Sharif Digital Repository

Size distribution of aerosol particles is prevalently obtained through electrical characterization techniques and study of charged particles' dynamics in the presence of electric field. In this work, a wire-cylinder corona charger is presented, redesigned, and aero dynamically optimized. An initial 2D axisymmetric geometry of the charger was employed for the simulations using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) commercial code FLUENT 6.3.26. Through successive attempts, a new geometry was obtained by streamlining the walls to eliminate the undesired vortices produced in the flow field of the previous ones. The process optimized the charger by minimizing losses and dilutions of the... 

The main goal of this study is to consider the simultaneous effect of the surface gradient and the temperature changes on nano-machine migration on gold substrates. By so doing, we hypothesize that nano-machines will experience minimal deviation, which leads them to have a long-range movement even at low temperatures (75 K and 150 K). To this end, the diffusive motion of C60, nanocar, and nanotruck on the conical and concave gold substrates with different radius gradients has been investigated. In order to better understand the effects of chassis and surface interactions on nano-machine movement, an all-atom model and classic atomistic dynamics have been utilized. According to the results,... 

Articular cartilage is an avascular and almost acellular tissue with limited self-regenerating capabilities. Although injectable hydrogels have garnered a lot of attention as a promising treatment, a biocompatible hydrogel with adequate mechanical properties is yet to be created. In this study, an interpenetrating network hydrogel comprised of chitosan and silk fibroin was created through electrostatic and hydrophobic bonds, respectively. The polymeric network of the scaffold combined an effective microenvironment for cell activity with enhanced mechanical properties to address the current issues in cartilage scaffolds. Furthermore, microspheres (MS) were utilized for a controlled release of... 

Fabricating a fibrous well-ordered wound dressing for accelerating full-thickness wounds is a desirable treatment vector. Here, through modifications in the material extrusion device and adding a pneumatic-based injection, a material extrusion method for gelatin was introduced with the ability to fabricate 3D structure with repeat layers to support cell activity for the under layer. Furthermore, in the upper layer, the co-electrospinning of PU with gelatin was designed to simultaneously exploit the oxygen permeability and mechanical stability of PU with regenerative properties and collagen-like structure of gelatin. Moreover, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO) was added into the 3D-printed under... 

This study investigated the use of magnetic fluid hyperthermia (MFH) for treating glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a deadly and treatment-resistant tumor. It considers the effects of magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) (different sizes and materials), alternating magnetic field (AMF) characteristics (frequency and strength magnetic field), MFH duration, and injection number, using a realistic brain phantom, considering its blood circulation system, tumor, and healthy tissue properties. Results demonstrated that MFH is more sensitive to frequency, increasing frequency causing greater temperature and thermoablation than increasing strength magnetic field. The magnetic field strength can be increased at... 

Investigating the protein adhesion properties of polymeric scaffolds through computational simulations can predict the biocompatibility of scaffolds before an experimental assay is carried out. This prediction can be highly beneficial since it can cut costs and the time it takes for experimental assays. The current study aims to test the hypothesis that there is a correlation between the biocompatibility of a composite scaffold and the molecular dynamics simulations of protein adhesion. To this end, chitosan and gelatin were selected for fabricating a composite skin-tissue wound scaffold with five different polymer ratios. This polymeric blend has not been simulated for protein adhesion. The... 

Cell-based diagnosis and the introduction of personalized drugs are key factors, motivating researchers to discover an efficacious tool for effective cell isolation. Optimal systems were presented through the finite element method by adjusting the arrangement of hydrodynamic forces within a serpentine micro-channel, which managed to separate different cell lines in addition to their focusing. Considering the parameters of flow, particle, and geometry, two optimal serpentine systems (fixed and variable slope) were presented and the accuracy of the simulation results was verified by their comparison with the experimental findings of the optimized microchannel. The results indicated that the... 

Fabricating a multifunctional orthopedic implant which prevents post-surgery infection is highly desirable in advanced materials applications. However, designing an antimicrobial implant, which simultaneously promotes a sustained drug release and satisfactory cell proliferation, remains a challenge. The current study presents a drug-loaded surface-modified titanium nanotube (TNT) implant with different surface chemistry which was developed to investigate the effect of surface coating on drug release, antimicrobial activity, and cell proliferation. Accordingly, sodium alginate and chitosan were coated on the surface of TNT implants with different coating orders through layer-by-layer... 

In this paper we introduce some general necessary conditions for the existence of graph homomorphisms, which hold in both directed and undirected cases. Our method is a combination of Diaconis and Saloff–Coste comparison technique for Markov chains and a generalization of Haemers interlacing theorem. As some applications, we obtain a necessary condition for the spanning subgraph problem, which also provides a generalization of a theorem of Mohar (1992) as a necessary condition for Hamiltonicity. In particular, in the case that the range is a Cayley graph or an edge-transitive graph, we obtain theorems with a corollary about the existence of homomorphisms to cycles. This, specially, provides... 

In this paper we introduce a chromatic parameter, called the fixing chromatic number, which is related to unique colourability of graphs, in the sense that it measures how one can embed the given graph G in G∪Kt by adding edges between G and Kt to make the whole graph uniquely t-colourable. We study some basic properties of this parameter as well as its relationships to some other well-known chromatic numbers as the acyclic chromatic number. We compute the fixing chromatic number of some graph products by applying a modified version of the exponential graph construction  

In this paper, we apply some new algebraic no-homomorphism theorems in conjunction with some new chromatic parameters to estimate the circular chromatic number of graphs. To show the applicability of the general results, as a couple of examples, we generalize a well known inequality for the fractional chromatic number of graphs and we also show that the circular chromatic number of the graph obtained from the Petersen graph by excluding one vertex is equal to 3. Also, we focus on the Johnson–Holroyd–Stahl conjecture about the circular chromatic number of Kneser graphs and we propose an approach to this conjecture. In this regard, we introduce a new related conjecture on Kneser graphs and we... 

We introduce two necessary conditions for the existence of graph homomorphisms based on the concepts of density and power graph. As corollaries, we obtain a lower bound for the fractional chromatic number, and we set forward elementary proofs of the facts that the circular chromatic number of the Petersen graph is equal to three and the fact that the Coxeter graph is a core  

The effect of temperature on the noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) surface imaging is investigated with the aid of molecular dynamics (MD) analysis based on the Sutton-Chen (SC) interatomic potential. Particular attention is devoted to the tip and sample flexibility at different temperatures. When a gold coated probe is brought close to the Au (001) surface at high temperatures, the tip and surface atoms are pulled together and their distance becomes smaller. The tip and sample atoms displacement varies in the different environment temperatures and this leads to the different interaction forces. Along this line, to study the effect of temperature on the resulting images, we have...