Sharif Digital Repository

Demand response (DR) as a state-of-the-art program is accommodated in the energy efficiency contexts of the smart grid. Lack of the customer knowledge about how to respond to the time-differentiated tariffs and offered controlling signals is the major obstacle in the way of broad DR implementing. As a solution, an optimization method, namely load control (LC), is proposed to automatically control the on/off status of the responsive appliances in a smart home. This paper focuses on the direct load control (DLC) program in the category of incentive-based DR programs. LC is extended to consider inconvenience cost of the DLC implementation for DLC program participants. Outputs of the extended LC... 

A web attack is an attack against a web server through the HTTP Protocol. By analyzing known web attacks, we find out that each one has its own behavior. Vestiges of their behavior could be detected in non-body parts of the HTTP Protocol. Such information can be used to verify web alerts generated by Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and Web Intrusion Detection Systems (Web IDSs). In this paper, we propose a method to verify web alerts generated by mentioned sensors. The goal of the alert verification component is to eliminate or tag alerts that do not represent successful attacks. Our approach is based on analyzing HTTP Transaction metadata, including Request method, Request Headers, Status... 

Accurate forecasting of outpatient visits aids in decision-making and planning for the future and is the foundation for greater and better utilization of resources and increased levels of outpatient care. It provides the ability to better manage the ways in which outpatient's needs and aspirations are planned and delivered. This study presents a hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) model to develop a Mamdani type fuzzy rule based system to forecast outpatient visits with high accuracy. The hybrid model uses genetic algorithm for evolving knowledge base of fuzzy system. Actually it extracts useful patterns of information with a descriptive rule induction approach based on Genetic Fuzzy Systems... 

The paper investigates the deep structure of the human mind by analyzing multiple intelligences theory. Regarding serious critiques proposed by a number of cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and educational theorists (i.e. Sternberg 1983, 1991; Eysenck 1994; Scarr 1985; Klein 1998; Demetriou and Kazi 2006; Demetriou, Mouyi, and Spanoudis 2010, among others), it seems that the different types of intelligence introduced by Gardner (1983) have a shared feature. The authors believe that this particular shared feature can be counted as the key point of the underlying system of human knowledge. Since human cognition may be analyzed by means of universal structures of the mind,... 

Botnets (networks of compromised computers) are often used for malicious activities such as spam, click fraud, identity theft, phishing, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Most of previous researches have introduced fully or partially signature-based botnet detection approaches. In this paper, we propose a fully anomaly-based approach that requires no a priori knowledge of bot signatures, botnet C&C protocols, and C&C server addresses. We start from inherent characteristics of botnets. Bots connect to the C&C channel and execute the received commands. Bots belonging to the same botnet receive the same commands that causes them having similar netflows characteristics and... 

Classification of data streams has become an important area of data mining, as the number of applications facing these challenges increases. In this paper, we propose a new ensemble learning method for data stream classification in presence of concept drift. Our method is capable of detecting changes and adapting to new concepts which appears in the stream  

Phase identification is an important aspect of flash calculations which can affect the phase and chemical equilibria. A new simultaneous approach for reactive mixtures, based on τ-method which relies on modification equation for mole fraction summation, is introduced in this paper. In the proposed methodology, phase identification and solution of governing equations can be performed simultaneously and effectively. In addition, prior knowledge of the number of phases in advance is not required. Present methodology has been verified with the help of case studies and results are discussed in the present paper. The results indicate that the present method gives us information about presence of... 

The most important event following the establishmenet of the Internet network was the Web introduced by Tim Berners-Lee. Websites give their owners features that allow sharing with which they can publish their content with users and visitors. In the last 5 years, we have seen some changes in the use of web. Users want to participate in content sharing and they like to interact with each other. This is known as Web 2.0. In the last year, Web 2.0 has reached maturity and now we need a smart web which will be accordingly be called Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is based on semantic web definition. Changing the way of using the web has had a clear impact on E-Tourism and its development and also on business... 

Nowadays, knowledge is the key to success in all software engineering processes. This valuable knowledge, obtained through analysis, design, development, and maintenance processes of the system, should be saved and reused in designing and developing current and similar systems. Using pre-existing knowledge is a practical approach which reduces design complexity, improves software architecture design and manages software quality. In this paper, we describe an approach to create architecture design knowledge using a hierarchical structure of architectural styles based on quality attributes. Knowledge is most importance asset of our approach that reuses similar domains, correlates architectures... 

Web Engineering has been enriched with processes and modeling languages that focus on the specific features of web-based systems, taking into account the special requirements and constraints that are associated with this specific context. Process Patterns, on the other hand, represent elements of knowledge and experience in software engineering; they also act as reusable method chunks that can be used for constructing bespoke methodologies that are tailored to fit specific project situations. We propose a set of process patterns based on current web development practices. A number of prominent web development methodologies have been studied, and a set of process patterns has been elicited... 

This paper introduces a new file manager to support multiple categorization. The proposed file manager is designed based on a subtle idea named Conceptual File Management (CFM). According to this approach, files are not contained by folders; nevertheless, each file can be a member of one or more folders (concepts). A prototype file manager is designed and implemented based on the new approach. Filtering by set operations and also manual concept selection improves retrieval of the files. CFM improves file system's clarity and avoids ambiguity and redundancy. As a result, it reduces the size of file system and enhances file access  

Many factors affect the yield loss in wheat harvesting with a grain combine harvester. Grain harvesting is a non-linear process, is of considerable complexity, and there is no mathematical model to describe the behavior of this complex system. In this paper, a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) incorporating human expert knowledge is designed for automatic adjustment and control of the harvester to achieve minimal grain losses especially at the position of straw walker and upper sieve. The FLC automatically adjusts cylinder speed, concave clearance, fan speed and forward speed of the combine based on the measured losses at straw walker and sieve sections. The designed FLC expert system consists... 

Conventional polygraphy has several alternatives and one of them is P300-based guilty knowledge test. The purpose of this paper is to apply a new method called empirical mode decomposition (EMD) to extract features from electroencephalogram (EEG) signal. EMD is an appropriate tool to deal with the nonlinear and nonstationary nature of EEG. In the previous studies on the same data set, some morphological, frequency, and wavelet features were extracted only from Pz channel, and used for the detection of guilty and innocent subjects. In this paper, an EMD-based feature extraction was done on EEG recorded signal. Features were extracted from all three recorded channels (Pz, Cz, and Fz) for... 

Design and implementation of Architecture is a knowledge-driven process. Evaluation and verification the knowledge, in order to ensure its quality, have important role in improving overall design process. Furthermore, Architectural decision making is a complex and multi-criteria decision making problem in which multiple stakeholders make decisions from their perspectives causing overlaps and conflicts in the adopted decisions. Therefore, the requirement for strategies to manage these issues and also to improve coordination and cooperation among the various stakeholders to improve the overall process design is necessary. In this regard, there have been several activities that focus on... 

Sensor networks usually generate mass of data, which if not structured for future applications, will require much effort on analytical processing and interpretations. Thus, storing sensor data in an effective and structured format is a key issue in the area of sensor networks. In the meantime, even a little improvement on data storing structure may lead to a significant effect on the lifetime and performance of the sensor network. This paper describes a new method for sensor storage that combines semantic web concepts, a data aggregation method along with aligning sensors in hierarchical form. This solution is able to reduce the amount of data stored at the sink nodes significantly. At the... 

In this study, the self-adaptive evolutionary (SaE) agent is employed to structure the contributing elements to process the management of extreme learning machine (ELM) architecture based on a logical procedure. In fact, the SaE algorithm is utilized for possibility of enhancing the performance of the ELM to estimate daily soil temperature (ST) at 6 different depths of 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 cm. In the developed SaE-ELM model, the network hidden node parameters of the ELM are optimized using SaE algorithm. The precision of the SaE-ELM is then compared with the ELM model. Daily weather data sets including minimum, maximum and average air temperatures (Tmin, Tmax and Tavg), atmospheric... 

Bayesian inference has traditionally been conceived as the proper framework for the formal incorporation of expert knowledge in parameter estimation of groundwater models. However, conventional Bayesian inference is incapable of taking into account the imprecision essentially embedded in expert provided information. In order to solve this problem, a number of extensions to conventional Bayesian inference have been introduced in recent years. One of these extensions is 'fuzzy Bayesian inference' which is the result of integrating fuzzy techniques into Bayesian statistics. Fuzzy Bayesian inference has a number of desirable features which makes it an attractive approach for incorporating expert... 

Business process reengineering (BPR) assists organisations in improving their internal functions to better achieve their business objectives. Various methodologies have been developed for applying BPR, through which organisational processes are identified, analysed, and improved. However, the need still remains for custom methodologies which are tailored to fit the specific characteristics of organisations and BPR projects. Process patterns are abstract representations of common and effective processes that can be reused as method parts for building custom methodologies; an approach that is commonly referred to as situational method engineering (SME). This study aims to use SME in the... 

This paper compares and quantifies the differences between formants of speech across accents. The crossentropy information measure is used to compare the differences between the formants of vowels of three major English accents British, American and Australian. An improved formant estimation method, based on a linear prediction model feature analysis and a hidden Markov model of formants, is employed for estimation of formant trajectories of vowels and diphthongs. The impact of vocal tract length on accent is also examined. Comparative analysis of formant space of the three accents indicates that these accents are mostly conveyed by the first two formants  

Applying engineering approaches to non-engineering systems such as biological systems has brought a new research filed to the surface. The sole purpose of this research is mathematical modeling the cell cycle control system in the fissionyeast cell using Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE).This paper, in fact, introduces the capabilities of engineering knowledge and engineering of control, in particular, in this field. ©2009 IEEE