MeIPeAS: An Intelligent Virtual Tutor for Mexican Elementary Schoolchildren

Artículo en revista indizada publicado en Research in Computing ScienceIt is known that virtual tutors have a wide range of functionalities, which have been little exploited and applied in the educational field at the primary level. However, these functionalities allow to offer mechanisms of interaction with students through an interactive dialogue by using text to speech, and even more sophisticated, the recognition and understanding of natural language or speech. In this paper, a personalized virtual tutor for the primary education scenario in Mexico is presented. This virtual tutor is called Mexican Intelligent Pedagogical Agent for Schoolchildren (MeIPeAS) and was created to be used as a pedagogical support mechanism offering a unique attraction for current and future generations of schoolchildren in Mexico. The virtual tutor has been validated in practice in public primary schools of the municipalities of the State of Mexico in Mexico. This validation is to analyze the impact of the user experience from the obtained results having relevant information about the reinforcement of topics taught within the classroom

Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different Encapsulation Techniques

One of the main challenges related to concrete is the formation of cracks, which can greatly diminish its strength and decrease its service life. Repair costs to mitigate these cracks can be high. This study investigated the use of Bacillus cibi to produce a self-healing bio-concrete capable of repairing cracks by itself through microbial activity. Bacteria were introduced into concrete by direct incorporation and encapsulating it in lightweight aggregates (LWA) and diatomaceous earth (DE). Samples of concrete cylinders were tested to quantify crack healing, compressive strength, and water permeability. The results showed that bio-concrete prepared with the LWA encapsulation method was able heal the largest crack width at 0.541 mm after 35 days of wet-dry cycle. Bio-concrete produced from bacteria with no encapsulation exhibited significant enhancement in 28-day compressive strength (57.28 MPa) compared to normal concrete (54.78 MPa) and produced the highest hydraulic conductivity recovery at 85.04% after 35 days of healing. The XRD analysis showed that the bacteria did not cause any major changes to the concrete

Self-Healing of Cracks in Concrete using Bacillus cibi with Different Encapsulation Techniques

One of the main challenges related to concrete is the formation of cracks, which can greatly diminish its strength and decrease its service life. Repair costs to mitigate these cracks can be high. This study investigated the use of Bacillus cibi to produce a self-healing bio-concrete capable of repairing cracks by itself through microbial activity. Bacteria were introduced into concrete by direct incorporation and encapsulating it in lightweight aggregates (LWA) and diatomaceous earth (DE). Samples of concrete cylinders were tested to quantify crack healing, compressive strength, and water permeability. The results showed that bio-concrete prepared with the LWA encapsulation method was able heal the largest crack width at 0.541 mm after 35 days of wet-dry cycle. Bio-concrete produced from bacteria with no encapsulation exhibited significant enhancement in 28-day compressive strength (57.28 MPa) compared to normal concrete (54.78 MPa) and produced the highest hydraulic conductivity recovery at 85.04% after 35 days of healing. The XRD analysis showed that the bacteria did not cause any major changes to the concrete

Mosquito Detection with Neural Networks: The Buzz of Deep Learning

Many real-world time-series analysis problems are characterised by scarce data. Solutions typically rely on hand-crafted features extracted from the time or frequency domain allied with classification or regression engines which condition on this (often low-dimensional) feature vector. The huge advances enjoyed by many application domains in recent years have been fuelled by the use of deep learning architectures trained on large data sets. This paper presents an application of deep learning for acoustic event detection in a challenging, data-scarce, real-world problem. Our candidate challenge is to accurately detect the presence of a mosquito from its acoustic signature. We develop convolutional neural networks (CNNs) operating on wavelet transformations of audio recordings. Furthermore, we interrogate the network's predictive power by visualising statistics of network-excitatory samples. These visualisations offer a deep insight into the relative informativeness of components in the detection problem. We include comparisons with conventional classifiers, conditioned on both hand-tuned and generic features, to stress the strength of automatic deep feature learning. Detection is achieved with performance metrics significantly surpassing those of existing algorithmic methods, as well as marginally exceeding those attained by individual human experts.Comment: For data and software related to this paper, see http://humbug.ac.uk/kiskin2017/. Submitted as a conference paper to ECML 201

FUENTES DE FINANCIAMIENTO PARA LA ADQUISICIÓN DE ACTIVO FIJO TANGIBLE EN EL GRIFO SANTA JULIA SAC CHICLAYO

Debido al incremento de mercado y a la exigencia que impone el mismo el grifo Santa Julia SAC desea adquirir una cisterna de combustible, pero el problema surge cuando no se cuenta con el conocimiento suficiente sobre las fuentes de financiamientos que existen y la competitividad actual, es por ello que en el presente trabajo de investigación se trata de demostrar que existen diferentes fuentes de financiamiento para invertir en la adquisición de activos fijos tangibles, y demostrar cual sería la más apropiada. La investigación tuvo como objetivo general determinar la mejor fuente de financiamiento para la adquisición de activos fijos tangibles en el Grifo Santa Julia SAC Chiclayo. Se usó un tipo de estudio mixto con diseño no experimental, utilizándose como instrumentos la guía de entrevista y el análisis documental, documentos validados a través de la técnica juicios de expertos. Se obtuvo como resultado que la empresa cuenta con un óptimo nivel de liquidez endeudamiento y rentabilidad, así mismo al aplicar la entrevista al administrador de la empresa se obtuvo como respuesta que el grifo requiere de una cisterna de combustible para brindar el servicio de transporte. Se concluyó que para la adquisición de un activo fijo tangible se debe utilizar como mejor fuente de financiamiento el leasing financiero, siendo el más viable y beneficioso para el Grifo Santa Julia SAC, tanto en el aspecto económico como tributario. Obteniendo como resultado una rentabilidad mayor a la del préstamo bancario.Tesi

Extracto acuoso natural de Morinda Citrifolia como inhibidor de corrosión del acero AISI-1045 en ambientes ácidos de HCl.

Mara Franco quisiera agradecer a la beca del CONACYT que le ha permitido realizar su trabajo de tesis y su visita a la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, UAM. También se agradece al proyecto MAT2015-67557-C2-2-P del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad por su financiación. En particular el Dr. Héctor Herrera Hernández agradece el apoyo económico recibido por el proyecto de investigación 3817/2014/CID (UAEM-Secretaria de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados). Por último, Dr. Héctor Herrera Hernández y el Dr. Iván García Orozco, reconocen al CONACyT por la distinción al mérito como INVESTIGADOR NACIONAL, SNI.Natural liquid-extract of Morinda Citrifolia as corrosion inhibitor for steels (AISI-1045) exposed to acidic environments of HCl. Both the organic and inorganic compounds commonly used in the industry to inhibit the corrosion process of metals and its alloys are mostly composed by highly toxic chemicals, in addition to being more expensive. In this research sugar-components derived from the Morinda Citrifolia (MC) leaves have been extracted in aqueous solution to perform a natural inhibitor capable to control de corrosion damage, which can replace the traditional inhibitors, being environmentally friendly. The experimental results indicate that this compound has shown excellent performance as corrosion inhibitor, reaching inhibition efficiency (EI), values up to 90% at inhibitor concentrations ranging 0.8 to 2 g•L−1 and immersion times of about 1 to 4 h. It has been found that the inhibition process takes place by the adsorption of the molecules on the surface of the metal (AISI 1045), by a physisorption mechanism.proyecto de investigación 3817/2014/CID (UAEM-Secretaria de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados)

AN INTELLIGENT VIRTUAL TUTOR FOR SUPPORTING AND ASSISTING THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS IN THE FIRST THREE GRADES OF PRIMARY EDUCATION IN MEXICO

Artículo en revista indizada publicado en Pistas EducativasActualmente, la gran mayoría de los videojuegos contribuyen al ocio de las personas. Sin embargo, se ha creado un número mucho menor para reforzar la enseñanza en el aula o ayudar a aprender en el hogar. En este artículo, un prototipo de un tutor virtual como agente pedagógico se presenta en un juego lúdico serio, cuyo objetivo es servir como herramienta de apoyo en la didáctica educativa para los primeros grados de educación básica en México. El prototipo se adhirió a lo establecido por la metodología de desarrollo de software educativo. Los escolares y el tutor virtual pueden interactuar por medio de diálogo bidireccional natural, que se percibe cada vez que se ejecuta una actividad de refuerzo, mostrándola de diferentes maneras, tanto en la forma de preguntarla cómo de responderla, empleando mecanismos de texto a voz y de reconocimiento del habla. El tutor virtual aquí presentado representa uno de los primeros agentes pedagógicos desarrollados en México y ha sido validado en la práctica

Comparative Study of Quick Lime and CaO as Catalysts of Safflower Oil Transesterification

This work aimed to contrast the performance of quicklime and CaO reagent grade as heterogeneous catalysts for the safflower oil transesterification reaction. Quicklime was characterized by TGA analysis, XRD, atomic absorption, nitrogen physisorption and by Hammett method. In the safflower transesterification reaction, four main variables were studied: addition reagents order, reagents dosage, type of catalyst and methanol-oil molar ratio. The addition reagents order was not found to be determinant on time for reaching equilibrium or maximum methyl esters yield. On the contrary, reagents dosage was found to negatively affect reaction rate and methyl esters yield. It was found that quicklime performs better than CaO and this was ascribed to an increased basicity found in the former. From the results can also be inferred that the use of quicklime as catalyst of the transesterification reaction allows the decrease of the process cost by reducing both, the reaction time and the required amount of alcohol

Rational design of novel N-alkyl-N capped biostable RNA nanostructures for efficient long-term inhibition of gene expression

Computational techniques have been used to design a novel class of RNA architecture with expected improved resistance to nuclease degradation, while showing interference RNA activity. The in silico designed structure consists of a 24–29 bp duplex RNA region linked on both ends by N-alkyl-N dimeric nucleotides (BCn dimers; n = number of carbon atoms of the alkyl chain). A series of N-alkyl-N capped dumbbell-shaped structures were efficiently synthesized by double ligation of BCn-loop hairpins. The resulting BCn-loop dumbbells displayed experimentally higher biostability than their 3′-N-alkyl-N linear version, and were active against a range of mRNA targets. We studied first the effect of the alkyl chain and stem lengths on RNAi activity in a screen involving two series of dumbbell analogues targeting Renilla and Firefly luciferase genes. The best dumbbell design (containing BC6 loops and 29 bp) was successfully used to silence GRB7 expression in HER2+ breast cancer cells for longer periods of time than natural siRNAs and known biostable dumbbells. This BC6-loop dumbbell-shaped structure displayed greater anti-proliferative activity than natural siRNAs.Instituto de Salud Carlos III [Miguel Servet Program, CP13/00211, 205024141 to M.T.]; Spanish MINECO [BIO2012–32869 and BIO2015-64802-R toM.O.]; AGAUR (toM.O.); ERCCouncil (SimDNA, grant 291433, to M.O.). M.O. is an ICREA Academia fellow. Funding for open access charge: ERC Council [grant 291433 (simDNA)].Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Synthesis, Characterization, and Catalytic Activity of Platinum Nanoparticles on Bovine-Bone Powder: A Novel Support

Pt nanoparticles supported on bovine-bone powder were obtained by a rather simple method consisting of immersing powder of bovine bone into a Pt+4 metal ion solution at room temperature and subsequent reduction by sodium borohydride.This method eliminates the calcination step of the usual catalyst preparation methods. The nanocomposite was characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which revealed uniformly dispersed platinum nanoparticles with average particle size of 2.2nm ± 0.6 nm.The XPS studies exhibited the presence of 63%Pt∘ and 37%PtO.The catalytic activity was tested in the hydrogenation of 2-butyne-1,4-diol.The nanocomposite shows good catalytic performance with nearly 100% conversion and 83% selectivity towards 2-butene-1,4-diol.CONACYT 26909