Shahed University

Edalatifard M., Akhtari M., Salehi M., Naderi Z., Jamshidi A., Mostafaei S., Najafizadeh S.R., Farhadi E., Jalili N., Esfahani M., Rahimi B., Kazemzadeh H., Mahmoodi Aliabadi M., Ghazanfari T., Sattarian M., et. al.

IntroductionThere are no determined treatment agents for severe COVID-19. It is suggested that methylprednisolone, as an immunosuppressive treatment, can reduce the inflammation of the respiratory system in COVID-19 patients.MethodsWe conducted a single-blind, randomised controlled clinical trial involving severe hospitalised patients with confirmed COVID-19 at the early pulmonary phase of the illness in Iran. The patients were randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio by the block randomisation method to receive standard care with methylprednisolone pulse (intravenous injection, 250 mg·day−1 for 3 days) or standard care alone. The study end-point was the time of clinical improvement or death, whichever came first. Primary and safety analysis was done in the intention-to-treat (ITT) population.Results68 eligible patients underwent randomisation (34 patients in each group) from April 20, 2020 to June 20, 2020. In the standard care group, six patients received corticosteroids by the attending physician before the treatment and were excluded from the overall analysis. The percentage of improved patients was higher in the methylprednisolone group than in the standard care group (94.1% versus 57.1%) and the mortality rate was significantly lower in the methylprednisolone group (5.9% versus 42.9%; p<0.001). We demonstrated that patients in the methylprednisolone group had a significantly increased survival time compared with patients in the standard care group (log-rank test: p<0.001; hazard ratio 0.293, 95% CI 0.154–0.556). Two patients (5.8%) in the methylprednisolone group and two patients (7.1%) in the standard care group showed severe adverse events between initiation of treatment and the end of the study.ConclusionsOur results suggest that methylprednisolone pulse could be an efficient therapeutic agent for hospitalised severe COVID-19 patients at the pulmonary phase.

Shahbazi Farahani F., Rahmanifar M.S., Noori A., El-Kady M.F., Hassani N., Neek-Amal M., Kaner R.B., Mousavi M.F.

The need for enhanced energy storage and improved catalysts has led researchers to explore advanced functional materials for sustainable energy production and storage. Herein, we demonstrate a reductive electrosynthesis approach to prepare a layer-by-layer (LbL) assembled trimetallic Fe-Co-Ni metal-organic framework (MOF) in which the metal cations within each layer or at the interface of the two layers are linked to one another by bridging 2-amino-1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid linkers. Tailoring catalytically active sites in an LbL fashion affords a highly porous material that exhibits excellent trifunctional electrocatalytic activities toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (ηj=10 = 116 mV), oxygen evolution reaction (ηj=10 = 254 mV), as well as oxygen reduction reaction (half-wave potential = 0.75 V vs reference hydrogen electrode) in alkaline solutions. The dispersion-corrected density functional theory calculations suggest that the prominent catalytic activity of the LbL MOF toward the HER, OER, and ORR is due to the initial negative adsorption energy of water on the metal nodes and the elongated O-H bond length of the H2O molecule. The Fe-Co-Ni MOF-based Zn-air battery exhibits a remarkable energy storage performance and excellent cycling stability of over 700 cycles that outperform the commercial noble metal benchmarks. When assembled in an asymmetric device configuration, the activated carbon||Fe-Co-Ni MOF supercapacitor provides a superb specific energy and a power of up to 56.2 W h kg-1 and 42.2 kW kg-1, respectively. This work offers not only a novel approach to prepare an LbL assembled multimetallic MOF but also provides a benchmark for a multifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting and Zn-air batteries.

Fotouhi M., Bayat M., Das A.K., Far H.A., Pournaghi S.M., Doostari M.A.

The widespread use of mobile devices, sensors, and wireless sensor networks and the progressive development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has motivated medical and health-care societies to employ IoT to monitor, collect data, and communicate with patients using the wireless body area networks (WBANs). The collected data will make a lot of medical diagnosis applications of WBANs, which are obtained directly from the patients’ bodies. Therefore, because of the nature of wireless networks and freely accessible data feature over the public channel, the security and privacy of WBANs is the most critical concern for those who use it for health-care purposes. Accordingly, there is a need for an authentication scheme for letting a trusted user such as doctors or clinical personnel access to the sensor’s data from patients. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight hash-chain-based and forward secure authentication scheme for wireless body area networks in health-care IoT. Our scheme is secure against various known attacks obliged for WBANs. Additionally, we perform the formal security analysis using Real-or Random (ROR) model, and informal security on the proposed scheme, also, security verification of our scheme is validated by the ProVerif tool. Besides, our scheme is simulated by the OPNET network simulator and compared with several new schemes in terms of security and performance requirements. The simulation results and comparisons confirm that the proposed scheme is suitable for WBANs, and it supports more security features compared to related schemes.

Bagher Z., Ehterami A., Safdel M.H., Khastar H., Semiari H., Asefnejad A., Davachi S.M., Mirzaii M., Salehi M.

Skin damages have always been considered as one of the most common physical injuries. Therefore, many researches have been conducted to find an efficient method for wound healing. Since hydrogels have suitable characteristics, they are widely used for this purpose. In this study, based on the high efficiency of alginate and chitosan hydrogels in the wound healing, different concentrations of hesperidin were loaded to alginate and chitosan hydrogels followed by evaluating their morphology, swelling properties, release, weight loss, hemo- and cytocompatibility, antibacterial and toxicity properties. Finally, the therapeutic function of the prepared hydrogels was evaluated in the full-thickness dermal wound in a rat model. Our results indicated that the hydrogels have appropriate porosity (91.2 ± 5.33%) with the interconnected pores. Biodegradability of the prepared hydrogel was confirmed with weight loss assessment (almost 80% after 14 days). Moreover, the time-kill assay showed the antibacterial properties of hydrogels, and MTT assay revealed the positive effect of hydrogels on cell proliferation, and they have no toxicity effect on cells. Also, the in vivo results indicated that the prepared hydrogels had better wound closure than the gauze-treated wound (the control group), and the highest wound closure percentage was observed for the alginate/chitosan/10% hesperidin group. All in all, this study shows that alginate/chitosan hydrogels loaded with 10% of hesperidin can be used to treat skin injuries in humans.

Fasahat M., Manthouri M.

The state of charge (SOC) of a battery indicates its useable capacity. In the case of lithium-ion batteries, an accurate estimate improves their performance. With the recent tendency in the increased use of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, the estimation of SOC has become even a more critical issue than before. In this paper, the combination of an Autoencoder neural network and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network is proposed for the estimation of the SOC of a battery with high precision. The Dynamic Stress Test (DST) drive cycle and the Federal Urban Driving Schedule (FUDS) drive cycle datasets are used to test the proposed algorithm at three different temperatures. To reveal the performance of the proposed method, the results are compared with several other methods from the literature. It is observed that the SOC estimation by the proposed method yields to a significantly better accuracy at all three temperatures.

Yasamineh S., Yasamineh P., Ghafouri Kalajahi H., Gholizadeh O., Yekanipour Z., Afkhami H., Eslami M., Hossein Kheirkhah A., Taghizadeh M., Yazdani Y., Dadashpour M.

The buildup of nonionic surfactants in the aqueous environment produces niosomes. The usage of niosomes is becoming increasingly frequent due to their sustainability, low cost of components and assembly, large-scale manufacture, and, finally, easy maintenance of the niosomes to the other. Because of their nonionic characteristics, niosomes play a critical role in medication delivery systems. Controlled release and targeted distribution of niosomes to treat cancer, infectious illnesses, and other disorders are one of their most important properties. Niosomes can also be injected by ocular and transdermal routes, which are less common than oral and parenteral administration. Using niosomes to manufacture biotechnology goods and novel vaccines is one of the most exciting research fields today. The molecular structure of niosomes, the physicochemical characteristics of nonionic surfactants in their formulation, the influence of external stimuli on niosomes, the many methods of niosomes administration, and their diverse therapeutic qualities are all explored in this study.

Pournaghi S.M., Bayat M., Farjami Y.

The development of Electronic Information Technology has made the Electronic Medical Record a commonly used approach to recording and categorizing medical patient data in databases of different hospitals and medical entities so that controlling the shared data is not possible for patients at all. The importance of medical data as possessions of people and the system leads us to be concerned about its security, privacy, and accessibility. How to store and controlling access to medical information is of the most important challenges in the electronic health area. The present paper provides a new, secure, and efficient scheme based on blockchain technology and attribute-based encryption entitled “MedSBA” to record and store medical data, indicating that our proposed scheme protects user privacy and allows fine-grain access control of medical patient data based on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Private blockchains are used in MedSBA to improve the right to revoke instant access which is of the attribute-based encryption challenges. The security and functionality of our proposed scheme are proved within a formal model and based on BAN logic, respectively; simulating the MedSBA scheme in the OPNET software as well as examining its computational complexity and storage indicates the efficiency of the present scheme.

Jalilibal Z., Amiri A., Castagliola P., Khoo M.B.

• An overview on monitoring the coefficient of variation papers. • Providing a comprehensive classification of articles in this area. • Presenting an analytical overview on the researches in this area. • Introducing research gaps in this area to motivate future studies. There are some situations when the process mean fluctuates from time to time but is still considered as in-control and the process standard deviation is a linear function of the process mean. In addition, in some cases, the mean and the variance of a process are actually dependent on each other. In these situations, many researchers have suggested to monitor the CV (Coefficient of Variation) as a single statistic. In this paper, a rigorous content analysis method (based on 71 related studies in this area from 2007 to 2021) is applied to categorize the articles that use the coefficient of variation in the SPM (statistical process monitoring) field, to identify the research gaps and to provide guidance to stimulate further researches in this direction.

Kazemi M., Salehpour S.Y., Shahbaazy F., Behzadpoor S., Pirouzi S., Jafarpour S.

In order to increase energy efficiency, the energy hub is considered as a form of aggregator and coordinator of various resources and storage. With the optimal performance of resources and storage generators based on a proper energy management system, it is expected that hubs can gain financial benefits from energy markets and ancillary services. So, the paper presents the participation of networked energy hubs in day-ahead (DA) reserve regulation and energy markets, where the hub operator incorporates a coordinated energy management (CEM) strategy to manage power sources and energy storage devices within the hub. Hence, this problem maximizes the total profit of hubs in the DA energy and up and down reserve markets. Also, the problem is constrained by optimal power flow (OPF) constraints in gas, electricity, and thermal networks, reserve limits, and hub constraints, including the model of the combined heat and power (CHP), renewable energy source (RES), electrical/thermal storage, parking lots of electric vehicles (EVs), and boiler. Following that, a linear format is obtained for the nonlinear equation using traditional linearization methods so that an optimal solution is found in less time considering less computational error. Eventually, a standard case system is used to test the strategy, and thus, the capabilities of the approach are investigated. The obtained findings validate the potential of the proposed design in enhancing the economic situation of power sources and storage in hub form, which can enhance operation indices by optimal management of the hub so that the energy management of resources and storage in the form of a hub based on CEM compared to their independent management plan has been able to increase the profit of these elements in energy and up and down reserve markets by about 17%, 28%, and 15%, respectively. Regarding technical indices of energy networks, the proposed scheme by creating low energy losses in the gas network and providing pressure drop, overvoltage, and overtemperature within their permissible limits succeeded in reducing the energy losses in electricity and heat networks by about 83% and 38%, respectively, compared to power flow studies. Also, in these conditions, it has reduced the maximum voltage and temperature drop by 45% and 39%, respectively.

Bikson M., Hanlon C.A., Woods A.J., Gillick B.T., Charvet L., Lamm C., Madeo G., Holczer A., Almeida J., Antal A., Ay M.R., Baeken C., Blumberger D.M., Campanella S., Camprodon J.A., et. al.

AbstractBackground The COVID-19 pandemic has broadly disrupted biomedical treatment and research including non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS). Moreover, the rapid onset of societal disruption and evolving regulatory restrictions may not have allowed for systematic planning of how clinical and research work may continue throughout the pandemic or be restarted as restrictions are abated. The urgency to provide and develop NIBS as an intervention for diverse neurological and mental health indications, and as a catalyst of fundamental brain research, is not dampened by the parallel efforts to address the most life-threatening aspects of COVID-19; rather in many cases the need for NIBS is heightened including the potential to mitigate mental health consequences related to COVID-19. Objective To facilitate the re-establishment of access to NIBS clinical services and research operations during the current COVID-19 pandemic and possible future outbreaks, we develop and discuss a framework for balancing the importance of NIBS operations with safety considerations, while addressing the needs of all stakeholders. We focus on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and low intensity transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES) - including transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS). Methods The present consensus paper provides guidelines and good practices for managing and reopening NIBS clinics and laboratories through the immediate and ongoing stages of COVID-19. The document reflects the analysis of experts with domain-relevant expertise spanning NIBS technology, clinical services, and basic and clinical research – with an international perspective. We outline regulatory aspects, human resources, NIBS optimization, as well as accommodations for specific demographics. Results A model based on three phases (early COVID-19 impact, current practices, and future preparation) with an 11-step checklist (spanning removing or streamlining in-person protocols, incorporating telemedicine, and addressing COVID-19-associated adverse events) is proposed. Recommendations on implementing social distancing and sterilization of NIBS related equipment, specific considerations of COVID-19 positive populations including mental health comorbidities, as well as considerations regarding regulatory and human resource in the era of COVID-19 are outlined. We discuss COVID-19 considerations specifically for clinical (sub-)populations including pediatric, stroke, addiction, and the elderly. Numerous case-examples across the world are described. Conclusion There is an evident, and in cases urgent, need to maintain NIBS operations through the COVID-19 pandemic, including anticipating future pandemic waves and addressing effects of COVID-19 on brain and mind. The proposed robust and structured strategy aims to address the current and anticipated future challenges while maintaining scientific rigor and managing risk.