A mobile and evolving tool to predict colorectal cancer survivability

In this work, a tool for the survivability prediction of patients with colon or rectal cancer, up to five years after diagnosis and treatment, is presented. Indeed, an accurate survivability prediction is a difficult task for health care professionals and of high concern to patients, so that they can make the most of the rest of their lives. The distinguishing features of the tool include a balance between the number of necessary inputs and prediction performance, being mobile-friendly, and featuring an online learning component that enables the automatic evolution of the prediction models upon the addition of new cases.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of Tiago Oliveira is supported by a FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dry drilling of alloy Ti-6Al-4V

This work is focused on the combined study of the evolution of tool wear, quality of machined holes and surface integrity of work-piece, in the dry drilling of alloy Ti–6Al–4V. Tool wear was studied with optical microscope and SEM–EDS techniques. The quality of machined holes was estimated in terms of geometrical accuracy and burr formation. Surface integrity involves the study of surface roughness, metallurgical alterations and microhardness tests. The end of tool life was reached because of catastrophic failure of the drill, but no significant progressive wear in cutting zone was observed previously. High hole quality was observed even near tool catastrophic failure, evaluated from the point of view of dimensions, surface roughness and burr height. However, microhardness measurements and SEM–EDS analysis of work-piece showed important microstructural changes related with a loss of mechanical properties. Depending on the application of the machined component, the state of the work-piece could be more restrictive than the tool wear, and the end of tool life should be established from the point of view of controlled damage in a work-piece.Microstructural studies and microhardness tests were developed at Department of Materials Science of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. This work was supported in part by project DPI2001-3747 and a grant from the Foundation Ramón Areces, Spain.Publicad

Iris: an Extensible Application for Building and Analyzing Spectral Energy Distributions

Iris is an extensible application that provides astronomers with a user-friendly interface capable of ingesting broad-band data from many different sources in order to build, explore, and model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris takes advantage of the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, but hides the technicalities of such standards by implementing different layers of abstraction on top of them. Such intermediate layers provide hooks that users and developers can exploit in order to extend the capabilities provided by Iris. For instance, custom Python models can be combined in arbitrary ways with the Iris built-in models or with other custom functions. As such, Iris offers a platform for the development and integration of SED data, services, and applications, either from the user's system or from the web. In this paper we describe the built-in features provided by Iris for building and analyzing SEDs. We also explore in some detail the Iris framework and software development kit, showing how astronomers and software developers can plug their code into an integrated SED analysis environment.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin