Heterogeneous azeotropic distillation is a widely used technique to separate binary azeotropic mixtures into their components. One of its most important applications is the dehydration of ethanol, which is blended with gasoline to obtain automobile fuel. Among all the compounds…

Design and optimization of distillation columns for ethanol dehydration, using a hydrocarbon as entrainer, implies a good knowledge of vapor-liquid (VLE), liquid-liquid (LLE) and vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium (VLLE). Chemical process simulation programs always require the use of a thermodynamic model that…

In this paper, a restricted domain question answering (QA) system is described. The design architecture of this QA system and the features that allow the adaptation of the QA system to the medical domain are also presented. The advantages of…

Diagnosis is an important process in patient care. A suitable diagnosis helps a physician determine a precise treatment. Physicians also have a tendency to seek collaboration from other colleagues and expert systems for better confidence in their decision. The sources…

Ensuring environmental sustainability is the aim of the seventh Millennium Development Goal (MDG7). United Nations data shows insufficient progress, especially in developing countries. In order to generate new information about this progress and the main barriers that hinder it, we…

Social knowledge is one of the key aspects of MAS in order to face complex problems in dynamical environments. However, it is usually incorporated without specific support on behalf of the platform and that does not let agents take all…

This paper describes the development of an image retrieval
system that combines probabilistic and ontological information1. The
process is divided in two different stages: indexing and retrieval. Three
information flows have been created with different kind of information
each one:…

This article explores the stylistic devices and narrative techniques that the late 19th-century
great American satirist employed to subvert and ridicule his contemporaries'
understanding of language and of its relationship to reality. According to Bierce, language
is not merely a…

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation. From a device used in clinical practice, as the corneal topographer, reverse engineering will be used…

This work presents the main theories and models formulated with the purpose of offering a global overview on the acquisition of knowledge and skills involved in the initial development of expert competence. Setting from this background, we developed an empirical…