Grid frequency and voltage support using photovoltaic systems with energy storage assist

An optimized operating scheme for a grid-connected community based photovoltaic (PV) system is described. The system can participate in grid ancillary services like frequency and voltage regulation functions based on the Smart Grid framework. The proposed model comprises of a PV plant with Li-ion batteries coupled to the grid by means of a three-phase inverter. A two-way communication between the PV plant and the grid is assumed. The PV/storage plant provides constant updates on its current kW/kVar capability and the grid transmits the demand for specific amounts of power and for specific lengths of time. The battery charging energy can originate from either the PV system or the grid depending on the prevailing energy prices. The batteries are discharged when two conditions are met: the grid requests energy from the community-based PV system and if the PV system itself fails to meet the requested kW or kVar demand. The PV plant and the battery storage are integrated with the grid with the help of dc-dc and dc-ac converters in such a way that bi-directional flow of active and reactive powers can be achieved. Controllers integrating energy sources respond to the received signals and attempt to fulfill the grid demand. The system response is almost instantaneous and thus can be very helpful in grid frequency and voltage support --Abstract, page iii

FACILE SYNTHESIS, SPECTRAL STUDIES, DFT CALCULATIONS AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES OF NOVEL NI (II), CU (II), AND PD (II) COMPLEXES OF THIADIAZOLE ANALOGS

Objective: A facile synthesis of some novel Schiff base derivatives of 2-substituted-5-amino-thiadiazoles along with their Ni (II), Cu (II), and Pd (II) complexes were achieved by sonication and the conventional method. In addition to establish the structure by DFT studies and to explore antimicrobial and anticancer activities of these novel compounds.Methods: The precursor 2-substituted-5-amino-thiadiazoles (T1-T3), target ligands and their metal complexes were synthesized by ultra-sonication and conventional means. The isolated products were thoroughly characterized by physical and spectroscopic techniques including 1H-NMR, [13]C-NMR and IR spectroscopy. All characterized compounds were screened for antimicrobial activities using well diffusion method, and MTT assay was performed for cytotoxicity.Results: All novel compounds were synthesized by a green route i.e. ultra sonication and a noticeable improvement in yield with shorter reaction time than the conventional method were observed. The octahedral geometry was proposed for Ni (II)/Cu (II) complexes whereas square planar for Pd (II) complexes on the basis of the spectral techniques which were supported by DFT analysis by Gaussian03. On the analysis of antimicrobial activities, the compound T7 and T10 showed maximum antibacterial and antifungal activities respectively. However, compounds T25, T37, T31 found to be a potential cytotoxic compound with IC50 value 0.469, 0.865 and 1.131 μM respectively.Conclusion: Analysis of synthetic protocol, it could be concluded that ultra-sonication is the better method to synthesize these potential biological active moiety. On the whole Cu (II) and Ni (II) complexes showed promising activity towards all microorganisms while Pd (II) complex emerged an excellent moiety in carcinoma cell line

Correlation between prostate specific antigen and prostate volume with disease symptom severity assessed by international prostate symptom score

Background: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is clinically defined as prostate adenoma, resulting in bladder outlet obstruction (BOO), which may eventually harm the bladder and even kidneys. For differential diagnosis of male LUTS, uroflowmetry can be used together with non-invasive ultrasound to ascertain the flow rate and IPP. PSA is also an important indicator for differential diagnosis. International prostate symptoms score (IPSS) is used to assess the severity of the symptoms for clinical BPH. There is also a recommendation to consider the quality of life (QoL) index, where a QoL score of ≥3 is considered as worrisome. Methods: This was a retro-prospective study based on secondary and primary data collection and analysis, pertaining to BPH patients who visited the study site previously as well as those who are coming for regular follow-up since 2019. Patient enrolment was done at a teaching hospital Shree Krishna Hospital affiliated to the Pramukh Swami Medical College, Bhaikaka University, Karamsad. About 100 patients presenting with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and histo-pathologically proven cases of BPH were enrolled to pursue research objectives. All patients were followed up to a period of 3-months after initiating the treatment and disease severity through IPSS and quality of life upon completion of treatment were also assessed. Results: PSA is also an important indicator for differential diagnosis, which is generally less than 1 μg/l in patients in absence of clinically confirmed BPH. In our study, mean prostate volume was reported to be 43.46±19.35 cc. A positive correlation was observed between prostate volume and serum PSA with disease severity. Conclusions: Our study evaluated the IPSS to predict the disease severity and correlated it with quality of life, prostate volume and serum PSA. Our findings were in line with currently available evidences, and suggested that QoL, prostate volume and serum PSA are better predictors of disease severity, IPSS

Implementation of the SutteARIMA method to predict short‑term cases of stock market and COVID‑19 pandemic in USA

The objective of this study is to compare the different methods which are effective in predicting data of the short-term effect of COVID-19 confirmed cases and DJI closed stock market in the US. Data for confirmed cases of COVID-19 has been obtained from Worldometer, the database of Johns Hopkins University and the US stock market data (DJI) was obtained from Yahoo Finance. The data starts from 20 January 2020 (first confirmed COVID-19 case the US) to 06 December 2020 and DJI data covers 21 January 2019 to 04 December 2020. COVID-19 data was tested for the period 30 November to 06 December and DJI from 25 November 2020 to 04 December. From the result, we find that the method SutteARIMA was found more suitable to calculate the daily forecasts of COVID- 29 confirmed cases and DJI in the US and this method has been used in this study. For the evaluation of the prediction methods, the accuracy measure means absolute percentage error (MAPE) has been used. The MAPE value with the SutteARIMA of 0.56 and 0.60 for COVID-19 and DJI stock respectively was found to be smaller than the MAPE value with ARIMA method

A Comprehensive Corpus Callosum Segmentation Tool for Detecting Callosal Abnormalities and Genetic Associations from Multi Contrast MRIs

Structural alterations of the midsagittal corpus callosum (midCC) have been associated with a wide range of brain disorders. The midCC is visible on most MRI contrasts and in many acquisitions with a limited field-of-view. Here, we present an automated tool for segmenting and assessing the shape of the midCC from T1w, T2w, and FLAIR images. We train a UNet on images from multiple public datasets to obtain midCC segmentations. A quality control algorithm is also built-in, trained on the midCC shape features. We calculate intraclass correlations (ICC) and average Dice scores in a test-retest dataset to assess segmentation reliability. We test our segmentation on poor quality and partial brain scans. We highlight the biological significance of our extracted features using data from over 40,000 individuals from the UK Biobank; we classify clinically defined shape abnormalities and perform genetic analyses

The effect of hypnosis on pain and peripheral blood flow in sickle-cell disease: a pilot study

Background: Vaso-occlusive pain crises (VOCs) are the “hallmark” of sickle-cell disease (SCD) and can lead to sympathetic nervous system dysfunction. Increased sympathetic nervous system activation during VOCs and/or pain can result in vasoconstriction, which may increase the risk for subsequent VOCs and pain. Hypnosis is a neuromodulatory intervention that may attenuate vascular and pain responsiveness. Due to the lack of laboratory-controlled pain studies in patients with SCD and healthy controls, the specific effects of hypnosis on acute pain-associated vascular responses are unknown. The current study assessed the effects of hypnosis on peripheral blood flow, pain threshold, tolerance, and intensity in adults with and without SCD.Subjects and methods: Fourteen patients with SCD and 14 healthy controls were included. Participants underwent three laboratory pain tasks before and during a 30-minute hypnosis session. Peripheral blood flow, pain threshold, tolerance, and intensity before and during hypnosis were examined.Results: A single 30-minute hypnosis session decreased pain intensity by a moderate amount in patients with SCD. Pain threshold and tolerance increased following hypnosis in the control group, but not in patients with SCD. Patients with SCD exhibited lower baseline peripheral blood flow and a greater increase in blood flow following hypnosis than controls.Conclusion: Given that peripheral vasoconstriction plays a role in the development of VOC, current findings provide support for further laboratory and clinical investigations of the effects of cognitive–behavioral neuromodulatory interventions on pain responses and peripheral vascular flow in patients with SCD. Current results suggest that hypnosis may increase peripheral vasodilation during both the anticipation and experience of pain in patients with SCD. These findings indicate a need for further examination of the effects of hypnosis on pain and vascular responses utilizing a randomized controlled trial design. Further evidence may help determine unique effects of hypnosis and potential benefits of integrating cognitive–behavioral neuromodulatory interventions into SCD treatment

Inhibition of ALK1 signaling with dalantercept combined with VEGFR TKI leads to tumor stasis in renal cell carcinoma

Treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) with agents that block signaling through vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) induces disease regression or stabilization in some patients; however, these responses tend to be short-lived. Therefore, development of combination therapies that can extend the efficacy of VEGFR antagonists in mRCC remains a priority. We studied murine xenograft models of RCC that become refractory to treatment with the VEGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) sunitinib. Dalantercept is a novel antagonist of Activin receptor-like kinase 1 (ALK1)/Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) 9 signaling. Dalantercept inhibited growth in the murine A498 xenograft model which correlated with hyperdilation of the tumor vasculature and an increase in tumor hypoxia. When combined with sunitinib, dalantercept induced tumor necrosis and prevented tumor regrowth and revascularization typically seen with sunitinib monotherapy in two RCC models. Combination therapy led to significant downregulation of angiogenic genes as well as downregulation of endothelial specific gene expression particularly of the Notch signaling pathway. We demonstrate that simultaneous targeting of molecules that control distinct phases of angiogenesis, such as ALK1 and VEGFR, is a valid strategy for treatment of mRCC. At the molecular level, combination therapy leads to downregulation of Notch signaling

Temporal Trends in Care and Outcomes of Patients Receiving Fibrinolytic Therapy Compared to Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: Insights From the Get With The Guidelines Coronary Artery Disease (GWTG‐CAD) Registry

Background: Timely reperfusion after ST‐elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) improves survival. Guidelines recommend primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) within 90 minutes of arrival at a PCI‐capable hospital. The alternative is fibrinolysis within 30 minutes for those in those for whom timely transfer to a PCI‐capable hospital is not feasible. Methods and Results: We identified STEMI patients receiving reperfusion therapy at 229 hospitals participating in the Get With the Guidelines—Coronary Artery Disease (GWTG‐CAD) database (January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2008). Temporal trends in the use of fibrinolysis and PPCI, its timeliness, and in‐hospital mortality outcomes were assessed. We also assessed predictors of fibrinolysis versus PPCI and compliance with performance measures. Defect‐free care was defined as 100% compliance with all performance measures. We identified 29 190 STEMI patients, of whom 2441 (8.4%) received fibrinolysis; 38.2% of these patients achieved door‐to‐needle times ≤30 minutes. Median door‐to‐needle times increased from 36 to 60 minutes (P=0.005) over the study period. Among PPCI patients, median door‐to‐balloon times decreased from 94 to 64 minutes (P<0.0001) over the same period. In‐hospital mortality was higher with fibrinolysis than with PPCI (4.6% vs 3.3%, P=0.001) and did not change significantly over time. Patients receiving fibrinolysis were less likely to receive defect‐free care compared with their PPCI counterparts. Conclusions: Use of fibrinolysis for STEMI has decreased over time with concomitant worsening of door‐to‐needle times. Over the same time period, use of PPCI increased with improvement in door‐to‐balloon times. In‐hospital mortality was higher with fibrinolysis than with PPCI. As reperfusion for STEMI continues to shift from fibrinolysis to PPCI, it will be critical to ensure that door‐to‐needle times and outcomes do not worsen

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio