Dynamic Robust Transmission Expansion Planning

Recent breakthroughs in Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) have demonstrated that the use of robust optimization, as opposed to stochastic programming methods, renders the expansion planning problem considering uncertainties computationally tractable for real systems. However, there is still a yet unresolved and challenging problem as regards the resolution of the dynamic TNEP problem (DTNEP), which considers the year-by-year representation of uncertainties and investment decisions in an integrated way. This problem has been considered to be a highly complex and computationally intractable problem, and most research related to this topic focuses on very small case studies or used heuristic methods and has lead most studies about TNEP in the technical literature to take a wide spectrum of simplifying assumptions. In this paper an adaptive robust transmission network expansion planning formulation is proposed for keeping the full dynamic complexity of the problem. The method overcomes the problem size limitations and computational intractability associated with dynamic TNEP for realistic cases. Numerical results from an illustrative example and the IEEE 118-bus system are presented and discussed, demonstrating the benefits of this dynamic TNEP approach with respect to classical methods.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TPWRS.2016.2629266, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 201

Opacity calculation for target physics using the ABAKO/RAPCAL code

Radiative properties of hot dense plasmas remain a subject of current interest since they play an important role in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research, as well as in studies on stellar physics. In particular, the understanding of ICF plasmas requires emissivities and opacities for both hydro-simulations and diagnostics. Nevertheless, the accurate calculation of these properties is still an open question and continuous efforts are being made to develop new models and numerical codes that can facilitate the evaluation of such properties. In this work the set of atomic models ABAKO/RAPCAL is presented, as well as a series of results for carbon and aluminum to show its capability for modeling the population kinetics of plasmas in both LTE and NLTE regimes. Also, the spectroscopic diagnostics of a laser-produced aluminum plasma using ABAKO/RAPCAL is discussed. Additionally, as an interesting application of these codes, fitting analytical formulas for Rosseland and Planck mean opacities for carbon plasmas are reported. These formulas are useful as input data in hydrodynamic simulation of targets where the computation task is so hard that in line computation with sophisticated opacity codes is prohibitive

Magneto-optical imaging of magnetic deflagration in Mn12-Acetate

For the first time, the morphology and dynamics of spin avalanches in Mn12-Acetate crystals using magneto-optical imaging has been explored. We observe an inhomogeneous relaxation of the magnetization, the spins reversing first at one edge of the crystal and a few milliseconds later at the other end. Our data fit well with the theory of magnetic deflagration, demonstrating that very slow deflagration rates can be obtained, which makes new types of experiments possible.Comment: 5 two-column pages, 3 figures, EPL styl

"En euskera y en cristiano". Gènere, religió i nació al País Basc durant el franquisme [“En euskera y en cristiano”. Gender, religion and nation in the Basque Country during Francoism]

Des dels seus orígens, el vincle entre nacionalisme basc i religió catòlica ha estat prou estret. Aquest article pretén estudiar aquesta relació des d'una perspectiva de gènere durant la dictadura de Franco. Mitjançant la metodologia de la història oral, s'analitzaran els testimoniatges de quatre dones nascudes i/o residents al País Basc les dècades centrals del segle i que van militar en diferents grups catòlics. Amb el suport de fonts hemerogràfiques publicades per alguns d'aquests moviments, es tractaran també les diferències de discurs en l'àmbit urbà i rural. Així, es defensarà que els canvis experimentats pel catolicisme des de mitjan anys cinquanta van ser decisius en la transformació de la identitat religiosa i de gènere d'aquestes dones i que, al seu torn, els canvis en el model de feminitat hegemònic van provocar algunes tensions dins el discurs nacionalista. [Since its inception, Basque nationalism has been closely linked with Catholicism. This paper aims to explore this connection from a gender perspective during Franco’s dictatorship by analysing the oral testimonies of four Catholic women who were born and/or were living in the Basque Country during the period 1940-70. It will also consider the differences in discourse in urban and rural environments by examining journals and newsletters published by distinct Catholic movements. Two hypotheses will be argued: first, that the changes experienced by Catholicism from the mid-1950s were decisive in the transformation of the religious and gender identity of these women; and second, that changes to the hegemonic femininity model generated tension in Basque nationalist discourse.

Explicit expressions for state estimation sensitivity analysis in water systems

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.The implementation of state estimation techniques to water systems enables the hydraulic state of a given network to be computed at any time. However, errors in both measurements and model parameters can severely affect the quality of the state estimate, thus sensitivity analysis is crucial to assess its performance. The aim of this paper is to provide general explicit expressions for the sensitivities of the objective function and the primal variables of the state estimation problem with respect to both measurements and roughness parameters based on the perturbation of the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Additionally, among all the possible applications of sensitivity analysis, two specific forms of such analysis for water systems are presented: identifiability of roughness parameters, and linear state estimate approximation. The merit of these applications is illustrated by means of a case study, which highlights the usefulness of compact sensitivity formulae to further understanding of state estimation solutions

¿En el regazo de la Iglesia? Las disputas políticas por la educación femenina en Francia y España en el siglo XIX (In the lap of the Church? Political disputes over female education in France and Spain in the 19th century)

Mediante una perspectiva comparada, el objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer algunas claves explicativas de por qué la educación, particularmente la femenina, se convirtió en motivo de discusión y debate público a lo largo del siglo XIX y, más concretamente, entre los años 1865 y 1875 en Francia y España. La hipótesis que se defenderá es que la discusión pública en torno a la educación femenina se activó en momentos en los que los precarios consensos sobre cuestiones más generales como el papel de la religión o la función de las mujeres en la sociedad se tambalearon. Se abordarán dos casos concretos de estudio que nos permitirán calibrar el alcance de la politización de la educación femenina: el intento de establecer una escuela secundaria pública para niñas en los últimos años del II Imperio y la negativa a jurar la Constitución de 1869 por parte de algunas maestras con fuertes convicciones religiosas. Through a comparative perspective, the objective of this article is to offer some explanatory keys as to why education, particularly female education, became the subject of public discussion and debate throughout the nineteenth century and, more specifically, between the years 1865 and 1875 in France and Spain. The hypothesis that will be defended is that the public discussion around female education was activated at a time when the precarious consensus on more general issues such as the role of religion or the role of women in society faltered. Two specific case studies will be addressed that will allow us to gauge the scope of the politicization of female education

First detection of Onchocerca lupi infection in dogs in southern Spain.

BACKGROUND: Onchocerca lupi causes ocular pathology of varying severity in dogs from south-western United States, western Europe and northern Asia. This filarioid has also been recognized as a zoonotic agent in Tunisia, Turkey, Iran and the USA, though the information about the biology and epidemiology of this infection is largely unknown. In Europe, O. lupi has been reported in dogs from Germany, Greece, Hungary, Portugal and Romania and in a cat from Portugal. The present study was designed to establish the occurrence of O. lupi in dogs in southwestern Spain. In the present study a total of 104 dogs of different breed, sex, and age living in a shelter in Huelva (SW Spain) were examined. Skin snip samples were collected using a disposable scalpel in the forehead and inter-scapular regions and stored as aliquots in saline solution (0.5 ml) before light microscopy observation of individual sediments (20 μl) and molecular examination. RESULTS: Of the 104 dogs examined, 5 (4.8 %) were skin snip-positive for O. lupi: two by microscopy and three by PCR. One of the O. lupi infected dogs showed neurological signs but ocular ultrasonography and/or MRI detected no abnormalities. CONCLUSIONS: This first report of O. lupi infection in dogs in southern Spain expands the range of geographical distribution of this parasite and sounds an alarm bell for practitioners and physicians working in that area

In Silico Exploration of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Metabolic Networks Shows Host-Associated Convergent Fluxomic Phenotypes

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, is composed of several lineages characterized by a genome identity higher than 99%. Although the majority of the lineages are associated with humans, at least four lineages are adapted to other mammals, including different M. tuberculosis ecotypes. Host specificity is associated with higher virulence in its preferred host in ecotypes such as M. bovis. Deciphering what determines the preference of the host can reveal host-specific virulence patterns. However, it is not clear which genomic determinants might be influencing host specificity. In this study, we apply a combination of unsupervised and supervised classification methods on genomic data of ~27,000 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates to decipher host-specific genomic determinants. Host-specific genomic signatures are scarce beyond known lineage-specific mutations. Therefore, we integrated lineage-specific mutations into the iEK1011 2.0 genome-scale metabolic model to obtain lineage-specific versions of it. Flux distributions sampled from the solution spaces of these models can be accurately separated according to host association. This separation correlated with differences in cell wall processes, lipid, amino acid and carbon metabolic subsystems. These differences were observable when more than 95% of the samples had a specific growth rate significantly lower than the maximum achievable by the models. This suggests that these differences might manifest at low growth rate settings, such as the restrictive conditions M. tuberculosis suffers during macrophage infection