In this work, micro-3D printing is applied to fabricate light absorbing feed spacers for air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) application. Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structure is selected as the spacer model, and graphene oxide (GO) coating is applied on the 3D printed spacer to harvest solar energy more effectively. UV-visible light characterization of coated and uncoated spacers is conducted, and their impact on solar AGMD is also evaluated with permeate flux measurements.
Many applications in biomedical and terrestrial imaging require solutions of inverse radiative transfer problems for detection and image reconstruction. However, the inverse problems in radiative transfer are nonlinear, ill-posed, and underdetermined imaging problems. Solving such problems is difficult and very time intensive, and achieving good accuracy is challenging. In this study a machine learning method with neural networks is proposed to solve the inverse problem of the Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) medical imaging modality. The neural network model is trained to recover the location and size parameters of a single inclusion in a specific geometry. Preliminary results indicate that the neural network model can accurately recover the targeted parameters for inclusions that are larger than a certain size, thus validating the proof-of-concept.
Simulating particles behavior in microchannel considered to be an important and useful in many microfluidic applications that researchers try to understand, e.g. separation of cancer cells from blood. A dynamic behavior of polystyrene particle in water is described in this paper. Theoretical analysis of forces acting on particles is conducted. Newton's equation of motion is used to describe the trajectory of the particles. The governing equations are solved using fourth order of Runga-Kutta method. The particles assumed to be at rest at the inlet of the channel. Standing surface acoustic waves are applied to align the particles at the center of channel. The most effective forces are found to be drag force and the acoustic radiation force. The larger particle will move faster towards the centerline. The effect of added mass force, basset force, and Brownian motion are assumed to be very small and neglected for this case.
Nanoparticles have become a prominent topic in the medical field over the past several decades because of their similarity in scale with biological systems and the increased controllability over drug release and dosage in drug delivery applications. Nanoparticle material can be tuned depending on the type of application. For example, gold nanoparticles are used in cancer diagnosis and lipid nanoparticles drug delivery. Traditional synthesis of nanoparticles results in particles with high size non-uniformity. Utilizing microfluidic channels for nanoparticle generation overcomes traditional methods by its high flow controllability and microscale.
The cost of renewable energy, especially solar energy is constantly reducing, hence, encouraging more solar energy projects to develop, specifically in the United Arab Emirates. CSP systems such as parabolic dish can be used to produce the high temperatures required for these systems. This work will focus on studying and analysing a commercial parabolic dish developed by a Swedish company called Azelio. An optical model is created using a commercial software called TracePro which is used simulate how the dish system concentrates solar energy in a perfect environment. In addition, two experimental setups have been developed to measure the temperature and the flux of the dish system. The results obtained from the flux measurement setup validated the optical model. The maximum flux obtained by the optical model was 163 kW/m2 and the maximum flux obtained from the experiment was 155 kW/m2 and this resulted in a 5% loss.
In this research work, Non-premixed, counterflow, NH3-oxygen and CH4-oxygen flames with same momentum were studied in 3 various cases and a computational tool for the study of these flames was developed in a computer program and verified with grid independence study and with previous computations of the same flame. It was shown that NH3 flames has lower temperature and narrower high temperature area compare to CH4 flames in all studied cases as NH3 flame seems to be a heat-releasing sheet with minimal effect on the velocity profile. As flames transition from strainless to strained, flames achieve higher temperature while high temperature areas shrink, especially for NH3 flames which is due to the limited heat release from NH3 oxidization. The fact that maximum temperature increases with imposed strain is of course not expected for "near-equilibrium" flames and deserves serious consideration.
Ionic liquids (ILs) offer a wide range of promising applications in condensation, oil-water separation and Li-ion batteries owing to their unique physicochemical properties. Here, we reveal the role of hydrogen-bonding in IL-water interfacial interactions based on ab-initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulation. Stronger hydrogen bonding between water and [BF4]- ion of [BMIm][BF4] renders water molecules move faster than that at water-[BMIm][Tf2N] interface. This finding also provides indirect explanation of hydrophobicity of [BMIm][Tf2N], which is popular in phase change and multiphase systems.
In this paper, we modeled computationally dry methane reforming (DRM) process in an industrial scale packed bed using multi-phase particle in cell (MP-PIC) approach via implementing reaction kinetics of Rhodium catalyst. We provide a lumping scheme of detailed surface reaction mechanism for the system in order to be treated as a black-box. Our simulated results not only shows that this system significantly improves in utilization greenhouse gases (GHG) area in the industry by replacing the conventionally used steam reformation of methane (SRM), but also verify theoretical analysis. We thus believe that the proposed system can be a good framework for fluidized bed reactor simulation in future work.
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is an oncogenic virus associated in the pathogenesis of several human malignancies. Unfortunately, several aspects of the EBV biology remain poorly understood, due to the lack of a suitable animal model. We have shown that healthy rabbits are susceptible to EBV infection and the virus establishes a pattern of latent infection typically seen in humans. We observed that, immunosuppression of animals at the time of primary infection with EBV causes severe infection with gross pathology evident within two weeks of infection. EBV infected animals express various lytic and latent proteins. Taken together, these findings show that our rabbit model is not only suitable for studying the biology of EBV, but more importantly, it closely recapitulates EBV infection in humans. We use this novel animal model to address the dynamics of EBV infection which could not be previously addressed in an in vivo system.
Clinical trials have shown that natural killer (NK) cells possess potent effects against solid and blood malignancies. NK92, an immortal human NK cell line derived from a non-hodgkin lymphoma patient, is one of the most important sources of NK cell used in adoptive cell therapy. The ability to easily expand these cells, make them highly attractive for immunocytotherapy. However, the fate of NK92 cells post killing tumor cells is not well investigated. Here we sought to investigate the fate of NK92 cells post their killing of the colorectal cancer cell line, HCT116. Defining the type of cell death of NK92 cells following their anti-tumor activity will provide impetus to their utilization in immunotherapy of cancer, and will aid in finding methods to harness these cells for greater efficacy.
