TRIZ Methodology Applied to Maintenance Problem Solving on Industrial Steam Systems in Africa

The problems in steam systems installations in Africa have three main causes: lack of proper preventive and predictive maintenance actions; lack of awareness of the importance of availability and efficiency of the systems during design stage; and lack of care and misuse of the steam systems during operation due to the scarcity of specialized workforce. The present study, carried out during a one year trainee program within the scope of Bosch Industrial Business Development in Africa, is focused on identifying po-tential improvement points and problems related to maintenance and efficiency in Steam Systems in Africa. Maintenance services offered by the company were studied and after thorough analysis, improvement points were identified using TRIZ methodol-ogy in order to propose enhanced solutions further adapted to the African necessities. A detailed analysis was performed regarding the problems of equipment availability in Africa, thus enlightening the importance of redundant solutions in a market where qual-ified workforce and spare parts for equipment are not easily and readily available. A remote predictive and preventive maintenance solution was identified using Contradiction Matrix. An improvement to a maintenance contract was proposed using Substance-Field analysis. A suggestion to increase the availability of a steam system, and a proposal to increase the efficiency of a steam system were both also developed using Substance-Field analysis. In this way, the study was focused on using innovative methodologies in the development of improvement proposals in Africa, without disregarding the importance of certain aspects that are often not taken into account as much as they should

An analysis of guidelines on revision and rewriting of scientific texts in the digital universe

Ao considerar o amplo alcance e a facilidade do acesso que o universo digital possibilita na propagação de ideias e conteúdos, bem como a necessidade de examinar a credibilidade e a qualidade de conteúdos com viés educativo e/ou instrutivo que são veiculados nas práticas comunicativas desse universo, este trabalho investiga o tratamento dado à revisão e à reescrita de textos científicos em sites e blogs nacionais que abordam a escrita acadêmico-científica. Fundamentado em trabalhos situados dentro de uma perspectiva sociointeracionista da linguagem articulada ao ensino da produção textual (GERALDI, 1997; ANTUNES, 2003; GARCEZ, 2010; SUASSUNA, 2011) e em estudos que abordam a escrita de textos acadêmico-científicos (RUSSEL, 2009; NAVARRO, 2014; CARLINO, 2017), este artigo realiza uma análise de natureza interpretativa e de base qualitativa de um corpus constituído por 40 textos com conteúdo a respeito da produção de artigos científicos e monografias coletados em sites e blogs como enago, Ciência prática, Lendo.org, Monografia urgente e TCC pronto. A análise aponta que a maioria dos sites e blogs investigados contemplam, de maneira precária e restrita, aspectos implicados na prática de escrever e reescrever textos científicos, contribuindo, assim, para produzir uma imagem fragmentada do que é efetivamente a atividade de produção de textos acadêmico-científicos.Considering the wide reach and ease of access that the digital universe allows in the propagation of ideas and content, as well as the need to examine the credibility and quality of content with an educational and / or instructive bias that are conveyed in the communicative practices of that universe, this study investigates the treatment given to text revision and rewriting of scientific texts on national websites and blogs that address academic-scientific writing. Based on a sociointeractionist perspective of articulated language to the teaching of writing (GERALDI, 1997; ANTUNES, 2003; GARCEZ, 2010; SUASSUNA, 2011) and in studies that address the writing of academic-scientific texts (RUSSEL, 2009; NAVARRO, 2014; CARLINO, 2017), this article carries out an interpretative and qualitative analysis of a corpus consisting of 40 texts with content on the writing of scientific articles and monographs extrated from websites and blogs such as enago, Ciência prática, Lendo.org, monografia urgente and TCC Pronto. The analysis points out that most of the investigated sites and blogs contemplate, in a precarious and restricted way, aspects involved in the practice of writing and rewriting of scientific texts, thus contributing to produce a fragmented image of what academic text writing activity actually is

Gatekeepers of pancreas: TEAD and YAP

The pancreas hosts some of the most debilitating and deadly diseases, including pancreatic cancer and diabetes mellitus. In autoimmune diabetes, for example, there is a massive destruction of the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Pancreatic developmental defects can also result in a deficit of this cell type. To revert these important pancreatic diseases, researchers are currently trying to artificially generate insulin producing beta-cells for implantation and, in this way, suppress insulin administration [1]. However, to derive cells that function properly it is necessary to understand in depth the instructions that our body uses to produce them during fetal development. On the other hand, regarding pancreatic cancer, it is known that tumor cells very often recover characteristics similar to those of embryonic cells [2]. These are clear examples of the relevance to understand the identity of pancreatic progenitor cells.Fil: Rodríguez Seguí, Santiago Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias; ArgentinaFil: Bessa, José. Universidad de Porto; Portuga

Sox21a is requiered for posterior lateral line patterning by regulating Fgf signalling

Resumen del póster presentado al IX Meeting of the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology celebrado en Granada del 12 al 14 de noviembre de 2012.Peer Reviewe

Development of MetalFFF for mechanical applications: Mechanical properties and Corrosion characterization

3D printing of polymers (i.e. Fused Deposition Modelling/Fused Filament Fabrication) is a well-known and well-investigated manufacturing method. The relative simplicity of use and low-cost instrumentation means that this technique has spread widely. However, there are many constructive constraints and limitations. First, the strong anisotropy of the 3D printed parts. Second, the layer-by-layer construction involves a decrease in the mechanical properties compared to the same geometries obtained with conventional techniques. Finally, the surface roughness appears to be greatly compromised by the type, cost and tolerances of machine used and influenced by a layer thickness almost always greater than 100 microns. In this framework, the following thesis work add an extra level of complexity compared to pure polymer printing focusing on hybrid polymer-based filaments highly filled with metal particles (i.e. 17-4 PH). The 3D printing of metals using composite filaments, referred in the literature as metal FFF, has recently been investigated by the research group of Prof. Gianluca Cicala at the University of Catania, in terms of determining the mechanical responses of green and sintered parts of 316L and 17-4 PH steel samples. Among the works recently carried out, there is the mechanical characterization of the sintered samples in 17-4PH obtained from different printing profiles, the result of a combination of several printing parameters. Among the objectives of this thesis work, it is interesting to investigate a printing profile and to characterize the sintered metal parts before and after the machining of the green parts. The tests carried out will include tensile and/or bending tests, corrosion resistance tests, morphological findings by optical microscopy and surface roughness. The ultimate goal is to determine the effect of machining at a convenient stage on green parts, rather than on dense metal parts, on the mechanical and corrosion properties of metal samples based on 17-4 PH mainly

Adaptation and validation of the ITC - Sense of Presence Inventory for the Portuguese language

This investigation concerns the translation and validation of the ITC - Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) for the Portuguese-speaking population (in Europe), estimating the validity of the content and concepts and the maintenance of an equivalent semantics. It also sought to verify its psychometric properties, namely its factorial validity and internal consistency. The sample consisted of 459 individuals, 274 males and 185 females. The fidelity of the subscales varied between 0.67 and 0.89. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a theoretical model of 35 items, divided by four factors. After fixing some of the residual errors between items, the following adjustment indexes were calculated: χ2/df = 2.301; goodness fit index = 0.860; comparative fitness index=0.889; root mean square error of approximation=0.053; Akaike’s information criterion=1420. Based on the observed results and the robustness of the sample size used, the obtained theoretical model shows that the ITC-SOPI is recommended to measure presence in virtual reality research projects with samples of Portuguese language speakers.This work is financed by the ERDF European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028618 entitled PERFECT - Perceptual Equivalence in virtual Reality For authEntiC Training. All the works were conducted at INESC TEC’s MASSIVE Virtual Reality Laboratory.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Transformaciones de la penalidad migratoria en el contexto de la crisis económica: El giro gerencial del dispositivo de deportación.

[spa] Durante la primera década del siglo XXI, España fue un destino prioritario de las migraciones internacionales. Los distintos gobiernos gestionaron este fenómeno mediante la puesta en marcha de un conjunto de medidas de control, sustancialmente orientadas a erigir fronteras exteriores e interiores. No obstante, la extensión de la crisis económica ha conducido a reajustar el sistema de control migratorio en su conjunto. Este texto pretende analizar las racionalidades que subyacen a la actual transformación de las políticas en este campo. A estos efectos, estudia las implicaciones del giro gerencial en el dispositivo de deportación, y concluye delineando un conjunto de reformas normativas sustentadas en un paradigma de derechos humanos.[eng] Over the first decade of the current century Spain was a primary destination of international migrations. Spanish governments managed this phenomenon by implementing a number of control measures, largely aimed at walling external and internal borders. However, the persistence of the economic crisis has led to the readjustment of the whole system of migration control. This article intends to grasp the underlying rationales of the current transformation of the Spanish policies of bordered penality. It scrutinizes the implications of the managerial turn of the Spanish apparatus of deportation and concludes by outlining a range of legal reforms grounded on a human rights perspective

Identification and Analysis of Conserved cis-Regulatory Regions of the MEIS1 Gene

Meis1, a conserved transcription factor of the TALE-homeodomain class, is expressed in a wide variety of tissues during development. Its complex expression pattern is likely to be controlled by an equally complex regulatory landscape. Here we have scanned the Meis1 locus for regulatory elements and found 13 non-coding regions, highly conserved between humans and teleost fishes, that have enhancer activity in stable transgenic zebrafish lines. All these regions are syntenic in most vertebrates. The composite expression of all these enhancer elements recapitulate most of Meis1 expression during early embryogenesis, indicating they comprise a basic set of regulatory elements of the Meis1 gene. Using bioinformatic tools, we identify a number of potential binding sites for transcription factors that are compatible with the regulation of these enhancers. Specifically, HHc2:066650, which is expressed in the developing retina and optic tectum, harbors several predicted Pax6 sites. Biochemical, functional and transgenic assays indicate that pax6 genes directly regulate HHc2:066650 activity.This work was funded through grants BFU2009-07044 (MICINN) and Proyecto de Excelencia CVI 2658 (Junta de Andalucía) to FC and BFU2010-14839 (MICINN), CSD2007-00008 and Proyecto de Excelencia CVI-3488 to JLGS. JLR is a recipient of a JAE-DOC contract from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)