Sharif Digital Repository

In the modern world, electronic communications play a significant role in national and international electronic transactions. This issue has forced all legal systems to face up to many emerging legal problems in the context of electronic communications, such as the legal status of electronic agents in contracting electronically. Regarding the legal validity of e-contracts made through interactive websites, the legal status of electronic agents which play an important role in this process is questionable to see whether they are akin to real agents in the physical world or they are only a mere tool of communication. The current article tries to analyse this question by criticising a number of... 

Background: Recently, concerns have been raised regarding the environmental and public health safety of azo dyes, the most widely used synthetic dyes. The membrane technique has been introduced as one of the efficient methods for dye removal treatments. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane manipulated by surfactants was studied for removal of the azo dye, carmoisine. Methods: PVDF membrane was prepared via non-solvent-induced phase separation (NIPS) and used to remove the azo dye, carmoisine. Three nonionic surfactants including Tween 20, Tween 60, and Tween 80 were used individually as additives in casting solutions to improve PVDF membrane properties. Results: Fourier-transform infrared... 

Bridged bithiazoles (5,5′-ethylene-4,4′-bithiazoles) are synthesized as a good chelating agent  

Integration of advice is intended to acquire knowledge from an agent with more comprehensive information. This paper describes Arian, a general architecture for advice integration. Advice is injected into the system using the advice model which is a case in a CBR system. The architecture comprises an advice adapter to model incomming advice as cases of a CBR system. The Arian architecture is a 2-layered structure in which a refiner component in the top layer is used to modify agent behaviors. The paper also discusses how trust is modelled to distinguish between multiple sources of advice including humans. Arian, the champion team of RoboCup'02 Rescue Simulation Competitions, as an example of... 

The deployment of multi-agent systems in presence of obstacle deals with autonomous motion of agents toward a specified target by sensing each other and boundaries of obstacles. In this paper, asynchronous, scalable, distributed algorithm is used to deploy agents. Boundaries of obstacles are modeled by virtual agents. Algorithm was implemented by solving continuous n-median problem called generalized Fermat-Weber problem. It is shown that deployment is performed when position of real agents are the geometric median of their Voronoi cells. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed algorithm very well  

In a multi-agent system, the number and initial position of informed agents play a major role in the convergence of uninformed agents. In this paper, three different patterns of informed agents' initial positions are studied to see how the convergence percentage can be affected by the number of informed agents. The proposed initial locations are intuitive and inferred from the collective behavior in humans. To evaluate efficiency of the proposed methods and to compare them from different points of view, large number of computer simulations is performed and results are analyzed  

Agent-oriented software methodologies have found their way to become one of the most important issues of software development. The diversity of existing methodologies and the variety of newly arriving ones have arisen the question of which methodology is best in the context of a special problem, so the need for evaluating and comparing methodologies is becoming more important everyday. On the other hand evaluating methodologies can reveal their strengths and shortcomings which lead to an improvement in development of the next generation of agent-oriented methodologies. In this paper, we are going to introduce an approach for evaluating methodologies via the evaluation of their lifecycle... 

The environmental and economic benefits of recycling asphalt pavements have received much attention in recent years. Because of the increase in the cost of raw materials and energy carriers, the reuse of large portions of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is critical in reducing both the cost and environmental footprint of asphalt pavements. High-RAP mixtures are more prone to low temperature cracking and poor mixture workability because of the higher stiffness of RAP binder. Recycling agents are one of the additives which are used to improve these deficiencies. However, there is some ambiguity about the optimum content of recycling agent to assure proper performance of recycled asphalt... 

Graphene nanoplatelets with different oxidation degrees, from low polar few-layer graphene (FLG) to high polar graphene oxide (GO) in the same current and concentration of the oxidizing agent in low concentrated electrolytes ((NH4)2SO4, Sodium Do-decyl Sulfate (SDS), and HNO3) are prepared through a one-step and cost-effective electrochemical synthesis route to find the effect of electrolyte on the surface polarity of powders. In order to use a wide variety of electrolytes, basic, neutral, and acidic electrolytes in a concentration as low as 0.2 M are used. Exfoliated graphene nanoplatelets without any further process are obtained to simplify and accelerate the synthesis process. Several... 

Functional relationship between supplier and buyer in an open market place leads to investigate the role of both quantifiable and non-quantifiable parameters in coordination mechanism with the aim of achieving higher performance in supply chain activities. Here, we develop a supply chain model and a new agent to analyze and simulate the players' behavior in the network. A cooperative game theory framework is utilized between buyer and supplier in order to increase the supply chain performance. The study is supported by presenting SC Net Optimizer as a tool for implementing the proposed coordination mechanism and evaluates the performance of the chain by simulation using stochastic Petri nets... 

CdS nanoparticles were synthesized by a thermochemical method by using Na2S2O3 and CdSO4 as the precursors and thioglycerol as the capping agent. We have investigated the effect of different temperatures on the size and crystalline phase of the CdS nanoparticles. The results of the optical spectroscopy and XRD analyses clarified that increasing the synthesis temperature increased the final nanoparticles size and also changed the crystalline phase of the particles from hexagonal to cubic phase. The size of the synthesized particles was less than 4nm. TEOS was also used in cooperation with thioglycerol for better surface passivation. The results of the PL analysis showed that using this... 

In this paper, we envision a solution to the problem of capturing an intruder in a product network. This solution is derived based on the assumed existing algorithms for basic member graphs of a graph product. In this problem, a team of cleaner agents are responsible for capturing a hostile intruder in the network. While the agents can move in the network one hop at a time, the intruder is assumed to be arbitrarily fast in a way that it can traverse any number of nodes contiguously as far as no agents reside in those nodes. Here, we consider a version of the problem where each agent can replicate new agents. Hence, the algorithm start with a single agent and new agents are created on demand.... 

Emotions are the subject of study in many research areas, including psychology, physiology and artificial intelligence. However, there is not yet a general computational definition for emotions and many of the related works in artificial intelligence are based on uncertain assumptions about the origin, features, and applications of emotions. Therefore, we direct our studies toward achieving a better understanding of emotions and generating a computational model that could be a base for further research in the field. As a first step, we present the results of our study into the possible role of emotions in mental resource management. To do so, we will introduce a model of emotions based on... 

Traditional AI planners often suffer from their poor efficiency. There are many choice points in the planning process, but lack of information precludes proper decision. In this paper, we introduce a new method for adding automatic learning capability to a forward planning system. Our idea is based on a dynamic voting algorithm to choose the best action to proceed to the next state. In every planning cycle, applicable actions (i.e. those actions whose preconditions are satisfied in the current world state) vote to, and compete with each other. As a result of this voting, gradually more useful actions are chosen. This idea has been applied to the blocks world domain, and the preliminary... 

A thorough investigation on different controlled release systems were evaluated. The required devices were constructed simultaneously and the required experiments were performed. The polymeric network and membranes of poly vinyl alcohol with cross-linking agent glutaraldehyde for preparation of hyrogel system was effected. Paraquat, a type of herbicide was introduced as solute in the system. Glutaraldehyde was utilized as cross-linking agent at different concentration. Increase in the concentration of the cross-linking agent will cause a decrease in the extent of release out of the system. The effect of temperature on hydrogel adsorption demonstrates a higher adsorption at lower temperature.... 

Introduction: Biodegradation of azo dyes under harsh environmental conditions has been of great interest for the treatment of colored effluents. The present study aims to evaluate Klebsiella quasipneumoniae GT7 for degrading azo dye Carmoisine under extreme pH conditions and high salinity. Materials and Methods: The growth profiles of bacteria were compared under different conditions of salinity and pH, using the optical density and viability measurements. Kinetic patterns of decolourization by GT7 were investigated under different concentrations of NaCl and/or pH, through the spectrophotometry method. Moreover, thin layer chromatography (TLC) was used to evaluate the biotransformation of... 

Silver can inhibit bacterial activity. Previous studies showed that high concentration of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in compared to its lower concentrations is toxic for human health. However, by decreasing concentration of AgNPs, antibacterial activity also decreases. In this study, we investigated synergistic inhibitory activity of the combination of AgNPs and garlic oil nanoemulsion (GONE) for increase antibacterial activity of AgNPs at lower concentrations. AgNPs and GONE with sizes of 30.7 and 19.3 nm were synthesized and prepared by chemical reduction and low energy method, respectively. Physicochemical properties of AgNPs and GONE were investigated. The minimum inhibitory... 

One of the most important issues discussed in multi-agent systems, is communication between agents. Usually, a predefined communication protocol is used, but predefining a protocol between agents causes some problems; for example it is possible that agents recognize a subject that is not defined in their protocol so they can't express anything about it. In this paper we propose a new method for evolution of a communication protocol between intelligent agents by using natural selection mechanism. Experimental results will be discussed in detail. © 2006 IEEE  

One of the most important issues that be discussed in multi-agent systems, is the communication between agents. In existing applications usually a communication protocol defined between agents. But defining a protocol between agents cause some problems; for example it is possible that agents recognize a subject, but because it is not defined in their protocol, they can't express any thing about that. In this paper we propose a new method for evolution of a communication protocol between intelligent agents, after that the experimental results will be discussed and at the end of the paper future works and conclusion. Copyright - World Automation Congress (WAC) 2006  

Agent-oriented software products are becoming increasingly complicated, and the competitive market is forcing the producers to reduce time-to-market and increase the quality of the software produced. Therefore, developers have come to realize the need for more reliable and efficient agent-oriented software development processes (methodologies) which address the specific needs of each and every project. Software Process Lines provide a solution to this problem by using Process Line Engineering concepts for instantiating bespoke software processes. This research focuses on developing a software process line for Requirements Engineering (RE) in the context of agent-oriented software...