Application of the mass transfer model for describing nonequilibrium transport of HOCs through natural geosorbents

Column experiments of nonsorbing and sorbing solutes were conducted in sandy aquifer material. Results of the column experiments were analyzed using a numerical nonequilibrium mass transfer model (designated as dispersed flow, film and particle diffusion model, DF-FPDM), an equilibrium advection-dispersion model (designated as dispersed flow, local equilibrium model, DF-LEM) as well as a nonequilibrium two region (mobile-immobile) advection-diffusion model (designated as homogeneous solid diffusion model, HSDM). Results of the analyses revealed that in all experiments the experimental BTCs are much better predicted by the DF-FPDM than by DF-LEM and HSDM. The relative influence of different processes (film diffusion, intraparticle diffusion and dispersion) can be identified by dimensionless mass transfer parameters N(F), N(S) and N(D). Their plausibility can be compared with the well-known advection-dispersion-based equilibrium model. In general, spreading and asymmetry of sorbing solute BTCs can be explained with the DF-LEM and HSDM, but the identification of different processes and their influence on the total transport processes can only be ascertained with a model like DF-FPDM.     

Phase behavior modelling of asphaltene precipitation utilizing MLP-ANN approach

Since the sedimentation of heavy hydrocarbons such as asphaltenes, is the highlighted concern in production and operational, many studies were focused on this challenge in the petroleum industry. Therefore, the petroleum engineers should access to the asphaltene precipitation as an essential factor in order to conquer its problems. In this study, an empirical model for prediction asphaltene precipitation by multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN) is offered that takes the effect of the temperature, dilution ratio, and molecular weight for different n-alkanes. The output of this model showed 0.9999 for correlation coefficient (R²) and 0.000495 for mean squared error (MSE). This value illustrates the high quality of this model in compare of other available models. So far, MLP-ANN can offer significant accuracy in predicting asphaltene precipitation of asphaltene and other heavy oil.     

Flaxseed Oil Supplementation Improve Gene Expression Levels of PPAR-γ, LP(a), IL-1 and TNF-α in Type 2 Diabetic Patients with Coronary Heart Disease

This study was carried out to determine the effects of flaxseed oil administration on gene expression levels related to insulin, lipid and inflammation in overweight diabetic patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). This randomized double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial was conducted among 60 diabetic patients with CHD. Subjects were randomly allocated into two groups to intake either 1000 mg n‐3 fatty acid from flaxseed oil containing 400 mg α‐Linolenic acid [ALA (18:3n‐3)] (n = 30) or placebo (n = 30) twice a day for 12 weeks. Gene expression related to insulin, lipid and inflammation were quantified in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of diabetic patients with CHD with RT‐PCR method. Results of RT‐PCR demonstrated that after the 12‐week intervention, compared with the placebo, flaxseed oil supplementation could up‐regulate gene expression of peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor gamma (PPAR‐γ) (P = 0.02) in PBMC of diabetic patients with CHD. In addition, compared with the placebo, taking flaxseed oil supplements down‐regulated gene expression levels of lipoprotein(a) [LP(a)] (P = 0.001), interleukin‐1 (IL‐1) (P = 0.001) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF‐α) (P = 0.02) in PBMC of diabetic patients with CHD. We did not observe any significant effect of flaxseed oil supplementation on gene expression levels of low‐density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR), IL‐8 and transforming growth factor beta (TGF‐β) in PBMC of diabetic patients with CHD. Overall, flaxseed oil supplementation for 12 weeks in diabetic patients with CHD significantly improved gene expression levels of PPAR‐γ, LP(a), IL‐1 and TNF‐α, but did not influence LDLR, IL‐8 and TGF‐β.     

Modelling Equitable and Reasonable Water Sharing in Transboundary Rivers: the Case of Sirwan-Diyala River

There are over 260 transboundary river and lake basins in the world that many of them are facing great challenges of water sharing between riparian countries concerned. The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, entered into force in 2014, includes articles and factors on water sharing which have not been completely used for modelling of the basins yet. In this paper, legal aspects (i.e. Articles 5, 6, 7 and 10 of the Convention) are integrated with a technical approach for water allocation in transboundary rivers. For this purpose, a new conceptual model is developed for quantification of the Convention provisions concerning equitable and reasonable water sharing. The method is applied to the Sirwan-Diyala transboundary river shared by Iran and Iraq. Some indicators are developed and quantified for determination of water shares of the riparian countries and different scenarios considering extreme and equal weights of the factors are defined. The basin is simulated by WEAP model to evaluate effects of the scenarios on up- and downstream of the basin. Five demand management alternatives comprising increasing of irrigation efficiency and eliminating second cultivation are proposed as appropriate measures for elimination or mitigation of possible significant harm. The proposed technical-legal approach paves the way for enhancing bargaining potentials of the riparian countries and increasing their cooperation to achieve a win-win solution in using waters of transboundary rivers.     

A closed-loop supply chain configuration considering environmental impacts: a self-adaptive NSGA-II algorithm

Applied Intelligence - Configuration of a supply chain network is a critical issue that contributes to choose the best combination for a set of facilities in order to attain an effective and...     

Alignment of protein sequences using secondary structure: a modified dynamic programming method

A method for comparison of protein sequences based on theirprimary and secondary structure is described. Protein sequencesare annotated with predicted secondary structures (using a modifiedChou and Fasman method). Two lettered code sequences are generated(Xx, where X is the amino acid and x is its annotated secondarystructure). Sequences are compared with a dynamic programmingmethod (STRALIGN) that includes a similarity matrix for boththe amino acids and secondary structures. The similarity valuefor each paired two-lettered code is a linear combination ofsimilarity values for the paired amino acids and their annotatedsecondary structures. The method has been applied to eight globinproteins (28 pairs) for which the X-ray structure is known.For protein pairs with high primary sequence similarity (>45%),STRALIGN alignment is identical to that obtained by a dynamicprogramming method using only primary sequence information.However, alignment of protein pairs with lower primary sequencesimilarity improves significantly with the addition of secondarystructure annotation. Alignment of the pair with the least primarysequence similarity of 16% was improved from 0 to 37% ‘correct’alignment using this method. In addition, STRALIGN was successfullyapplied to seven pairs of distantly related cytochrome c proteins,and three pairs of distantly related picornavirus proteins.     

The influence of operating conditions on the dense gas precipitation of model proteins

Dense gas techniques provide a suite of clean technology options for the processing of pharmaceuticals. Monodisperse, micron‐sized particles can be produced at mild operating temperatures and with negligible solvent residue. In this study, protein was precipitated from organic solutions using dense carbon dioxide as antisolvent. The gas antisolvent precipitation process (GAS) was used to produce biologically active lysozyme, insulin, and myoglobin powders. The effects of operating temperature, solute concentration and the rate of antisolvent addition on the morphology, size, activity and residual solvent concentration of lysozyme and insulin precipitates have been examined. The powders produced consisted of uniformly sized non‐aggregated spherical particles. Precipitate size was controlled between 0.05 µm and 2.0 µm by changes to the solvent and antisolvent compositions. In general the concentration of residual organic solvent was found to be dependent on the mass of antisolvent used during the washing cycle. Residual concentrations as low as 300 ppm were easily achievable in a single step. © 2000 Society of Chemical Industry     

A new humanitarian relief logistic network for multi-objective optimization under stochastic programming

Millions of affected people and thousands of victims are consequences of earthquakes, every year. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a proper preparedness and response planning. The objectives of this paper are i) minimizing the expected value of the total costs of relief supply chain, ii) minimizing the maximum number of unsatisfied demands for relief staff and iii) minimizing the total probability of unsuccessful evacuation in routes. In this paper, a scenario based stochastic multi-objective location-allocation-routing model is proposed for a real humanitarian relief logistics problem which focused on both pre- and post-disaster situations in presence of uncertainty. To cope with demand uncertainty, a simulation approach is used. The proposed model integrates these two phases simultaneously. Then, both strategic and operational decisions (pre-disaster and post-disaster), fairness in the evacuation, and relief item distribution including commodities and relief workers, victim evacuation including injured people, corpses and homeless people are also considered simultaneously in this paper. The presented model is solved utilizing the Epsilon-constraint method for small- and medium-scale problems and using three metaheuristic algorithms for the large-scale problem (case study). Empirical results illustrate that the model can be used to locate the shelters and relief distribution centers, determine appropriate routes and allocate resources in uncertain and real-life disaster situations.

     

Inlay-inspired meta-piezoelectric plates for the low-frequency vibration energy harvesting

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Different novel auxetic geometries are proposed applicable for the low-frequency vibration energy harvesting. The geometrical idea...