Sharif Digital Repository

Graphene oxide (GO) has never been considered as a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) contrast agent since it was conceived as a diamagnetic material. There is a possibility that introduction of structural defects or manipulation of oxygen functionalities in GO change its magnetic response and provided a chance for GO to be a contrast agent for MRI. For this purpose, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) was treated by irradiation and annealing procedures. The study on the magnetic properties of the samples confirmed that the competition between the structural defects and oxygen functionalities to magnetic moments determines the magnetism in RGO. © 2018  

Recently, graphene oxide and its unconventional magnetism have attracted much interest due to their novel applications in spintronics, memory chips and theranostics. Owing to the excellent biocompatibility, cellular uptake, bio-conjugation possibilities, flexible chemical modification and characteristic broad-wavelength absorbance, graphene oxide and its derivatives have been utilized as contrast agents for various imaging modalities such as photoluminescence, photoacoustic or ultrasound. Despite their suitable applications in bioimaging and due to lack of magnetic moment, graphene oxide cannot confer magnetic resonance imaging contrast without incorporating the magnetic component. Such... 

Given a set of points in the plane, the unit clustering problem asks for finding a minimum-size set of unit disks that cover the whole input set. We study the unit clustering problem in a distributed setting, where input data is partitioned among several machines. We present a (3 + ϵ)-approximation algorithm for the problem in the Euclidean plane, and a (4 + ϵ)-approximation algorithm for the problem under general Lp metric (p1). We also study the capacitated version of the problem, where each cluster has a limited capacity for covering the points. We present a distributed algorithm for the capacitated version of the problem that achieves an approximation factor of 4+" in the L2 plane, and a... 

In the present study, a detailed biocompatibility testing of a novel class of hybrid nanostructure based on hyperbranched polyglycerol and β-cyclodextrin is conducted. This highly water soluble nanostructure with size of less than 10 nm, polydispersity of less than 1.3, chemical tenability and highly branched architecture with the control over branching structure could be potentially used as a carrier in drug delivery systems. To this end, extensive studies in vitro and in vivo conditions have to be demonstrated. The in vitro studies include in vitro cytotoxicity tests; MTT and Neutral Red assay as an indicator of mitochondrial and lysosomal function, and blood biocompatibility tests such as... 

The synthesis of a new drug delivery system based on hybrid nanomaterials containing a β-CD core and hyperbranched PG is described. Conjugating PG branches onto β-CD not only increases its water solubility but also affects its host/guest properties deeply. It can form molecular inclusion complexes with small hydrophobic guest molecules such as ferrocene or FITC with reasonable release. In addition, the achievable payloads are significantly higher as for carriers such as hyperbranched PGs. Short-term in vitro cytotoxicity and hemocompatibility tests on L929 cell lines show that the hybrid nanomaterial is highly biocompatible. Due to their outstanding properties, β-CD-g-PG hybrid nanomaterials... 

Motivated by the bus escape routing problem in printed circuit boards, we revisit the following problem: given a set of n axis-parallel rectangles inside a rectangular region R, find the maximum number of rectangles that can be extended toward the boundary of R, without overlapping each other. We provide an efficient algorithm for solving this problem in O(n2 log3 n log log n) time, improving over the current best O(n3)-time algorithm available for the problem  

Single-time-scale distributed estimation of dynamic systems via a network of sensors/estimators is addressed in this letter. In single-time-scale distributed estimation, the two fusion steps, consensus and measurement exchange, are implemented only once, in contrast to, e.g., a large number of consensus iterations at every step of the system dynamics. We particularly discuss the problem of failure in the sensor/estimator network and how to recover for distributed estimation by adding new sensor measurements from equivalent states. We separately discuss the recovery for two types of sensors, namely α and β sensors. We propose polynomial-order algorithms to find equivalent state nodes in graph... 

The task preparation system (TPS) is a tool developed mainly for preparing IOI tasks. It was originally developed for, and successfully used in IOI 2017, and since then, it has been used in several other nationwide and international programming contests, including IOI 2019. The tool consists of a command-line interface for local (offline) work, and a web interface which integrates with git and provides more features. This article presents the main features of the task preparation system, and briefly describes how it works. © 2019 IOI, Vilnius University  

The task preparation system (TPS) is a tool developed mainly for preparing IOI tasks. It was originally developed for, and successfully used in IOI 2017, and since then, it has been used in several other nationwide and international programming contests, including IOI 2019. The tool consists of a command-line interface for local (offline) work, and a web interface which integrates with git and provides more features. This article presents the main features of the task preparation system, and briefly describes how it works. © 2019 IOI, Vilnius University  

Paclitaxel as one of the most effective anticancer drugs has low aqueous solubility. This inevitably reveals its commercial formulation in Cremophor EL®/ethanol mixture. However, this formulation leads to several severe side effects such as hypersensitivity reactions, neurotoxicity and nephrotoxicity. Inclusion complexation has been introduced as a practical approach in increasing paclitaxel aqueous solubility. To this end, a hybrid nanocarrier system based on hyperbranched polyglycerol and β-cyclodextrin is designed with key components uniquely structured at nanoscale and evaluated according to medical requirements. Paclitaxel is included in the hydrophobic cavity of cyclodextrin as guest... 

Electrospray is an old processing technique that has recently been rediscovered. This technology is revolutionizing the biomaterials and nanotechnology fields by opening up new areas of research in fabricating drug delivery nano-devices. Due to their size, nanoparticles have the advantage of reaching less accessible sites in the body by escaping phagocytosis and entering tiny capillaries. Nanoparticles also have the unique property to accumulate at the site of inflammation and therefore, are very suitable for targeted drug delivery. The feasibility of fabricating relatively monodispersed polymeric nanoparticles by electrospray method in a modified electrospray setup is demonstrated in this... 

Over the past few decades, gold nanomaterials have shown great promise in the field of nanotechnology, especially in medical and biological applications. They have become the most used nanomaterials in those fields due to their several advantageous. However, rod-shaped gold nanoparticles, or gold nanorods (GNRs), have some more unique physical, optical, and chemical properties, making them proper candidates for biomedical applications including drug/gene delivery, photothermal/photodynamic therapy, and theranostics. Most of their therapeutic applications are based on their ability for tunable heat generation upon exposure to near-infrared (NIR) radiation, which is helpful in both... 

We study a new class of visibility problems based on the notion of α-visibility. Given an angle α and a collection of line segments in the plane, a segment t is said to be α-visible from a point p, if there exists an empty triangle with one vertex at p and the side opposite to p on t such that the angle at p is α. In this model of visibility, we study the classical variants of point visibility, weak and complete segment visibility, and the construction of the visibility graph. We also investigate the natural query versions of these problems, when α is either fixed or specified at query time  

We revisit the problem of finding (Formula presented.) paths with a minimum number of shared edges between two vertices of a graph. An edge is called shared if it is used in more than one of the (Formula presented.) paths. We provide a (Formula presented.)-approximation algorithm for this problem, improving the best previous approximation factor of (Formula presented.). We also provide the first approximation algorithm for the problem with a sublinear approximation factor of (Formula presented.), where (Formula presented.) is the number of vertices in the input graph. For sparse graphs, such as bounded-degree and planar graphs, we show that the approximation factor of our algorithm can be...