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Oscillations caused by insufficient system damping may introduce severe instability issues to power systems with a high level of penetration of renewables and electronics. In this paper, repetitive learning control (RLC) is considered for the first time to improve system damping as well as the system dynamic responses. This work introduces an enhanced Automatic generation control (AGC) system with RLC, called RLC-AGC, which helps damp out the oscillations of frequency and tie-line power faster, for both normal load changes and low-frequency inter-area oscillations. The optimal learning gain will be selected based on the derived analytical expressions of the synchronous and damping coefficients, and more importantly, the condition for convergence, to provide a theoretical guarantee for the convergence of the proposed learning control. The New England 39-bus system is simulated to illustrate the performance of RLC-AGC. more...

For a Demand Response (DR) program with internet data centers (IDC), the Price-Amount curve that estimates how the potential DR amount depends on the DR price determined by power systems is crucial. Constructing this curve is challenging mainly due to the uncertainty in IDCs' operation. A novel Gaussian Process Regression-based estimation method is thus proposed. The variance of resulting curve reflecting the IDC operational uncertainty is also calculated., Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, submitted to TSG more...

Battery energy storage systems are widely adopted in grid-connected applications to mitigate the impact of intermittent renewable generations and enhance power system resiliency. Degradation of the battery during its service time is one of the major concerns in the deployment that strongly affects the long-term lifetime. Apart from environmental factors, this intrinsic property of a battery depends on the daily operating conditions. Thus, optimally engaging the daily operation of the battery based on its current status in order to meet the required remaining useful life becomes a practical and demanding need. To address this issue, this paper proposes a health-informed RUL-constrained optimal power flow framework to characterize the corresponding optimal feasible operation space. The targeted service lifespan is achieved if the battery's working condition is confined within this feasible domain. Equivalent box constraints are then constructed for better computational efficiency in solving the optimization problem. In this framework, a Monte Carlo-based data-driven approach and a health indicator (HI) representing the battery's current states are introduced. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated with the IEEE 39-bus system., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PESGM 2021 more...

Utilizing spectroscopic observations taken for the VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey (VUDS), new observations from Keck/DEIMOS, and publicly available observations of large samples of star-forming galaxies, we report here on the relationship between the star formation rate (SFR) and the local environment ($δ_{gal}$) of galaxies in the early universe ($2, v2, 24 pages, nine figures, accepted to A&A after minor changes to language and formatting more...

Battery energy storage is an essential component of a microgrid. The working temperature of the battery is an important factor as a high-temperature condition generally increases losses, reduces useful life, and can even lead to fire hazards. Hence, it is indispensable to regulate the temperature profile of the battery modules/packs properly in the battery energy storage during the operation. In view of this, a two-layer optimal control and operation scheme is proposed for a microgrid with energy storage. In the first layer, an optimal control model is formed to derive the optimal control policy that minimizes the control efforts, consisting of the fan speed and battery current magnitude, in order to achieve a temperature distribution reference over the battery modules. In the second layer, the system operator of the microgrid performs an optimal power flow to search for the optimal temperature distribution reference used in the first stage and the corresponding operating current of the battery that minimize the operation cost of the entire microgrid system. This two-layer scheme offers a great computational benefit that allows for large-scale integration of batteries. A case study is performed on the proposed two-layer model to illustrate its performance., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PESGM 2020 more...

Due to uncertainties and the complicated intrinsic dynamics of power systems, it is difficult to predict the cascading failure paths once the cascades occur. This makes it challenging to achieve the effective power system protection against cascading blackouts. By incorporating uncertainties and stochastic factors of the cascades, a Markov chain model is developed in this paper to predict the cascading failure paths of power systems. The transition matrix of Markov chain is dependent on the probability of branch outage caused by overloads or stochastic factors. Moreover, a robust optimization formulation is proposed to prevent the cascading blackouts by optimal load shedding and generation control for multiple cascading failure paths with relatively high probabilities. Since each state on the cascading failure paths can be described by one convex set, the proposed robust optimization problem is equivalent to the best approximation problem in Euclidean space. Thus, an efficient numerical solver based on Dykstra's algorithm is employed to deal with the robust optimization problem. In theory, we provide a lower bound for the probability of preventing the cascading blackouts of power systems. Finally, the proposed approach for power system protection is verified by a case study of IEEE 118 bus system. Ministry of Education (MOE) Nanyang Technological University National Research Foundation (NRF) This work is supported by NTU SUG and Ministry of Education of Singapore under Contract MOE2016-T2-1-119. It is partially supported by the Future Resilient Systems Project at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), which is funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) under its CREATE program more...

While most power system small-signal stability assessments rely on the reduced Jacobian, which depends non-linearly on the states, uncertain operating points introduce nontrivial hurdles in certifying the systems stability. In this paper, a novel probabilistic robust small-signal stability (PRS) framework is developed for the power system based on Gaussian process (GP) learning. The proposed PRS assessment provides a robust stability certificate for a state subspace, such as that specified by the error bounds of the state estimation, with a given probability. With such a PRS certificate, all inner points of the concerned subspace will be stable with at least the corresponding probability. To this end, behavior of the critical eigenvalue of the reduced Jacobian with state points in a state subspace is learned using GP. The proposed PRS certificate along with the Subspace-based Search and Confidence-based Search mechanisms constitute a holistic framework catering to all scenarios. The proposed framework is a powerful approach to assess the stability under uncertainty because it does not require input uncertainty distributions and other state-specific input-to-output approximations. Further, the critical eigenvalue behavior in a state subspace is analyzed using an upper bound of the eigenvalue variations and their inferences are discussed in detail. The results on three-machine nine-bus WSCC system show that the proposed certificate can find the robust stable state subspace with a given probability. Accepted version more...

The small-signal stability is an integral part of the power system security analysis. The introduction of renewable source related uncertainties is making the stability assessment difficult as the equilibrium point is varying rapidly. This paper focuses on the Differential Algebraic Equation (DAE) formulation of power systems and bridges the gap between the conventional reduced system and the original one using logarithmic norm. We propose a sufficient condition for stability using Bilinear Matrix Inequality and its inner approximation as Linear Matrix Inequality. Another contribution is the construction of robust stability regions in state-space in contrast to most existing approaches trying same in the parameter space. Performance evaluation of the sufficiency condition and its inner approximation has been given with the necessary and sufficient condition for a small-scale test case. The paper provides a necessary base to develop tractable construction techniques for the robust stability region of power systems. more...

This paper introduces a novel framework to construct the region of attraction (ROA) of a power system centered around a stable equilibrium by using stable state trajectories of system dynamics. Most existing works on estimating ROA rely on analytical Lyapunov functions, which are subject to two limitations: the analytic Lyapunov functions may not be always readily available, and the resulting ROA may be overly conservative. This work overcomes these two limitations by leveraging the converse Lyapunov theorem in control theory to eliminate the need of an analytic Lyapunov function and learning the unknown Lyapunov function with the Gaussian Process (GP) approach. In addition, a Gaussian Process Upper Confidence Bound (GP-UCB) based sampling algorithm is designed to reconcile the trade-off between the exploitation for enlarging the ROA and the exploration for reducing the uncertainty of sampling region. Within the constructed ROA, it is guaranteed in probability that the system state will converge to the stable equilibrium with a confidence level. Numerical simulations are also conducted to validate the assessment approach for the ROA of the single machine infinite bus system and the New England $39$-bus system. Numerical results demonstrate that our approach can significantly enlarge the estimated ROA compared to that of the analytic Lyapunov counterpart. more...

Wireless dynamic charging technologies are becoming a promising alternative solution to plug-in ones as they allow on-the-move charging for electric vehicles. From a power network point of view, this type of charging makes electric vehicles a new type of loads--the moving loads. Such moving loads are different from the traditional loads as they may change their locations constantly in the grids. To study the effect of these moving loads on power distribution grids, this work focuses on the steady-state analysis of electrified roads equipped with wireless dynamic charging. In particular, the voltage profile and the long-term voltage stability of the electrified roads are considered. Unusual shapes of the voltage profile are observed such as the half-leaf veins for a one-way road and the harp-like shape for a two-way road. Voltage swings are also detected while the vehicles move in the two-way road configuration. As for the long-term voltage stability, continuation power flow is used to characterize the maximum length of a road as well as the maximum number of vehicles that the road can accommodate., 6 pages, 8 figures, accepted to present at eenergy19, ACM19, Phoenix, AZ, USA, June 2019 more...

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) pain is more prevalent and severe than pain generated by any other form of cancer. We previously showed that protease-activated receptor-2 (PAR2) contributes to oral SCC pain. Cathepsin S is a lysosomal cysteine protease released during injury and disease that can activate PAR2. We report here a role for cathepsin S in PAR2-dependent cancer pain. We report that cathepsin S was more active in human oral SCC than matched normal tissue, and in an orthotopic xenograft tongue cancer model than normal tongue. The multiplex immunolocalization of cathepsin S in human oral cancers suggests that carcinoma and macrophages generate cathepsin S in the oral cancer microenvironment. After cheek or paw injection, cathepsin S evoked nociception in wild-type mice but not in mice lacking PAR2 in Nav1.8-positive neurons (Par2Nav1.8), nor in mice treated with LY3000328 or an endogenous cathepsin S inhibitor (cystatin C). The human oral SCC cell line (HSC-3) with homozygous deletion of the gene for cathepsin S (CTSS) with CRISPR/Cas9 provoked significantly less mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia, as did those treated with LY3000328, compared to the control cancer mice. Our results indicate that cathepsin S is activated in oral SCC, and that cathepsin S contributes to cancer pain through PAR2 on neurons. more...

Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading allows prosumers to trade energy directly without intermediaries. To provide a payment system and record transaction information, public blockchain is designed to match the decentralized feature of the P2P market. The incentive for nodes outside the microgrid is removed but it is maintained for the prosumers within the microgrid. Therefore the number of miner competitors is limited to decrease the mining difficulty and its power consumption. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus protocol defines the function of blockchain with its mining mechanism. Miners sacrifice part of their stake to compensate for the power losses and reduce the price gap from the traditional prosumer-to-grid trading (Feed-in-tariff). Moreover, the proposed model also contributes to increase the social welfare by improving producers’ income and consumers’ cost-saving through the designed pricing scheme, which eliminates the price gap between buying and selling. Successful mining is encouraged by rewards accordingly. A case study is introduced where a microgrid model with 27 prosumers is tested with the PoS public blockchain-based pricing scheme. The process of model implementation and smart contract creation are specifically demonstrated. Numerical results prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. more...

The increase in distributed generation (DG) and variable load mandates system operators to perform decision-making considering uncertainties. This paper introduces a novel state-aware stochastic optimal power flow (SA-SOPF) problem formulation. The proposed SA-SOPF has objective to find a day-ahead base-solution that minimizes the generation cost and expectation of deviations in generation and node voltage set-points during real-time operation. We formulate SA-SOPF for a given affine policy and employ Gaussian process learning to obtain a distributionally robust (DR) affine policy for generation and voltage set-point change in real-time. In simulations, the GP-based affine policy has shown distributional robustness over three different uncertainty distributions for IEEE 14-bus system. The results also depict that the proposed SA-OPF formulation can reduce the expectation in voltage and generation deviation more than 60% in real-time operation with an additional day-ahead scheduling cost of 4.68% only for 14-bus system. For, in a 30-bus system, the reduction in generation and voltage deviation, the expectation is achieved to be greater than 90% for 1.195% extra generation cost. These results are strong indicators of possibility of achieving the day-ahead solution which lead to lower real-time deviation with minimal cost increase. more...

Background: Inappropriate antibiotic use among outpatients is recognized as the primary driver of antibiotic resistance. A proper understanding of appropriate antibiotic usage and associated factors helps to determine and limit inappropriateness. We aimed to identify the rate of appropriate use of antibiotics and identify factors associated with the inappropriate prescriptions. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study in outpatient antibiotic use at a hospital in Can Tho City, Vietnam, from August 1, 2019, to January 31, 2020. Data were extracted from all outpatient prescriptions at the Medical Examination Department and analyzed by SPSS 18 and Chi-squared tests, with 95% confidence intervals. The rationale for antibiotic use was evaluated through antibiotic selection, dose, dosing frequency, dosing time, interactions between antibiotics and other drugs, and general appropriate usage. Results: A total of 420 prescriptions were 51.7% for females, 61.7% with health insurance, and 44.0% for patients with one comorbid condition. The general appropriate antibiotic usage rate was 86.7%. Prescriptions showed that 11.0% and 9.5% had a higher dosing frequency and dose than recommended, respectively, 10.2% had an inappropriate dosing time, 3.1% had drug interactions, and only 1.7% had been prescribed inappropriate antibiotics. The risk of inappropriate antibiotic use increased in patients with comorbidities and antibiotic treatment lasting &gt, 7 days (p &lt, 0.05). Conclusions: The study indicated a need for more consideration when prescribing antibiotics to patients with comorbidities or using more than 7 days of treatment. more...

We report a classical rate theory approach to predict the exchange mechanism that occurs between water and aqueous uranyl ion. Using our water and ion-water polarizable force field and molecular dynamics techniques, we computed the potentials of mean force for the uranyl ion-water pair as a function of different pressures at ambient temperature. These potentials of mean force were used to calculate rate constants using transition rate theory; the transmission coefficients also were examined using the reactive flux method and Grote-Hynes approach. The computed activation volumes are positive; thus, the mechanism of this particular water-exchange is a dissociative process. more...

A newly developed coarse-grained model called BioModi is utilized to elucidate the effects of temperature and concentration on DNA hybridization in self-assembly. Large-scale simulations demonstrate that complementary strands of either the tetrablock sequence or randomized sequence with equivalent number of cytosine or guanine nucleotides can form completely hybridized double helices. Even though the end states are the same for the two sequences, there exist multiple kinetic pathways that are populated with a wider range of transient aggregates of different sizes in the system of random sequences compared to that of the tetrablock sequence. The ability of these aggregates to undergo the strand displacement mechanism to form only double helices depends upon the temperature and DNA concentration. On one hand, low temperatures and high concentrations drive the formation and enhance stability of large aggregating species. On the other hand, high temperatures destabilize base-pair interactions and large aggregates. There exists an optimal range of moderate temperatures and low concentrations that allow minimization of large aggregate formation and maximization of fully hybridized dimers. Such investigation on structural dynamics of aggregating species by two closely related sequences during the self-assembly process demonstrates the importance of sequence design in avoiding the formation of metastable species. Finally, from kinetic modeling of self-assembly dynamics, the activation energy for the formation of double helices was found to be in agreement with experimental results. The framework developed in this work can be applied to the future design of DNA nanostructures in both fields of structural DNA nanotechnology and dynamic DNA nanotechnology wherein equilibrium end states and nonequilibrium dynamics are equally important requiring investigation in cooperation. more...

IL-27 is a heterodimeric cytokine comprised of IL-27p28 and EBI3. As a relatively new member of the IL-12 family, the biological mechanisms associated with the role of IL-27 in the immune response are ambiguous, displaying both proinflammatory and suppressive functions that seem to be dependent on the disease model. A recent report demonstrates that pharmacological blockade of IL-27p28 alleviates graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in mice. However, the specific role of the IL-27Rα/gp130 signaling complex that forms the IL-27 receptor (IL-27R) on T cells has not been well characterized in the context of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT). Here, we demonstrate that IL-27Rα expression on T cells exacerbates GVHD after allo-HCT, which was consistent across 3 different MHC- mismatched murine models of allo-HCT. Expression of IL-27Rα on T cells was required for acquisition of optimal Th1 effector function and subsequent inhibition of Th2 and T regulatory subsets after allo-HCT. Furthermore, administration of IL-27significantly increased mortality after allo-HCT; suggesting that the suppressive functions linked to IL-27 in T cell responses may be relatively modest in this model. Hence, IL-27Rα signaling on T cells promotes the development of GVHD. more...

Background Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) is an increasing problem worldwide, but particularly problematic in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) due to limitations of resources for surveillance of CRE and infection prevention and control (IPC). Methods A point prevalence survey (PPS) with screening for colonisation with CRE was conducted on 2233 patients admitted to neonatal, paediatric and adult care at 12 Vietnamese hospitals located in northern, central and southern Vietnam during 2017 and 2018. CRE colonisation was determined by culturing of faecal specimens on selective agar for CRE. Risk factors for CRE colonisation were evaluated. A CRE admission and discharge screening sub-study was conducted among one of the most vulnerable patient groups; infants treated at an 80-bed Neonatal ICU from March throughout June 2017 to assess CRE acquisition, hospital-acquired infection (HAI) and treatment outcome. Results A total of 1165 (52%) patients were colonised with CRE, most commonly Klebsiella pneumoniae (n=805), Escherichia coli (n=682) and Enterobacter spp. (n=61). Duration of hospital stay, HAI and treatment with a carbapenem were independent risk factors for CRE colonisation. The PPS showed that the prevalence of CRE colonisation increased on average 4.2 % per day and mean CRE colonisation rates increased from 13% on the day of admission to 89% at day 15 of hospital stay. At the NICU CRE colonisation increased from 32% at admission to 87% at discharge, mortality was significantly associated (OR 5•5, P < 0•01) with CRE colonisation and HAI on admission. Conclusion These data indicate that there is an epidemic spread of CRE in Vietnamese hospitals with rapid transmission to hospitalised patients. Funding agencies: Karolinska Institute, Solna, Sweden; Linkoping University, County of Ostergotland, Sweden; Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, STINT, Stockholm, Sweden; European Union, Marie Slodowska Curie Grants; ReAct, Up more...

In solvent extraction processes for recovering metal ions from used nuclear fuel, as well as other industrial applications, a better understanding of the metal complex phase transfer phenomenon would greatly aid ligand design and process optimization. We have approached this challenge by utilizing the classical molecular dynamics simulations technique to gain visual appreciation of the vapor/liquid and liquid/liquid interface between tri- n-butyl phosphate (TBP) and n-dodecane with air and water. In this study, we successfully reparameterized polarizable force fields for TBP and n-dodecane that accurately reproduced several of their thermophysical properties such as density, heat of vaporization, and dipole moment. Our models were able to predict the surface and interfacial tension of different systems when compared to experimental results that were also performed by us. Through this study, we gained atomistic understanding of the behaviors of TBP and n-dodecane at the interface against air and water, useful in further computational studies of such systems. Finally, our studies indicate that the initial configuration of a simulation may have a large effect on the final result. more...

Electronic medical records (EMR) have emerged as an important source of data for research in medicine andinformation technology, as they contain much of valuable human medical knowledge in healthcare and patienttreatment. This paper tackles the problem of coreference resolution in Vietnamese EMRs. Unlike in English ones,in Vietnamese clinical texts, verbs are often used to describe disease symptoms. So we first define rules to annotateverbs as mentions and consider coreference between verbs and other noun or adjective mentions possible. Thenwe propose a support vector machine classifier on bag-of-words vector representation of mentions that takes intoaccount the special characteristics of Vietnamese language to resolve their coreference. The achieved F1 scoreon our dataset of real Vietnamese EMRs provided by a hospital in Ho Chi Minh city is 91.4%. To the best of ourknowledge, this is the first research work in coreference resolution on Vietnamese clinical texts.Keywords: Clinical text, support vector machine, bag-of-words vector, lexical similarity, unrestricted coreference more...

Conventional plasma x-ray lasers have the characteristics of spatial coherence, while less temporal one. In order to realize fully coherent plasma x-ray lasers, we have employed a seed-amplifier scheme. In this setup, a high-order harmonics as a seeder is injected into an amplifier plasma medium. As a result, the harmonics is amplified while maintaining its original coherencies. For generation of a narrow beam divergence and intense high-order harmonics, we focus on the x-ray parametric amplification. The high-order harmonics generated in two He gas jets are amplified due to parametric interaction, by which the quality of the harmonics are even improved. On the other hand, plasma amplifier is created by using the same Ti:Sa laser by a grazing incident pumping. To meet the requirements on the spatial and spectral coupling is essential to achieve the efficient amplification. Thus, the central wavelength of the laser is tuned at 792.3 nm, by which the lasing transition (13.9 nm) matches the 57th order harmonics. The preliminary results of the parametric amplification of the harmonics will be presented., 60th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics more...