BACKGROUND Numerous studies have reported that microgrooves on metal and polymer materials can affect cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation and guidance. However, our knowledge of the cell activity associated with microgrooves on ceramics, such as alumina, zirconia, hydroxyapatite and etc, is very incomplete, owing to difficulties in the engraving of microgrooves on the hard surface of ...

Lanthanide (Ln3+) doping in alumina has shown great promise for stabilizing and promoting desirable phase formation to achieve optimized physical and chemical properties. However, doping alumina with Ln elements is generally accompanied by formation of new phases (i.e. LnAlO3, Ln2O3), and therefore inclusion of Ln-doping mechanisms for phase stabilization of the alumina lattice is indispensable...

BACKGROUND Iran signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on June 16, 2003 and it was ratified by the parliament and the House of Representatives on November 6, 2005. Finally, it came into force on February 4, 2006. In this study, we aimed to evaluate health experts' opinion about tobacco control activities in Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS This was a qualitative case study. We used a s...

This paper considers the degradation of alumina and zirconia toughened alumina vs. alumina for hip implants. The materials are as assumed to be load bearing surfaces subjected to shocks in wet conditions. The load is a peak of force; 9 kN was applied over 15 ms at 2 Hz for 800,000 cycles. The volumetric wear and roughness are lower for ZTA than for alumina. The long ZTA ageing did not seem to h...

Data mining has a tremendous contribution for researchers to extract the hidden knowledge and information which have been inherited in the raw data. This study has proposed a brand new and practical fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) based weighted RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) model for application in K-means algorithm for auto insurance customers’ segmentation. The developed met...

Anodic porous alumina has been widely investigated and used as a nanostructure template in various nanoapplications. The porous structure consists of numerous hexagonal cells perpendicular to the aluminum substrate and each cell has several tens or hundreds of nanoscale pores at its center. Because the nanomorphology of anodic porous alumina is limited by the electrolyte during anodizing, the d...

Experimental researches on adsorptive capacity of activated alumina, silica sand and anthracite coal for phosphorus were conducted. Results showed that performances of three filter media were all in line with Langmuir isotherm, and activated alumina adsorptive performance was much better than silica sand and anthracite coal for phosphorus removal. The adsorptive capacity of activated alumina, s...

Mono-phase bio-ceramics (alumina and zirconia) are widely used as femoral heads in total hip replacements (THR) as an alternative to metal devices. Unfortunately, the orthopaedic community reports significant in-vivo failures. Material scientists are already familiar with composites like alumina zirconia. Since both are biocompatible, this could prove to be a new approach to implants. This pape...

background: this study aimed to evaluate the workers safety behavior and to determine the importance of each unsafe behavior in an iranian steel manufacturing company. methods: this study was conducted in mobareke steel manufacturing company, which is located in the middle of iran, in 2007. the methodology was based on the safety behavior sampling (sbs) technique and entropy. after specifying t...