Short view of leukemia diagnosis and treatment in Iran

Background: Early diagnosis and treatment of leukemia patients remains a fundamental aim in clinical oncology, especially in developing country. Present study highlights the basic requirements of these patients in Iran. Better understanding of these issues may lead to improve the healthcare standards toward leukemia diagnosis and treatment. Methods: This descriptive study included 101 specialists in hematology-oncology and pathology serving in oncology centers. The participants were then asked to fill out a standard questionnaire on the issues around diagnosis and treatment of blood malignancies. Results: According to specialists, unfair distribution of facilities across the country, delayed diagnosis of disease, absence of psychological support for patients, and insufficient financial support were the main reasons of inappropriate diagnosis and treatment in leukemia patients. Conclusions: Our results show that making an amendment to health policies by preparing well-equipped medical centers in all provinces, improving the morale of patients through consultation during the process of treatment, and above all, subsiding leukemia patients' financial problems will promote the health standard regarding the leukemia diagnosis and treatment in Iran. © 2015, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). All rights reserved

SCALE DEPOSITS IN POROUS MEDIA AND THEIR REMOVAL BY EDTA INJECTION

Formation damage has been observed in several oil reservoirs and production equipment in Iranian oil fields. Laboratory and field testing confirmed that the primary cause of damage was the build-up of calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate and strontium sulfate scale either in the perforation tunnels or in the formation sandstone nears the wellbore. Conventional acid treatments could dissolve this scale, but scale precipitation from the spent acid caused rapid productivity decline. A scale removal treatment with Na2H2EDTA has been developed that can effectively dissolve scale and chelate the dissolved metal ions. Chelation of the dissolved scale prevents scale reprecipitation. This study describes the results of an experimental and theoretical study on the removal of formation damage resulting from scale formation in porous media. An experimental investigation was undertaken to look into the possible causes of the injectivity loss in a typical Iranian oilfield. Sets of experimental investigations were undertaken with different objectives in mind. Glass and sand bead packs were used to test the experimental set up and to observe the general behaviour of scale formation and removal by ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA) to determine its possible effects on the permeability of the porous medium

Antimutagenic activity of chloroformic and methanolic extracts of muscle, liver and cartilage of Sphyrna lewini with the Ames test

For this study one species of Shyrnidae family caught along Persian Gulf in Bandarabbas city. Sphyrna lewini were transferred to the laboratory on spring 2007. The antimutagenic activity of the Methanolic and Chloroforamic extracts of muscle, liver and cartilage of Sphyrna lewini with the Ames test was investigated. The use of antimutagens and anticarcinogens in everyday life is the most effective procedure to prevent human cancer and genetic diseases. Since angiogenenesis is a key factor in tumor growth, inhibiting this process is one way to treat cancer. In this study the antimutagenic effect of the Chloroformic and Methanolic extracts of muscle, liver and cartilage on the damage induced by two mutagens was studied. The results driven from this study were inhibitory effect of two extracts. The highest antimutagenic effect was determined in the Potassium Permanganate and Sodium Azide as a mutagen was Methanolic extracts of cartilage . There is a general correlation between mutagenesis and the initiation stage of carcinogenesis. Mutagens appear to initiate the process by inducing the primary DNA lesion. These are called initiators and the damage they cause is generally irreversible

Laboratory-scale Investigation of Two-phase Relative Permeability

We present experimental investigations of two-phase (oil and water) relative permeability of laboratory scale rock cores through a joint use of direct X-ray measurement and flow-through investigations. The study is motivated by the observation that appropriate modeling of oil and water displacement in porous media or fractured rocks requires to be firmly grounded on accurate and representative core flood experiments and their appropriate interpretation. Experimental data embed key information relating relative permeability to observables. In this context, direct measurement of in-situ fluid saturation through X-Ray techniques has the unprecedented ability to characterize key processes occurring during the displacement of immiscible fluids through natural permeable materials. Water saturation profiles determined by X-ray scanner can then be linked to relative permeability curves stemming from two-phase flow experiments. We illustrate the benefit of employing direct X-Ray measurements of fluid saturation through a set of laboratory experiments targeted to the estimate of two-phase relative permeabilities of homogeneous samples (sand pack and Berea sandston core). Data are obtained for a range of diverse fractional flow rates and provide information at saturations ranging from irreducible water content to residual oil saturation. Our X-Ray saturation data are consistent with an interpretation of measured relative permeabilities as associated with water-wet rock conditions. The comparison of different preamble samples result high displacement efficiency and recovery factor corresponds to the high permeable and well-connected pores

Development of an oxide-dispersion-strengthened steel by introducing oxygen carrier compound into the melt aided by a general thermodynamic model

In general, melting process is not a common method for the production of oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloys due to agglomeration and coarsening of oxide particles. However, vacuum casting process has recently been employed as a promising process to produce micro-scale oxide dispersed alloys. In this paper, we report the process and characterization of in situ formation and uniform dispersion of nano-scale Y-Ti oxide particles in Fe-10Ni-7Mn (wt.%) alloy. The processing route involves a solid-liquid reaction between the added TiO2 as an oxygen carrier and dissolved yttrium in liquid metal leading to an optimal microstructure with nano-sized dispersed oxide particles. The developed thermodynamic model shows the independence of the final phase constituents from experimental conditions such as melting temperature or vacuum system pressure which offers a general pathway for the manufacture of oxide dispersion strengthened materials.1131Ysciescopu

Enhanced thermoelectric properties in phosphorene nanorings

Using the tight-binding approach, we investigate the thermoelectric (TE) properties of rectangular phosphorene nanorings for both symmetrically and asymmetrically attaching to phosphorene nanoribbon leads. We design our phosphorene-based nanostructures to enhance the TE performance in the absence and the presence of perpendicular magnetic fields. Our results show that when zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons (ZPNRs) are coupled symmetrically to rectangular rings, a comparatively large band gap is induced in the electronic conductance due to the suppression of the contribution of edge states. This gives rise to a remarkable increase in the thermopower response compared to the case of pristine ZPNRs. More intriguingly, we found that though the maximum power factor in this system is about the same as the one for its ZPNR counterpart, the much smaller electronic thermal conductance of this phosphorene-based nanostructure can remarkably contribute to the improvement of the figure of merit. Also, we found that the symmetry/asymmetry of our designed nanostructures, the geometrical characteristics of the ring, and the magnetic flux are three important factors that control the thermoelectric properties of phosphorene quantum rings. Our numerical calculations show that by changing the magnetic flux through the nanoring, a drastic increase in the thermopower is observed near an antiresonance point. We demonstrate the tunability of the thermopower and the possibility to switch on and off the TE response of phosphorene nanorings with the magnetic flux. Moreover, for asymmetric connection configurations with armchair-edged leads, we found that though the thermopower is almost intact, a remarkable reduction of the electronic thermal conductance can lead to a notable improvement in the figure of merit. Our results suggest phosphorene nanorings as promising candidate nanostructures for TE applications

Study on hybrid combustion of aero-suspensions of boron-aluminum powders in a quiescent reaction medium

© 2017. The present research deals with a hybrid combustion of aluminum/boron dust particles in a heterogeneous quiescent reaction medium with spatially discrete heat sources. A developed thermal model is employed to estimate flame propagation speed in a reaction medium. The burning velocity and minimum ignition energy are studied parametrically as a function of dust concentration and particle diameter for different percentages of boron powder in a hybrid mixture of aluminum/boron dust cloud. The model shows that the addition of boron powder as a component of the mixture decreases the burning rate and causes a higher amount of minimum ignition energy needed for ignition, owing to the role of boron as a heat sink. Comparison of the simulation results with the available experimental data shows that the model captures the flame propagation speed as a function of particle concentration, except at very low concentrations

Stochastic inverse modeling of transient laboratory-scale three-dimensional two-phase core flooding scenarios

We develop a comprehensive and efficient workflow for a stochastic assessment of key parameters governing two-phase flow conditions associated with core-scale experiments. We rely on original and detailed datasets collected on a Berea sandstone sample. These capture the temporal evolution of pressure drop across the core and three-dimensional maps of phase saturations (determined via X-ray CT) in oil- and brine-displacement flooding scenarios characterized by diverse brine/oil viscosity contrasts. Such experiments are used as a test-bed for the proposed stochastic model calibration strategy. The latter is structured across three main steps: (i) a preliminary calibration, aimed at identifying a behavioral region of the model parameter space; (ii) a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA), geared towards identification of the relative importance of model parameters on observed model outputs and assessment of non-influential parameters to reduce dimensionality of the parameter space; and (iii) a stochastic inverse modeling procedure. The latter is based on a differential-evolution genetic algorithm to efficiently explore the reduced parameter space stemming from the GSA. It enables one to obtain a probabilistic description of the relevant model parameters through their frequency distributions conditional on the detailed type of information collected. Coupling GSA with a stochastic parameter estimation approach based on a genetic algorithm of the type we consider enables streamlining the procedure and effectively cope with the considerable computational efforts linked to the two-phase scenario considered. Results show a remarkable agreement with experimental data and imbue us with confidence on the potential of the approach to embed the type of rich datasets considered towards model parameter estimation fully including uncertainty