Sharif Digital Repository

Twice a year the National University of Singapore hosts computer programming events open to the nation’s secondary, junior college, polytechnic and technical education students. To qualify for the live events, participants complete online programming activities during a month-long qualification phase open to all non-university students over the age of 12. The activities include game-based learning and traditional coding problems. During the past year, more than 1700 students participated in the two qualification phases and more than 200 students participated in the live events. At these events, students pair-program to test their programming abilities and showcase their coded creations in a... 

Urban commuters and road authorities are interested in knowing how well their city can manage traffic conditions. It is challenging to make a fair comparison among global cities due to the absence of a consistent, publicly accessible and inexpensive framework. This study proposes a methodology to compare travel time and average speed in different cities. Large cities have a central core, in which many of the major activities take place. This core is called downtown or the central business district (CBD). In this study, a comparison is made by simulating the morning commute trips from origins outside to destinations inside the CBD. The proposed framework outlines how the city and the CBD... 

Urban commuters and road authorities are interested in knowing how well their city can manage traffic conditions. It is challenging to make a fair comparison among global cities due to the absence of a consistent, publicly accessible and inexpensive framework. This study proposes a methodology to compare travel time and average speed in different cities. Large cities have a central core, in which many of the major activities take place. This core is called downtown or the central business district (CBD). In this study, a comparison is made by simulating the morning commute trips from origins outside to destinations inside the CBD. The proposed framework outlines how the city and the CBD... 

Background: The burden of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is rising globally, with substantial variation in levels and trends of disease in different countries and regions. Understanding these geographical differences is crucial for formulating effective strategies for preventing and treating IBD. We report the prevalence, mortality, and overall burden of IBD in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2017, based on data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017. Methods: We modelled mortality due to IBD using a standard Cause of Death Ensemble model including data mainly from vital registrations. To estimate the non-fatal burden, we used data... 

H.264/AVC, the latest video coding standard, achieves better video compression rates since it supports new features such as a large number of intra- and inter-prediction candidate modes. H.264/AVC adopts rate-distortion optimization (RDO) technique to obtain the best intra- and inter-prediction, while maximizing visual quality and minimizing the required bit rate. However, the RDO reduces the encoding speed via the exhaustive evaluation of all candidate modes. In this paper, we decrease the encoding time by reducing the computational complexity of the prediction function and the number of candidate modes. First, we improve Pan's method, by eliminating the DC mode from the candidates. Second,... 

This paper addresses the problem of optimal power allocation in multiuser OFDM ad-hoc networks. Our objective is to maximize the weighted rate-sum of users under total transmit power constraint. Maximizing a weighted rate-sum is more amenable whereas appropriate weight assignment to different users, guarantees fairness among users. We propose a distributed algorithm for optimal power allocation based on reaching a consensus among users for power allocation. The proposed algorithm is tractable in the sense of computational complexity and requires only local information at each node. Simulation results and the analysis of the algorithm are presented to support the proposed idea. © 2006 IEEE