Incremental Loss Research Articles

Performance analysis of dual-hop underwater visible light communication system with receiver diversity

Visible light communication (VLC) has the ability to provide a high data rate up to Mbps in underwater environments for real-time communication systems. In underwater VLC (UWVLC), two major impairments are the turbulence-induced fading due to variation of salt and temperature of seawater and incremental path loss with distance due to absorption and scattering. We consider these two impairments and derive the closed form expressions for average symbol error probability (ASEP), asymptotic relative diversity order, and ergodic capacity for UWVLC dual-hop cooperative communication system. We consider multiple receiver branches with selection combining to combat the effect of fading. The impact of temperature on the fading parameters and system performance is highlighted. We conduct a comparative analysis of ASEP for four-pulse amplitude modulation and four-square quadrature amplitude modulation schemes and draw useful insights. We prove the accuracy of the derived analytical expression using Monte Carlo simulations.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Combined phase balancing and reconfiguration for unbalanced distribution system optimization through hybrid fuzzy-MFOA

The phase balance and reconfiguration of the power distribution system is a dynamic analysis to improve and manage the radial power distribution system. Power loss analysis in the distribution system is mainly central, considering the point of view of money. In order to reduce power loss, different technologies are excluded in reconstruction, capacitor layout and phase balance. In addition to these three methods, in unevenness in the distribution system, the phase balance is considered one of three dynamic processes all of those above. Unbalanced feeders are dangerous for incremental power loss and excessive burden conditions; however, they affect quality and cost. A severely uneven circuit can convey an unsafe voltage drop in the intense phase. A positive feeder system is arranged to be load-dependent, recording balanced feed, the desire to improve the load and unbalanced load errors will begin feeder imbalance. For the equilibrium phase feeder, the exchange is a quick and convincing way. This paper proposes a problem of adding phase balance and reconfiguration to try to assist the hybrid fuzzy and Moth flame optimization algorithm (MFOA) to deal with the uneven distribution system. The verification of the estimative program is completed with two standard evaluations, and the work approves the simulation results.

Extraterritorial Damages in Copyright Law

A recurring fact pattern in U.S. copyright infringement litigation involves a defendant who makes an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, in the United States; exports it to another country, where it is used to generate additional copies; and then profits from the use or sale of these copies (outside the United States). Under these circumstances, the question sometimes arises whether a U.S. court can award damages or profits reflecting the foreign uses and sales, without overstepping traditional territorial limitations on the application of U.S. copyright law. Several courts, over the years, have concluded that the answer is yes, as long as the initial act of U.S. infringement is what enables the subsequent foreign exploitation. In this article, I argue that this “predicate act” doctrine is largely correct, both doctrinally and as a matter of policy, though subject to certain limitations. More specifically, I argue that, if the defendant proves that it could have exploited the work in another country by employing a cognizable noninfringing alternative to the predicate act of domestic infringement—for example, by acquiring a lawfully-made copy in the U.S. and exporting that copy for further use abroad—the only damages or profits that are properly attributable to the U.S. infringement are those that reflect the incremental loss or benefit occasioned by the defendant’s avoidance of this alternative. In such a case, consistent with the territoriality principle, the amount awarded specifically for the U.S. infringement may be minimal—though U.S. courts should be receptive to exercising jurisdiction over supplemental claims arising under foreign copyright law, and where appropriate awarding monetary relief under foreign law. In other cases, by contrast, where the defendant could not have engaged in the foreign activity without a predicate act of U.S. infringement, the courts are right to award damages or profits reflecting the foreign exploitation, albeit subject to traditional proximate cause principles and to the single recovery rule. Application of these standards will enable courts to abide by the territorial limitations of U.S. copyright law while at the same time ensuring full compensation, as the facts warrant.

The Geometry of Power Systems Steady-State Equations– Part II: a Power Surface Study

Steady-state equations play an essential part in the theory of power systems and the practice of computations. These equations are directly or mediately used almost in all areas of the theory of power system states, constituting its basis. This two-part study deals with a geometrical interpretation of steady-state solutions in a power space. Part I has proposed considering the power system's steady states in terms of power surface. Part II is devoted to an analytical study of the power surface through its normal vectors. An interrelationship between the entries of the normal vector is obtained through incremental transmission loss coefficients. Analysis of the normal vector has revealed that in marginal states, its entry of the slack bus active power equals zero, and the incremental transmission loss coefficient of the slack bus equals one. Therefore, any attempts of the slack bus to maintain the system power balance in the marginal state are fully compensated by associated losses. In real-world power systems, a change in the slack bus location in the marginal state makes this steady state non-marginal. Only in the lossless power systems, the marginal states do not depend on a slack bus location.

Rates of RNFL Thinning in Patients with Suspected or Confirmed Glaucoma Receiving Unilateral Intravitreal Injections for Exudative AMD

This study evaluated whether the rate of retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thinning is faster in eyes receiving intravitreal injections than in fellow uninjected eyes among patients suspected of having or confirmed to have glaucoma and exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Retrospective comparative cohort study. Patients with a diagnosis of unilateral exudative AMD and confirmed to have or suspected of having glaucoma in both eyes receiving unilateral intravitreal injections were identified. Those with ≥3 RNFL optical coherence tomography scans and ≥6 injections were included in the study. Rates of RNFL thinning in the injected eye versus the uninjected eye were estimated using linear mixed models. The main outcome measurement was the differences in rates of RNFL thinning in the injected versus the fellow uninjected eye. The effects of postinjection elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP), injection frequency, and number of injections were also evaluated. A total of 53 patients met the inclusion criteria, receiving 26.4 ± 15.9 intravitreal injections. The average rate of RNFL thinning in uninjected eyes was-0.620μm/year (P= .029). Injected eyes had an additional incremental loss of-0.385μm/year, but this value was not statistically significant (95% confidence interval [CI]:-1.147 to 0.379μm/year; P= .324). Subgroup analysis with only glaucoma patients (n= 33) also demonstrated a nonsignificant effect of injections (-0.568μm/year; 95% CI:-1.454 to 0.319μm/year; P= .212). Postinjection IOP elevation, injection frequency, and total number of injections were not associated with faster RNFL loss. Among exudative AMD patients with glaucoma or suspected of having glaucoma, the rate of RNFL thinning in eyes receiving intravitreal injections did not significantly differ from that of fellow uninjected eyes.

Finding a suitable library size to call variants in RNA-Seq

BackgroundRNA sequencing allows the study of both gene expression changes and transcribed mutations, providing a highly effective way to gain insight into cancer biology. When planning the sequencing of a large cohort of samples, library size is a fundamental factor affecting both the overall cost and the quality of the results. Here we specifically address how overall library size influences the detection of somatic mutations in RNA-seq data in two acute myeloid leukaemia datasets.Results We simulated shallower sequencing depths by downsampling 45 acute myeloid leukaemia samples (100 bp PE) that are part of the Leucegene project, which were originally sequenced at high depth. We compared the sensitivity of six methods of recovering validated mutations on the same samples. The methods compared are a combination of three popular callers (MuTect, VarScan, and VarDict) and two filtering strategies. We observed an incremental loss in sensitivity when simulating libraries of 80M, 50M, 40M, 30M and 20M fragments, with the largest loss detected with less than 30M fragments (below 90%, average loss of 7%). The sensitivity in recovering insertions and deletions varied markedly between callers, with VarDict showing the highest sensitivity (60%). Single nucleotide variant sensitivity is relatively consistent across methods, apart from MuTect, whose default filters need adjustment when using RNA-Seq. We also analysed 136 RNA-Seq samples from the TCGA-LAML cohort (50 bp PE) and assessed the change in sensitivity between the initial libraries (average 59M fragments) and after downsampling to 40M fragments. When considering single nucleotide variants in recurrently mutated myeloid genes we found a comparable performance, with a 6% average loss in sensitivity using 40M fragments.ConclusionsBetween 30M and 40M 100 bp PE reads are needed to recover 90–95% of the initial variants on recurrently mutated myeloid genes. To extend this result to another cancer type, an exploration of the characteristics of its mutations and gene expression patterns is suggested.

Biomechanics in an Incomplete Versus Complete Supraspinatus Tear: A Cadaveric Study.

Background:Degenerative and traumatic changes to the rotator cuff can result in massive and irreparable rotator cuff tears (RCTs).Purpose/Hypothesis:The study objective was to conduct a biomechanical comparison between a small, incomplete RCT and a large, complete RCT. We hypothesized that the incomplete supraspinatus (SS) tear would lead to an incremental loss of abduction force and preserve vertical position of the humeral head, while a complete SS tear would cause superior humeral migration, decrease functional deltoid abduction force, and increase passive range of motion (ROM).Study Design:Controlled laboratory study.Methods:Six cadaveric shoulders were evaluated using a custom testing apparatus. Each shoulder was subjected to 3 conditions: (1) intact/control, (2) 50%, full-thickness, incomplete SS tear, and (3) 100%, complete SS tear. Deltoid abduction force, superior humeral head migration, and passive ROM were measured in static conditions at 0°, 30°, and 60° of glenohumeral abduction, respectively.Results:The intact SS resulted in a mean deltoid abduction force of 2.5, 3.3, and 3.8 N at 0°, 30°, and 60° of abduction, respectively. Compared with the intact shoulder, there was no significant difference in mean abduction force seen in the incomplete tear, while the force was significantly decreased by 52% at 30° of abduction in the complete tear (P = .009). Compared with the incomplete tear, there were significant decreases in abduction force seen in the complete tear, by 33% and 48% (0.9 N and 1.1 N) at 0° and 30° of abduction, respectively (P = .04 and .004). The intact configuration experienced a mean superior humeral head migration of 1.5, 1.4, and 1.1 mm at 0°, 30°, and 60° of abduction, respectively. The complete tear resulted in a superior migration of 3.0 and 4.4 mm greater than the intact configuration at 0° and 30° of abduction, respectively (P = .001). There was a 5° and 10° increase in abduction ROM with 50% and 100% tears, respectively (P = .003 and .03).Conclusion:An incomplete SS tear does not significantly alter the biomechanics of the shoulder, while a large, complete SS tear leads to a significant superior humeral migration, a decreased deltoid abduction force, and a mild increase in passive ROM.Clinical Relevance:Our findings demonstrate the effects of large SS tears on key biomechanical parameters, as they progress from partial tears.

Taking an environmental ethics perspective to understand what we should expect from EIA in terms of biodiversity protection

As a globally mandated decision-support tool, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has the potential to contribute to the protection of biodiversity, which is increasingly under threat because of human activities. Concern over its ability to do this, however, has led to the addition of trade-off rules, Ecosystem Services Assessment (ESA), and biodiversity offsets. But given that EIA is set in a political decision-making context, what is reasonable to expect of EIA? In this paper we seek to explore what level of biodiversity protection we can expect EIA to support (and therefore whether these additions are worthwhile). Our point of departure is that EIA supports its political context and associated societal goals, and those goals typically (explicitly or implicitly) reflect some form of sustainable development. Given that the appropriate level of biodiversity protection is a moral consideration, we take an environmental ethics perspective to explain how different levels of protection are associated with different ethical positions on a spectrum from anthropocentrism (where only humans have intrinsic rights) through to ecocentrism (where all individuals of all species have intrinsic rights). We then investigate how different sustainable development discourses, one economic (on a spectrum from weak to strong sustainability) and one ecological (on a spectrum from shallow to deep ecology) map against the environmental ethics spectrum. We find that the economic discourse on sustainable development, which tends to prevail in political decision-making, is heavily anthropocentric, whereas an ecological discourse has some potential to deliver ecocentrism, but only where a deep ecology interpretation is adopted. We then show that the practise of EIA (with or without the addition of other approaches) maps against, and is bounded by, an economic discourse on sustainable development. The reality is, therefore, that EIA can do no more than contribute to delaying incremental biodiversity loss. If EIA were legislated to protect biodiversity using a deep ecology discourse, then only brownfield development would be possible.

Antifungal Activity of Organic Acies and Their Impact on Wood Decay Resistance

Organic acids are present in many bio-based chemicals suggested as active ingredients for wood preservative formulations, but their effects in wood have not been studied. However, an understanding of their effect in wood is necessary. The aim of this study was to determine the antifungal and wood-preserving activities in vitro of acetic, formic, and propionic acids against the wood-decaying fungi Coniophora puteana, Rhodonia (Poria) placenta, Gloeophyullum trabeum, and Trametes versicolor. Mixes of these three acids were also tested for possible synergetic effects. All the acids and mixtures showed antifungal activity against the pure cultures of wood-decaying fungi. Propionic acid by itself had the best performance, inhibiting at 1 g/L concentration the growth of all the decay fungi by 99-100%. Despite the antifungal activity of the organic acids, the pine sapwood specimens treated with 3% and 6% acid solutions and exposed to decay by C. Puteana and G. trabeum did not differ significantly from the untreated pine. Leaching of the sapwood specimens caused an incremental mass loss of the sapwood specimens. In addition, the leached specimens had a lower mass than the specimens before the acid impregnation, indicating that they were damaged by the acidic chemicals. The presence and acidity of organic acids in wood-derived bio0-based chemicals need to be assessed before they are used as wood preservatives.

The polyethylene on bone articulation, as occurs with scapular notching, is associated with osteolytic potential

IntroductionScapular notching is a common finding following reverse total shoulder arthroplasty. Severe notching can extend beyond the inferior baseplate screw or post and is therefore unlikely to be the result of isolated mechanical impingement. It is highly likely that the cause of this bone loss is biologically mediated osteolysis, but the driver of this osteolysis is unknown. We completed in vitro polyethylene on bone wear testing, as occurs with scapular notching, to characterize the osteolytic potential of this articulation. MethodsPhysiologically relevant wear testing was performed with 18 polyethylene pins articulating against cortical bone, cancellous bone, and cobalt-chrome pucks. Pins were cycled up to 1,000,000 times, or until failure, and incremental material loss was determined to calculate polyethylene and bone wear rates. Polyethylene particles were extracted from the associated lubricant and evaluated using scanning electron microscopy. To validate the model, wear patterns on polyethylene pins were compared to those on 24 explanted reverse prostheses. ResultsPolyethylene wear rates were significantly higher on cortical bone (3.5-times, P = .040) and cancellous bone (10,700-times, P = .015) than on cobalt-chrome. Cortical bone wear rates decreased over time (P = .003). Electron microscopy demonstrated that polyethylene on cortical and cancellous bone both produced submicron polyethylene particles, the size necessary to induce biologically mediated osteolysis. Analysis of explanted reverse polyethylene components with impingement demonstrated similar wear patterns to what was seen in vitro. ConclusionThe polyethylene on bone articulation, as occurs with scapula notching, has potential to be an osteolytic driver as it is marked by high polyethylene wear rates and produces particles small enough to cause macrophage-mediated osteolysis, as has been demonstrated following total hip arthroplasty. Level of evidenceBasic Science Study

Implementing Interventions with Varying Marginal Cost-Effectiveness: An Application in Precision Medicine.

Purpose. A range of barriers may constrain the effective implementation of strategies to deliver precision medicine. If the marginal costs and consequences of precision medicine vary at different levels of implementation, then such variation will have an impact on relative cost-effectiveness. This study aimed to illustrate the importance and quantify the impact of varying marginal costs and benefits on the value of implementation for a case study in precision medicine. Methods. An existing method to calculate the value of implementation was adapted to allow marginal costs and consequences of introducing precision medicine into practice to vary across differing levels of implementation. This illustrative analysis used a case study based on a published decision-analytic model-based cost-effectiveness analysis of a 70-gene recurrence score (MammaPrint) for breast cancer. The impact of allowing for varying costs and benefits for the value of the precision medicine and of implementation strategies was illustrated graphically and numerically in both static and dynamic forms. Results. The increasing returns to scale exhibited by introducing this specific example of precision medicine mean that a minimum level of implementation (51%) is required for using the 70-gene recurrence score to be cost-effective at a defined threshold of €20,000 per quality-adjusted life year. The observed variation in net monetary benefit implies that the value of implementation strategies was dependent on the initial and ending levels of implementation in addition to the magnitude of the increase in patients receiving the 70-gene recurrence score. In dynamic models, incremental losses caused by low implementation accrue over time unless implementation is improved. Conclusions. Poor implementation of approaches to deliver precision medicine, identified to be cost-effective using decision-analytic model-based cost-effectiveness analysis, can have a significant economic impact on health systems. Developing and evaluating the economic impact of strategies to improve the implementation of precision medicine will potentially realize the more cost-effective use of health care budgets.

Efficient method for the optimal economic operation problem in point-to-point VSC-HVDC connected AC grids based on Lagrange multipliers

This paper describes a method based on Lagrange multipliers for efficiently solving the economic dispatch in power systems including point-to-point VSC-HVDC links. The proposed formulation bases on linear models of the AC systems and HVDC links where power losses are properly considered through incremental transmission loss factors.This timely formulation preserves suitable outcome accuracy while showing a greater computational efficiency than what is achieved with classical, nonlinear OPF methods. Its main features are demonstrated using two compelling test cases: a system accommodating one point-to-point VSC-HVDC link and another comprising multi-infeed HVDC connected AC power grids. Results of this approach are compared with those calculated by the nonlinear interior point method. It is confirmed that both fundamentally different approaches are in good agreement since errors smaller than 0.5% were obtained for generation costs, whereas the computational time was reduced by more than 60% with the introduced method.To show the method applicability in realistic power systems, the 10-generator New England Test system incorporating a VSC-HVDC link is studied. The DC link effect on system operation is examined for a 24-hour period dispatch thus demonstrating its usefulness, unrivalled modelling versatility and numerical efficiency with respect to existing approaches.

Финансовый рычаг в обрабатывающей промышленности Чешской Республики

The paper is focused on the problem of ffinancial leverage that assumes a high risk of possible incremental losses as well as it is a means to achieve higher profits dictating the urgency of the problem and the need to find the solution. The company’s performance is influenced by several factors that need to be taken into account and evaluated according to the ratio of assets (the way to obtain the return on assets). These factors include risks, return on equity and financial stability. Determining the appropriate amount of financial leverage is quite difficult. It depends not only on the time interval and level of preparation for risk, but also on the size of equity and the degree of success of recent transactions. Financial leverage can have a huge impact, because it creates both the risk of increased potential losses and the possibility of gaining a higher profit. There has been presented the answer to a scientific question, whether the foreign capital was efficiently used in the manufacturing industry in 2012-2018. There have been illustrated the data from financial statements from the manufacturing industry in the Czech Republic during the period from 2012 to 2018. The data were processed in Excel. Mean values of ROE, ROA and ROCE indicators are cal-culated for individual years. There have been calculated the values of indebtedness of every year; they are compared with the average profit in separate years. The proportion of foreign resources and overall assets has been analysed, the indebtedness was calculated and the inventory of using the foreign capital in 2012-2018 was made. It was found out that comparing to 2012, the indebtedness has grown, which supposes a considerable growth in the coming years. The indebtedness has been found not necessary to exceed 1. Alternatively, it is recommended to maintain the average value of the foreign capital on the same or slightly lower level in order to check the average indebtedness at 0.5, because this value illustrates comparatively positive results of average profit values.

Skeleton-based action recognition with hierarchical spatial reasoning and temporal stack learning network

Skeleton-based action recognition aims to recognize human actions by exploring the inherent characteristics from the given skeleton sequences and has attracted far more attention due to its great important potentials in practical applications. Previous methods have illustrated that learning discriminative spatial and temporal features from the skeleton sequences is a crucial factor to recognize human actions. Nevertheless, how to model spatio-temporal evolutions is still a challenging problem. In this work, we propose a novel model with hierarchical spatial reasoning and temporal stack learning network (HSR-TSL) to explore the discriminative spatial and temporal features for human action recognition, which consists of a hierarchical spatial reasoning network (HSRN) and a temporal stack learning network (TSLN). Specifically, the HSRN employs a hierarchical residual graph neural network to capture two-level spatial features: intra spatial information of each part and body-level structural information between each part. The TSLN models the detailed temporal dynamics of skeleton sequences by a composition of multiple skip-clip LSTMs. During training, we develop a clip-based incremental loss to effectively optimize the model. We perform extensive experiments on five challenging benchmarks to verify the effectiveness of each component of our model. The comparison results illustrate that our approach significantly boosts the performances for skeleton-based action recognition.

A Cost-Utility Analysis of Switching from Reference to Biosimilar Infliximab Compared to Maintaining Reference Infliximab in Adult Patients with Crohn's Disease.

Background and AimsLower-cost biosimilar infliximab may address affordability concerns in the treatment of adults with Crohn’s disease (CD), however, evidence regarding the cost-effectiveness of switching from reference to biosimilar is warranted. The aim of this research was to assess the incremental cost of switching from treatment with reference infliximab to biosimilar compared with maintaining reference infliximab in adults with CD per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained.MethodsA probabilistic cohort Markov model with 8-week cycle lengths was constructed to estimate the incremental costs and effects of switching over a 5-year time horizon from a public payer perspective. Base-case clinical inputs were obtained from NOR-SWITCH subgroup analyses and other published trials. Costs were obtained from Canadian sources. A total of 10,000 simulations were run. Sensitivity analysis was used to test the robustness of the results to variations in uncertain parameters.ResultsSwitching to biosimilar infliximab was less costly but also less effective with incremental savings of $46,194 (95% confidence interval [CI]: $42,420, $50,455) and a loss in QALYs of −0.13 (95% CI: −0.16, −0.07). Eighty-three per cent of the simulations demonstrated incremental cost savings and an incremental loss of effectiveness. The model was sensitive to differences in rates of disease worsening between reference and biosimilar infliximab.ConclusionsWhile biosimilar infliximab is associated with incremental savings for patients on maintenance therapy who are switched from reference infliximab, funding decision makers must decide whether a small loss of effectiveness is justified. Further evidence will help to inform reimbursement policy.

Alterations of Serum Ser312-Phosphorylated Fetuin-A from Exercise-Induced Moderate Body Weight Loss in Individuals with Obesity.

Phosphorylated fetuin-A (pFet-A) inhibits insulin action and has been shown to be associated with obesity and insulin resistance. The objective of this cohort study was to assess the effect of incremental body weight loss on alterations in serum pFet-A and indexes of insulin sensitivity. A total of 16 men with obesity attained a targeted weight loss of 8% to 10% of their initial body weight by achieving an energy expenditure/deficit of 2,000 to 2,500 kcal/wk. Anthropometric assessments and blood samples were obtained every 4 weeks. Weight loss was calculated and partitioned as 2% to 4%, 4% to 6%, 6% to 8%, and 8% to 10% compared with initial body weight. Targeted body weight loss of 8% to 10% decreased serum pFet-A, pFet-A:Fet-A ratio, fasting insulin, log(homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance), quantitative insulin sensitivity check index, adipose insulin resistance, and insulin resistance index significantly. Percent changes in serum pFet-A were associated with percent changes in indexes of insulin sensitivity. Unlike insulin sensitivity indexes, which were altered starting with 6% to 8% weight loss, serum pFet-A levels were significantly decreased by 19.6% starting with 2% to 4% weight loss and decreased by 25.6%, 36.8%, and 42.3% with 4% to 6%, 6% to 8%, and 8% to 10% weight loss, respectively. This study reports for the first time that the insulin-sensitizing effects of moderate weight loss are associated with a reduction in serum pFet-A levels.

A multi-phase blending method with incremental intensity for training detection networks

Object detection is an important topic for visual data processing in the visual computing area. Although a number of approaches have been studied, it still remains a challenge. There is a suitable way to promote image classifiers by blending training with blended images and corresponding blended labels. However, our experiments show that directly moving existing blending methods from classification to object detection will cause the training process become harder and eventually will lead to a bad performance. Inspired by our discovery, this paper presents a multi-phase blending method with incremental blending intensity to improve the accuracy of object detectors and achieve remarkable improvements. Firstly, to adapt blending method to detection task, we propose a smoothly scheduled and incremental blending intensity to control the degree of multi-phase blending. Based on the above dynamic coefficient, we propose an incremental blending method, in which the blending intensity is smoothly increased from zero to full. Therefore, more complex and various data can be created to achieve the goal of regularizing the network. Secondly, we also design an incremental hybrid loss function to replace the original loss function. The blending intensity in our loss function increases smoothly, which is controlled by our scheduled coefficient. Thirdly, we further discard more negative examples in our multi-phase training process than other typical training methods and processes. By doing so, we can regularize the neural network to enhance generalization capability with data diversity and eventually to improve the accuracy in object detection. Another advantage is that there is no negative effect on evaluation because our method is just applied during the training process. Typical experiments show the proposed method improves the generalization of the detection networks. On PASCAL VOC and MS COCO, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art RFBNet of one-stage detectors for real-time processing.

Incremental focal loss GANs

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have achieved inspiring performance in both unsupervised image generation and conditional cross-modal image translation. However, how to generate quality images at an affordable cost is still challenging. We argue that it is the vast number of easy examples that disturb training of GANs, and propose to address this problem by down-weighting losses assigned to easy examples. Our novel Incremental Focal Loss (IFL) progressively focuses training on hard examples and prevents easy examples from overwhelming the generator and discriminator during training. In addition, we propose an enhanced self-attention (ESA) mechanism to boost the representational capacity of the generator. We apply IFL and ESA to a number of unsupervised and conditional GANs, and conduct experiments on various tasks, including face photo-sketch synthesis, map↔aerial-photo translation, single image super-resolution reconstruction, and image generation on CelebA, LSUN, and CIFAR-10. Results show that IFL boosts learning of GANs over existing loss functions. Besides, both IFL and ESA make GANs produce quality images with realistic details in all these tasks, even when no task adaptation is involved.

Plasma-Based Power Limitation for Highly Linear MEMS Switch Protection and Isolation Enhancement

A novel hybrid approach integrating a MEMS switch with a gas discharge tube plasma cell to enhance switch survivability and isolation, especially at high incident power levels, is demonstrated. The theory of operation is discussed including consideration of the underlying plasma phenomena as well as the practical integration details. Measurement of a fabricated prototype is presented. Discussion of measurement challenges and potential solutions is accompanied by detailed explanations of measurement practice. Measurements provide insights into applied RF plasmas not present in the body of literature. Wideband enhancement of isolation by more than 10 dB at 50 W incident power is observed in a quasi-absorptive mode with increasing isolation over power. No penalty to the excellent linearity of MEMS switches is detected with a measured IIP3 of 75.3 dBm. Advantages in linearity as compared to semiconductor-based power limiting solutions are shown and demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. An incremental insertion loss of less than 0.2 dB with a return loss better than 12.5 dB is reported. Measurement of the effects on MEMS switch timing parameters as well as time domain characterization of the plasma breakdown is included.

OPTIMAL REACTIVE POWER ALLOCATION AND SETTLEMENT IN DEREGULATED POWER MARKET

This paper proposes a new optimal Q flow (OQF) method for market clearing and settlement of pure reactive power market to overcome the variability of loss price due to change in marginal bus. A lumped linear model is proposed for fast convergence. The power balance equality constraint and voltage inequality constraints are incorporated in the OQF method. In this method a unique reference for delivery/withdrawal point for reactive power called Market Center is proposed to share the total transmission loss equitably between the GENCO and DISCO participants in a transparent manner for pure Q Market using incremental loss factor method. The objective function is to minimize the cost of the reactive power payable to GENCOs with respect to market center. The compensation received by GENCO participants and Locational Marginal Price to be paid by DISCO participants are derived for a single sided auction market.