A review of studies mapping (or cross walking) from non-preference based measures of health to generic preference-based measures

This paper presents a systematic review of current practice in mapping between nonpreference based measures and generic preference-based measures. It reviews the studies identified by a systematic search of the published literature and the grey literature. This review seeks to address the feasibility and overall validity of this approach, the circumstances when it should be considered and to bring together any lessons for future mapping studies.mapping; cross walking; preference-based measures; QALYs

Fault ride-through of doubly-fed induction generator with converter protection schemes

This paper from the point view of wind farm fault ride-through (FRT) capability, discusses the performance of converter protection schemes to it. Different resistor protection methods are summarized and then a new combined protection with crowbar (CB) and series dynamic resistor (SDR) is proposed. With the analysis of rotor current during fault, resistance values are calculated for practical application. The rotor high current reduction performance is simulated with MATLAB/Simulink. Fault ride-through performance including the reactive power supply, torque fluctuation and rotor speed with crowbar and series dynamic resistor are compared. The proposed method is an alternative for further protection and requirements of wind farm riding-through grid disturbances. Index Terms-Fault ride-through (FRT), Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG), converter protection, wind generation. © 2008 IEEE

A particle swarm optimization based memetic algorithm for dynamic optimization problems

Copyright @ Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2010.Recently, there has been an increasing concern from the evolutionary computation community on dynamic optimization problems since many real-world optimization problems are dynamic. This paper investigates a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based memetic algorithm that hybridizes PSO with a local search technique for dynamic optimization problems. Within the framework of the proposed algorithm, a local version of PSO with a ring-shape topology structure is used as the global search operator and a fuzzy cognition local search method is proposed as the local search technique. In addition, a self-organized random immigrants scheme is extended into our proposed algorithm in order to further enhance its exploration capacity for new peaks in the search space. Experimental study over the moving peaks benchmark problem shows that the proposed PSO-based memetic algorithm is robust and adaptable in dynamic environments.This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 70431003 and Grant No. 70671020, the National Innovation Research Community Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60521003, the National Support Plan of China under Grant No. 2006BAH02A09 and the Ministry of Education, science, and Technology in Korea through the Second-Phase of Brain Korea 21 Project in 2009, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of UK under Grant EP/E060722/01 and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grants under Grant G-YH60

Group Leaders Optimization Algorithm

We present a new global optimization algorithm in which the influence of the leaders in social groups is used as an inspiration for the evolutionary technique which is designed into a group architecture. To demonstrate the efficiency of the method, a standard suite of single and multidimensional optimization functions along with the energies and the geometric structures of Lennard-Jones clusters are given as well as the application of the algorithm on quantum circuit design problems. We show that as an improvement over previous methods, the algorithm scales as N^2.5 for the Lennard-Jones clusters of N-particles. In addition, an efficient circuit design is shown for two qubit Grover search algorithm which is a quantum algorithm providing quadratic speed-up over the classical counterpart

Allele-specific expression analysis does not support sex chromosome inactivation on the chicken Z chromosome

Heterogametic sex chromosomes have evolved many times independently, and in many cases the loss of functional genes from the sex-limited Y or W chromosome leaves only one functional gene copy on the corresponding X or Z chromosome in the heterogametic sex. Because gene dose often correlates with gene expression level, this difference in gene dose between males and females for X or Z-linked genes in some cases has selected for chromosome-wide transcriptional dosage compensation mechanisms to counteract any reduction in expression in the heterogametic sex. These mechanisms are thought to restore the balance between sex-linked loci and the autosomal genes they interact with, and this also typically results in equal expression between the sexes. However, dosage compensation in many other species is incomplete, and in the case of birds average expression from males (ZZ) remains higher than in females (ZW). Interestingly, recent reports in chickens and related species have shown that the Z chromosome is expressed less in males than would be expected from two copies of the chromosome, and recent data from cell-based approaches on 11 loci in chicken have suggested that one Z chromosome is partially inactivated in males, in a mechanism thought to be homologous to X inactivation in therian mammals. In the present study, we use controlled crosses in three tissues to test for the presence of Z inactivation in males, which would be expected to bias transcription to the active gene copy (allele-specific expression). We show that for the vast majority of genes on the chicken Z chromosome, males express both parental alleles at statistically similar levels, indicating no Z chromosome inactivation. For those Z chromosome loci with detectable ASE in males, we show that the most likely cause is cis-regulatory variation, rather than Z chromosome inactivation. Taken together, our results indicate that unlike the X chromosome in mammals, Z inactivation does not affect an appreciable number of loci in chicken

What is required in terms of mass drug administration to interrupt the transmission of schistosome parasites in regions of endemic infection?

Supplementary information. (PDF 445 kb

Presynaptic protein synthesis required for NT-3-induced long-term synaptic modulation

10.1186/1756-6606-4-1Molecular Brain41

The neonicotinoid insecticide Imidacloprid repels pollinating flies and beetles at field-realistic concentrations

Neonicotinoids are widely used systemic insecticides which, when applied to flowering crops, are translocated to the nectar and pollen where they may impact upon pollinators. Given global concerns over pollinator declines, this potential impact has recently received much attention. Field exposure of pollinators to neonicotinoids depends on the concentrations present in flowering crops and the degree to which pollinators choose to feed upon them. Here we describe a simple experiment using paired yellow pan traps with or without insecticide to assess whether the commonly used neonicotinoid imidacloprid repels or attracts flying insects. Both Diptera and Coleoptera exhibited marked avoidance of traps containing imidacloprid at a field-realistic dose of 1 μg L-1, with Diptera avoiding concentrations as low as 0.01 μg L-1. This is to our knowledge the first evidence for any biological activity at such low concentrations, which are below the limits of laboratory detection using most commonly available techniques. Catch of spiders in pan traps was also slightly reduced by the highest concentrations of imidacloprid used (1 μg L-1), but catch was increased by lower concentrations. It remains to be seen if the repellent effect on insects occurs when neonicotinoids are present in real flowers, but if so then this could have implications for exposure of pollinators to neonicotinoids and for crop pollination. © 2013 Easton, Goulson