Prospect of renewable energy sources and integrating challenges in Victoria, Australia

The Australian Government has targeted 20% of electricity generation from renewable energy sources by 2020. The 20% renewable energy target (RET) for Australia will be around 45000GWH in 2020. Renewable energy of Victoria also includes as part of support to achieve 20% RET in Australia. In Victoria wind and solar resources are abundant as compared to other sources of renewable energy. Solar radiation and wind speed data for Victoria State was collected from NASA surface meteorology and solar energy web site. A feasibility analysis has been carried out to explore the potentialities of wind and solar energy for Victoria State using hybrid optimization model of electric renewable (HOMER) software. This paper also represents the estimation analysis of RET for Victoria and describes the integrating challenges of renewable energy sources to the utility grid

Maternal hemodynamics in normal pregnancy: reference ranges and role of maternal characteristics

Objectives The main aim of this study was to construct reference ranges of maternal central hemodynamic parameters during pregnancy. The second aim was to determine the maternal and pregnancy characteristics that influence these hemodynamic parameters. Methods This was a prospective cohort study of low‐risk pregnant women attending for routine antenatal care at St George's Hospital, London, UK. Exclusion criteria included any medical disorder present at the time of study recruitment, or development of hypertension or intrauterine fetal growth restriction following study recruitment. Stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO) and systemic vascular resistance (SVR) were obtained using non‐invasive cardiac output monitoring (USCOM‐1A®). USCOM‐1A utilizes a non‐imaging probe in the suprasternal notch to obtain velocity‐time integrals of transaortic blood flow at the left ventricular outflow tract. Once the distribution of the data with respect to gestational age had been determined, maternal characteristics were added to the model to test whether they provided a significant improvement in the prediction of the median value. Results The study included 627 women with a singleton pregnancy. The estimated median CO was constant for a maternal age above 32 years, but was around 0.5 L/min higher for women aged ≤ 25 years (P < 0.001). Maternal weight (P < 0.001) and height (P < 0.001) significantly affected CO values and there was a significant interaction (P = 0.002) between them. In women with a height of less than 1.60 m, there was no association between median CO and weight; however, in those with a height exceeding 1.60 m, an increase in weight was associated with an increase in CO. SV was primarily associated with height (P < 0.001), although some positive association with weight (P < 0.001) could also be observed within the normal body‐mass‐index range. Greater height (P < 0.001) was associated with lower median values of SVR, with an estimated difference of around 120 dynes × s/cm5 between 1.60 m and 1.80 m. Advancing maternal age was associated with higher median SVR, with an estimated difference of around 50 dynes × s/cm5 between 25 and 35 years. Smokers had a lower SVR by 73.5 (95% CI, 8.6–138.4) dynes × s/cm5. Conclusion Maternal hemodynamics are influenced significantly by maternal age, height and weight. We provide USCOM‐1A‐specific reference ranges and a calculator for SV, CO and SVR in uncomplicated pregnancies that correct for maternal age, height and weight. This should enable clinical application and comparison in both uncomplicated and pathological pregnancies

Impaired Maternal Hemodynamics in Morbidly Obese Women: A Case-control Study.

AIM: Maternal obesity is associated with significant pregnancy complications and is a risk factor for the development of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy as well as other adverse outcomes. There are few data regarding the hemodynamic aberrations observed in maternal obesity. The aim of this study was to investigate maternal hemodynamics in morbidly obese pregnant women. METHODS: This was a prospective, case-control study of morbidly obese women (BMI >40 kg/m(2) ) and controls (BMI 20-29.9 kg/m(2) ) at a ratio of one-to-ten. The control population was matched for maternal age and gestational age. BMI was calculated based on maternal height and weight at the time of recruitment to the study, which occurred on the same day as the hemodynamic assessment. Pregnant women in the second or third trimester of pregnancy were included. Women who were found to be hypertensive at any time were excluded from the study. USCOM-1A(®) was used to assess hemodynamic parameters (heart rate, stroke volume, cardiac output and systemic vascular resistance). The parameters were corrected for body surface area (BSA) to provide the stroke volume index (SVI), cardiac index (CI) and systemic vascular resistance index (SVRI). Mann Whitney-U test was used to compare the medians of the hemodynamic variables between the two groups. RESULTS: A total of 30 obese women and 327 controls were recruited. There was no difference in maternal (p = 0.506) or gestational (p = 0.693) age at recruitment between the groups. Mean arterial pressure was higher both at pregnancy booking (90 vs 80 mmHg, p < 0.001) and study recruitment (91 vs 85 mmHg, p < 0.001) in the obese group. Heart rate was higher in the obese group (p = 0.003), however there was no difference in stroke volume (p = 0.271), cardiac output (p = 0.238) or systemic vascular resistance (p = 0.635). Following correction of these parameters for BSA, the SVI (34 vs 45 ml/m(2) , p < 0.001) and CI (2.96 vs 3.64 L/min/m(2) , p < 0.001) were significantly reduced in the obese group, whilst the SVRI was significantly higher (2354 vs 1840 dynes-sec-cm(5) /m(2) , p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The findings of our study suggest that cardiac function is significantly altered in morbidly obese pregnant women. In order to make appropriate comparisons between individuals, it is imperative that hemodynamic parameters are indexed for BSA - as indeed they are in pediatric cardiology. The novel finding of a reduced CI in morbidly obese pregnant women may explain the predisposition to preeclampsia and other adverse outcomes in this population and warrants further investigation

Design and Fabrication of Economic Motorized Wheelchair

Wheelchair is the device which is mainly used for physically challenged people. In the earlier day’s wheelchair were existed manually and dependent on other person for the mobility. In case a patient who has challenge in using their hands for mobility, then he/she needs another person help for mobility. In the world of Engineering, the Engineers play a vital role in the development of the society and provide comfort in their lifestyle. With this as primary objective our project had evolved the wheelchair with automatic control

Design and Manufacturing of Smart Braking System

Now a days, vehicles have been developed a lot and reach its new margin; but yet accidents are mostly occurred by retard of the driver to stomp the brake or by the sloppiness of the driver or over speed or due to unpleasant weather. So our project points to emerge a system which can actuate the braking system automatically with the aid of high profile sensors with relay circuit and some more changes in conventional braking system which can actuate the brake automatically in emergency state. The brain of this entire set-up is Arduino microcontroller. The ultrasonic sensors are the vision of this system and stepper motor utilised for actuation. This system has been composed to depict the technological improvement in further. In future the actual model may be evolved based on its viability

Integrating protein-protein interaction networks with phenotypes reveals signs of interactions

A major objective of systems biology is to organize molecular interactions as networks and to characterize information-flow within networks. We describe a computational framework to integrate protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and genetic screens to predict the “signs” of interactions (i.e. activation/inhibition relationships). We constructed a Drosophila melanogaster signed PPI network, consisting of 6,125 signed PPIs connecting 3,352 proteins that can be used to identify positive and negative regulators of signaling pathways and protein complexes. We identified an unexpected role for the metabolic enzymes Enolase and Aldo-keto reductase as positive and negative regulators of proteolysis, respectively. Characterization of the activation/inhibition relationships between physically interacting proteins within signaling pathways will impact our understanding of many biological functions, including signal transduction and mechanisms of disease

ProbCD: enrichment analysis accounting for categorization uncertainty

As in many other areas of science, systems biology makes extensive use of statistical association and significance estimates in contingency tables, a type of categorical data analysis known in this field as enrichment (also over-representation or enhancement) analysis. In spite of efforts to create probabilistic annotations, especially in the Gene Ontology context, or to deal with uncertainty in high throughput-based datasets, current enrichment methods largely ignore this probabilistic information since they are mainly based on variants of the Fisher Exact Test. We developed an open-source R package to deal with probabilistic categorical data analysis, ProbCD, that does not require a static contingency table. The contingency table for&#xd;&#xa;the enrichment problem is built using the expectation of a Bernoulli Scheme stochastic process given the categorization probabilities. An on-line interface was created to allow usage by non-programmers and is available at: http://xerad.systemsbiology.net/ProbCD/. We present an analysis framework and software tools to address the issue of uncertainty in categorical data analysis. In particular, concerning the enrichment analysis, ProbCD can accommodate: (i) the stochastic nature of the high-throughput experimental techniques and (ii) probabilistic gene annotation