Sharif Digital Repository

Using 3-D scanned data to analyze and extract pore network plays a vital role in investigation of porous media's characteristics. In this paper, a new simple method is developed to detect pores and throats for analyzing the connectivity and permeability of the network. This automated method utilizes some of the common and well-known image processing functions which are widely accessible by researchers and this has led to an easy algorithm implementation. In this method, after polishing and quality control of images, using city-block distance function and watershed segmentation algorithm, pores and throats are detected and 3-D network is produced. This method can also be applied on 2-D images... 

This work concerns simultaneous determination of relative permeability, capillary pressure, pore size distribution (PSD), and residual oil saturation data by optimization of well testing data, and introduces a new capillary pressure relationship, based on the Weibull distribution function, for direct determination of the PSD function from capillary pressure parameters. Three consecutive injection, fall off, and production well tests are performed on a predefined synthetic reservoir through simulation, and an optimization algorithm is used to find the parameters of relative permeability and capillary pressure curves as well as the value of residual oil saturation. The PSD function is also... 

In the present paper, a dynamic modeling is presented for deposition of the mud solid particles over and through the porous sandstones during permeability plugging experiments. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with image processing are utilized to find the porosity and pore size distribution of the mud cake. The structure of the porous rock as well as the mud cake are modeled via bundle of the curved tubes approach and deposition probability of the solid particles has been taken into the account through filtration theories. Four different sandstones in addition to four mud samples were utilized to measure and predict the volume of the expelled fluid during the 30 min of filtration... 

Composite coatings of Hydroxyapatite (HA) with ceramics, polymers and metals are used to modify the surface structure of implants. In this research, HA/TiO2 composite coating was fabricated by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) on 316 stainless steel substrate. HA/TiO2 composite coatings with 5, 10 and 20 wt.% of TiO2, deposited at 40 V and 90 s as an optimum condition. The samples coated at this condition led to an adherent, continuous and crack-free coating. The influence of TiO2 content was studied by performing different characterization methods such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), corrosion resistance in simulated body fluid (SBF),... 

The number of known proteins is increasing every day; tens of thousands have been studied and categorized by now. In this chapter, we propose amodel for protein matching or extracting similar parts of two given proteins. We focus on the computational geometric approach and the graph matching method that are used to model and compare the sequence and 3D structure of proteins. The remainder ofthis chapter is organized as follows. We first have a glance at the related works. There are two major methods used in the literature: Delaunay tetrahedralization and similarity flooding.We explain the required information in the next section as background knowledge, and then propose a new idea in Sect.... 

Proteins are the main players in the game of life. Good understanding of their structures, functions, and behaviors leads to good understanding of drugs, diseases, and thus our health. So, much effort has been done to study and categorize proteins. Nowadays, tens of thousands of proteins have been found. Moreover, the problem of comparing the proteins is hard. Therefore efficient methods are needed to deal with this problem. In this paper, we used one important computational geometric method and one graph matching method: "Delaunay Tetrahedral-ization" and "Similarity Flooding" to propose a new idea to extract similar parts of proteins by combining both of these methods  

Nowadays, there are plenty of online websites related to news. Hence, new technologies, tools and special search engines are created for having access to the news on these websites. Online news is a special type of public information which has exclusive characteristics. These characteristics contribute news engines tasks such as discovering, collecting and searching to be different with similar tasks in traditional web search engines. Clustering plays conspicuous role in news engines tasks. In this paper we study various tasks in news engines and also focusing on clustering applications in them. © 2007 Springer  

Recent years have witnessed an explosion in the availability of news articles on the World Wide Web. In addition, organizing the results of a news search facilitates the user(s) in overviewing the returned news. In this work, we have focused on the label-based clustering approaches for news meta-search engines, and which clusters news articles based on their topics. Furthermore, our engine for NEws meta-Search REsult Clustering (NeSReC) is implemented along. NeSReC takes queries from the users and collect the snippets of news which are retrieved by The Altavista News Search Engine for the queries. Afterwards, it performs the hierarchical clustering and labeling based on news snippets in a... 

We present axiom systems, and provide soundness and strong completeness theorems, for classes of Kripke models with restricted extension rules among the node structures of the model. As examples we present an axiom system for the class of cofinal extension Kripke models, and an axiom system for the class of end-extension Kripke models. We also show that Heyting arithmetic (HA) is strongly complete for its class of end-extension models. Cofinal extension models of HA are models of Peano arithmetic (PA). © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

Filtrate and solid invasion from drilling fluids are two key sources of formation damage, and can result in formation permeability impairment. Typically, spurt invasion of mud solids causes the evolution of an external mud cake which tends to reduce further solids and filtrate influx. However, uncontrolled spurt and filtrate invasion are detrimental because they reduce the permeability of the formation. Mud composition, formation rock's permeability and porosity, and temperature can influence both spurt and filtrate invasion. The sizes of mud solids relative to the average pore size of a rock are also important in predicting the extent of mud invasion and permeability impairment. In this... 

An advanced method using progressive concept of geometrical correspondence is applied to create a new wheel/rail contact model based on virtual penetration theory. The geometry and contact mechanism are solved simultaneously because of the independency in a defined correspondence. The model takes the penetrated profiles of wheel and rail and also associated creeps as inputs, and produces driving contact forces as output. The advantage of this model is that it doesn't require pretabulation of rigid contact situation. The method allows calculating flexible, non-elliptical, multiple contact patches during integration of the model. Consequently the rails with substructures can vibrate separately... 

A two dimensional rectangular microchannel with circular micropillars was modeled in the presence of an electric field. Continuity and Navier-Stokes equations were solved along with convection-diffusion equation using finite element method. Reaction phenomenon was applied via a partial differential equation on the reaction surfaces and electric force was added as a source term to the transport equations. Velocity, concentration and electric potential distributions were obtained, with the aid of which, capture efficiency and average surface concentration of reaction surfaces were calculated. To ameliorate the reaction rate, different designs of reaction surfaces were investigated; the designs... 

Despite brilliant properties of glass ionomer cement (GIC), its weak mechanical property poses an obstacle for its use in medical applications. The present research aims to formulate hydroxyapatite/yttria-stabilized zirconia (HA/YSZ) in the composition of GIC to enhance mechanical properties and to improve fluoride release of GIC. HA/YSZ was synthesized via a sol-gel method and characterized by applying X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photo-emission spectroscopy (XPS) and simultaneous thermal analysis (STA) along with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) methods. The synthesized nanocomposite was mixed with GIC at a fixed composition of 5.... 

In the last decades, much attention has been paid to the design of multi-speaker voice conversion. In this work, a new method for voice conversion (VC) using nonlinear principal component analysis (NLPCA) is presented. The principal components are extracted and transformed by a feed-forward neural network which is trained by combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Back-Propagation (BP). Common pre- and post-processing approaches are applied to increase the quality of the synthesized speech. The results indicate that the proposed method can be considered as a step towards multi-speaker Voice conversion. © 2007 IEEE  

Background: Systemic sclerosis (SSc), a multi-organ disorder, is characterized by vascular abnormalities, dysregulation of the immune system, and fibrosis. The mechanisms underlying tissue pathology in SSc have not been entirely understood. This study intended to investigate the common and tissue-specific pathways involved in different tissues of SSc patients. Methods: An integrative gene expression analysis of ten independent microarray datasets of three tissues was conducted to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). DEGs were mapped to the search tool for retrieval of interacting genes (STRING) to acquire protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks. Then, functional clusters in PPI... 

Cell-laden hydrogel microcapsules enable the high-throughput production of cell aggregates, which are relevant for three-dimensional tissue engineering and drug screening applications. However, current microcapsule production strategies are limited by their throughput, multistep protocols, and limited amount of compatible biomaterials. We here present a single-step process for the controlled microfluidic production of single-core microcapsules using enzymatic outside-in cross-linking of tyramine-conjugated polymers. It was hypothesized that a physically, instead of the conventionally explored biochemically, controlled enzymatic cross-linking process would improve the reproducibility,... 

Microfluidic droplet generators excel in generating monodisperse micrometer-sized droplets and particles. However, the low throughput of conventional droplet generators hinders their clinical and industrial translation. Current approaches to parallelize microdevices are challenged by the two-dimensional nature of the standard fabrication methods. Here, we report the facile production of three-dimensionally (3D) parallelized microfluidic droplet generators consisting of stacked and radially multiplexed channel designs. Computational fluid dynamics simulations form the design basis for a microflow distributor that ensures similar flow rates through all droplet generators. Stereolithography is...