Effectiveness of light pressure stroking massage on pain and fatigue of patients after coronary artery bypass graft surgery-A randomized clinical trial

زمینه و هدف: درد و خستگی از مشکلات شایع بعد از عمل بیماران تحت جراحی پیوند عروق کرونر می باشد. هدف از این مطالعه تعیین تأثیر ماساژ درمانی بر شدت درد و خستگی بعد از عمل بیماران تحت جراحی پیوند عروق کرونر بوده است. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه کارآزمایی بالینی تصادفی سازی شده، تعداد 72 نفر بیمار تحت عمل جراحی قرارگرفته عروق کرونر در بیمارستان شهید چمران شهر اصفهان، انتخاب شدند و بطور تصادفی در دو گروه مداخله و شاهد قرار گرفتند. بیماران گروه مداخله (36 نفر)، ماساژ استروک سطحی 20 دقیقه ای به مدت 4 جلسه در 4 روز پیاپی در روزهای 3 تا 6 بعد از عمل جراحی دریافت کردند و بیماران گروه شاهد تنها مراقبت های روتین را دریافت نمودند. متغیرهای درد و خستگی قبل و بعد از مداخله با استفاده از مقیاس قیاسی دیداری ثبت شدند. یافته ها: نتایج نشان داد که اختلاف معنی داری بین شدت درد و خستگی در دو گروه مداخله و شاهد بعد از انجام مداخله وجود داشته است (0/001>P). بطوریکه کاهش میانگین شدت درد و خستگی از روز اول تا چهارم بعد از عمل در گروه مداخله بیشتر از گروه شاهد بود. نتیجه گیری: استفاده از ماساژ استروک سطحی می تواند باعث کاهش درد و خستگی بعد از عمل بیماران تحت جراحی پیوند عروق کرونر شود و با توجه به سادگی و کم هزینه بودن این روش، شاید بتواند به عنوان مکمل مناسبی برای دارودرمانی و مداخلات بعد از عمل در این بیماران مورد استفاده قرار گیرد

Enhancement of an Air-Cooled Battery Thermal Management System Using Liquid Cooling with CuO and Al2O3 Nanofluids under Steady-State and Transient Conditions

Lithium-ion batteries are a crucial part of transportation electrification. Various battery thermal management systems (BTMS) are employed in electric vehicles for safe and optimum battery operation. With the advancement in power demand and battery technology, there is an increasing interest in enhancing BTMS’ performance. Liquid cooling is gaining a lot of attention recently due to its higher heat capacity compared to air. In this study, an air-cooled BTMS is replaced by a liquid cooled with nanoparticles, and the impacts of different nanoparticles and flow chrematistics are modeled. Furthermore, a unique approach that involves transient analysis is employed. The effects of nanofluid in enhancing the thermal performance of lithium-ion batteries are assessed for two types of nanoparticles (CuO and Al2O3) at four different volume concentrations (0.5%, 2%, 3%, and 5%) and three fluid velocities (0.05, 0.075, and 0.1 m/s). To simulate fluid flow behavior and analyze the temperature distribution within the battery pack, a conventional k-ε turbulence model is used. The results indicate that the cooling efficiency of the system can be enhanced by introducing a 5% volume concentration of nanofluids at a lower fluid velocity as compared to pure liquid. Al2O3 and CuO reduce the temperature by 7.89% and 4.73% for the 5% volume concentration, respectively. From transient analysis, it is also found that for 600 s of operation at the highest power, the cell temperature is within the safe range for the selected vehicle with nanofluid cooling. The findings from this study are expected to contribute to improving BTMS by quantifying the benefits of using nanofluids for battery cooling under both steady-state and transient conditions

SPARC 2022 book of abstracts

Welcome to the Book of Abstracts for the 2022 SPARC conference. Our conference is called “Moving Forwards” reflecting our re-emergence from the pandemic and our desire to reconnect our PGR community, in celebration of their research. PGRs have continued with their research endeavours despite many challenges, and their ongoing successes are underpinned by the support and guidance of dedicated supervisors and the Doctoral School Team. To recognise supervision excellence we will be awarding our annual Supervisor of the Year prizes, based on the wonderful nominations received from their PGR students.Once again, we have received a tremendous contribution from our postgraduate research community; with over 60 presenters, 12 Three-Minute Thesis finalists, and 20 poster presentations, the conference showcases our extraordinarily vibrant, inclusive, and resilient PGR community at Salford. This year there will be prizes to be won for ‘best in conference’ presentations, in addition to the winners from each parallel session. Audience members too could be in for a treat, with judges handing out spot prizes for the best questions asked, so don’t miss the opportunity to put your hand up. These abstracts provide a taster of the diverse and impactful research in progress and provide delegates with a reference point for networking and initiating critical debate. Take advantage of the hybrid format: in online sessions by posting a comment or by messaging an author to say “Hello”, or by initiating break time discussions about the amazing research you’ve seen if you are with us in person. Who knows what might result from your conversation? With such wide-ranging topics being showcased, we encourage you to take up this great opportunity to engage with researchers working in different subject areas from your own. As recent events have shown, researchers need to collaborate to meet global challenges. Interdisciplinary and international working is increasingly recognised and rewarded by all major research funders. We do hope, therefore, that you will take this opportunity to initiate interdisciplinary conversations with other researchers. A question or comment from a different perspective can shed new light on a project and could lead to exciting collaborations, and that is what SPARC is all about. SPARC is part of a programme of personal and professional development opportunities offered to all postgraduate researchers at Salford. More information about this programme is available on our website: Doctoral School | University of Salford. Registered Salford students can access full details on the Doctoral School hub: Doctoral School Hub - Home (sharepoint.com) You can follow us on Twitter @SalfordPGRs and please use the #SPARC2022 to share your conference experience.We particularly welcome taught students from our undergraduate and master’s programmes as audience members. We hope you enjoy the presentations on offer and that they inspire you to pursue your own research career. If you would like more information about studying for a PhD here at the University of Salford, your lecturers can advise, or you can contact the relevant PGR Support Officer; their details can be found at Doctoral School | University of Salford. We wish you a rich and rewarding conference experience

Towards the assembly of a minimal oscillator

Life must have started with lower degree of complexity and connectivity. This statement readily triggers the question how simple is the simplest representation of life? In different words and considering a constructive approach, what are the requirements for creating a minimal cell? This thesis sets the first step stones towards an ambitious goal of understanding fundamental principles of a minimal/synthetic life. The above-mentioned question has been addressed by two distinct but complementary investigation routes. In the top-down approach, in vivo reduction of genes of a living organism would reveal the minimal genome size that is essential to support life. Alternatively, in a bottom-up approach, essential cellular functions are constructed utilizing a minimal number of purified constituents for DNA, RNA and protein syntheses. Advances in such a protein-based in vitro minimal cell project has been owed to the recent development of the PURE system (Protein synthesis Using Recombinant Elements). The expression of genes into proteins is a fundamental and ubiquitous cellular process. The transfer of the DNA sequence information to proteins occurs in two steps forming the central dogma in molecular biology: the transcription of the gene in RNA and the subsequent translation of that RNA into a protein. During transcription the double-stranded DNA is copied by an RNA polymerase protein into a single stranded messenger RNA (mRNA). Translation is a more complex process involving many different components, with the ribosome as a key player. The synthesis of proteins from DNA templates inside lipid vesicles offers an elegant and unavoidable alternative to the exclusive use of purified constituents. By regulating the timely synthesis of the multiple proteins, the gene expression machinery is arguably at the heart of a programmable, genetically controlled, artificial cell. For a bimolecular assembly to be considered alive three major characteristics are inevitable: self-maintenance, self-replication and evolvability in response to the environmental signals. A distinguishing feature of a living cellular system, even in its simplest representation, is the compartment: a continuous membrane that acts as a functional interface to regulate the ionic and molecular exchanges with the environment. In Chapter 2, we established a porous matrix-assisted protocol to produce large and giant liposomes (micrometer size range) encapsulating the PURE system and DNA encoding a fluorescent reporter. The protocol describes immobilization of the liposomes on a glass coverslip and the methods to trigger internal gene expression and visualize those femtoliter-sized reactors using a laser scanning confocal microscope. We used several lipid compositions to better understand the microreactor properties. The results showed that gene expression is negatively influenced by the length of the phospholipid carbon chains. We believe that the main driving force for allocation of nutrients and tRNA across the membrane is the osmotic stress generated when diluting the liposomes in the feeding solution upon immobilization. Heterogeneity in the expression levels between individual vesicles is high and no obvious size dependency is observed. We developed a dual gene assay which proves that under this experimental condition, DNA concentration is not a limiting factor. Such a system provides a unique possibility to analyze compartmentalized gene expression inside individual vesicles over long time. To be able to rationally relate the measured protein expression signal to the encapsulation of multiple DNAs inside liposomes, in Chapter 3, we established the link between phenotype and genotype. The amounts of entrapped DNA molecules (the genotype) and synthesized proteins (the phenotype) were visualized by fluorescence confocal microscopy in single liposomes. We first showed that there exists no DNA crowding effect in giant liposomes. Our results suggest a compositional reorganization of DNA molecules within the first 30 min of the incubation, which leads to a large vesicle-to-vesicle heterogeneity. Moreover, we report no linear correlation between the amount of encapsulated genes and the level of output proteins. We then developed an assay based on expression of two orthogonally detectable fluorescent reporter proteins from two different DNA templates. Basically, the probabilities of single-color and double-color vesicles for three DNA concentrations were analyzed and compared to the expected values for Poisson statistics using the bulk DNA concentrations. The deviation of measured and Poisson probabilities was minimized when only 10 % of the bulk DNA was considered to be transcriptionally active. These findings will allow us to operate the expression of multiple genes in a controlled manner and to generate the output proteins with predictable dynamics in liposomes. An essential feature of a molecular assembly to be considered alive is self-reproduction, which implies that both the compartment and the genetic material supporting life self-replicate in a coordinated manner. A possible minimal divisome machinery in the absence of a cell wall would consist of FtsZ protofilaments anchored to the liposomes membrane by actin homologues, such as FtsA or ZipA. In Chapter 4, we investigated how membrane deforming proteins, such as NBAR, FtsZ and FtsA, could be integrated into the construction of a programmable minimal cell relying on gene expression inside liposomes. The aforementioned proteins were expressed in vitro from their corresponding genes. We then assessed liposome membrane sculpting activity of in situ expressed N-BAR protein in PURE system. Our results showed that the N-BAR domain protein could assemble onto the outer surface of liposomes and form tubular structures out of the membrane. Besides, we performed preliminary experiments on the in situ synthesis of full length FtsZ and FtsA from their corresponding gene. Oscillatory behaviors are fundamental in living organisms to regulate various functions in time and space. In Chapter 5, we aimed at utilizing our cell-free expression system as a platform for incorporation of regulatory networks towards achieving spatial and temporal dynamics of protein production. To be able to control the system's dynamics, the mRNA and protein lifetime has to be tunable. We achieved controlled degradation by supplementing the PURE system with purified MazF and ClpXP, which provides an additional level of control for mRNA and protein levels, respectively. We addressed the influence of the degradation machineries on transcription and translation. We then designed and characterized a number of genetic regulatory modules (two-stage cascade, repression, negative feedback) that will in the future be assembled into functional networks. The results presented in this thesis demonstrated that encapsulation of PURE system constituents in liposomes can be used as a primary experimental platform that allows us to implement various molecular machineries and regulatory circuits to recapitulate essential cell-like functions.BionanoscienceApplied Science

Spatial decision support systems for hospital layout design: A review

This study presents a systematic review of the literature on decision support for designing hospital layouts using spatial network analysis and/or simulation modelling. The review includes 102 articles, which are classified into five different categories concerning their layout-related challenges. Specifically, the categories include overcrowding, patient waiting times, visibility &amp; staff interaction, wayfinding &amp; walkability, and other issues such as hospital-acquired infections. The main finding is the cross-referenced table of different performance issues related to the hospital layout to different assessment methods, indicators, and quality criteria. The review suggests prospects for associating hospital design problems/challenges with spatial layout, as well as a framework for developing methods for layout representation, aggregation and relativization borrowing from the fields of transport planning and operations research. The main focus of this study lies in the spatial layout. Viewing the spatial complexity of a hospital as an indoor spatial environment is at least as complex as an urban environment, thus justifying a geographical approach; hence we expand the scope of the literature review to papers that may not directly address hospital design but have relations to spatial decision support systems.</p

Public transport risk assessment through fault tree analysis

This study focused on the public transport risk assessment in District one of ​​Tehran through Fault Tree Analysis involving the three criteria of human, vehicle and road in Haddon matrix. In fact, it examined the factors contributing to the occurrence of road accidents at several urban black spots within District 1. Relying on road safety checklists and survey of experts, this study made an effort to help urban managers to assess the risks in the public transport and prevent road accidents. Finally, the risk identification and assessment of public transport in District one yielded several results to answer the research questions. The hypotheses analysis suggested that safety issues involved in public transport are concerned by urban managers. The key reactive measures are investigation of accidents, identification of causes and correction of black spots. In addition to high costs, however, the reactive measures give rise to multiple operational problems such as traffic navigation and guaranteeing user safety in every operation. The case study highlighted the same fact. The macro-level management in the metropolis of Tehran is critical. The urban road casualties and losses can be curtailed by preventive measures such as continuous assessment of road safety

Experimental investigation of the extent of the impact of Halite precipitation on CO2 injection in deep saline aquifers

A laboratory investigation was carried out to experimentally determine the extent of the salt precipitation effects on the petrophysical properties of deep saline aquifer during CO2 storage. This was performed on selected core samples using laboratory core flooding process. The petrophysical properties (Porosity, Permeability) of the core sample were measured before core flooding using Helium Porosimetry and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to determine the morphology of the core samples. The core samples were saturated with brines of different salinities (5, 15, 25, wt% NaCl) and core flooding process was conducted at a simulated reservoir pressure of 1,000 psig, temperature of 45°C, with varying injection rates of 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 ml/min respectively. The obtained results indicated that the porosity and permeability decreased drastically as salinities increases, noticeably because the higher concentration of brine resulted in higher amounts of salt precipitation. Porosity reduction ranged between 0.75% to 6% with increasing brine salinity while permeability impairment ranged from 10% to 70% of the original permeability. The SEM images of the core samples after the flooding showed that salt precipitation not only plugged the pore spaces of the core matrix but also showed significant precipitation around the rock grains thereby showing an aggregation of the salts. This clearly proved that the reduction in the capacity of the rock is associated with salt precipitation in the pore spaces as well as the pore throats. Higher injection rates induced higher salt precipitation which caused reduction in porosity and permeability. This is attributed to the fact that; the higher injection of CO2 vaporizes the formation brine more significantly and thereby increasing brine concentration by removing the water content and enhancing precipitation of salt. These findings provide meaningful understanding and evaluation of the extent of salt precipitation on CO2 injectivity in saline reservoirs. The insight gained could be useful in simulation models to design better injectivity scenarios and mitigation techniques (Abstract copyright: SPE, 2020

Spatial decision support systems for hospital layout design: A review

This study presents a systematic review of the literature on decision support for designing hospital layouts using spatial network analysis and/or simulation modelling. The review includes 102 articles, which are classified into five different categories concerning their layout-related challenges. Specifically, the categories include overcrowding, patient waiting times, visibility &amp; staff interaction, wayfinding &amp; walkability, and other issues such as hospital-acquired infections. The main finding is the cross-referenced table of different performance issues related to the hospital layout to different assessment methods, indicators, and quality criteria. The review suggests prospects for associating hospital design problems/challenges with spatial layout, as well as a framework for developing methods for layout representation, aggregation and relativization borrowing from the fields of transport planning and operations research. The main focus of this study lies in the spatial layout. Viewing the spatial complexity of a hospital as an indoor spatial environment is at least as complex as an urban environment, thus justifying a geographical approach; hence we expand the scope of the literature review to papers that may not directly address hospital design but have relations to spatial decision support systems.History & ComplexityDesign InformaticsEnvironmental & Climate Desig