Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Transmission Project : Draft Environmental Impact Statement

This report summarizes the results of system planning, environmental, and location studies for transmission facilities associated with the proposed Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Project in northern Maine. The studies recommend the construction of two 345-kV transmission circuits from a substation near the project along a route through western Maine into northern New Hampshire and Vermont. The plan will integrate the power produced by the project into the New England Power Pool Transmission System

Tuberculosis Transmission by Patients with Smear- Negative Pulmonary Tuberculosis in a Large Cohort in The Netherlands

Background. Sputum smear microscopy is commonly used for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB). Although patients with sputum smear-negative TB are less infectious than patients with smear-positive TB, they also contribute to TB transmission. The objective of this study was to determine the proportion of TB transmission events caused by patients with smear-negative pulmonary TB in The Netherlands. Methods. All patients in The Netherlands with culture-confirmed TB during the period 1996-2004 were included in this study. Patients with identical DNA fingerprints in Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from sputum samples were clustered. The first patients in a cluster were considered to be the index patients; all other patients were considered to have secondary cases. In addition, we examined transmission from sources by conventional contact tracing. Results. We analyzed 394 clusters with a total of 1285 patients. On the basis of molecular linkage only, 12.6% of the secondary cases were attributable to transmission from a patient with smear-negative TB. The relative transmission rate among patients with smear-negative TB, compared with patients with smear-positive TB, was 0.24 (95% confidence interval, 0.20-0.30). Secondary cases in clusters with an index patient with smear-negative TB more frequently had smear-negative status (odds ratio, 1.86; 95% confidence interval, 1.18-2.93), compared with secondary cases in clusters with an index patient with smear-positive TB. Conventional contact tracing revealed that 26 (6.2%) of the 417 sources, as identified by the Municipal Health Services, had smear-negative TB. Conclusions. In The Netherlands, patients with smear-negative, culture-positive TB are responsible for 13% of TB transmission. Countries that have ample resources should expand their TB-control efforts to include prevention of transmission from patients with smear-negative, culture-positive pulmonary TB

Toll-like receptor gene variants and bacterial vaginosis among HIV-1 infected and uninfected African women.

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common vaginal syndrome associated with altered microflora that increases the risk of preterm delivery and acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases. The cause of BV is unknown although toll-like receptors (TLRs), that are central to innate immune responses, may be important. We evaluated associations between TLR SNPs and BV among HIV-1 infected and uninfected African women. Logistic regression was used to assess associations between SNPs (N=99) in TLRs 2-4, 7-9 and BV (as classified by Nugent's criteria). Among HIV-1 uninfected women, TLR7 rs5743737 and TLR7 rs1634323 were associated with a decreased risk of BV, whereas TLR7 rs179012 was associated with an increased risk. TLR2 SNP rs3804099 was associated with a decreased risk of BV among HIV-1 infected women. Our findings indicate that there may be differences in TLR association with BV among HIV-1 infected and HIV-1 uninfected women

A 95% decline in estimated newly acquired HIV infections, Amsterdam, 2010 to 2022

The infrastructure in cities provides unique opportunities to eliminate HIV. Since 2014, the HIV Transmission Elimination AMsterdam Initiative, a consortium involved in HIV prevention and care, has employed an integrated approach to curb HIV incidence in Amsterdam. This effort contributed to the 95% decline in estimated newly acquired infections and the 79% decline in observed new HIV diagnoses in Amsterdam from 2010 to 2022. In 2022, Amsterdam reached and exceeded the 95-95-95 UNAIDS treatment cascade goals (98-95%-96%)

Generation And Transmission Systems For Wave Power: A Feasibility Study

Following his recommendation to WESC, Dr. J.K. Wright was asked to approach GEC, Joseph Lucas and IRD with a view to seeking their support in assessing the technical feasibility and cost of converting wave energy, available in some mechanical form at the output of a device (WEC), to a more usable form for consumption on the UK mainland. At this time it was anticipated that this usable form would be electricity which would be fed into the CEGB/Scottish Boards grid network but it was also agreed that other energy forms were to be included. Early agreement by the companies on the desirability of such a study and discussions on how it might proceed led to the proposal 'Getting the Power to Shore' (1). The overall objectives of the study were agreed as (i) to identify and assess possible energy conversion and transmission system; (ii) estimate the performance and cost of the more promising systems and make a first order assessment of the impact of the operational and performance characteristics of particular designs on the overall economics of WEC systems; (iii) provide design information for the device teams developing particular WECs - both through independent studies and by way of consultancies; (iv) estimate the timescales and the R & D effort required to implement particular designs. The very large number of possible routes, the unfamiliar characteristics of the energy supply and the 'fluid' state of the thinking of the device teams were all factors which led TAG 6 to propose a preliminary, 9 month, 'broad brush' study as a necessary precursor to a detailed study of preferred systems. It is this preliminary study which is the subject of the present report. The succeeding sections of the report set out the specific objectives of the preliminary survey, set out the system options, discuss the assumptions which have been made in relation to wave and device properties and then discuss specific elements of the possible systems. The final sections relate these generic considerations to specific device designs and describe the preferred systems, ranked in order of technical 'credibility' and cost, which TAG 6 believe should be examined in greater detail during the second stage of its phase I study. Frequent reference is made to the working papers which have been prepared in the course of this study (a total of more than sixty are listed in Appendix III). It goes without saying that these papers are available for examination by anyone who wishes to obtain background information and supporting technical detail but the reader is asked to note that these are working papers and do not necessarily represent the present views of TAG 6. It would be surprising if detailed studies during stage II, when better information is available from device teams and the other TAGs, do not give rise to further shifts of emphasis

Exploiting depth information for fast motion and disparity estimation in multi-view video coding

This research work is partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (STEPS-Malta). This scholarship is partly financed by the European Union – European Social Fund (ESF 1.25).Multi-view Video Coding (MVC) employs both motion and disparity estimation within the encoding process. These provide a significant increase in coding efficiency at the expense of a substantial increase in computational requirements. This paper presents a fast motion and disparity estimation technique that utilizes the multi-view geometry together with the depth information and the corresponding encoded motion vectors from the reference view, to produce more reliable motion and disparity vector predictors for the current view. This allows for a smaller search area which reduces the computational cost of the multi-view encoding system. Experimental results confirm that the proposed techniques can provide a speed-up gain of up to 4.2 times, with a negligible loss in the rate-distortion performance for both the color and the depth MVC.peer-reviewe

Electric Vehicles as a Mobile Storage Device

International audienceElectricity is a quite recent energy (150 years old) that has developed very much as it allows a flexible use through converters (electrical machines and power electronics). At the beginning, the main use was for lighting and metro. Now, electricity is a major energy for developed countries: 17.7% of the world final energy consumption and 22% for the ECD countries (IEA, 2013a; b, Figure 1), and an economic growth is always linked to an electric consumption growth. Electricity has improved our daily life: washer, dryer, dishwasher, microwaves, internet, TV, air-conditioning, and so on. Humans have become very dependent on electricity consumptions. Nevertheless, electricity is a specific product in the sense that it is a nonmaterial energy, and thus it can only be stored through a costly transformation. Electricity can be classified as a tertiary or secondary energy produced from thermal, potential, hydro (see Volume 5, Chapter XX), wind hces137, or solar energy. For a thermal plant, the primary energy (coal, gas, or uranium) is converted into mechanical energy (secondary energy) by a turbine and is transmitted to the generator to be converted into electricity (tertiary energy). As electricity is difficult to store, it needs an infrastructure to be delivered to consumers: the electrical grid that makes the link between power plants and the consumers through transformers and overhead or cabled lines. At the beginning of the twentieth century, all countries made the choice of the alternating current technology as it allowed—thanks to a key device (the transformer) transmission of high power at high voltages to reduce losses. In the context of emissions reduction (CO2, NOx, etc.), objectives have been given for cleaner energies and the use of more efficient ones. In Europe, there are the “20–20–20” targets: 20% reduction for CO2 emissions, 20% reduction in energy consumption, and 20% increase in efficiency by 2020 (see Volume 6, Chapter XX). To reach these policy goals, electricity is an appropriate vector: it is a flexible energy that can be produced from renewable or CO2-free sources, electrical converters have high efficiency (80–90% for an electric motor) and are bidirectional what makes energy recovery possible for applications such as breaking (trains, vehicles, etc.). Transportation (cars, autobuses, and trucks) is often considered a major contributor to local pollution. Then, constraints for CO2 emissions reduction are more and more severe, especially in Europe. Automakers and their suppliers have optimized their engines with innovations such as start&stop starter/generator, kinetic energy recovery ystems, hybrid systems, and full battery electric vehicles (EVs) and plugin hybrid vehicles. For the two last cases, the energy stored in the batteries will totally or partially come from the electric grid