Sharif Digital Repository

This study embarked upon the development of a nationwide freight activity microsimulation as an acceptable analysis tool for policy assessments. Mode choice component of a large-scale behavioral microsimulation framework, named Freight Activity Microsimulation Estimator (FAME) was developed and validated in this study. The results of a nationwide establishment survey, discussed in earlier studies, are used to develop the mode choice model for the entire US. Despite many previous freight mode choice models, the proposed model works at the disaggregate level of firm-to-firm. A new concept for firm-types is implemented in FAME to keep the computational burden at a reasonable level and to... 

Analcime shell-nickel ferrite core microspheres were decorated with Pd and Pt nanoparticles with the aid of an ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (BMIM-PF6). The samples thus prepared were characterized using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) methods. The XRD patterns confirmed the growth of a zeolitic layer on the surface of the magnetic cores. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) curve clearly indicated the thermal decomposition of the loaded IL, which confirmed the presence of... 

This paper aims to estimate a demand model for health insurance and medical care in Iran, in the presence of heterogeneous and latent health status of individuals; moreover it tests the asymmetry of information in the health insurance market. Our data set have been taken from the Households expenditures survey (2006) of Iran. Parameters of the model are estimated by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the presence of asymmetric information (adverse selection and moral hazard) is tested by a non-parametric econometric method. The analytical model is specified under minimal assumptions on the selection process of different insurance categories and the statistical distribution of... 

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is a rapidly growing additive manufacturing process, because it has the capacity to build parts from a variety of materials. However, the dimensional accuracy of the fabricated parts in this process is dependent on the ability to control phenomena such as warpage and shrinkage. This research presents an optimization algorithm to find the best processing parameters for minimizing warpage. The finite element method was used to simulate the sintering of a layer of polymer powder, and the warpage of the layer was calculated. The numerical model was verified through comparison with experimental results. A back-propagation neural network was used to formulate the... 

Threshold selection for text segmentation is an essential preprocessing step in most document processing algorithms. Although there are a number of sophisticatedly well-trained methods for text extraction, many researchers still prefer a fast and simple threshold selection algorithm for preprocessing. In this paper, a new global threshold selection method is proposed based on fuzzy expert systems (FESs). It initially enhances image contrast by using a FES. Then, the range of the threshold value is adjusted by using another FES and a pixel-counting algorithm. Finally, the threshold value is obtained as the middle value of the above range. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm,... 

Adsorption is one of the most sophisticated separation processes widely used in oil, gas and petrochemical facilities, and there is no doubt in the environmental and technological significant of this technology. But, the key to design an efficient adsorption service is to accurately select a suitable adsorbent that strongly dependent to the feed composition, product specification, and operating conditions. During the last 30 years, different classes of solid adsorbent have been manufactured; but, they should be meticulously chosen accordingly. In this paper, the specification and main charac-teristics of adsorbents generally used in oil, gas and petrochemical processes including activated... 

A dimeric tungstophosphate, Na14[Co4(PW9O35)2].28H2O (1), was synthesized via a simple one-pot method and characterized by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. Nanocluster 1 was exhibited to be able to selective oxidation of aliphatic and aromatic sulfides to sulfoxides in the presence of hydrogen peroxide at room temperature with high performance. Further investigations showed that this catalyst could reuse four times without a significant reduction in its activity for the oxidation of methyl phenyl sulfide. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd  

This review paper is devoted to the intensification of processes for nitrate removal. First, the developments of microfluidic sensors for nitrate detection and analysis have addressed. Second, the process variables of photocatalytic nitrate removal have been categorized according to their relationship with activity, selectivity and stability of the catalyst. The objective of this classification is to generate guidelines toward the photocatalytic process optimization. Third, because of the fact that a single method for nitrate removal faces some challenges, hybrid methods have been presented, and the best choice for nitrate removal can be referred to as photocatalytic – reverse osmosis... 

Copper phthalocyanine was used as ion carrier for preparing polymeric membrane selective sensor for detection of iodide. The electrode was prepared by incorporating the ionophore into plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) membrane, coated on the surface of graphite electrode. This novel electrode shows high selectivity for iodide with respect to many common inorganic and organic anions. The effects of membrane composition, pH and the influence of lipophilic cationic and anionic additives and also nature of plasticizer on the response characteristics of the electrode were investigated. A calibration plot with near-Nernestian slope for iodide was observed over a wide linear range of five... 

In this paper, an innovative method is proposed for material selection. This method is based on the well-known weighting properties approach while integrating a new exponential function in the method to overcome the deficiencies of previously proposed methods. Using a maximum and minimum, in each significant aspect of the problem, for scaling, the values of material properties and achieving more realistic results by not emphasizing on any of the high and low extremes and using an exponential function that ranks the candidates regardless of their number, for improving the performance of the methodology and obtaining more absolute rankings, are some of the advantages of this method. The... 

The novel N2O2 unsymmetrical tetradentate Schiff bases complexes are used as catalysts for the selective aerobic oxidation of cyclohexene. In general, conversion percentages decrease with increasing ΔEp and decreasing Eredox 0′. Catalytic activity increases with decrease of the number of electron-donating groups and the catalytic selectivity varies according to the types of substituents in the ligands. The catalytic system described here is an inexpensive method for selective oxidation of olefins, with advantages of high activity, selectivity, re-usability and short reaction times. Analysing GC and redox potential results shows a moderate correlation between selectivity and activity. © 2004... 

Synchronous heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation of cyclohexene and acetone, catalyzed by Pt/Al2O3, was carried out in solutions of 2-hydroxy ethylammonium formate (a room temperature ionic liquid, RTIL) with ethanol and propan-1-ol at 25 °C. Rate constants and selectivity of the reaction (relative to cyclohexene hydrogenation) increase with mole fraction of the ionic liquid (IL). The reactants tendency to the catalyst surface increases by addition of the ionic liquid and thus the reaction rate increases, especially for cyclohexene hydrogenation. Consequently the selectivity to cyclohexene hydrogenation was increased. Single-parameter correlations of log kvs.π* (dipolarity/polarizibility)... 

Given a random variable (Formula presented.) and a set of experts (Formula presented.), we describe a method for finding a subset of experts (Formula presented.) whose aggregated opinion best predicts the outcome of (Formula presented.). Therefore, the problem can be regarded as a team formation for performing a prediction task. We show that in case of aggregating experts' opinions by simple averaging, finding the best team (the team with the lowest total error during past (Formula presented.) rounds) can be modeled with an integer quadratic programming and we prove its NP-hardness whereas its relaxation is solvable in polynomial time. At the end, we do an experimental comparison between... 

The pseudocapacitance and morphology of electrodeposited transition metal oxides depend significantly on the morphology of the substrate. The nanoporous nickel substrate, derived from selective electro-dissolution of antimony from an electro-deposited Ni-Sb alloy, effectively promotes the electrochemical utilization of manganese oxide deposited on this structure. The large electronic and ionic conduction within the nanostructured deposit improve the energy storage performance of Mn oxide as compared to that on flat Ni substrate. In this work, the MnO2 specific capacitances of around 612 F g-1 were obtained, which was five times higher than Mn oxide deposited on a flat Ni-ribbon. A highly... 

In this paper, three critical issues with the paper "A fuzzy set approach for R&D portfolio selection using a real options valuation model", coauthored by Wang and Hwang and published in Omega 2007 are addressed. Shortcomings of the original work are highlighted and corrective measures to improve the approach are proposed  

Determining the power ratio of the electric motor to the total power in parallel hybrid electric vehicles is of great importance that has a major impact on electric vehicle performance. The so-called Hybridization Factor is selected based on the desired performance indices of the vehicle. In practice, the effect of hybridization factor is observable on all the main indices of vehicle performance such as maximum speed, gradeability, pollutant emission, fuel consumption, etc. This ratio should be determined considering the desired performance indices and priorities. In this paper, the performance of an example electric vehicle is investigated through simulation results in ADVISOR software... 

Optimum operating parameters for pulse co-deposition of nano-Al2O3 with Cr from a trivalent chromium bath onto Cu cathode are selected by using “technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution” (TOPSIS), “VIšekriterijumsko KOmpromisno Rangiranje” (VIKOR), “elimination and choice expressing the reality” (ELECTRE) and “complex proportional assessment” (CORPAS) accompanied with analytic hierarchy processing (AHP) to compare methods for achievement of the best tribological coating performance. Criteria for appropriate selection include wear loss, corrosion resistance, micro-hardness, bath condition and current efficiency. Results ascertain the best Cr–Al2O3 nano-composite coating... 

Feature selection is a fundamental problem in machine learning and data mining. The majority of feature selection algorithms are designed for running on a single machine (centralized setting) and they are less applicable to very large datasets. Although there are some distributed methods to tackle this problem, most of them are distributing the data horizontally which are not suitable for datasets with a large number of features and few number of instances. Thus, in this paper, we introduce a novel vertically distributable feature selection method in order to speed up this process and be able to handle very large datasets in a scalable manner. In general, feature selection methods aim at... 

Abstract: Carbonyl compounds were prepared by selective oxidation of alcohols in the presence of recoverable Fe 3O 4@ SiO 2@ Pd magnetic nanocatalyst in aqueous media as a green solvent. Molecular oxygen served as an oxidant. The catalyst was removed from the reaction media by external magnetic field, washed with methanol, and reused for six more times without any considerable reduction in its reactivity. The chemoselectivity and regioselectivity of the catalyst can serve for selective oxidation of primary alcohols in the presence of secondary ones, and for oxidation of unhindered alcohols in the presence of hindered ones. Graphical Abstract: Selective and facile oxidation of alcohols to... 

This paper presents a new prediction model based on empirical mode decomposition, feature selection and hybrid forecast engine. The whole structure of proposed model is based on nonstationarity and non-convex nature of wind power signal. The hybrid forecast engine consists of three main stages as; empirical mode decomposition, an intelligent algorithm and three stage neural network. All parameters of proposed neural network will be optimized by intelligent algorithm. Effectiveness of the proposed model is tested with real-world hourly data of wind farms in Canada, Spain and Texas. In order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed model, it is compared with several other wind speed and...