Sharif Digital Repository

The nanotubular arrays of titanium dioxide (TiO2 NTs) have recently received considerable interest for fabrication of dental and orthopedic implants. However, their antibacterial activity requires substantial improvement for the potential infections minimization, without compromise of their biocompatibility. In this work, TiO2 NTs were developed on Ti6Al4V substrates via anodization at a constant potential of 60 V for 60 min, followed by heat treatment at 500 °C for 90 min. Physical vapor deposition (PVD) was further employed to decorate silver oxide nanoparticles (Ag2O NPs) on the nanotubular edges. The results indicated that the highly-ordered TiO2 NTs with decorated Ag2O NPs could promote... 

Multiple blood collection from an adult Danio rerio is important in most of metabolic studies. The method allows researcher to profile the metabolic dynamic from an individual fishes, which contribute to a high resolution of dataset. Currently, several devices have been developed for the purpose of blood withdrawal from Danio rerio. Limited accessibility to it hindering the log phase development of Danio rerio based studies. This study shows that the multiple blood collection from an adult Danio rerio can be achieved to the highest survival rate (94.75 %) using the in-house fabricated Z-fish needle. The fabricated device is cheaper and can be accessible in any developing Danio rerio... 

Macrobenthos animals are an architect of a variety of roles including as a part of the food web of aquatic ecosystem and improve the structure of the sediment and can determine the quality of the water. Macrobenthos communities have shown their potential role in biomonitoring to analyze contaminant loads due to high sensitivity to organic pollutants along the coastal water area. Besides, it is also used to determine heavy metals and petroleum hydrocarbons in coastal water due to their long sustainability with chemicals are primarily related with industrial calamities and occupational activities. Based on above perspectives, this systematic review has shown interesting findings about the... 

Porous PZT-PCN ceramics were fabricated with this formula, “0.8 Pb(Zr1/2Ti1/2)O3-0.2 Pb(Co1/3Nb2/3)O3”, abbreviated as “PZTPCN” by introducing Polyvinyl chloride(PVC) and stearic acid (SA) as pore forming agents (PFA) with varied percentages (5, 10 and 15 wt%). The optimum sintering procedure was designed according to the thermogravimetric analysis of pore formers. XRD and FESEM were applied to study the formed phase and the microstructure of the system. Electrical Characterization was conducted using Piezo meter. A decrease in density reduced longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient (d33) and relative dielectric constant (ε) and enhanced hydrostatic figure of merit (dhgh) of PZTPCN ceramics.... 

Abstract Porous lead zirconate titanate-lead cobalt niobate 0.8Pb(Zr1/2Ti1/2)O3-0.2Pb(Co1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PZT-PCN) piezoelectric ceramics were fabricated by introducing pore-forming agent polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), and the effect of sintering behavior on their microstructure, dielectric, and piezoelectric properties were investigated. The optimum sintering procedure was designed according to the thermogravimetric analysis of pore former. Finally the electrical properties were measured. The porosity of PZT-PCN ceramics decreased and the grain size increased with an increase in the sintering temperature at a fixed PMMA addition. "An increase in density with sintering temperature from 1050 to... 

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the simulation and analysis of piezoelectric transducers with the he help of equivalent electrical circuit simulations (EECS). This paper has been devoted to study of such approach for two designed and fabricated ultrasonic sandwich transducers. By using analytical analysis, the dimensions of components of the two piezoelectric transducers were determined for the assumed resonance frequencies of 30 kHz and 40 kHz. Then, by using a two dimensional finite element model, and regarding two different modeling techniques for the transducers and by application of a current source which was connected directly to the piezoelectric pieces of the... 

Background: Water contamination by noxious heavy metals due to urbanization is a global environmental problem. Heavy metal ions pollution makes the water unsuitable for drinking and is also highly toxic to human beings and eco-system. The remediation of heavy metals is therefore very crucial. Methods: Adsorbents based on biopolymer and eco-friendly polymer composites have been developed and fabricated to remediate and remove heavy metals from the ecosystem. Results: In recent years biocomposites have been successful as cost-effective adsorbents for the remediation of various contaminants with their eco-friendly nature and sustainability. Conclusion: This review article gives an overview on... 

A simple, rapid, and highly regioselective green protocols for the synthesis of β-hydroxylnitriles by the direct reaction of epoxides with trimethylsilyl cyanide in the presence of catalytic amount of lithium perchlorate under solvent free conditions in high to quantitative yield is reported  

Singular spectrum analysis (SSA) is a well-studied approach in signal processing. SSA has originally been designed to extract information from short noisy chaotic time series and to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. SSA is good for offline applications; however, many applications, such as modelling, analysis, and prediction of time-varying and non-stationary time series, demand for online analysis. This study introduces a recursive algorithm called recursive SSA as a modification to regular SSA for dynamic and online applications. The proposed method is based on eigenvector matrix perturbation approach. After recursively calculating the covariance matrix of the trajectory matrix, R-SSA... 

The time-varying Sun as the main source of space weather affects the Earth's magnetosphere by emitting hot magnetized plasma in the form of solar wind into interplanetary space. Solar and geomagnetic activity indices and their chaotic characteristics vary abruptly during solar and geomagnetic storms. This variation depicts the difficulties in modeling and long-term prediction of solar and geomagnetic storms. On the other hand, the combination of neurofuzzy models and spectral analysis has been a subject of interest due to their many practical applications in modeling and predicting complex phenomena. However, these approaches should be trained by algorithms that need to be carried out by an... 

In this paper, the flexible flow shop sequence-dependent group scheduling problem (FFSDGS) with minimisation of makespan as the criterion (FF m|fmls, S plk|C max) is investigated. For the first time a mathematical model for the proposed research problem is developed. Since the problem is shown to be NP-hard, six metaheuristic algorithms based on tabu search (TS) are developed to efficiently solve the problem. The proposed metaheuristics are different to the only available metaheuristic algorithm in the literature based on TS. By applying randomised complete block design and using available test problems in the literature, the best of the proposed TS algorithms in this research is identified.... 

Considering the weaknesses of cryptography algorithms and the attacks performed against them, cryptography alone cannot guarantee the security of communication in a wireless network. With regard to the developments in wireless communication networks brought about by smart array antennas, security can be sought in the physical layer as well, aiming to restrict the access of the data in a wireless network and limit it to authorized users only in order to further restrain malicious data accesses. In this paper, we analysis a strategy for restricting data access using smart array antennas and present the results in security by a parameter called exposure region. For this strategy afterwards we... 

The kinematics information from imaging, if combined with optimization-based biomechanical models, may provide a unique platform for personalized assessment of trunk muscle forces (TMFs). Such a method, however, is feasible only if differences in lumbar spine kinematics due to differences in TMFs can be captured by the current imaging techniques. A finite element model of the spine within an optimization procedure was used to estimate segmental kinematics of lumbar spine associated with five different sets of TMFs. Each set of TMFs was associated with a hypothetical trunk neuromuscular strategy that optimized one aspect of lower back biomechanics. For each set of TMFs, the segmental... 

Embedded systems have migrated from special-purpose hardware to commodity hardware. These systems have also tended to Mixed-Criticality (MC) implementations, executing applications of different criticalities upon a shared platform. Multi-core processors, which are commonly used to design MC systems, bring out new challenges due to the process variations. Power and frequency asymmetry affects the predictability of embedded systems. In this work, variation-aware techniques are explored to not only improve the reliability of MC systems, but also aid the scheduling and energy saving of them. We leverage the core-to-core (C2C) variations to protect high-criticality tasks and provide full service... 

Skeletal muscle tissue engineering aims to fabricate tissue constructs to replace or restore diseased or injured skeletal muscle tissues in the body. Several biomaterials and microscale technologies have been used in muscle tissue engineering. However, it is still challenging to mimic the function and structure of the native muscle tissues. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is a powerful tool to mimic the hierarchical structure of native tissues. Here, 3D bioprinting was used to fabricate tissue constructs using gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA)-alginate bioinks. Mechanical and rheological properties of GelMA-alginate hydrogels were characterized. C2C12 myoblasts at the density 8 × 106 cells/mL... 

Adding value to agricultural leftovers and turning them into biochar is a viable way to replenish soil nutrients and boost crop productivity. To further validate the efficacy of enriched rice husk biochar, an incubation study and a pot experiment were conducted: (1) to describe the effect of enriched rice husk biochar addition on soil total N, soil exchangeable NH4+ and available NO3− and (2) to describe the effect of enriched rice husk biochar on improving N, P, K, Ca, and Mg uptake, use efficiency, and dry matter production of rice plants. The amount of NH3 loss that was considerably reduced by rice husk biochar at 5 and 10 t ha−1 was 34 % lower than the control. The availability of soil... 

Indoline-2-thiones (5) were applied as 1,3-dinucleophiles in a tandem reaction with Baylis-Hillman adduct acetates (4) to give novel tetrahydrothiopyrano[2,3-b]indole skeletons (6). The effect of different solvents, bases, and catalysts on the yields and stereochemical outcome was studied in detail. The results indicated that acetonitrile as solvent and K 2CO3 as base, under reflux conditions, were the optimum conditions. Products 6a-6l were obtained in high diastereoselectivity and yield (up to 94%)  

The aim of this research is the study of hexyltriphenylphosphonium bromide (HTPB) ionic liquid as a bifunctional promoter (solvent and catalyst) in the presence of cerium(IV) ammonium nitrate as a single electron oxidant for the Michael reaction at room temperature and solvent-free conditions. A novel, one-pot and environmentally benign the process to achieve the chemoselective of 2-(3-oxo-1,3-diarylpropyl)malononitrile derivatives instead of 2-(1,3-diarylallylidene)malononitriles using a three-component reaction involving acetophenone derivatives, various aromatic aldehydes and malononitrile was developed. This protocol is simple and provides biologically interesting products in good...