Explore the vast range of titles available.

Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems constitute the majority of the demands in modern power systems for aggregated buildings. However, HVAC integrated with renewable energy sources (RES) face notable issues, such as uneven demand–supply balance, frequency oscillation and significant drop in system inertia owing to sudden disturbances in nearby generation for a longer period. To overcome these challenges, load frequency control (LFC) is implemented to regulate the frequency, maintain zero steady-state error between the generation and demand, reduce frequency deviations and balance the active power flow with neighboring control areas at a specified value. In view of this, the present paper investigates LFC with a proposed centralized single control strategy for a micro-grid (µG) system consisting of RESs and critical load of a HVAC system. The proposed control strategy includes a newly developed cascaded two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) proportional integral (PI) and proportional derivative filter (PDF) controller optimized with a very recent meta-heuristic algorithm—a modified crow search algorithm (mCSA)—after experimenting with the number of performance indices (PICs). The superiority of both the proposed optimization algorithm and the proposed controller is arrived at after comparison with similar other algorithms and similar controllers, respectively. Compared to conventional control schemes, the proposed scheme significantly reduces the frequency deviations, improving by 27.22% from the initial value and reducing the performance index criteria (ƞISE) control error to 0.000057. Furthermore, the demand response (DR) is implemented by an energy storage device (ESD), which validates the suitability of the proposed control strategy for the µG system and helps overcome the challenges associated with variable RESs inputs and load demand. Additionally, the improved robustness of the proposed controller for this application is demonstrated through sensitivity analysis with ±20% μG coefficient variation.

Due to increasing load demand and the energy crisis, microgrids (MGs) have attracted more attention. The idea and technology of microgrids (MGs) have undergone significant advancements largely aimed at enabling the automation of distribution systems and enhance the integration of renewable energy sources (RESs). In this paper, the MG is a combined form of various distributed generations (DGs), battery energy storage system (BESS), and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). A novel approach is introduced to minimize the operational expenses of the grid-connected low-voltage microgrid by leveraging a probabilistic expert optimization technique. This methodology takes into account various factors such as power supply costs, power dissipation, PHEV charging requirements, and the optimal capacity of BESS. Three charging techniques are proposed in this paper to control the PHEVs’ charging demand at homes and public charging stations. This study employs a comprehensive model to simulate a whole day, accounting for the stochastic charging requirements of PHEVs, load profiles, RESs outputs, and variations in energy price. To address the inherent nonlinearity of the optimization problem, the energy management within the MG is tackled using the slime mould algorithm, a population-based stochastic optimizer. The primary goal is to minimize operational costs in the microgrid by optimizing the efficient utilization of available resources.

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is the leading cause of the liver cirrhosis related death worldwide. Excessive alcohol consumption resulting enhanced gut permeability which trigger sensitization of inflammatory cells to bacterial endotoxins and induces secretion of cytokines, chemokines leading to activation of stellate cells, neutrophil infiltration and hepatocyte injury followed by steatohepatitis, fibrosis and cirrhosis. But all chronic alcoholics are not susceptible to ALD. This study investigated the causes of differential immune responses among ALD patients and alcoholic controls (ALC) to identify genetic risk factors and assessed the therapeutic potential of a microRNA, miR-124-3p. Bio-Plex Pro™ Human Chemokine analysis/qRT-PCR array was used for identification of deregulated immune genes. Sequencing/luciferase assay/ELISA detected and confirmed the polymorphisms. THP1 co-cultured with HepG2/LX2/HUVEC and apoptosis assay/qRT-PCR/neutrophil migration assay were employed as required. The combined data analysis of the GSE143318/Bio-Plex Pro™ Human Chemokine array and qRT-PCR array revealed that six genes (TNFα/IL1β/IL8/MCP1/IL6/TGFβ) were commonly overexpressed in both serum/liver tissue of ALD-patients compared to ALC. The promoter sequence analysis of these 6 genes among ALD (n=322)/ALC (n=168) samples revealed that only two SNPs, rs361525(G/A) at -238 in TNF-α/rs1143627(C/T) at -31 in IL1β were independently associated with ALD respectively. To evaluate the functional implication of these SNPs on ALD development, the serum level of TNF-α/IL1β was verified and observed significantly higher in ALD patients with risk genotypes TNF-α-238GA/IL1β-31CT+TT than TNF-α-238GG/IL1β-31CC. The TNF-α/IL1β promoter Luciferase-reporter assays showed significantly elevated level of luciferase activities with risk genotypes -238AA/-31TT than -238GG/-31CC respectively. Furthermore, treatment of conditioned medium of TNF-α/IL1β over-expressed THP1 cells to HepG2/LX2/HUVEC cells independently showed enhanced level of ER stress and apoptosis in HepG2/increased TGFβ and collagen-I production by LX2/huge neutrophil infiltration through endothelial layer. However, restoration of miR-124-3p in THP1 attenuated such inter-cellular communications and hepatocyte damage/collagen production/neutrophil infiltration were prohibited. Target analysis/luciferase-reporter assays revealed that both TNF-α/IL1β were inhibited by miR-124-3p along with multiple genes from TLR4 signaling/apoptosis/fibrogenesis pathways including MYD88, TRAF3/TRADD, Caspase8/PDGFRA, TGFβR2/MCP1, and ICAM1 respectively. Thus, rs361525(G/A) in TNF-α and rs1143627(C/T) in IL1β gene may be used as early predictors of ALD susceptibility among East Indian population. Impeding overexpressed TNF-α/IL1β and various genes from associated immune response pathways, miR-124-3p exhibits robust therapeutic potential for ALD patients.

The Chemoradiotherapy for Oesophageal Cancer Followed by Surgery Study (CROSS) trial established a new benchmark in the management of oesophageal cancer with neoadjuvant chemoradiation followed by surgery with a marked benefit for squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs). We evaluate if the CROSS protocol can be safely implemented with a broader eligibility criteria in a real-world setting. A retrospective analysis of 80 patients of SCC oesophagus was performed, who were treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiation with radiation therapy (RT) to 41.4 Gy/23 Fr/4.5 weeks and weekly paclitaxel and carboplatin, followed by surgery at our institute between 2012 and 2019. Eligibility for the use of this regimen was expanded beyond the limits of size and stage allowed in the CROSS trial. The median age of this cohort was 57 years (range: 39-78 years). Most of the patients (77/80; 96.3%) had T3 disease and 25% patients (20/80) had N2/N3 disease. Thirty-three patients (41.3%) had the disease beyond CROSS eligibility criteria. All patients completed planned course of RT and five cycles of weekly chemotherapy were received by 61 patients (76.2%). Overall pathological complete response (pCR) could be achieved in 33 patients (41.3%). Among 33 CROSS ineligible patients, 14 (42.4%) had pCR. Acute grade 3 dysphagia and grade ≥ 3 neutropenia were seen in seven cases (8.3%) and nine cases (10.7%), respectively. At a median follow-up of 16 months, 1-year and 2-year overall survival (OS) were 84.4% (95% confidence interval (CI): 73.5%-91.1%) and 76.3% (95% CI: 63.2%-85.2%), respectively, for the entire cohort. For CROSS ineligible patients, 1-year and 2-year OS were 82% (95% CI: 61.8%-92.2%) and 72.7% (95% CI: 50.4%-86.2%), respectively. On univariate analysis, patients who had pathologically N0 disease had significantly better 2-year OS (85.7% versus 48.4%; p = 0.03) as compared to pathologically N+ patients. On univariate and multivariate analysis, there was no significant difference in OS and progression free survival between CROSS eligible and CROSS ineligible patients. CROSS protocol can be safely implemented for carefully selected patients of SCC oesophagus outside clinical trial settings with expanded eligibility criteria.

The current research tries to unravel if primes which are not consciously perceivable can impact emotion categorization task. For this study, 101 healthy young adults (male = 38; female = 63) with mean age of males being 22.35 with an SD of 2 and that of females being 22.18 with an SD of 0.77 were made to perform a cognitive task where they had to categorize the emotion displayed by neutral faces after being primed by neutral and negative words, presented supraliminally or subliminally. A software SublimiX was used to generate subliminal stimuli and present the priming task. The neutral facial expressions were created using a software called FaceGen Modeller. General health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1992) was administered to screen psychiatric morbidity in the participants. Results revealed an attention bias towards negative (unpleasant) stimuli.