Markov logic networks for adverse drug event extraction from text

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are a major concern and point of emphasis for the medical profession, government, and society. A diverse set of techniques from epidemiology, statistics, and computer science are being proposed and studied for ADE discovery from observational health data (e.g., EHR and claims data), social network data (e.g., Google and Twitter posts), and other information sources. Methodologies are needed for evaluating, quantitatively measuring and comparing the ability of these various approaches to accurately discover ADEs. This work is motivated by the observation that text sources such as the Medline/Medinfo library provide a wealth of information on human health. Unfortunately, ADEs often result from unexpected interactions, and the connection between conditions and drugs is not explicit in these sources. Thus, in this work, we address the question of whether we can quantitatively estimate relationships between drugs and conditions from the medical literature. This paper proposes and studies a state-of-the-art NLP-based extraction of ADEs from text.     

Robust analysis for improvement of vowel onset point detection under noisy conditions

Vowel onset point (VOP) is the instant of time at which the vowel region starts in a speech signal. The VOPs are used as anchor points to design various speech based systems. Different algorithms exist in the literature to identify the occurrences of vowels in continuous spoken utterances. The algorithm based on combined evidences derived from source excitation, spectral peaks and modulation spectrum have been used as a baseline system for the present study. The baseline system provides a satisfactory level of performance under clean data condition. However under noisy data condition the performance of the previous system may be improved further by additional pre-processing of the raw speech data and post-processing the detected VOPs. In this paper we propose to use the speech enhancement techniques as pre-processing module to remove the noise from the speech data under different noisy conditions. The pre-processed speech data is then passed through the baseline system to detect the VOPs. It has been observed that there exist several spurious VOPs at the output of the baseline system. We propose to use a post-processing module based on average signal-to-noise ratio and information derived from the glottal closure instant to remove the spurious VOPs. The experiments were carried out on clean, artificially injected noisy, and data collected from the practical noisy environments. The results suggest that the proposed system using pre-processing and post-processing modules is robust and shows an improvement of 28–35 % over the existing baseline system by removing the spurious VOPs under different noisy conditions.     

基于余弦平顶窗的谐波相量测量

In this paper, a Backstepping Global Integral Terminal Sliding Mode Controller (BGITSMC) with the view to enhancing the dynamic stability of a hybrid AC/DC microgrid has been presented. The proposed approach controls the switching signals of the inverter, interlinking the DC-bus with the AC-bus in an AC/DC microgrid for a seamless interface and regulation of the output power of renewable energy sources (Solar Photovoltaic unit, PMSG-based wind farm), and Battery Energy Storage System. The proposed control approach guarantees the dynamic stability of a hybrid AC/DC microgrid by regulating the associated states of the microgrid system to their intended values. The dynamic stability of the microgrid system with the proposed control law has been proved using the Control Lyapunov Function. A simulation analysis was performed on a test hybrid AC/DC microgrid system to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control strategy in terms of maintaining power balance while the system’s operating point changed. Furthermore, the superiority of the proposed approach has been demonstrated by comparing its performance with the existing Sliding Mode Control (SMC) approach for a hybrid AC/DC microgrid.     

Nonlinear Decentralized Feedback Linearizing Controller Design for Islanded DC Microgrids

This paper aims to design decentralized controllers for different components in islanded DC microgrids. The major components in the DC microgrid as considered in this paper include a fuel cell, solar photovoltaic (PV) unit, and battery energy storage system (BESS) along with critical and non-critical loads. The main control objective is to maintain the power balance within the DC microgrid through the regulation of the common DC-bus voltage. The controllers are designed based on the dynamical models of the fuel cell, solar PV unit, and BESS. The feedback linearization technique is employed to obtain the control laws, which simplifies the original dynamical models and decouples different components in the form of several subsystems. In this way, the feedback linearization technique allows different components in DC microgrids to achieve the desired control objectives by using only the local information (i.e., in a decentralized manner). The performance of the proposed decentralized controllers for different components is evaluated on a test DC microgrid under different operating conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme performs in a much better way as compared to an existing proportional integral controller.     

Nonlinear Adaptive Backstepping Controller Design for Three-Phase Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic Systems

A cascaded control structure is proposed in this paper for injecting active and reactive power in a three-phase grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system by considering external disturbances. In the proposed cascaded control structure, there are two control loops—the outer loop voltage controller is used to ensure a continuous balance in power flow between the PV arrays and electrical power grid whereas the inner loop current controller controls the output current of the inverter. Moreover, the DC-DC boost converter is controlled to achieve a constant voltage at the input of the inverter. In order to obtain the power balance and extract maximum power, an incremental conductance (IC) based maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method is used in this paper. The current controller is designed using a nonlinear adaptive backstepping technique to regulate the active and reactive components of the grid current. The regulation of these currents towards desired values which in turn control the active and reactive power delivered into the grid. The overall stability analysis of the system is performed based on the formulation of control Lyapunov functions (CLFs). Finally, the performance of the designed controller is tested on three-phase grid-connected PV systems with single as well as multiple PV units under different environmental conditions and compared with an existing sliding mode controller. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive backstepping control scheme and demonstrate the superior performance over the sliding mode controller.     

Energy harvesting using piezoelectric materials

This paper is presented to achieve the objective of energy harvesting from vibrational sources through piezoelectric materials. In this analysis, two piezoelectric buzzers: 35 mm buzzer and 27 mm buzzer were used to carry out the experiment. The experimental set-up includes an electro-dynamic shaker, function generator and a power amplifier. Buzzer of thickness 35 mm gave maximum output at resonant frequency of 23 Hz and 57 g of mechanical stress while buzzer of thickness 27 mm gave maximum output at resonant frequency of 25 Hz and 27 g of weight. The paper also presents some important applications of piezoelectricity in day-to-day life.     

A 3.1–10.6 GHz UWB LNA Based on Self Cascode Technique for Improved Bandwidth and High Gain

In this work, we present a self cascode based ultra-wide band (UWB) low noise amplifier (LNA) with improved bandwidth and gain for 3.1–10.6 GHz wireless applications. The self cascode (SC) or split-length compensation technique is employed to improve the bandwidth and gain of the proposed LNA. The improvement in the bandwidth of SC based structure is around 1.22 GHz as compared to simple one. The significant enhancement in the characteristics of the introduced circuit is found without extra passive components. The SC based CS–CG structure in the proposed LNA uses the same DC current for operating first stage transistors. In the designed UWB LNA, a common source (CS) stage is used in the second stage to enhance the overall gain in the high frequency regime. With a standard 90 nm CMOS technology, the presented UWB LNA results in a gain \(\hbox {S}_{21}\) of \(20.10 \pm 1.65\,\hbox {dB}\) across the 3.1–10.6 GHz frequency range, and dissipating 11.52 mW power from a 1 V supply voltage. However, input reflection, \(\hbox {S}_{11}\), lies below \(-\,10\) dB from 4.9–9.1 GHz frequency. Moreover, the output reflection (\(\hbox {S}_{22}\)) and reverse isolation (\(\hbox {S}_{12}\)), is below \(-\,10\) and \(-\,48\) dB, respectively for the ultra-wide band region. Apart from this, the minimum noise figure (\(\hbox {NF}_{min}\)) value of the proposed UWB LNA exists in the range of 2.1–3 dB for 3.1–10.6 GHz frequency range with a a small variation of \(\pm \,0.45\,\hbox {dB}\) in its \(\hbox {NF}_{min}\) characteristics. Linearity of the designed LNA is analysed in terms of third order input intercept point (IIP3) whose value is \(-\,4.22\) dBm, when a two tone signal is applied at 6 GHz with a spacing of 10 MHz. The other important benefits of the proposed circuit are its group-delay variation and gain variation of \(\pm \,115\,\hbox {ps}\) and \(\pm \,1.65\,\hbox {dB}\), respectively.     

Bioinspired Electrically Activated Soft Bistable Actuators

Movement and morphing in biological systems provide insights into the materials and mechanisms that may enable the development of advanced engineering structures. The nastic motion of plants in response to environmental stimuli, e.g., the rapid closure of the Venus flytrap's leaves, utilizes snap‐through instabilities originating from anisotropic deformation of plant tissues. In contrast, ballistic tongue projection of chameleon is attributed to direct mechanical energy transformation by stretching elastic tissues in advance of rapid projection to achieve higher speed and power output. Here, a bioinspired trilayered bistable all‐polymer laminate containing dielectric elastomers (DEs) is reported, which double as both structural and active materials. It is demonstrated that the prestress and laminating strategy induces tunable bistability, while the electromechanical response of the DE film enables reversible shape transition and morphing. Electrical actuation of bistable structures obviates the need for continuous application of electric field to sustain their transformed state. The experimental results are qualitatively consistent with our theoretical analyses of prestrain‐dependent shape and bistability.     

Performance Evaluation of Antenna Receive Diversity in SlMO-OFDM System over Rayleigh Fading Channel

This paper represents a comparative performance evaluation of different diversity combining techniques for a SIMO-OFDM （single-input-multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing） system over Rayleigh fading channel. OFDM is a key technique for achieving high data rates and spectral efficiency requirements for wireless communication systems. But in scattering environment, the system performances are severely degraded by the effects of multipath fading and inter-symbol interference. In wireless communication systems, antenna diversity is an important technique to combat multipath fading in order to improve the system performance and increase the channel capacity. In this paper, the performance of different diversity combining techniques-SC （selection combining）, EGC （equal gain combining） and MRC （maximal ratio combining） has been analyzed and compared in terms of SNR （signal to noise ratio） and BER （bit error rate） probability. The simulation results show that the maximal ratio combining technique provides maximum performance improvement relative to all other combining schemes by maximizing the SNR of SIMO-OFDM system at the combiner output. The analytic expressions of error probability and effective bit energy to noise ratio correlated with BPSK （binary phase shift keying） modulation have been derived and formulated for N-branch SC, EGC and MRC schemes. The BER characteristics for all three combining techniques are simulated in MATLAB （matrix laboratory） tool box for varying bit energy to noise ratio. Our results also derives that SNR can be improved if the number of receiving antenna is increased, which in turn reduces BER over a Rayleigh fading channel.     

Kinetics and reaction mechanism of hydrogen sulfide oxidation over activated carbon in the temperature range of 125–200°c

The kinetics and reaction mechanism of the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide over activated carbon were studied in the temperature range 125–200°C. The heats of adsorption of oxygen and H₂S were found to be 73.8 and 16.0 kJ/mol, respectively, in the above temperature range. The sorption constants and the reaction constant have been expressed as a function of temperature. The role of water in the oxidation reaction has been clarified. No evidence was found to show that sulfur catalyzes the oxidation reaction.