Operating market based regulation service using software agents compliant with NERC\u27s control performance standards

With the changing scenario for procurement of energy it becomes necessary to understand the process of obtaining energy from a diverse set of suppliers capable of providing substantial amounts of electric power at competitive prices. Sufficient insight has been gained in the energy brokerage system design and planning owing to experiences in the recently established markets especially the California market. It becomes contextual to analyze and understand the procurement of ancillary services, which are generally bundled as part of the wholesale energy supply chain, using a similarly competitive environment having a number of players that provide electric power for such services.;The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to provide a simulation package for conducting competitive auctions using software agents for the regulation service auction market, and (2) to demonstrate the compliance of a power system, employing Automatic Generation Control with parameters obtained from such a market, with North American Electric Reliability Council\u27s performance standards. The package employs a flexible and extensible Java-based agent development environment, MADKIT, to simulate the auctions for regulation service, and MATLAB/SIMULINK models with a fuzzy controller to simulate the power system. The framework is tested using a sample three-area power system, where the parameters for regulation service in the second area are obtained from a competitive auction market. A bidding strategy based on fuzzy logic is also designed and tested for ensuring good profit for a bidding supplier in the auctions

Herbicidal Control of Grasses

Necessity of the herbicidal application for controlling undesirable grasses, by the Defence Services, Military farms and Inter Service Organisations is highlighted. Control of grasses by herbicidal chemicals, registered under the Insecticides Act 1968 in this country, is reviewed apart from a mention of non-chemical methods

Copper and Zinc Nanoparticles as Microbial Disinfectants in Water

Waterborne illness is one of the world's most pervasive causes of morbidity and mortality, with severe health, social, environmental and economic impacts. Human faeces are often inadequately managed and contaminate community and household water supplies. Sustainable safe community and household water access is often not achieved in the developing world and adverse health impacts can result from faecal contamination of water. Metals, particularly copper and zinc, have been proposed as effective disinfectants of drinking water. This research aimed to quantify the overall disinfecting effects of a 0.2 mg/L and 2mg/L dose of copper and zinc oxide nanoparticles, as well as the kinetics of such disinfection, on three test organisms; Bacillus cereus spores, Escherichia coli log-phase cells, and MS2 coliphage. Experiments were conducted in pH 7.3, 10 g/L (approximately 42mM)HEPES-buffered water with and without about 10 mg/L added natural organic matter (NOM). The concentrations of culturable microorganisms were assayed at 0, 20, 60, 180, and 360 minutes. Copper and zinc oxide nanoparticles were found to be effective for same-day or overnight achievement of the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) "protective" level of disinfection (2 log[10] or 99% reduction) for E. coli in both experimental waters, and B. cereus spores in waters without added NOM. Measurable inactivation was not observed against MS2 coliphage for the low dose, although some inactivation (0.53 to 0.78 log[10] reduction in 6 hours in NOM-amended and NOM-negative waters, respectively) was achieved at the high dose. Some other experimental conditions yielded inactivation, but it was not rapid or extensive enough to achieve the W.H.O. protective performance target for same-day or overnight use. Overall, the combined use of copper and zinc nanoparticles shows promise for effective point-of-use disinfection of water low in turbidity and natural organic matter.Master of Science in Public Healt

Motor activity dependent and independent functions for Myosin II in cytokinesis contribute to actomyosin ring assembly and contraction in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Cytokinesis depends on a contractile actomyosin ring in many eukaryotes [1, 2, 3]. Myosin II is a key component of the actomyosin ring, although whether it functions as a motor or as an actin cross-linker to exert its essential role is disputed [1, 4, 5]. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the myo2-E1 mutation affects the upper 50 kDa sub-domain of the myosin II heavy chain, and cells carrying this lethal mutation are defective in actomyosin ring assembly at the non-permissive temperature [6, 7]. myo2-E1 also affects actomyosin ring contraction when rings isolated from permissive temperature-grown cells are incubated with ATP [8]. Here we report isolation of a compensatory suppressor mutation in the lower 50 kDa sub-domain (myo2-E1-Sup1) that reverses the inability of myo2-E1 to form colonies at the restrictive temperature. myo2-E1-Sup1 is capable of assembling normal actomyosin rings, although rings isolated from myo2-E1-Sup1 are defective in ATP-dependent contraction in vitro. Furthermore, the product of myo2-E1-Sup1 does not translocate actin filaments in motility assays in vitro. Superimposition of myo2-E1 and myo2-E1-Sup1 on available rigor and blebbistatin-bound myosin II structures suggests that myo2-E1-Sup1 may represent a novel actin translocation-defective allele. Actomyosin ring contraction and viability of myo2-E1-Sup1 cells depend on the late cytokinetic S. pombe myosin II isoform, Myp2p, a non-essential protein that is normally dispensable for actomyosin ring assembly and contraction. Our work reveals that Myo2p may function in two different and essential modes during cytokinesis: a motor activity-independent form that can promote actomyosin ring assembly and a motor activity-dependent form that supports ring contraction

Burden of typhoid and paratyphoid fever in India.

BACKGROUND: In 2017, more than half the cases of typhoid fever worldwide were projected to have occurred in India. In the absence of contemporary population-based data, it is unclear whether declining trends of hospitalization for typhoid in India reflect increased antibiotic treatment or a true reduction in infection. METHODS: From 2017 through 2020, we conducted weekly surveillance for acute febrile illness and measured the incidence of typhoid fever (as confirmed on blood culture) in a prospective cohort of children between the ages of 6 months and 14 years at three urban sites and one rural site in India. At an additional urban site and five rural sites, we combined blood-culture testing of hospitalized patients who had a fever with survey data regarding health care use to estimate incidence in the community. RESULTS: A total of 24,062 children who were enrolled in four cohorts contributed 46,959 child-years of observation. Among these children, 299 culture-confirmed typhoid cases were recorded, with an incidence per 100,000 child-years of 576 to 1173 cases in urban sites and 35 in rural Pune. The estimated incidence of typhoid fever from hospital surveillance ranged from 12 to 1622 cases per 100,000 child-years among children between the ages of 6 months and 14 years and from 108 to 970 cases per 100,000 person-years among those who were 15 years of age or older. Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi was isolated from 33 children, for an overall incidence of 68 cases per 100,000 child-years after adjustment for age. CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of typhoid fever in urban India remains high, with generally lower estimates of incidence in most rural areas. (Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; NSSEFI Clinical Trials Registry of India number, CTRI/2017/09/009719; ISRCTN registry number, ISRCTN72938224.)

In Vitro Contraction of Cytokinetic Ring Depends on Myosin II but not on Actin Dynamics

10.1038/ncb2781Nature Cell Biology157853-859NCBI

Product Design: A Review and Research Agenda for Management Studies

This paper reviews research on product design in the broad domain of business studies. It highlights established and emerging perspectives and lines of inquiry, and organizes them around three core areas, corresponding to different stages of the design process (design activities, design choices, design results). Avenues for further research at the intersection of these bodies of research are identified and discussed, and the authors argue that management scholars possess conceptual and methodological tools suited to enriching research on design and effectively pursuing lines of investigation only partially addressed by other communities, such as the construction and deployment of design capabilities, or the organizational and institutional context of design activities

Aerobic microbial community-based single cell protein production from soybean-processing wastewater

Concerns over the depletion of natural resources and the need for food security for a growing global population are driving research into sustainable alternative ways to produce food-grade protein. Microbial protein or single cell protein (SCP) is defined as dried microorganisms with a high protein content along with fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Unlike single organism-based SCP, microbial community-based protein is composed of various microbial taxa, which can be grown on wastewater without the need for sterilization. Food-processing wastewaters constitute a safe and reliable substrate for microbial community-based SCP production, with carbon, nitrogen, and the existent microbial communities as key parameters. The aim of this research is to produce microbial protein directly from soybean-processing wastewater using the nutrients and microbial communities present. Regardless of the conditions applied in this work, microbial protein contained the essential amino acids required by aquaculture animals. Overall, this dissertation advances our understanding of the feasibility of reusing nutrients and microbial communities in food-processing wastewater to produce microbial protein without the addition of exogenous nutrients.Doctor of Philosoph

REAL TIME STATIC SCENE 3D RECONSTRUCTION USING DEPTH SENSORS FOR AUGMENTED TELEOPERATION

In the first part of this Master’s Thesis, literature survey is done to find the best performing algorithm in terms of real-time performance and quality of 3D reconstruction from depth images. Kinfu of PCL is found to be the best in terms of real-time performance and maintainability, as it is open-source software, with thousands of users working on to improve it. The primary part of the thesis is to improve on the 3D reconstruction quality of Kinfu and this is achieved by improving on the three important stages of Kinfu, Depth Filtering, Pose-estimation and 3D reconstruction. A new Anisotropic depth filtering kernel is proposed and it is found to give 23% quantitative improvement over baseline Kinfu. A modified pose-estimation which incorporates the uncertainty or error characteristics of the depth measured as part of the ICP algorithm is proposed. This results in a 51% quantitative improvement and a big subjective quality improvement over baseline Kinfu. A similar approach based on depth error characteristics but applied to 3D reconstruction stage which is based on an already published paper [1], is implemented. All the improvements in each of the three stages are combined together, to get a robust, real-time 3D reconstruction framework.M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 201