Clinical efficacy of convalescent plasma for treatment of COVID-19 infections: Results of a multicenter clinical study

Since Dec. 2019 the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has infected millions and claimed life of several hundred thousand worldwide. However, so far no approved vaccine or drug therapy is available for treatment of virus infection. Convalescent plasma has been considered a potential modality for COVID-19 infection. One hundred eighty-nine COVID-19 positive patients including 115 patients in plasma therapy group and 74 patients in control group, registered in the hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 infection, entered this multi-center clinical study. Comparison of outcomes including all-cause mortality, total hospitalization days and patients� need for intubation between the two patient groups shows that total of 98 (98.2 ) of patients who received convalescent plasma were discharged from hospital which is substantially higher compared to 56 (78.7 ) patients in control group. Length of hospitalization days was significantly lower (9.54 days) in convalescent plasma group compared with that of control group (12.88 days). Only 8 patients (7) in convalescent plasma group required intubation while that was 20 in control group. This clinical study provides strong evidence to support the efficacy of convalescent plasma therapy in COVID-19 patients and recommends this treatment for management of these patients. Clinical efficacy, immediate availability and potential cost effectiveness could be considered as main advantages of convalescent plasma therapy. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Fog data management: A vision, challenges, and future directions

Cloud computing with its key facets and its inherent advantages still faces several challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. The distance among the IoT end devices and cloud computing might be a problem for latency-sensitive applications such as catastrophe management and content transference applications. Fog computing is a novel paradigm to address such issues that playacts a significant role in massive and real-time data management systems in an IoT environment. Particularly IoT data management by fog computing is one important phase for latency reduction in latency-sensitive applications and necessary to generate more skilled knowledge and intelligent decisions. In this study, we used the SLR (systematic literature review) method to survey fog data management to understand the various topics and main contexts in this domain that have been newly offered. The target of this article is classifying and analyzing the researches about the fog data management domain which has been released from 2014 to 2019. A context-based taxonomy is offered for fog data management including data processing, data storage and data security based on the context of papers that are elected with the SLR method in our study. Based on presented technical taxonomy, the grouped papers in any context are compared with each other pursuant to some metrics of fog data management reference model. Then, for any selected research, the new findings, advantages, and weaknesses are debated. Finally, based on studies the open issues in fog data management and their related challenges for future researches are highlighted. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Experimental study on thermo-physical and rheological properties of stable and green reduced graphene oxide nanofluids: Hydrothermal assisted technique

In this study a dehydration hydrothermal technique has been used to introduce a simple, environmentally friendly and facile method for manufacturing highly dispersed reduced graphene oxide for improving the thermo-physical and rheological properties of heat transfer liquids. The hydrothermal reduction of graphene oxide was verified by various characterizations methods such as UV–visible absorption spectroscopy, Zeta potential, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. A thorough investigation was conducted on the thermo-physical properties of reduced graphene oxide at concentrations of 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, and 0.08 wt% under different temperatures. Significant improvements in electrical and thermal conductivity were obtained by adding a small amount of hydrothermal-assisted reduced graphene oxide (h-rGO) in the suspension. The viscosity and density remained relatively unchanged with the increase of concentrations where the pH was maintained within the desirable value, despite the fact that no additive was used during the reduction process. It is noteworthy to highlight that the h-rGO aqueous suspensions have shown Newtonian behavior. Results indicated that the h-rGO could be employed as a promising additive for conventional heat transfer liquids for different thermal applications