Deployment Strategies of EV School Buses with Vehicle to Grid (V2G) in the US School System

Governments across the world are pushing for speedier adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in order to meet their target for transition to a greener and cleaner environment that has low or zero carbon emission. Transportation being one of the major contributors to environmental pollution because of incessant burning of fossil fuels. EVs are being considered to be the best possible solution to alleviate vehicular pollution. However, proliferation of EVs create additional burden on the power grids. The consumption of electrical power is steadily rising because of even-growing population and the demand is particularly higher during summer months due to higher use of air conditioners. To ease this pressure on the grid the novel vehicle-to-grid or V2G technology is being employed whereby idle electric vehicles can be put to use as giant batteries that can send power back to the grid to supplement its output. With the wide scale adoption of electrical buses is schools this turns out to be a feasible option. Battery driven school buses are best suited for this. These vehicles remain idle for major portion of the day and also during summer months and can be effectively utilized for generating electricity using their batteries. However, there are challenges involved in the implementation of this strategy. Besides lack of charging infrastructure and limited knowledge of owners about the nature and benefits of the implementation there are also problems of rapid battery degradation, lack of control on the vehicle and the process and high costs involved. Nevertheless, using literature review this article explains the rationale behind adoption of the technology and highlights, the strategies that can be adopted to effectively exploit this novel technology to make the most out of idle electric school buses to support public utilities. To an extent electric school buses and the v2g technology can be potentially helpful for stabilizing supply of electricity during peak hours and improve efficiency of supply chain management of several industries including the power sector

V2G from Electric School Buses: The Impact on Children, Communities and Supply Chain Management

Electric vehicles (EVs) are rapidly acquiring significance in the day-to-day lives of the masses and so is the vehicle to grid technology (V2G). While nations across the globe are pushing for rapid adoption, they have to first address the challenges of grid overload and shutdown and intermittency of electricity supply from renewable sources. V2G technology provides a respite but is not without drawbacks. The electric school buses (ESBs), that remain idle for most part of the day, have emerged as the preferred choice in implementing V2G with obvious health, environmental and economic advantages. ESBs may appear initially as the new solution to public transportation, but it will affect our lives in many aspects besides being the environmental solution to public transportation. These EVs can be used for multifaceted functionalities than just being restricted to be a charging tool, a load balancer for the Grid or just as a means of transportation. In our digitized world the need for uninterrupted energy has attained a lot of importance. Innumerable solutions and diversified usage of EVs can be innovated from EVs existing energy sources (the batteries) to its in-built technological systems. The V2G concept, combined with smart grid technologies, offers an optimal system for the realization of the benefits offered to users, utilities, economics and the environment by electric vehicles. Electric school buses (ESB) can be used effectively to build a cleaner supply chain. This article delves into the benefits that ESBs confer upon school children, upon the communities and the economy. The health, environmental and economic benefits outweigh the initial costs involved with acquisition and usage of ESB fleet. The sustainability of using the V2G technology using school buses in supply chain management, especially where the supply chain is spread across remains a concern and warrants further research. Nevertheless, beyond a doubt, electric school buses will play a significant role so far as improving the health of the children and communities and reducing emission of pollutants is concerned

Global, regional, and national burden of disorders affecting the nervous system, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BackgroundDisorders affecting the nervous system are diverse and include neurodevelopmental disorders, late-life neurodegeneration, and newly emergent conditions, such as cognitive impairment following COVID-19. Previous publications from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study estimated the burden of 15 neurological conditions in 2015 and 2016, but these analyses did not include neurodevelopmental disorders, as defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11, or a subset of cases of congenital, neonatal, and infectious conditions that cause neurological damage. Here, we estimate nervous system health loss caused by 37 unique conditions and their associated risk factors globally, regionally, and nationally from 1990 to 2021.MethodsWe estimated mortality, prevalence, years lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs), by age and sex in 204 countries and territories, from 1990 to 2021. We included morbidity and deaths due to neurological conditions, for which health loss is directly due to damage to the CNS or peripheral nervous system. We also isolated neurological health loss from conditions for which nervous system morbidity is a consequence, but not the primary feature, including a subset of congenital conditions (ie, chromosomal anomalies and congenital birth defects), neonatal conditions (ie, jaundice, preterm birth, and sepsis), infectious diseases (ie, COVID-19, cystic echinococcosis, malaria, syphilis, and Zika virus disease), and diabetic neuropathy. By conducting a sequela-level analysis of the health outcomes for these conditions, only cases where nervous system damage occurred were included, and YLDs were recalculated to isolate the non-fatal burden directly attributable to nervous system health loss. A comorbidity correction was used to calculate total prevalence of all conditions that affect the nervous system combined.FindingsGlobally, the 37 conditions affecting the nervous system were collectively ranked as the leading group cause of DALYs in 2021 (443 million, 95% UI 378–521), affecting 3·40 billion (3·20–3·62) individuals (43·1%, 40·5–45·9 of the global population); global DALY counts attributed to these conditions increased by 18·2% (8·7–26·7) between 1990 and 2021. Age-standardised rates of deaths per 100 000 people attributed to these conditions decreased from 1990 to 2021 by 33·6% (27·6–38·8), and age-standardised rates of DALYs attributed to these conditions decreased by 27·0% (21·5–32·4). Age-standardised prevalence was almost stable, with a change of 1·5% (0·7–2·4). The ten conditions with the highest age-standardised DALYs in 2021 were stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, epilepsy, neurological complications due to preterm birth, autism spectrum disorder, and nervous system cancer.InterpretationAs the leading cause of overall disease burden in the world, with increasing global DALY counts, effective prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for disorders affecting the nervous system are needed

Elliptical-Tukey chirp signal for high-resolution, air-coupled ultrasonic imaging

A new signal processing method, which uses a modified chirp signal for air-coupled ultrasonic imaging, is described. A combination of the elliptical and Tukey window functions has been shown to give a better performance than the Harming windowing used in most pulse-compression algorithms for air-coupled applications. The elliptical-Tukey chirp signal provides an improvement in both the resolution of images and signal-to-noise ratios. In addition, this type of signal also reduces the level of signal voltages required to drive the source transducer while maintaining the performance of the system. This approach, thus, may have wide interest in all forms of wide bandwidth ultrasonic imaging