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Background: Chronic abdominal pain is a common problem in childhood.Purpose: Due to the prevalence of functional abdominal pain (FAP) and the importance of probiotics, this study aimed to compare the ability of 2 probiotics to reduce and improve FAP in children.Methods: This open-label randomized clinical trial included 116 children aged 5–15 years with FAPP who met the ROME-4 criteria and were referred to the gastrointestinal clinic of Amir-Kabir Hospital in Arak in 2020–2021. The children were randomly allocated to receive polymicrobial probiotic (PMP group) or mono-strain probiotic (MSP group) once daily for 4 weeks. The standard Wong-Baker Faces scale was used to assess symptom severity.Results: Of the 116 subjects, 62 (53.5%) were boys; the mean participant age was 7.39 years (standard deviation, 3.4 years). A significant intergroup difference (P=0.003) was observed in pain severity; 10.34% of children in the PMP group had no pain, while all patients in the MSP group reported low-degree pain. There was no intergroup difference in mean pain score (P=0.466), but it decreased over time in both groups (P= 0.001).Conclusion: Although significantly more children were painless in the PMP versus MSP group, no significant intergroup difference in pain score was noted and symptom severity decreased in both groups. A future study with a placebo group is recommended to validate our findings.

Background: Functional constipation (FC) is a common problem in childhood worldwide. This disorder can lead to various physical and behavioral problems and ultimately reduce the quality of life. Sleep disorders are also among the complaints of patients with FC. Objectives: In this study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of sleep disorders in children with chronic FC. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 140 children aged 5 to 12 with chronic FC referred to the specialized pediatrics clinic of Amirkabir Hospital of Arak, Iran. The functional constipation was diagnosed based on Rome ΙV criteria. Children and their parents were requested to complete the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ). Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 22 using the chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests to find significant associations at the significance level of 5%. Results: The mean (SD) age of the participants was 7.36 ± 1.6, and most participants were boys (65.7%). The prevalence of sleep disorders in children with chronic FC was 62.9% (95% CI: 54.5 - 70.2). Sleep resistance and sleep apnea were the most common minor sleep disorders. The prevalence of sleep disorders was significantly higher in girls (81.3%) than in boys (53.3%) with chronic FC (P = 0.001). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of sleep disorders in children with chronic FC aged 5 to 8 and 9 to 12. Conclusions: In the present study, the results showed that the prevalence of sleep disorders in children with chronic FC was significant, and it was higher compared to other studies conducted on healthy children, and also it was found that girls had a significantly higher rate of sleep disorders than boys.

Background: Functional constipation (FC) is a common disease in children. This disease can cause many behavioral and mental problems and ultimately reduce the quality of life. Reciprocally, psychological factors can play a role in the development and persistence of FC. Objectives: In this study, we aimed to determine the prevalence of social anxiety in children with chronic FC in Arak city, Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 200 children between 10 - 17 years with chronic FC referred to Amirkabir Hospital in Arak, Iran, which is a specialized center, were enrolled. This study was done in 2022, and the participants' disease was diagnosed based on Rome ΙV criteria. The Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SASA) was completed by children under the guidance and supervision of their parents. Statistical analyses were performed in SPSS 22 using the Chi-square test and independent sample T-test. Results: The participants’ mean age (SD) was 13.43 ± 1.54 years. The prevalence of social anxiety was estimated at 67.5% (95%CI: 60.6 - 73.4), of whom 70% had moderate anxiety, and 30% had severe anxiety. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of social anxiety between the age groups (P = 0.167). The prevalence of social anxiety was significantly higher in girls (74.8%) than in boys (59.8%) (P = 0.034). Also, girls showed a significantly higher prevalence of severe social anxiety than boys (P = 0.023). Conclusions: In this study, the prevalence of social anxiety was found to be considerably high in children with chronic FC. There was no significant difference between different age groups in terms of the prevalence of social anxiety; however, the prevalence and severity of this disease were significantly higher in girls than in boys.

Background and Aim: Considering the importance of childhood obesity and easier correction of related factors in this age group, the present study aimed to investigate the role of some factors related to family, nutrition, and lifestyle on childhood obesity. Methods & Materials: This age-matched case-control study was performed on 150 obese and 150 healthy children, aged 2-15 years referring to Amir-Kabir Hospital in Arak City, Iran. Obesity was calculated based on Body Mass Index (BMI). Required information, including family factors, nutritional factors, and lifestyle characteristics were collected by a checklist. Ethical Considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Arak University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.ARAKMU.REC.1396.119). Results The results of Odds Ratio (OR) with 95% of Confidence Interval (CI) were in favor of father’s age of 25-35 and over 35 years (0.24), respectively, father’s overweight and obesity (3.87 and 3.57), mother’s overweight and obesity (3.81 and 5.5)7, more than three children per household (3.33), low and high consumption of fruits and vegetables (0.3 and 0.19), breakfast eating (0.43), dietary supplementation (2.68), consuming fast food (3.98), more than two hours of playing a computer game (3.5), chewing well (0.38), using food as a reward (1.89), as well as participating in food and table preparation (3.14). We found a dose-response association between children’s obesity and parents’ BMI, the number of children, and computer games. Conclusion: Obesity is associated with some factors related to the family, such as nutrition, computer games, and lifestyle characteristics. Due to various risk factors and adjustable safeguards, it is necessary to provide families and children with proper education to reduce obesity.

Underwater navigation is generally accomplished through the data fusion of INS (Inertial Navigation System) and auxiliary sensors such as DVL (Doppler Velocity Logger) sensor. However, because of the possibility of DVL outage, alternative low-cost solutions are attractive. Among these, one is using vehicle kinetic model information extracted by the Newton-Euler equation to improve INS performance, which is called model-aided navigation. In this paper, only the vehicle translational motion dynamics are used to replace DVL in underwater navigation in DVL outage. The vehicle 3D translational dynamics has been obtained by using general Newton-Euler equations. Integrating these dynamics leads to the calculation of velocities in the body reference frame. Similar to DVL measurements, the calculated velocities (called “Pseudo-DVL” in this paper) are fused with INS. In this paper, a Kalman filter is used for INS/Pseudo-DVL data fusion. Field test data collected by an equipped research AUV called SUT-III is used to evaluate the proposed approach experimentally. Also, a comparison between the integrated navigation of INS-DVL and INS-Pseudo-DVL is performed and the results are provided. The results reveal that despite having low-cost MEMS IMUs, INS/Pseudo-DVL has effectively corrected standalone INS estimation. Finally it is concluded that despite slight degradation of navigation performance, an expensive DVL sensor can be replaced by using the proposed method in DVL outage.

This study aims to identify the type and number of errors in the Iranian Electronic Health Record System (SEPAS) in hospitals affiliated with Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS). A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted to specify the errors done by SEPAS in the first half of 2019, based on the type and number of errors in 26 hospitals affiliated with MUMS that were connected to the SEPAS system. SEPAS system errors were classified into four categories: identity errors, clinical errors, administrative-financial and technical errors. The most important errors that occurred in the SEPAS system included non-authentication errors in Hospital Information System (HIS), non-service records, and invalid national code, respectively. Therefore, hospital administrators and information system developers must make an effort to prevent such errors.

Background: Gastroenteritis, as a rare and heterogeneous condition, is characterized by patchy or diffuse infiltration of gastrointestinal tissue. Induced azotemia in humans following gastroenteritis has been evaluated in some studies. Objectives: The aim of present study was to evaluate the effect of montelukast on induced azotemia in humans following gastroenteritis. Methods: This study examined children with gastroenteritis with moderate dehydration and more than 3 years of age. The cases had a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) less than 90 and were evaluated in two groups of control (n = 20) and intervention (n = 20). Montelukast (5-mg tablets) was given to patients in the intervention group for 5 days. Normal saline at a rate of 20 cc/kg was given to both groups within 20 minutes until clinical symptoms improved. Finally, the improvement of renal function was evaluated and compared between the 2 groups using SPSS. Results: Out of 40 evaluated patients, the mean age of the control and intervention groups was 5.52 and 5.15 years, respectively. Also, 13 cases (65.0%) in the control group and 9 cases (45.0%) in the control group were males. The mean creatinine (Cr) was significantly reduced after treatment in the intervention group (P = 0.001). Also, the mean GFR after treatment was significantly higher in the intervention group (P = 0.001), and GFR improvement duration was significantly lower in the intervention group (P = 0.002). Conclusions: Montelukast as an add-on drug was effective in reducing the time of GFR enhancement; thus, we can consider it as an add-on drug in azotemia.

The inertial navigation system/Doppler velocity logger (INS/DVL) plays an important role in ocean navigation. Any DVL malfunction poses serious risks to navigation. A precise detection system is required to detect the initial moments of DVL signal malfunctions; moreover, with loss of DVL, a fault-tolerant scheme (FTS) is necessary for DVL signal reconstruction. In this paper, an evolutionary knowledge-based method, namely improved evolutionary TS-fuzzy (I-eTS), is adopted to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-based pseudo DVL to deal with long-term outage of DVL. By employing Gaussian process regression (GPR) models for fault detection, a new FTS is constructed. To verify the effectiveness of the new fault detection and fault tolerance system, navigation data is gathered by a test setup and algorithms are performed in the laboratory. In the tests, it is demonstrated that the proposed FTS leads to rapid detection of both gradual and abrupt faults, which leads to less interaction between fault detection and FTS.

INS-DVL integration is a common method for underwater navigation. However, inherent errors of sensors, especially in MEMS IMUs, lead to inaccuracies in estimating the position and attitude. In this paper, dynamic motion model of AUV is used to improve MEMS INS-DVL navigation. In this method, which is called model-aided or model-based navigation, the information of the kinetic model of the vehicle (obtained from Newton–Euler equations) is used to improve the navigation performance. Previous model-aided navigation studies about AUVs have been focused on the translational dynamic model of vehicles. As the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first one which suggests using a rotational motion model of AUVs to improve the navigation performance and at the same time, reports successful implementation of method through field-testing. The utilized dynamic model, describes the rotational motion of AUV in a 3DOF form. Information extracted from the rotational dynamic model and the outputs of gyroscopes, will be fused in a secondary Kalman filter. So, before the fusion with auxiliary sensors in the main Kalman filter, the gyroscopes outputs have been improved by the rotational motion model. Therefore, the overall output will be better than the outputs of gyroscopes by itself. The main Kalman filter is a perturbation-based Kalman filter which is employed for data fusion. This algorithm is implemented on real data collected from field-test. The results show that this inexpensive method which requires no additional equipment was truly effective in improving navigation performance. Using this model, the accuracy of navigation was improved 5 to 10 times.

Indirect hyperbilirubinemia during neonatal period is a common problem, and most preterm and more than half of the term neonates find this problem. Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) protects the liver against oxidative stresses and prevents cellular apoptosis. In addition, it causes stimulation of bile flow, is well tolerated by the patient, and has limited side effects. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of UDCA in treating neonates with unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia undergoing phototherapy.In this randomized clinical trial, 220 neonates with unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia who referred to Amir-Kabir Hospital, Arak, Iran in 2017-2018, were randomly assigned to phototherapy group (Control group) and phototherapy plus UDCA group (Intervention group) as 10 mg/kg/day. The level of total bilirubin was measured at the baseline, and after 12, and 24 h using spectrophotometric, and the duration of receiving phototherapy was also measured in both groups.The mean age of included neonates in the control and intervention group was 5.3 and 4.9 days, respectively. The results revealed that after 12 h of treatment, the total bilirubin level in the control group had diminished by 2.70 mg/dL on average while, in the intervention group, the reduction was 3.7 md/dL (UDCA combined with phototherapy enhances TSB decrease, but this effect is not relevant from a clinical point of view because it does not decrease phototherapy and hospital stay duration. Thus, this study does not support the UDCA use in the clinical practice.IRCT, IRCT2017071515511N2. Registered 21 Aug 2017 - Retrospectively registered, https://en.irct.ir/trial/14763.

Background Gastrointestinal (GI) disorders are ranked first amongst medical diseases as a trigger of requests for mental health counselling. Child abuse has been regarded as one of the main causes of the development of functional abdominal pain (FAP) in children. This study aimed, therefore, to compare the prevalence of child abuse experience among two groups of patients with and without FAP. Methods A case-control study of children in Arak, Iran, in which experience of child abuse was compared in children with (n = 100) and without functional abdominal pain (n = 100). Three categories of child abuse - emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect - were assessed using the Child Abuse Questionnaire. The data were analyzed using Stata software. Results After adjusting for potential confounders, there were group differences in emotional abuse (96% vs. 81%, aOR = 5.13, 95% CI: 1.3–20.3, p = 0.017), neglect (28% vs. 8%, aOR = 4.27, 95% CI: 1.8–11.8, p = 0.001) and total child abuse score (98% vs. 84%, aOR = 8.2, 95% CI: 1.5–43.8, p = 0.014) but not in physical abuse (57% vs. 46%, aOR = 1.47, 95% CI: 0.81–2.60, p = 0.728). Conclusions As the prevalence of child abuse is higher in patients with FAP, child abuse appears to be related to the occurrence of FAP in children. However, the results of this study cannot be generalized to Iranian society generally and further longitudinal studies are recommended.

MEMS-IMUs have an extensive application in multifarious studies, as well as industrial and commercial areas. It is crucial to diminish their intrinsic errors in a suitable calibration procedure. In this paper, a novel calibration procedure was proposed for Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) on a turntable. A general nonlinear model of the IMU output including the effects of bias, scale factor, misalignment, and lever arm was derived. Transformed Unscented Kalman Filter (TUKF) was utilized to perform the estimation of error parameters for gyroscopes and accelerometers. The calibration maneuvers were applied using a tri-axis turntable to create input signals. In addition, assuming the sensors not placing in the center of the table makes angular acceleration become another variable which affects the estimation of the error parameters. Therefore, a suitable angular acceleration estimator was designed utilizing the angular velocity output. According to experimental results, applying the proposed method caused 66% and 63% increase in the accuracy of gyroscopes and accelerometers outputs, respectively, compared with the calibrated signals based on the least square method.

Background: Functional constipation as a common disorder in children, may be induce by psychiatric disorders. The present study aimed to evaluate and compared anxiety disorders in children with and without functional constipation. Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 200 children (100 cases with functional constipation and 100 children without functional constipation) aged 15 - 8 years. The participants’ age and gender were evaluated and compared in two groups. Moreover, the Spence Children Anxiety Scale (SCAS) (parent form) for children was completed. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using SPSS software version 24. Results: Of 200 evaluated cases in the case and control groups, there were 46 (46.0%) and 59 (59.0%) males, respectively (P = 0.113). The mean ± SD of age in total, the case, and the control groups were 7.51 ± 1.91, 7.61 ± 0.91, and 7.41 ± 2.49 years, respectively (P = 0.585). Furthermore, SCAS in the case group was significantly higher (33.06 ± 14.4 vs. 24.8 ± 14.9, P = 0.001). Furthermore, the mean of separation anxiety disorder (P = 0.001), generalized anxiety (P = 0.003), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were significantly higher in the functional constipation group (P = 0.001). Conclusions: Anxiety was higher in children with functional constipation than in children without functional constipation (ie, control group), among which separation anxiety, generalised anxiety, and OCD were significantly different in the two groups.

Background: Frequent blood transfusion can lead to iron overload which is potentially dangerous for the heart and liver. Silymarin has well-documented protective effects on hepatocytes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the hepatoprotective effects of silymarin addition to iron chelators in children with thalassemia. Materials and Methods: This randomized, double-blinded, and placebo-controlled trial was performed on 40 subjects with thalassemia major and intermedia in Amir Kabir Hospital, Arak, Iran. Subjects were randomized 1:1 oral to 30 mg/kg deferasirox plus placebo, or deferasirox plus oral 70-140 mg silymarin (twice daily) for 6 months. Cardiac and hepatic iron levels and levels of Gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), Alanine transaminase (ALT), Aspartate transaminase (AST), Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total bilirubin, albumin, total protein, and total cholesterol were measured at baseline and after 6 months of treatment. Results: The mean age of patients was 16 years and 60% of patients were female. After 6 months, there were significant increases in the levels of ALT, AST, GGT, and TG in the placebo group as compared to the silymarin group (P < 0.05). In contrast, ALT, AST, and GGT had significant reductions compared to the silymarin group (P =0.05). Patients in the placebo group had a rise in total bilirubin (P = 0.07), but total protein and albumin did not have significant changes in the silymarin group (P > 0.05). Finally, a significant improvement was noted in cardiac iron values in patients using silymarin; 22.2 ± 6.6 ms at baseline vs 26.9 ± 7.1 ms at 6 months (P < 0.05). Conclusion: This study suggests that twice-daily addition of silymarin to deferasirox could improve liver function in children with thalassemia major and intermedia. Silymarin seems safe in pediatrics.

Background: Child abuse is a serious global problem and can be in the form of physical, sexual, emotional or neglect by not providing for the child's needs. Functional constipation (FC) is a common functional gastrointestinal (GI) disorder in children. This study was aimed to assess the relationship between child abuse and functional constipation in children. Materials and Methods In this age frequency-matched case-control study, 100 children with FC were compared with 100 healthy children as control. The diagnosis of FC was based on history and physical examination. Child abuse in three sub-groups (physical, emotional and neglect) were assessed by ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool Children's Version (ICAST-C). The data were analyzed by Stata software (version 13.0). Results: The results of this study revealed that the frequency of any kind of child abuse in case (children with functional constipation), and control group (children without functional constipation) is 93% and 84%, respectively, OR: 2.53 (95% CI: 1.00-6.45), P=0.052. The most frequent abuse in both groups was emotional abuse (91% vs. 81%) followed by physical (61% vs. 47%), and neglect (19% vs. 8%). There was a significant association between frequency of emotional (OR: 2.37, P=0.046), physical (OR: 1.76, P=0.048) and neglect abuse (OR: 2.70, P=0.027) among case and control groups. However, after controlling the confounding variables, the association between child abuse and FC remained clinically important but was not statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusion Notwithstanding emotional abuse, physical abuse and child neglect rate were more frequent among children with FC, this study demonstrates that child abuse is not associated with FC occurrence.

This study presents a fault tolerant control (FTC) scheme based on fault estimation (FE) for a system subject to input saturation, uncertainty, L 2 -bounded disturbance and additive faults. In this study, the saturation is represented in polytopic form, and the disturbance is partitioned into matched and unmatched parts. For the FE scheme, a partially-decoupled unknown input observer is introduced to completely compensate for the matched part and only the unmatched part affects the FE performance. The FE and FTC schemes are integrated to ensure that the resulting closed-loop system is stable with L 2 -gain performance. Furthermore, all sufficient conditions for robust performance are derived and cast as linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Usage of the Young relation removes equality constraints, and thus all LMIs are solvable in a single step. Numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, the integrated design problem of Fault Estimation (FE) and Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) for saturated systems is considered. The system suffers from input saturation and L2-bounded disturbances. To design an adaptive observer-based FE, the actuator output measurements are not used, when the actuator is saturated, there exist new interactions between FE and FTC. In such a case the separation principle for FE and FTC design does not hold anymore. In this paper, a method is introduced for integrated design of FE and FTC, which guarantees boundedness stability of such a system. To extract sufficient conditions for stability and minimum L2-gain performance for disturbance rejection, the Modified Sector Condition (MSC) is employed for saturation modeling. Also, Quadratic Polytopic Differential Inclusion (QPDI) approach is developed for the comparative study. All conditions are cast as Linear Matrix Inequality(LMIs) that can be evaluated in a single step. In a numerical example, the feasibility of the introduced method for stability guarantee is demonstrated and performance characteristics of FE and FTC in disturbance rejection are compared for both modeling approaches.

Kinematic constrained navigation is a subset of model-aided navigation systems that is attractive because of its independence from extra hardware equipment. In this study, the error-based Kalman Filter is used for the data fusion process through feedback strategy, and kinematic constraints are utilized to improve Inertial Navigation System-Doppler Velocity Log (INS-DVL) navigation performance. Here, the pseudo-measurement method is used for applying kinematic constraints. Real offline data obtained from field tests of an instrumented vessel in shallow water demonstrate that applying kinematic constraints improves navigation performance and robustness against initial condition uncertainty. Repeatability of results is also investigated for three different maneuvers.

Differentiation through NPD is one of the most effective ways to achieve success. However, because of the failure rate of these projects, it could not be expected firm’ success due to only one new product development project. Therefore, it should be selected a portfolio of new product development projects. In this research by literature review and interview with experts 20 criteria for evaluating new product development projects in disposable medical product extracted. Then by using analytic network process (ANP) based on DEMATEL method degrees of influences given and received among these criteria and also weights for each criteria based on correlation between them calculated. Finally, by evaluating NPD projects with VIKOR method, best portfolio selected. The proposed model is capable of considering complex interrelationship and interdependency between criteria and dimensions for more accurate project selection as well as providing appreciate solutions to improve selected portfolio performance by measuring these interrelationships between criteria and their effective degree and affected degree. The results show that the most important criteria for selecting portfolio of new product development projects are Platform for firm growth and Business-strategy fit.

Background: Infantile colic imposes a heavy financial burden on families and the healthcare system. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of Pedilact on the treatment of infantile colic. Materials and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 84 infant younger than 3 months with infantile colic were divided in two groups of 42 cases each- probiotic and standard treatment. This study was done in Arak city, Iran between 2013 and 2016. The population of the study consisted of breastfed infants and formula-fed infants younger than 3 months (less than 13 weeks) who referred to Amir Kabir Hospital and pediatric clinics presenting crying and restlessness symptoms consistent with the modified Wessel criteria. In the treatment group, in addition to the main treatment, five drops of Pedilact (Iran) was daily administered for 28 days. In both groups, the main treatment was instructed to the parents and they were advised to do the following techniques to pacify the infant: making relaxing sounds or vocals, applying peaceful and rhythmic rocking motion, walking, and using mild tremor-like movements. Results: In Pedilact and control groups, 54.75% and 28.57% of the cases were male, respectively. 23 infants (75.61%) in the Pedilact group and 33 infants (82.5%) in the control group were breastfed infants. The mean age of infants in Pedilact and control groups were 6.64 + 2.90 and 6.69 + 5.97, respectively.There was no significant difference between the Pedilact and control groups in terms of mean duration of crying time during a day (P= 0.075), and the number of crying attacks per day (P= 0.127), there was a significant decrease in both variables over time, but the mean for hours of sleep in the group receiving the standard treatment was significantly higher than that of the group receiving Pedilact (P= 0.001). Conclusion: There was no significant difference between the control and Pedilact groups in terms of crying time during a day and the number of crying attacks. It should be mentioned that, in this study, sample size was relatively low; hence, a multicenter study is recommended.

Background and Aim: Bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer in men and the eighth form of cancer in women. Role of the viral infections risk has been much discussed in recent years. Therefore the aim of this study was to optimize a method based on polymerase chain reaction to detect and evaluate prevalence of herpes simplex virus and papilloma virus in bladder tumors. Materials and Methods: forty cases of of the bladder TCC carcinoma in the paraffin from the pathology department of the Doctor Gharazi hospital, malayer were collected in the summer 2014. After deparaffin samples, DNA was extracted from the tissue and the beta-globin gene was amplification for the accuracy of the DNA extracted. The gene specific primers for HPV L1 protein and UL130 gene using by PCR for HSV. To examine the relationship between viruses and cancer incidence, was used chi-square test (X2). Results: From 40 Carcinoma samples studied 15 cases (47.39%) were men infected with HPV virus, None of the women surveyed have been infected with HPV. HSV wasn’t detected in 40 samples collected. Conclusions: Considering that independence validation of chi-square test equal to 0.664, and greater than 0.05, correlation between the incidence of HPV virus and no bladder tumor with 95% trust. We also compare the results with in other parts of the world, a lower incidence of HPV infection compared to some other countries were reported.

New Product Development (NPD) is one of the key factors for achieving competitive advantage and maintaining firm growth. Therefore, given the importance of this type of projects, this paper is an endeavor to make these projects more successful by effectively managing their risks in the conceptual design phase of new product development. For this purpose, a multi-objective model, with three objective functions, including risk, overall effectiveness of the design and cost, has been developed in this study. Among the innovations and features of this model, one can refer to its considering the mutual effect of risks to the outcomes of one another, as well as its taking into consideration the risks associated with the continuous design variables in calculating the risk measure of product design, which will ultimately lead to an increase in the accuracy of risk measure calculation for each product design.

In today’s world, control and navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are quite challenging issues. In these fields, obtaining an identified dynamic model of AUV is a vital part. In this paper, a method for parameter estimation of an AUV planar model is proposed, which uses augmented state space technique and Square Root Transformed Unscented Kalman Filter (SR-TUKF) as an estimator. Furthermore, by modeling, misalignment between Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) is estimated, simultaneously. Parameter identification is conducted using data of an AUV, equipped with Gyroscope, DVL and Encoder for measuring control inputs, in a planar maneuver. According to the experimental results, the output of the identified model has matched appropriately to the output of sensors in validation maneuvers. With and without considering the estimated misalignment between IMU-DVL, navigation is performed by fusing inertial navigation system (INS) with DVL. The results show an improvement in the end point error with respect to the travel distance by 53 percent in a maneuver with a distance of 6557 meters. Therefore, the proposed method for estimation of a planar model of AUV and misalignment of sensors has a plausible result, experimentally verified by raw data of a simple maneuver.

Calcium looping process has not yet been commercialized due to challenges associated with the activity loss of CaO sorbents resulting from sintering of the particles in cyclic operations. In the present study, zirconia-stabilized calcium oxide sorbents have been developed through the solution combustion synthesis (SCS) method. The effects of preparation conditions (percentage of Zr stabilizer and fuel-to-metal oxide ratio) on the CO2 capture performance were investigated in a thermogravimetric analyzer. Sorbents with 20% calcium zirconate stabilizer and high fuel-to-metal oxide ratio exhibited an optimal combination of CO2 uptake capacity and stability. Increasing the fuel ratio improved the CO2 uptake capacity due to higher surface area and smaller particle size of the synthesized sorbents. However, increasing the ratio beyond six did not have any significant impact on the performance of the sorbent. Based on the results, the optimum fuel-to-metal oxide ratio for synthesis was six times the stoichiometric ratio. Two sorbents showing the best results (S20-4x and S20-6x) were tested in 50-cycle experiments under mild and harsh calcination conditions for long-term stability assessment. Sorbents displayed high uptake capacity (7.7 and 8.8 mol/kg, respectively, under mild conditions; and 5.0 and 6.5 mol/kg respectively, under harsh conditions) after 50 cycles, which is a significant improvement over the uptake of the benchmark limestone (4.1 and 1.7 mol/kg under mild and harsh conditions, respectively). Based on the results, Zr-stabilized sorbents prepared from solution combustion synthesis method are promising materials for calcium looping CO2 capture.