Simplified Algorithm for Dynamic Demand Response in Smart Homes Under Smart Grid Environment

Under Smart Grid environment, the consumers may respond to incentive--based smart energy tariffs for a particular consumption pattern. Demand Response (DR) is a portfolio of signaling schemes from the utility to the consumers for load shifting/shedding with a given deadline. The signaling schemes include Time--of--Use (ToU) pricing, Maximum Demand Limit (MDL) signals etc. This paper proposes a DR algorithm which schedules the operation of home appliances/loads through a minimization problem. The category of loads and their operational timings in a day have been considered as the operational parameters of the system. These operational parameters determine the dynamic priority of a load, which is an intermediate step of this algorithm. The ToU pricing, MDL signals, and the dynamic priority of loads are the constraints in this formulated minimization problem, which yields an optimal schedule of operation for each participating load within the consumer provided duration. The objective is to flatten the daily load curve of a smart home by distributing the operation of its appliances in possible low--price intervals without violating the MDL constraint. This proposed algorithm is simulated in MATLAB environment against various test cases. The obtained results are plotted to depict significant monetary savings and flattened load curves.Comment: This paper was accepted and presented in 2019 IEEE PES GTD Grand International Conference and Exposition Asia (GTD Asia). Furthermore, the conference proceedings has been published in IEEE Xplor

Quantum limits on phase-preserving linear amplifiers

The purpose of a phase-preserving linear amplifier is to make a small signal larger, regardless of its phase, so that it can be perceived by instruments incapable of resolving the original signal, while sacrificing as little as possible in signal-to-noise. Quantum mechanics limits how well this can be done: a high-gain linear amplifier must degrade the signal-to-noise; the noise added by the amplifier, when referred to the input, must be at least half a quantum at the operating frequency. This well-known quantum limit only constrains the second moments of the added noise. Here we derive the quantum constraints on the entire distribution of added noise: we show that any phase-preserving linear amplifier is equivalent to a parametric amplifier with a physical state for the ancillary mode; the noise added to the amplified field mode is distributed according to the Wigner function of the ancilla state.Comment: 37 pages, 6 figure

Assesment of Roles and Responsibilities of ASHA workers in Bijapur taluk of Karnataka

The discourse on the ASHA's role centres around three typologies - ASHA as an activist, ASHA as a link worker or facilitator, and ASHA as a community level health care provider. She will counsel women on birth preparedness, importance of safe delivery, breastfeeding and complementary feeding, immunization, contraception and prevention of common infections including Reproductive Tract Infection/Sexually Transmitted Infection (RTIs/STIs) and care of the young child. A cross sectional study was done on 132 ASHA workers selected from 5 random PHCs in Bijapur taluk. Data was collected in a prestructured proforma using interview technique from June to October, 2012. Most of the ASHA workers were not aware about the newer roles and responsibilities been implied on them under various national programmes including the immunization guidelines and schedule. All the ASHA workers were aware about the performance based incentive for the their work in the community and its their right to claim that incentive. Under the cascade model of training to the ASHA, trainings should provide complete knowledge and skills to the trainees within the stipulated time. Quality of training should be enhanced and refresher trainings should be planned regularly

Fast Automatic Verification of Large-Scale Systems with Lookup Tables

Modern safety-critical systems are difficult to formally verify, largely due to their large scale. In particular, the widespread use of lookup tables in embedded systems across diverse industries, such as aeronautics and automotive systems, create a critical obstacle to the scalability of formal verification. This paper presents a novel approach for the formal verification of large-scale systems with lookup tables. We use a learning-based technique to automatically learn abstractions of the lookup tables and use the abstractions to then prove the desired property. If the verification fails, we propose a falsification heuristic to search for a violation of the specification. In contrast with previous work on lookup table verification, our technique is completely automatic, making it ideal for deployment in a production environment. To our knowledge, our approach is the only technique that can automatically verify large-scale systems lookup with tables. We illustrate the effectiveness of our technique on a benchmark which cannot be handled by the commercial tool SLDV, and we demonstrate the performance improvement provided by our technique

Evaluation of pharmacovigilance concepts among healthcare professionals in Davangere, Karnataka, India

Background: Adverse drug reactions are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Timely detection and reporting of adverse drug events through pharmacovigilance is the best tool we have to prevent adverse drug reaction. One of the major reasons for underutilization of pharmacovigilance in India is deficit in awareness, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance. The objective of this study was to assess these parameters among healthcare professionals in our hospital.Methods: 200 health care professionals (post graduate students, undergraduate students, interns and nurses) took part in the study. A pre-designed questionnaire structured to obtain information on pharmacovigilance was used for evaluation. Questionnaire also enquired on factors that deter respondents from reporting.Results: Among undergraduates, the satisfactory responses for knowledge, awareness and practice of pharmacovigilance were 12%, 72% and 42% respectively and for postgraduates it was 52%, 48% and 26% respectively. For interns it was 4%, 38% and 8 % respectively and nurses 8%, 18% and 26% respectively. Only 1% of undergraduates and 14% of postgraduates showed satisfactory responses to all three categories evaluated. Undergraduate students had a significantly higher awareness scores among the categories (p<0.05). When it comes to knowledge and practice there was not much differences between groups. Lack of time to report was the most cited factor across all categories discouraging reporting.Conclusions: Results are encouraging among undergraduate students, but not significantly better than postgraduates. The poor performance among interns and nurses is due to lack of awareness. A strong basic foundation course regarding pharmacovigilance in academics will help in effective implementation of pharmacovigilance