This paper provides a comprehensive review of the major concepts associated with the μgrid, such as constant power load (CPL), incremental negative resistance or impedance (INR/I) and its dynamic ...behaviours on the μgrid, and power system distribution (PSD). In general, a μgrid is defined as a cluster of different types of electrical loads and renewable energy sources (distributed generations) under a unified controller within a certain local area. It is considered a perfect solution to integrate renewable energy sources with loads as well as with a traditional grid. In addition, it can operate with a conventional grid, for example, by energy sourcing or a controllable load, or it can operate alone as an islanding mode to feed required electric energy to a grid. Hence, one of the important issues regarding the μgrid is the constant power load that results from the tightly designed control when it is applied to power electronic converters. The effect of CPL is incremental negative resistance that impacts the power quality of a power system and makes it at negative damping. Also, in this paper, a comprehensive study on major control and compensation techniques for μgrid has been included to face the instability effects of constant power loads. Finally, the merits and limitations of the compensation techniques are discussed.
Electrically charged particles can be created by the decay of strong enough electric fields, a phenomenon known as the Schwinger mechanism
. By electromagnetic duality, a sufficiently strong magnetic ...field would similarly produce magnetic monopoles, if they exist
. Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical fundamental particles that are predicted by several theories beyond the standard model
but have never been experimentally detected. Searching for the existence of magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger mechanism has not yet been attempted, but it is advantageous, owing to the possibility of calculating its rate through semi-classical techniques without perturbation theory, as well as that the production of the magnetic monopoles should be enhanced by their finite size
and strong coupling to photons
. Here we present a search for magnetic monopole production by the Schwinger mechanism in Pb-Pb heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, producing the strongest known magnetic fields in the current Universe
. It was conducted by the MoEDAL experiment, whose trapping detectors were exposed to 0.235 per nanobarn, or approximately 1.8 × 10
, of Pb-Pb collisions with 5.02-teraelectronvolt center-of-mass energy per collision in November 2018. A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer scanned the trapping detectors of MoEDAL for the presence of magnetic charge, which would induce a persistent current in the SQUID. Magnetic monopoles with integer Dirac charges of 1, 2 and 3 and masses up to 75 gigaelectronvolts per speed of light squared were excluded by the analysis at the 95% confidence level. This provides a lower mass limit for finite-size magnetic monopoles from a collider search and greatly extends previous mass bounds.
Inflammation is thought to play an important role in hand osteoarthritis (HOA), which is associated with pain and increased limitation of hand function.
To explore the acceptability of therapy with ...intramuscular methylprednisolone in HOA among health-care providers (HCPs) and HOA patients. Additionally, the response to a single methylprednisolone injection was investigated.
We adopted a mixed-methods design.
In a qualitative study, we asked HCPs and patients for their acceptability of intramuscular methylprednisolone. A prospective observational study was performed afterward in HOA patients who received a single 120-mg intramuscular methylprednisolone injection as part of off-label administration. Average pain, functional impairment, and occurrence of adverse events were assessed at baseline and at 4, 8, and 12 weeks after the injection.
Fourteen HCPs and 15 patients participated in the first part of the study. They considered intramuscular methylprednisolone potentially effective, yet expressed concerns about the risk for long-term adverse events. Among the 22 HOA patients who received intramuscular methylprednisolone, 13 patients reported 44 adverse events, with half of them occurring within the first 4 weeks after injection and being classified as nonserious. Mean hand pain decreased the most 4 weeks after injection and this effect persisted till week 12, though less pronounced. Similar results were seen with HOA-related functional impairment, which improved the most at week 4 and to a lesser extent at week 12.
We found a good acceptability of intramuscular methylprednisolone treatment among HCPs and HOA patients, as well as a potential to reduce pain and improve hand function with a good safety profile for as long as 12 weeks after a single administration.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases dramatically in patients with ischaemic stroke. Monomeric C-reactive protein (mCRP) appears in the ECM of ischaemic tissue after stroke, associating with ...microvasculature, neurons and AD-plaques, Aβ, also, being able to dissociate native-CRP into inflammatory, mCRP in vivo. Here, mCRP injected into the hippocampal region of mice was retained within the retrosplenial tract of the dorsal 3rd ventrical and surrounding major vessels. Mice developed behavioural/cognitive deficits within 1 month, concomitant with mCRP staining within abnormal looking neurons expressing p-tau and in beta-amyloid 1-42-plaque positive regions. mCRP co-localised with CD105 in microvessels suggesting angiogenesis. Phospho-arrays/Western blotting identified signalling activation in endothelial cells and neurons through p-IRS-1, p-Tau and p-ERK1/2-which was blocked following pre-incubation with mCRP-antibody. mCRP increased vascular monolayer permeability and gap junctions, increased NCAM expression and produced haemorrhagic angiogenesis in mouse matrigel implants. mCRP induced tau244-372 aggregation and assembly in vitro. IHC study of human AD/stroke patients revealed co-localization of mCRP with Aβ plaques, tau-like fibrils and IRS-1/P-Tau positive neurons and high mCRP-levels spreading from infarcted core regions matched reduced expression of Aβ/Tau. mCRP may be responsible for promoting dementia after ischaemia and mCRP clearance could inform therapeutic avenues to reduce the risk of future dementia.
The origin of changes in the neuronal activity of the globus pallidus (GP) and the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD) is still controversial. The aim of the study ...was to investigate the neuronal activity of STN and GP neurons under urethane anesthesia in an early and in an advanced stage PD rat model. 6-Hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) injection into the striatum induced a partial lesion of dopamine cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and fibers in the striatum. The GP firing rate decreased significantly with no significant change of the pattern. 6-OHDA injection into the SNc induced a total or subtotal lesion without any change in the firing rate and patterns of GP neurons. Concerning the STN, after partial lesion, the firing rate remained unchanged but the firing pattern significantly changed towards a more irregular and bursty pattern. In rats with total or subtotal lesion of the SNc the firing rate increased significantly and the relative amount of tonic neurons significantly decreased. Our results demonstrate that neuronal reactivity in the basal ganglia network considerably differs in the early versus late stage model of PD. We showed that the pathological activity of STN neurons after severe lesion is not mediated by the GP. Moreover, the unchanged activity of GP neurons is likely to be a consequence of the STN hyperactivity. These data suggest that in the GP-STN-GP network, the excitatory influence of the STN-GP pathway overrides that of the GABAergic GP-STN pathway, questioning the classical model of basal ganglia organization.
For a robust interpretation of upcoming observations from PLANCK and Large Hadron Collider experiments it is imperative to understand how the inflationary dynamics of a non-minimally coupled Higgs ...scalar field with gravity may affect the determination of the inflationary observables. We make a full proper analysis of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, Type Ia supernova distance-redshift relation, and the baryon acoustic oscillations data sets in a context of the non-minimally coupled Higgs inflation field with gravity. For the central value of the top quark pole mass mT = 171.3 GeV, the fit of the inflation model with a non-minimally coupled Higgs scalar field leads to a Higgs boson mass in the range 143.7 GeV <= mH <= 167 GeV (95% CL). We show that the inflation driven by a non-minimally coupled scalar field to the Einstein gravity leads to significant constraints on the scalar spectral index nS and the tensor-to-scalar ratio R when compared with a tensor with similar constraints to form the standard inflation with a minimally coupled scalar field. We also show that an accurate reconstruction of the Higgs potential in terms of inflationary observables requires an improved accuracy of other parameters of the standard model of particle physics such as the top quark mass and the effective QCD coupling constant.
Electrophysiological measures can help understand brain function both in healthy individuals and in the context of a disease. Given the amount of information that can be extracted from these measures ...and their frequent use, it is essential to know more about their inherent reliability.
To understand the reliability of electrophysiology measures in healthy individuals. We hypothesized that measures of threshold and latency would be the most reliable and least susceptible to methodological differences between study sites.
Somatosensory evoked potentials from 112 control participants; long-latency reflexes, transcranial magnetic stimulation with resting and active motor thresholds, motor evoked potential latencies, input/output curves, and short-latency sensory afferent inhibition and facilitation from 84 controls were collected at 3 visits over 24 months at 4 Track-On HD study sites. Reliability was assessed using intra-class correlation coefficients for absolute agreement, and the effects of reliability on statistical power are demonstrated for different sample sizes and study designs.
Measures quantifying latencies, thresholds, and evoked responses at high stimulator intensities had the highest reliability, and required the smallest sample sizes to adequately power a study. Very few between-site differences were detected.
Reliability and susceptibility to between-site differences should be evaluated for electrophysiological measures before including them in study designs. Levels of reliability vary substantially across electrophysiological measures, though there are few between-site differences. To address this, reliability should be used in conjunction with theoretical calculations to inform sample size and ensure studies are adequately powered to detect true change in measures of interest.
•Levels of reliability varied substantially between electrophysiological measures.•Latencies, thresholds, and SEPs at high intensities had the highest reliability.•Measures of amplitude rather than area were more reliable.•Few between-site differences suggest usefulness of measures in multi-centre trials.•Reliability and hypothetical statistical power calculations can inform study design.
The MoEDAL trapping detector consists of approximately 800 kg of aluminum volumes. It was exposed during run 2 of the LHC program to 6.46 fb^{-1} of 13 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHCb ...interaction point. Evidence for dyons (particles with electric and magnetic charge) captured in the trapping detector was sought by passing the aluminum volumes comprising the detector through a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer. The presence of a trapped dyon would be signaled by a persistent current induced in the SQUID magnetometer. On the basis of a Drell-Yan production model, we exclude dyons with a magnetic charge ranging up to five Dirac charges (5g_{D}) and an electric charge up to 200 times the fundamental electric charge for mass limits in the range 870-3120 GeV and also monopoles with magnetic charge up to and including 5g_{D} with mass limits in the range 870-2040 GeV.
ContextGraves' disease is the most prevalent cause of hyperthyroidism worldwide. Adiponectin, the most abundant adipokine, plays a significant role in a cluster of prevalent diseases connected to ...metabolic disorders.ObjectiveAlthough the association between adiponectin and Graves' disease has been studied, the existing data is inconsistent. Therefore, we conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between adiponectin levels and Graves' disease.MethodsWe performed a systematic electronic search on PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus and Cochrane Library using predefined keywords. We used the NHLBI quality assessment tools to assess the included studies.ResultsThere were 11 studies involving 781 subjects included in our qualitative synthesis, while 6 studies were included in our quantitative synthesis. We observed significantly increased adiponectin levels in Graves' disease patients compared to controls (MD 2.983 95% CI 0.138-5.828) and hypothyroidism patients (MD 3.389 95% CI 1.332-5.446). Nevertheless, no significant MD was observed when comparing Graves' disease patients with and without Graves' ophthalmopathy (MD -27.124 95% CI -88.893 - 34.645).ConclusionsAdiponectin levels were significantly higher in patients with Graves' disease compared to controls and hypothyroidism patients. However, patients with and without Graves' ophthalmopathy did not present a significant mean difference in adiponectin levels.
A search for highly electrically charged objects (HECOs) and magnetic monopoles is presented using 2.2
fb
-
1
of
p
-
p
collision data taken at a centre of mass energy (E
CM
) of 8 TeV by the MoEDAL ...detector during LHC’s Run-1. The data were collected using MoEDAL’s prototype Nuclear Track Detectord array and the Trapping Detector array. The results are interpreted in terms of Drell–Yan pair production of stable HECO and monopole pairs with three spin hypotheses (0, 1/2 and 1). The search provides constraints on the direct production of magnetic monopoles carrying one to four Dirac magnetic charges and with mass limits ranging from 590 GeV/c
2
to 1 TeV/c
2
. Additionally, mass limits are placed on HECOs with charge in the range 10
e
to 180
e
, where
e
is the charge of an electron, for masses between 30 GeV/c
2
and 1 TeV/c
2
.
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