Using Rules to Adapt Applications for Business Models with High Evolutionary Rates

Nowadays, business models are in permanent evolution since the requirements belongs to a rapidly evolving world. In a context where communications all around the world travel so fast the business models need to be adapted permanently to the information the managers receive. In such world, traditional software development, needed for adapting software to changes, do not work properly since business changes need to be in exploitation in shorter times. In that situation, it is needed to go quicker from the business idea to the exploitation environment. This issue can be solved accelerating the development speed: from the expert to the customer, with no –or few, technical intervention. This paper proposes an approach to empower domain experts in developing adaptability solutions by using automated sets of production rules in a friendly way. Furthermore, a use case that implements this kind of development was used in a real problem prototype

Modified carbon fabric electrodes: preparation and electrochemical behavior toward amaranth electrolysis

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10800-014-0769-9The electrochemical behavior of non-modified, Pt-modified, and Pt/polyaniline-modified carbon fiber textile electrodes was studied through a series of electrolyses, under potentiostatic conditions, on an amaranth/sulfuric solution in the presence or absence of chloride ion. The morphology of the dispersed Pt, PANI, and PANI/Pt coatings was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. Scanning electrochemical microscopy confirmed that the textile surface was effectively modified by the electrocatalytic material. Color removal reached values above 90 % in both electroreduction and electrooxidation processes. The amaranth electroreductions carried out with the non-modified electrode showed better charge efficiency than those with the Pt-modified textile electrode. The electrooxidations with Pt-modified textile electrodes showed a significant reduction in electrolysis time. Ultraviolet-visible and Fourier transform infrared with attenuated total reflection spectra enabled the electrochemical behavior of the non-modified and Pt/PANI-modified electrodes to be distinguished.The authors wish to acknowledge to the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (contract CTM2011-23583) and Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Vicerrectorado de Investigacion PAID-06-10 contract 003-233) for the financial support; and as well as Carbongen S. A. (Cocentaina, Spain), who kindly donated the activated carbon fabric. J. Molina is grateful to the Conselleria d'Educacio, Formacio i Ocupacio (Generalitat Valenciana) for the Programa VALi+D Postdoctoral Fellowship. A.I. del Rio is grateful to the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia for the FPI fellowship.Fernández Sáez, J.; Del Río García, AI.; Molina Puerto, J.; Bonastre Cano, JA.; Cases Iborra, FJ. (2015). Modified carbon fabric electrodes: preparation and electrochemical behavior toward amaranth electrolysis. Journal of Applied Electrochemistry. 45(3):263-272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-014-0769-9S263272453Marsh H, Reinoso FR (2000) Sciences of carbon materials. Universidad de Alicante, AlicanteKinoshita K (1998) Carbon: electrochemical and physicochemical properties. Wiley, New York, pp 293–387Burchell TD (1999) Carbon materials for advances technologies. Pergamon, AmsterdamDomínguez SD, Pardilla JA, Murcia AB, Morallón E, Amorós DC (2008) Electrochemical deposition of Pt nanoparticles on different carbon supports and conducting polymers. J Appl Electrochem 38:259–268Kezhong W, Xu M, Xindong W, Jingling L (2005) Pt–Polyaniline-modified carbon fiber electrode for the electrooxidation of methanol. Rare Met 24:33–36Wu G, Li L, Li JH, Xu BQ (2006) Methanol electrooxidation on Pt particles dispersed into PANI/SWNT composite films. J Power Sources 155:118–127Singh RN, Awasthi R, Tiwari SK (2010) Electro-catalytic activities of binary nano-composites of Pt and nano-carbon/multiwall carbon nanotube for methanol electro-electrooxidation. Open Catal J 3:50–57Zhiani M, Rezaei B, Jalili J (2010) Methanol electro-electrooxidation on Pt/C modified by polyaniline nanofibers for DMFC applications. Int J Hydrogen Energ 35:9298–9305Laborde H, Léger J-M, Lamy C (1994) Electrocatalytic electrooxidation of methanol and C1 molecules on highly dispersed electrodes. Part 1: Pt in polyaniline. J Appl Electrochem 24:219–226Niu L, Li Q, Wei F, Wu S, Liu P, Cao X (2005) Electrocatalytic behaviour of Pt-modified polyaniline electrode for methanol electrooxidation: effect of Pt deposition modes. J Electroanal Chem 578:331–337Huang LM, Tang WR, Wen TCh (2007) Spatially electrodeposited Pt in polyaniline doped with poly(styrene sulfonic acid) for methanol electrooxidation. J Power Sources 164:519–526Fernández J, Molina J, del Río AI, Bonastre J, Cases FJ (2012) Synthesis and characterization of electrochemically platinum–polyaniline modified carbon textile electrodes. Int J Electrochem Sci 7:10175–10189Snehalatha M, Ravikumar C, Sekar N, Jayakumar SV, Joe H (2008) FT–Raman, IR and UV–visible spectral investigations and ab initio computations of a nonlinear food dye amaranth. J Raman Spectrosc 39:928–936Rajendran L, Ananthi SP (2004) Analysis of positive feedback currents at the scanning electrochemical microscope. J Electroanal Chem 561:113–118Niu L, Li Q, Wei F, Chen X, Wang W (2003) Formation optimization of Pt-modified polyaniline films for the electrocatalytic electrooxidation of methanol. Synthetic Met 139:271–276Sala M, del Río AI, Molina J, Cases F, Gutierrez-Bouzán MC (2012) Influence of cell design and electrode materials on the decoloration of dyeing effluents. Int J Electrochem Sc 7:12470–12488Priyantha N, Malavipathirana S (1996) Effect of chloride ions on the electrochemical behavior of platinum surfaces. J Natn Sci Coun Sri Lanka 24:237–246Rajeev J, Nidhi Sh, Keisham R (2009) Electrochemical treatment of pharmaceutical azo dye amaranth from waste water. J Appl Electochem 39:577–582Nadupalli S, Koorbanally N, Jonnalagadda SB (2011) Kinetics and mechanism of the oxidation of amaranth with hypochlorite. J Phys Chem A 115:7948–795

Bronchoscopist's perception of the quality of the single-use bronchoscope (Ambu aScope4™) in selected bronchoscopies: a multicenter study in 21 Spanish pulmonology services

Background: The disposable bronchoscope is an excellent alternative to face the problem of SARS-CoV-2 and other cross infections, but the bronchoscopist's perception of its quality has not been evaluated. Methods: To evaluate the quality of the Ambu-aScope4 disposable bronchoscope, we carried out a cross-sectional study in 21 Spanish pulmonology services. We use a standardized questionnaire completed by the bronchoscopists at the end of each bronchoscopy. The variables were described with absolute and relative frequencies, measures of central tendency and dispersion depending on their nature. The existence of learning curves was evaluated by CUSUM analysis. Results: The most frequent indications in 300 included bronchoscopies was bronchial aspiration in 69.3% and the median duration of these was 9.1 min. The route of entry was nasal in 47.2% and oral in 34.1%. The average score for ease of use, image, and aspiration quality was 80/100. All the planned techniques were performed in 94.9% and the bronchoscopist was satisfied in 96.6% of the bronchoscopies. They highlighted the portability and immediacy of the aScope4TM to start the procedure in 99.3%, the possibility of taking and storing images in 99.3%. The CUSUM analysis showed average scores > 70/100 from the first procedure and from the 9th procedure more than 80% of the scores exceeded the 80/100 score. Conclusions: The aScope4™ scored well for ease of use, imaging, and aspiration. We found a learning curve with excellent scores from the 9th procedure. Bronchoscopists highlighted its portability, immediacy of use and the possibility of taking and storing images

Integrating sequence and structural biology with DAS.

BACKGROUND: The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a network protocol for exchanging biological data. It is frequently used to share annotations of genomes and protein sequence. RESULTS: Here we present several extensions to the current DAS 1.5 protocol. These provide new commands to share alignments, three dimensional molecular structure data, add the possibility for registration and discovery of DAS servers, and provide a convention how to provide different types of data plots. We present examples of web sites and applications that use the new extensions. We operate a public registry of DAS sources, which now includes entries for more than 250 distinct sources. CONCLUSION: Our DAS extensions are essential for the management of the growing number of services and exchange of diverse biological data sets. In addition the extensions allow new types of applications to be developed and scientific questions to be addressed. The registry of DAS sources is available at http://www.dasregistry.org.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Plastisol Foaming Process. Decomposition of the Foaming Agent, Polymer Behavior in the Corresponding Temperature Range and Resulting Foam Properties

The decomposition of azodicarbonamide, used as foaming agent in PVC - plasticizer (1/1) plastisols was studied by DSC. Nineteen different plasticizers, all belonging to the ester family, two being polymeric (polyadipates), were compared. The temperature of maximum decomposition rate (in anisothermal regime at 5 K min-1 scanning rate), ranges between 434 and 452 K. The heat of decomposition ranges between 8.7 and 12.5 J g -1. Some trends of variation of these parameters appear significant and are discussed in terms of solvent (matrix) and viscosity effects on the decomposition reactions. The shear modulus at 1 Hz frequency was determined at the temperature of maximum rate of foaming agent decomposition, and differs significantly from a sample to another. The foam density was determined at ambient temperature and the volume fraction of bubbles was used as criterion to judge the efficiency of the foaming process. The results reveal the existence of an optimal shear modulus of the order of 2 kPa that corresponds roughly to plasticizer molar masses of the order of 450 ± 50 g mol-1. Heavier plasticizers, especially polymeric ones are too difficult to deform. Lighter plasticizers such as diethyl phthalate (DEP) deform too easily and presumably facilitate bubble collapse

D* Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

This paper presents measurements of D^{*\pm} production in deep inelastic scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel $D^{*+}\to (D^0 \to K^- \pi^+) \pi^+$ (+ c.c.) has been used in the study. The $e^+p$ cross section for inclusive D^{*\pm} production with $5<Q^2<100 GeV^2$ and $y<0.7$ is 5.3 \pms 1.0 \pms 0.8 nb in the kinematic region {$1.3<p_T(D^{*\pm})<9.0$ GeV and $| \eta(D^{*\pm}) |<1.5$}. Differential cross sections as functions of p_T(D^{*\pm}), $\eta(D^{*\pm}), W$ and $Q^2$ are compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the full kinematic region in p_T(D^{*\pm}) and $\eta$(D^{*\pm}), the charm contribution $F_2^{c\bar{c}}(x,Q^2)$ to the proton structure function is determined for Bjorken $x$ between 2 $\cdot$ 10$^{-4}$ and 5 $\cdot$ 10$^{-3}$.Comment: 17 pages including 4 figure

Association of candidate gene polymorphisms with chronic kidney disease : Results of a case-control analysis in the NEFRONA cohort

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major risk factor for end-stage renal disease, cardiovascular disease and premature death. Despite classical clinical risk factors for CKD and some genetic risk factors have been identified, the residual risk observed in prediction models is still high. Therefore, new risk factors need to be identified in order to better predict the risk of CKD in the population. Here, we analyzed the genetic association of 79 SNPs of proteins associated with mineral metabolism disturbances with CKD in a cohort that includes 2,445 CKD cases and 559 controls. Genotyping was performed with matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry. We used logistic regression models considering different genetic inheritance models to assess the association of the SNPs with the prevalence of CKD, adjusting for known risk factors. Eight SNPs (rs1126616, rs35068180, rs2238135, rs1800247, rs385564, rs4236, rs2248359, and rs1564858) were associated with CKD even after adjusting by sex, age and race. A model containing five of these SNPs (rs1126616, rs35068180, rs1800247, rs4236, and rs2248359), diabetes and hypertension showed better performance than models considering only clinical risk factors, significantly increasing the area under the curve of the model without polymorphisms. Furthermore, one of the SNPs (the rs2248359) showed an interaction with hypertension, being the risk genotype affecting only hypertensive patients. We conclude that 5 SNPs related to proteins implicated in mineral metabolism disturbances (Osteopontin, osteocalcin, matrix gla protein, matrix metalloprotease 3 and 24 hydroxylase) are associated to an increased risk of suffering CKD

Association of a single nucleotide polymorphism combination pattern of the Klotho gene with non-cardiovascular death in patients with chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with an elevated risk of all-cause mortality, with cardiovascular death being extensively investigated. However, non-cardiovascular mortality represents the biggest percentage, showing an evident increase in recent years. Klotho is a gene highly expressed in the kidney, with a clear influence on lifespan. Low levels of Klotho have been linked to CKD progression and adverse outcomes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the Klotho gene have been associated with several diseases, but studies investigating the association of Klotho SNPs with noncardiovascular death in CKD populations are lacking. The main aim of this study was to assess whether 11 Klotho SNPs were associated with non-cardiovascular death in a subpopulation of the National Observatory of Atherosclerosis in Nephrology (NEFRONA) study (n ¼ 2185 CKD patients). After 48 months of follow-up, 62 cardiovascular deaths and 108 non-cardiovascular deaths were recorded. We identified a high non-cardiovascular death risk combination of SNPs corresponding to individuals carrying the most frequent allele (G) at rs562020, the rare allele (C) at rs2283368 and homozygotes for the rare allele (G) at rs2320762 (rs562020 GG/AG þ rs2283368 CC/CT þ rs2320762 GG). Among the patients with the three SNPs genotyped (n ¼ 1016), 75 (7.4%) showed this combination. Furthermore, 95 (9.3%) patients showed a low-risk combination carrying all the opposite genotypes (rs562020 AA þ rs2283368 TT þ rs2320762 GT/TT). All the other combinations [n ¼ 846 (83.3%)] were considered as normal risk. Using competing risk regression analysis, we confirmed that the proposed combinations are independently associated with a higher fhazard ratio [HR] 3.28 [confidence interval (CI) 1.51-7.12]g and lower [HR 6 × 10- (95% CI 3.3 × 10--1.1 × 10-)] risk of suffering a non-cardiovascular death in the CKD population of the NEFRONA cohort compared with patients with the normal-risk combination. Determination of three SNPs of the Klotho gene could help in the prediction of non-cardiovascular death in CKD

Bronchoscopist's perception of the quality of the single-use bronchoscope (Ambu aScope4™) in selected bronchoscopies: a multicenter study in 21 Spanish pulmonology services

Background: The disposable bronchoscope is an excellent alternative to face the problem of SARS-CoV-2 and other cross infections, but the bronchoscopist’s perception of its quality has not been evaluated. Methods: To evaluate the quality of the Ambu-aScope4 disposable bronchoscope, we carried out a cross-sectional study in 21 Spanish pulmonology services. We use a standardized questionnaire completed by the bronchoscopists at the end of each bronchoscopy. The variables were described with absolute and relative frequencies, measures of cen‑ tral tendency and dispersion depending on their nature. The existence of learning curves was evaluated by CUSUM analysis. Results: The most frequent indications in 300 included bronchoscopies was bronchial aspiration in 69.3% and the median duration of these was 9.1 min. The route of entry was nasal in 47.2% and oral in 34.1%. The average score for ease of use, image, and aspiration quality was 80/100. All the planned techniques were performed in 94.9% and the bronchoscopist was satisfed in 96.6% of the bronchoscopies. They highlighted the portability and immediacy of the aScope4TM to start the procedure in 99.3%, the possibility of taking and storing images in 99.3%. The CUSUM analysis showed average scores>70/100 from the frst procedure and from the 9th procedure more than 80% of the scores exceeded the 80/100 score