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Comprehensive review on dynamic state estimation techniques with cybersecurity applications
Get PDFData Availability Statement: Data will be made available for research and non-commercial purpose, and can be requested from the corresponding author.The role of cybersecurity in cyber-physical power systems (CPPS) is reviewed, focusing on the applications of dynamic state estimation (DSE) techniques. These DSE techniques are particularly relevant with the integration of phasor measurement units (PMUs) and advanced communication infrastructure. A comprehensive review on DSE techniques and applications to efficiently protect CPPS against cyberattacks is classified into three cyber resilience phases including prevention, detection, and mitigation. The DSE techniques in the prevention phase are surveyed to improve the observability of the CPPS by the robust design of the Kalman filter and optimal protection of PMUs. The DSE techniques in the detection phase are surveyed to improve the adaptability of CPPS in various attack detection scenerios and optimise the detection accuracy. The DSE techniques in the mitigation phase are surveyed to enhance the flexibility of CPPS resource utilisation with compensation-based, isolation-based, and scheduling-based strategies. Finally, the benefits and limitations of each DSE technique are summarised with potential suggestions on research directions for enhancing the cyber resilience of CPPS.UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (grant number: MR/W011360/2): ‘Digitalisation of Electrical Power and Energy Systems Operation’
Performing a Motor Action Enhances Social Reward Processing and Modulates the Neural Processing of Predictive Cues
Get PDFData Availability Statement: Fully anonymized ERP data are available on OSF at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2734D (CC-By Attribution 4.0 International). Raw data are available upon request.Associative learning affects many areas of human behavior. Recently, we showed that the neural response to monetary reward is enhanced by performing an action, suggesting interactions between neural systems controlling motor behavior and reward processing. Given many psychiatric disorders are associated with social anhedonia, a key open question is whether such effects generalize to social rewards, and in how far they affect associative learning. We developed a novel task in which participants (n = 66) received social reward feedback and social punishment either by pressing a button or waiting. Predictive cues were linked to feedback valence with 80% accuracy. Using EEG, we measured the neural response to both predictive cues and social feedback. We found enhanced reward positivity for social reward preceded by an action, and an enhanced N2 for cues predicting negative feedback. Cue-locked P3 amplitude was reduced for cues associated with negative feedback in passive trials only, showing a modulation of outcome anticipation by performing a motor action. This was supported by connectivity analyses showing stronger directed theta synchronization, in line with increased top–down modulation of attention, in active compared with passive trials. These findings suggest that actively obtaining social feedback enhances reward sensitivity and modulates outcome anticipation
The Price of Water: Reflections on an Anthropological Play
Get PDFIn memoriam Benjamin Zephaniah.Immigrants, refugees, hotspots, smugglers, police and border control—these are some of the recurrent concepts that fill government narratives, the media and news. These concepts are also filled with stereotypes that often mask the lived realities as well as the systemic conditions that lead to “invasions” and exploitation. Both anthropology and theatre offer powerful ways to challenge these and to share research with the public. This paper outlines the life of such a project by outlining the creative process of performing The Price of Water, a play based on ethnographic research with Syrian refugees in Greece during the so-called “refugee crisis” and the time of the implementation of the EU Hotspot approach to migration.Institute of Communities and Society: The Price of Water: An immersive ethnographic collaboration
To share or not to share: Public attitudes towards disclosing personal and identifiable medical data and information
Get PDFBackground/Aims:
Public perceptions of the acceptability of healthcare organisations, such as the NHS, sharing their data or information with other relevant entities may depend on various factors. This study aimed to fill gaps in the literature relating to this topic by investigating public perceptions of health record sharing with different entities, and how the anonymity (or lack thereof) of records and the terminology used may affect these attitudes.
Methods:
A survey was distributed to 2335 members of the public in England, sampled through YouGov's online panel. Respondents were randomly sorted into four groups and given a scenario about health record sharing. The scenarios differed between groups in terms of whether records were personal (non-anonymous) or anonymous, and whether the term ‘data’ or ‘information’ was used. Respondents were asked to rate the acceptability of sharing with different entities, including health and social care providers, insurance companies and local government. Differences between responses were analysed, with significance set at P<0.01.
Results:
The majority (84%) of respondents indicated that they found it either acceptable or very acceptable for the NHS to share personal data and information with hospitals and GPs. Higher levels of acceptability were observed when the term ‘information’ rather than ‘data’ was used. However, over half of respondents found it either unacceptable or very unacceptable for the NHS to share such information with pharmaceutical companies for research purposes or with councils, whether these data were personal or anonymised.
Conclusions:
This study suggests that people are more willing to share personal data when they perceive there to be potential personal benefits. It also contradicts the commonly held assumption that people are more comfortable sharing records that have been anonymised. These findings could inform future public health initiatives.Economic & Social Research Council Project Reference:
ES/W011913/1, Measuring Trust and its Variance during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Serial Surveys and Quantitative Text Analysis (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW011913%2F1)
Directors’ exposure and social enterprise performance: does entrepreneurial mindset and financial resource availability matter?
Get PDFPurpose:
Building on insights from the upper echelons theory and resource-based view (RBV), this study explains how directors’ exposure influences social enterprise performance through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial mindset, and the contingent role of financial resource availability.
Design/methodology/approach:
The study follows a quantitative approach. Data were gathered from a survey of 168 social enterprises (i.e. Community Interest Companies (CICs)) in the United Kingdom (UK), and covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.
Findings:
The results show that directors’ exposure positively relates to social enterprise performance, and that the relationship is mediated by entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, the findings reveal that financial resource availability moderates the indirect path between directors’ exposure and social enterprise performance such that the effect is more pronounced at high levels of financial resource availability.
Originality/value:
This study is a pioneering attempt to uncover the linkage between directors’ exposure and social enterprise performance. Unlike past research, the study integrates the upper echelons theory and RBV to extend social enterprise research within the social entrepreneurship domain and provide important practical value for social enterprise practitioners.The development of this paper was supported by The Open University, UK through The Open University Business School PhD Studentship Award, and a Conference Travel Grant from Brunel Business School, UK
Acidic surface chemical modification of biomass combustion ash-derived activated carbon for CO2 adsorption
Get PDFAcknowledgements:
The authors would like to thank and acknowledge the Experimental Techniques Centre (ETC) at Brunel University London and their scientific officers (namely, Dr Ashley Howkins, Dr Myles Worsley, Dr Nicholas Nelson and Dr Uche Onwukwe) for facilitating access to analytical equipment.
The authors would like to recognise Sebastien Genta from IUT Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse III for facilitating this collaboration.
Last but not least, we would also like to acknowledge the continued generous support from Drax Group UK, with a special thanks to Dr James Hammerton throughout this research.To maximise the output and optimise a given adsorbent-adsorbate system, tailoring the material to the specific task at hand is a prominent approach. In the context of CO2 adsorption, terminal amine groups are most common due to their exceptional affinity towards carbon dioxide. However, other methods involving introduction of alternative functionalities are often overlooked despite providing major benefits: e.g. cost-effectiveness of sorbent production and regeneration, thermal stability and etc. On these grounds, a physically activated carbon has been chemically modified with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid to introduce novel acidic functional groups to facilitate CO2 adsorption. The experimental campaign was conducted by employing a randomised Box-Behnken design, evaluating the modification time and temperature as well as the ratio at which the acids (of different concentrations) have been mixed. CO2 uptake was maximised (0.96 mmol/g at 50 °C) when treating the sorbent for 3 hours at 90 °C with 1 molar acids at a volumetric HNO3/H2SO4 ratio of 1:2. Successful grafting of the nitro group was confirmed via spectroscopic studies, increased nitrogen content as well as other indicators. The sample was shown to possess a high working capacity, losing less than 5 % of its original uptake even after 40 adsorption-desorption cycles. As such, nitration of the surface may be viewed as a novel yet cost-effective surface modification method in the context of CO2 adsorption.This work has been funded by the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (EP/W002841/1) through the flexible funded research programme “Investigation of Environmental and Operational Challenges of Adsorbents Synthesised from Industrial Grade Biomass Combustion Residues”. The UKCCSRC is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK, as part of the UKRI Energy Programme
Cash is queen? Impact of gender-diverse boards on firms' cash holdings during COVID-19
Get PDFData availability: Data available on request from the authors.JEL classification: G01; G34; M14.This study examines the role of gender-diverse boards in preserving cash holdings during crises. Using a sample of UK firms during the COVID-19 period, we find that firms with more female directors had higher cash holdings. This increase in cash reserves is primarily driven by reduced board compensation, reflecting the careful stewardship associated with gender-diverse boards. Interestingly, we find no evidence of female directors reducing acquisition activity or capital expenditures, suggesting that these firms did not compromise on growth prospects while building their cash buffer. Our study underscores the value of gender-diverse boards in navigating firms through crises without sacrificing shareholder value. Our results remain robust even after controlling for endogeneity and alternative estimation techniques. The findings hold significant implications for investors, policymakers, and advocates of gender diversity in boardrooms, emphasizing the financial prudence that gender diversity can bring in crisis management.The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
The role of alpha oscillations in free- and goal-directed semantic associations
Get PDFData availability statement: The data underpinning this publication are available at https://osf.io/gra42 under a CCBY licence https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GRA42.Supporting Information is available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.26770#support-information-section .Alpha oscillations are known to play a central role in several higher-order cognitive functions, especially selective attention, working memory, semantic memory, and creative thinking. Nonetheless, we still know very little about the role of alpha in the generation of more remote semantic associations, which is key to creative and semantic cognition. Furthermore, it remains unclear how these oscillations are shaped by the intention to “be creative,” which is the case in most creativity tasks. We aimed to address these gaps in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we compared alpha oscillatory activity (using a method which distinguishes genuine oscillatory activity from transient events) during the generation of free associations which were more vs. less distant from a given concept. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings and also compared alpha oscillatory activity when people were generating free associations versus associations with the instruction to be creative (i.e. goal-directed). We found that alpha was consistently higher during the generation of more distant semantic associations, in both experiments. This effect was widespread, involving areas in both left and right hemispheres. Importantly, the instruction to be creative seems to increase alpha phase synchronisation from left to right temporal brain areas, suggesting that intention to be creative changed the flux of information in the brain, likely reflecting an increase in top-down control of semantic search processes. We conclude that goal-directed generation of remote associations relies on top-down mechanisms compared to when associations are freely generated.Fundação Bial. Grant Number: 138/18
A parametric study on in-situ hydrogen production from hydrocarbon reservoirs – Effect of reservoir and well properties
Get PDFSupplementary data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319924028544?via%3Dihub#appsec1 .Energy transition is a key driver to combat climate change and achieve zero carbon future. Sustainable and cost-effective hydrogen production will provide valuable addition to the renewable energy mix and help minimize greenhouse gas emissions. This study investigates the performance of in-situ hydrogen production (IHP) process, using a full-field compositional model as a precursor to experimental validation The reservoir model was simulated as one geological unit with a single point uniform porosity value of 0.13 and a five-point connection type between cell to minimize computational cost. Twenty-one hydrogen forming reactions were modelled based on the reservoir fluid composition selected for this study. The thermodynamic and kinetic parameters for the reactions were obtained from published experiments due to the absence of experimental data specific to the reservoir. A total of fifty-four simulation runs were conducted using CMG STARS software for 5478 days and cumulative hydrogen produced for each run was recorded. Results generated were then used to build a proxy model using Box-Behnken design of experiment method and Support Vector Machine with RBF kernel. To ascertain accuracy of the proxy models, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the variables. The average absolute percentage error between the proxy model and numerical simulation was calculated to be 10.82%. Optimization of the proxy model was performed using genetic algorithm to maximize cumulative hydrogen produced. Based on this optimized model, the influence of porosity, permeability, well location, injection rate, and injection pressure were studied. Key results from this study reveals that lower permeability and porosity reservoirs supports more hydrogen yield, injection pressure had a negligible effect on hydrogen yield, and increase in oxygen injection rate corelated strongly with hydrogen production until a threshold value beyond which hydrogen yield decreased. The framework developed in the study could be used as tool to assess candidate reservoirs for in-situ hydrogen production.Funding for this project was received from Petroleum Technology Development Fund, under grant number
PTDF/ED/PHD/PPI/1028/1
“Greenwashing” in the EU, the selected EU Member States and the UK
No full textPublished September 27, 2024 by Routledge (https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Consumer-Protection-and-Behaviour-in-Energy-Mark/Czarnecka-Hunter-Kraniewski-Malinauskaite/p/book/9781032452012, pp. 54 - 66)
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