Sharif Digital Repository

Background: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most abundant chronic liver disorder, because racial and ethnic differences may influence prevalence and severity of NAFLD. Objectives: This metabolomic study was conducted to identify the metabolic biomarkers and determine the mechanism of progress of NAFLD in Iranian patients. Methods: Serum samples were collected from 75 participants (37 healthy controls and 38 patients with NAFLD) after an overnight fast. The metabolome of all samples were determined by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and were compared by multivariate statistical analysis. Results: Totally, 19 metabolomic biomarkers were identified by NMR. Compared to healthy... 

Objective(s): Hepatitis B virus infection causes chronic disease such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The metabolomics investigations have been demonstrated to be related to pathophysiologic mechanisms in many disorders such as hepatitis B infection. The aim of this study was to investigate the saliva metabolic profile of patients with chronic hepatitis B infection and to identify underlying mechanisms as well as potential biomarkers associated with the disease. Materials and Methods: Saliva from 16 healthy subjects and 20 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus were analyzed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Then, multivariate statistical analysis was performed to identify... 

Social tagging is a process in which many users add metadata to a shared content. Through the past few years, the popularity of social tagging has grown on the web. In this paper we investigated the use of social tags for web page classification: adding new web pages to an existing web directory. A web directory is a general human-edited directory of web pages. It classifies a collection of pages into a wide range of hierarchical categories. The problem with manual construction and maintenance of web directories is the significant need of time and effort by human experts. Our proposed method is based on applying different automatic approaches of using social tags for extending web... 

Heisenberg spin chains can act as quantum wires transferring quantum states either perfectly or with high fidelity. Gaussian packets of excitations passing through dual rails can encode the two states of a logical qubit, depending on which rail is empty and which rail is carrying the packet. With extra interactions in one or between different chains, one can introduce interaction zones in arrays of such chains, where specific one- or two-qubit gates act on any qubit which passes through these interaction zones. Therefore, universal quantum computation is made possible in a static way where no external control is needed. This scheme will then pave the way for a scalable way of quantum... 

Background/Objectives: Curcumin, a natural polyphenol compound in the spice turmeric, has been found to have potent anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory activity. Curcumin may treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) through its beneficial effects on biomarkers of oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation, which are considered as two feature of this disease. However, the effects of curcumin on NAFLD have been remained poorly understood. This investigation evaluated the effects of administrating curcumin on metabolic status in NAFLD patients. Subjects/Methods: Fifty-eight NAFLD patients participated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel design of study. The subjects... 

Teratozoospermia is one of conditions that can cause male infertility. The mechanism of teratozoospermia remains unclear. The knowledge of the metabolites in human seminal plasma (HSP) is meaningful for the pathological study of teratozoospermia. Analysis of changed metabolites in HSP can help understand the cellular mechanism, find the novel biomarkers and subsequently design a diagnosis test. In this study, the analysis of samples performed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H NMR spectroscopy) to identify the various metabolites, with the aim of finding metabolic profiles and biomarkers related to male infertility. Eighteen de-regulated metabolites were identified in... 

Metabolomics is a powerful technique for determination of biomarkers. Here, we aimed to determine discriminatory metabolomic profiles in different stages of sulfur mustard-exposed patients (SMEPs). Materials and methods: Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to analyze serum samples from 17 SMEPs (normal group patients) and 17 SMEPs (severe group patients). Multivariate statistical analysis using random forest (RF) was performed on a ‘training set’ (70% of the total sample) in order to produce a discriminatory model classifying two groups of patients, and the model tested in the remaining subjects. Results: A classification model was derived using data from the training set with... 

Growing the need for long-life and high-available programs, dynamic reconfiguration is going to be an important research issue. Dynamic reconfiguration enables the software systems to change at runtime to decrease their down-time in case of any updating, upgrading or in any changes. Any invalid reconfiguration at runtime may lead programs into invalid states. In this paper, we investigate on validity of dynamic reconfiguration for component-based programs and propose validity conditions for it. We show that the problem of validity assurance in general is undecidable and there is no general-purpose algorithm to verify dynamic reconfiguration validity. To have a computable algorithm for... 

Sulfur mustard (SM) is a vesication chemical warfare agent for which there is currently no antidote. Despite years of research, there is no common consensus about the pathophysiological basis of chronic pulmonary disease caused by this chemical warfare agent. In this study, we combined chemometric techniques with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to explore the metabolic profile of sera from SM-exposed patients. A total of 29 serum samples obtained from 17 SM-injured patients, and 12 healthy controls were analyzed by Random Forest. Increased concentrations of seven amino acids, glycerol, dimethylamine, ketone bodies, lactate, acetate, citrulline and creatine together with the... 

Coating is an effective approach to address the high corrosion rate of biodegradable Mg alloys, as their main challenge toward their extensive use. In this regard, it was tried to control the degradation process of an Mg-4Zn alloy by Ca addition, equal channel angular pressing (ECAP), and hydrothermal coating. The obtained results indicated that excellent grain refinement induced by Ca incorporation and ECAP simultaneously, improved both mechanical strength and corrosion resistance of the Mg-based substrate. The achieved grain refinement resulted in a thicker, more compact and integrated coating, where the ECAP-processed Mg-4Zn-0.5Ca alloy exhibited the best coating quality with no... 

Commercial pure copper sheets were severely deformed after primary annealing to a strain magnitude of 2.32 through constrained groove pressing. After induction of an electrical current, the sheets were heated for 0.5, 1, 2, or 3 s up to maximum temperatures of 150, 200, 250, or 300°C. To compare the annealing process in the current-carrying system with that in the current-free system, four other samples were heated to 300°C at holding times of 60, 90, 120, or 150 s in a salt bath. The microstructural evolution and hardness values of the samples were then investigated. The results generally indicated that induction of an electrical current could accelerate the recrystallization process by... 

Sulfur Mustard (SM) is a potent alkylating agent and its effects on cells and tissues are varied and complex. Due to limitations in the diagnostics of sulfur mustard exposed individuals (SMEIs) by noninvasive approaches, there is a great necessity to develop novel techniques and biomarkers for this condition. We present here the first nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) metabolic profiling of serum from and healthy controls to identify novel biomarkers in blood serum for better diagnostics. Of note, SMEIs were exposed to SM 30 years ago and that differences between two groups could still be found. Pathways in which differences between SMEIs and... 

Previous experiments on the fouling/current and fouling/wave interactions were mostly limited to two dimensional (2D) net panels or isolated twines. The current paper deals with the wave-induced forces/moments in three dimensional (3D) physical models of a gravity net-cage. The colonial hydroid Ectopleura larynx, a common fouling organism in the aquaculture industry, was artificially modelled and considered in the current experiments. A clean cage and cages with different fouling lengths were tested under deep-water regular wave trains. The time series of the wave-induced forces/moments in the surge, sway, roll and pitch degrees of freedom were recorded and analysed. The experimental results... 

In this paper a 6-bit vector-sum phase shifter with a full 360° variable phase-shift range for S-band has been designed and simulated using standard 180 nm CMOS technology. A new In-phase and Quadrature (I and Q) network to generate quadrature signals with minimum I and Q amplitude mismatch over wide bandwidth is proposed and deployed in the vector sum phase shifter. The designed phase shifter achieves an RMS (root mean square) phase error less than 1.34° and an RMS amplitude error less than 0.43 dB over wide bandwidth of 2 – 4 GHz, resulting in a 6-bit resolution. The gain of phase shifter chain varies from 3 to −6 dB over S-band of 2 – 4 GHz. Moreover the input of phase shifter is widely... 

In this paper, a wideband full-360o phase shifter with 6 bits of accuracy has been designed and simulated with minimal root mean square (RMS) phase error. The proposed phase shifter deployed a feed forward path including a frequency-to-voltage converter (FVC) to minimize the mismatch in quadrature generation to eventually reduce the RMS phase error for S-band (2-4GHz) applications. The designed phase shifter in 180nm CMOS technology achieves an RMS phase error in the range of 0.607-1.18? with -50dBm input signal over 2-4GHz frequency band. With lower input signal of -75dBm, the RMS phase error is 0.621-1.34? for 2-4GHz input frequency. The proposed phase shifter shows an RMS amplitude error... 

Preserving consistency properties, such as preventing forwarding loops, black-holes, and congestion, is crucial during the transitions in network forwarding state that occur between network updates. Nevertheless, maintaining these properties within SDN networks poses challenges due to flexibility and programmability of SDN, which can result in an increased frequency of network updates. While existing research has introduced mechanisms to uphold consistency during network transitions, they often overlook the consideration of flow priority when scheduling forwarding rules. We address this problem with pUpdate, a framework designed to facilitate consistent and continuous network updates while... 

Microvalve is one of the most important components in microfluidic systems and micropumps. In this paper, threedimensional incompressible flow through a Tesla-type microvalve is simulated using FLUENT computational fluid dynamic package. The flow is laminar and SIMPLE algorithm is used. The second-order upwind method is implemented for discretizing convective terms. The diodicity mechanism is investigated in detail for three different microvalves. Effect of several series Tesla-type microvalves on diodicity is also studied. The numerical analyses reveal that the mechanism of diodicity occurs at the T-junction and side channel. If inlet and outlet channels are eliminated, diodicity can be... 

The non-isothermal aging behaviour of a newly developed Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloy containing 17 wt-% Zn was investigated. Hardness and shear punch tests demonstrated that during non-isothermal aging, the mechanical properties of the alloy first increased and then decreased. The best properties were obtained in a sample which was non-isothermally aged upto 250°C with heating rate of 20°C min−1, due to the presence of η′/η (MgZn2) phases. This was confirmed by differential scanning calorimetery. After homogenisation, residual eutectic phases remained at triple junctions or in a spherical form. During aging, these phases transformed into rodlike S (Al2CuMg)-phase at 400°C, with sizes ranging from 50 to... 

The non-isothermal aging behaviour of a newly developed Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloy containing 17 wt-% Zn was investigated. Hardness and shear punch tests demonstrated that during non-isothermal aging, the mechanical properties of the alloy first increased and then decreased. The best properties were obtained in a sample which was non-isothermally aged upto 250°C with heating rate of 20°C min−1, due to the presence of η′/η (MgZn2) phases. This was confirmed by differential scanning calorimetery. After homogenisation, residual eutectic phases remained at triple junctions or in a spherical form. During aging, these phases transformed into rodlike S (Al2CuMg)-phase at 400°C, with sizes ranging from 50 to...