Enhancement of in vitro antitumour activity of epirubicin in HER2+ breast cancer cells using immunoliposome formulation

Epirubicin (EPI) is one of the potent breast cancer (BC) chemotherapeutic agents, but its adverse effects limit its efficacy. Herein, EPI was selected to be loaded in liposomal carrier, which has been targeted by a monoclonal antibody, Herceptin. The preparation process of liposomes was a modified ethanol injection method followed by Herceptin conjugation. The in vitro cell toxicity and cellular uptake of optimum formulation against HER2+ and HER2− cancer cell lines were evaluated. The results showed that the drug loading (DL%) and encapsulation efficiency (EE%) of liposome preparation method yielded 30.62% ± 0.49% and 62.39% ± 8.75%, respectively. The average size of naked liposomes (EPI‐Lipo) and immunoliposomes (EPI‐Lipo‐mAb) was 234 ± 9.86 and 257.26 ± 6.25 nm, with a relatively monodisperse distribution, which was confirmed by SEM micrographs. The release kinetic followed Higuchi model for both naked and immunoliposomes. In vitro cytotoxicity study on three different BC cell lines including BT‐20, MDA‐MB‐453 and MCF‐7 demonstrated higher toxicity of EPI in the Herceptin conjugated form (EPI‐Lipo‐mAb) in comparison with the free EPI and EPI‐Lipo in HER2 overexpressing cell line. In addition, the cellular uptake study showed a higher uptake of immunoliposomes by MCF‐7 cells in comparison with naked liposomes. In conclusion, these data show that the targeted delivery of EPI to breast cancer cells can be achieved by EPI‐Lipo‐mAb in vitro, and this strategy could be used for breast cancer therapy with further studies.     

On selection of forwarding nodes for long opportunistic routes

Opportunistic routing is a promising routing paradigm which increases the network throughput. It forces the sender’s neighbors, who successfully overheard the transmitted packet, to participate in the packet forwarding process as intermediate forwarding nodes. As a seminal opportunistic routing protocol, MORE combines network coding idea with opportunistic routing to eliminate the need for strict coordination among active forwarding nodes. In this paper, we show that MORE performance does not scale well with the route length, especially when the route length goes beyond two hops. Also, we found that MORE fails to establish a working opportunistic route in sparse networks. Clearly, the network throughput is directly influenced by both the quantity and quality of forwarding nodes, and their cooperation order. In this paper, we propose a new forwarder selection mechanism which considers the route length, link qualities, the distance from the source, and nodes density. It eliminates the occasional route disconnectivity happening in MORE and improves the quality of the established opportunistic routes. The simulation result indicates that our proposal always outperforms MORE when dealing with long opportunistic routes.

     

Elastic analysis of heterogeneous thick-walled spherical pressure vessels with parabolic varying properties

On the basis of plane elasticity theory (PET), the displacement and stress components in a thick-walled spherical pressure vessels made of heterogeneous materials subjected to internal and external pressure is developed. The mechanical properties except the Poisson’s ratio are assumed to obey the parabolic variations throughout the thickness. Effect of material inhomogeneity on the elastic deformations and stresses is investigated. The analytical solutions and the solutions carried out through the FEM have a good agreement. The values used in this study are arbitrary chosen to demonstrate the effect of inhomogeneity on displacements, and stresses distributions.     

Prediction of Particle Deposition Using a Simplified Particle Model in Fully Developed Channel Flow

In this study the Eulerian particle model was modified to predict the particle deposition rate in fully developed channel flow. The modified model is less complicated and has much lower computation time. The performance of the simplified model was examined by comparing the particle deposition rate in a vertical channel with the experimental data for fully developed channel flow available in the literature. The effects of turbophoretic force, thermophoretic force, electrostatic force, gravitational force, Brownian/turbulent diffusion, and the wall roughness on the particle deposition rate were examined. The predictions of the modified particle model were in agreement with the experimental data.     

Management of sustainable manufacturing systems-a review on mathematical problems

The ever-growing awareness of environmental protection has significantly influenced the method of manufacturing products. Due to the introduction of new processes, the management of sustainable manufacturing shows different characteristics to those of traditional systems. Sustainable manufacturing systems have attracted a great deal of attention in the past 20 years as an emerging manufacturing approach. Particularly in the last 10 years, the number of papers focusing on the topic of sustainable manufacturing systems’ management has increased rapidly. More and more practical factors have been considered and integrated into this area which makes it more complex, but closer to reality. This paper aims to classify the mathematical problems dealing with the management of sustainable manufacturing systems. More than 100 related papers mainly from 1994 to 2015 have been selected and reviewed and divided into three categories according to the main elements in a manufacturing system: production planning and control, inventory management and control and manufacturing network design. The development of each category is summarised and the corresponding mathematical problems are discussed to provide a general overview of the relevant research fields and identify future research directions.     

Performance analysis of the internet‐protocol multimedia‐subsystem's control layer using a detailed queueing Petri‐net model

In the current trend in telecommunications industry towards all‐internet‐protocol (IP) infrastructures, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) plays a critical role by providing a coherent data and control‐plane solution for large‐scale live multimedia applications in a flexible and cost‐effective manner. On the other hand, such a large‐scale service platform would inevitably fail without effective support for the quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements perceived by its users. Among the most important factors that influence user QoS are system performance and scalability. In this paper, a performance model for IMS systems is developed using the queueing Petri nets (QPNs) as the modeling formalism. The model's parameters are tuned based on the measurements carried out using a well‐known IMS implementation. The model is validated against the real system. During the model calibration, the Java garbage‐collector process used in the home subscriber‐server (HSS) implementation was found to be a main factor in the discrepancy between the model and the reality. In addition, the effects of other factors such as the network stack in the operating system are investigated. The validated model is employed to give insights into the scalability of every single instance of IMS implementation. The model is extended to study load balancing among multiple instances of HSS to remove the main bottleneck in the system. It provides a valuable platform for resource management of various components of the IMS ecosystem to support the intended level of QoS for the users.     

Integrated sequential fuzzy logic search models for simulating wastewater treatment plants missing influent parameters

Aiming at achieving optimum operations of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) processes, it is essential to develop accurate predictive models for expected influent pollutant loads. To overcome limited timespan data and model complexity, this study is devoted to propose an integration of inputs' sequential search with the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for reducing the modelling complexity. The input data included nine influent parameters measured bi-weekly for 12 years at a WWTP, South Africa (SA). The sequential search process was used for input optimization to select the most representative inputs in modelling four parameters. The obtained results indicated a strong correlation with R² and NSE above 0.85 for the four targeted influent parameters. After validating the developed models using different criteria, the missing records were predicted throughout the study period. The integration of sequential search input optimization and ANFIS modelling was able to provide a high performance in modelling WWTP datasets.     

AUTOMATIC CONTROL OF A REACTOR FOR BULK POLYMERIZATION OF STYRENE

Automatic temperature and initiator feed control of a reactor for styrene bulk polymerization, initiated by A.I.B.N., was achieved.

We show that suitable temperature and/or initiator feed policies allow production with high conversions (>50%) of a polymer with narrower molecular weight distribution.

The good fit of experimental data on mathematical model (taking in account viscosity effect) allow us to find experimental conditions required to obtain a polymer with a predetermined molecular weight distribution (especially polydispersity).     

Automated robotic grinding by low-powered manipulator

A new robotic grinding process has been developed for a low-powered robot system using a spring balancer as a suspension system. To manipulate a robot-arm in the vertical plane, a large actuator torque is required due to the tool weight and enormous gravity effect. But the actuators of the robot system always exhibit a limited torque capacity. This paper presents a cheap and available system for precise grinding tasks by a low-powered robot system using a suspension system. For grinding operations, to achieve position and force-tracking simultaneously, this paper presents an algorithm of the hybrid position/force-tracking scheme with respect to the dynamic behavior of a spring balancer. Material Removal Rate (MRR) is developed for materials SS400 and SUS304. Simulations and experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system.     

Utilization of textile wastewater as carbon source by newly isolated <Emphasis Type="Italic">Haloarcula</Emphasis> sp<Emphasis Type="Italic">.</Emphasis> IRU1: optimization of conditions by Taguchi methodology

Wastewater of textile industry is one of the most important threats to the environment and human health. The Taguchi methodology was applied to optimize conditions for the growth of a novel Haloarcula sp. IRU1 with a textile wastewater as carbon source by evaluating the influence of temperature, concentration of textile wastewater and pH on biomass of Haloarcula sp. IRU1. We intended to evaluate biodegradation ability of this bacterium. Highest biomass of Haloarcula sp. IRU1 was achieved at temperature 47°C, concentration of textile wastewater 7% v/v and pH 9. In conclusion, the isolated halophilic bacterium Haloarcula sp. IRU1 can utilize textile wastewater as carbon source and biodegrade it in different conditions.