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[Display omitted] • The free-standing, monolithic and anisotropic graphite networks were constructed by a two-stage, economy, facile expansion process. • The sensitivity of the sensors/switches can be accurately tailored. • The wireless monitoring of human movement was realized by integrating the sensors/switches with microelectronic components. Highly sensitive strain sensors and switches are essential components to wearable electronics in many emerging applications such as personal health monitoring, human–machine interaction, smart robots and intelligent control system. Herein, we report a new highly-anisotropic graphite framework (HAGF) for creating strain sensors and switches with high flexibility, stretchability and sensitivity. The highly anisotropic three-dimensional (3D) graphite structure was fabricated via a facile, low-cost and scalable expansion of commercially-available graphite papers. By controlling the orientation structure and thickness of HAGF, the contact area and switchable conduction path can be tailored to create strain sensors and switches based on HAGF/PDMS composites to achieve a tunable gauge factor between 1.3 and 379, an ultra-high ON/OFF ratio in the order of 1035 with tunable critical switching strain (8 % ∼ 50 %), an excellent long-term repeatability of over 1000 cycles at a peak strain of 50 %, and a stretchability up to 100 %. The potentials of the new sensors and switches are demonstrated by pairing them with the smartphone for tracking and recognition of human motions, offering a new solution to a wide range of portable devices and mobile applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For maximizing the customer satisfaction and retention, improvement of service reliability is a major concern for electric utilities. Service reliability can be improved by placing switches and reclosers at appropriate locations in the distribution system so that supply from the main substation to the healthy load points can be maintained after isolating the faulted section. This paper presents a formulation for an optimal placement of switches and reclosers in a distribution system for maximizing system reliability while minimizing the associated investment and outage costs considering uncertainties in load data, system failure and repair rates. The uncertainties have been incorporated in the formulation using point estimate method (PEM). The proposed formulation has been tested on 13, 58 and IEEE 123-bus test systems using differential evolution (DE) and mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) method. The obtained results establish the effectiveness of the consideration of data uncertainties in improving the distribution system reliability and maximizing utilities’ profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]