Sharif Digital Repository

Temporal synchronization of neuronal activity plays an important role in various brain functions such as binding, cognition, information processing, and computation. Patients suffering from disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia show abnormality in the synchronization patterns. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a cheap, non-invasive, and easy-to-use method with fine temporal resolution. Modern multichannel EEG data are increasingly being used in brain studies. Traditional approaches for identifying synchronous activity in EEG are through univariate techniques such as power spectral density or bivariate techniques such as coherence. In this paper, we review two methods for... 

In this manuscript a new phenomenon of adjacency and closeness rating is proposed for constructing the optimal facility layout design. In the proposed approach, the closeness rating is applied to every pair of neighboring departments in a range of their attached point up to a predefined distance between them. Also, while in the traditional approach the closeness rating is applied for determining either the proximity or farness of two departments, the proposed approach considers both the degree of closeness as the economical purposes, and farness as the safety purposes concurrently. A mathematical model is proposed for constructing the optimal layout design. For evaluating the efficiency and... 

Due to the lack of data in active distribution networks, employing new accurate measurement devices like phasor measurement units (PMUs) and micro-PMUs with a high reporting rate becomes an inevitable choice for the future vision of distribution systems. As a result, different algorithms have been presented to optimally place PMUs cost-effectively based on the estimation errors of the distribution state estimation (DSE) results. However, any component failure in measurement devices or communication links between sending ends and monitoring system of the distribution management system can significantly affect the DSE results. In response, this study introduces the reliability of satisfying... 

Particulate matter (PM) pollution is a growing concern in urban areas in the developing countries because of its potential to aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. Traditional approaches in monitoring urban pollutants have relied on ground-based networks even though they essentially provide point measurements and are inadequate for health alerts on large spatial and long temporal scales. Recent advances in satellite imagery has attracted managers to look into this new alternative as a predictive tool for improving air quality at urban and regional scales by providing necessary data in advance of the onset of actual severe conditions. Moderate Resolution Imaging... 

The earned value is a leading technique in monitoring and analyzing project performance and project progress. Although, it allows exact measurement of project progress, and can uncover any time and cost deviations from the plan, its capability in reporting accepted level of deviation is not well studied. This study presented an approach to overcome this limitation by applying statistical quality control charts to monitor earned value indices. For this purpose, project time and cost performance indices of a real construction project were monitored regularly on individual control charts. The results were quite promising, and not only competed well against traditional approaches, but also... 

In this paper, we consider the uplink of the narrowband multicell multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In traditional approaches, orthogonal pilots among users of all (interfering) cells are utilized to estimate their channels assumed to be constant during channel coherence time. However, in multicell scenarios, such schemes suffer from pilot contamination. In order to address this issue, based on asymptotic pairwise orthogonality of the users' channels in massive regime, blind channel estimation schemes have been proposed. On the other hand, such schemes rely on low interference or high signal to noise ratio (SNR) levels, to achieve reliable performance. Inspired... 

The traditional approach to origin-destination (OD) estimation based on data surveys is highly expensive. Therefore, researchers have attempted to develop reasonable low-cost approaches to estimating the OD vector, such as OD estimation based on traffic sensor data. In this estimation approach, the location problem for the sensors is critical. One type of sensor that can be used for this purpose, on which this paper focuses, is vehicle identification sensors. The information collected by these sensors that can be employed for OD estimation is discussed in this paper. We use data gathered by vehicle identification sensors that include an ID for each vehicle and the time at which the sensor... 

The fabrication of a suitable scaffold material is one of the major challenges for bone tissue engineering. Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is one of the most favorable matrix materials in bone tissue engineering owing to its biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, PLA suffers from some shortcomings including low degradation rate, low cell adhesion caused by its hydrophobic property, and inflammatory reactions in vivo due to its degradation product, lactic acid. Therefore, the incorporation of bioactive reinforcements is considered as a powerful method to improve the properties of PLA. This review presents a comprehensive study on recent advances in the synthesis of PLA-based biocomposites... 

Numerical simulation of dam-foundation-fault system, considering the earthquake source, propagation path, and local site effects, was carried out for realistic and reasonable seismic safety analysis of concrete dams. The Domain Reduction Method (DRM) was used for seismic analysis of Dam-Foundation-Fault (DFF) system, in which a modular two-step methodology for reducing the computational costs in large domain analysis was introduced. In this method, seismic excitation is directly applied to the computational domain such that assigning artificial boundary to the finite element models is more comfortable. In order to verify the implementation of the DRM in Finite Element Method (FEM), a simple... 

Numerical simulation of dam-foundation-fault system, considering the earthquake source, propagation path, and local site effects, was carried out for realistic and reasonable seismic safety analysis of concrete dams. The Domain Reduction Method (DRM) was used for seismic analysis of Dam-Foundation-Fault (DFF) system, in which a modular two-step methodology for reducing the computational costs in large domain analysis was introduced. In this method, seismic excitation is directly applied to the computational domain such that assigning artificial boundary to the finite element models is more comfortable. In order to verify the implementation of the DRM in Finite Element Method (FEM), a simple...