Sharif Digital Repository

Recent progress in developing artificial neural network (ANN) metamodels has paved the way for reliable use of these models in the prediction of air pollutant concentrations in urban atmosphere. However, improvement of prediction performance, proper selection of input parameters and model architecture, and quantification of model uncertainties remain key challenges to their practical use. This study has three main objectives: to select an ensemble of input parameters for ANN metamodels consisting of meteorological variables that are predictable by conventional weather forecast models and variables that properly describe the complex nature of pollutant source conditions in a major city, to... 

Biosurfactant production through a fermentation process involving the biodegradation of soybean oil refining wastes was studied. Pseudomonas aeruginosa MR01 was able to produce extracellular biosurfactant when it was cultured in three soybean oil refinement wastes; acid oil, deodorizer distillate and soapstock, at different carbon to nitrogen ratios. Subsequent fermentation kinetics in the three types of waste culture were also investigated and compared with kinetic behavior in soybean oil medium. Biodegradation of wastes, biosurfactant production, biomass growth, nitrate consumption and the number of colony forming units were detected in four proposed media, at specified time intervals.... 

Finite element analysis is an effective tool to evaluate the material properties of living tissue. For an interactive optimization procedure, the finite element analysis usually needs many simulations to reach a reasonable solution. The metamodel analysis of finite element simulation can be used to reduce the computation of a structure with complex geometry or a material with composite constitutive equations. The intervertebral disc is a complex, heterogeneous, and hydrated porous structure. A poroelastic finite element model can be used to observe the fluid transferring, pressure deviation, and other properties within the disc. Defining reasonable poroelastic material properties of the... 

In the present work a central composite design based on response surface methodology (RSM) is employed for fine tuning of the aspect ratios of seed-mediated synthesized gold nanorods (GNRs). The relations between the affecting parameters, including ratio of l-ascorbic acid to Au3+ ions, concentrations of silver nitrate, CTAB, and CTAB-capped gold seeds, were explored using a RSM model. It is observed that the effect of each parameter on the aspect ratio of developing nanorods highly depends on the value of the other parameters. The concentrations of silver ions, ascorbic acid and seeds are found to have a high contribution in controlling the aspect ratios of NRs. The optimized parameters led... 

Response surface methodology was used to investigate the effects of operating parameters such as impeller speed, binder mass and granulation time on the average size of granules produced in a lab scale conical high shear granulator. Two quadratic models were proposed to express granule mean size as a function of impeller speed and binder mass as well as impeller speed and granulation time. It was found out that in the studied domain, the influence of each parameter on granule size differs from one another. While increasing binder mass at constant quantity of powder increased the average size linearly, increasing impeller speed changed the mean size in accordance with quadratic trend. The... 

In percutaneous applications, needle insertion into soft tissue is considered as a challenging procedure, and hence, it has been the subject of many recent studies. This study considers a model-based dynamics equation to evaluate the needle movement through prostate soft tissue. The proposed model estimates the applied force to the needle using the tissue deformation data and finite element model of the tissue. To address the role of mechanical properties of the soft tissue, an inverse dynamics control method based on sliding mode approach is used to demonstrate system performance in the presence of uncertainties. Furthermore, to deal with inaccurate estimation of mechanical parameters of... 

In this research, the main parameters of the multivariate cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart (the reference value k, the control limit H, the sample size n and the sampling interval h) are determined by minimising the Lorenzen-Vance cost function [Lorenzen, T.J., and Vance, L.C. (1986), The Economic Design of Control Charts: A Unified Approach, Technometrics, 28, 3-10], in which the external costs of employing the chart are added. In addition, the model is statistically constrained to achieve desired in-control and out-of-control average run lengths. The Taguchi loss approach is used to model the problem and a genetic algorithm, for which its main parameters are tuned using the response... 

Purpose. Drug release from nanosystems at the sites of either absorption or effect biophase is a major determinant of its biological action. Thus, in vitro drug release is of paramount importance in gaining insight for the systems performance in vivo. Methods. A novel in vitro in vivo correlation, IVIVC, model denoted as double reciprocal area method was presented and applied to 19 drugs from 55 nano formulations with total 336 data, gathered from literature. Results. The proposed model correlated the in vitro with in vivo parameters with overall error of 12.4 ± 3.9%. Also the trained version of the model predicted the test formulations with overall error of 15.8 ± 3.7% indicating the... 

Nanoparticles for biomedical use must be cytocompatible with the biological environment that they are exposed to. Current research has focused on the surface functionalization of nanoparticles by using proteins, polymers, thiols and other organic compounds. Here we show that inorganic nanoparticles such as titanium oxide can be coated by pyrolytic carbon (PyC) and that the coating has cytocompatible properties. Pyrolization and condensation of methane formed a thin layer of pyrolytic carbon on the titanium oxide core. The formation of the PyC shell retards coalescence and sintering of the ceramic phase. Our MTT assay shows that the PyC-coated particles are cytocompatible at employed doses  

The significant role of protein nanoparticle interactions in nanomedicine and nanotoxicity is emerging recently through the identification of the nanoparticles (NP) protein (biomolecule) corona. The dynamic layer of proteins and/or other biomolecules adsorbed to the nanoparticle surface determines how a NP interacts with living systems and thereby modifies the cellular responses to the NP. Ehrenberg and co-workers used cultured endothelium cells as a model for vascular transport of polystyrene NP with various functional groups, which showed that the capacity of the various NP surfaces to adsorb proteins was indicative of their tendency to associate with cells. The quantification of the... 

Vaccines require a period of at least three months for clinical trials, hence a method that can identify elicitation of immune response a few days after the first dose is a necessity. Evolutionary variable selections are modeling approaches for proper manipulation of available data which were used to set up an animal model for classification of time dependent 'HNMR metabolomic profiles and pattern recognition of fluctuations of metabolites in two groups of male rabbits. One group of rabbits was immunized with human red blood cells and the other used as control. Blood was obtained every 48 h from each rabbit for a period of six weeks and the serum monitored for antibodies and metabolites by... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe optical flow-based navigation of a very light fixed-wing aircraft in flight between obstacles. Design/methodology/approach - The optical flow information of two cameras mounted on the aircraft is used to detect the obstacle. It is assumed that the image processing has been completed and the optical flow vectors have been obtained beforehand. The optical flow is used to detect the obstacles and make a rapid turn manoeuvre for the aircraft. Findings - It is shown that using the optical flow feedback by itself is unable to give a rapid turn to the aircraft and its rate should be employed into the control law. Six degree-of-freedom flight... 

Nanoparticulated TiO 2 fibers as one-dimensional long structures were introduced into TiO 2 P25 nanoparticle films using coelectrophoretic deposition. This prevented the usual crack formation occurring in wet coatings, and resulted in less porosity and higher roughness factor of the films that provided more favorable conditions for electron transport. The films used as the photoanode of a dye solar cell (DSC) produced 65% higher photovoltaic efficiency. TiO 2 fibers can be excellent binders in single-step, organic-free electrophoretic deposition of TiO 2 for DSC photoanode  

Background: Cardiotocography (CTG) is the most widely used tool for fetal surveillance. The visual analysis of fetal heart rate (FHR) traces largely depends on the expertise and experience of the clinician involved. Several approaches have been proposed for the effective interpretation of FHR. In this paper, a new approach for FHR feature extraction based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is proposed, which was used along with support vector machine (SVM) for the classification of FHR recordings as 'normal' or 'at risk'.Methods: The FHR were recorded from 15 subjects at a sampling rate of 4 Hz and a dataset consisting of 90 randomly selected records of 20 minutes duration was formed from... 

Assessment of groundwater quality monitoring networks requires methods to determine the potential efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the current monitoring programs. To this end, the concept of entropy has been considered as a promising method in previous studies since it quantitatively measures the information produced by a network. In this study, the measure of transinformation in the discrete entropy theory and the transinformation- distance (T-D) curves, which are used frequently by other researchers, are used to quantify the efficiency of a monitoring network. This paper introduces a new approach to decrease dispersion in results by performing cluster analysis that uses fuzzy... 

In this work, the individual and interaction effects of three key operating parameters of the photocatalytic disinfection process were evaluated and optimized using response surface methodology (RSM) for the first time. The chosen operating parameters were: reaction temperature, initial pH of the reaction mixture and TiO2 P-25 photocatalyst loading. Escherichia coli concentration, after 90 minutes irradiation of UV-A light, was selected as the response. Twenty sets of photocatalytic disinfection experiments were conducted by adjusting operating parameters at five levels using the central composite design. Based on the experimental data, a semi-empirical expression was established and applied... 

In this study, we have investigated the potential of a native bacterial strain isolated from an Iranian oil field for the production of biosurfactant. The bacterium was identified to be Bacillus mycoides by biochemical tests and 16S ribotyping. The biosurfactant, which was produced by this bacterium, was able to reduce the surface tension of media to 34. mN/m. Compositional analysis of the produced biosurfactant has been carried out by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and FT-IR. The biosurfactant produced by the isolate was characterized as lipopeptide derivative. Biosurfactant production was optimized by the combination of central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology... 

Enzymatic decolorization of the monoazo dye, acid orange 7 (AO7) by the fungal peroxidase from Coprinus cinereus NBRC 30628 is a complex system, which is greatly affected by temperature, pH, enzyme activity and the concentrations of H2O2 and dye concentration. The study of these factors and investigating the combined interactions between them by applying one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) method and two other statistical methods including 2-factorial method and response surface methodology (RSM) were aimed in this work. Through OFAT analysis the optimized conditions were a temperature of 25 °C, pH 9.0 with H2O2 concentration of about 3.9 mM and AO7 concentration of 40 mg/l. A complete... 

Doxorubicin (DOX), a common cancer chemotherapeutics, was conjugated to folate-modified thiolated-polyethylene glycol-functionalized gold nanoparticles. The in vitro, controlled release behavior of DOX-loaded gold nanoparticles was observed using porous dialysis membranes (cut-off = 2 kDa). DOX-loaded gold nanoparticles had higher cytotoxicity for folate-receptor-positive cells (KB cells) compared to folate-receptor-negative cells (A549 cells) which were 48 and 62% viable for 10 μM doxorubicin, respectively. This indicates the potential of these nano-carriers for targeted-delivery. In addition, healthy cell viability was 69% for 10 μM free doxorubicin whereas for the same content of drug in... 

The experimental 13C NMR chemical shift components of uracil in the solid state are reported for the first time (to our knowledge), as well as newer data for the 15N nuclei. These experimental values are supported by extensive calculated data of the 13C, 15N and 17O chemical shielding and 17O and 14N electric field gradient (EFG) tensors. In the crystal, uracil forms a number of strong and weak hydrogen bonds, and the effect of these on the 13C and 15N chemical shift tensors is studied. This powerful combination of the structural methods and theoretical calculations gives a very detailed view of the strong and weak hydrogen bond formation by this molecule. Good calculated results for the...