Demand Bidding Program and Its Application in Hotel Energy Management

Demand bidding program (DBP) is recently adopted in practice by some energy operators. DBP is a risk-free demand response program targeting large energy consumers. In this paper, we consider DBP with the application in hotel energy management. For DBP, optimization problem is formulated with the objective of maximizing expected reward, which is received when the amount of energy saving satisfies the contract. For a general distribution of energy consumption, we give a general condition for the optimal bid and outline an algorithm to find the solution without numerical integration. Furthermore, for Gaussian distribution, we derive closed-form expressions of the optimal bid and the corresponding expected reward. Regarding hotel energy, we characterize loads in the hotel and introduce several energy consumption models that capture major energy use. With the proposed models and DBP, simulation results show that DBP provides economics benefits to the hotel and encourages load scheduling. Furthermore, when only mean and variance of energy consumption are known, the validity of Gaussian approximation for computing optimal load and expected reward is also discussed

Aluminum Alloys Behavior during Forming

Industrial revolution toward weight reduction and fuel efficiency of the automotive and aerospace vehicles is the major concern to replace heavy metals with light weight metals without affecting much strength. For this, aluminum alloys are the major contributors to those industries. Moreover, aluminum alloys are majorly categorized as 1xxx, 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx, and 8xxx based on major alloying elements. Among all, 2xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx are having majority of applications in the abovementioned industries. For manufacturing any engineering deformable components, forming characteristics are must. Forming behavior of aluminum alloys has been evaluated through different processes including deep drawing, stretching, incremental forming, bending, hydro forming etc., under different process conditions (cold, warm, and hot conditions) and process parameters. Each process has its own process feasibility to evaluate the formability without any forming defects in products. The present chapter discusses a few important processes and their parameter effect on the aluminum alloys through the experimentations and simulation works

Quantitation of Group A Rotavirus by real time Polymerase Chain Reaction in Children with varying severity of gastroenteritis

INTRODUCTION: Rotaviral gastroenteritis is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in Indian children below 5 years of age. India spends about 2 to 3.4 billion rupees annually on the treatment of these cases. One in approximately every 260 children below five years of age die of rotavirus diarrhea every year. Faeco oral route is the most important mode of transmission and hence improvement in sanitation and general hygiene should ideally prevent transmission. However, even in the developed countries, this could not be achieved. It is difficult to prevent feco-orally transmitted diseases in developing countries without multiple preventive measures, including vaccination. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended incorporation of vaccines against rotavirus diarrhea in the national immunization schedules of developing countries with high diarrheal mortality. Though vaccines are available, they have to be in a reasonable price range to be affordable for the poorer countries which have the majority of the mortality and severe disease burden. To cater to this need in India, various indigenous vaccines are being developed. Rotavirus is a double stranded RNA virus belonging to the family Reoviridae. The genome is segmented. The virus is a triple layered particle with outer, middle and inner layers. Different serogroups are identified based on the antigenic specificity of the middle layer of the virus and electrophoretic mobility of the 11 RNA segments of the viral genome. Out of the seven different serogroups (A – G) identified, Groups A, B and C are associated with humans and group A viruses are most commonly associated with severe life threatening disease worldwide. Among the serogroups, there are genotypes which are designated G and P types based on the antigenic determinants of the outer layer. Distribution of the genotypes varies from place to place and more than one genotype may exist in a given geographical region. OBJECTIVE: To correlate viral load by real-time PCR in children with mild, moderate and severe rotavirus gastroenteritis assessed by the 20 point Vesikari scoring system for rotavirus diarrhea. METHODS: One hundred and twenty two faeces samples from children below 5 years of age presenting with diarrhea and positive for rotavirus by enzyme immune assay were included in the study. A 20 point Vesikari scoring system was used to objectively arrive at scoring the severity of diarrhea based on the information provided by the mothers. Twenty ‘mild’, sixty two ‘moderate’ and forty ‘severe’ category faeces samples were obtained. Samples were collected from the main hospital and from a community study. RNA extraction was done using the Qiagen kit extraction method for RNA which is a combination of silica gel based membrane and microspin technique. Reverse transcription was carried out in the presence of random primers and reverse transcriptase derived from Moloney murine leukemia virus. Real time PCR was performed on all the samples using Taqman chemistry and the crossing points (real time PCR cycle number where fluorescence crossed the threshold) obtained, which are a direct correlate of the viral load were used to study the association with severity of diarrhea. Kruskal Wallis test was the statistical method employed to study the association. RESULTS: One hundred and twenty two samples were analysed. The mean age in the community study children was less than that of the children from the hospital study. Majority of the children affected were more than 6 months of age. The median Vesikari scores in the mild, moderate and severe categories were 5, 8 and 11 respectively. There was no association observed between the viral load and severity of gastroenteritis. When associations were studied between viral load and the individual parameters of the Vesikari scoring system, there was a significant association between the number of episodes of diarrhea and the viral load. The more the number of episodes of diarrhea, the greater is the viral load. Other parameters did not have any association with viral load. CONCLUSION: There was no significant association studied between the severity of rotavirus gastroenteritis and viral load. However, with increase in the number of episodes of diarrhea, the viral load increased

A PRECISE REVIEW ON FAST DISSOLVING ORAL FILMS

Orally fast dissolving films (OFDFs) have been introduced in the market recently as they provide convenience and ease of use over other dosage forms such as orally disintegrating tablets. This technology evolved over the past few years from the confection and oral care markets in the form of breath strips and became a novel and widely accepted form by consumers, so OFDFs are gaining the interest of large number of pharmaceutical industries. Orally fast dissolving film is the type of drug delivery system which when placed in the oral cavity, disintegrate or dissolve within few seconds without the intake of water. OFDFs are very similar to postage stamp in their shape, size and thickness. These films have a potential to deliver the drug systemically through intragastric, sublingual or buccal route of administration and also has been used for local action. This type of technology offer a convenient way of dosing medication, not to special population groups like pediatric, geriatric, bedridden patients, mentally ill patients, but also to the general population. The present review provides an account of various formulation considerations, method of preparation and quality control of the OFDFs. Keywords: Fast dissolving films, Fast disintegration, Oral strips, Tensile strength

Exact-Differential Large-Scale Traffic Simulation

Analyzing large-scale traffics by simulation needs repeating execution many times with various patterns of scenarios or parameters. Such repeating execution brings about big redundancy because the change from a prior scenario to a later scenario is very minor in most cases, for example, blocking only one of roads or changing the speed limit of several roads. In this paper, we propose a new redundancy reduction technique, called exact-differential simulation, which enables to simulate only changing scenarios in later execution while keeping exactly same results as in the case of whole simulation. The paper consists of two main efforts: (i) a key idea and algorithm of the exact-differential simulation, (ii) a method to build large-scale traffic simulation on the top of the exact-differential simulation. In experiments of Tokyo traffic simulation, the exact-differential simulation shows 7.26 times as much elapsed time improvement in average and 2.26 times improvement even in the worst case as the whole simulation