Full AC analysis of value of DER to the grid and optimal DER scheduling

This paper presents part of the work ComEd and Quanta Technology have performed to quantify the locational and temporal value of DER to avoid distribution grid upgrade investments. It focuses on the formulation of a robust and efficient algorithm for DER optimal dispatch on a distribution feeder to mitigate the violation of current and voltage limits using the allocated cost of capacity and locational marginal value of real and reactive DER injection/withdrawal.     

Cerebral malaria

There is no established protocol for selection among the different retentive material-attachment combinations for clasps other than tradition or laboratory preference. Various wrought-wire, cast-metal, and thermoplastic materials were subjected to several fabrication procedures and tested in a custom-designed force displacement apparatus. The wrought wires included ADA Spec. No. 7 type I and type II alloys and other precious and nonprecious alloys. A graphic means was devised to allow the rational selection of wrought-wire clasp-arm combinations for placing clasps on canine and premolar teeth. Guidelines for using straight wire data for curved wire applications are indicated.     

Copper bioavailability from breakfasts containing tea. Influence of the addition of milk

The influence of drinking tea on copper bioavailability is unclear, particularly when tea is consumed with food. A breakfast meal containing white bread, margarine, strawberry jam, cheese and tea, with or without milk, was digested in; vitro and the dialysis of copper investigated. Reference breakfasts were prepared with water and water with milk. Copper dialysability (percentage of copper dialysed) was markedly increased by tea. The influence of adding milk to tea was not significant. A second study was carried out in rats using the breakfasts containing tea and water. They were spiked with ⁶⁴Cu and given orally to the animals in a single dose. Whole-body ⁶⁴Cu retention was measured over a 4-day period after administration. In order to determine the true absorption of ⁶⁴Cu a control group of rats received the dose intraperitioneally. The results in vivo indicate a tendency to higher absorption and retention of ⁶⁴Cu with tea. Liver ⁶⁴Cu retention was significantly elevated by tea. Therefore, the presence of tea in a breakfast meal favours the formation of soluble low-molecular-weight ligands which can be absorbed and retained by rats. The concomitant increase in liver copper retetition may be associated with higher bioavailability and/or lower copper mobilisation.     

Self-Synchronous and Self-Referenced Coherent Beam Combination for Large Optical Arrays

A novel and highly accurate electronic technique for phase locking arrays of optical fiber amplifiers is demonstrated. This is the only electronic phase locking technique that does not require a reference beam. The measured phase error for this system is lambda /20. A model for calculating the signal-shot noise-limited phase errors and the phase-modulation-induced phase errors is developed. For the first time, nine fiber amplifiers are coherently combined. The total power in the phase locked array is 100 W.     

Tailoring HASE rheology through polymer design: Effects of hydrophobe size, acid content, and molecular weight

Hydrophobically modified alkali-soluble emulsion (HASE) polymers are an important class of rheology modifiers for waterborne coatings applications. They are typically prepared as terpolymers by emulsion polymerization of ethyl acrylate (EA), methacrylic acid (MAA), and an associative macromonomer. The viscosity development and shear responses of HASE solutions depend on a number of factors. This article presents rheological data reflecting the impacts of three key variables: hydrophobe size, acid content, and molecular weight, on model HASE thickening and rheological performance. The relative contributions of hydrophobic association, chain expansion, and polymer chain length are discussed. In steady shear flow, all thickener solutions approached some constant low-shear viscosity at small deformation rates. At the same molar composition, larger hydrophobe size resulted in higher viscosity development and greater shear thinning behavior. The amount of acid monomer in HASE polymers can influence the balance between hydrophobic attraction and electrostatic repulsion forces. It was found that a minimum of 15 wt% MAA was required to effect dissolution and thickening of the model HASE polymers. Increasing the MAA level yielded higher zero-shear viscosity and storage modulus G’ with maximal values being obtained at 40% MAA. The molecular weight of the model thickeners was controlled by the amount of chain transfer agent (CTA) added during polymerization. When the CTA level was below 0.1 wt% based on total monomers, the polymer solutions displayed shear-thinning behavior. A small increase in CTA concentration beyond 0.1% resulted in a dramatic change to Newtonian flow, and the solution viscosity was nearly two orders of magnitude lower. The model thickeners were also tested in a vinyl acrylic architectural paint formulation. The effects of each individual factor on paint thickener efficiency, high-shear, and low-shear properties are discussed and compared with solution rheology for predictive relationships. Presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Federation of Societies for Coatings Technology, November 11–12, 2003, in Philadelphia, PA.     

Isolation of yeast artificial chromosomes free of endogenous yeast chromosomes: construction of alternate hosts with defined karyotypic alterations

An intrinsic feature of yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) is that the cloned DNA is generally in the same size range (i.e., approximately 200-2000 kb) as the endogenous yeast chromosomes. As a result, the isolation of YAC DNA, which typically involves separation by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, is frequently confounded by the presence of a comigrating or closely migrating endogenous yeast chromosome(s). We have developed a strategy that reliably allows the isolation of any YAC free of endogenous yeast chromosomes. Using recombination-mediated chromosome fragmentation, a set of Saccharomyces cerevisiae host strains was systematically constructed. Each strain contains defined alterations in its electrophoretic karyotype, which provide a large-size interval devoid of endogenous chromosomes (i.e., a karyotypic "window"). All of the constructed strains contain the kar1-delta 15 mutation, thereby allowing the efficient transfer of a YAC from its original host into an appropriately selected window strain using the kar1-transfer procedure. This approach provides a robust and efficient means to obtain relatively pure YAC DNA regardless of YAC size.     

AMOLED displays with transfer‐printed integrated circuits

Abstract— Small integrated circuits of crystalline silicon (chiplets) transfer‐printed onto a flat‐panel‐display substrate provide greatly improved electrical performance and uniformity in active‐matrix organic light‐emitting‐diode (OLED) displays. The integrated circuits are formed in high‐performance crystalline silicon using conventional photolithographic processes and then transfer‐printed onto a substrate using a stamp that transfers hundreds or thousands of chiplets at once. The chiplets are connected to an external controller and to pixel elements using conventional photolithographic substrate processing methods. Active‐matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays using transfer‐printed chiplets have good yields, excellent uniformity, and electrical performance and are thermally robust.     

Speeding Up HMM Decoding and Training by Exploiting Sequence Repetitions

We present a method to speed up the dynamic program algorithms used for solving the HMM decoding and training problems for discrete time-independent HMMs. We discuss the application of our method to Viterbi’s decoding and training algorithms (IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory IT-13:260–269, 1967), as well as to the forward-backward and Baum-Welch (Inequalities 3:1–8, 1972) algorithms. Our approach is based on identifying repeated substrings in the observed input sequence. Initially, we show how to exploit repetitions of all sufficiently small substrings (this is similar to the Four Russians method). Then, we describe four algorithms based alternatively on run length encoding (RLE), Lempel-Ziv (LZ78) parsing, grammar-based compression (SLP), and byte pair encoding (BPE). Compared to Viterbi’s algorithm, we achieve speedups of Θ(log n) using the Four Russians method, using RLE, using LZ78, using SLP, and Ω(r) using BPE, where k is the number of hidden states, n is the length of the observed sequence and r is its compression ratio (under each compression scheme). Our experimental results demonstrate that our new algorithms are indeed faster in practice. We also discuss a parallel implementation of our algorithms. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proc. 18th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM), pp. 4–15, 2007. Y. Lifshits’ research was supported by the Center for the Mathematics of Information and the Lee Center for Advanced Networking. S. Mozes’ work conducted while visiting MIT.     

A self-stabilizing transformer for population protocols with covering

Developing self-stabilizing solutions is considered to be more challenging and complicated than developing classical solutions, where a proper initialization of the variables can be assumed. Hence, to ease the task of the developers, some automatic techniques have been proposed to design self-stabilizing algorithms. In this paper, we propose an automatic transformer for algorithms in an extended population protocol model. Population protocols is a model that was introduced recently for networks with a large number of resource-limited mobile agents. We use a variant of this model. First, we assume agents having characteristics (e.g., moving speed, communication radius) affecting their intercommunication “speed”, which is reflected by their cover times. Second, we assume the existence of a special agent with an unbounded memory, the base station. The automatic transformer takes as an input an algorithm solving a static problem (and meeting some additional rather natural requirements) and outputs a self-stabilizing algorithm for the same problem. The transformer is built using a re-execution approach (the technique consisting of executing an algorithm repeatedly in order to obtain its self-stabilizing version). We show that in the model we use, a transformer based on such an approach is impossible without the assumption of an unbounded memory agent.     

Retina subjected to components of ischemia in vitro. Selective vulnerability and minimum lethal exposure of neurons and glia to oxygen and/or glucose deprivation and to loss of exchange with incubating medium

Rabbit retinas were incubated at 37 C in media lacking oxygen, glucose, or both, or sealed in a small compartment without medium to convert them to a "closed system." They were then returned to control medium before being fixed for microscopy. Other retinas were incubated only in control medium and then fixed. Conversion of the retina to a closed system caused irreversible damage to all cell types within 40 minutes. Combined deprivation of oxygen and glucose also irreversibly damaged the neuronal cells within 40 minutes, but Mueller cells,the principal glial cells of the retina, were not irreversibly altered by 90 minutes of the deprivation. Deprivation of oxygen alone caused irreversible damage to receptor cells in 80 minutes, but the cells of the inner nuclear layer, ganglion cells, and Mueller cells retained normal structure for at least 180 minutes. Deprivation of glucose alone damaged receptor cells in 160 minutes and the other neuronal cells in 180 minutes, but did not irreversibly damage Mueller cells by 200 minutes.