NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF PREMIXED FLAMES OF MULTI COMPONENT FUELS/AIR MIXTURES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

Combustion has been used for a long time as a means of energy extraction. However, in the recent years there has been further increase in air pollution, through pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, acid rain etc. To solve this problem, there is a need to reduce carbon and nitrogen oxides through lean burning, fuel dilution and usage of bi-product fuel gases. A numerical analysis has been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of several reduced mechanisms, in terms of computational time and accuracy. The cases were tested for the combustion of hydrocarbons diluted with hydrogen, syngas, and bi-product fuel in a cylindrical combustor. The simulations were carried out using the ANSYS Fluent 19.1. By solving the conservations equations, several global reduced mechanisms (2-5-10 steps) were obtained. The reduced mechanisms were used in the simulations for a 2D cylindrical tube with dimensions of 40 cm in length and 2.0 cm diameter. The mesh of the model included a proper fine quad mesh, within the first 7 cm of the tube and around the walls. By developing a proper boundary layer, several simulations were performed on hydrocarbon/air and syngas blends to visualize the flame characteristics. To validate the results “PREMIX and CHEMKIN” codes were used to calculate 1D premixed flame based on the temperature, composition of burned and unburned gas mixtures. Numerical calculations were carried for several hydrocarbons by changing the equivalence ratios (lean to rich) and adding small amounts of hydrogen into the fuel blends. The changes in temperature, radical formation, burning velocities and the reduction in NOx and CO2 emissions were observed. The results compared to experimental data to study the changes. Once the results were within acceptable range, different fuels compositions were used for the premixed combustion through adding H2/CO/CO2 by volume and changing the equivalence ratios and preheat temperatures, in the fuel blends. The results on flame temperature, shape, burning velocity and concentrations of radicals and emissions were observed. The flame speed was calculated by finding the surface area of the flame, through the mass fractions of fuel components and products conversions that were simulated through the tube. The area method was applied to determine the flame speed. It was determined that the reduced mechanisms provided results within an acceptable range. The variation of the inlet velocity had neglectable effects on the burning velocity. The highest temperatures were obtained in lean conditions (0.5-0.9) equivalence ratio and highest flame speed was obtained for Blast Furnace Gas (BFG) at elevated preheat temperature and methane-hydrogen fuels blends in the combustor. The results included; reduction in CO2 and NOx emissions, expansion of the flammable limit, under the condition of having the same laminar flow. The usage of diluted natural gases, syngas and bi-product gases provides a step in solving environmental problems and providing efficient energy

Exome sequencing identified rare variants in genes HSPG2 and ATP2B4 in a family segregating developmental dysplasia of the hip

Variant filtration process illustrating the exome filtering scheme in two affected individuals. Panel 1: Genes containing rare variants (1% in 1000G/ExAC/in-house database; absent from dbSNP) and in accordance with an autosomal dominant inheritance with incomplete penetrance (shared between affected samples III:5 and IV:2). ACOT8, ADCK1, AGMO, ANGPT4, ANKS3, ATP2B4, BARHL1, C12orf44, C18orf56, CACTIN, CCM2L, CEACAM4, CRISPLD2, CTAGE7P, CTSA, CTSE, DAGLB, DAZAP2, DCTN4, DENND1B, EDEM1, EMG1, FAM154A, FAM19A2, GSK3A, HIPK1, HMCN2, HNRNPUL1, HSPG2, INCENP, INTS1, IRG1, KCNIP4, KHSRP, LEPREL2, LPPR3, MAN1C1, MICALCL, MREG, MUC5B, NAV1, NEURL2, NPR2, NUCKS1, PCSK5, PDS5A, PLCG2, POMT1, PPL, PRDM7, PRKAB1, SEZ6L, SLC6A12, SLC7A5, SLIT2, ZCCHC8, ZNF335, ZNF648, ZNF780A. (JPG 128 kb

Hepatocellular Carcinoma Prediction and early Diagnosis of Hepatitis B and C viral infection using miR-122 and miR-223 in a sample of Iraqi patients.

    يُعد سرطان الخلايا الكبدية (HCC) أحد أكثر أنواع سرطانات الكبد خطورة، وهو ثالث أكثر أسباب الوفيات المرتبطة بالسرطان انتشارًا. يتعلق  العديد من الأمراض ومن ضمنها السرطان بالتعبير الجيني غير الطبيعي لجزيئات الرنا الصغيرة micro RNA والتي تلعب دورا مهما في الوظائف البيولوجية للخلية ومن اهمها الموت المبرمج والتكاثر والتمايز والايض الخلوي .هدفت الدراسة الى اختبار فرضية استخدام miR-122 وmiR-223    كمؤشر حيوي محتمل في تشخيص وتطور سرطان الخلايا الكبدية HCC وكل من العدوى الفايروسية HBV وHCV عن طريق استخدام تقنية ال PCR الكمي . اجريت تقنية ال PCR الكمي لتحليل التعبير الجيني للمؤشرين الحيويين    miR-122 وmiR-223   ل (٦٤) عينة مصل تم الحصول عليها من مرضى مصابين بسرطان الكبد ممن كانوا يخضعون للعلاج ومجموعة لم يخضعوا للعلاج وفي بداية تشخيص المرض لهم. هذا فضلا عن عينات من مرضى مصابين بالتهاب الكبد الفيروسي بنوعيه B و C بالإضافة الى عينات مجموعة المقارنة من المتطوعين الاصحاء.  أظهرت النتائج وجود فروق معنوية كبيرة بين مجموعات المرضى الثلاثة (سرطان الكبد، التهاب الكبد الفيروسي B و C ) وبين مجموعة السيطرة ( الاصحاء) في التعبير الجيني لكلا المؤشرين الحيويين     , وبانخفاض معنوي في مستوى التعبير الجيني  لكل من miR-223 و  miR-122 على التوالي وبمستوى معنوي  .P value (≤0.0001)  علاوة على ذلك، قمنا بمقارنة التعبير الجيني لهذين المؤشرين بين عينات مصل المرضى الذين تم تشخيص مرض سرطان الكبد (HCC) لديهم ولم يبدا نظامهم العلاجي بعد وبين عينات المرضى المصابين بسرطان الكبد وهم تحت سير البروتوكول العلاجي لهم.  أظهرت النتائج فرق معنوي كبير جدا بين العينات في مستوى التعبير الجيني حيث كان تعبير miR-122 معدوم تقريبا في عينات المرضى الذين لم يخضعوا الى العلاج بعد، مقارنة بالارتفاع النسبي الحاصل في التعبير الجيني لهذا المؤشر الحيوي في المرضى الخاضعين للعلاج بالمقارنة مع مجموعة الاصحاء. نتائج مشابهة ظهرت في المؤشر الحيوي miR-223 أيضا لنفس العينات وبفروق معنوية عاليةP value ≤0.0001 لكلا المؤشرين على التوالي. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، أظهرت عينات المصابين بالتهاب الكبد الفيروسي بنوعيه B و C انخفاضا معنويا بمستويات التعبير الجيني لكلا المؤشرين الحيويين  miR-122,miR-223مقارنتا بمجموعة الاصحاء P value ≤0.0001 على التوالي. هذه النتائج تستحق المزيد من التحقيق لأغراض التشخيص ومتابعة العلاج والتنبؤ بالمرض باستخدام كلا المؤشرين الحيويين.    Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third most common cause of cancer-related death. Therefore, it is critical for researchers to understand molecular biology in greater depth.  In several diseases including cancer, abnormal miRNA expression has been linked to apoptosis, proliferation, differentiation, and metastasis. Many miRNAs have been studied in relation to cancer, including miR-122, miR-223, and others. Hepatitis B and C viruses are the most important global risk factors for HCC. This study is intended to test whether serum miRNAs serve as a potential biomarker for both HCC and viral infections HBV and C. The expression of miRNA in 64 serum samples was analyzed by RT-qPCR. Compared to healthy volunteers, HCC patients' sera expressed significantly lower levels of miR-122 and miR-223. Furthermore, we compared the expression of these miRNAs between early-diagnosed HCC patients and healthy controls. There was a significant difference between miR-122 expression in HCC sera and healthy volunteers' sera (0.000 and 0.253, respectively), with a P value of <0.0001. Early diagnostic patients without treatment had completely deleted miR-122 expression levels, while those treated had slightly elevated levels. Clearly, miR-122 has been identified as a biomarker for early detection and follow-up of HCC treatment. HBV and HCV specimens expressed significantly lower levels of miRNA than normal samples with a P value of <0.0001. It is recommended that these findings be further investigated for diagnostic purposes. Further, these miRNAs are highly specific for diagnosing HCC, HBV, and HCV, making them valuable therapeutic indicators

Postgraduate pedagogy in pandemic times: Online forums as facilitators of access to dialogic interaction and scholarly voices

In 2020, when the switch to remote teaching and learning required redesigning asynchronous on-line versions of face-to-face courses, we were concerned about whether access to engaged and dialogic learning could be facilitated in this new space. In attempting to address this concern we asked students in a B Ed Honours course to post, in an online forum, their reflective responses to weekly readings and to each other’s posts. This discussion forum became the engine of the course. With their permission, the posts of students in the 2021 cohort, together with their summative reflective reading response assignment, were analysed in order to understand different kinds of dialogic interactions and their affordances for reducing the potential alienation of asynchronous learning. One of the key findings that emerged from this analysis is the role of dialogic interaction in facilitating the development of personal, professional and scholarly voices which contributed to epistemic access.  Our analysis was informed by the theoretical work of Bakhtin on the dialogic and by theoretical and empirical work of scholars in the field of critical pedagogies. We use examples from the writing of a ‘stronger’ and a ‘weaker’ student to illustrate how students negotiated roles and positions for themselves by appropriating and using the textual resources available on the forum. We argue for the value of sustained practice in ‘writing about reading’, of reading each other’s writing and of ‘writing back’ to one another on-line, for the gradual acquisition of a range of confident voices and for enhanced understanding of module content

L-Tryptophan as Fluorescent Probe for Determination of Folic Acid in Some Pharmaceutical Products

A new fluorescent probe L-Tryptophan was reported for the determination of folic acid (FA), based on its quenching effect of the fluorescence intensity of L-Tryptophan. The concentration of folic acid was proportional to the quenched fluorescence intensity of L-Tryptophan at an emission wavelength of 365 nm in Britton– Robinson (BR) buffer solution of pH 7. Optimized conditions of pH, time, order of addition of the reagent, potential interferences, concentrations of L-Tryptophan and buffer were investigated. Folic acid was determined in a linear range of 2.0 to 16.0 μg ml-1 with a correlation coefficient R2 0.9974. The limits of detection LOD and quantification LOQ values were 0.09 μg ml-1 and 0.27 μg ml-1, respectively. The standard deviation (RSD) values for five replicated measurements of 2, 8, 16 μg ml-1 folic acid were between 0.23 % and 1.07%. This method is efficient for routine analysis and quality control assay as it is relatively interferences free

Analisis Penduduk Miskin Berdasarkan Penjualan Pulsa Telepon Genggam Dengan Menggunakan Web Mining

Pada setiap penyajian data dari Pemerintah kerap kali menimbulkan ketidakpuasan dari berbagai pihak, salah satunya adalah data mengenai penduduk miskin. Banyak pihak yang mengatakan bahwa sebenarnya penduduk miskin lebih besar dari pada data yang diinformasikan dari pemerintah, seperti dari BPS. Mengingat hal ini, maka pendekatan web mining bisa memberikan sebuah gambaran berbagai sumber data yang menyatakan besaran nilai dari penduduk miskin dan dapat dilakukan perbandingan nilai data. Dan untuk lebih menarik, perlu dilihat juga data pendamping seperti besarnya nilai belanja pulsa telepon genggam. Web mining akan memberikan gambaran kelengkapan data dari internet lebih banyak walaupun data yang dimiliki bisa berbeda secara ekstrim. At each presentation of data from the government often lead to dissatisfaction from various parties, one of which is data about the poor people. Many parties who say that poor people actually bigger than the data that informed by the government, such as from the BPS. Refer to this isue, the web mining approach can provide a variety of data sources that states the amount of the value of the population poor and can do a comparison of data values. And for more interesting, also need to see data assistants such as the size of the value of free mobile phones. Web mining will give you a completeness of data from the internet although more data that can be owned by a different extrem

Proposal of multi-service (MS) code to differentiate quality of services for OCDMA systems

The emergence of a broad range of network-driven applications (e.g. multimedia, online gaming) rises the demand for network environments with ability to provide multiservice capabilities with diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, a new code family of novel spreading sequences, called Multi-Service (MS) code has been constructed in order to support multiple services in OCDMA system. The performance of the proposed code is demonstrated using mathematical analysis. Different numbers of basic users are used to support triple-play services (audio, data and video) with different QoS requirements. Results indicate that the technique can clearly provide a relative QoS differentiation. Lower value of basic users can support larger number of subscribers as well as delivering better performance in terms of acceptable BER of 10-9 at fixed code weight

Reevaluation Body Weight and Age with Standardized Uptake Value in the Liver Cancer for [18F] FDG PET/CT

Standardized uptake values, often known as SUVs, are frequently utilized in the process of measuring 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in malignancies . In this work, we investigated the relationships between a wide range of parameters and the standardized uptake values (SUV) found in the liver.  Examinations with 18F-FDG PET/CT were performed on a total of 59 patients who were suffering from liver cancer. We determined the SUV in the liver of patients who had a normal BMI (between 18.5 and 24.9) and a high BMI (above 30) obese. After adjusting each SUV based on the results of the body mass index (BMI) and body surface area (BSA) calculations, which were determined for each patient based on their height and weight. Under a variety of different circumstances, SUVs were evaluated based on their means and standard deviations. Scatterplots were created to illustrate the various weight and SUV variances. In addition to that, the SUVs that are appropriate for each age group were determined. SUVmax in the liver was statistical significantly in obese BMI and higher  BSA, p- value  <0.001).  Age appeared to be the most important predictor of SUVmax and was significantly associated with the liver SUVmax with mean value (58.93±13.57). Conclusions: Age is a factor that contributes to variations in the SUVs of the liver. These age-related disparities in SUV have been elucidated as a result of our findings, which may help clinicians  in doing more accurate assessments of malignancies. However, the SUV overestimates the metabolic activity of each and every individual, and this overestimation is far more severe in people who are obese compared to people who have a body mass index that is normal (BMI).  

Sequence analysis of the VSX1 and SOD1 genes in families with Keratoconus and a review of the literature

AbstractObjectiveKeratoconus (KC) is a non-inflammatory disorder of the cornea in which the cornea becomes thin and conical, inducing myopia and irregular astigmatism and resulting in mild to marked impairment of vision. The present study was designed to screen two candidate KC genes to identify pathogenic sequence variants responsible for KC in Saudi families.MethodsPeripheral blood samples from members of five Saudi families with KC from the Northern region were collected. Genomic DNA was isolated, and bidirectional sequencing was performed of all coding exons of VSX1 and SOD1 genes using Sanger sequencing.ResultsAll five of the KC families showed a pattern of autosomal recessive inheritance. Phenotyping of these families was performed by a senior ophthalmologist. Sequence analysis of the VSX1 and SOD1 genes failed to reveal any pathogenic sequence variant that could account for KC in the affected individuals.ConclusionOur failure to detect sequence variants in two of the known KC associated genes triggers an interest in other known KC candidate genes, including miR-184, DOCK9, IL1RN and SLC4A11. Future genotyping with dense SNP arrays followed by exome sequencing in these families will be a useful approach to identify the gene(s) underlying KC in this Saudi cohort, which may be different from those reported elsewhere

Molecular and ionic diffusion in aqueous - deep eutectic solvent mixtures: probing inter-molecular interactions using PFG NMR.

Pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR has been used to probe self-diffusion of molecular and ionic species in aqueous mixtures of choline chloride (ChCl) based deep eutectic solvents (DESs), in order to elucidate the effect of water on motion and inter-molecular interactions between the different species in the mixtures, namely the Ch(+) cation and hydrogen bond donor (HBD). The results reveal an interesting and complex behaviour of such mixtures at a molecular level. In general, it is observed that the hydroxyl protons ((1)H) of Ch(+) and the hydrogen bond donor have diffusion coefficients significantly different from those measured for their parent molecules when water is added. This indicates a clear and significant change in inter-molecular interactions. In aqueous Ethaline, the hydroxyl species of Ch(+) and HBD show a stronger interaction with water as water is added to the system. In the case of Glyceline, water has little effect on both hydroxyl proton diffusion of Ch(+) and HBD. In Reline, it is likely that water allows the formation of small amounts of ammonium hydroxide. The most surprising observation is from the self-diffusion of water, which is considerably higher that expected from a homogeneous liquid. This leads to the conclusion that Reline and Glyceline form mixtures that are inhomogeneous at a microscopic level despite the hydrophilicity of the salt and HBD. This work shows that PFG NMR is a powerful tool to elucidate both molecular dynamics and inter-molecular interactions in complex liquid mixtures, such as the aqueous DES mixtures.Carmine D’Agostino would like to acknowledge Wolfson College, Cambridge, for supporting his re search activities. The authors would also like to thank Salahaddin University (EIA) and the University of Kufa (AYMA) for funding studentships.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from RSC at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/CP/C5CP01493J#!divAbstract