Demand Response in HEMSs Using DRL and the Impact of Its Various Configurations and Environmental Changes

With smart grid advances, enormous amounts of data are made available, enabling the training of machine learning algorithms such as deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Recent research has utilized DRL to obtain optimal solutions for complex real-time optimization problems, including demand response (DR), where traditional methods fail to meet time and complex requirements. Although DRL has shown good performance for particular use cases, most studies do not report the impacts of various DRL settings. This paper studies the DRL performance when addressing DR in home energy management systems (HEMSs). The trade-offs of various DRL configurations and how they influence the performance of the HEMS are investigated. The main elements that affect the DRL model training are identified, including state-action pairs, reward function, and hyperparameters. Various representations of these elements are analyzed to characterize their impact. In addition, different environmental changes and scenarios are considered to analyze the model's scalability and adaptability. The findings elucidate the adequacy of DRL to address HEMS challenges since, when appropriately configured, it successfully schedules from 73% to 98% of the appliances in different simulation scenarios and minimizes the electricity cost by 19% to 47%. 2022 by the authors.This research was funded by the NPRP11S-1202-170052 grant from Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu

The invisible hand of touch: testing a tactile sensation-choice satisfaction model in online shopping

This study tests a model of the relationship between online store sensory environments and consumer responses using the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm. The aim is to a) examine the ability of three online product presentation formats (OPPFs) to induce tactile sensations; b) identify the effect of tactile sensations upon choice satisfaction and c) examine the mediating role of cognitive effort and affective experience. Videos are found to induce the greatest tactile sensations followed by zoom image while static image is found to induce the least. Furthermore, the more tactile sensations consumers experience while shopping online, the higher their emotional experience, resulting in lower cognitive effort and higher consumer choice satisfaction. Affective experience is found to mediate the tactile sensations and choice satisfaction relationship. The original contribution of the research is a newly validated model of OPPFs, tactile sensations, customer experience and choice satisfaction that extends theoretical understanding of variables previously untested. Practical Applications: The study offers practical results from which small to medium sized, or new start-up, online clothing retailers can benefit. The study shows the advantages of using OPPFs such as videos and zoom images on retail websites in order to assist shoppers by enhancing the sensory buying experience. Such online retailers may not be able to afford the investment in more complex and costly advanced technologies such as the use of augmented reality in virtual mirroring. The study shows that when online retailers provide videos and/or zoom images on their websites, they allow shoppers to experience greater tactile sensations while evaluating and selecting a product compared to only being able to view it as a static image. Online clothing retailers can continue to rely on these technologies to compensate shoppers for the lack of touch in the online shopping context which is so important when purchasing clothing

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Managing and Leading a Diverse Workforce: One of the Main Challenges in Management

In the recent years, there has been an increasing trend in organizations to give teams more responsibility to work on major tasks. More companies are getting to recognize that the best way to meet customer satisfaction, higher quality products, and faster service challenges is through coordinated efforts of employees. The increasing number of mergers, joint ventures and strategic alliances is bringing people from distinct cultures and types of organizations together. As a result, in the twenty first century managers have become more concerned with managing diversity in organizations. Diversity offers both potential costs and benefits for the organization. This research explains how managers can lead and manage diverse teams. Further, it shows how managers could manage more effectively diverse team whose members have different ages, genders and nationalities or even belong to distinct ethnic or cultural groups. Therefore, this research paper is focusing on one of the main recent challenges in management and business, which is managing and leading a diverse workforce. As a major challenge for all mangers in the world is to lead and treat a diverse workforce in an equitable and fair manner

Examining how online product presentation formats can impact female consumers’ choice satisfaction through tactile sensations, cognitive, and affective processes in the online shopping context

This research examines how online product presentation formats can impact consumers’ choice satisfaction through tactile sensations, cognitive, and affective processes in the online shopping context. To achieve the aim of the thesis, this research sets out to answer three research questions via the testing of a quantitative research model. 1. What is the effect of different online product display formats upon tactile sensations? 2. What is the relationship between tactile sensations and choice satisfaction in an online shopping context? 3. What are the factors that mediate the effect of tactile sensations upon choice satisfaction? Utilizing a hypothetico-deductive approach, the research questions are tested in a model which includes three independent variables, one final dependent variable, and two control variables. A three-way between-subjects experimental design is adopted in this research study, as participants are divided into three groups according to the online product presentation technologies (OPPTs) to which they were assigned. Three formats are included: static image, video, and interactive zoom image. The data collection is based on an online simulation selection task on a simulated website developed for this research study, and a post-task questionnaire. Correlation analysis, one way ANOVA, and structural equation modelling are applied to analyse the data. Contributions from this study include theoretical contributions, contributions to practice and methodological contributions. The research offers meaningful contributions to the literature on sensory marketing, recent online product display technologies, and media richness. This contribution is crucial in order to make the online shopping experience more tangible, and to increase consumers’ satisfaction and confidence with their online choices. The theoretical contribution involves extending a theoretical understanding of the relationship between tactile sensations and choice satisfaction. This research adds a new validated model of the relationship between tactile sensations and choice satisfaction to existing knowledge. This research contributes to practice, as it provides online clothing retailers with evidence of the benefits of employing advanced online product presentation technologies (OPPTs), such as videos and interactive zoom images. These formats are found to allow consumers to experience greater tactile sensations compared to the static image. Also, it has been found that a video and an interactive zoom image can allow consumers to have a greater affective experience compared to a static image. Further, an interactive zoom image can allow consumers to experience lower cognitive effort compared to a video

DRL-HEMS: Deep Reinforcement Learning Agent for Demand Response in Home Energy Management Systems Considering Customers and Operators Perspectives

With the smart grid and smart homes development, different data are made available, providing a source for training algorithms, such as deep reinforcement learning (DRL), in smart grid applications. These algorithms allowed the home energy management systems (HEMSs) to deal with the computational complexities and the uncertainties at the end-user side. This article proposes a multi-objective DRL-HEMS: a data-driven solution, which is a trained DRL agent in a HEMS to optimize the energy consumption of a household with different appliances, an energy storage system, a photovoltaic system, and an electric vehicle. The proposed solution reduces the electricity cost considering the resident’s comfort level and the loading level of the distribution transformer. The distribution transformer load is optimized by optimizing its loss-of-life. The performance of DRL-HEMS is evaluated using real-world data, and results show that it can optimize multiple appliances operation, reduce electricity bill cost, dissatisfaction cost, and the transformer loading condition. IEEEScopu

Evaluation of OVOL1 and Filaggrin immunohistochemical expression and clinical relevance in psoriasis

Abstract Background Psoriasis is a disease of overactive immune system. OVOL1 and Filaggrin have been associated with many inflammatory skin lesions. To the best of our knowledge, the correlation between OVOL1 and Filaggrin in psoriasis was not previously investigated. This work aims to search the immunohistochemical expression and correlation between OVOL1 and Filaggrin in psoriasis. Materials and methods Slides cut from paraffin blocks of 30 psoriasis cases and 30 control subjects were stained with OVOL1 and Filaggrin. Clinicopathological data were correlated with the results of staining. Results OVOL1 and Filaggrin expression in epidermis showed a significant gradual reduction from normal skin to peri-lesional and psoriasis biopsies (P < 0.001). In contrast, psoriasis dermis showed a significant overexpression of OVOL1 in inflammatory cells in relation to peri-lesional biopsies (P < 0.002). OVOL1 demonstrated a significant direct correlation with Filaggrin expression in psoriasis (r = 0.568, P < 0.004). OVOL1 and Filaggrin expression in psoriasis skin epidermis demonstrated a statistically significant negative correlation with PASI score. Conclusion OVOL1 and Filaggrin might be involved in psoriasis-associated inflammation and skin hyperproliferation. OVOL1 might have a protective barrier function in the skin and could be used to stratify progressive disease. Filaggrin may play a role in progression of psoriasis. OVOL1 inhibition could be considered in suppression of Filaggrin function. OVOL1 agonists may be beneficial in psoriasis treatment

Degradation of methyl orange using Fenton catalytic reaction

Oxidation by Fenton reactions a proven and economically feasible process for destruction of a variety of hazardous pollutants in wastewater. We report herein the oxidation of methyl orange using a Fenton reaction at normal laboratory temperature and at atmospheric pressure. The effects of different parameters like the dosages of H2O2 and Fe2+, initial concentration of dye and pH of the solution, on the oxidation of the dye present in dilute aqueous solutions are found. The results indicate that the dye can be most effectively oxidized in aqueous solution at dye: Fe2+:H2O2 molar ratio of 1:3.5:54.2. It was found that more than 97.8% removal of the dye could be achieved in 15 min in the pH 2.79 at room temperature. The results will be useful for designing the treatment systems of the various dyes containing wastewater