Acoustic Manipulation and Alignment of Particles for Applications in Separation, Micro-Templating, and Device Fabrication

This dissertation studies the manipulation of particles using acoustic stimulation for applications in microfluidics and templating of devices. The term particle is used here to denote any solid, liquid or gaseous material that has properties, which are distinct from the fluid in which it is suspended. Manipulation means to take over the movements of the particles and to position them in specified locations. Using devices, microfabricated out of silicon, the behavior of particles under the acoustic stimulation was studied with the main purpose of aligning the particles at either low-pressure zones, known as the nodes or high-pressure zones, known as anti-nodes. By aligning particles at the nodes in a flow system, these particles can be focused at the center or walls of a microchannel in order to ultimately separate them. These separations are of high scientific importance, especially in the biomedical domain, since acoustopheresis provides a unique approach to separate based on density and compressibility, unparalleled by other techniques. The study of controlling and aligning the particles in various geometries and configurations was successfully achieved by controlling the acoustic waves. Apart from their use in flow systems, a stationary suspended-particle device was developed to provide controllable light transmittance based on acoustic stimuli. Using a glass compartment and a carbon-particle suspension in an organic solvent, the device responded to acoustic stimulation by aligning the particles. The alignment of light-absorbing carbon particles afforded an increase in visible light transmittance as high as 84.5%, and it was controlled by adjusting the frequency and amplitude of the acoustic wave. The device also demonstrated alignment memory rendering it energy-efficient. A similar device for suspended-particles in a monomer enabled the development of electrically conductive films. These films were based on networks of conductive particles. Elastomers doped with conductive metal particles were rendered surface conductive at particle loadings as low as 1% by weight using acoustic focusing. The resulting films were flexible and had transparencies exceeding 80% in the visible spectrum (400-800 nm) These films had electrical bulk conductivities exceeding 50 S/cm

DOFDM for carrier aggregation in LTE-Advanced

In Long-Term Evolution (LTE), maximum bandwidth allocation of channels in downlink and uplink is 20 MHz. To meet an increasing demand of data rate for users in next generation wireless communication systems such as LTE-Advanced, bandwidth up to 100MHz or above is required. A key technology to achieve higher bandwidths up to 100MHz is carrier aggregation. To provide maximum bandwidth to the users and optimum use of radio resources for the operators , the carriers of same or different bandwidths can be aggregated using carrier aggregation. This paper presents an overview of carrier aggregation algorithms and using Matlab simulations study feasibility of using Discontiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DOFDM) for carrier aggregation. It is concluded that DOFDM enables carrier aggregation without sacrificing bit error rates for users

Frequency of Kidney Stone Different Compositions in Patients Referred to a Lithotripsy Center in Ilam, West of Iran

Introduction: Ilam is one of the provinces with the highest prevalence of kidney stone. The aim of this study was to calculate the frequency percentage of kidney stones by composition in Ilam.Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 160 patients referred to the lithotripsy center of Ilam for the treatment of kidney stones from 2014 to 2015 (9 months). A two-part questionnaire including demographic information and stone type was used for collecting data. Finally, the obtained data were analyzed with SPSS version 17.Results: The frequency of kidney stones was 68% in men and 31.8% in women. The prevalence of kidney stones was higher in men than women, but there was no significant relationship between gender and the stone type. The highest prevalence of the stone was in the age group 31-41 years (33.7%) and there was a significant relationship between age and the stone type (P=0.001). The frequency of calcium oxalate (CaOx), mixed, uric acid, and cysteine kidney stones was 61.25%, 36.25%, 1.9%, and 0.6%, respectively. The most prevalent mixed stone was uric acid together with calcium oxalate stones (21.8%) followed by CaOx together with calcium phosphate stones (10.6%).Conclusions: The prevalence of CaOx and uric acid and CaOx stones was high. It is likely the increase in mixed stones in Ilam, especially uric acid and CaOx stones, is due to the nutritional pattern of subjects. More studies are required to determine the relationship between the stone type and diet in this area.Keywords: Kidney stones; Nephrolithiasis; Urolithiasis; Calcium phosphate; Calcium oxalate; Struvite; Uric aci

Measuring Iran’s success in achieving Millennium Development Goal 4: a systematic analysis of under-5 mortality at national and subnational levels from 1990 to 2015

Background Child mortality as one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDG 4—to reduce child mortality by two-thirds from 1990 to 2015), is included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3, target 2—to reduce child mortality to fewer than 25 deaths per 1000 livebirths for all countries by 2030), and is a key indicator of the health system in every country. In this study, we aimed to estimate the level and trend of child mortality from 1990 to 2015 in Iran, to assess the progress of the country and its provinces toward these goals. Methods We used three different data sources: three censuses, a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), and 5-year data from the death registration system. We used the summary birth history data from four data sources (the three censuses and DHS) and used maternal age cohort and maternal age period methods to estimate the trends in child mortality rates, combining the estimates of these two indirect methods using Loess regression. We also used the complete birth history method to estimate child mortality rate directly from DHS data. Finally, to synthesise different trends into a single trend and calculate uncertainty intervals (UI), we used Gaussian process regression. Findings Under-5 mortality rates (deaths per 1000 livebirths) at the national level in Iran in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015 were 63·6 (95% UI 63·1–64·0), 38·8 (38·5–39·2), 24·9 (24·3–25·4), and 19·4 (18·6–20·2), respectively. Between 1990 and 2015, the median annual reduction and total overall reduction in these rates were 4·9% and 70%, respectively. At the provincial level, the difference between the highest and lowest child mortality rates in 1990, 2000, and 2015 were 65·6, 40·4, and 38·1 per 1000 livebirths, respectively. Based on the MDG 4 goal, five provinces had not decreased child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Furthermore, six provinces had not reached SDG 3 (target 2). Interpretation Iran and most of its provinces achieved MDG 4 and SDG 3 (target 2) goals by 2015. However, at the subnational level in some provinces, there is substantial inequity. Local policy makers should use effective strategies to accelerate the reduction of child mortality for these provinces by 2030. Possible recommendations for such strategies include enhancing the level of education and health literacy among women, tackling sex discrimination, and improving incomes for families

Impact of neuraminidase inhibitors on influenza A(H1N1)pdm09‐related pneumonia: an individual participant data meta‐analysis

BACKGROUND: The impact of neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) on influenza‐related pneumonia (IRP) is not established. Our objective was to investigate the association between NAI treatment and IRP incidence and outcomes in patients hospitalised with A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infection. METHODS: A worldwide meta‐analysis of individual participant data from 20 634 hospitalised patients with laboratory‐confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09 (n = 20 021) or clinically diagnosed (n = 613) ‘pandemic influenza’. The primary outcome was radiologically confirmed IRP. Odds ratios (OR) were estimated using generalised linear mixed modelling, adjusting for NAI treatment propensity, antibiotics and corticosteroids. RESULTS: Of 20 634 included participants, 5978 (29·0%) had IRP; conversely, 3349 (16·2%) had confirmed the absence of radiographic pneumonia (the comparator). Early NAI treatment (within 2 days of symptom onset) versus no NAI was not significantly associated with IRP [adj. OR 0·83 (95% CI 0·64–1·06; P = 0·136)]. Among the 5978 patients with IRP, early NAI treatment versus none did not impact on mortality [adj. OR = 0·72 (0·44–1·17; P = 0·180)] or likelihood of requiring ventilatory support [adj. OR = 1·17 (0·71–1·92; P = 0·537)], but early treatment versus later significantly reduced mortality [adj. OR = 0·70 (0·55–0·88; P = 0·003)] and likelihood of requiring ventilatory support [adj. OR = 0·68 (0·54–0·85; P = 0·001)]. CONCLUSIONS: Early NAI treatment of patients hospitalised with A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infection versus no treatment did not reduce the likelihood of IRP. However, in patients who developed IRP, early NAI treatment versus later reduced the likelihood of mortality and needing ventilatory support

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Electromechanical Natural Frequency Analysis of an Eco-Friendly Active Sandwich Plate

In conventional piezoelectric ceramics, their brittle nature and containing lead are two crucial issues that significantly restrict their uses in many applications such as biomedical devices. In this work, we suggest the use of an eco-friendly piezoelectric nanocomposite material to piezoelectrically activate a cantilever meta-structure plate to be used as a novel actuator/sensor or even energy harvester; this cantilever plate is formed of several polymeric links to create an auxetic core plate that structurally shows a negative Poisson’s ratio. Moreover, the active nanocomposite materials are used as the face sheets on the auxetic plate; these active layers are made of nanowires of zinc oxide (ZnO) that are placed into an epoxy matrix in different forms of functionally graded (FG) patterns. For such active sandwich plates (ASPs) with potential electromechanical applications, a coupled electromechanical analysis has been performed to numerically investigate their natural frequencies as a crucial design parameter in such electromechanical devices. By developing a meshless method based on a higher plate theory, the effects of nanowire volume fraction, nanowire distribution, auxetic parameters, layer dimensions, and electrical terminal set-up have been studied; this in-depth study reveals that ASPs with an auxetic core have much lower natural frequencies than ASPs with honeycomb cores which would be very helpful in designing actuators or energy harvesters using the proposed cantilever sandwich plates

Temperature effect on free vibration response of a smart multifunctional sandwich plate

A smart multifunctional sandwich plate with a wide range of applications can be produced by proper arrangement of its layers. This paper offers a smart multifunctional sandwich plate with one central lightweight porous layer, two middle polymer/graphene nanocomposite layers and two active faces made of a piezoceramic material. The coupled effects of temperature conditions and piezoelectric behavior on the natural frequencies of the proposed smart multifunctional sandwich plate located on elastic foundations have been studied in the current research. For the dispersions of graphene particles and pores inside host layers, different functional profiles have been considered. Moreover, graphene particles and polymeric materials with temperature-dependent material properties have been adopted. The mechanical properties of polymer/graphene nanocomposite are evaluated by employing Halpin-Tsai approach which is modified to capture nanoscale effects. Eventually, the coupled governing eigenvalue equations of the proposed smart multifunctional sandwich plate are derived using a third-order theory called TSDT and are studied by a developed meshless solution. In addition, the effects of graphene, porosity, geometric and foundation aspects on the natural frequency of the proposed smart multifunctional sandwich plate are studied. The results disclose that the natural frequencies of the proposed smart multifunctional sandwich plates are improved by embedding pores in core layer due to the remarkable reduction of structural weight. It is worth noting that nanocomposite layers can completely compensate the structural stiffness reduction caused by embedding pores in the core.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author- ship, and/or publication of this article: The work described in this paper was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC under grant RGPIN-217525)

Electro-Mechanical Behavior of Smart Sandwich Plates With Porous Core and Graphene-Reinforced Nanocomposite Layers

The use of piezoelectric sensor and/or actuator layers in engineering structures provides smart sandwich structures with adaptive responses. Moreover, due to the brittle behavior of piezoceramic materials, inserting nanocomposite and porous layers between piezoelectric layers offers more flexible and lighter structures along with maintaining the advantages of nanocomposite materials. Therefore, in this paper, we have proposed smart sandwich plates consisting of a porous polymeric core and two graphene-reinforced composite (GRC) layers integrated with two piezoceramic layers. The distributions of porosities and randomly oriented graphene particles are assumed to be functionally graded (FG) along the thickness of core and nanocomposite layers, respectively. For the static behavior of the proposed sandwich plates, the coupled electro-mechanical governing equation has been extracted by minimizing potential energy equation with respect to displacement and electrical potential. The governing equation has been discretized by adopting a higher order shear deformation theory (HSDT) of plates and a developed mesh-free method. Using the developed solution framework, the effects of porosity and graphene characteristics, electromechanical loads, and layer thicknesses on the deflection behavior of the proposed FG piezoelectric porous nanocomposite sandwich plates (FG-PPNSPs) have been studied.The work described in this paper was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC under grant RGPIN-217525). The authors are grateful for their support

Gene cloning and expression of soluble thrombopoietin functional domain by harnessing Rosetta-gami expression system

Background: Thrombopoietin (TPO) is an important cytokine that has a critical role in regulating hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) proliferation and megakaryocyte differentiation. Because of scares amount of this protein in human plasma, in many biotechnological centers around the world, recombinant production of this protein has been carried out. This study was aiming to gene cloning and expression of recombinant thrombopoietin. Methods: This research is an experimental laboratory study carried out in Blood Transfusion Research Center, Tehran, Iran, from July 2016 to August 2017. At the beginning HepG2 cell line was cultured and RNA extraction was performed. Extracted RNA was used as template for cDNA synthesis and subsequently the synthesized cDNA was adopted to isolate TPO gene through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reaction using designed primers. After isolating the TPO sequence from HepG2 cell line, the designated sequence was inserted into pET32 vectors. Recombinant plasmid was amplified by meriting from DH5α replicating system. The amplified plasmids were sequenced via chain termination method. Next step was transforming the recombinant plasmid into Rosetta-gami bacteria to express the recombinant protein. In order to induce protein expression, an appropriate amount of isopropyl β-D-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) was added to growth media, then bacterial lysate of expression host was prepared and assayed via polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and western blotting test. Results: After sequencing of recombinant plasmid, it was confirmed that TPO sequence has been successfully colonized in adopted vector. Subsequent to induction of recombinant protein, total cell protein analysis affirmed that recombinant protein has been expressed in its soluble form at cytoplasmic condition. Location of expected recombinant protein band on polyacrylamide gel and reaction of recombinant protein with His-tag monoclonal antibody at western blotting was asserting that expressed protein is the one of interest. Conclusion: Rosetta-gami bacteria has capability of expressing recombinant thrombopoietin in its soluble form. By harnessing this method of recombinant protein expression, it would be possible to take advantage of high throughout bacterial expression system which would not produce inclusion body and its product doesn’t need further processing and refolding