HVdc circuit breakers: Prospects and challenges

The integration of offshore wind farms has revitalized the interest in multi–terminal high voltage direct current (M–HVdc) transmission grids. HVdc breakers’ importance has increased as M–HVdc grids are now a commercial truth. Several HVdc circuit breaker technologies have been developed, published, and appeared as prototypes for HVdc networks. This paper summarizes the HVdc breaker technologies from the last two decades, distributed mainly in literature. A comparison of various state–of–the–art HVdc breakers is presented. Further, areas are identified where further research and development are required. The goal is to provide primary challenges and prospects in the HVdc breaker field

Meeting Summary of The NYO3 5th NO-Age/AD Meeting and the 1st Norway-UK Joint Meeting on Aging and Dementia:Recent Progress on the Mechanisms and Interventional Strategies

Unhealthy aging poses a global challenge with profound healthcare and socioeconomic implications. Slowing down the aging process offers a promising approach to reduce the burden of a number of age-related diseases, such as dementia, and promoting healthy longevity in the old population. In response to the challenge of the aging population and with a view to the future, Norway and the United Kingdom are fostering collaborations, supported by a "Money Follows Cooperation agreement" between the 2 nations. The inaugural Norway-UK joint meeting on aging and dementia gathered leading experts on aging and dementia from the 2 nations to share their latest discoveries in related fields. Since aging is an international challenge, and to foster collaborations, we also invited leading scholars from 11 additional countries to join this event. This report provides a summary of the conference, highlighting recent progress on molecular aging mechanisms, genetic risk factors, DNA damage and repair, mitophagy, autophagy, as well as progress on a series of clinical trials (eg, using NAD+ precursors). The meeting facilitated dialogue among policymakers, administrative leaders, researchers, and clinical experts, aiming to promote international research collaborations and to translate findings into clinical applications and interventions to advance healthy aging.</p

Regulation of the IL-21 gene by the NF-κB transcription factor c-Rel

IL-21 is a member of the common γ-chain–dependent cytokine family and is a key modulator of lymphocyte development, proliferation, and differentiation. IL-21 is highly expressed in activated CD4+ T cells and plays a critical role in the expansion and differentiation of the Th cell subsets, Th17 and follicular helper T (TFH) cells. Because of its potent activity in both myeloid and lymphoid cell immune responses, it has been implicated in a number of autoimmune diseases and has also been used as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of some cancers. In this study, we demonstrate that c-Rel, a member of the NF-κB family of transcription factors, is required for IL-21 gene expression in T lymphocytes. IL-21 mRNA and protein levels are reduced in the CD4+ cells of rel−/− mice when compared with rel+/+ mice in both in vitro and in vivo models. A c-Rel binding site identified in the proximal promoter of il21 is confirmed to bind c-Rel in vitro and in vivo and to regulate expression from the il21 promoter in T cells. Downstream of IL-21 expression, Th17, TFH, and germinal center B cell development are also impaired in rel−/− mice. The administration of IL-21 protein rescued the development of TFH cells but not germinal center B cells. Taken together, c-Rel plays an important role in the expression of IL-21 in T cells and subsequently in IL-21-dependent TFH cell development

Emotion recognition and school violence detection from children speech

Abstract School violence is a serious problem all over the world, and violence detection is significant to protect juveniles. School violence can be detected from the biological signals of victims, and emotion recognition is an important way to detect violence events. In this research, a violence simulation experiment was designed and performed for school violence detection system. Emotional voice from the experiment was extracted and analyzed. Consecutive elimination process (CEP) algorithm was proposed for emotion recognition in this paper. After parameters optimization, SVM was chosen as the classifier and the algorithm was validated by Berlin database which is an emotional speech database of adults, and the mean accuracy for seven emotions was 79.05%. The emotional speech database of children extracted in violence simulation was also classified by SVM classifier with proposed CEP algorithm, and the mean accuracy was 66.13%. The results showed that high classification performance could be achieved with the CEP algorithm. The classification result was also compared with database of adults, and the results indicated that children and adults’ voice should be treated differently in speech emotion recognition researches. The accuracy of children database is lower than adult database; the accuracy of violence detection will be improved by other signals in the system