Approach to Assess Adequacy of Acupuncture in Randomized Controlled Trials:A Systematic Review

Objective To summarize and identify the available instruments/methods assessing the adequacy of acupuncture in randomized controlled trials(RCTs)for proposing a new improved instrument.Methods A systematic literature search was carried out in 7 electronic databases from inception until 21st November 2022.Any study evaluating the adequacy or quality of acupuncture,specifying specific acupuncture treatment-related factors as criteria of subgroup analysis,or developing an instrument/tool to assess the adequacy or quality of acupuncture in an RCT was included.Basic information,characteristics and contents of acupuncture adequacy assessment were presented as frequencies and percentages.Results Forty studies were included in this systematic review.Thirty-five studies(87.50%)were systematic reviews,none of which used formal methods to develop the assessment instruments/methods of acupuncture adequacy;of 5 methodological studies,only 1 study used a relatively formal method.Thirty-two studies(82.05%)assessed the components of acupuncture,while 7(17.95%)assessed the overall quality of acupuncture.An independent assessment instrument/method was used to assess acupuncture adequacy in 29 studies(74.35%),whereas as one part of a methodological quality assessment scale in 10(25.65%).Only 9(23.00%)studies used the assessment results for subgroup analysis,sensitivity analysis or the criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis.Conclusion Assessment contents for adequacy or quality of acupuncture in RCTs hadn’t still reached consensus and no widely used assessment tools appeared.The methodology of available assessment instruments/scales is far from formal and rigorous.A new instrument/tool assessing adequacy of acupuncture should be developed using a formal method.

Generating capacity adequacy evaluation of large-scale, grid-connected photovoltaic systems

Large-scale, grid-connected photovoltaic sys- tems have become an essential part of modem electric power distribution systems. In this paper, a novel approach based on the Markov method has been proposed to investigate the effects of large-scale, grid-connected photovoltaic systems on the reliability of bulk power systems. The proposed method serves as an applicable tool to estimate performance （e.g., energy yield and capacity） as well as reliability indices. The Markov method frame- work has been incorporated with the＇ multi-state models to develop energy states of the photovoltaic systems in order to quantify the effects of the photovoltaic systems on the power system adequacy. Such analysis assists planners to make adequate decisions based on the economical expectations as well as to ensure the recovery of the investment costs over time. The failure states of the components of photovoltaic systems have been considered to evaluate the sensitivity analysis and the adequacy indices including loss of load expectation, and expected energy not supplied. Moreover, the impacts of transitions between failures on the reliability calculations as well as on the long- term operation of the photovoltaic systems have been illustrated. Simulation results on the Roy Billinton test system has been shown to illustrate the procedure of the proposed frame work and evaluate the reliability benefits of using large-scale, grid-connected photovoltaic system on the bulk electric power systems. The proposed method can be easily extended to estimate the operating and maintenance costs for the financial planning of the photovoltaic system projects.

A novel method for reliability and risk evaluation of wind energy conversion systems considering wind speed correlation

This paper investigates an analytical approach for the reliability modeling of doubly fed induction generator （DFIG） wind turbines. At present, to the best of the authors＇ knowledge, wind speed and wind turbine generator outage have not been addressed simultaneously. In this paper, a novel methodology based on the Weibull- Markov method is proposed for evaluating the probabil- istic reliability of the bulk electric power systems, including DFIG wind turbines, considering wind speed and wind turbine generator outage. The proposed model is presented in terms of appropriate wind speed modeling as well as capacity outage probability table （COPT）, considering component failures of the wind turbine generators. Based on the proposed method, the COPT of the wind farm has been developed and utilized on the IEEE RBTS to estimate the well-known reliability and sensitive indices. The simulation results reveal the importance of inclusion of wind turbine generator outage as well as wind speed in the reliability assessment of the wind farms. Moreover, the proposed method reduces the complexity of using analytical methods and provides an accurate reliability model for the wind turbines. Furthermore, several case studies are considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in practical applications.