Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, different polymers are utilized for controlling the release rate of iodine in drinking water to counteract iodine deficiency. Polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride and ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer are used to fabricate polymeric reservoirs of Nal. Zero-order release kinetics with different release rates has been achieved through choosing different materials and various formulation factors. The experimental results are consistent with the expectation that by using a polymer with a greater permeability or a device with a large release area, higher release rate could be achieved  

Scoliosis, kyphosis, and bone fracture are health problems, especially of the elderly throughout the world. The vertebra protects the spinal cord. Any impairment to the vertebra can lead to pain and nervousness. NiTi alloy (Nitinol) helps to resolve the problem by fulfilling such requirements as for strength, durability, resistance to wear, and shockwave damping which is due to the shape memory effect. Nitinol medical applications have so far been restricted to surgical devices and orthopaedics. Little has been said about Nitinol use for medication of the spinal vertebra disorder. This article appraises the potential features of Nitinol for vertebral implantation and therapeutic prescription... 

Since expertise elicited from past resolved cases plays an important role in medical application and images acquired from various cases have a great contribution to diagnosis of the abnormalities, Content based medical image retrieval has become an active research area for many scientists, In this article we proposed a new framework to retrieve visually similar images from a large database, in which visual relevance is regarded as much as the semantic category similarity, we used optimized wavelet transform as the multi-resolution analysis of the images and extracted various statistical SGLDM features from different resolutions then after reducing feature space we used error correcting codes... 

Because of its unique properties, graphene has attracted the attentions of many academic research groups and recently, the industry. One of the promising applications of the graphene is in micro/nano-sensors, e.g. using it as a pressure sensor. To use it in mechanical-based nano-sensors, it is very important to investigate the mechanical behavior of the nano-sized graphene sheet and its sensitivity to the medium changes applied on its faces. In this work, we use the molecular dynamics MD method and simulate the behavior of graphene sheet under differential water pressure influences. In this regard, a square straight monolayer graphene sheet is placed as a separator diaphragm between two... 

Flow sensors play a critical role in monitoring flow parameters, including rate, velocity, direction, and rotation frequency. In this paper, inspired by biological hair cells in the human vestibular system, an innovative flow sensor is developed based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel nanocomposites with a maze-like network of vertically grown graphene nanosheets (VGNs). The VGNs/PVA hydrogel absorbs a copious amount of water when immersed in water, making the sensor highly sensitive to tiny stimuli underwater. The sensor demonstrates a high sensitivity (5.755 mV (mm s−1)−1) and extremely low velocity detection (0.022 mm s−1). It also reveals outstanding performance in detecting... 

Flow sensors play a critical role in monitoring flow parameters, including rate, velocity, direction, and rotation frequency. In this paper, inspired by biological hair cells in the human vestibular system, an innovative flow sensor is developed based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel nanocomposites with a maze-like network of vertically grown graphene nanosheets (VGNs). The VGNs/PVA hydrogel absorbs a copious amount of water when immersed in water, making the sensor highly sensitive to tiny stimuli underwater. The sensor demonstrates a high sensitivity (5.755 mV (mm s−1)−1) and extremely low velocity detection (0.022 mm s−1). It also reveals outstanding performance in detecting... 

Flow sensors play a critical role in monitoring flow parameters, including rate, velocity, direction, and rotation frequency. In this paper, inspired by biological hair cells in the human vestibular system, an innovative flow sensor is developed based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel nanocomposites with a maze-like network of vertically grown graphene nanosheets (VGNs). The VGNs/PVA hydrogel absorbs a copious amount of water when immersed in water, making the sensor highly sensitive to tiny stimuli underwater. The sensor demonstrates a high sensitivity (5.755 mV (mm s−1)−1) and extremely low velocity detection (0.022 mm s−1). It also reveals outstanding performance in detecting... 

During the recent years, some Mg based alloys have extensively been considered as a new generation of degradable and absorbable bio-medical materials. In this work, the Mg–2Zn–1Gd–1Ca (wt%) alloy as a new metallic bio-material was produced by the casting process followed by the heat treatment. The samples of the alloy were solution treated at temperatures of 500, 550, and 600 °C and then quench aged at temperatures of 125, 150, and 175 °C. The results of SEM-EDS examinations indicated that the alloy microstructure consists of α-Mg matrix and the Ca2Mg6Zn3 and Mg3Gd2Zn3 secondary phases. With regard to the results of Vickers hardness test, the temperatures of 500 °C and 150 °C were selected... 

This paper presents closed loop simulation of a CMOS-MEMS force sensor for biomedical applications employing an optimal proportional-integral-derivative controller. Since the dynamic behavior of the sensor under investigation is nonlinear the iterative feedback tuning approach was proposed for optimal gains tuning of the proposed controller. Simulation results presented in this research illustrate that the proposed controller suppresses the undesired in-plane vibration induced by environment or gripper 40 times faster than the nonlinear controller proposed in the literature. To suppress the maximum input disturbance the maximum voltage was approximately 18 V which was less than the pull-in... 

A novel nanocomposite of ZnO-PbO with flower-like nanostructure was fabricated from zinc acetate and lead nitrate as principle raw materials via an in situ process. The novelty of this study consists in the use of a common approach for fabricating of ZnO and PbO nanoparticles simultaneously. From these experiments the conclusion might be drawn that Zn(NH4) 2 4+ ions and Pb(OH)2 act as precursors for the nucleation and growth of ZnO and PbO respectively under microwave irradiation. The precursors formation were carried at two stages: reaction between zinc ions and lead nitrate with ammonium ion and hydroxide sodium respectively. The average crystalline size of Zno and PbO has been analysed by... 

Stimuli responsive hydrogels (SRHs) are smart materials with reversible changes in their properties through the environmental stimulus variations. Although SRHs have been used in various medical applications such as sensors, drug release systems and, etc., they are still being actively researched on other sectors such as functional textiles and smart clothing. One of the best methods to produce textiles with more functionality is smart finishing of textile by surface modifying stimuli responsive hydrogels. In this paper, literatures on SRHs applications, methods and application of some SRHs on textile have been thoroughly discussed  

Monitoring the respiratory signal is crucial in many medical applications. Traditional methods for the respiration measurement are normally based on measuring the volume of air inhaled and exhaled by lungs (like spirometer) or oxygen saturation in blood. However, these methods have numerous challenges including their high cost and not being accessible in some cases. In this paper, an algorithm for deriving the respiratory signal from ECG signal is proposed, which is based on other proposed algotithms. This algorithm uses the cubic spline interpolation (CSI) of R-waves in ECG to derive the respiratory signal. The CSI algorithm is made efficient with respect to ECG features in order to reduce... 

Over the last decade, nanoparticles used as protein carriers have opened new avenues for a variety of biomedical applications. The main concern for these applications is changes in biological activity of immobilized proteins due to conformational changes on the surface of the carrier. To evaluate this concern, the preparation and biocatalyst activity of α-chymotrypsin-Fe 3O4 @ Au core/shell nanoparticles were investigated. First, Fe3O4 @ Au core/shell nanoparticles were synthesized by coprecipitation method and citrate reduction of HAuCl 4. TEM imaging revealed a core size of 13 ± 3 nm and a shell thickness of 4 ± 1 nm for synthesized nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to study... 

The catalytic activity of Pt/Ni/TiO 2 nanotubes electrode toward glucose has been studied. Fabrication of Pt/Ni nanostructures was done in a single-bath solution through electrochemical pulse method by changing the deposition potential between -0.3 and -4 V vs. SCE, respectively. The resulting modified electrode represented high conductivity due to the effective presence of metallic components and uniform surface area caused by dispersion of Pt and Ni nanostructures. The scanning electron microscopy images also confirmed that a large amount of metals colonies were well-dispersed at the edge of the TiO 2 nanotubes. In addition, the Pt/Ni TiO 2 nanotubes modified electrode exhibited an... 

On-chip accurate clock references are one of the essential building blocks in fully integrated Systems-On-Chips (SOC). In this paper, a low phase noise, temperature and supply voltage independent clock reference is presented. It provides the reference frequency for a biomedical implantable system. The simulated phase noise at 100 KHz offset from 2MHz carrier is 113dBc/Hz. Simulations show the frequency remains within 0.34% of the nominal oscillation frequency in the operating voltage range of 1.7 - 1.9 V without any calibration and its change in the temperature range of 20-to100C is 0.5%. The circuit consumes 77W and is designed in a 0.18m technology with 1.8V supply voltage  

Medical applications of rapid prototyping have an increasing trend, making the future of RP more and more promising. These applications may include design, development, and manufacture of medical devices and instrumentation, as well as implant design, anatomical modeling, surgical planning, surgical implants, and prosthesis fabrication. This paper provides a new methodology for customized hip prosthesis that could provide high accuracy of femoral canal reconstruction via 3D modeling of prosthesis stem, 3D modeling of prosthesis neck, and facilitating the communication between the designer and surgeon. Combining RP technologies and rapid tooling with this novel custom-made hip prosthesis,... 

A biocompatible ferrofluid have been prepared by coprecipitation of FeCl 2.4H 2O and FeCl 3.6H 2O under ultrasonic irradiation and with NaOH as alkaline agent. Cystein was also used as capping agent in the solution. Magnetic properties of the produced ferrofluid were then determined by VSM test and magnetite nanoparticles were characterized by XRD and TEM techniques. The effect of surfactant to Fe ion weight ratio was also studied during this project by using two different amount of Dextran. Results showed the presence of a biocompatible superparamagnetic ferrofluid including magnetite nanoparticles with particle size ranging under 20 nm. The increase in the surfactant content results in the... 

This paper reports the design of an optimal controller to prevent suppressvertical vibration due to undesired out of plane excitations generated by environment or gripper during manipulation for a CMOS-MEMS Nano-Newton capacitive force sensor applied for biomedical applications. Undesired out of plane excitations generated by environment or gripper during manipulation is the most prevalent source of vertical vibration in this type of sensors. To suppress the vibrational movement a PZT 5A is used as actuation mechanism. Discrete element method DEM model and Modal analysis were used to find dominant natural frequencies and mode shape vectors. To eliminate out of plane excitation an optimal... 

Some sources transmit periodic and quasi periodic sparse pulse trains in the environment and a number of sensors might receive them through a single channel simultaneously. It is usually our interest to know which pulse belongs to which source. This identification process has wide applications in communications, radar system, medical applications, and neural systems. Blind source separation (BSS) is one solution for this problem. This paper proposed a geometrical approach to solve BSS problem when observations are whitened data and are obtained from the linear mixtures of 2-valued sparse signals (such as sparse pulse trains). In other words, the proposed approach aims to estimate a rotation... 

A bilateral nonlinear adaptive impedance controller is proposed for the control of multi-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) teleoperation systems. In this controller, instead of conventional position and/or force tracking, the impedance of the nonlinear teleoperation system is controlled. The controller provides asymptotic tracking of two impedance models in Cartesian coordinates for the master and slave robots. The proposed bilateral controller can be used in different medical applications, such as telesurgery and telerehabilitation, where the impedance of the robot in interaction with human subject is of great importance. The parameters of the two impedance models can be adjusted according to the...