Unpredictable Variations Research Articles

Impact of Cyberbullying Behavior on the Self-Esteem among Secondary and Higher Secondary School Students in Punjab, Pakistan

The internet users are more than four billion globally. The fast advancement in electronic technology caused an unpredictable variation in the development of students. The use of the internet has become the backbone of education and communication. The current study sets out to measure the impact of cyberbullying on the selfesteem among secondary and higher secondary school students in nine districts of Punjab, Pakistan were selected. The total sample size comprised of 3236 (1614 male 1622 female) students, and their ages were 13-19 years, recruited through conveniently sampling. Two questionnaires were employed in the present research for the purpose of data collection; Cyberbullying Scale and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The data were analyzed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 23.0). The quantitative results revealed that cyberbullying was significantly (p < .01) positively correlated with self-esteem. Further, linear regression results showed that cyberbullying was a significant impact on self-esteem. Results also showed the comparison between male and female samples for cyberbullying on the self-esteem, and results of the comparison showed that the mean of cyberbullying was selfesteem was significantly higher among female students than male respondents. The limitations of the results are discussed.

The Conceptual study of Grahani Dosha with special reference to Bruhatrayee

All the living things in an ecosystem continued survival for food and other needs. For the protection of health and production of ailments Hita and Ahita anna is responsible respectively. Agni, which determines the quantity and quality of food to be consumed, is responsible for strength, fitness, longevity and essential breathing. Agni converts food in the form of biological energy, which is responsible for all the vital functions of our body. Grahani is the disease of Annavaha Srotas, as well directly related to status of Agni and diet habits. Passage of stools alternating with constipation or diarrhea (muhur baddham muhur dravam) is the fundamental symptom of Grahani Roga. Ayurveda regards Grahani as a Tridoshatmaka, which is the disorder of digestive system caused by reason of vitiation of Jatharagni, Saman Vayu, Pachakagni, Kledaka Kapha. The failure in digestion of ingested food (production of Pakwapakwam), malabsorption of the food absorption, excessive motility of gut resulting in recurrent emigration of the bowel. All the unpredictable variations of Agni i.e., Mandagni, Tiksnagni and Vishamagni are treated as Grahani Roga. So it should be primarily treated for Agnivardhana Chikitsa with the help of drugs which is Deepana (which boosts digestive power) and Pachana (digestive) qualities.

Characterization of Inactivated Influenza Vaccines Used in the Russian National Immunization Program.

Background: today’s standard quality control methods used to control the protein composition of inactivated influenza vaccines only take into account a few key reference components. They do not allow for thorough characterization of protein compositions. As a result, observation of unpredictable variations in major viral constituents and admixtures of cellular proteins within manufactured vaccines that may seriously influence the immunogenicity and safety of such vaccines has become a pressing issue in vaccinology. This study aims at testing a more sophisticated approach for analysis of inactivated split influenza vaccines licensed in the Russian Federation. The formulations under study are the most available on the market and are included in the Russian National Immunization Program. Methods: liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis, in combination with label-free protein quantitation via the intensity-based absolute-quantitation (iBAQ) algorithm, as well as a number of standard molecular analysis methods, such as sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and negative-stain transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were applied. Results: the methods implemented were able to identify dozens of viral and host proteins and quantify their relative amounts within the final formulations of different commercially available inactivated split influenza vaccines. Investigation of molecular morphology of the vaccine preparations using TEM revealed typical rosettes of major surface proteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase). DLS was used to demonstrate a size distribution of the rosettes and to test the stability of vaccine preparations at increased temperatures. Conclusions: a holistic approach based on modern, highly productive analytical procedures was for the first time applied for a series of different commercially available inactivated split influenza vaccines licensed in Russia. The protocols probed may be suggested for the post-marketing quality control of vaccines. Comparison of different preparations revealed that the Ultrix® and Ultrix® Quadri vaccines produced by pharmaceutical plant FORT LLC and trivalent vaccine Vaxigrip® produced by pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur have well-organized antigen rosettes, they contain fewer admixture quantities of host cell proteins, and demonstrate good correlation among mostly abundant viral proteins detected by different methods.

A scale-dependent model to represent changing aerodynamic roughness of ablating glacier ice based on repeat topographic surveys

AbstractTurbulent fluxes make a substantial and growing contribution to the energy balance of ice surfaces globally, but are poorly constrained owing to challenges in estimating the aerodynamic roughness length (z0). Here, we used structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) surveys to make plot-scale 2-D and 3-D microtopographic estimations ofz0and upscale these to mapz0across an ablating mountain glacier. At plot scales, we found spatial variability inz0estimates of over two orders of magnitude with unpredictablez0trajectories, even when classified into ice surface types. TLS-derived surface roughness exhibited strong relationships with plot-scale SfMz0estimates. At the glacier scale, a consistent increase inz0of ~0.1 mm d−1was observed. Space-for-time substitution based on time since surface ice was exposed by snow melt confirmed this gradual increase inz0over 60 d. These measurements permit us to propose a scale-dependent temporalz0evolution model where unpredictable variability at the plot scale gives way to more predictable changes ofz0at the glacier scale. This model provides a critical step towards deriving spatially and temporally distributed representations ofz0that are currently lacking in the parameterisation of distributed glacier surface energy balance models.

Using the Model for Improvement and Plan-Do-Study-Act to effect SMART change and advance quality.

Using the Model for Improvement and Plan-Do-Study-Act to effect SMART change and advance quality.

Coastline variability of several Latin American cities alongside Pacific Ocean due to the unusual "Sea Swell" events of 2015.

This study aims to report the short-term coastline dynamics and inundation limits of coastal cities along the Eastern Pacific due to the sea swell events that occurred during April to May 2015. The multi-temporal satellite datasets from Landsat such as Enhanced Thematic Mapper (L7 ETM+) and Operational Land Imager/Thermal Infrared Sensor (L8 OLI/TIRS) of different periods before and after the swell events were used to identify the shoreline changes. The satellite images were pre-processed using ERDAS imagine 9.2, and the coastline was digitized in ArcGIS 10.4.1 for ten cities spread across from Mexico to Chile (in Pacific coast) using the spectral water indices, and the shoreline change rate and erosion/accretion pattern at each transect were estimated using the statistical parameters embedded in Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS). The maximum erosion and accretion were observed in El Salvador (268m) and Huatulco (Mexico) (115m), respectively. Likewise, the maximum inundation was observed in El Salvador with 268m and Acapulco (Mexico) with 254m, and the tide gauge data suggest a possible relation to the bathymetry and the geomorphological conditions of the coast. Overall, the results indicate that the Eastern Pacific Ocean side sea swell events has led to extreme coastal flooding in recent years due to the increase in the mean sea level and the unpredictable variation in El Niño/Southern Oscillation events. Graphical abstract.

Automation of Dead End Filtration: An Enabler for Continuous Processing of Biotherapeutics.

Dead end filtration is a critical unit operation that is used for primary and secondary clarification during manufacturing of both microbial and mammalian cell based biotherapeutics. Dead end filtration is conventionally done in batch mode and requires filter pre-sizing using extensive scouting studies, along with filter over-sizing before deployment to handle potential variability. However, continuous manufacturing processes require consistent use of dead-end filtration over weeks or months, with potential unpredictable variations in feed stream attributes, which is a challenge currently facing the industry. In this work, a dead-end filtration skid is designed for continuous depth filtration, incorporating multiple small-sized filters along with turbidity, and pressure sensors with immediate switching to a fresh filter whenever turbidity or pressure breakthrough above a pre-determined cut-off is detected in real time. The skid has been successfully tested for manufacturing of granulocyte colony stimulating factor from Escherichia coli, human serum albumin from Pichia pastoris, and a monoclonal antibody therapeutic from CHO cells. The proposed skid can be directly applied for any dead-end filtration application with minimal prior scouting studies or sizing calculations for scale-up. It is a useful solution for continuous processing trains where the nature of the feed, such as its turbidity or host cell proteins content, may change over long continuous campaigns, rendering previous sizing calculations inaccurate. The skid also allows significant cost savings by eliminating the sizing safety factor of 1.5–2x which is generally added before filter deployment at manufacturing scale.

A Novel Approach of Face Recognition Using Optimized Adaptive Illumination–Normalization and KELM

Light variations from different directions on the face images cause severe performance degradation in face recognition system. These variations should be nullified or suppressed so that the recognition performance can be improved. Here, the objective is to develop a robust and pragmatic method which can compensate the effect of uncontrolled light incident from different directions on the person’s face. To normalize the effect of unpredictable illumination variations from face images, a novel illumination–normalization method is proposed by utilizing the fractional discrete cosine transform (Fr-DCT) and a nonlinear modifier. Fr-DCT provides a generalized α-domain in which illumination variation’s effect can be better processed. The proposed method adaptively selects and processes the low-frequency α-domain coefficients depending upon the light variations incident on the face image. The illumination-normalized images are classified with the help of a non-iterative classifier. The parameters of the proposed method are optimized with the help of genetic algorithm. The proposed method is tested over Extended YALE B, AR, CMU PIE and YALE face databases. Very promising results have been achieved with percentage error rate zero for CMU PIE and subset 3 of Extended YALE B, 0.38% for subset 4 and 0.55% for subset 5. On AR database, error rate is 0.5% when only illumination-varying images are considered for testing. The comparison of the results of the proposed method with those of the existing state-of-the-art methods clearly establishes the superiority of the proposed method.

Seismic effectiveness of hysteretic tuned mass dampers for inelastic structures

The problem of reducing the damage due to seismic loads in engineering structures by means of tuned mass dampers (TMDs) is addressed. Differently from previous studies focused on linear or geometrically nonlinear TMDs, the present work is concerned with a device that exhibits a hysteretic restoring force with pinching. A numerical TMD optimization is carried out so as to ensure optimal energy transfer from the main structure to the TMD for various seismic ground motion severities. The effectiveness of the vibration protection strategy is discussed for two different structural systems, i.e. a multi-story steel building with a purely elastoplastic behavior and a masonry building that exhibits stiffness and strength degradation.Numerical simulations demonstrate that the hysteretic TMD can achieve a meaningful average reduction of the root mean square (RMS) displacement of the steel structure between 40% (for 1% mass ratio) and 60% (for 5% mass ratio). Various seismic records related to soil types and seismic intensity levels different from those considered at the design stage, or unpredictable variations of the main system stiffness up to 10%, are shown to have rather limited influence on the TMD performance. It is shown that a classical linear TMD can attain a protection level comparable to that of the hysteretic TMD only at the expense of much higher mass ratios. Compared to the multi-story structure, the performance of the hysteretic TMD in a masonry building is still satisfactory although degraded, i.e. by about 15% in terms of RMS displacement. The performance is better than that of a classical linear absorber for very small mass ratios, especially for mid- or high-intensity seismic ground motions. The greater robustness of the hysteretic TMD performance for a wide range of seismic ground motions is due to its softening-type backbone, which can be optimized to accommodate the frequency changes that engineering structures typically undergo under seismic excitation. The role of the pinching in the performance of the hysteretic TMD is clarified.

(Invited) Receptor-Free and Label-Free Biomolecular Sensing Using Miniature Sensors

Nano and microsensors sensors, such as micro/nano cantilevers, nanowires, inter-digital electrodes, etc., offer unprecedented sensitivity for real-time detection of chemical and biological molecules. These miniature sensor platforms offer all the much desired sensor characteristics such as size, low power consumption, simultaneous detection of multiple analytes, easy readout, and low cost, compared to conventional sensors. In general, molecular adsorption on a sensor surface changes one or more of its physical properties in proportion to the amount of molecules adsorbed. However, many of these miniature sensors do not offer any selectivity. Chemical and Biological selectivity is often accomplished by using labels or immobilized molecular receptors on their surfaces. Many successful demonstrations of chem/biomolecular detection with exceptional selectivity and sensitivity using immobilized receptors have been reported in the literature. However, reproducibility of the sensor response has not been addressed adequately in the literature. We have we have observed a wide distribution in the response data of microcantilevers, immobilized with the same receptors in identical fashion, to a specific target analyte. Because the measured variations in the resonance characteristics of bare cantilevers is less than one percentage, the observed distribution in the cantilever-based chemical and biological sensors data should be due to the variations in the immobilized layers. Receptor graft densities on the cantilever surfaces can vary during the immobilization process. The unpredictable variations in the graft density are the major source of irreproducibility in cantilever sensors and pose a formidable challenge for their practical use. In addition, bio-receptors such as antibodies suffer from disadvantages such as short shelf life, requirement of special storage conditions, and persistent nonspecific binding. Immobilized polymer layers and self assembled monolayers also show degradation with time. Therefore, developing concepts that can provide high selectivity without relying on immobilized chemical interfaces is very important. We have combined cantilever sensor and nano wire sensors with infrared spectroscopy for a novel sensor platform that offers excellent selectivity as well as sensitivity. Microfabricated sensors have a very small thermal mass and they are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature. When the physisorbed molecular species on a bi-material microcantilever sensor are excited into their vibrational levels by sequential exposure to pulsed infrared radiation (IR), the non-radiative decay of the excited species results in changes in the temperature of the sensor. Temperature changes of the sensor can be measured by many different methods and when plotted as a function of irradiating IR wavelength show peaks corresponding to molecular vibrations. Monitoring the IR spectra of adsorbed species mechanically offer very high sensitivity as well as selectivity. This technique can also be used for liquid analytes.

Geochemical, petrographic and petrophysical characterization of the Lower Bakken Shale, Divide County, North Dakota

The Lower Bakken Shale is a key member of the Bakken Petroleum System, which is a prolific unconventional accumulation in North America. Unconventional accumulations have unpredictable lateral variations in hydrocarbon production due to a variety of factors including porosity, permeability, and other rock properties. Therefore, understanding the geochemical (source rock potential), petrological, and petrophysical properties of these units is essential in evaluating the hydrocarbon potential for the Lower Bakken Shale. This study utilized cores from four wells within three fields in Divide County, North Dakota, with samples collected for Rock- Eval pyrolysis, organic petrology, petrographic thin section studies, XRD, SEM, porosity, pore size, and pore fluid distribution. Helium porosimetry and NMR T2 porosity techniques were used to estimate porosity and also to check the quality of the results and avoid discrepancies. Results showed that maturity in the study area varies from immature to early mature using Tmax and solid bitumen reflectance. Organic petrology showed the dominance of solid bitumen and marine alginites, which confirms the Type II kerogen identified from pyrolysis and marine depositional environment in the study area. Major organic matter types identified from SEM studies involve stringy OM, OM-mineral admixture, particulate OM and pure OM which host the majority of the organic matter pores. Furthermore, pore types identified from SEM include mineral matrix pores, organic matter pores, and microfracture pores. Porosity values based on both helium and NMR varies but the difference was nominal and attributed to the presence of abundant clay minerals. Pore sizes are distributed within micropores, mesopores, and macropores with thermal maturity, TOC, and clay mineral proportion having a major influence on pore distribution. Clay-bound water was identified to be the dominant fluid within the shale samples using the T2 cutoff values and supporting evidence from the abundance of clay matrix porosity.

Exogenous Root Uptake of Glycine Betaine Mitigates Improved Tolerance to Salinity Stress in Avicenna germinans under Ambient and Elevated CO2 Conditions

In recent years, climate change has caused unpredictable variations in sea levels and an increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. Increasing temperatures and subsequent rates of evaporation have been demonstrated to cause increased coastal salinity in certain areas, which induces abiotic stress, in mangroves systems. The osmolyte, glycine betaine, has been shown in numerous studies to increase the tolerance of plants to environmental stressors, including salt stress. A handful of studies have demonstrated that increased CO2 concentrations confer increased salt tolerance and photosynthetic productivity of different mangrove species. Avicenna germinans, commonly referred to as the black mangrove, is native to Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and produces glycine betaine endogenously. This study sought to characterize the response of A. germinans exposed to increasing saline conditions, grown under normal and high CO2 concentrations. Elucidation of the role glycine betaine accumulation plays in tolerance to abiotic stress was investigated. A. germinans seedlings were subjected to increasing levels of salt stress (15–90 ppt) and treated with a dose response of glycine betaine (0–50 μM). Half of the seedlings were grown under ambient (400 ppm) CO2 conditions, and the other half were grown under elevated (800 ppm) CO2 conditions. Increased salinity tolerance and higher photosynthetic rates were observed among seedlings exposed to elevated CO2 conditions, as indicated by increased survival rates and qualitative health observations. This research may provide insights into potential consequences posed by climate change, as well as characterizing the glycine betaine signaling pathway in this mangrove species. Looking into the future, the knowledge obtained through this study may potentially contribute to our predictions of mangrove adaptability and therefore conferred protection of our coastlines in an ever‐changing world.

Climate change-driven elevational changes among boreal nocturnal moths

Climate change has shifted geographical ranges of species northwards or to higher altitudes on elevational gradients. These changes have been associated with increases in ambient temperatures. For ectotherms in seasonal environments, however, life history theory relies largely on the length of summer, which varies somewhat independently of ambient temperature per se. Extension of summer reduces seasonal time constraints and enables species to establish in new areas as a result of over-wintering stage reaching in due time. The reduction of time constraints is also predicted to prolong organisms’ breeding season when reproductive potential is under selection. We studied temporal change in the summer length and its effect on species’ performance by combining long-term data on the occurrence and abundance of nocturnal moths with weather conditions in a boreal location at Värriötunturi fell in NE Finland. We found that summers have lengthened on average 5 days per decade from the late 1970s, profoundly due to increasing delays in the onset of winters. Moth abundance increased with increasing season length a year before. Most of the species occurrences expanded upwards in elevation. Moth communities in low elevation pine heath forest and middle elevation mountain birch forest have become inseparable. Yet, the flight periods have remained unchanged, probably due to unpredictable variation in proximate conditions (weather) that hinders life histories from selection. We conclude that climate change-driven changes in the season length have potential to affect species’ ranges and affect the structure of insect assemblages, which may contribute to alteration of ecosystem-level processes.

Blood Pressure measurements are site dependent in a cohort of patients with neurological illness

Blood pressure (BP) management is a crucial part of critical care that directly affects morbidity and mortality. While BP has become a mainstay in patient care, the accuracy and precision of BP measures across commonly used sites (left upper arm, right upper arm, etc.) and methods have not been established. This study begins to fill this gap in literature by testing the null hypothesis that BP measurement does not vary according to site. This is a prospective, non-randomized, cross-sectional study of 80 neurocritical care unit patients. Near simultaneous non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) readings from 4 different locations (bilateral upper arm, bilateral wrist) and, when available, intra-arterial blood pressure readings (IABP) were included. Pearson correlation coefficients and one-way repeated measures ANOVA were used to observe the systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial pressure (MAP) correlations. The BP measured at the four most common sites (left upper arm, left wrist, right upper arm, right wrist) had adequate correlation coefficients but were statistically significantly different and highly unpredictable. The median inter-site systolic variability was 10 mmHg (IQR 2 to 10 mmHg). The median inter-site MAP variability was 6mmHg with an interquartile range (IQR) of 3 to 9 mmHg. As expected, the values correlated to show that patients with high BP in one site tended to have high BP in another site. However, the unpredictable inter-site variability is concerning within the clinical setting where oftentimes BP measurement site is not standardized but resulting values are nevertheless used for treatment. There is prominent inter-site variability of BP measured across the 4 most common measurement sites. The variability persists across non-invasive (NIBP) and invasive (IABP) methods of assessment.

Decentralized learning for self-adaptive QoS-aware service assembly

The highly dynamic nature of future computing systems, where applications dynamically emerge as opportunistic aggregation of autonomous and independent resources available at any given time, requires a radical shift in the adopted computing paradigms. Indeed, they should fully reflect the decentralized perspective of the execution environment and consider QoS, scalability and resilience as key objectives. In this context, the everything-as-a-service (XaaS) paradigm, which envisions the creation of new services as an assembly of independent services available within the environment, can greatly help in tackling the challenges of developing future applications. However, in order to be effective, XaaS paradigm requires self-adaptive service assembly solutions able to cope with the unpredictable variability and scalability of the execution environment, the lack of global knowledge, and the QoS requirements of services to be built. We contribute in this direction by designing a fully decentralized and collective self-adaptive service assembly framework whose main features are: (i) self-assembly, i.e., the ability to operate autonomously, (ii) online-learning, i.e., the ability to dynamically learn from experience, (iii) QoS-awareness, i.e., the inclusion of QoS requirements as driving forces for self-assembly, (iv) scalability, i.e., the ability to cope with a large number of services, and (v) resilience, i.e., the ability to maintain the persistence of service delivery when facing unexpected changes (e.g., in the number and/or QoS of services). Simulation experiments show that our solution makes the system able to quickly converge to viable assemblies that improve and maintain over time the social welfare of the system, despite the local perspective of each participating service.

A Reliable Smart Interaction With Physical Thing Attached With BLE Beacon

Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) beacon is a key enabler for smart interaction between the user device and the physical thing, in which the physical thing can actively engage users for interaction via its advertising packet. However, reliability is always an issue for the beacon-based interaction since the beacon employs an unreliable broadcasting approach which provides no way to check if the user device has received the correct packet. We define the sparse observation to describe the phenomenon where the number of packets received by the user device within an arbitrarily small time duration is less than the number of deployed beacons. This article studies the sparse observation causing by the following two factors: 1) the unpredictable environmental variations and 2) the uncontrollable operating conditions of a beacon. An analysis is provided to investigate the interaction reliability in connection with the above two factors. Motivated by the above challenges, a novel solution, which exploits the ambient RF fingerprinting to address the sparse-observation issues, is proposed to enhance the interaction reliability. Our proposed solution is validated with extensive experiments consisting of real data collected from both indoor and outdoor environments. Finally, the feasibility of our proposed solution is demonstrated with a proof-of-concept prototype implemented over multiple physical things.

Distinctive structural properties of THB11, a pentacoordinate Chlamydomonas reinhardtii truncated hemoglobin with N- and C-terminal extensions

Hemoglobins (Hbs) utilize heme b as a cofactor and are found in all kingdoms of life. The current knowledge reveals an enormous variability of Hb primary sequences, resulting in topological, biochemical and physiological individuality. As Hbs appear to modulate their reactivities through specific combinations of structural features, predicting the characteristics of a given Hb is still hardly possible. The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii contains 12 genes encoding diverse Hbs of the truncated lineage, several of which possess extended N- or C-termini of unknown function. Studies on some of the Chlamydomonas Hbs revealed yet unpredictable structural and biochemical variations, which, along with a different expression of their genes, suggest diverse physiological roles. Chlamydomonas thus represents a promising system to analyze the diversification of Hb structure, biochemistry and physiology. Here, we report the crystal structure, resolved to 1.75 Å, of the heme-binding domain of cyanomet THB11 (Cre16.g662750), one of the pentacoordinate algal Hbs, which offer a free Fe-coordination site in the reduced state. The overall fold of THB11 is conserved, but individual features such as a kink in helix E, a tilted heme plane and a clustering of methionine residues at a putative tunnel exit appear to be unique. Both N- and C-termini promote the formation of oligomer mixtures, and the absence of the C terminus results in reduced nitrite reduction rates. This work widens the structural and biochemical knowledge on the 2/2Hb family and suggests that the N- and C-terminal extensions of the Chlamydomonas 2/2Hbs modulate their reactivity by intermolecular interactions.

Trace selection method for a best representative in stochastic downscaling of precipitation

Stochastic weather simulation models are used to generate data for hydrologic and agricultural applications. In recent years, stochastic downscaling has been employed in downscaling scenarios-based GCM or RCM output data, especially highly unpredictable hydrometeorological variables (e.g., precipitation). However, downscaling produces a number of traces to apply. In practice, multiple scenarios are difficult to handle. To overcome this difficulty, trace selection methods (TSMs) were proposed and tested in the current study, based on the mean and standard deviation (MS), empirical cumulative distribution function (Ecdf), and density estimate (Dens) methods. Simulation results indicated that key statistics were well preserved by the selected trace with the MS and Ecdf methods, while the Dens method did not show a reasonable performance in selecting a representative trace. The MS and Ecdf methods preserved well the mean and standard deviation of the average of these statistics from all simulated series and the Ecdf method was superior in preserving extrema, such as maximum and minimum. In a real application involving over 62 weather stations from South Korea, results showed that the MS and Ecdf methods were feasible ways to select the best trace to represent all temporally downscaled hourly precipitation from daily data. Overall, the MS and Ecdf can be both good alternatives as a trace selection method (TSM). The MS method can be used in general cases and the Ecdf can be employed in extreme analysis, such as estimating design rainfall with selected traces.

Lifetime eurythermy by seasonally matched thermal performance of developmental stages in an annual aquatic insect.

Organisms with annual life cycles are exposed to life stage specific thermal environments across seasons. Seasonal variation in thermal environments can vary across years and among sites. We investigated how organisms with annual life cycles respond to predictable seasonal changes in temperature and unpredictable thermal variation between habitats and years throughout their lives. Field surveys and historical records reveal that the spatially and temporally heterogeneous thermal environments inhabited by the annual mayfly Ephemerella maculata (Ephemerellidae) shift the date for transition to the next, life stage, so that the thermal phenotype of each life stage matches the thermal environment of the specific habitat and year. Laboratory studies of three distinct life stages of this mayfly reveal that life stage transitions are temperature dependent, facilitating timing shifts that are synchronized with the current season's temperatures. Each life stage exhibited specific thermal sensitivity and performance phenotypes that matched the ambient temperature typically experienced during that life stage. Our study across the whole life cycle reveals mechanisms that allow organisms to achieve lifetime eurythermy in a dynamic seasonal environment, despite having narrower thermal ranges for growth and development in each life stage.

A Fault Detection and Classification Scheme for Unified Power Flow Controller Compensated Transmission Lines Connecting Wind Farms

In recent years, there is an increasing trend of integrating large capacity offshore wind farms into power grids through UPFC compensated TLs for accommodating large flow of power. The nonlinear fluctuations of output power due to unpredictable variation of wind speed and the different operating modes of the UPFC greatly affect the performance of the conventional distance relaying-based TL protection scheme. This article investigates the impact of such TLs on distance relay performance and proposes a two criteria-based new fault detection and classification scheme. The method utilizes the sign of the change in the magnitude of positive-sequence current at both ends of the line for fault detection and the transient monitor index derived from the locally measured three-phase current for fault classification. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated on different fault and nonfault transients generated on two standard test systems through EMTDC/PSCAD during different operating modes of UPFC and at different wind speed. The performance of the proposed scheme is further validated through dSPACE DS 1103-based real-time digital simulation platform. Finally, the comparative assessment results with some important existing methods justify the effectiveness of the proposed method.