Sharif Digital Repository

A simple, green and high-yielding procedure for the synthesis of 4-substituted-2-(alkylsulfanyl)thiazoles from the reaction of dithiocarbamates and α-halocarbonyl containing compounds in water is described. Also, a one-pot, two-step procedure for the synthesis of 2-(alkylsulfanyl)thiazoles from acetophenone and dithiocarbamates was developed. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

An efficient method for the synthesis of functionalized 4H-chromenes via a one-pot three-component condensation reaction of a 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde with an active methylene compound and a carbon-based nucleophile in the presence of a catalytic amount of ZrOCl2·8H2O in water under thermal condition has been described. High yields, simple work-up procedure, performing reactions in water and synthesis of complex molecules with a one-pot procedure are the main advantages of this procedure. In addition, the structure of the product from the condensation of salicylaldehyde, 2-naphthol, and dimedone was confirmed by X-ray crystallography. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc  

Accelerated Michael-type Friedel-Crafts alkylation of naphthols with nitrostyrenes in the presence of water is reported. The procedure is simple, catalyst-free, and affords good yields of the products. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

A highly efficient and simple synthesis of unsymmetrical thioureas is reported based on the reaction of readily synthesized dithiocarbamates with amines, without using any catalyst under solvent-free conditions. The short reaction time, high yields, and solvent-free conditions are advantages of this method. We did not observe the formation of any symmetric disubstituted thiourea, under these reaction conditions. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

Polystyrene is one of the best candidates as the extracting medium due to its high stability in different media and acceptable extraction capability. However, the hydrophobic nature and low wettability of polystyrene limits its application to non–polar analytes. To resolve this limitation, in this project, amine groups were chemically attached to the surface of magnetic polystyrene. The resulting hydrophilic magnetic particles were expected to be capable of extracting both polar and non–polar analytes. Non–steroidal anti–inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were chosen for testing the applicability of modified magnetic polystyrene according to the importance of their analysis and also their wide... 

Sample preparation for non-target analysis is challenging due to the difficulty in the extraction of polar and non-polar analytes simultaneously. Most commercial solid sorbents lack the proper comprehensiveness for extraction of analytes with different physiochemical properties. A possible key is the combination of hydrophobic polymer and hydrophilic surface functional groups in solid based extraction methods in order to generate the susceptibility for retaining both polar and non-polar analytes. To pursue this goal, in this study, four polar groups including [sbnd]NH 2 , [sbnd]NO 2 , [sbnd]COOH, and [sbnd]COCH 3 were chemically bound to Amberlite XAD-4 substrate in order to prepare a... 

Measuring the coupling of single neuron's spiking activities to the local field potentials (LFPs) is a method to investigate neuronal synchronization. The most important synchronization measures are phase locking value (PLV), spike field coherence (SFC), pairwise phase consistency (PPC), and spike-triggered correlation matrix synchronization (SCMS). Synchronization is generally quantified using the PLV and SFC. PLV and SFC methods are either biased on the spike rates or the number of trials. To resolve these problems the PPC measure has been introduced. However, there are some shortcomings associated with the PPC measure which is unbiased only for very high spike rates. However evaluating... 

Novel organic-inorganic hybrid heterogeneous nanocatalysts were obtained by covalent anchoring of a molybdenum(vi) complex of salicylidene 2-picoloyl hydrazine, MoO2(sal-phz)(CH3OH), (1) on the surface of magnetic nanoparticles functionalized by one of two routes: in the first method, the surface of magnetic nanoparticles is directly modified with 3-chloropropyltrimethoxysilane yielding 1A. In the second method, magnetic nanoparticles were silica-coated with tetraethoxysilane and then with 3-chloropropyltrimethoxysilane yielding the intermediate 2B. Then complex 1 was grafted on the surface of 1A or 2B through covalent interaction yielding 2A or 3B, respectively. The nanocatalysts 2A and 3B... 

Background: Understanding cancer development crossing several spatial-temporal scales is of great practical significance to better understand and treat cancers. It is difficult to tackle this challenge with pure biological means. Moreover, hybrid modeling techniques have been proposed that combine the advantages of the continuum and the discrete methods to model multiscale problems. Methods: In light of these problems, we have proposed a new hybrid vascular model to facilitate the multiscale modeling and simulation of cancer development with respect to the agent-based, cellular automata and machine learning methods. The purpose of this simulation is to create a dataset that can be used for... 

The potential of electrospun cellulose acetate/chitosan/single walled carbon nanotubes/ferrite/titanium dioxide (CA/chitosan/SWCNT/Fe3O4/TiO2) nanofibers was investigated for the removal of Cr(VI), As(V), Methylene blue and Congo red from aqueous solutions via the adsorption and photocatalytic reduction processes. The properties of synthesized SWCNT/Fe3O4/TiO2 and fibers were characterized using TEM, SEM, FTIR, XRD, TGA and BET analysis. In adsorption process, the influence of adsorbent type including SWCNT to Fe3O4 ratio, TiO2 to SWCNT/Fe3O4 ratio and SWCNT/Fe3O4/TiO2 concentration as well as the adsorption parameters including pH, contact time, and initial concentration of adsorbates on... 

This paper presents a three-dimensional micromechanical model of brain white matter tissue as a transversely isotropic soft composite described by the generalized Ogden hyperelastic model. The embedded element technique, with corrected stiffness redundancy in large deformations, was used for the embedment of a histology-informed probabilistic distribution of the axonal fibers in the extracellular matrix. The model was linked to a multi-objective, multi-parametric optimization algorithm, using the response surface methodology, for characterization of material properties of the axonal fibers and extracellular matrix in an inverse finite element analysis. The optimum hyperelastic... 

Background: Pluripotency is proposed to exist in two different stages: Naive and Primed. Conventional human pluripotent cells are essentially in the primed stage. In recent years, several protocols have claimed to generate naive human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). To the best of our knowledge, none of these protocols is currently recognized as the gold standard method. Furthermore, the consistency of the resulting cells from these diverse protocols at the molecular level is yet to be shown. Additionally, little is known about the principles that govern the metabolic differences between naive and primed pluripotency. In this work, using a computational approach, we tried to shed light on... 

Tissue transglutaminase (TG2) is a unique multifunctional enzyme. The enzyme possesses enzymatic activities such as transamidation/crosslinking and non-enzymatic functions such as cell migration and signal transduction. TG2 has been shown to be involved in molecular mechanisms of cancers and several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. The present study aimed at cloning and expression of full length human TG2 in Bac-to-Bac baculovirus expression system and evaluation of its activity. Methods: pFastBac HTA donor vector containing coding sequence of human TG2 was constructed. The construct was transformed to DH10Bac for generating recombinant bacmid. The verified bacmid was... 

In this paper, a bottom-up hydrothermal route is reported for the synthesis of oxygen and nitrogen co-decorated carbon quantum dots (CQDs) using ammonium hydrogen citrate (AHC) as a single precursor. DLS data approved the formation of 4.0 nm (average size) CQDs. XRD pattern shows the interlayer spacing (002) of 3.5 Å for CQDs, which is exactly the same as that of crystalline graphite. XPS and FTIR spectra verified the formation of oxygen and nitrogen functional groups on the CQDs surface. Co-decorated carboxyl, hydroxyl and amine groups on the CQDs surfaces make them as promising polyelectrolyte for gene delivery. Toxicity assay showed a survival rate of 70% under different incubation times... 

Early onset adjacent segment degeneration (ASD) can be found within six months after anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). Deficits in deep paraspinal neck muscles may be related to early onset ASD. This study aimed to determine whether the morphometry of preoperative deep neck muscles (multifidus and semispinalis cervicis) predicted early onset ASD in patients with ACDF. Thirty-two cases of early onset ASD after a two-level ACDF and 30 matched non-ASD cases were identified from a large-scale cohort. The preoperative total cross-sectional area (CSA) of bilateral deep neck muscles and the lean muscle CSAs from C3 to C7 levels were measured manually on T2-weighted magnetic resonance... 

Herein, we report the impact of chromium doping on the physical properties, electronic band structure and photovoltaic characteristics of their corresponding devices based on dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Different DSCs with various compositions of the photoanode electrodes are fabricated to study their optical, structural, conduction band edge, donor density, depth of trap states and photoelectrochemical properties using X-ray diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Mott-Schottky capacitance analysis, chemical capacitance and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. For such studies, the Cr-doped... 

The current gold standard for clinical diagnosis of melanoma is excisional biopsy and histopathologic analysis. Approximately 15–30 benign lesions are biopsied to diagnose each melanoma. In addition, biopsies are invasive and result in pain, anxiety, scarring, and disfigurement of patients, which can add additional burden to the health care system. Among several imaging techniques developed to enhance melanoma diagnosis, optical coherence tomography (OCT), with its high-resolution and intermediate penetration depth, can potentially provide required diagnostic information noninvasively. Here, we present an image analysis algorithm, "optical properties extraction (OPE)," which improves the... 

A novel second-order-statistics-based sequential blind extraction algorithm for blind extraction of quasi-periodic signals, with time-varying period, is introduced in this paper. Source extraction is performed by sequentially converging to a solution that effectively diagonalizes autocorrelation matrices at lags corresponding to the time-varying period, which thereby explicitly exploits a key statistical nonstationary characteristic of the desired source. The algorithm is shown to have fast convergence and yields significant improvement in signal-to-interference ratio as compared to when the algorithm assumes a fixed period. The algorithm is further evaluated on the problem of separation of... 

In this work, two important opioid antagonists, naltrexone and oxycodone, were prepared from thebaine and were characterized by IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Moreover, computational NMR and IR parameters were obtained using density functional theory (DFT) at B3LYP/6-311++G* * level of theory. Complete NMR and vibrational assignment were carried out using the observed and calculated spectra. The IR frequencies and NMR chemical shifts, determined experimentally, were compared with those obtained theoretically from DFT calculations, showed good agreements. The RMS errors observed between experimental and calculated data for the IR absorptions are 85 and 105 cm-1, for the 1H NMR peaks are... 

Controlling topographic features at all length scales is of great importance for the interaction of cells with tissue regenerative materials. We utilized an indirect three-dimensional printing method to fabricate polymeric scaffolds with pre-defined and controlled external and internal architecture that had an interconnected structure with macro- (400-500 μm) and micro- (∼25 μm) porosity. Polycaprolactone (PCL) was used as model system to study the kinetics of tissue growth within porous scaffolds. The surface of the scaffolds was decorated with TiO2 and bioactive glass (BG) nanoparticles to the better match to nanoarchitecture of extracellular matrix (ECM). Micrometric BG particles were...