Sharif Digital Repository

This study uses a 5-lobe symmetric model to investigate total, lobar and generational particle deposition fractions in the lungs during successive cycles. It was found that for the particle size between 0.05 and 2 μm and the tidal volumes greater than 1000 ml, the effect of successive cycles helped predict more deposition fraction per cycle up to about 16% than that of a single cycle. The mentioned range of tidal volumes corresponds to light or heavy physical activities. Therefore, it can be understood that people, when physically active, exposed to particulate matter within the mentioned size range are at higher health risk as compared to both the resting state and the same state... 

Iran is engaged in a long-term program to improve and strengthen its position among producers of petroleum in the world. In this regard, many projects are planned and executed in different fields related to oil and gas industry. Prior to investment in new projects, it is essential to understand and manage major corporate risks and their related consequences. Due to nature of petroleum industry, Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) issues are associated with such projects and have always been matters of concern. This paper directs readers towards the integrated HSE approach from concept to affect project construction phase. The process of oil production includes exploration, extraction and... 

The demand and importance of fairness creams as a major cosmetic have increased significantly in recent years. However, some of these cosmetics contain heavy metals, hydroquinone and microorganism that can cause various health problems. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine and examine the concentration of metals (i.e. Cd, Pb, Cr, Ni, Zn, Hg), hydroquinone and microorganisms in nine different fairness creams produced by local and international brands. The health risk assessment of the tested substances for consumers was accessed through systemic exposure dosage (SED), margin of safety (MoS), lifetime cancer risk (LCR), hazard quotient (HQ) and hazard index (HI). The concentration... 

Because of the importance of health-care processes to people life, researchers attempted to reduce death rates using risk-adjusted control charts. In this paper, the number of patients survived at least 30days after a surgery is monitored using a novel risk-adjusted geometric control chart. In this chart, the patient risk is modeled using a logistic regression. The new scheme is proposed to be used in Phase-I where a likelihood ratio test derived from a change-point model is employed. The application of the proposed chart is demonstrated in a case study. Furthermore, through simulation studies, it is shown that the proposed control chart is more effective in terms of power than the chart... 

Well-Being reliability indices (Health, Margin and Risk), provide a comprehensive measure to assess the adequacy of composite power systems. Conventional reliability information about power system operation only considered health and risk states, which were not often adequate criteria in both power system planning and operation. Well-being approach for power system generation adequacy evaluation incorporates deterministic criteria in a probabilistic framework, and provides system operating information in addition to risk assessment and can be evaluated using analytical techniques. The most important part of this approach is the algorithm for calculating the probability of the states.... 

In recent years, quantum dots (QDs) have been widely used in upcoming nanotechnology-based solar cells, light-emitting diodes and even bioimaging, due to their tunable optical properties and excellent quantum yields. But, such nanostructures are currently constituted by heavy elements which can threat the human health and living environment. Hence, in this work, the in vivo effects of CdTe nanocrystals (NCs) (as one of the promising QDs) on spermatozoa of male mice and subsequently on fertility of female mice were investigated, for the first time. To do this, CdTe NCs were synthesized through an environment-friendly (aqueous-based solution) method. The sperm cells presented a high potential... 

Because of the importance of health-care processes to people life, researchers attempted to reduce death rates using risk-adjusted control charts. In this paper, the number of patients survived at least 30 days after a surgery is monitored using a novel risk-adjusted geometric control chart. In this chart, the patient risk is modeled using a logistic regression. The new scheme is proposed to be used in Phase-I where a likelihood ratio test derived from a change-point model is employed. The application of the proposed chart is demonstrated in a case study. Furthermore, through simulation studies, it is shown that the proposed control chart is more effective in terms of power than the chart... 

The prediction of deposition efficiency of submicron particles in the pulmonary alveoli has received special attention due to its importance for drug delivery systems and for assessing air pollutants health risks. In this work, the pulmonary alveoli of a healthy human are idealized by a three-dimensional honeycomb-like configuration and a fluid-structure interaction analysis is performed. In contrast to previous works in which the inlet flow rate is predefined, in this model, a negative pressure is imposed on the outside surface of the flalveolus which causes air to flow in and out of the alveolus. The resulting flow patterns confirmed that there was no circulation in the terminal alveolus.... 

Locating critical objects is crucial in various security applications and industries. For example, in security applications, such as in airports, these objects might be hidden or covered under shields or secret sheaths. Millimeter-wave images can be utilized to discover and recognize the critical objects out of the hidden cases without any health risk due to their non-ionizing features. However, millimeter-wave images usually have waves in and around the detected objects, making object recognition difficult. Thus, regular image processing and classification methods cannot be used for these images and additional pre-processings and classification methods should be introduced. This paper... 

Nowadays, the construction industry has started to embrace IBS as a method of attaining better construction quality and productivity and reducing risks related to occupational safety and health. The built of pre-fabricated component in factories reduces many problems related to lack of purposing uncertainty in scheduling calculation and time management of projects. In the case of using IBS method for managing time in projects, former studies such as Allan Tay's research, indicates that this method can save up at least 29% of overall completion period versus the conventional method. But beside mentioned advantages of this technical method, the projects could be optimized more and more in... 

Economic development and population growth in Tehran has increased demand for goods movement and road transportation. This trend has increased mobile source emissions and citizens’ exposure, imposing severe health risks. We used the framework of Land-Use Regression models to quantify the effect of real-time traffic, within buffer distance, on hourly exposure of CO, NO2, and PM2.5. Effect of residential, industrial, and governmental land-use in addition to the effect of pollution sources, such as construction sites and airport were assessed on air pollution. Meteorological variables were also employed to adjust between day variations. R-squared of the models were 38, 27, and 38% for CO, NO2,... 

Choosing the right place to set up temporary hospitals is one of the most important and urgent measures for pandemic response. To solve this problem, we propose a new hybrid approach based on two steps. Firstly, since human health is highly sensitive to the impact of decisions about temporary hospital locations and a mistake may pose severe threat to human lives, we propose a new risk-averse multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach. To choose the alternatives with the fewest possible weaknesses, a comprehensive hierarchal structure of relevant criteria categorized into environmental, social, economic, and infrastructural, along with a new risk-averse best-worst method (BWM), are... 

Health, Margin and Risk states which in recent years are known as well-being reliability indices, provide a comprehensive adequacy assessment of bulk power system reliability studies. Conventional reliability information about power system operation only considered health and risk states which were not often adequate criteria both in system planning and utilization. It seems margin state as the intermediate condition between health and risk must be considered. Well-being method which is a approach to power system generation adequacy evaluation incorporates deterministic criteria in a probabilistic framework and provides system operating information in addition to risk assessment and can be... 

Rapid growth in generating power from wind turbines led to application of long laminated composite blades. However, as the length of blades increases, the risk of failure due to excessive vibration increases. Therefore, a reliable wind power generator requires an efficient and accurate, yet economical structural health monitoring system to detect vibration and apply a reliable control to prevent from unpredicted failure. This paper presents an optimal, low cost and continuous vibration monitoring system for laminated composite blades using Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG). Utilizing a layerwise displacement theory, the Finite Element (FEM) model has been developed for the wind turbine blade. The... 

Buried pipe lines are an efficient way of transporting of water, sewage, oil, and gas resources in all over the world. Since the buried pipe lines are exposed to many unexpected conditions, such as landslides, corrosion, fatigue, earthquakes, material flaws or even intentional damaging, so the inspection requirements lead to adoption of new method of maintenance, protection and conserving. This report aims to improve the trustworthiness, reliability, yet economical technologies for monitoring of behavior and manner of buried pipe lines during operation and assessing the risk of pipe lines failure. Distributed sensors (piezoelectric) are surface designed and embedded to investigate the... 

All current highest efficiency perovskite solar cells (PSCs) use highly toxic, halogenated solvents, such as chlorobenzene (CB) or toluene (TLN), in an antisolvent step or as solvent for the hole transporter material (HTM). A more environmentally friendly antisolvent is highly desirable for decreasing chronic health risk. Here, the efficacy of anisole (ANS), as a greener antisolvent for highest efficiency PSCs, is investigated. The fabrication inside and outside of the glovebox showing high power conversion efficiencies of 19.9% and 15.5%, respectively. Importantly, a fully nonhalogenated solvent system is demonstrated where ANS is used as both the antisolvent and the solvent for the HTM.... 

By exponential increase in applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as smart ecosystems or e-health, more security threats have been introduced. In order to resist known attacks for IoT networks, multiple security protocols must be established among nodes. Thus, IoT devices are required to execute various cryptographic operations, such as public key encryption/decryption. However, classic public key cryptosystems, such as Rivest-Shammir-Adlemon and elliptic curve cryptography are computationally more complex to be efficiently implemented on IoT devices and are vulnerable regarding quantum attacks. Therefore, after complete development of quantum computing, these cryptosystems will... 

Environmental pollutions with heavy metals pose serious health and ecological risks. Sabzevar in the northeast of Iran has natural chromic mines and then chromium-polluted soils and groundwater. In the present work, the metal-tolerant bacterial strain KR2 was identified as Shewanella sp. following 16S rDNA gene sequence analysis. Bioremediation ability of isolated bacterial from agricultural soils that irrigated by groundwater, Shewanella sp., was evaluated for uptaking of chromium with varying Cr(VI) concentrations from 50 to 500 ppm in aerobic conditions (pH 7.0, 37 °C). The Shewanella sp. strain KR2 showed an obvious heavy metal tolerant in the wide range of heavy metals including: Cr6+,... 

A new approach is presented in this paper to determine the degree of system well-being in the form of healthy, marginal and at risk state indices using the fuzzy logic concepts. Conventional well-being method uses a crisp deterministic criterion to divide power system comfort zone into the healthy and marginal states. In this regard, the main drawback is associated with categorising the system performance in the comfort zone into the healthy and marginal states. To overcome this problem, a new approach is developed that categorises the states as healthy or marginal using fuzzy logic. The technique together with the effects on the system risk and the system health and margin probabilities of... 

Unwanted vibrations of vehicles are regarded as harmful threats to human health in biomechanical and psychophysical terms. Road roughness is considered as the main cause of unwanted vibrations of bus vehicles. Vertical seat vibrations were found via simulating a 10-Degree-Of-Freedom (10-DOF) model of an intercity bus vehicle under harmonic and random excitations caused by road roughness. To suppress undesirable vibrations, mass-spring-damper passive absorbers were proposed in a 13-Degree-Of- Freedom (13-DOF) model of the bus. Following the optimization of the characteristics of embedded passive absorbers under each seat and implementation of the designed absorbers, the vertical displacement...