Sharif Digital Repository

According to the Amyloid hypothesis, as the foremost scientific explanation for Alzheimer Disease (AD), the neuropathology of AD is related to toxic fragments of amyloid beta (Aβ) protein. Based on this hypothesis, an attractive therapeutic approach was demonstrated to identify multifunctional peptides able to modulate Aβ pathologies as the source of AD. On this premise, a bifunctional polypeptide based on the iAβ5p lead compound, was designed to inhibit Aβ aggregation and free metal ions. Herein, the efficacy of this novel drug in Zn2+ and Cd2+ ion chelation was examined through an integrated technique comprising combined Docking, QM, and MD simulations. MD relaxation of a set of probable... 

This article reports the development of a new smart electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring system, consisting of the related hardware, firmware, and Internet of Things (IoT)-based web service for artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted arrhythmia detection and a complementary Android application for data streaming. The hardware aspect of this article proposes an ultralow power patch sampling ECG data at 256 samples/s with 16-bit resolution. The battery life of the device is two weeks per charging, which alongside the flexible and slim (193.7 mm times62.4 mm times8.6 mm) and lightweight (43 g) allows the user to continue real-life activities while the real-time monitoring is being done without... 

The respiratory system is a vital organ system which makes breathing and gas exchange possible for human's body. The loss of functionality in this system is due to either genetical problems or environmental issues like pollution or toxic gases which in many cases is inevitable. These circumstances may cause different respiratory diseases which may not be curable presently but their side effects can be partly controlled by careful and timely analysis improving the quality of patient's life. So, an appropriate device for conducting different analysis can be effective for people who suffer from respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, occupational lung... 

Convenient medical diagnostics and treatments can replace conventional healthcare procedures because of their fast and profitable applications with reduced infection risk. Meanwhile, early diagnosis of cancer is a leading research subject due to the high fatality rate of the disease and being a vital precursor in the treatment effectiveness. Electrochemical-based micro-biosensors are the best candidates for measuring particular biomarker concentrations in body fluids. To address this need, we used a simple fabrication approach to develop an effective immunosensor for the early detection of cancer, in particular prostate cancer. The carbon fibers, obtained from the electrospinning technique,... 

In the present study, we designed a pH-responsive drug nanocarrier based on polyamidoamine-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles coated by PEGylated starch-co-poly(acrylic acid). This carrier was used for the controlled release of doxorubicin as an anticancer drug model. The purpose of using the polyethylene glycol moiety is to generate a biostable nanocarrier in blood stream as it has been reported widely in the pharmaceutical literature. The use of a poly(acrylic acid) segment also provided pH-sensitivity to the polymer. Besides, the magnetic nanoparticles facilitate the cancer cell targeting with an external magnetic field located near the tumor site. This carrier was... 

Diabetes, as a widespread chronic disease, is caused by the increase of blood glucose concentration (BGC) due to pancreatic insulin production failure and/or insulin resistance in the body. The artificial pancreas (AP) known as a closed-loop insulin delivery control system consists of a glucose sensor for BGC measurement, a control algorithm for calculation of exogenous insulin delivery rate (IDR), and an insulin infusion pump. The AP provides a closed-loop glucose-insulin regulatory system for type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients in order to effectively reduce the high BGC level. In this paper, we aim to design a controller in order to regulate the BGC of T1DM patients at its basal... 

Diabetes, as a widespread chronic disease, is caused by the increase of blood glucose concentration (BGC) due to pancreatic insulin production failure and/or insulin resistance in the body. The artificial pancreas (AP) known as a closed-loop insulin delivery control system consists of a glucose sensor for BGC measurement, a control algorithm for calculation of exogenous insulin delivery rate (IDR), and an insulin infusion pump. The AP provides a closed-loop glucose-insulin regulatory system for type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients in order to effectively reduce the high BGC level. In this paper, we aim to design a controller in order to regulate the BGC of T1DM patients at its basal... 

In an effort to identify a useful noninvasive screening tool for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) screening, photoplethysmograph (PPG) signals were acquired and analyzed. These PPG signals were recorded during reactive hyperemia experiments consisting of a 4-minute blood flow blockage of the right arm (RA) brachial artery (BA) using a blood pressure cuff inflator. This procedure is usually done for the assessment of endothelial dysfunction which is a risk factor for developing CVD. In this study, signals of the infrared (IR) and red (R) LED's of the PPG sensor were analyzed. These signals were preprocessed, normalized and slow varying component of the signal (DC values) and the pulsatile... 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive method that helps to analyze brain function based on BOLD signal fluctuations. Functional Connectivity (FC) catches the transient relationship between various brain regions usually measured by correlation analysis. The elements of the correlation matrix are between -1 to 1. Some of them are very small values usually related to weak and spurious correlations due to noises and artifacts. They can not be concluded as real strong correlations between brain regions and their existence could make a misconception and leads to fake results. It is crucial to make a conclusion based on reliable and informative correlations. In order to... 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive method that helps to analyze brain function based on BOLD signal fluctuations. Functional Connectivity (FC) catches the transient relationship between various brain regions usually measured by correlation analysis. The elements of the correlation matrix are between -1 to 1. Some of them are very small values usually related to weak and spurious correlations due to noises and artifacts. They can not be concluded as real strong correlations between brain regions and their existence could make a misconception and leads to fake results. It is crucial to make a conclusion based on reliable and informative correlations. In order to... 

Background: While decoding visual and auditory stimuli using recorded EEG signals has enjoyed significant attention in the past decades, decoding olfactory sensory input from EEG data remains a novelty. Recent interest in the brain's mechanisms of processing olfactory stimuli partly stems from the association of the olfactory system and its deficit with neurodegenerative diseases. New Methods: An olfactory stimulus decoder using features that represent nonlinear behavior content in the recorded EEG data has been introduced for classifying 4 olfactory stimuli in 5 healthy male subjects. Results: We show that by using nonlinear and chaotic features, a subject-specific classifier can be... 

Curcumin (as a natural reductant material) was utilized for green reduction and functionalization of chemically exfoliated graphene oxide (GO) sheets. The π-π attachment of the curcumin molecules onto the curcumin-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets was confirmed by Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. Zeta potential of the GO sheets decreased from about - 40 mV to - 20 mV, after the green reduction and functionalization. The probable cytotoxicity of the curcumin-rGO sheets was studied through their interactions with two human breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and SKBR3 cell lines) and a normal cell line (mouse fibroblast L929 cell line). The curcumin-rGO sheet with... 

Although curcumin is highly cytotoxic against cancer cells, its hydrophobicity and fast degradation at physiological pH limit its effective practical application. To prevent such limitations, inexpensive curcumin-loaded starch particles are synthesized in this research. Particles are prepared by water-in-oil (W/O) miniemulsion technique and an adsorption method is used for curcumin loading. Also, encapsulation efficiency (%EE) is improved by using pluronic F-127 in the drug solution. Particles are characterized, swelling studies are performed, and MTT assays against human adipose mesenchymal stem cells (hAMSCs) and MG-63 cells are utilized for investigations. Results indicate that... 

A self-report questionnaire survey was conducted online to collect big data from over 16000 Iranian families (who were the residents of 1000 urban and rural areas of Iran). The resulting data storage contained over 1 M records of data and over 1G records of automatically inferred information. Based on this data storage, a series of machine learning experiments was conducted to investigate the relationship between nutrition and the risk of contracting COVID-19. With highly accurate scores, the findings strongly suggest that foods and water sources containing certain natural bioactive and phytochemical agents may help to reduce the risk of apparent COVID-19 infection. © 2022 The Author(s)  

Humanity's challenges are becoming increasingly difficult, and as these challenges become more advanced, the need for effective and intelligent action becomes more apparent. Meanwhile, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which has plagued the world, could be considered as an opportunity to take a step toward the need for atomic engineering, compared to molecular engineering, as well as to accelerate this type of research. This approach, which can be expressed in terms of picotechnology, makes it possible to identify living cell types or in general, chemical and biological surfaces using their atomic arrays, and applied for early diagnosis even treatment of the disease. © 2020... 

Nowadays, cardiovascular diseases are very common and are one of the main causes of death worldwide. One major type of such diseases is the coronary artery disease (CAD). The best and most accurate method for the diagnosis of CAD is angiography, which has significant complications and costs. Researchers are, therefore, seeking novel modalities for CAD diagnosis via data mining methods. To that end, several algorithms and datasets have been developed. However, a few studies have considered the stenosis of each major coronary artery separately. We attempted to achieve a high rate of accuracy in the diagnosis of the stenosis of each major coronary artery. Analytical methods were used to... 

The aim of this study is to develop a non-linear robust controller with adaptive gains in order to prevent malaria epidemic as a positive system with an uncertain model. The malaria outbreak is modelled by seven non-linear coupled differential equations for the population variables: susceptible, exposed, symptomatic infected and recovered humans and the susceptible, exposed and infected mosquitoes. The non-linear robust adaptive integral-sliding-mode controller is developed in order to appropriately adjust the use of treated bednets, treatment rate of infected individuals and the use of insecticide spray to control malaria epidemic. Accordingly, the numbers of exposed and infected humans and... 

Drug administration using infusion pumps can find application in treating patients with arrhythmias. These pumps can obviate the need to use drugs several times a day and automatically adapt the dosage to patient situation. Considering the importance of administration of right dosage, a perfect-controlled pump is needed to approach this goal. This paper focuses on controlling Atrial fibrillation (AF) arrhythmia. The abnormal heart rhythm that affects RR interval sequence and there have been some attempts to model these effects. One of these models is proposed by Cohen and colleges. Searching through the variables of this model, selecting the potential control variable (the one that its... 

Separation and isolation of suspended submicron particles is fundamental to a wide range of applications, including desalination, chemical processing, and medical diagnostics. Ion concentration polarization (ICP), an electrokinetic phenomenon in micro-nano interfaces, has gained attention due to its unique ability to manipulate molecules or particles in suspension and solution. Less well understood, though, is the ability of this phenomenon to generate circulatory fluid flow, and how this enables and enhances continuous particle capture. Here, we perform a comprehensive study of a low-voltage ICP, demonstrating a new electrokinetic method for extracting submicron particles via flow-enhanced... 

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is one of the most physiological active fatty acids due to its positive effect on prevention of diseases such as obesity, hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis and cancer. The aim of this study was to optimize the production of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)% in alkali isomerization of safflower oil including 71% linoleic acid (LA) using response surface methodology (RSM). The effect of three reaction variables such as temperature, reaction time and amount of KOH on CLA production was investigated using design-expert software. The optimal condition determined at this point, 72% total CLA with the yield of 84% temperature reaction time and the amount of KOH were 187.6...