Promoting Social Behaviour in Reducing Peak Electricity Consumption Using Multi-Agent Systems

As we move towards an energy system based on renewable energy sources, we need to consider their inflexibility to meet sudden peaks in demand. It is therefore important to reduce the peak load placed on our energy system. For individual households this means spreading out the use of high-powered appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines, throughout the day. Traditional approaches to this problem have relied on differential pricing set by a centralised utility company, but this mechanism has not been effective in promoting widespread shifting of appliance usage. Our previous research investigated a decentralised mechanism where agents receive an initial allocation of time-slots to use their appliances, which they can then exchange with other agents. This was found to be an effective approach to reducing the peak load within a community energy system when we introduced social capital, the tracking of favours given and received, in order to incentivise agents to act flexibly by accepting exchanges that do not immediately benefit them. This system encouraged self-interested agents to learn socially beneficial behaviour in order to earn social capital that they could later use to improve their own performance. In this paper we expand this work by implementing real world household appliance usage data in order to ensure that our mechanism could adapt to the challenging demand needs of real households. We also demonstrate how smaller and more diverse populations can optimise more effectively than larger community energy systems and better overcome the challenges of real-world demand peaks

Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective

This Report has a number of inter-related general purposes. One is to explore the extent to which food, nutrition, physical activity, and body composition modify the risk of cancer, and to specify which factors are most important. To the extent that environmental factors such as food, nutrition, and physical activity influence the risk of cancer, it is a preventable disease. The Report specifies recommendations based on solid evidence which, when followed, will be expected to reduce the incidence of cancer

Unique opportunities for NMR methods in structural genomics

This Perspective, arising from a workshop held in July 2008 in Buffalo NY, provides an overview of the role NMR has played in the United States Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), and a vision of how NMR will contribute to the forthcoming PSI-Biology program. NMR has contributed in key ways to structure production by the PSI, and new methods have been developed which are impacting the broader protein NMR community

Unique opportunities for NMR methods in structural genomics

This Perspective, arising from a workshop held in July 2008 in Buffalo NY, provides an overview of the role NMR has played in the United States Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), and a vision of how NMR will contribute to the forthcoming PSI-Biology program. NMR has contributed in key ways to structure production by the PSI, and new methods have been developed which are impacting the broader protein NMR community

Estimating the Spatial Extent of Bottom-Water Hypoxia and Habitat Degradation in a Shallow Estuary

Bottom-water hypoxia (≤ 2 mg 1-1 dissolved oxygen [DO]) greatly modifies the benthic habitat of estuaries, depending upon spatial extent, duration, and frequency. Bottom-water hypoxia often develops under conditions of density stratification, which inhibits vertical mixing, and warm temperatures, which enhance biological oxygen demand. Long-term, mid-channel data from the Neuse River Estuary in North Carolina permitted evaluation of how stratification and temperature combined to affect DO concentrations at the bottom. Salinity stratification (DS) and water temperature (T) explained respectively 30 and 23% of the variance in bottom-water DO concentrations. The amount of salinity stratification required to induce bottom-water hypoxia declined with increasing water temperature. About 80% of observed hydrographic profiles exhibited bottom hypoxia when DS exceeded 5 psu and T exceeded 20°C. Using cross-channel hydrographic surveys as verification, we derived a general set of methods to estimate the lateral extent of low-DO bottom water from midchannel hydrographic profiles. The method involves cross-estuary and along-estuary extrapolation based on assumption of a flat oxycline. Occasional violation of this assumption resulted in modest overestimation in cross-channel extent of low DO. Application of this method produced estimates ranging from 0 to 116 km2 of bottom area (0 to 42% of the estuarine study area) exposed to hypoxia over all sample dates in summer 1997. The maximal bottom area exposed to hypoxia corresponded closely with an independent estimate of the area (100 km2) that experienced almost complete mortality of Macoma spp. clams, the key benthic resource for demersal fishes and crabs. Consequently, mid-channel hydrographic profiles taken along the mid-channel of the estuary can be employed to assess the spatial scale of bottom habitat degradation due to hypoxia

Peptidomics analysis reveals changes in small urinary peptides in patients with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome

Interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) is a chronic and debilitating pain disorder of the bladder and urinary tract with poorly understood etiology. Symptomatic criteria to aid in the diagnosis of IC/BPS includes bladder pain, an increase in urinary urgency or Hunner’s ulcers on the bladder wall. Our study revealed differences in the profiles of small urinary peptides for IC/BPS patients compared to age-matched controls which is consistent with increased protease activity in IC/BPS. Our study also enabled the direct measurement of APF peptide abundance in IC/BPS and control urine. Our results indicate that the full-length APF peptide was not consistently found in the urine of IC/BPS patients at levels sufficient to reliably differentiate IC/BPS patients from healthy individuals

Mutually-Antagonistic Interactions in Baseball Networks

We formulate the head-to-head matchups between Major League Baseball pitchers and batters from 1954 to 2008 as a bipartite network of mutually-antagonistic interactions. We consider both the full network and single-season networks, which exhibit interesting structural changes over time. We find interesting structure in the network and examine their sensitivity to baseball's rule changes. We then study a biased random walk on the matchup networks as a simple and transparent way to compare the performance of players who competed under different conditions and to include information about which particular players a given player has faced. We find that a player's position in the network does not correlate with his success in the random walker ranking but instead has a substantial effect on its sensitivity to changes in his own aggregate performance.Comment: A few clarifications added 14 pages, 2 tables, 6 figures. Submitte

Searching the protein structure database for ligand-binding site similarities using CPASS v.2

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A recent analysis of protein sequences deposited in the NCBI RefSeq database indicates that ~8.5 million protein sequences are encoded in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes, where ~30% are explicitly annotated as "hypothetical" or "uncharacterized" protein. Our Comparison of Protein Active-Site Structures (CPASS v.2) database and software compares the sequence and structural characteristics of experimentally determined ligand binding sites to infer a functional relationship in the absence of global sequence or structure similarity. CPASS is an important component of our Functional Annotation Screening Technology by NMR (FAST-NMR) protocol and has been successfully applied to aid the annotation of a number of proteins of unknown function.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>We report a major upgrade to our CPASS software and database that significantly improves its broad utility. CPASS v.2 is designed with a layered architecture to increase flexibility and portability that also enables job distribution over the Open Science Grid (OSG) to increase speed. Similarly, the CPASS interface was enhanced to provide more user flexibility in submitting a CPASS query. CPASS v.2 now allows for both automatic and manual definition of ligand-binding sites and permits pair-wise, one versus all, one versus list, or list versus list comparisons. Solvent accessible surface area, ligand root-mean square difference, and Cβ distances have been incorporated into the CPASS similarity function to improve the quality of the results. The CPASS database has also been updated.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CPASS v.2 is more than an order of magnitude faster than the original implementation, and allows for multiple simultaneous job submissions. Similarly, the CPASS database of ligand-defined binding sites has increased in size by ~ 38%, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a positive search result. The modification to the CPASS similarity function is effective in reducing CPASS similarity scores for false positives by ~30%, while leaving true positives unaffected. Importantly, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves demonstrate the high correlation between CPASS similarity scores and an accurate functional assignment. As indicated by distribution curves, scores ≥ 30% infer a functional similarity. Software URL: <url>http://cpass.unl.edu</url>.</p

Seizure frequency discrepancy between subjective and objective ictal electroencephalography data in dogs

Background Many studies of epilepsy in veterinary medicine use subjective data (eg, caregiver-derived histories) to determine seizure frequency. Conversely, in people, objective data from electroencephalography (EEG) are mainly used to diagnose epilepsy, measure seizure frequency and evaluate efficacy of antiseizure drugs. These EEG data minimize the possibility of the underreporting of seizures, a known phenomenon in human epileptology. Objective To evaluate the correlation between reported seizure frequency and EEG frequency of ictal paroxysmal discharges (PDs) and to determine whether seizure underreporting phenomenon exists in veterinary epileptology. Animals Thirty-three ambulatory video-EEG recordings in dogs showing >= 1 ictal PD, excluding dogs with status epilepticus. Methods Retrospective observational study. Ictal PDs were counted manually over the entire recording to obtain the frequency of EEG seizures. Caregiver-reported seizure frequency from the medical record was categorized into weekly, daily, hourly, and per minute seizure groupings. The Spearman rank test was used for correlation analysis. Results The coefficient value (r(s)) comparing reported seizure to EEG-confirmed ictal PD frequencies was 0.39 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.048-0.64, P = .03). Other r(s) values comparing history against various seizure types were: 0.36 for motor seizures and 0.37 for nonmotor (absence) seizures. Conclusions and Clinical Importance A weak correlation was found between the frequency of reported seizures from caregivers (subjective data) and ictal PDs on EEG (objective data). Subjective data may not be reliable enough to determine true seizure frequency given the discrepancy with EEG-confirmed seizure frequency. Confirmation of the seizure underreporting phenomenon in dogs by prospective study should be carried out.Peer reviewe