Systematic categorization of optimization strategies for virtual power plants

Due to the rapid growth in power consumption of domestic and industrial appliances, distributed energy generation units face difficulties in supplying power efficiently. The integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and energy storage systems (ESSs) provides a solution to these problems using appropriate management schemes to achieve optimal operation. Furthermore, to lessen the uncertainties of distributed energy management systems, a decentralized energy management system named virtual power plant (VPP) plays a significant role. This paper presents a comprehensive review of 65 existing different VPP optimization models, techniques, and algorithms based on their system configuration, parameters, and control schemes. Moreover, the paper categorizes the discussed optimization techniques into seven different types, namely conventional technique, offering model, intelligent technique, price-based unit commitment (PBUC) model, optimal bidding, stochastic technique, and linear programming, to underline the commercial and technical efficacy of VPP at day-ahead scheduling at the electricity market. The uncertainties of market prices, load demand, and power distribution in the VPP system are mentioned and analyzed to maximize the system profits with minimum cost. The outcome of the systematic categorization is believed to be a base for future endeavors in the field of VPP development

A Uniform Description of Perioperative Brain MRI Findings in Infants with Severe Congenital Heart Disease:Results of a European Collaboration

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: A uniform description of brain MR imaging findings in infants with severe congenital heart disease to assess risk factors, predict outcome, and compare centers is lacking. Our objective was to uniformly describe the spectrum of perioperative brain MR imaging findings in infants with congenital heart disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective observational studies were performed at 3 European centers between 2009 and 2019. Brain MR imaging was performed preoperatively and/or postoperatively in infants with transposition of the great arteries, single-ventricle physiology, or left ventricular outflow tract obstruction undergoing cardiac surgery within the first 6 weeks of life. Brain injury was assessed on T1, T2, DWI, SWI, and MRV. A subsample of images was assessed jointly to reach a consensus. RESULTS: A total of 348 MR imaging scans (180 preoperatively, 168 postoperatively, 146 pre- and postoperatively) were obtained in 202 infants. Preoperative, new postoperative, and cumulative postoperative white matter injury was identified in 25%, 30%, and 36%; arterial ischemic stroke, in 6%, 10%, and 14%; hypoxic-ischemic watershed injury in 2%, 1%, and 1%; intraparenchymal cerebral hemorrhage, in 0%, 4%, and 5%; cerebellar hemorrhage, in 6%, 2%, and 6%; intraventricular hemorrhage, in 14%, 6%, and 13%; subdural hemorrhage, in 29%, 17%, and 29%; and cerebral sinovenous thrombosis, in 0%, 10%, and 10%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: A broad spectrum of perioperative brain MR imaging findings was found in infants with severe congenital heart disease. We propose an MR imaging protocol including T1-, T2-, diffusion-, and susceptibility-weighted imaging, and MRV to identify ischemic, hemorrhagic, and thrombotic lesions observed in this patient group

Rapidly progressive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in an infant with Noonan syndrome with multiple lentigines: Palliative treatment with a rapamycin analog

Noonan syndrome with multiple lentigines (NSML) frequently manifests with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Recently, it was demonstrated that mTOR inhibition reverses HCM in NSML mice. We report for the first time on the effects of treatment with a rapamycin analog in an infant with LS and malignant HCM. In the boy, progressive HCM was diagnosed during the first week of life and a diagnosis of NSML was established at age 20 weeks by showing a heterozygous Q510E mutation in PTPN11. Immunoblotting with antibodies against pERK, pAkt, and pS6RP in fibroblasts demonstrated enhanced Akt/mTOR pathway activity. Because of the patient's critical condition, everolimus therapy was started at age 24 weeks and continued until heart transplantation at age 36 weeks. Prior to surgery, heart failure improved from NYHA stage IV to II and brain natriuretic peptide values decreased from 9,600 to <1,000 pg/ml, but no reversal of cardiac hypertrophy was observed. Examination of the explanted heart revealed severe hypertrophy and myofiber disarray with extensive perivascular fibrosis. These findings provide evidence that Akt/mTOR activity is enhanced in NSML with HCM and suggest that rapamycin treatment could principally be feasible for infantile NSML. The preliminary experiences made in this single patient indicate that therapy should start early to prevent irreversible cardiac remodelling

Hearing Feelings: Affective Categorization of Music and Speech in Alexithymia, an ERP Study

Background: Alexithymia, a condition characterized by deficits in interpreting and regulating feelings, is a risk factor for a variety of psychiatric conditions. Little is known about how alexithymia influences the processing of emotions in music and speech. Appreciation of such emotional qualities in auditory material is fundamental to human experience and has profound consequences for functioning in daily life. We investigated the neural signature of such emotional processing in alexithymia by means of event-related potentials. Methodology: Affective music and speech prosody were presented as targets following affectively congruent or incongruent visual word primes in two conditions. In two further conditions, affective music and speech prosody served as primes and visually presented words with affective connotations were presented as targets. Thirty-two participants (16 male) judged the affective valence of the targets. We tested the influence of alexithymia on cross-modal affective priming and on N400 amplitudes, indicative of individual sensitivity to an affective mismatch between words, prosody, and music. Our results indicate that the affective priming effect for prosody targets tended to be reduced with increasing scores on alexithymia, while no behavioral differences were observed for music and word targets. At the electrophysiological level, alexithymia was associated with significantly smaller N400 amplitudes in response to affectively incongruent music and speech targets, but not to incongruent word targets. Conclusions: Our results suggest a reduced sensitivity for the emotional qualities of speech and music in alexithymia during affective categorization. This deficit becomes evident primarily in situations in which a verbalization of emotional information is required

Diagnostic quality of X-ray films digitised using conventional digital cameras

As more electronic means are used in the medical sector, digitisation of film based modalities has become common. Usually, expensive digitisers are used. This paper reports a study conducted to determine if commercial digital cameras can be used as a cost effective means for digitisation of X-ray films, while maintaining the same diagnostic quality as the costly digitisers. Selections out of more than 150 models of commercial digital cameras available in the market were made based on resolution, resolving power, and linearity. Diagnostic tests conducted on digitised X-ray images of the chest, hip, skull, and extremities, by a group of radiologists, show that in more than 80% of the cases, there is no diagnostic difference between X-ray films digitised with a conventional digital camera, as opposed to a purpose made digitiser. Cost savings gained through this solution could be significant as the costs incurred by digitisers are approximately 15–25 times that of good digital cameras.7 page(s

How do people with intellectual disabilities construct their social identity? A review

BACKGROUND: A 2005 review by Beart, Hardy and Buchan, asking how people with intellectual disabilities view their social identities, has been widely cited, indicating this important topic needs an updated review. This review covers research on how people with intellectual disabilities view their ascribed label; to what extent they ascribe it to themselves; and whether they recognise it as devalued in society. METHOD: Rapid review methodology using PsycINFO, citation- and hand-searching identified relevant studies. RESULTS: The 16 studies identified indicate that the majority are aware of their ascribed label, or acknowledge they are 'different'. Others reject it, focusing on alternative attributes or roles. Most recognise others view the label negatively and express feelings of shame, anger and powerlessness. CONCLUSIONS: The review advances our understanding of social identity formation in people with intellectual disabilities, with implications for future research and practice to support construction of positive social identities and stigma resistance

Adaptive fault tolerant resource allocation scheme for cloud computing environments

Cloud computing is an optimistic technology that leverages the computing resources to offer globally better and more efficient services than the collection of individual use of internet resources. Due to the heterogeneous and high dynamic nature of resources, failure during resource allocation is a key risk in cloud. Such resource failures lead to delay in tasks execution and have adverse impacts in achieving quality of service (QoS). This paper proposes an effective and adaptive fault tolerant scheduling approach in an effort to facilitate error free task scheduling. The proposed method considers the most impactful parameters such as failure rate and current workload of the resources for optimal QoS. The suggested approach is validated using the CloudSim toolkit based on the commonly used metrics including the resource utilization, average execution time, makespan, throughput, and success rate. Empirical results prove that the suggested approach is more efficient than the benchmark techniques in terms of load balancing and fault tolerance

Early Psychosis Informatics into Care [EPICare]: A co-designed protocol for implementing and evaluating a national integrated digital registry and clinical decision support system within early intervention in psychosis services

Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) services are nationally mandated in England to provide multidisciplinary care to people experiencing first-episode psychosis, which disproportionately affects deprived and ethnic minority youth. Quality of service provision varies by region, and people from historically underserved populations have unequal access. In other disease areas, including stroke and dementia, national digital registries coupled with clinical decision support systems have revolutionised delivery of equitable, evidence-based interventions to transform patient outcomes and reduce population-level disparities in care and prognosis. Given psychosis is ranked the third most burdensome mental health condition by the World Health Organization, it is essential that we achieve the same parity of health improvements. Objectives: Here, we provide details of a co-designed protocol to produce an evidence-based, stakeholder-informed framework for the build, implementation, and evaluation of a national integrated digital registry and clinical decision support system for psychosis, known as EPICare (Early Psychosis Informatics into Care). Here, we provide details of a co-designed protocol to produce an evidence-based, stakeholder-informed framework for the build, implementation, and evaluation of a national integrated digital registry and clinical decision support system for psychosis, known as EPICare (Early Psychosis Informatics into Care). Using a participatory co-design framework, we engaged key stakeholders across four meetings to establish the parameters and essential features of EPICare and identify factors likely to influence adoption and implementation into routine practice. Stakeholders consisted of organisational, clinical, academic, and patient and public contributors. In collaboration with National Health Service (NHS) informatics teams, we identified how to retrieve key data items from Electronic Health Records and subsequently design the software architecture and data model to create an infrastructure plan for future implementation. Guided by Normalisation Process Theory, data synthesised from observations of stakeholder meetings and individual interviews (n=10) were subject to interpretative qualitative analysis. Finally, a co-designed set of guides were produced to allow for the build, implementation, and evaluation of EPICare in a larger, future study. An inclusive, representative stakeholder group, fully engaged with the future co-development of EPICare, was also established. Stage 1 of the EPICare study is now complete. Next steps include Stage 2 building, piloting, implementation, and evaluation of the EPICare platform in five demonstrator NHS Trusts serving underserved and diverse populations with substantial need for EIP care in England. If successful, this will be followed by Stage 3, in which we will seek NHS adoption of EPICare for rollout to all EIP services in England. By establishing a multi-stakeholder network comprising organisational, clinical, academic, and patient and public contributors and engaging them in an iterative co-design process, we have identified essential and desirable elements of the EPICare platform; proactively identified and minimized potential challenges and barriers to uptake and implementation; and addressed key questions related to informatics architecture, infrastructure, governance, and integration in diverse NHS Trusts, enabling us to move forward with the building, piloting, implementation, and evaluation of the EPICare platform in the next stage of the study