Optimizing microgrid designs towards net-zero emissions for smart cities: addressing energy disparities and access issues in Northern and North-eastern India

Providing affordable and clean energy is a significant sub-sector of the Smart Cities Mission proposed by India. This research investigates the development of optimal microgrid designs for smart cities in northern and north-eastern India to address regional energy disparities and access issues. In the northern zone, characterized by uneven urban-rural infrastructure and high-power demand, microgrids offer localized, reliable solutions that reduce dependency on centralized systems and enhance energy efficiency. In the north-eastern zone, where geographical isolation and underdeveloped infrastructure hinder energy access, microgrids provide decentralized power generation and distribution, improving access in remote areas. The proposed microgrid designs aim to enhance energy reliability, efficiency, and accessibility by integrating renewable energy sources. The proposed system is analyzed for technical and economic feasibility based on critical factors such as cost of energy (COE), loss of power supply probability (LPSP), and the renewable fraction (RF). The renowned particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to optimize the system size to achieve better performance in terms of technical and economic aspects. A proper energy management technique ensures the energy balance between the demand side and the distributed energy sources. A typical 24-hour household load profile is used for the optimization

Global Major Stock Market Crashesincluding Causes and Their Effects of 2016 Chinese Stock Market Crash

There were eight major Stock Market crashes including the Chinese ,in the past thirty years.Only three only three of the seven crises can be considered as genuine turning points.The beginning of 2016 was very worst for Chinese Stock Market. Chinese stock market was heavily affected and faced a drop nearly 8 per cent. Fundamentals will see the market struggle is the belief of Investors.This paper reviews the major stock market crashes including the recent Chinese crash and the causes and effects of the Chinese stock Market Crash

Clinical and audio vestibular profile of meniere’s disease in a tertiary care centre in a developing country like India.

Meniere’s disease is a clinical disorder first described by Prosper Meniere in 1861, characterized by fluctuating hearing loss, recurrent spontaneous episodic vertigo, tinnitus and aural fullness. Endolymphatic hydrops is the basic pathology in Meniere’s disease in which dilatation of the endolymphatic spaces of membranous labyrinth due to excessive endolymphatic fluid. Both Meniere’s disease and Meniere’s syndrome are believed to result from increased pressure within the endolymphatic system. However, Meniere’s disease is idiopathic, whereas Meniere’s syndrome occur secondary to various processes interfering with normal production or resorption of endolymph e.g. trauma, autoimmune dysfunction, medications and syphilis etc. In atypical Meniere’s disease patients will have some but not all the classical symptoms of Meniere’s disease1. Cochlear Meniere’s disease is recognized as a fluctuating sensorineural hearing loss and aural fullness in the absence of vestibular symptoms. Vestibular Meniere’s disease2 is characterized as episodic vertigo and disequilibrium associated with pressure in one or both ears

Design of vehicle using Ackermann steering with IoT concept

Electric vehicles are becoming more demanding these days. In this project the possibility of using Ackerman steering with electric drive servomotor is explained. Scalability is the advantage of using this mechanism which can be adopted for four-wheel vehicle system as well. The objective of this project is to do design a system using Ackerman steering which determines the maximum and minimum angle of the turning of the wheels. It also avoids the front tire slippage and activates pure rolling. Ackermann steering geometry is a geometric arrangement of linkages in the steering of a car or other vehicle designed to solve the problem of wheels on the inside and outside of a turn needing to trace out circles of different radii. The geometrical solution to this is for all wheels to have their axles arranged as radii of circles with a common centre point. As the rear wheels are fixed, this centre point must be on a line extended from the rear axle. Intersecting the axes of the front wheels on this line as well requires that the inside front wheel be turned, when steering, through a greater angle than the outside wheel. The microcontroller used in this project is ATMega16 andlmax232 is used for the serial data transmission

Decoding the X-ray flare from MAXI J0709-159 using optical spectroscopy and multi-epoch photometry

We present a follow-up study on the recent detection of two X-ray flaring events by MAXI/GSC observations in soft and hard X-rays from MAXI J0709-159 in the direction of HD 54786 (LY CMa), on 2022 January 25. The X-ray luminosity during the flare was around 10^(37) erg/s (MAXI), which got reduced to 10^(32) erg/s (NuSTAR) after the flare. We took low-resolution spectra of HD 54786 from HCT and VBT facilities in India, on 2022 February 1 and 2. In addition to H-alpha emission, we found emission lines of He I in the optical spectrum of this star. By comparing our spectrum of the object with those from literature we found that He I lines show variability. Using photometric study we estimate that the star is having effective temperature of 20000 K. Although HD 54786 is reported as a supergiant in previous studies, our analysis favours it to be evolving off the main sequence in the Color-Magnitude Diagram. We could not detect any infrared excess, ruling out the possibility of IR emission from a dusty circumstellar disc. Our present study suggests that HD 54786 is a Be/X-ray binary system with a compact object companion, possibly a neutron star.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ

Chronic pulmonary cavitary tuberculosis in rabbits: a failed host immune response

The molecular determinants of the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis HN878 infection in a rabbit model of pulmonary cavitary tuberculosis were studied. Aerosol infection of rabbits resulted in a highly differentially expressed global transcriptome in the lungs at 2 weeks, which dropped at 4 weeks and then gradually increased. While IFNγ was progressively upregulated throughout the infection, several other genes in the IFNγ network were not. T-cell activation network genes were gradually upregulated and maximally induced at 12 weeks. Similarly, the IL4 and B-cell activation networks were progressively upregulated, many reaching high levels between 12 and 16 weeks. Delayed peak expression of genes associated with macrophage activation and Th1 type immunity was noted. Although spleen CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells showed maximal tuberculosis antigen-specific activation by 8 weeks, macrophage activation in lungs, lymph nodes and spleen did not peak until 12 weeks. In the lungs, infecting bacilli grew exponentially up to 4 weeks, followed by a steady-state high bacillary load to 12 weeks that moderately increased during cavitation at 16 weeks. Thus, the outcome of HN878 infection of rabbits was determined early during infection by a suboptimal activation of innate immunity and delayed T-cell activation

Phosphodiesterase-4 Inhibition Alters Gene Expression and Improves Isoniazid – Mediated Clearance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Rabbit Lungs

Tuberculosis (TB) treatment is hampered by the long duration of antibiotic therapy required to achieve cure. This indolent response has been partly attributed to the ability of subpopulations of less metabolically active Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) to withstand killing by current anti-TB drugs. We have used immune modulation with a phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitor, CC-3052, that reduces tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) production by increasing intracellular cAMP in macrophages, to examine the crosstalk between host and pathogen in rabbits with pulmonary TB during treatment with isoniazid (INH). Based on DNA microarray, changes in host gene expression during CC-3052 treatment of Mtb infected rabbits support a link between PDE4 inhibition and specific down-regulation of the innate immune response. The overall pattern of host gene expression in the lungs of infected rabbits treated with CC-3052, compared to untreated rabbits, was similar to that described in vitro in resting Mtb infected macrophages, suggesting suboptimal macrophage activation. These alterations in host immunity were associated with corresponding down-regulation of a number of Mtb genes that have been associated with a metabolic shift towards dormancy. Moreover, treatment with CC-3052 and INH resulted in reduced expression of those genes associated with the bacterial response to INH. Importantly, CC-3052 treatment of infected rabbits was associated with reduced ability of Mtb to withstand INH killing, shown by improved bacillary clearance, from the lungs of co-treated animals compared to rabbits treated with INH alone. The results of our study suggest that changes in Mtb gene expression, in response to changes in the host immune response, can alter the responsiveness of the bacteria to antimicrobial agents. These findings provide a basis for exploring the potential use of adjunctive immune modulation with PDE4 inhibitors to enhance the efficacy of existing anti-TB treatment

The Effect of Diagnostic Delays on the Drop-Out Rate and the Total Delay to Diagnosis of Tuberculosis

Background: Numerous patient and healthcare system-related delays contribute to the overall delay experienced by patients from onset of TB symptoms to diagnosis and treatment. Such delays are critical as infected individuals remain untreated in the community, providing more opportunities for transmission of the disease and adversely affecting the epidemic. Methodology/Principal Findings: We present an analysis of the factors that contribute to the overall delay in TB diagnosis and treatment, in a resource-poor setting. Impact on the distribution of diagnostic delay times was assessed for various factors, the sensitivity of the diagnostic method being found to be the most significant. A linear relationship was found between the sensitivity of the test and the predicted mean delay time, with an increase in test sensitivity resulting in a reduced mean delay time and a reduction in the drop-out rate. Conclusions/Significance: The results show that in a developing country a number of delay factors, particularly the low sensitivity of the initial sputum smear microscopy test, potentially increase total diagnostic delay times experienced by TB patients significantly. The results reinforce the urgent need for novel diagnostic methods, both for smear positive an

Molecular immunologic correlates of spontaneous latency in a rabbit model of pulmonary tuberculosis

Background: Infection of humans with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) results in latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in 90-95% of immune competent individuals, with no symptoms of active disease. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 billion people have LTBI, which can reactivate in the setting of waning host immunity, posing a threat to global TB control. Various animal models have been used to study the pathogenesis of TB. However, besides nonhuman primates, rabbits are the only animal model that fully recapitulates the pathological features of human TB, including progressive disease with necrosis and cavitation or establishment of spontaneous latency. Results: We defined the molecular immunological correlates of LTBI establishment in a rabbit model of pulmonary infection with Mtb CDC1551. After aerosol infection, exponential bacterial growth was noted in the lungs for 4 weeks, followed by a significant decline by 12 weeks, resulting in the absence of cultivable bacilli by 24 weeks. We used rabbit whole genome microarrays to profile the lung transcriptome during the course of infection. At 2 weeks post-infection, gene networks involved in natural killer (NK) and dendritic cell (DC) activation and macrophage antimicrobial activities were highly upregulated. This was followed by upregulation of gene networks involved in macrophage and T cell activation and autophagy, peaking at 4 to 8 weeks. Concomitantly, host Th1, but not Th2 or inflammatory, immune response genes were significantly upregulated. Thus, the expression kinetics of genes involved in cross-talk between innate and adaptive immunity over the first 8 weeks post-infection were consistent with early efficient control of infection in the lungs. Interestingly, expression of many genes of the host innate and adaptive immune response pathways was downregulated at 12 weeks, suggesting that immune activation did not persist once bacilli began to clear from the infected lungs. Conclusions: Our results suggest that early activation of host innate immunity prior to efficient activation of T cell-mediated adaptive immunity but not inflammation is essential for establishment of LTBI in Mtb CDC1551-infected rabbits. We also show that T cell activation and the host adaptive immune response networks are dampened once bacterial growth is controlled, ultimately resulting in spontaneous LTBI