Sharif Digital Repository

In this research, it is aimed to enhance the heat transfer properties of the carbon nanotubes through nitrogen doping. To this end, nitrogen-doped multiwall carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) were synthesized via chemical vapor deposition method. For supplying carbon and nitrogen during the synthesis of N-CNTs, camphor and urea were used, respectively, at 1000 °C over Co–Mo/MgO nanocatalyst in a hydrogen atmosphere. N-CNTs with three different nitrogen loadings of 0.56, 0.98, and 1.38 mass% were synthesized, after which, water/N-CNT nanofluids of these three samples with concentrations of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 mass% were prepared. To obtain a stable nanofluid, N-CNTs were functionalized by nitric acid... 

In the original publication of the article, the first author’s affiliation was incorrectly published. © 2020, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary  

In the present work, mesoporous nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) were synthesized by using a low-cost and unique set of precursors (camphor and urea). The CVD method at 1000 °C was used with different camphor/urea ratios, and Co-Mo/MgO nanocatalyst was utilized as growth catalyst. Application of mesoporous N-CNTs in selective oxidation of H2S was studied experimentally and N-CNTs interactions with H2S was also investigated using DFT calculations. The as-synthesized N-CNTs were characterized using FTIR, FE-SEM, elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), XPS and nitrogen adsorption/desorption. The N-CNT2 sample with urea to camphor ratio (U/C) of 1 showed the highest sulfur yield at... 

The efficiency of a learning process directly depends on how well the students are attentive. Detecting the level of attention can help to improve the learning quality. In recent years, there have been several attempts to leverage EEG signal processing as a tool to detect whether a student is attentive or not. In such work, the level of attention is determined by analyzing the EEG power spectrum, which is mostly followed by machine learning approaches. However, the efficiency of such methods for detecting auditory attention of blind or visually-impaired students has not been analyzed. This study aims to investigate such a scenario. To this end, we propose an EEG recording protocol to... 

Selective oxidation of H2S to elemental sulfur is a low cost and highly efficient process for sulfur removal from H2S-containing hydrocarbon streams in medium scale (i.e. 0.2–10 ton sulfur/day) for environmental protection and prevention of emitting toxic gases to the atmosphere. In this research, in order to prepare a highly active and selective nanocatalyst for selective oxidation of hydrogen sulfide, for the first time, molybdenum oxides were loaded uniformly over nitrogen- doped carbon nanotubes through incipient wetness impregnation. Different metal loadings including 5, 10, and 15 wt% Mo were considered in the synthesis procedure to achieve the optimized performance and provide... 

In vivo dose-dependent effects of nanoscale graphene oxide (NGO) sheets on reproduction capability of Balb/C mice were investigated. Biodistribution study of the NGO sheets (intravenously injected into male mice at dose of ∼2000 μg/mL or 4 mg/kg of body weight) showed a high graphene uptake in testis. Hence, in vivo effects of the NGO sheets on important characteristics of spermatozoa (including their viability, morphology, kinetics, DNA damage and chromosomal aberration) were evaluated. Significant in vivo effects was found at the injected concentrations ≥200 μg/mL after (e.g., ∼45% reduction in sperm viability and motility at 2000 μg/mL). Observation of remarkable DNA fragmentations and... 

Asian red ginseng was used for green reduction of chemically exfoliated graphene oxide (GO) into reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The reduction level and electrical conductivity of the ginseng-rGO sheets were comparable to those of hydrazine-rGO ones. Reduction by ginseng resulted in repairing the sp 2 graphitic structure of the rGO, while hydrazine-rGO showed more defects and/or smaller aromatic domains. The ginseng-rGO sheets presented a better stability against aggregation than the hydrazine-rGO ones in an aqueous suspension. Whilst the hydrophobic hydrazine-rGO films exhibited no toxicity against human neural stem cells (hNSCs), the hydrophilic GO and ginseng-rGO films (as more... 

Vigorous debates have taken place within and between many countries about regulatory policy regimes covering the assessment and approval of genetically modified (GM) crops. In Iran, a very vigorous and hotly contested policy debate concerning legislation covering GM crops occurred between 2004 and 2009, but it was confined within government circles with almost no public discussion. This paper analyses the Iranian policy-making process in the period 2006-9. It explains how and why a stalemate arose in disputes between ministries and departments. The chosen analytical framework draws mainly on the regulation of technological risks and the analysis of public policy-making. It deploys the... 

A μ-way latin trade of volume s is a set of μ partial latin rectangles (of inconsequential size) containing exactly the same s filled cells, such that if cell (i, j) is filled, it contains a different entry in each of the μ partial latin rectangles, and such that row i in each of the μ partial latin rectangles contains, set-wise, the same symbols and column j, likewise. In this paper we show that all μ-way latin trades with sufficiently large volumes exist, and state some theorems on the non-existence of μ-way latin trades of certain volumes. We also find the set of possible volumes (that is, the volume spectrum) of μ-way latin trades for μ = 4 and 5. (The case μ = 2 was dealt with by Fu,... 

The set of integers k for which there exist three latin squares of order n having precisely k cells identical, with their remaining n2 -k cells different in all three latin squares, denoted by I3[n], is determined here for all orders n. In particular, it is shown that I3[n] = {0,.,n2 -15}U [n2 - 12,n2-9,n2], for n ≫8. ©2002 Eisevier Science B.V. All rights reserved  

Coronary angiography is a vital instrument to detect the prevailing of vascular diseases, and accurate vascular segmentation acts a crucial role for proper quantitative analysis of the vascular tree morphological features. Level set methods are popular for segmenting the coronary arteries, but their performance is related to suitable start-up and optimum setting of regulating parameters, essentially done manually. This research presents a novel fuzzy level set procedure with the objective of segmentation of the coronary artery tree in 2-D X-ray angiography as automatically. It is clever to clearly develop from the early segmentation with spatial fuzzy grouping. The adjusting parameters of... 

Visual attributes are great means of describing images or scenes, in a way both humans and computers understand. In order to establish a correspondence between images and to be able to compare the strength of each property between images, relative attributes were introduced. However, since their introduction, hand-crafted and engineered features were used to learn increasingly complex models for the problem of relative attributes. This limits the applicability of those methods for more realistic cases. We introduce a deep neural network architecture for the task of relative attribute prediction. A convolutional neural network (ConvNet) is adopted to learn the features by including an... 

We present the first public code for the calculation of the astrometric centroid shift occurring during microlensing events. The computation is based on the contour integration scheme and covers single and binary lensing of finite sources with arbitrary limb darkening profiles. This allows for general detailed investigations of the impact of finite source size in astrometric binary microlensing. The new code is embedded in version 3.0 of vbbinarylensing, which offers a powerful computational tool for extensive studies of microlensing data from current surveys and future space missions. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society  

The possibility of real-time tuning of optical devices has attracted a lot of interest over the last decade. At the same time, coming up with simple lithography-free structures has always been a challenge in the design of large-area compatible devices. In this work, we present the concept and the sample design of an electrically tunable, lithography-free, ultra-thin transmission-mode color filter, the spectrum of which continuously covers the whole visible region. A simple Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) cavity configuration is used. It is shown that using the electro-optic dielectric material of 4-dimethyl-amino-N-methyl-4-stilbazoliumtosylate (DAST) as the dielectric layer in this... 

Magnetic flux leakage is the most widely used method for oil and gas pipeline non destructive testing. The saturation level of the sample under test has a significant effect on its efficiency; therefore, the magnetizing yoke requires an elaborate design. The finite element method is the conventional approach used for this purpose, but it is very time consuming. In this article, a neuro-fuzzy method is presented to model the behavior of the magnetizing yoke. Modeling a few different designs with the finite element method and using the results for training the neuro-fuzzy model eradicates the necessity of modeling a huge number of designs with the finite element method. The acquired... 

The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions to decompose a complete tripartite graph K(r, s, t) into 5-cycles was first considered by Mahmoodian and Mirzakhani (1995). They stated some necessary conditions and conjectured that these conditions are also sufficient. Since then, many cases of the problem have been solved by various authors; however the case when the partite sets r ≤ s ≤ t have odd and distinct sizes remains open. A necessary condition is t ≤ 3r. Billington and Cavenagh (2011) have shown that when r, s, and t are all odd and r ≤ s ≤ t ≤ κr, where κ ≈ 1.0806, then the conjectured necessary conditions for decomposing are also sufficient. We extend this result... 

The heat and mass transfer through the hybrid nanofluid (Hnf) flow with the significance of magnetic field across two spinning parallel plates has been described. The Hnf is prepared by the dispersion of SiO2 (Silicon dioxide) and MoS2 (Molybdenum Disulfide) nanoparticles (NPs) in the ethylene glycol (EG). The MoS2 is anti-friction compound used in automobiles and other types of heavy machineries in industry. It reduces the engine noise, reduces fuel consumption and enhances engine life. Similarly, SiO2 is used in structural materials, food processing, pharmaceutical industries and as an electrical insulator in microelectronic apparatus. Based on the remarkable applications of the hybrid... 

Graphene oxide nanoplatelets (GONPs) with extremely sharp edges (lateral dimensions ∼20-200 nm and thicknesses <2 nm) were applied in extraction of the overexpressed guanine synthesized in the cytoplasm of leukemia cells. The blood serums containing the extracted guanine were used in differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) with reduced graphene oxide nanowall (rGONW) electrodes to develop fast and ultra-sensitive electrochemical detection of leukemia cells at leukemia fractions (LFs) of ∼10-11 (as the lower detection limit). The stability of the DPV signals obtained by oxidation of the extracted guanine on the rGONWs was studied after 20 cycles. Without the guanine extraction, the DPV peaks... 

Specific and sensitive electroanalysis of blood-circulating protein cancer biomarkers is often complicated by interference from serum proteins nonspecifically adsorbing at the biosensing interface and masking specific reactions of interest. Here, we have developed an electrocatalytically amplified assay for specific and sensitive analysis of human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2/neu, a protein cancer biomarker over-expressed in breast cancers) that allows us to avoid both the interference from bovine serum albumin (BSA) and electrocatalytic amplification of the signal stemming from the specific aptamer−HER-2/neu binding. A HER-2/neu-specific thiolated aptamer sequence was... 

Nanomaterials (NMs) based on carbon are suitable candidates for separating oil from core rock. Nowadays, the application of carbon-based NMs to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is far less. The production of NMs based on carbon (water-wet) is of great importance due to the high recovery they create in reservoirs. The purpose of this study was to change the wettability of oil-wet (OW) carbonate rock (CR) towards water-wet (WW) conditions using cheap synthetic materials. In this regard, the effect of three quantum carbon dots (CQDs) on saltwaters has been used. The CQDs were synthesized by hydrothermal procedure and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) was used as the initial source of carbon. In this...