Natural killer or T-lymphocyte cells: Which is the best immune therapeutic agent for cancer? An optimal control approach

Therapeutic vaccines are being developed as a promising new approach to treatment for cancer patients. There are still many unanswered questions about which kind of therapeutic vaccines are the best for the cancer treatments? In this paper we consider a mathematical model, in the form of a system of ordinary differential equations (ODE), this system is an example from a class of mathematical models for immunotherapy of the tumor that were derived from a biologically validated model by Lisette G. de Pillis. The problem how to schedule a variable amount of which vaccines to achieve a maximum reduction in the primary cancer volume is consider as an optimal control problem and it is shown that optimal control is quadratic with 0 denoting a trajectory corresponding to no treatment and 1 a trajectory with treatment at maximum dose along that all therapeutics are being exhausted. The ODE system dynamics characterized by locating equilibrium points and stability properties are determined by using appropriate Lyapunov functions. Especially we attend a parametric sensitivity analysis, which indicates the dependency of the optimal solution with respect to disturbances in model parameters.     

Smartphone Information Displays When Reading News in Persian and English Languages

By their nature, smartphones must have small screens, and that is one of their limitations. Many users have trouble reading information on the Internet on such small screens because Internet browsers are usually designed for computers that have larger screens than smartphones. This study evaluates the usability of alternative user interfaces when reading news articles on smartphones. An experiment was conducted involving 120 smartphone users who were asked to evaluate six types of user interfaces based on three methods (pop-up, full-screen, and auto-zooming) and two display orientations (horizontal, vertical) in one of two languages (English and Persian). The participants were assigned four typical tasks that users must perform to obtain information from the Internet, that is, finding, refinding, reading, and browsing; they were asked to conduct the tasks in random order. In addition, a questionnaire was used to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the participants’ completion of the tasks, as well as their satisfaction, compatibility, and enjoyment of the undertakings. The results indicated that method, orientation, and language affected the actual usage and the time used. Based on the human factor experiment, the full-screen method was preferred in refinding and reading, whereas the pop-up method was preferred in browsing and finding. In terms of orientation, the vertical mode was preferred, and each user’s performance in the vertical mode was better in all tasks except browsing. Of interest, using the English language turned out to be more satisfying, enjoyable, and efficient to the Persian users who did the experiment in English as their second language.     

Mortality response of folate receptor-activated,PEG–functionalized TiO2 nanoparticles for doxorubicin loading with and without ultraviolet irradiation

TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by hydrothermal assisted sol–gel technique. In the next step, as-synthesized NPs were modified by poly ethylene glycol (PEG). Then, folic acid (FA) was conjugated to TiO₂–PEG. Finally, Doxorubicin (Dox) as an anticancer drug was loaded on as-prepared TiO₂–PEG–FA nanocarrier. The optimization of TiO₂ and FA concentration and the influence of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation on photocatalytic activity of nanocarrier and Dox loaded carrier were assessed by utilizing the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT)-assay method.     

Development of a Demand Driven Hydro-climatic Model for Drought Planning

In recent years, droughts with increasing severity and frequency have been experienced around the world due to climate change effects. Water planning and management during droughts needs to deal with water demand variability, uncertainties in streamflow prediction, conflicts over water resources allocation, and the absence of necessary emergency schemes in drought situations. Reservoirs could play an important role in drought mitigation; therefore, development of an algorithm for operation of reservoirs in drought periods could help to mitigate the drought impacts by reducing the expected water shortages. For this purpose, the probable drought’s characteristics and their variations in response to factors such as climate change should be incorporated. This study aims at developing a contingency planning scheme for operation of reservoirs in drought periods using hedging rules with the objective of decreasing the maximum water deficit. The case study for evaluation of the performance of the proposed algorithm is the Sattarkhan reservoir in the Aharchay watershed, located in the northwestern part of Iran. The trend evaluations of the hydro-climatic variables show that the climate change has already affected streamflow in the region and has increased water scarcity and drought severity. To incorporate the climate change study in reservoir planning; streamflow should be simulated under climate change impacts. For this purpose, the climatic variables including temperature and precipitation in the future under climate change impacts are simulated using downscaled GCM (General Circulation Model) outputs to derive scenarios for possible future drought events. Then a hydrological model is developed to simulate the river streamflow, based on the downscaled data. The results show that the proposed methodology leads to less water deficit and decreases the drought damages in the study area.     

MPC-Based Distributed Control for Intelligent Energy Management of AC Microgrids

Abstract

Power scheduling of distributed storage devices and renewable energy resources in microgrids is crucial for their reliable and optimal operation. Conventionally, the power scheduling problem is solved with a centralized energy management control, which has access to all the information from the overall system. This type of control has limitations related to computational burden, communication latencies, and missing information. Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to propose a distributed energy management strategy, to reduce the operational cost of microgrids, and to enhance the computation time. The strategy is formulated based on the model predictive control method since it allows the control action in the current time-step to be optimized while taking into account the future time-steps. Outputs of the energy management system are the optimal power references generated for all energy resources based on the system’s demand, constraints, and objective functions. To illustrate the effectiveness of the distributed model predictive control, the proposed algorithm is validated through simulation, on a microgrid candidate via MATLAB/Simulink, and controller hardware-in-the-loop experiment on a LabVIEW platform using National Instruments control devices (myRIO). The results will show the computation time in the distributed IEM method is improved compared to centralized IEM. Additionally, the results will show the robustness of the distributed IEM in the plug and play scenario.     

The influence of cap rock composition on hydrocarbon seep type in the Zagros oil fields,a study using Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer mineral map

The persistent natural hydrocarbon seepage in onshore basins challenges observation and exploration technologies, which are required to document and assess these valuable indications of the presence of oil and gas in the subsurface. This paper aims at demonstrating the relationship between the compositional variation of an evaporite cap rock and the types of seeps occurring at the surface. For this purpose, the multispectral Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data was utilized for mapping mineral variations of a petroleum system in the Zagros oil fields. Relative absorption-band depth (RBD), band rationing and the boosted regression trees (BRT) were applied to enhance and classify the mineral composition of evaporite, sandstone, and marly limestone formations. The gas seeps were associated with the areas of gypsum-bearing evaporite cap rock while oil seeps were mostly associated with calcite and clay zones within the cap rock, which was more prone to fracturing during the tectonic activities of the basin. It is suggested that the application of remote sensing in the oil and gas industry could be widened by detection of sleep-induced alteration to assess the efficiency of cap rock and to evaluate the productivity of reservoirs at a regional scale.     

Effect of heat moisture treatment on resistant starch content among carbohydrate sources: a meta-analysis

Resistant starch (RS) can be generated through heat moisture treatment (HMT). The HMT was conducted by modifying starch using different ratio of moisture content, high temperature and heating time. A number of studies showed that the effects of HMT on RS contents in cereals, pulses, tubers and fruits were inconsistent. This study aimed to analyse the impact of HMT on RS level in various carbohydrate sources through a meta-analysis approach. Study selection was conducted with the PRISMA method. There were 21 relevant studies and 67 data used for meta-analysis. The database was analysed by using Hedges’ d. The results showed that there was a significant impact of HMT on RS level of cereals, especially wheat. The highest increase in RS levels for various carbohydrate sources in starch was influenced by the interaction of treatment between water content at 15 ≤ x < 25%, heating time at 0.25 < x ≤ 6 h and temperature at 120 ≤ x ≤ 130 °C.     

SGDD: self‐managed grid‐based data dissemination protocol for mobile sink in wireless sensor network

The reduction of energy consumption in order to increase network lifetime is one of the most major challenges in the design of wireless sensor networks. During data dissemination, the sensors that are located in the sink's neighborhood are responsible to relay data to the other nodes; hence, their energy is exhausted expeditiously. Therefore, the idea of utilizing mobile sinks can be so advantageous to decrease energy consumption during data dissemination process. In this paper, we propose self‐managed grid‐based data disseminating protocol for mobile sink in wireless sensor networks by using the idea of constructing a virtual grid. In self‐managed grid‐based data disseminating protocol, sink and nodes map their geographical position to a virtual location. In order to increase the performance, we have employed a cell head for each grid cell. Cell heads are selected based on two parameters, centralization and residual energy. Our data dissemination protocol is simple and has low overhead to construct and maintain. Also, we have presented a new method for sink location update, which leads to the least cost in data transfer. Simulation results illustrate that by utilizing hierarchical functionality and determining an optimal size for grid cells, energy consumption is decreased, which leads to increasing network lifetime. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.