Sharif Digital Repository

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak spread rapidly worldwide. Yet, there is no identifiable antiviral treatment, so an effective drug is urgently needed. Preventive strategies and oxygen therapy are the main practical approaches to prevent and treat COVID-19. Clinical trials are in progress for the antiviral and immunomodulation agents that eventually are being developed for COVID-19 treatment. Pharmacological, immunotherapies, natural-based supplements, biologics, and combination therapies interventions have been established. The concept of drug repurposing was re-visited, and many conventional antivirals or immunosuppresses were evaluated for Efficacy against COVID-19... 

In this work, the effect of brine salinity on water-in-oil emulsion flow performance in porous media is studied as it imposes a significant challenge to oil production in the petroleum industry. A crude oil sample from an Iranian oilfield and synthetic brine with different salinities (40-140 g/L salt) are used. The results show that the emulsion viscosity and interfacial tension increase slightly with salinity, while they do not considerably affect the flow behavior. The emulsion stability analysis shows that larger w/o emulsion droplets are formed for higher brine salinity, which potentially block more pore spaces through straining and interception mechanisms. This phenomenon resulted in... 

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... 

Hepcidin is a peptide hormone that plays an important role in iron metabolism. We have produced a recombinant mouse hepcidin-1 by using baculovirus expression system. Its expression yield was 25 μg/ml when cell culture media were supplemented with a protease inhibitor cocktail. The recombinant mouse hepcidin-1 and synthetic human hepcidin-25 had similar effects on reducing ferroportin expression in J774A cell line and in peritoneal macrophages. However, synthetic human hepcidin-25 was more efficient than recombinant mouse hepcidin-1 in reducing iron concentration in blood circulation (p < 0.01)  

In this paper, we present design and implementation of TCvisor, a new trusted hypervisor. To this end, TCvisor provides a secure storage with different isolated view per user by using para-passthrough and combined key. In this regard, virtualization technology of processors has been used for complete isolation from operating system. By combining TPM base key, user's password and geo function key, TCvisor provides a secure storage in an environment with split data. We have applied feature wise security analysis TCvisor's secure storage from software system layers point then we have compared performance of TCvisor to selected candidates of existing layers  

Low and high valence were induced in 20 male volunteers using two groups of pictures stimuli. Heart response was compared between two groups from RR series extracted from recorded ECG measurements. Mean heart rate and heart rate variability measures including time, frequency and Poincare domain were extracted. The results revealed that HRV triangular index, SDNN and SD2 were the only statistically significant parameters between groups (p<0.05). Mean heart rate and power in LF and HF bands were also different between low and high valence groups however level of significance was not reached. © 2015 CCAL  

There has been an increasing interest in telemonitoring thanks to the availability of new technologies for data transmission and processing with better performances and lower costs. In this paper, we try to develop and implement the HRV signal processing into a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The hardware implementing algorithm was developed in Verilog Hardware Description Language (HDL). In designed hardware, after defining the number of samples in the input, we extract and analyses the Triangular Phase Space Mapping (TPSM), a novel method for representation of heart rate. The performance of the system was tested using MATLAB and validated based on the input signals  

Pemphigus vulgaris is an autoimmune disease, in which the role of Th17 cytokines needs to be further explored. This study was performed to assess serum levels of three interleukins (IL) required for Th17 differentiation (IL-β, IL-6 and IL-23) and two specific Th17 cytokines (IL- 17 and IL-22) in a group of patients with pemphigus vulgaris, at baseline, 3 weeks and 6 months after of treatment. Correlations between anti-desmogleins and cytokines with disease severity as well as the influence of therapy on the above factors were assessed. Forty-three first-admitted pemphigus vulgaris patients with the active disease entered the study, but only 31 completed the study. Forty-five healthy... 

The accurate fault location is an important criterion for protection system. Accurate and fast fault location decreases the outage time, consumers dissatisfaction and operation cost. Different methods have been proposed to determine the fault location. The impedance-based methods are usually used to protect power systems. The accuracy of these methods depends on system parameters and the structure of power systems. Also, these methods require an iterative process, the phase alignment and a high volume of data. Another algorithm has been newly presented based on negative sequence parameters, which is not iterative and the amount of data communicated between relays is small. Besides, this... 

The α-FAPbI3 perovskite nanocrystals exhibit interesting optical properties, which make them attractive for versatile optoelectronic applications; however, the spontaneous phase transformation to the non-perovskite phase (δ-FAPbI3) in humid conditions requires a new strategy to improve the phase stability of the material. We employed 3-Aminopropyl triethoxysilane (APTES)-assisted reprecipitation and sol-gel methods at ambient temperature to prepare stable α-FAPbI3 nanocrystals embedded in a silica matrix. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction analysis determined that ultrafine perovskite nanocrystals (11.5 ± 3 nm) were uniformly distributed in a silica matrix.... 

Utilization of nanoparticles in oil and gas industry has attracted considerable attention of engineers and researchers. In this article, the feasibility of nanoemulsion flooding is investigated as a method for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) through coreflooding experiments, using a packed bed and real reservoir fluids. Nine different mixtures of the solvent, surfactant, and nanoparticles in the form of a nanoemulsion phase are generated and used to recover the oil in the context of an EOR process. Various tests are conducted to determine the properties of porous medium and fluids. To study the production performance of this EOR technique, pressure drop across the packed bed are measured, along... 

In this paper, we propose efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) policies for various practical scenarios in wirelessly powered communication networks (WPCNs). First, we consider WPT from an energy access point (E-AP) to multiple energy receivers (E-Rs). We formulate the problem of maximizing the total average received power of the E-Rs subject to power constraints of the E-AP, which is a non-convex stochastic optimization problem. Using eigenvalue decomposition techniques, we derive a closed-form expression for the optimal policy, which requires the distribution of the channel state information (CSI) in the network. We then propose a near-optimal policy that does not require this knowledge... 

Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is the main constituent extracted from turmeric. This polyphenol is a non-toxic, potent compound with anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. Due to the wide range of health benefits and pharmaceutical properties, curcumin has recently gained considerable attention in both in vitro and in vivo investigations. However, pharmaceutical applications of curcumin are limited due to its hydrophobicity which leads to low bioavailability. Here, we have highlighted recent advances in curcumin-incorporated biomaterials as an effective strategy to enhance curcumin bioavailability in biomedical applications, including drug delivery,... 

In this paper, "Subspace" method is generalized to asymmetrical case. In the new algorithm described here, "Lanczos" method is used to find the first subspace and to solve the eigenvalue problem resulted in generalized subspace method. To solve the standard eigenvalue problem developed by "Lanczos" method "Jacoby" method is used. If eigenvalue problem includes damping matrix, that will be imported in new defined mass and stiffness matrices  

Etoposide (EP) is one of the anticancer drugs with wide application and many side effects. Therefore, it is very important to provide a simple, fast and sensitive measurement method to monitor the treatment of patients treated with this drug. In the upcoming research, etoposide has been measured using a carbon paste electrode (CPE) modified with a new green synthesized nanocomposite. To prepare the nanocomposite, first the Lapis lazuli stone was ground by rubbing in a stone mortar. Proton-induced X-ray emission analysis of processed Lapis lazuli showed the presence of specific mineral phases such as SiO2, CaO, Al2O3, MgO, SO3, Na2O, and Fe2O3 that are associated with Lapis lazuli sources.... 

In today's competitive market, culture of excellence (CoE) and knowledge sharing (KS) are vital factors for organisations to thrive in the ever-expanding global market-economy. However, most previous studies have paid less attention to CoE especially in developing countries. In addition, they gave less attention to KS as a mediator in the CoE performance model. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship among CoE, KS, and organisational performance (OP) in the sector of industrial companies in Iran, and to develop a conceptual framework based on extensive review of the literature. Based on a review of the literature, a link was established between CoE and OP. Furthermore,... 

Control of unstable non-minimum-phase delayed stochastic processes is a challenging problem. In this work based on the Diophantine equation and using pole-placement technique, a discrete control scheme for such processes has been proposed. Robust stability of the suggested control structure has been shown. Advantages of the proposed scheme over the existing algorithms have been shown through computer simulations. It has been shown that performance of the proposed scheme for handling model mismatch and colored noise is superior to the previous work proposed in the literature  

This article indicates the accurate method for load level calculation to solve the power flow problem when capacitor reactive power is involved. Using the correct method causes some changes in the results and conclusion stated in the discussed paper on optimal reconfiguration and capacitor placement in radial distribution systems  

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... 

Capacitor placement/setting is one of the main means for loss reduction and voltage profile improvement in distribution systems. If capacitor placement is meant, the objective function will be the cost of energy losses besides the capacitors costs in a specified period of time. Here, reconfiguration can be used as a strategy to reform the base configuration of the distribution network in order to place the capacitors more efficiently with lower costs. On the other hand, if capacitors are already available in a network, optimum capacitors setting and network reconfiguration should be performed for power loss minimization. In this paper both power loss minimization and capacitor placement cost...