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Introduction: Immune responses and inflammation are major risk factors for mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Increased oxidative stress is a common feature of ESRD, and it has been speculated that it is interrelated to inflammation. In many studies it has been proved that red grape seed extract (RGSE) provides an antioxidant efficacy. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-inflammatory effects of RGSE in hemodialysis patients. Patients and Methods: Thirty hemodialysis individuals were divided into two groups that received either 200 mg/day of the RGSE or placebo for one month. Mean ± SD of age of patients was 58.5 ± 10.5 years. Duration of dialysis was 4 ± 3.4 years and 27 patients were male and 3 patients were female. After a 2-week washout period, the groups were crossed over for another one month. Markers of inflammation, lipid profiles and blood factors were measured at baseline after intervention with RGSE or placebo. Results: Our results showed that RGSE consumption could not make statistically significant changes in markers of inflammation, lipid profiles and blood factors in hemodialysis patients. Conclusion: Although RGSE could not improve markers of inflammation, lipid profiles and blood factors in hemodialysis subjects over a 1 month period. However, this result may be due to short period of treatment or low dose of RGSE. Further studies need to clear these contradictions

High frequency transformer is used in many applications among the Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS), high voltage pulse power and etc can be mentioned. Regarding that the core of these transformers is often the ferrite core; their functions partly depend on this core characteristic. One of the characteristics of the ferrite core is thermal behavior that should be paid attention to because it affects the transformer function and causes heat generation. In this paper, a typical high frequency transformer with ferrite core is designed and simulated in ANSYS software. Temperature rise due to winding current (Joule-heat) is considered as heat generation source for thermal behavior analysis of the transformer. In this simulation, the temperature rise and heat distribution are studied and the effects of parameters such as flux density, winding loss value, using a fan to cool the winding and core and thermal conductivity are investigated.

The gas turbine power output and efficiency decrease with increasing ambient temperature. Compressor inlet air cooling is one way to compensate these losses. In this paper thermoeconomic optimization of an ice (latent) thermal storage systems (TES) has been studied as a gas turbine inlet cooling system. The objective function included the capital and operational costs of the gas turbine and compression refrigeration system as well as corresponding cost due to system exergy destruction. The system design parameters were obtained using numerical search optimization technique.Copyright © 2007 by ASME