Electronic Ticket and Check-in System for Indico Conferences

Project Specification: This project should build on the existing participant registration module of Indico and provide additional functionalities for managing the check-in process. While in small conferences it is easy to keep track of participants with a simple paper list, such techniques become inefficient when the need to scale the process up arises. Therefore Indico’s participant registration module would be extended with the functionality to generate electronic tickets. This will allow conference organizers to keep track of attendees after they finish the registration process. As part of this project it is also necessary to develop a mobile application that will be used to scan the electronic tickets, identify the user and mark them as checked in when they arrive at the conference. Additionally Indico’s HTTP API would be extended to be used by the mobile application to retrieve data about conferences and attendees. Abstract: The main goal of this project is to simplify the check-in process for conferences that use the Indico conference management system. This is archived by extending Indico’s core to include electronic ticket generation functionality and developing a mobile application that is used to scan the electronic tickets during the check-in process. Indico’s HTTP API is also extended to provide the mobile application with the necessary data

A Case Study for Financial Feasibility of Automated Costing Support in A Small Machine Shop

A knowledge-based cost estimating expert system is chosen by a Mexican machine shop. Differences between the traditional experience-based system employed and the automated system are studied. Data is gathered to analyze time effectiveness, accuracy and payback of the software. Data from seventy part models is recorded to study the time experiment, and data from fifty part models is used to study the accuracy and consistency. Data is analyzed by calculating mean, standard deviation, and test of hypothesis. The results indicate that the software is faster than the traditional quoting system; however, the payback point is high. Also, results show the software has a smaller average time-to-manufacture percentage difference between the automated system and the actual time-to-manufacture (TTM) compared to the percentage difference between the traditional’s TTM and actual TTMs, and this difference is statistically significant. The standard deviation for the automated system is also less implying better consistency

Benefits of Implementing Automated Costing in a Small Machine Shop: A Case Study

Knowledge based cost estimating systems are available, but is there a lower limit to their applicability in an industrial environment?  This paper answers this question by examining a knowledge based cost estimating expert system application in a small machine shop.  Differences between the traditional experienced-based system currently employed and the automated system are studied.  Data is gathered to analyze time effectiveness, accuracy, and payback of the software.  Data from seventy part models is recorded to study the time experiment and data from fifty part models is used to study accuracy and consistency.The results indicate that the software is faster than traditional quoting systems; however, the payback point is high. Also, results show that the software has a smaller average time to manufacture percent difference between the automated system and the actual time to manufacture (TTM) compared to the percentage difference between the traditional TTM and actual TTM. Standard deviation for the automation is also less, implying better consistency.  As a result, the attractiveness of the automated system in the limiting case of a small machine shop rests with significantly improved accuracy and consistency rather than payback.

Prospecting the future with AI

If we were able to foresee the future, we could be prepared to reduce the impact of bad situations as well as getting the most of profiting periods. Our world is a dynamic system that evolves as time goes by. The number of variables that can influence in future situations outnumbers our capacity of prediction at a first glance. This article will show an alternative way to foresee potential future scenarios based on human experts’ opinion, what can be considered as a knowledge modeling tool

Effect of a silica nanofiller on the structure, dynamics and thermostability of LDPE in LDPE/silica nanocomposites

The effect of the presence of silica nanoparticles on the structure, thermal stability and dynamics of low density polyethylene, LDPE, has been studied. Different loads of nanoparticles were dispersed within a LDPE matrix using high energy ball milling (HEBM) as a preliminary processing step to ensure a uniform dispersion of nanofiller to obtain nanocomposites in the form of films by hot pressing. The monitoring of the FTIR-ATR spectra of the samples as a function of the temperature has proven as a convenient method to study the interactions at a molecular scale between the polyethylene chains and the nanofiller. Band splitting observed in the bending and rocking modes of the ethylene groups indicated formation of crystalline phases whereas the analysis of absorbance band ratios from the stretching vibrations of PE accounted for the behavior of the polymer bulk. No evidence of strong polymer–filler interactions were found with the exception of a thermal relaxation process observed at 55 °C. Structural, morphological and thermal characterization of the nanocomposites did not reveal remarkable changes at low loads of filler, indicating that in the case of LDPE–silica nanocomposites, where weak interactions between the polymer and filler occur, the volume fraction of nanoparticles must be relatively high in order to produce changes in the bulk properties.The authors acknowledge financial support from projects MAT2007-65752 and MAT2010-16815, and the assistance of S. Martínez with the TGA and FTIR-ATR experiments

Poly (ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) films prepared by solution blow spinning: surface characterization and its relation with E.coli adhesion

Solution blow spinning, SBS, a quite novel processing method, was used to obtain poly (ethylene-co-vinyl acetate), EVA, films with controlled surface properties. The influence of the surface characteristics of EVA films on the adhesion of DH5α Escherichia coli was studied. In particular, the initial concentration of the EVA solution to be blow spun was varied in order to get different surface topographies. Considering the potential use of EVA based materials in applications such as food packaging or scaffolds for tissue engineering all factors affecting proliferation of microorganisms on their surfaces should be studied and understood. Structural, morphological and surface characterizations based on the use of infrared spectroscopy, FTIR, scanning electron microscopy, SEM, and contact angle measurements were performed to ascertain the main factor influencing the E. coli adhesion on the EVA films. Roughness data were determined at different scales from 3D surfaces obtained using a stereoscopic reconstruction of SEM images. It was concluded that, depending on the conditions of the SBS process, only variations of topography were found on the EVA films, being therefore the unique cause of different adhesion capacity of E. coli cells. A correlation between roughness and the number of attached E. coli cells showed that the higher the roughness at microscale level the higher the biofilm development, demonstrating that, apart from specific interactions at nanoscale surface, heterogeneity at microscale can greatly modify the antibacterial action.Authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Project MAT2014-59116-C2 (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad). We also greatly appreciate the technical support from the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Group (Department of Bioengeneering and Aerospace Engeneering) of the Carlos III University of Madrid, particularly to Angélica Corral and José Luis Jorcano

Nanofibrous polysulfone/TiO2 nanocomposites: surface properties and their relation with E. coli adhesion

Solution blow spinning, SBS, was used to prepare fibrous films of thermoplastic nanocomposites with potential antibacterial properties based on polysulfone, PSF, filled with well dispersed TiO2 nanoparticles. The PSF/TiO2 nanocomposites were produced with different nanoparticles content up to 10% by weight. A wide characterization was carried out focusing on the morphology at the nanoscale, roughness, contact angles, and surface free energy. Cell adhesion was studied by inspection by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A uniform dispersion of the nanofiller was achieved, with the nanoparticles evenly embedded in the polymer along the fibers when they were created during the blow spinning process. TiO2 content influenced the topography of the films, most likely due to a direct effect on the solvent evaporation rate. The results obtained pointed out that an increase of the surface hydrophobicity as a result of the increased roughness induced by the presence of TiO2 nanoparticles was the main contribution to the reduction of DH5α Escherichia coli cells adhesion.This work was financially supported by the Projects MAT2014-59116-C2 (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad); 2012/00130/004 (Fondos de Investigación de Fco. Javier Gonzalez Benito, política de reinversión de costes generales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and 2011/00287/002 (Acción Estratégica en Materiales Compuestos poliméricos e Interfases, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Metabolic risk score indexes validation in overweight healthy people

The constellation of adverse cardiovascular disease (CVD) and metabolic risk factors, including elevated abdominal obesity, blood pressure (BP), glucose, and triglycerides (TG) and lowered high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), has been termed the metabolic syndrome (MetSyn) [1]. A number of different definitions have been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) [2], the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) [3], the European Group for the Study of Insulin Resistance (EGIR) [4] and, most recently, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) [5]. Since there is no universal definition of the Metabolic Syndrome, several authors have derived different risk scores to represent the clustering of its components [6-11]

Cyclodextrin-Grafted TiO2 Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Complexation Capacity, and Dispersion in Polymeric Matrices

The modification of the surface of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) by the incorporation of cyclodextrins (CDs), cyclic oligosaccharides with a hydrophobic cavity, can largely improve the functionality of TiO2 by lodging molecules of interest in the CD to act directly on the surface of the nanoparticles or for further release. With this aim, we have synthesized betaCD-modified nanoparticles (betaCDTiO2 NPs) by a two-step reaction that involves the incorporation of a spacer and then the linking of the macrocycle, and characterized them by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The capacity of the functionalized structures to trap model compounds (Rhodamine and 1-naphthol) has been compared to that of bare TiO2 NPs by fluorescence and Ultraviolet-visible (UV-visible) spectroscopy. The presence of the CDs on the surface of the TiO2 avoids the photo-degradation of the guest, which is of interest in order to combine the photocatalytic activity of TiO2, one of its most interesting features for practical purposes, with the delivery of compounds susceptible of being photo-degraded. The betaCDTiO2 NPs have been dispersed in polymeric matrices of frequently used polymers, polyethylene (LDPE) and polyethylene oxide (PEO), by cryogenic high energy ball milling to produce nanocomposites in the form of films. The surface modification of the nanoparticles favors the homogenization of the filler in the matrix, while the nanoparticles, either in bare or functionalized form, do not seem to alter the crystallization properties of the polymer at least up to a 5% (w/w) load of filler.This research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, project MAT2014-59116-C2-2-R