Sharif Digital Repository

Two types of nanosized photocatalyst, TiO 2 P-25 and ap/Ag/AgBr/TiO 2, were used for decolorization of Acid Blue 92 (AB92) in dark, visible light (V-L), and UV media. Under UV and V-L, the effect of three possible photodegradation processes of AB92 including photocatalytic degradation, self-photosensitization, and direct photolysis were studied. Results showed that in UV/photocatalysts, photocatalytic degradation is the major process for photodecolorization. However, in the presence of TiO 2, self-photosensitization has the major role under V-L. Because of the presence of AgBr as photoactive center in ap/Ag/AgBr/TiO 2, the main process is the photocatalytic degradation in V-L. By using... 

Solute-solvent and solvent-solvent interactions were investigated for binary mixtures of an ionic liquid (IL) 2-hydroxy ethylammonium formate as with methanol, ethylene glycol and glycerol. The physicochemical properties of the solvent mixtures at 25 °C, over the whole range of mole fractions, were determined using solvatochromic probes. High normal polarity (ETN) in the alcohol-rich region confirms solute-solvent interactions in this medium. Dipolarity/polarizability (π *) show a different trend to ETN with a positive deviation from ideal behavior in IL-glycerol mixtures. However, these deviations for other solvent mixtures are insignificant. Contrary to what is observed for E TN and π*,... 

Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) were prepared by co-precipitation method. The nanoparticles were silica coated using TEOS, and then modified by the polymeric layers of polypropylene glycol (PPG) and polyethylene glycol (PEG). Finally, the core-shell samples were decorated with Ag, Au, and Cu nanoparticles. The products were characterized by vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM), TGA, SEM, XRD, and FTIR methods. The antibacterial activity of the prepared samples was evaluated in inactivation of E. coli and S. aureus microorganisms, representing the Gram-negative and Gram-positive species, respectively. The effect of solid dosage, bacteria concentration and type of polymeric modifier on the... 

Multi-component photocatalysts based on apatite-coated Ag=AgBr=TiO 2 were prepared by the deposition method. The effects of various kinds of apatites, with hydroxyl and fluoro substituents, on photocatalytic activity were investigated. The antibacterial processes in the dark, and under visible light, on two types of bacteria indicate that the multi-composites can inhibit the growth of bacteria by two different mechanisms. TEM images and optical microscopic data demonstrate that by attaching the nanosize catalyst to the outer membrane of the cell, the bacteria could not derive nourishment from surrounding media, i.e. this component acts as bacteria-static. The mechanism for deactivation of... 

Apatite-coated Ag/AgBr/TiO2 was prepared by deposition of Ag as novel metal to generate electron-hole pairs by extending the excitation wavelength to the visible-light region, AgBr, and hydroxy apatite as photosensitive material and adsorption bioceramic, respectively. The energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry clearly showed the presence of Ti, Ag, Ca, and P elements on the surface of catalyst. The bactericidal experiments in dark media indicated that only the novel catalyst shows inhibiting growth of bacteria in this case. A transmission electron microscopy image illustrated that catalyst nanoparticles adhere to the outer membrane of the cell and act as an inhibitor to the nourishment of... 

Multi-component photocatalysts based on apatite-coated Ag/AgBr/TiO(2) were prepared by the deposition method. The effects of various kinds of apatites, with hydroxyl and fluoro substituents, on photocatalytic activity were investigated. The antibacterial processes in the dark, and under visible light, on two types of bacteria indicate that the multi-composites can inhibit the growth of bacteria by two different mechanisms. TEM images and optical microscopic data demonstrate that by attaching the nanosize catalyst to the outer membrane of the cell, the bacteria could not derive nourishment from surrounding media, i.e. this component acts as bacteria-static. The mechanism for deactivation of... 

Solute-solvent and solvent-solvent interactions were investigated for binary mixtures of an ionic liquid (IL) 2-hydroxy ethylammonium formate as with methanol, ethylene glycol and glycerol. The physicochemical properties of the solvent mixtures at 25 °C, over the whole range of mole fractions, were determined using solvatochromic probes. High normal polarity ( ENT ) in the alcohol-rich region confirms solute-solvent interactions in this medium. Dipolarity/polarizability (π ∗) show a different trend to ENT with a positive deviation from ideal behavior in IL-glycerol mixtures. However, these deviations for other solvent mixtures are insignificant. Contrary to what is observed for ENT and π ∗,... 

We report the nanoporous Ag2O based on the copper terephthalate metal–organic frameworks (Ag2O/MOF) photocatalyst. Ag2O/MOF nanostructure was formed via oxygen treatment of Ag/MOF nanoparticles. The resulting Ag2O/MOF photocatalysts were characterised by various techniques. Results showed that the synthesised Ag2O/MOF nanocomposite exhibited dramatic separation of photoinduced electron/hole and excellent photodegradation activity under visible light irradiation. The degradation rate of acid blue 92 using Ag2O/MOF nanocomposite is found to be higher than that using pure MOF and Ag/MOF. It was divulged that the photodegradation rate is increased by oxygen treatment of Ag in Ag/MOF structure.... 

Zeolite-based Ag/AgBr and Ag/AgBr/TiO2 photocatalysts were prepared by sol–gel and deposition methods and were characterized. Their photocatalytic activities were evaluated by inactivation of Escherichia (E.) coli and the photodegradation of Acid Blue 92 and potassium permanganate. The composites containing Ag/AgBr showed the antibacterial activity in the dark by releasing Ag+ ions into the medium. The results for inactivation of E. coli indicated that Ag/AgBr/TiO2 modified photocatalyst had better antibacterial activity than Ag/AgBr/zeolite, while zeolite and TiO2/zeolite did not show any antibacterial activity under visible light and dark conditions. Photodecolarization rate was affected... 

Direct CO dissociation is seen the main path of the first step in the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) on the reactive iron surfaces. Cu/Fe alloy film is addressed with various applications over face-centered-cubic (fcc)-Cu and body-centered-cubic (bcc)-Fe in the FTS, i.e. preventing iron carbide formation (through direct CO dissociation) by moderating the surface reactivity and facilitating the reduction of iron surfaces, respectively. In this study by density functional theory, the stable configurations of CO molecule on various Cu/Fe alloys over fcc-Cu(100) and bcc-Fe(100) surfaces with different CO coverage (25% and 50%) have been evaluated. Our results showed that the ensemble effect... 

Several methods have been developed in the past for analyzing the porosity and other types of well logs for large-scale porous media, such as oil reservoirs, as well as their permeability distributions. We developed a method for analyzing the porosity logs φ(h) (where h is the depth) and similar data that are often nonstationary stochastic series. In this method one first generates a new stationary series based on the original data, and then analyzes the resulting series. It is shown that the series based on the successive increments of the log y(h)=φ(h+δh)-φ(h) is a stationary and Markov process, characterized by a Markov length scale hM. The coefficients of the Kramers-Moyal expansion for... 

Yeh et al. have recently proposed a mutual authentication protocol based on EPC Class-1 Gen.-2 standard. They claim their protocol is secure against adversarial attacks and also provides forward secrecy. In this paper we show that the proposed protocol does not have cited security features properly. A powerful and practical attack is presented on this protocol whereby the whole security of the protocol is broken. Furthermore, Yeh et al.'s protocol does not assure the untraceabilitiy and backwarduntraceabilitiy attributes. We also will propose our revision to safeguard the Yeh et al.'s protocol against cited attacks  

In this paper, we show how time-sharing method may reduce transmission delay in the dynamic index coding scenario. We propose a novel time-shared dynamic index coding transmission scheme that achieves the maximum index coding gain for a complete bi-directional side information graph and formulate a constrained optimization problem to tune the transmission scheme for the minimum transmission delay. A closed-form solution is presented for the special case of two-user. We also use analytical and simulation results to provide graphical intuition for the obtained results  

Dynamic index coding is a practical generalization of conventional index coding that deals with real dynamic traffic streams. We identify the code-constrained capacity region of a dynamic index coding problem with a complete bi-directional side information graph and introduce the performance metric of dynamic index coding gain to measure how dynamic index coding reduces the required data transmissions. A greedy dynamic index coding scheme is proposed that achieves the maximum coding gain almost everywhere in the identified capacity region. Although the greedy scheme attains the maximum coding gain, its selfish nature may unacceptably increase transmission delay. To address this issue, a... 

This paper suggests methods for improving efficiency of a high step up high efficiency converter based on three state commutation cells. A loss analysis has been performed to identify the source of power loss. Based on this analysis, methods are presented to reduce losses in the most power dissipating elements. These methods include replacing some power diodes with large conduction losses with MOSFETs having small on-state resistance. Efficiency improvement up to %1.25 percent is verified in simulation and experimental results  

Locally multipath adaptive routing (LMAR) protocol, classified as a new reactive distance vector routing protocol for MANETs is proposed in this paper. LMAR can find an ad-hoc path without selfish nodes and wormholes using a random search algorithm in polynomial-time. Also when the primary path fails, it discovers an alternative safe path if network graph remains connected after eliminating selfish/malicious nodes. The main feature of LMAR to seek safe route free of selfish and malicious nodes in polynomial time is its searching algorithm and flooding stage that its generated traffic is equiloaded compared to single-path routing protocols but its ability to bypass the attacks is much better... 

von Willebrand factor (VWF) is a naturally collapsed protein that participates in primary haemostasis and coagulation events. The clotting process is triggered by the adsorption and conformational changes of the plasma VWFs localized to the collagen fibres found near the site of injury. We develop coarse-grained models to simulate the adsorption dynamics of VWF flowing near the adhesive collagen fibres at different shear rates and investigate the effect of factors such as interaction and cooperativity of VWFs on the success of adsorption events. The adsorption probability of a flowing VWF confined to the receptor field is enhanced when it encounters an adhered VWF in proximity to the... 

A general regression neural network technique was applied to design optimization of a liquid-liquid coaxial swirl injector. Phase Doppler Anemometry measurements were used to train the neural network. A general regression neural network was employed to predict droplet velocity and Sauter mean diameter at any axial or radial position for the operating range of a liquid-liquid coaxial swirl injector. The results predicted by neural network agreed satisfactorily with the experimental data. A general performance map of the liquid-liquid coaxial swirl (LLCS) injector was generated by converting the predicted result to actual fuel/oxidizer ratios. © 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA