Ultra-ductile and low friction epoxy matrix composites

We present the results of an effective reinforcement of epoxy resin matrix with fullerene carbon soot. The optimal carbon soot addition of 1 wt. % results in a toughness improvement of almost 20 times. The optimized soot-epoxy composites also show an increase in tensile elongation of more than 13 %, thus indicating a change of the failure mechanism in tension from brittle to ductile. Additionally, the coefficient of friction is reduced from its 0.91 value in plain epoxy resin to 0.15 in the optimized composite. In the optimized composite, the lateral forces during nanoscratching decrease as much as 80 % with enhancement of the elastic modulus and hardness by 43 % and 94%, respectively. The optimized epoxy resin fullerene soot composite can be a strong candidate for coating applications where toughness, low friction, ductility and light weight are important.Comment: 24 pages, 7 Figures, 1 Table in Polymer Testing (2015

Design of a case management model for people with chronic disease (Heart Failure and COPD). Phase I: modeling and identification of the main components of the intervention through their actors: patients and professionals (DELTA-ICE-PRO Study

Background Chronic diseases account for nearly 60% of deaths around the world. The extent of this silent epidemic has not met determined responses in governments, policies or professionals in order to transform old Health Care Systems, configured for acute diseases. There is a large list of research about alternative models for people with chronic conditions, many of them with an advanced practice nurse as a key provider, as case management. But some methodological concerns raise, above all, the design of the intervention (intensity, frequency, components, etc). Methods/Design Objectives: General: To develop the first and second phases (theorization and modeling) for designing a multifaceted case-management intervention in people with chronic conditions (COPD and heart failure) and their caregivers. Specific aims: 1) To identify key events in people living with chronic disease and their relation with the Health Care System, from their point of view. 2) To know the coping mechanisms developed by patients and their caregivers along the story with the disease. 3) To know the information processing and its utilization in their interactions with health care providers. 4) To detect potential unmet needs and the ways deployed by patients and their caregivers to resolve them. 5) To obtain a description from patients and caregivers, about their itineraries along the Health Care System, in terms of continuity, accessibility and comprehensiveness of care. 6) To build up a list of promising case-management interventions in patients with Heart Failure and COPD with this information in order to frame it into theoretical models for its reproducibility and conceptualization. 7) To undergo this list to expert judgment to assess its feasibility and pertinence in the Andalusian Health Care. Design: Qualitative research with two phases: For the first five objectives, a qualitative technique with biographic stories will be developed and, for the remaining objectives, an expert consensus through Delphi technique, on the possible interventions yielded from the first phase. The study will be developed in the provinces of Almería, Málaga and Granada in the Southern Spain, from patients included in the Andalusian Health Care Service database with the diagnosis of COPD or Heart Failure, with the collaboration of case manager nurses and general practitioners for the assessment of their suitability to inclusion criteria. Patients and caregivers will be interviewed in their homes or their Health Centers, with their family or their case manager nurse as mediator. Discussion First of a series of studies intended to design a case-management service for people with heart failure and COPD, in the Andalusian Health Care System, where case management has been implemented since 2002. Accordingly with the steps of a theoretical model for complex interventions, in this study, theorization and intervention modeling phases will be developed.This research was carried out with the support of one research grant, awarded by the Regional Health Ministry of Andalusia (Exp. 0222/2008

A Multiobjective Evolutionary Conceptual Clustering Methodology for Gene Annotation Within Structural Databases: A Case of Study on the Gene Ontology Database

Current tools and techniques devoted to examine the content of large databases are often hampered by their inability to support searches based on criteria that are meaningful to their users. These shortcomings are particularly evident in data banks storing representations of structural data such as biological networks. Conceptual clustering techniques have demonstrated to be appropriate for uncovering relationships between features that characterize objects in structural data. However, typical con ceptual clustering approaches normally recover the most obvious relations, but fail to discover the lessfrequent but more informative underlying data associations. The combination of evolutionary algorithms with multiobjective and multimodal optimization techniques constitutes a suitable tool for solving this problem. We propose a novel conceptual clustering methodology termed evolutionary multiobjective conceptual clustering (EMO-CC), re lying on the NSGA-II multiobjective (MO) genetic algorithm. We apply this methodology to identify conceptual models in struc tural databases generated from gene ontologies. These models can explain and predict phenotypes in the immunoinflammatory response problem, similar to those provided by gene expression or other genetic markers. The analysis of these results reveals that our approach uncovers cohesive clusters, even those comprising a small number of observations explained by several features, which allows describing objects and their interactions from different perspectives and at different levels of detail.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-00877Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología BIO2004-0270EMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIN2006-1287

Antioxidant activity, photosynthetic rate, and Spectral mass in bean Plants (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in Response to Stress Defense Activators

An increase in antioxidant activity is a common response in plants as a defense mechanism against biotic and abiotic stress factors, such response is also generated with the exogenous application of "defense activators", which have negative effects on plant metabolism. In this work, bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cv. Pinto Nacional were treated with jasmonic acid (0.5 mM), salicylic acid (2 mM), Trichoderma asperellum (105 spores/ml), and Bacillus pumilus (105 CFU / mL), in order to determine the level of structural and metabolic response of the plants. On the seventh day after the application of the treatments, it was measured the enzymatic activity of catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POX), and superoxide dismutase (SOD). In addition, leaf impressions were taken to measure the stomatal opening and conductance, photosynthetic rate, and the mass spectrum (mass/charge, m/z). The antioxidant activity increased in plants treated with jasmonic acid and T. asperellum, which in turn significantly increased the stomatal opening and conductance, and photosynthetic rate. The mass profile showed that the plants treated with T. asperellum have a greater quantity of masses/charge, of which some had statistically highly significant difference according to the means test Tukey (

The NoiseFiltersR Package: Label Noise Preprocessing in R

In Data Mining, the value of extracted knowledge is directly related to the quality of the used data. This makes data preprocessing one of the most important steps in the knowledge discovery process. A common problem affecting data quality is the presence of noise. A training set with label noise can reduce the predictive performance of classification learning techniques and increase the overfitting of classification models. In this work we present the NoiseFiltersR package. It contains the first extensive R implementation of classical and state-of-the-art label noise filters, which are the most common techniques for preprocessing label noise. The algorithms used for the implementation of the label noise filters are appropriately documented and referenced. They can be called in a R-user-friendly manner, and their results are unified by means of the "filter" class, which also benefits from adapted print and summary methods.Spanish Research ProjectAndalusian Research PlanBrazilian grant-CeMEAI-FAPESPFAPESPUniv Granada, Dept Comp Sci & Artificial Intelligence, E-18071 Granada, SpainUniv Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencias Matemat & Comp, Trabalhador Sao Carlense Av 400, BR-13560970 Sao Carlos, SP, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencia & Tecnol, Talim St 330, BR-12231280 Sao Jose Dos Campos, SP, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencia & Tecnol, Talim St 330, BR-12231280 Sao Jose Dos Campos, SP, BrazilSpanish Research Project: TIN2014-57251-PAndalusian Research Plan: P11-TIC-7765CeMEAI-FAPESP: 2013/07375-0FAPESP: 2012/22608-8FAPESP: 2011/14602-7Web of Scienc

A Bayesian Approach for Estimating the Thinning Corrosion Rate of Steel Heat Exchanger in Hydrodesulfurization Plants

Fuel consumption has been increasing in recent years, especially that of diesel and jet fuel. For this reason, the necessity to build new plants to reduce their sulfur content has arisen. Sometimes, just revamping existing plants is feasible, but determining which pieces of equipment are in the appropriate condition to be reused is also necessary. In order to select the equipment, it is essential to have information about the wall thickness of vessels. Sometimes, the information is limited; consequently, the application of advanced statistical techniques is needed. ,e Bayesian Data Analysis (BDA) used in this study has the goal of determining a more accurate, unobserved thinning rate distribution for existing heat exchangers, taking into consideration all the information available about the thinning rate of the heat exchangers that cool down the effluent of the hydrotreating reactors in Mexican oil refineries. ,e information obtained from BDA was compared with existing shell wall thickness obtaining favorable results