Hybrid wavelet/Elman NN model for short term cost prediction utilizing developed deer hunting optimizer.

The cost signal of electricity in the competitive electrical energy marketplaces is of special importance for all planning and operation activities. Also, the price of electricity has an uncertain nature and various factors affect it in the short and long term. Factors active in the electricity market need to accurately and effectively forecast the electricity price signal to manage risk in the market. For estimating future electricity prices, this research suggests a combined procedure on the basis of Elman neural network model and the wavelet transform. The proposed Elman neural network/wavelet transform forecasted the next hour's power price based on the past 24 h' pricing. This research uses an optimized Elman neural network using a developed deer hunting optimizer and the total model is named Elman neural network/developed deer hunting optimization-wavelet transform. In this paper, Data of Zone Preliminary Billing is used for establishing the training of model and forecasting of performance. The method is then compared with some other published works and the outcomes demonstrate the offered approach superiority toward those for the electrical cost predicting.

Automatic surface inspection for S-PVC using a composite vision-based method.

Appearance defect inspection is crucial for quality control in the context of Industry 4.0. This research introduces a joint surface defect inspection and classification framework for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe based on the low-cost visual sensors and high-efficiency computer vision algorithms. First, we build a robust imaging system to acquire the surface of PVC (S-PVC) by considering its characteristics and the illumination condition into the modeling process. Second, we adopt the region of interest method to eliminate the background interference captured in the S-PVC imaging and design an efficient S-PVC defect inspection and classification method. Third, we build an automatic machine prototype to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework has the advantages of low latency, high precision, and robustness.

Antinociceptive effect of berberine on visceral hypersensitivity in rats.

AIM: To assess the protective effect of berberine administration and the role of nitric oxide (NO) in visceral hypersensitivity. METHODS: Fifty male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to five groups. An inflammatory bowel disease model was induced in rats by intracolonic instillation of 1 mL 4% acetic acid at 8 cm proximal to the anus for 30 s and restraint stress. After subsidence of inflammation on day 7 of the experiment, the rats were subjected to rectal distension, performed by a balloon (6-Fr, 2 mm external diameter, disposable silicon balloon-urethral catheter for pediatric use) which was rapidly inflated with increasing volumes of prewarmed (37 °C) water (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 mL) for 30 s at four-minute intervals, and then the abdominal withdrawal reflex (AWR) and the level of fecal output were measured, respectively. AWR scores either 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 were obtained by blinded observers. Rats had been pretreated with berberine or aminoguanidine (NO synthetase inhibitor) or berberine + aminoguanidine before measurement. RESULTS: The rats in the placebo group showed a hypersensitive response to rectal distension (2.69 ± 0.08 vs 1.52 ± 0.08, P = 0.000) and defecated more frequently than those in the control group (5.0 ± 0.16 vs 0.44 ± 0.16, P = 0.000). Comparing the berberine with placebo group, the AWR scores were reduced for all distension volumes and were significant at 0.2-1 mL (1.90 ± 0.08 vs 2.69 ± 0.08, P = 0.000), while the numbers of hard pellets, soft pellets, formless stools, and total fecal output in the placebo group were significantly larger than in the berberine group (5.0 ± 0.16 vs 2.56 ± 0.16, P = 0.000). Administration of aminoguanidine or berberine + aminoguanidine before VH score measurement reversed the antinociceptive effect of berberine (2.52 ± 0.08 vs 1.90 ± 0.08, P = 0.000; 2.50 ± 0.08 vs 1.90 ± 0.08, P = 0.000). The numbers of hard pellets, soft pellets, formless stool, and total of fecal output in aminoguanidine group were significantly larger than the corresponding values in control group, berberine group, and berberine + aminoguanidine group (4.81 ± 0.16 vs 0.44 ± 0.16, P = 0.000; 4.81 ± 0.16 vs 2.56 ± 0.16, P = 0.000; 4.81 ± 0.16 vs 3.75 ± 0.16, P = 0.000). The berberine and berberine + aminoguanidine groups showed reduced defecation, but aminoguanidine alone did not reduce defecation (2.56 ± 0.16 vs 4.81 ± 0.16, P = 0.000; 3.75 ± 0.16 vs 4.81 ± 0.16, P = 0.000). CONCLUSION: Berberine had an antinociceptive effect on visceral hypersensitivity, and NO might play a role in this effect.

Developing an automatic accreditation support system of health websites.

The annual national quality and accreditation label awarding approach has been used to identify quality health websites since 2002 in Taiwan. Since the accreditation process has resumed great amount of professional manpower every year, this study was designed to simplify the process by using the text categorization and information extraction approach..

Developing a health web information gatekeeper.

We describe how and what health web gatekeeper browser we are developing to assist the layperson to report the contents, screen shot, and URL links of questionable health web sites and get efficient and effective assistance from healthcare professionals.