Sharif Digital Repository

A rapid and sensitive HPLC method has been developed for the quantification of mirtazapine (MRZ), a noradrenergic and specific serotonergic inhibitor antidepressant (NaSSA) and its two major metabolites N-desmethyl mirtazapine (NDM) and 8-hydroxymirtazapine (8-OHM) in human plasma. The separation was achieved using Chromolith C18 column and a mobile phase of acetonitrile: phosphate buffer (pH = 3, 20:80, v/v) in isocratic mode at a flow rate of 2 mL/min. A fluorescence detector was set at 290 and 350 nm for excitation and emission, respectively. Zolpidem was used as the internal standard. Liquid-liquid extraction was applied for sample clean up. All analytes were eluted in less than 5... 

Commercially pure aluminum sheets, AA 1050, are processed by accumulative roll bonding (ARB) up to eight cycles to achieve ultrafine-grained (UFG) aluminum as primary material for mechanical testing. Optical microscopy and electron backscattering diffraction analysis are used for microstructural analysis of the processed sheets. Strain rate sensitivity (m-value) of the specimens is measured over a wide range of strain rates by stress relaxation test under plane strain compression. It is shown that the flow stress activation volume is reduced by decrease of the grain size. This reduction which follows a linear relation for UFG specimens, is thought to enhance the required effective (or... 

Good knowledge of fracture parameters and cracking behavior of self-compacting concrete (SCC) from early ages until the SCC becomes mature plays an important role in design of SCC structure and also in evaluation of durability and consequently prevention of damage. In this paper, variation of fracture parameters and corresponding ductility behavior of SCC at different ages (e.g. 3days, 7days, 28days and 90days) for SCC mixes with w/c ratios of 0.45 and 0.65 have been experimentally studied. To do so, three-point bending tests were carried out on 120 notched beams. Then, size effect method (SEM) and work of fracture method (WFM) were applied to interpret the results. The results of analyses... 

Nanostructured TiO2-SnO2 thin films and powders were prepared by a facile aqueous particulate sol-gel route. The prepared sols showed a narrow particle size distribution with hydrodynamic diameter in the range 17.2-19.3 nm. Moreover, the sols were stable over 5 months, since the constant zeta potential was measured during this period. The effect of Sn:Ti molar ratio was studied on the crystallisation behaviour of the products. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the powders were crystallised at the low temperature of 400 °C containing anatase-TiO2, rutile-TiO2 and cassiterite-SnO2 phases, depending on annealing temperature and Sn:Ti molar ratio. Furthermore, it was found that SnO2... 

We propose a self-adaptive process (SAP) that maintains the software architecture quality using the MAPE-K standard model. The proposed process can be plugged into various software development processes and service-oriented methodologies due to its explicitly defined inputs and outputs. To this aim, the proposed SAP is integrated with the service-oriented modeling and application (SOMA) methodology in a two-layered structure to create a novel methodology, named self-adaptive service-oriented architecture methodology (SASOAM), which provides a semi-automatic self-aware method by the composition of architectural tactics. Moreover, the maintenance activity of SOMA is improved using... 

Al-15wt.% Mg2Si composites were prepared by in situ casting and characterized in wear tests. Previous to the extrusion of specimens at 470°C - varying extrusion ratio (7.4, 14.1 and 25), the as-cast composites were homogenized at 500°C for 5h, followed by slow furnace cooling. The microstructure, hardness and sliding wear behavior were characterized for both, the as-cast and hot extruded composites. Results show that increasing the extrusion ratio causes a significant improvement in hardness and wear resistance. This is ascribed to the observed decrease in average size and better distribution of Mg2Si particles, in tandem with a remarkable decrease in porosity percentages, which goes from... 

Batch adsorption experiments were carried out for the removal of malachite green (MG) cationic dye from aqueous solution using novel hydrogel nanocomposite that was prepared by graft copolymerization of acrylic acid (AA) onto kappa-carrageenan (κC) biopolymer in the presence of a crosslinking agent, a free radical initiator and aminosilica-functionalized TiO2 nanoparticles (κC-g-PAA/TiO2-NH2). The factors influencing adsorption capacity of the adsorbents such as initial pH value (pH0) of the dye solutions, TiO2-NH2 content (wt%), initial concentration of the dye, amount of adsorbents, and temperature were investigated. The adsorption capacity of hydrogel nanocomposite for MG was compared... 

The present paper deals with the design and optimization of a heat driven thermoacoustic refrigerator. A simplified model is developed which enables to pinpoint and examine the most important physical characteristics of a compact traveling wave thermoacoustic refrigerator driven by a traveling wave thermoacoustic engine. The model can explain the so-called traveling standing wave effect in thermoacoustics very well. The position, length and hydraulic radius of the refrigerator are optimized for the maximum total COP. The prime mover efficiency, refrigerator COP and dimensionless dissipation and their impacts on total COP are investigated and discussed. The results indicate that a COP of... 

Permeability reduction in porous media as a result of frail and tenuous fine particles migration would decrease the productivity index in the subterranean reservoirs. During reservoir stimulation by injecting fluids into the reservoir, as the salinity condition of the formation brine changes, fine particles initiate the triggering process. In this study, MgO-based nanofluid as a fines fixation agent was stably prepared based on the particle size distribution and characterized through transmission electron microscopy analysis. Afterward, several core flooding tests were performed using Berea sandstone cores to study the effect of nanofluid injection on fines fixation in the water shock... 

In this paper a new continuous model for flexural vibration of rotors with an open edge crack has been developed. The cracked rotor is considered in the rotating coordinate system attached to it. Therefore, the rotor bending can be decomposed in two perpendicular directions. Two quasi-linear displacement fields are assumed for these two directions and the strain and stress fields are calculated in each direction. Then the final displacement and stress fields are obtained by composing the displacement and stress fields in the two directions. The governing equation of motion for the rotor has been obtained using the Hamilton principle and solved using a modified Galerkin method. The free... 

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the two solid malignancies in which a higher T cell infiltration in the tumor microenvironment (TME) corresponds with a worse prognosis for the tumor. The inability of T cells to eliminate tumor cells despite an increase in their number reinforces the possibility of impaired antigen presentation. In this study, we investigated the TME at single-cell resolution to understand the molecular function and communication of dendritic cells (DCs) (as professional antigen-presenting cells). According to our data, tumor cells stimulate the migration of immature DCs to the tumor site by inducing inflammatory chemokines. Many signaling pathways such as TNF-α/NF-κB,... 

With the increasing rate of population in big cities around the world, the tendency to build new buildings in the suburb of main cities or to build large apartments in the main cities has been highlighted. In this regard, building residential complexes has seen a dramatic increase in these areas as it makes it possible to build a large number of residential units within a reasonable space. Although these complexes have brought numerous benefits, they are some challenges regarding their construction processes. One main concern associated with these complexes is how to optimally install energy components such as transformers, combined heat and power (CHP) units, boilers etc., in the shared... 

With the application of chemical enhanced oil recovery methods, water separation is a major issue in a production facility. Oil/water separation is suppressed with a stable emulsion. The present study evaluated the impact of different emulsifiers in enhanced oil recovery. The effectiveness of each additive such as an alkali, surfactant, or polymer on the stability of the emulsion was anticipated using laser scattering to measure the emulsion’s stability. An artificial neural network was applied to predict the effectiveness of the additives on stabilization/destabilization and to assess how alkali/surfactants, surfactant/polymers, and polymer/surfactants affect the separation profiles.... 

The era of personal resources being sufficient for enterprise big data computations has passed. As computations are executed in the cloud, small policy changes of cloud operators may cause considerable changes in operational costs. Carefully choosing the amount of resources for a given application is thus of great importance. This, however, requires a priori knowledge of the application's performance under different configurations. Creating a performance prediction model needs to account for the heterogeneity of resources and the diversity in application workflows. Previous approaches for heterogeneous environments consider a black-box representation of the application which results in... 

The authors regret the following mistakes: 1) In section 2, 3rd paragraph, the sentence:“Fe3O4/MWCNT-COOH/Extract has a much higher roughness than Fe3O4/MWCNT-COOH, which is unacceptable in agreement with similar results in the literature and electron microscopy observations [88–90].” must be replaced by “Fe3O4/MWCNT-COOH/Extract has a much higher roughness than Fe3O4/MWCNT-COOH, which is in agreement with similar results in the literature and electron microscopy observations [88–90].” 2) In section 3.8, the sentence:“The release of DOX from prepared nanocomposites were investigated under typical conditions: At 37 °C and different pH values of 7.4, 5.5, and 4.5 were tested in the phosphate... 

Magnetically controlled double emulsions offer a promising tool for targeted drug delivery. Here, the effect of a non-uniform magnetic field induced by a permanent magnet on ferrofluid double emulsion generation and morphology is studied. In the numerical part, the double emulsion (and its ferrofluid core) migration was analyzed for different transverse distances of the magnet from the channel centerline (Ly) and different core and shell diameters. In the experimental part, water-based ferrofluid is encapsulated in a UV-curable polymer phase in water, forming a W/O/W double emulsion. As the magnet's downstream distance from the ferrofluid junction reduces, the core aspect ratio increases... 

Improvement of the photoconversion efficiency and operational stability under environmental conditions is a principal challenge confronted to move forward toward commercialization of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) devices the world over. Herein, enhancement of sunlight harvesting by increasing light scattering via embedding mesoporous TiO2 beads in a photoanode matrix and delaying electrolyte leakage using gel polymer electrolyte, regarded as two approaches to address this challenge, respectively. Photoanodes with various thicknesses and architectures of mesoporous TiO2 beads and nanoparticles are employed in the assembly of DSSC devices in the presence of gel polymer electrolyte. Optical... 

The underlying mechanism of object recognition- a fundamental brain ability- has been investigated in various studies. However, balancing between the speed and accuracy of recognition is less explored. Most of the computational models of object recognition are not potentially able to explain the recognition time and, thus, only focus on the recognition accuracy because of two reasons: lack of a temporal representation mechanism for sensory processing and using non-biological classifiers for decision-making processing. Here, we proposed a hierarchical temporal model of object recognition using a spiking deep neural network coupled to a biologically plausible decision-making model for... 

In this paper, a cost-effective and high-accuracy precoding technique based on ϵ-Fuzzy pareto active learning (FPAL) is proposed for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO communications. The proposed method achieves a low iteration convergence with low complexity. Two practical structures, namely fully-connected and partially-connected structures are considered for hybrid precoding. Furthermore, the effect of high and low-resolution quantization in the digital-to-analog converter, phase shifter, and imperfect channel state information are discussed. The performance results of the proposed technique and alternating minimization methods beside fully digital techniques are compared and... 

This paper is to investigate the extent and speed of the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States (US). For this purpose, the fractional form of the susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered-vaccinated-quarantined-hospitalized-social distancing (SEIR-VQHP) model is initially developed, considering the effects of social distancing, quarantine, hospitalization, and vaccination. Then, a Monte Carlo-based back analysis method is proposed by defining the model parameters, viz. the effects of social distancing rate (α), infection rate (β), vaccination rate (ρ), average latency period (γ), infection-to-quarantine rate (E), time-dependent recovery rate (λ),...