Washington State University

About: Washington State University is a education organization based out in Pullman, Washington, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Gene. The organization has 26947 authors who have published 57736 publications receiving 2341509 citations. The organization is also known as: WSU & Wazzu.

Designing the Next Generation of Real-Time Control, Communication, and Computations for Large Power Systems

Abstract: The power grid is not only a network interconnecting generators and loads through a transmission and distribution system, but is overlaid with a communication and control system that enables economic and secure operation. This multilayered infrastructure has evolved over many decades utilizing new technologies as they have appeared. This evolution has been slow and incremental, as the operation of the power system consisting of vertically integrated utilities has, until recently, changed very little. The monitoring of the grid is still done by a hierarchical design with polling for data at scanning rates in seconds that reflects the conceptual design of the 1960s. This design was adequate for vertically integrated utilities with limited feedback and wide-area controls; however, the thesis of this paper is that the changing environment, in both policy and technology, requires a new look at the operation of the power grid and a complete redesign of the control, communication and computation infrastructure. We provide several example novel control and communication regimes for such a new infrastructure.

Interacting with hypertext: a meta-analysis of experimental studies

Abstract: The meta-analysis compared and synthesized the results of 23 experimental studies on hypertext. The analysis was based on 56 pairs of effect sizes and significance levels of the impact of users, tasks, and tools on interactions with hypertext. This analysis focused on three factors that prevailingly influence the use of hypertext: the cognitive styles and spatial ability of users; the complexity of tasks; and the structure of information organization and the visualization of the structure. The meta-analysis found that this group of experimental studies reported significantly discrepant findings, indicating that substantial differences exist among individual experiments. Individual differences in cognition did not yield enough evidence to conclude that the effect sizes are significantly apart from zero. The meta-analysis showed that the overall performance of hypertext users tended to be more effective than that of nonhypertext users, but the differences in efficiency measures were consistently in favor of nonhypertext users. Users benefited more from hypertext tools for open tasks. Overall, the complexity of tasks has the largest combined effect sizes. Graphical maps that visualize the organization of hypertext have significant impact on the usefulness of a hypertext system. This meta-analysis raised two issues concerned with the present hypertext literature: (a) the absence of a taxonomy of tasks for analyzing and comparing hypertext usability across studies, and (b) the weaknesses of the connections between abstract hypertext reference models and specific hypertext systems. These weaknesses may considerably undermine the significance of individual findings on hypertext usability. Results of the meta-analysis suggest that the discrepancies among empirical findings are related to these weaknesses. Future work on hypertext usability should emphasize task taxonomies along with longitudinal and ethnographic studies for a deep understanding of the interactions between users and hypertext. Recommended research issues for the future are highlighted in Section 5.