Improving the reliability of wind power through spatially distributed wind generation

Wind power is a fast-growing, sustainable energy source. However, the problem of wind variability as it relates to wind power reliability is an obstacle to its large-scale deployment. It is possible to improve the reliability of wind power by interconnecting wind generation. In this study, wind power plants within the Midwest ISO were aggregated to examine the effect on reliability. Wind speed data from the North American Regional Reanalysis were used to calculate wind power data. It was found that the reliability of interconnected wind power was improved relative to individual wind power plants in both the short-term and the long-term, and that the most significant improvements were at the highest scales of interconnection. It was also found that the reliability of interconnected wind power is more directly related to the area of the network rather than the number of wind power plants in the network

Comparative Analysis of the Proliferative Response of the Rat Urinary Bladder to Sodium Saccharin by Light and Scanning Electron Microscopy and Autoradiography

Three methods used to detect proliferative changes in the rat urothelium, light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and autoradiography, were compared for their sensitivity in detecting changes produced by administration of sodium saccharin. Weanling male F344 rats were fed sodium saccharin as 0, 3, 5, or 7.5% of the diet, and the bladders were evaluated after 4, 7, and 10 wks of feeding. Light microscopic changes and an increase in labeling index were seen at all time points in rats fed 7.5 % sodium saccharin, but not at the lower doses. A slight increase in labeling index was also observed at 10 wks in the 5.0% group. Scanning electron microscopic changes were evident as early as 4 wks with increasing severity at the 3, 5, and 7.5 % doses. This study demonstrates that the hyperplastic response of the urothelium to sodium saccharin administration varies with dose and time, and that observation by scanning electron microscopy is the most sensitive of the three methods evaluated for detecting these changes

The Hong Kong Statement on Practice Research 2017 : Contexts and Challenges of the Far East

This statement on social work practice research highlights the contributions of scholars, practitioners, and conference participants in the Fourth International Conference on Practice Research (ICPR) in 2017, hosted by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in May 2017. It focuses on the contexts and challenges of carrying out practice research in the Far East and beyond as well as raises pertinent questions about the development of practice research. It begins with a brief description of the context of social work practice research in the Far East. The second part explores the organizational and community contexts and challenges of practice research with special attention to the perspectives of practitioners. It concludes with reviewing some of the continuing challenges that will guide the program planning for the Fifth ICPR in 2020 in Melbourne, Australia, located at the crossroads between East and West.Peer reviewe

HARPS3 for a Roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope

We present a description of a new instrument development, HARPS3, planned to be installed on an upgraded and roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope by end-2018. HARPS3 will be a high resolution (R = 115,000) echelle spectrograph with a wavelength range from 380-690 nm. It is being built as part of the Terra Hunting Experiment - a future 10 year radial velocity measurement programme to discover Earth-like exoplanets. The instrument design is based on the successful HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6m ESO telescope and HARPS-N on the TNG telescope. The main changes to the design in HARPS3 will be: a customised fibre adapter at the Cassegrain focus providing a stabilised beam feed and on-sky fibre diameter ~ 1.4 arcsec, the implementation of a new continuous flow cryostat to keep the CCD temperature very stable, detailed characterisation of the HARPS3 CCD to map the effective pixel positions and thus provide an improved accuracy wavelength solution, an optimised integrated polarimeter and the instrument integrated into a robotic operation. The robotic operation will optimise our programme which requires our target stars to be measured on a nightly basis. We present an overview of the entire project, including a description of our anticipated robotic operation.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, SPIE conference proceeding

Region-Specific Myelin Pathology in Mice Lacking the Golli Products of the Myelin Basic Protein Gene

The myelin basic protein (MBP) gene encodes two families of proteins, the classic MBP constituents of myelin and the golli-MBPs, the function of which is less well understood. In this study, targeted ablation of the golli-MBPs, but not the classic MBPs, resulted in a distinct phenotype unlike that of knock-outs (KOs) of the classic MBPs or other myelin proteins. Although the golli KO animals did not display an overt dysmyelinating phenotype, they did exhibit delayed and/or hypomyelination in selected areas of the brain, such as the visual cortex and the optic nerve, as determined by Northern and Western blots and immunohistochemical analysis with myelin protein markers. Hypomyelination in some areas, such as the visual cortex, persisted into adulthood. Ultrastructural analysis of the KOs confirmed both the delay and hypomyelination and revealed abnormalities in myelin structure and in some oligodendrocytes. Abnormal visual-evoked potentials indicated that the hypomyelination in the visual cortex had functional consequences in the golli KO brain. Evidence that the abnormal myelination in these animals was a consequence of intrinsic problems with the oligodendrocyte was indicated by an impaired ability of oligodendrocytes to form myelin sheets in culture and by the presence of abnormal Ca^(2+) transients in purified cortical oligodendrocytes studied in vitro. The Ca^(2+) results reported in this study complement previous results implicating golli proteins in modulating intracellular signaling in T-cells. Together, all these findings suggest a role for golli proteins in oligodendrocyte differentiation, migration, and/or myelin elaboration in the brain

Dose response of the 16p11.2 distal copy number variant on intracranial volume and basal ganglia.

Carriers of large recurrent copy number variants (CNVs) have a higher risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders. The 16p11.2 distal CNV predisposes carriers to e.g., autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. We compared subcortical brain volumes of 12 16p11.2 distal deletion and 12 duplication carriers to 6882 non-carriers from the large-scale brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging collaboration, ENIGMA-CNV. After stringent CNV calling procedures, and standardized FreeSurfer image analysis, we found negative dose-response associations with copy number on intracranial volume and on regional caudate, pallidum and putamen volumes (β = -0.71 to -1.37; P < 0.0005). In an independent sample, consistent results were obtained, with significant effects in the pallidum (β = -0.95, P = 0.0042). The two data sets combined showed significant negative dose-response for the accumbens, caudate, pallidum, putamen and ICV (P = 0.0032, 8.9 × 10-6, 1.7 × 10-9, 3.5 × 10-12 and 1.0 × 10-4, respectively). Full scale IQ was lower in both deletion and duplication carriers compared to non-carriers. This is the first brain MRI study of the impact of the 16p11.2 distal CNV, and we demonstrate a specific effect on subcortical brain structures, suggesting a neuropathological pattern underlying the neurodevelopmental syndromes

Greenland and Canadian Arctic ice temperature profiles database

Here, we present a compilation of 95 ice temperature profiles from 85 boreholes from the Greenland ice sheet and peripheral ice caps, as well as local ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. Profiles from only 31 boreholes (36 %) were previously available in open-access data repositories. The remaining 54 borehole profiles (64 %) are being made digitally available here for the first time. These newly available profiles, which are associated with pre-2010 boreholes, have been submitted by community members or digitized from published graphics and/or data tables. All 95 profiles are now made available in both absolute (meters) and normalized (0 to 1 ice thickness) depth scales and are accompanied by extensive metadata. These metadata include a transparent description of data provenance. The ice temperature profiles span 70 years, with the earliest profile being from 1950 at Camp VI, West Greenland. To highlight the value of this database in evaluating ice flow simulations, we compare the ice temperature profiles from the Greenland ice sheet with an ice flow simulation by the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). We find a cold bias in modeled near-surface ice temperatures within the ablation area, a warm bias in modeled basal ice temperatures at inland cold-bedded sites, and an apparent underestimation of deformational heating in high-strain settings. These biases provide process level insight on simulated ice temperatures

A standard procedure for creating a frailty index

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Frailty can be measured in relation to the accumulation of deficits using a frailty index. A frailty index can be developed from most ageing databases. Our objective is to systematically describe a standard procedure for constructing a frailty index.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This is a secondary analysis of the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study, based in New Haven CT. Non-disabled people aged 70 years or older (n = 754) were enrolled and re-contacted every 18 months. The database includes variables on function, cognition, co-morbidity, health attitudes and practices and physical performance measures. Data came from the baseline cohort and those available at the first 18-month follow-up assessment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Procedures for selecting health variables as candidate deficits were applied to yield 40 deficits. Recoding procedures were applied for categorical, ordinal and interval variables such that they could be mapped to the interval 0–1, where 0 = absence of a deficit, and 1= full expression of the deficit. These individual deficit scores were combined in an index, where 0= no deficit present, and 1= all 40 deficits present. The values of the index were well fit by a gamma distribution. Between the baseline and follow-up cohorts, the age-related slope of deficit accumulation increased from 0.020 (95% confidence interval, 0.014–0.026) to 0.026 (0.020–0.032). The 99% limit to deficit accumulation was 0.6 in the baseline cohort and 0.7 in the follow-up cohort. Multivariate Cox analysis showed the frailty index, age and sex to be significant predictors of mortality.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A systematic process for creating a frailty index, which relates deficit accumulation to the individual risk of death, showed reproducible properties in the Yale Precipitating Events Project cohort study. This method of quantifying frailty can aid our understanding of frailty-related health characteristics in older adults.</p

Measurement of W Polarisation at LEP

The three different helicity states of W bosons produced in the reaction e+ e- -> W+ W- -> l nu q q~ at LEP are studied using leptonic and hadronic W decays. Data at centre-of-mass energies \sqrt s = 183-209 GeV are used to measure the polarisation of W bosons, and its dependence on the W boson production angle. The fraction of longitudinally polarised W bosons is measured to be 0.218 \pm 0.027 \pm 0.016 where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation

Search for Anomalous Couplings in the Higgs Sector at LEP

Anomalous couplings of the Higgs boson are searched for through the processes e^+ e^- -> H gamma, e^+ e^- -> e^+ e^- H and e^+ e^- -> HZ. The mass range 70 GeV < m_H < 190 GeV is explored using 602 pb^-1 of integrated luminosity collected with the L3 detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies sqrt(s)=189-209 GeV. The Higgs decay channels H -> ffbar, H -> gamma gamma, H -> Z\gamma and H -> WW^(*) are considered and no evidence is found for anomalous Higgs production or decay. Limits on the anomalous couplings d, db, Delta(g1z), Delta(kappa_gamma) and xi^2 are derived as well as limits on the H -> gamma gamma and H -> Z gamma decay rates