Inhibition of aluminum corrosion in acid solution by environmentally friendly antibacterial corrosion inhibitors: Experimental and theoretical investigations

Protection of Metals and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces - The inhibition performance of penicillin G(I), methicillin(II) and nafcillin(III) on the corrosion of aluminum in a 1 M HCl solution has...     

Investigating the performance of a water-based photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collector in laminar and turbulent flow regime

The objective of this work is to simulate a water-based flat plate photovoltaic/thermal system with glass cover and without it in laminar and turbulent regime and investigating the effects of solar irradiation, packing factor, Reynolds number, collector length, pipes diameter and number of pipes on the performance of this system. The accuracy of the model has been validated with the available data in the literature, where good agreements between the results have been achieved. The results showed that the energy efficiency in the glazed photovoltaic/thermal system is higher than unglazed one, while its exergy efficiency depends on the packing factor, Reynolds number and collector length. The results also indicated that increasing of solar radiation and packing factor increases total energy and exergy efficiency in both laminar and turbulent regime. Besides, it was found that there are the optimum values for mass flow rate and number of pipes that maximize exergy efficiency. The value of the optimum mass flow rate is larger in the case of unglazed system compared to that of glazed one. Furthermore, in most cases, the total energy efficiency in turbulent regime is higher, whereas the total exergy efficiency in laminar regime is superior.     

Ranking information security controls by using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Information Systems and e-Business Management - Information security can be achieved by implementing a set of appropriate controls. However, identifying and selecting the most effective information...     

Ceramic-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs): A review

Recently, porous ceramic and clayware membranes have been widely used in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as separators. Chemical, thermal and mechanical stability, low-cost and many other advantages of ceramic membranes make them an appropriate substitute for expensive polymeric ion exchange membranes. Moreover, good power performances in short and long-term periods were observed using ceramic membranes. In this review, we attempted to gather and assort all the experiments which applied ceramic or other earthenware membranes as the separator of MFCs. The effects of physical and chemical properties of ceramic membranes on the power efficiency of MFCs as well as scale-up challenges and future aspects were also studied.     

Binding affinity models for Falcipain inhibition based on the Linear Interaction Energy method

The high rate of drug resistance as well as the complex biochemical process of the parasite reproduction cycle makes development of new drugs for malaria a very important but challenging task. Falcipain 2 (FL2) and Falcipain 3 (FL3) are the major cysteine protease enzymes that play a central role in providing essential amino acids for the parasite’s protein biosynthesis through the hemoglobin hydrolysis process. Selective inhibition of these enzymes is considered as a promising chemotherapeutic target. In the present investigation, the highly efficient linear interaction energy (LIE) method has been parameterized for binding affinity predictions and assessed with a set of 244 compounds for FL2 and FL3 inhibition. The results revealed that the van der Waals energy is very important for ligands binding to Falcipain proteins and that, overall, the electrostatic energy contribution is minor. The best models obtained for FL2 and FL3 give root mean square errors (RMSE) of 1.82 and 1.33 kcal/mol respectively, for the test set. In this study, we also investigate how the choice of initial protein-ligand confirmation (pose) impacts the overall quality of the LIE models. Moreover, the transferability of LIE parameters is further discussed.     

Cadmium selenide@sulfide nanoparticle composites: Facile precipitation preparation,characterization, and investigation of their photocatalyst activity

We report a two-step synthesis and structural characterization of CdSe/CdS core/shell nanoparticles by the precipitation method. Besides, the effects of preparation parameters such as reaction temperature, the speed of the reaction stirrer, and the rate of adding sulfide source on the size, morphology, and photocatalyst activity of CdSe/CdS core–shell nanoparticles were studied by SEM images and degradation of methyl orange (MO) dye test. The structure and composition of the obtained products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution field-emission transmission electron microscope (HRTEM), photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), spectra energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDS), and ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) techniques.     

Design of a fractional order PID controller using GBMO algorithm for load–frequency control with governor saturation consideration

Load–frequency control is one of the most important issues in power system operation. In this paper, a Fractional Order PID (FOPID) controller based on Gases Brownian Motion Optimization (GBMO) is used in order to mitigate frequency and exchanged power deviation in two-area power system with considering governor saturation limit. In a FOPID controller derivative and integrator parts have non-integer orders which should be determined by designer. FOPID controller has more flexibility than PID controller. The GBMO algorithm is a recently introduced search method that has suitable accuracy and convergence rate. Thus, this paper uses the advantages of FOPID controller as well as GBMO algorithm to solve load–frequency control. However, computational load will higher than conventional controllers due to more complexity of design procedure. Also, a GBMO based fuzzy controller is designed and analyzed in detail. The performance of the proposed controller in time domain and its robustness are verified according to comparison with other controllers like GBMO based fuzzy controller and PI controller that used for load–frequency control system in confronting with model parameters variations.     

Dominant role of drivers’ attitude in prevention of road traffic crashes: A study on knowledge,attitude, and practice of drivers in Iran

Objective

Evaluating the relation between Iranian drivers’ knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) regarding traffic regulations, and their deterministic effect on road traffic crashes (RTCs).

Setting

Two cities of Tehran and Zahedan, Iran.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was designed. Using a simplified cluster sampling design, 2200 motor vehicle drivers including 1200 in Tehran and 1000 in Zahedan were selected. Sixty locations in Tehran and 50 in Zahedan were chosen. In each pre-identified location, 20 adult drivers were approached consecutively. A questionnaire developed by researchers was filled by each participant. The questionnaire had four sections including items assessing the demographics, knowledge, attitude and practice of drivers toward traffic regulations. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between the RTCs and KAP variables.

Results

The study sample consisted of 619 (28.1%) occupational and 1580 (71.8%) private drivers. Among them, 86.4% were male. The median age was 33.6 ± 10.83. Drivers in Tehran and Zahedan had no significant differences between their mean scores of KAP items of the questionnaire. Higher knowledge, safer attitude, and safer practice were associated with a decreased number of RTC. After adjusting for possible confounders, increase of one standard deviation in attitude and practice scores (but not knowledge) resulted in 26.4% and 18.5% decrease in RTC, respectively. Finally, considering knowledge, attitude and practice of drivers in one model to assess their mutual effect, it was shown that only attitude is significantly associated with a decrease of RTC (OR = 0.76, P = 0.007).

Conclusion

Increase in attitude and practice accompanied with decreased number of RTCs in Iranian drivers. Specifically, drivers’ attitude had the crucial effect. It is not knowledge and standard traffic education; rather it is how such education is registered as an attitude that translates what is being learned into actions. Without safer attitude, even safer self-reported practice will not result in lower RTCs.     

User Capacity Scaling Laws of Multi-user Fading Channels in the Presence of MMSE Channel Estimators

Considering development of delay-sensitive applications in wireless communications and cellular networks along with lack of system resources and environmental factors including fading and noise all together make it impossible for all users to be active and to achieve quality of service requirements simultaneously. To analyze wireless systems performance, user capacity is defined as the maximum number of users that can be activated at the same time. In order to obtain user capacity scaling laws, channel distribution information is required and channel gains can be estimated by different channel estimators such as minimum mean square error estimators. In this paper, estimated channel gains are substituted for true channel gains and effects of imperfect channel estimation errors on the user capacity scaling laws are analyzed. It is shown that the user capacity scales double logarithmically and there is a gap depending on channel estimators accuracy between the lower and upper bounds. Moreover, assuming estimated channels for different users are independent and identically distributed, it is shown that the user capacity scaling laws are asymptotically tight.