Study of heat and mass transfer applications in the field of engineering by using OpenFOAM

The aim of the project is to study OpenFOAM software and establish a well-based guide of standard and complex heat and mass transfer applications in engineering. OpenFOAM is a free, open source CFD software package. By being open, OpenFOAM offers users complete freedom to customise and extend its existing functionality. On the other hand, OpenFOAM offers a quick start user guide and there also is little available documentation and several examples. Thus, the project intends to: - Prepare an introductory and complete user guide to OpenFOAM with solved standard heat and mass transfer applications to the beginners, specially bachelor students ‐ Numerical simulation of complex heat and mass transfer applications in engineering with OpenFOAM in two‐ and three‐dimensional problems ‐ Practice in developing engineering projects by combining technical work with economic and environmental aspectsThe main tasks to be carried out in this project will be to: - Edit problems solved with OpenFOAM including explanations and detailed considerations in order to prepare a guide for new learners, specially bachelor students - Work in the study and analysis of heat and mass transfer simulations involving real engineering problems - Determine feasibility of the engineering project to be carried out - Study the socio-economics aspects in fluid dynamics applications solved by numerical simulation and fields of interest - Results analysi

IE WP 20/03 An Evolutionary Approach to the Process of Technology Diffusion and Standardization

The study described here aims to make a threefold contribution to the analysis of technology diffusion. First of all, it tries to offer a new approach to the study of the dynamic of innovation diffusion, not from the traditional perspective of the rate at which one new technology is fully adopted, but the extent of the diffusion of several technologies and the related phenomenon of standardization. Secondly, it aims to show a broadened and evolutionary view of the process of technology standardization, avoiding the habitual determinism of conventional models of technology diffusion and lock-in. Finally, it tries to identify and evaluate the relationships existing between the main characteristics of industries and the attributes of the technology standardization processes in them. To achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model (ABM), using distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation.Technology diffusion; standardization; lock-in; evolutionary models; agent-based models

IE WP 02/04 Technology and the environment: an evolutionary approach to sustainable technological change

Can the individual actions of agents spontaneously move the system out of a state where it is locked into an environmentally inferior technology, or is coordination from outside the system necessary in the form of public intervention? More importantly, even if the system were able to make the transition unaided, could market coordination mechanisms play an important role? The results of our model show that it would be advisable to undertake policies expressly aimed at the process of sustainable technological change –applying an ex ante (precautionary) approach– in a way that is complementary to the conventional equilibrium oriented environmental policies. The nature of these policies and how they might be implemented are questions we will address from this novel approach to the concept of sustainable development. In short, the main objectives of this paper are to understand more fully the dynamics of the process of technological change, its role in sustainable development, and to assess the implications of this dynamic approach to techno-environmental policy. To achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model (ABM), using distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation.Technology diffusion; standardization; lock-in; sustainability; precautionary approach; evolutionary models; agent-based models

Total Denoising: Unsupervised Learning of 3D Point Cloud Cleaning

We show that denoising of 3D point clouds can be learned unsupervised, directly from noisy 3D point cloud data only. This is achieved by extending recent ideas from learning of unsupervised image denoisers to unstructured 3D point clouds. Unsupervised image denoisers operate under the assumption that a noisy pixel observation is a random realization of a distribution around a clean pixel value, which allows appropriate learning on this distribution to eventually converge to the correct value. Regrettably, this assumption is not valid for unstructured points: 3D point clouds are subject to total noise, i. e., deviations in all coordinates, with no reliable pixel grid. Thus, an observation can be the realization of an entire manifold of clean 3D points, which makes a na\"ive extension of unsupervised image denoisers to 3D point clouds impractical. Overcoming this, we introduce a spatial prior term, that steers converges to the unique closest out of the many possible modes on a manifold. Our results demonstrate unsupervised denoising performance similar to that of supervised learning with clean data when given enough training examples - whereby we do not need any pairs of noisy and clean training data.Comment: Proceedings of ICCV 201

IE WP 01/03 Technology transfer and sustainable development in emerging economies

This paper aims to show how the process of diffusion of 'clean technologies' confronts a variety of forces at the macro level that create systematic, technological and institutional barriers to their adoption. There is abundant literature on the role of technology transfer in the development of emerging economies, but this perspective is clearly new. What needs to be borne in mind is the possibility that the transferred dominant technology may be subject to a techno- institutional lock-in at its source that does not allow the diffusion of environmentally superior alternative technologies.Developing economies; sustainable development; technology transfer; techno-institutional lock-in

Stratified discontinuous differential equations and sufficient conditions for robustness

International audienceThis paper is concerned with state-constrained discontinuous ordinary differential equations for which the corresponding vector field has a set of singularities that forms a stratification of the state domain. Existence of solutions and robustness with respect to external perturbations of the righthand term are investigated. Moreover, notions of regularity for stratifications are discussed

Beigel, Fernanda, Misión Santiago. El Mundo Académico Jesuita y los inicios de la cooperación internacional católica, Santiago de Chile, LOM, 2011. 260 págs. ISBN 9789560002853

Fil: Hermosilla, Adriana. Universidad Nacional de Cuy

Initiating a practice change: Prescribing probiotics concurrently with antibiotic therapy

Background and significance. Over half of all hospitalized patients are treated with antibiotics and antibiotic use is rising. There has been a 500% increase in antibiotic associated diarrhea, a common side effect of antibiotic use, in the last decade. Probiotics are a safe and cost effective measure to prevent or reduce antibiotic associated diarrhea.;Problem statement. The majority of patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit receive antibiotic therapy; however, few are prescribed probiotic therapy concurrent with antibiotics.;Project design. Education was provided to health care providers regarding antibiotic associated diarrhea and the benefits of probiotic use. A guideline was developed to assist health care providers in ordering probiotics.;Evaluation plan. Health care providers\u27 knowledge, attitude, and beliefs, pre and post education intervention were evaluated. Probiotic prescribing rates were tracked pre and post intervention.;Results. There was a statistically significant increase in knowledge and a significant change in attitude after the education intervention. There was also a 2 fold increase in prescribing rates; however a very small number of probiotics were prescribed.;Recommendations. Attempt this practice change on a unit with a more stable staff and a non ICU population. Potentially use yogurt instead of a probiotic tablet in the practice guideline. Also, soliciting change champions may promote probiotic use. Using a flag in the medication ordering system to remind providers to order a probiotic or yogurt concurrently with antibiotic therapy may also increase probiotic prescription rates. Additional research at the institution is recommended to demonstrate the effectiveness of probiotics