Cost benefit analysis of smart metering and direct load control

NERA was engaged by Australia\u27s Ministerial Council on Energy\u27s Smart Meter Working Group to estimate the net benefits associated with a mandatory rollout of smart metering, and a non-smart meter direct load control alternative. NERA had responsibility for the overall coordination of the project (which involved a number of consulting firms) and the cost benefit analysis modeling, and also undertook the analysis of the likely impact on customers of a smart meter rollout. NERA has provided two reports. The Overview Report summarizes the results of the national cost benefit analysis and includes the estimates of the costs and benefits of smart metering and direct load control for each jurisdiction in Australia. It also provides NERA\u27s final recommendation as to the national minimum functionality for smart meters. The Consumer Impact report estimates the impact on customers (including customer demand) of a national rollout of smart meters or a direct load control alternative. &nbsp

The Effect of Dietary Patterns & Mental State

The most common forms of mental disorder treatment include therapy, medication and physical activity. However, it is not quite as common to look at dietary habits to improve mental health. An anonymous online survey was administered through a google form. The survey included questions on the individuals general demographic, diet parameters, and various aspects of their mental health and mood states. There is an association between positive mood states and a healthy dietary pattern. Through the results that were obtained via the survey, it is concluded that there is a correlation between a healthy, balanced diet and a positive mental state.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2023/1041/thumbnail.jp

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Genetic Sharing with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Diabetes Reveals Novel Bone Mineral Density Loci.

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) is a highly heritable trait, but genome-wide association studies have identified few genetic risk factors. Epidemiological studies suggest associations between BMD and several traits and diseases, but the nature of the suggestive comorbidity is still unknown. We used a novel genetic pleiotropy-informed conditional False Discovery Rate (FDR) method to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with BMD by leveraging cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated disorders and metabolic traits. By conditioning on SNPs associated with the CVD-related phenotypes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, triglycerides and waist hip ratio, we identified 65 novel independent BMD loci (26 with femoral neck BMD and 47 with lumbar spine BMD) at conditional FDR < 0.01. Many of the loci were confirmed in genetic expression studies. Genes validated at the mRNA levels were characteristic for the osteoblast/osteocyte lineage, Wnt signaling pathway and bone metabolism. The results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms of variability in BMD, and a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of clinical comorbidity

Integrated genomic characterization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

We performed integrated genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic profiling of 150 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) specimens, including samples with characteristic low neoplastic cellularity. Deep whole-exome sequencing revealed recurrent somatic mutations in KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A, SMAD4, RNF43, ARID1A, TGFβR2, GNAS, RREB1, and PBRM1. KRAS wild-type tumors harbored alterations in other oncogenic drivers, including GNAS, BRAF, CTNNB1, and additional RAS pathway genes. A subset of tumors harbored multiple KRAS mutations, with some showing evidence of biallelic mutations. Protein profiling identified a favorable prognosis subset with low epithelial-mesenchymal transition and high MTOR pathway scores. Associations of non-coding RNAs with tumor-specific mRNA subtypes were also identified. Our integrated multi-platform analysis reveals a complex molecular landscape of PDAC and provides a roadmap for precision medicine

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Diversity favours the old: Metrics of avian diversity increase in aging regrowth Acacia woodlands of semi-arid eastern Australia

Understanding how native fauna use regrowth vegetation is critical because of increased land clearing rates and biodiversity loss, yet it remains poorly studied in Australia's semi-arid regions. The aim of this study was to use acoustic sensors to monitor avian diversity in three different age classes (new regrowth 30 years) of Acacia dominated, predominately mulga (Acacia aneura) woodlands in the Mulga Lands bioregion of south-west Queensland. We found that species richness (SR), functional diversity (FD) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) increased with time since last clearance, with statistically significant differences between new regrowth and old growth. Generalised linear models showed that tree cover was a significant predicator of SR, FD and PD. A non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis revealed that species composition was more similar within than between age classes. Each age class had unique species, yet intermediate regrowth and old growth shared a large number of species suggesting a convergence in species composition. The results of this study show that while old growth vegetation sustains the highest level of biodiversity, intermediate and new regrowth still support a range of bird species. Therefore, regrowth mulga vegetation represents important habitat for avian biodiversity in semi-arid western Queensland and should be protected