have led to dead ends in the last 20 years

Random load fluctuations and collapse probability of a power system operating near codimension 1 saddle-node bifurcation

For a power system operating in the vicinity of the power transfer limit of its transmission system, effect of stochastic fluctuations of power loads can become critical as a sufficiently strong such fluctuation may activate voltage instability and lead to a large scale collapse of the system. Considering the effect of these stochastic fluctuations near a codimension 1 saddle-node bifurcation, we explicitly calculate the autocorrelation function of the state vector and show how its behavior explains the phenomenon of critical slowing-down often observed for power systems on the threshold of blackout. We also estimate the collapse probability/mean clearing time for the power system and construct a new indicator function signaling the proximity to a large scale collapse. The new indicator function is easy to estimate in real time using PMU data feeds as well as SCADA information about fluctuations of power load on the nodes of the power grid. We discuss control strategies leading to the minimization of the collapse probability.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, submission to IEEE PES General Meeting 201

Alternative Care Sites: An Option in Disasters

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the limited surge capacity of the healthcare system is being quickly overwhelmed. Similar scenarios play out when an institution’s systems fail, or when local or regional disasters occur. In these situations, it becomes necessary to use one or more alternative care sites (ACS). Situated in a variety of non-healthcare structures, ACS may be used for ambulatory, acute, subacute, or chronic care. Developing alternative care facilities is the disaster-planning step that moves communities from talking to doing. This commitment pays real dividends if a disaster of any magnitude strikes. This paper discusses the basic criteria for selecting, establishing and ultimately closing an ACS, difficulties of administration, staffing, security, and providing basic supplies and equipment

Impact Assessment of Hypothesized Cyberattacks on Interconnected Bulk Power Systems

The first-ever Ukraine cyberattack on power grid has proven its devastation by hacking into their critical cyber assets. With administrative privileges accessing substation networks/local control centers, one intelligent way of coordinated cyberattacks is to execute a series of disruptive switching executions on multiple substations using compromised supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. These actions can cause significant impacts to an interconnected power grid. Unlike the previous power blackouts, such high-impact initiating events can aggravate operating conditions, initiating instability that may lead to system-wide cascading failure. A systemic evaluation of "nightmare" scenarios is highly desirable for asset owners to manage and prioritize the maintenance and investment in protecting their cyberinfrastructure. This survey paper is a conceptual expansion of real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, impact analyses, and mitigation (RAIM) framework that emphasizes on the resulting impacts, both on steady-state and dynamic aspects of power system stability. Hypothetically, we associate the combinatorial analyses of steady state on substations/components outages and dynamics of the sequential switching orders as part of the permutation. The expanded framework includes (1) critical/noncritical combination verification, (2) cascade confirmation, and (3) combination re-evaluation. This paper ends with a discussion of the open issues for metrics and future design pertaining the impact quantification of cyber-related contingencies

Hurricane María: An Agroecological Turning Point for Puerto Rico?

When Hurricane María tore through Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, it left 17 dead, 11,000 seeking shelter, and the island’s 3.4 million people without power, water, or fresh food supplies.i It also ripped off the democratic veneer of the US’ “commonwealth,” revealing the structural vulnerability of an island that has been colonized for over half a millennium. Disasters tend to unmask both unsustainable practices and inequitable relations of power. But they can also unleash the power of solidarity and self-governance as communities—abandoned by their governments and preyed upon by disaster capitalists—come together in unexpected ways. In the aftermath of Puerto Rico’s worst social, economic and environmental catastrophe, the Puerto Rican food sovereignty movement is using agroecology to reconstruct the island’s beleaguered food system