Capturing Aggregate Flexibility in Demand Response

Flexibility in electric power consumption can be leveraged by Demand Response (DR) programs. The goal of this paper is to systematically capture the inherent aggregate flexibility of a population of appliances. We do so by clustering individual loads based on their characteristics and service constraints. We highlight the challenges associated with learning the customer response to economic incentives while applying demand side management to heterogeneous appliances. We also develop a framework to quantify customer privacy in direct load scheduling programs.Comment: Submitted to IEEE CDC 201

A study of the pulmonary complications of preterm infants after prenatal corticosteroids prophylaxis in a major Bulgarian hospital

Abstract: An increasingly common problem in obstetrics and neonatology is premature birth. This problem is the cause of many health complications in premature neonates and is leading to neonatal mortality. These complications affect the whole body of premature babies, the respiratory system has the largest percentage due to lack of the period for intrauterine maturation of the lung. A retrospective study was carried out at the Clinic of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital St. Georgi, Plovdiv, Bulgaria for the period 2015-2016. 167 preterm infants have been studied. They were divided into two main groups: a working group of 89 preterm infants with prenatal corticosteroid prophylaxis and a control group of 78 preterm infants without prenatal prophylaxis. Data on clinical outcomes, health status, background complications of prenatal corticosteroid prophylaxis have been analyzed. The summary, however, of the results that is: the 3.6% difference has been found between newborn children with RDS and those with all other disabilities; this shows that in preterm infants the priority is to damage the respiratory system. Over 60% of the prematurity develop respiratory distress syndrome. The presence of respiratory complications is dew to the earlier gestational week of birth and the older age of the mother and is somewhat limited by the prenatal administration of corticosteroids.peer-reviewe

Middle school students’ knowledge of skin cancer, sun protective behaviors, and perceptions of acquiring skin cancer.

The incidence of skin cancer especially melanoma among children, adolescents, and young adults has reached epidemic proportions, with young females at highest risk for this deadly cancer. Increasing sun protection for children and making them aware of the dangers of the ultraviolet rays of the sun may reduce their risk of developing skin cancer. Therefore, teaching sun protective behaviors in schools should start early in childhood. Developing comprehensive sun safety programs for children that are motivating and individualized will help them to get involved in the programs and also help to retain the information that they have learned during these programs. Sun protection of children in North America is generally lower than what is desirable. Many programs in place in schools help to improve sun safety knowledge, but students continue to tan. Therefore, optimal method for teaching students and motivating them to learn about sun protective behaviors and skin cancer should be developed. Studies have shown that using skin analyzer machine (SAM) is an effective methodology when teaching about skin cancer, as it shows the changes of the skin that cannot be visualized by the naked eye and it personalizes sun damage to the students. The premise behind this study using SAM is that the students who seek the tanned look or those students who are not careful about protecting their skin, can be shown through the mirrors in the SAM, the sun damage to their skin that is not visible by the naked eye such as brown spots. This quasi-experimental study examined the teaching methodologies that can be used in 6th and 7th grade health assessment classes, with 283 students. This study examined the middle schools students’ knowledge of skin cancer, sun protective behaviors and perceptions of acquiring skin cancer. Pretest and posttest design were used in this study. Results from the study demonstrated that the intervention using the skin analyzer machine made a difference in changing the behavior of the students in the intervention group. The intervention of using SAM had a positive effect on the overall posttest of students along with showing a significant difference from the students in the control and lecture group in the variable of behavior

The zipper mechanism in phagocytosis: energetic requirements and variability in phagocytic cup shape

Phagocytosis is the fundamental cellular process by which eukaryotic cells bind and engulf particles by their cell membrane. Particle engulfment involves particle recognition by cell-surface receptors, signaling and remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton to guide the membrane around the particle in a zipper-like fashion. Despite the signaling complexity, phagocytosis also depends strongly on biophysical parameters, such as particle shape, and the need for actin-driven force generation remains poorly understood. Here, we propose a novel, three-dimensional and stochastic biophysical model of phagocytosis, and study the engulfment of particles of various sizes and shapes, including spiral and rod-shaped particles reminiscent of bacteria. Highly curved shapes are not taken up, in line with recent experimental results. Furthermore, we surprisingly find that even without actin-driven force generation, engulfment proceeds in a large regime of parameter values, albeit more slowly and with highly variable phagocytic cups. We experimentally confirm these predictions using fibroblasts, transfected with immunoreceptor FcyRIIa for engulfment of immunoglobulin G-opsonized particles. Specifically, we compare the wild-type receptor with a mutant receptor, unable to signal to the actin cytoskeleton. Based on the reconstruction of phagocytic cups from imaging data, we indeed show that cells are able to engulf small particles even without support from biological actin-driven processes. This suggests that biochemical pathways render the evolutionary ancient process of phagocytic highly robust, allowing cells to engulf even very large particles. The particle-shape dependence of phagocytosis makes a systematic investigation of host-pathogen interactions and an efficient design of a vehicle for drug delivery possible.Comment: Accepted for publication in BMC Systems Biology. 17 pages, 6 Figures, + supplementary informatio