1H NMR based metabolic profiling in Crohn's disease by random forest methodology

The present study was designed to search for metabolic biomarkers and their correlation with serum zinc in Crohn's disease patients. Crohn's disease (CD) is a form of inflammatory bowel disease that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract and can be difficult to diagnose using the clinical tests. Thus, introduction of a novel diagnostic method would be a major step towards CD treatment. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H NMR) was employed for metabolic profiling to find out which metabolites in the serum have meaningful significance in the diagnosis of CD. CD and healthy subjects were correctly classified using random forest methodology. The classification model for the external test set showed a 94% correct classification of CD and healthy subjects. The present study suggests Valine and Isoleucine as differentiating metabolites for CD diagnosis. These metabolites can be used for screening of risky samples at the early stages of CD diagnoses. Moreover, a robust random forest regression model with good prediction outcomes was developed for correlating serum zinc level and metabolite concentrations. The regression model showed the correlation (R²) and root mean square error values of 0.83 and 6.44, respectively. This model suggests valuable clues for understanding the mechanism of zinc deficiency in CD patients. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Studying the effects of surface modification of Cr2O3 nanoparticles by 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS) on its corrosion inhibitive performance

Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology - Cr2O3 nanoparticles were modified with 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS). The APTMS grafting on the surface of the nanoparticles was analyzed by...     

Design and simulation of nano-antenna with tunable direction of radiation

A new concept for tuning direction of radiation in nano-antenna with negative and positive polarizability is introduced and evaluated by numerical simulation. It has shown that such a configuration consisted of an array of nanoparticles can tune the direction of radiation pattern successfully. Increasing the number of nanoparticles exhibits more directivity at special direction. Variation in position of nanoparticles is used to tune the angle of maximum radiation. The maximum tunability for special geometry of three particles is about 40°. Angle of maximum radiation pattern for four particles is shifted from interval 150–180° to 0–30°.     

On the Thermal Degradation of a Novel Epoxy-Based Nanocomposite Cured With Tryptophan as an Environment-Friendly Curing Agent

The thermal degradation kinetics of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) cured with tryptophan (Trp) in the presence of silica nanoparticles (SiNP) was investigated by thermogravimetry analysis. The activation energies of the solid-state decomposition process were evaluated using the advanced isoconversional method. The dependence of conversion (degradation) on the temperature and activation energy was determined allowing the calculation of master plots. The experimental master plots agreed with the first-order (F1) kinetic function for both neat epoxy and nanocomposite in the conversion range of 0.45–0.85. Using the kinetic model and the calculated kinetic parameters, the times at half conversion (α = 0.5) were computed for different degradation temperatures. The kinetic analysis showed that the degradation rate of the epoxy nanocomposite was lower than that of the neat epoxy for conversions between 0.45 and 0.85. Therefore, we concluded that adding SiNP to DGEBA/Trp can improve the thermal stability in the conversion range of 0.45–0.85.     

Kinetics of cure for a coating system including DGEBA (n = 0)/1,8-NDA and barium carbonate

The increasing demand for low-cost and high performance coatings has promoted the development of chip epoxy-based coatings using inert fillers. Attention has been paid here on employing mixtures of DGEBA with barium carbonate as novel ceramic-based filler to produce a coating using 1,8-naphthalene diamine (1,8-NDA) as the crosslinking agent. A substantial increase in the T_g, from 85 to 100 °C, is observed for the optimum composition. The 1,8-NDA-cure of the epoxy composites showed an autocatalytic mechanism. At a specific conversion range the cure reaction of the composites will be controlled by a diffusion-control cure reaction rather than by Kamal autocatalytic model. Model-free isoconversional method is utilized to construct apparent activation energy dependence on conversion plot. The effect of diffusion control is described by an approach proposed by Chern and Poehlein. Greater diffusion control is observed as the cure temperature decreased.     

Fast Iterative Methods for Solving of Boundary Nonlinear Integral Equations with Singularity

A very efficient and fully discrete method for numerical solution of boundary nonlinear integral equation is described. There seems a lack of rigorous numerical analysis because of singular or hypersingular behavior. In this paper, we suggest variants of methods for solving numerical solutions. Moreover, our aim has been to show how the iterations can be effectively and efficiently regularized for solving ill-posed problems by using the preconditioner. We have compared these methods with CPU time and iterations. Finally, some numerical examples show the efficiency of the proposed methods.