A Review of Liberalization and Modeling of Electricity Markets

This paper provides a review on the restructuring of electricity markets around the word including the UK, Norway, Continental Europe, and the US. The focus of this review lies on aspects of competitiveness and regulation in generation and transmission markets and market design, whereas distribution and retail are not pursued in detail. Furthermore, an overview about current modeling trends regarding liberalized electricity markets is provided including a classification according to mathematical principles and a taxonomy of research topics analyzed with modeling approaches

Advances in the Treatment of Ischemic Stroke

In recent years research on ischemic stroke has developed powerful therapeutic tools. The novel frontiers of stem cells therapy and of hypothermia have been explored, and novel brain repair mechanisms have been discovered. Limits to intravenous thrombolysis have been advanced and powerful endovascular tools have been put at the clinicians' disposal. Surgical decompression in malignant stroke has significantly improved the prognosis of this often fatal condition. This book includes contributions from scientists active in this innovative research. Stroke physicians, students, nurses and technicians will hopefully use it as a tool of continuing medical education to update their knowledge in this rapidly changing field

Added value of acute multimodal CT-based imaging (MCTI) : a comprehensive analysis

Introduction: MCTI is used to assess acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients.We postulated that use of MCTI improves patient outcome regardingindependence and mortality.Methods: From the ASTRAL registry, all patients with an AIS and a non-contrast-CT (NCCT), angio-CT (CTA) or perfusion-CT (CTP) within24 h from onset were included. Demographic, clinical, biological, radio-logical, and follow-up caracteristics were collected. Significant predictorsof MCTI use were fitted in a multivariate analysis. Patients undergoingCTA or CTA&CTP were compared with NCCT patients with regards tofavourable outcome (mRS ≤ 2) at 3 months, 12 months mortality, strokemechanism, short-term renal function, use of ancillary diagnostic tests,duration of hospitalization and 12 months stroke recurrence

The gut microbiome modulates post stroke outcome

15 million people suffer from stroke per year. Fundamentally, stroke is caused by a lack of oxygenated blood to brain tissue which results in tissue death. This entails a complex pathophysiology which encompasses 3 phases. Within minutes to hours, brain resident cells initiate excitotoxicity leading to irreversible neuronal death. From days to months, peripheral recruitment of immune cells to the brain drives neuroinflammation and exacerbates stroke outcome. Finally, within months to years, there is an increase in neuronal plasticity which enables reorganisation of cortical networks and restoration of broken circuits. Despite decades of research and intricate understanding of the physiological processes occurring after stroke, only one acute therapy is approved for use in clinics. An interesting therapeutic target for scientific researchers is modulation of the peripheral host immune system. Experimental research has shown that polarisation of the immune cell sub populations towards pro-/anti-inflammatory state can exacerbate or alleviate stroke outcome respectively. Polarised immune cell subsets migrate from peripheral secondary lymphoid organs to the brain lesion. While the intestinal immune compartment contains the majority of the immune cells in the body, it is the intestinal lumen that is the home to 1000 different readily adapting bacterial species. The gut microbiota has been shown to intimately interact with the immune system and alter the function of particular immune cell subsets. Recent experimental evidence has indicated a potential role for the interaction the gut microbiota and immune system in brain disease. We hypothesised that the gut microbiota could therefore play a role in the outcome of stroke. Within this thesis we explore the gut microbiota and its derived metabolites in experimental ischemic stroke models. This thesis incorporates four publications which have unravelled different aspects of how the gut microbiota affects stroke. The key experimental findings within this thesis can be summarised in five key concepts. 1) The gut microbiota and stroke have a bidirectional interaction, both having the ability to change the other. 2) The gut microbiota alters peripheral immune cells which after stroke, were shown to migrate to the brain and alter the inflammatory milieu. 3) The presence of the gut microbiota, or treatment with healthy gut microbiota transfer, improved stroke outcome. 4) Small changes in the gut microbiota can alter response to stroke immunotherapies. 5) Short-chain fatty acids, the dietary metabolites derived from the gut microbiota, improve functional post stroke recovery. Taken together, I hope this thesis reflects and demonstrates the interesting therapeutic potential of gut microbiota manipulation for treatment of stroke. The addition of microbiota-based treatments may not only be a stand-alone therapy to aid recovery after stroke, but additionally could be a practical add-on for existing procedural treatments

パターンに基づく要求仕様の形式化方法及び支援ツールに関する研究

Despite the effectiveness of requirements formalization in producing accurate requirements documentation and deepening the developers\u27 understanding of the envisioned systems, this technique can hardly be accepted by software industry mainly because it requires mathematical sophistication and considerable experience in using formal notations, which remains a challenge to many practitioners. Many methods and tools have been proposed to deal with the problem by providing general guidance or automatic support in transforming informal requirements into formal specifications. However, they fail to accomplish the task when encountering incompleteness and ambiguities in the informal requirements. To handle this challenge, this thesis describes a pattern-based approach to facilitating the formalization of requirements. In this approach, a specification pattern system is pre-defined to guide requirements formalization where each pattern provides a specific solution for formalizing one kind of function into a formal specification. All of the patterns are classified and organized into a hierarchical structure according to the functions they can be used for formalization. The distinct characteristic of our approach is that all of the patterns are stored on computer as knowledge for creating effective guidance to facilitate the developer in requirements formalization; they are "understood" only by the computer but transparent to the developer. Based on the pattern system, a method that guides the requirements formalization process by applying the pattern system is described. To facilitate the understanding of the guidance produced by the pattern system and the utilization and maintenance of the pattern knowledge, a method for representing the pattern system is proposed where attribute tree and HFSM are adopted. These two notations are used to represent different parts of the pattern knowledge. The method for applying the pattern knowledge represented in the two notations is given. We also describe a prototype tool that supports the pattern-based approach. The tool derives necessary functional details of the intended requirement through interactions with the developer and generates a formal specification according to the obtained information. Two experiments on the tool supported approach are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.博士(理学)法政大学 (Hosei University

Strategic gas storage coordination among EU member states during supply crises: an optimization approach

Given the strong presence of natural gas in the European Union (EU) energy mix (25%), this work focuses on natural gas strategic storage reserves as a first non-market based solidarity measure to increase energy security among EU Member States in response to natural gas supply “high-impact, low-probability” events (HILP). It presents a two-stage stochastic LP optimization gas transport model minimizing costs to study the short-term resilience of the network to supply shocks when using strategic storage in a coordinated fashion and including a policy perspective (i.e., EU Regulation 2017/1938) to evaluate the impact of HILP on the level of demand curtailment, survival time, and the natural gas supply mix among MS in the EU. The model is implemented to analyze three applications related to natural gas storage: (1) assess resilience and security in the EU gas system during a real case of shock in demand during an exceptionally cold weather; (2) test the role of coordination in case of short-term HILP events in the EU natural gas network; and (3) examine solidarity measures, such as strategic storage, among EU Regional Risk Groups during gas system disruptions due to HILP events. Results highlight the value of gas infrastructure diversification and the role of storage in the gas market and its inherent value in the system. In particular, the cost efficiency found in the coordinated use of strategic storage during a short-term emergency emphasizes the importance of storage-based solidarity in mitigating the effects of HILP supply disruptions and securing resources to the grid. They indicate that geographical proximity alone, without solidarity interventions, is insufficient to provide system resilience and that solidarity interventions enhance survival time for Regional Risk Groups in the EU and reduce liquefied natural gas (LNG) and system costs, offering an additional insight on the interplay between storage and LNG.Open Acces

The gut microbiome modulates post stroke outcome

15 million people suffer from stroke per year. Fundamentally, stroke is caused by a lack of oxygenated blood to brain tissue which results in tissue death. This entails a complex pathophysiology which encompasses 3 phases. Within minutes to hours, brain resident cells initiate excitotoxicity leading to irreversible neuronal death. From days to months, peripheral recruitment of immune cells to the brain drives neuroinflammation and exacerbates stroke outcome. Finally, within months to years, there is an increase in neuronal plasticity which enables reorganisation of cortical networks and restoration of broken circuits. Despite decades of research and intricate understanding of the physiological processes occurring after stroke, only one acute therapy is approved for use in clinics. An interesting therapeutic target for scientific researchers is modulation of the peripheral host immune system. Experimental research has shown that polarisation of the immune cell sub populations towards pro-/anti-inflammatory state can exacerbate or alleviate stroke outcome respectively. Polarised immune cell subsets migrate from peripheral secondary lymphoid organs to the brain lesion. While the intestinal immune compartment contains the majority of the immune cells in the body, it is the intestinal lumen that is the home to 1000 different readily adapting bacterial species. The gut microbiota has been shown to intimately interact with the immune system and alter the function of particular immune cell subsets. Recent experimental evidence has indicated a potential role for the interaction the gut microbiota and immune system in brain disease. We hypothesised that the gut microbiota could therefore play a role in the outcome of stroke. Within this thesis we explore the gut microbiota and its derived metabolites in experimental ischemic stroke models. This thesis incorporates four publications which have unravelled different aspects of how the gut microbiota affects stroke. The key experimental findings within this thesis can be summarised in five key concepts. 1) The gut microbiota and stroke have a bidirectional interaction, both having the ability to change the other. 2) The gut microbiota alters peripheral immune cells which after stroke, were shown to migrate to the brain and alter the inflammatory milieu. 3) The presence of the gut microbiota, or treatment with healthy gut microbiota transfer, improved stroke outcome. 4) Small changes in the gut microbiota can alter response to stroke immunotherapies. 5) Short-chain fatty acids, the dietary metabolites derived from the gut microbiota, improve functional post stroke recovery. Taken together, I hope this thesis reflects and demonstrates the interesting therapeutic potential of gut microbiota manipulation for treatment of stroke. The addition of microbiota-based treatments may not only be a stand-alone therapy to aid recovery after stroke, but additionally could be a practical add-on for existing procedural treatments