Safety instrumented systems often employ redundancy to enhance the ability to detect and respond to hazardous events. The use of redundancy increases the fault tolerance to single failure but remains vulnerable in case of dependent failures, including common cause failures and cascading failures. Reliability analysis of safety instrumented systems therefore involves the impact of dependent failures. The used approaches have primarily focused on common cause failures. In this paper, it is argued the need to consider the efforts of cascading failures that are caused by functional dependencies, hazardous events, and shared resources. A recursive aggregation-based approach is proposed for performance analyzing of K-out-of-N safety instrumented systems with consideration of cascading failures. General approximation formulas are developed for estimating the average probability of failures on demand of different configurations of safety instrumented systems. These formulas are compared with those for common cause failures. Then a case of fire water pump is studied to illustrate the effects of cascading failures on safety instrumented systems.This paper proposes new indices of cascaded multilevel inverters (MLIs) in order to compare the conventional topology with 10-existed new topologies. Reduction in the number of power switches is the main target of these new topologies. This aim is to reduce the total cost of designed inverters, though the mentioned aim is not enough to design new inverters. Thus, in this study, four comparative indices including sources power uniform distribution index (SPUDI), switches current uniform distribution index (SCUDI), switches loss uniform distribution index (SLUDI), and switches voltage uniform distribution index (SVUDI), are proposed. In addition, it is shown that in most of the new topologies, reducing the number of switches can lead to lowered values of the proposed indices, after which non-uniform power, current, loss, and voltage pattern are obtained. The results prove that mere emphasis on the number of switches, along with the exclusion of either of the proposed indices will cause significant problems, where cost reduction may be underachieved. Based on new indices, the advantages of conventional topology over new ones are presented in this study.Low frequency oscillation (LFO) is one of the major concerns for reliable operation of the power system. This LFO occurs due to the failure of the rotor to supply sufficient damping torque to compensate the imbalance between mechanical input and electrical output. Hence, in this paper, we adopt a third generation flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) device named generalized unified power flow controller (GUPFC) based damping controller in order to investigate its effect for mitigating LFO for an single machine infinite bus (SMIB) system. To find an effective damping controller-optimizer pair, we integrate proportional-integral (PI) or lead-lag as a controller and grey wolf optimizer (GWO), differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), and chaotic whale optimization algorithm (CWOA) as an optimizer. Later, we investigate the performances for the above mentioned controller-optimizer pairs through time domain simulation, eigenvalue analysis, nyquist stability test, and quantitative analysis. Moreover, we carry out two non-parametric statistical tests named as one sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and paired sample t-test to identify statistical distribution as well as uniqueness of our optimization algorithms. Our analyses reveal that the GWO tuned lead-lag controller surpasses all other controller-optimizer combinations. The relationship between adiponectin and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is established; however the evidence on its role in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) functionality is still scant. The aim of this study was to assess the association of adiponectin with HDL functionality especially on the antioxidant capacity and HDL subfractions in individuals with T2DM. This case-control study enrolled 356 individuals who were divided into two groups diabetics [T2DM (n = 188)] and non-diabetic [nT2DM (n = 168)]. The association of adiponectin level on HDL functionality parameters was done in function of the cut-off point for adiponectin [percentile p < 75 = 12.9 μg/mL versus p ≥ 75 = 12.9 μg/mL] and multiple adjustments applied in the logistic regression models. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and body fat mass (FM) were higher in T2DM. The larger HDL particles (HDL ) were lower in T2DM group in comparison with nT2DM (28.20% versus 30.40%; p = 0.016). Valaciclovir inhibitor Individuals with T2DM and simultaneous highest adiponectin (p ≥ 75) had 2.25 OR (95% CI = 1.03-4.91) and 5.14 OR (95% CI = 2.37-11.15) to present higher HDL-C and HDL concentrations. After adjustment for multiple confounders, high level of adiponectin was independently related with improvement of the HDL antioxidant capacity (OR = 2.78; 95% CI = 1.16-6.67). High adiponectin level associates with a lesser negative impact of T2DM on HDL functionality by increase in APO AI, particles size, and cholesterol content. On the same token, higher adiponectin was associated with greater odds to have high antioxidant capacity.High adiponectin level associates with a lesser negative impact of T2DM on HDL functionality by increase in APO AI, particles size, and cholesterol content. On the same token, higher adiponectin was associated with greater odds to have high antioxidant capacity. In individuals at increased risk of infections, e.g., patients with type 2 diabetes, low MBL may have detrimental effects. We used the Mendelian randomization principle to examine whether genetically low MBL is a risk factor for developing infections in patients with type 2 diabetes. Serum MBL (n = 7305) and MBL genotype (n = 3043) were determined in a nationwide cohort of patients with new type 2 diabetes and up to 8 years follow-up for hospital-treated infections and community-based antimicrobial prescriptions. The associations were examined in spline and Cox regression analyses. 1140 patients (16%) were hospitalized with an infection and 5077 patients (70%) redeemed an antimicrobial prescription. For low (≤100 μg/L) versus intermediate (101-1000 μg/L) serum MBL concentration, the adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) were 1.13(95% confidence interval, 0.96-1.33) for any hospital-treated infections and 1.19(1.01-1.41) for bacterial infections. Low MBL expression genotype was not associated with risk of any hospital-treated infections except for diarrheal diseases (aHR 2.