The prevalence of intestinal parasites in hemodialysis patients in Bushehr,Iran

Hemodialysis patients, due to a dysfunction of the immune response, are prone to a variety of opportunistic infections. Studies of intestinal parasitic infections in these patients are limited. Therefore, the present study was performed to determine the prevalence of these infections in patients on hemodialysis in Bushehr. In this cross‐sectional study, fecal samples have been collected from all hemodialysis patients who were continuously referred from September 2011 to September 2012 to the dialysis center at Bushehr and tested using routine parasitological methods. From a total of 88 patients studied, 25 patients (28.4%) were infected with one or more intestinal parasites. Blastocystis hominis and Entamoeba coli with 13.6% and 6.7% prevalence had the highest prevalence among the patients, respectively. The age group 51–70 years had the highest rates of infection. Statistical analysis showed no relationship between sex and the risk of intestinal parasites. Seventeen percent of infected patients showed up with diarrhea and this relationship was statistically significant. Considering the high prevalence of intestinal parasitic infection among hemodialysis patients in Bushehr and also the high probability of infection in these patients, it is recommended that periodic examinations and screening patients during dialysis and before kidney transplantation should be a part of routine medical care.     

A study on melt spinning of polyethylene terephthalate filament yarns containing various concentrations of synthesized CuO nanoparticles

In this research the CuO nanoparticles were synthesized with four different methods then used to produce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers with antibacterial, antifungal, and photocatalytic properties during the melt spinning process. Nanoparticles were synthesized in different ways using copper acetate salt (Cu(CH₃COO)₂) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The synthesis of copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles was confirmed by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM images), EDX patterns, TGA, FTIR, X-ray diffraction pattern XRD, and UV-vis absorption spectrum. The results showed that synthesized nanoparticles exhibited strong antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Finally, after examining the fibers with different percentages of nanoparticles), fibers containing 1% of nanoparticles were produced using a 20% nanocopper oxide masterbatch as the optimal sample. The presence of nanoparticles in the fiber structure was confirmed by FE-SEM images, EDX, XRD, and FTIR analysis. Furthermore, the tensile properties, thermal behavior, and photocatalytic properties of the fibers were investigated. Evaluation of the antibacterial and antifungal activity of the produced fibers against gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans fungus showed about 90% death of bacteria and fungi.     

Numerical Analysis of a Small Size Baffled Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchanger Using Different Nano-Fluids

In this study, numerical simulation was used to investigate the effect of adding different nano-particles into the fluid on the performance of a baffled shell-and-tube heat exchanger. A three-dimensional modeling approach was followed to analyze the effect of different nano-fluids, at various volume fractions, as applied in a baffled shell-and-tube heat exchanger. Once finished with validating the grid independency and results, we proceeded to obtain heat transfer rate, pressure drop, outlet shell temperature and exchanger effectiveness for different volume fractions and particle size of different nano-fluids. The studied nano-particles in the present work included Al₂O₃, CuO, Fe₂O₃, Cu, Fe, SiO₂, and Au, with water and ethylene glycol employed as base fluids. With constant mass flow rate for all cases, the results indicated that, the addition of nano-particles had reduced the heat transfer coefficient, pressure drop and the rate of heat transfer through the shell, even though it had increased outlet shell temperature. In other words, considering a constant heat transfer rate, the presence of nano-fluids in a baffled shell-and-tube heat exchanger is likely to be associated with increased outlet shell temperature. Another consequence presents that using ethylene glycol as base fluid leads to higher effectiveness compared with water as a base fluid in exchanger.     

Analytical calculation for input impedance of a circularly‐polarized ferrite disk antenna including higher order modes

We propose an accurate analytical model for a circularly polarized antenna comprising a normally magnetized, grounded ferrite disk with a metalized top surface. The antenna is assumed to be excited by a conventional current probe. In the case of a thin ferrite disk, the electromagnetic fields of the dominant mode of the antenna do not vary in the direction normal to the disk. However, with increasing thickness of the ferrite disk, higher order modes start to affect antenna characteristics such as resonance frequency. This work presents an analysis of the structure that takes into account all higher modes of the antenna. To validate the theoretical calculations, HFSS simulations are performed. The antenna can be tuned by changing the magnetic bias field.     

Distributed Kalman filters with adaptive strategy for linear time‐varying interconnected systems

We consider the problem of distributed state estimation over a sensor network in which a set of nodes collaboratively estimates the state of a continuous‐time linear time‐varying system. In particular, our work focuses on the benefits of weight adaptation of the interconnection gains in distributed Kalman filters. To this end, an adaptation strategy is proposed with the adaptive laws derived via a Lyapunov‐redesign approach. The justification for the gain adaptation stems from a desire to adapt the pairwise difference of state estimates as a function of their agreement, thereby enforcing an interconnection‐dependent gain. In the proposed scheme, an adaptive gain for each pairwise difference of the interconnection terms is used in order to address edge‐dependent differences in the state estimates. Accounting for node‐specific differences, a special case of the scheme is also presented, where it uses a single adaptive gain in each node estimate and which uniformly penalizes all pairwise differences of state estimates in the interconnection term. The filter gains can be designed either by standard Kalman filter or Luenberger observer to construct the adaptive distributed Kalman filter or adaptive distributed Luenberger observer. Stability of the schemes has been shown, and it is not restricted by the graph topology and therefore the schemes are applicable to both directed and undirected graphs. The proposed algorithms offer a significant reduction in communication costs associated with information flow by the nodes. Finally, numerical studies are presented to illustrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed adaptive distributed Kalman filters. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adapting Shot Peening for Surface Texturing Using Customized Additive Manufactured Shots

Surface textures in engineering materials not only affect the reflective properties and aesthetics but if properly designed can modulate surface-related properties such as wettability, fatigue, wear, corrosion, and scratch resistance. Herein, a new surface texturing method is introduced based on the conventional shot peening process. Custom shots are designed, and their surface texturing capability is investigated on acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) polymer substrates. A finite-element model is developed to bombard the substrate using AISI 316 stainless steel customized shots. The generated unique textures are compared qualitatively by visual examination and quantitatively using the standard surface roughness parameters. As a proof of concept, preliminary experiments are performed using a candidate custom shot and a spherical shot to treat the ABS sheets. The results highlight the high potential of the shot peening technique paired with additive manufacturing for customizing the peening media to be used for surface texturing polymeric materials.