Sharif Digital Repository

In the current paper, we have investigated the generalized FitzHugh-Nagumo model. We have shown that symmetric bursting behaviors of different types could be observed in this model with an appropriate recovery term. A modified version of this system is used to construct bursting activities. Furthermore, we have shown some numerical examples of delayed Hopf bifurcation and canard phenomenon in the symmetric bursting of super-Hopf/homoclinic type near its super-Hopf and homoclinic bifurcations, respectively  

A theoretical model was developed to describe a dynamic process involving an enzymatic reaction and diffusion of reactants and product inside glucose sensitive composite membrane. The composite membrane consisted of nanoparticles of a weakly acidic polymer, glucose oxidase and catalase embedded in a hydrophobic polymer. Time- and position-dependent diffusivity of involved species was considered in the model. Donnan equilibrium was used to find concentrations of buffer ions inside the membrane. The profiles of pH, species concentrations, volume fraction of swollen gel, polymer and water-filled space, as well as solute diffusivity inside the membrane were predicted by the model as a function... 

A theoretical model concerning simultaneous diffusion and reaction was developed to describe the steady state behavior of a cationic glucose-sensitive membrane with consideration of oxygen limitation and swelling-dependent diffusivities of involved species inside the membrane. Donnan equilibrium was used to find concentrations of buffer ions inside the membrane. The profiles of species concentrations, pH, polymer volume fraction and solute diffusivity inside the membrane were predicted by the model in response to step changes of glucose concentration in the external solution. The influence of various factors on the responsiveness of the membrane was analyzed using the model. The results... 

Different experimental techniques which have been developed to obtain data related to force-deformation behaviour of soft tissues play an important role in realistically simulating surgery processes as well as medical diagnoses and minimally invasive procedures. Indeed, an adequate quantitative description of soft-tissue-mechanical-behaviour requires high-quality experimental data to be obtained and analysed. In this review article we will first scan the motivations and basic technical issues on surgery simulation. Then, we will concentrate on different experimental techniques developed for recording force-deformation (stress-strain) behaviour of soft tissues with focussing on the in-vivo... 

Techniques available in graph theory can be applied to signals recorded from human brain. In network analysis of EEG signals, the individual nodes are EEG sensor locations and the edges correspond to functional relations between them that are extracted from EEG time series. In this paper, we study EEG-based directed functional networks in Alzheimer's disease (AD). To this end, directed connectivity matrices of 25 AD patients and 26 healthy subjects are processed and a number of meaningful graph theory metrics are studied. Our data show that functional networks of AD brains have significantly reduced global connectivity in alpha and beta bands (P < 0.05). The AD brains have significantly... 

Background and objective Image registration is one of the fundamental and essential tasks for medical imaging and remote sensing applications. One of the most common challenges in this area is the presence of complex spatially varying intensity distortion in the images. The widely used similarity metrics, such as MI (Mutual Information), CC (Correlation Coefficient), SSD (Sum of Square Difference), SAD (Sum of Absolute Difference) and CR (Correlation Ratio), are not robust against this kind of distortion because stationarity assumption and the pixel-wise independence cannot be obeyed and captured by these metrics. Methods In this paper, we propose a new intensity-based method for... 

Influence maximization deals with identification of the most influential nodes in a social network given an influence model. In this paper, a game theoretic framework is developed that models a competitive influence maximization problem. A novel competitive influence model is additionally proposed that incorporates user heterogeneity, message content, and network structure. The proposed game-theoretic model is solved using Nash Equilibrium in a real-world dataset. It is shown that none of the well-known strategies are stable and at least one player has the incentive to deviate from the proposed strategy. Moreover, violation of Nash equilibrium strategy by each player leads to their reduced... 

Covalently functionalized carbon nanoplatelets and non-covalent functionalized metal oxides nanoparticles (surfactant-treated) have been used to synthesize water-based nanofluids in this paper. To prove nanofluid stability, ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy is used, and the results show that nanofluid is stable for sixty days for carbon and thirty days for metal oxides. The thermophysical properties are evaluated experimentally and validated with theoretical models. Thermal conductivities of f-GNPs, SiO2, and ZnO nanofluids are enhanced by 25.68%, 11.49%, and 15.42%, respectively. Lu-Li and Bruggeman's thermal conductivity models are correctly matched with the experimental data.... 

Covalently functionalized carbon nanoplatelets and non-covalent functionalized metal oxides nanoparticles (surfactant-treated) have been used to synthesize water-based nanofluids in this paper. To prove nanofluid stability, ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy is used, and the results show that nanofluid is stable for sixty days for carbon and thirty days for metal oxides. The thermophysical properties are evaluated experimentally and validated with theoretical models. Thermal conductivities of f-GNPs, SiO2, and ZnO nanofluids are enhanced by 25.68%, 11.49%, and 15.42%, respectively. Lu-Li and Bruggeman's thermal conductivity models are correctly matched with the experimental data.... 

Persian Gulf is a semi-enclosed highly saline reverse estuary that is exposed to the risk of oil spills in offshore oil and gas activities. In the early 2000s, a specific version of NOAA's Trajectory Analysis Planner (TAP II) was developed for Persian Gulf to assist regional organizations in preparing oil spill contingency plans. In this research, a new stochastic model is developed to cover the limitations of TAP II. The new model is based on an advanced trajectory model, which is now linked with high resolution spatiotemporal data of the wind and sea current. In a case study, the developed model is compared with TAP II, and evaluated by multiple tests designed for analysis of uncertainty,... 

Different causes lead to accidental oil spills from fixed and mobile sources in the marine environment. Therefore, it is essential to have a systematic plan for mitigating oil spill consequences. In this research, a general DSS is proposed for passive and active response planning in Persian Gulf, before and after a spill. The DSS is based on NOAA's advanced oil spill model (GNOME), which is now linked with credible met-ocean datasets of CMEMS and ECMWF. The developed open-source tool converts the results of the Lagrangian oil spill model to quantitative parameters such as mean concentration and time of impact of oil. Using them, two new parameters, emergency response priority number (ERPN)... 

Recent progress in developing artificial neural network (ANN) metamodels has paved the way for reliable use of these models in the prediction of air pollutant concentrations in urban atmosphere. However, improvement of prediction performance, proper selection of input parameters and model architecture, and quantification of model uncertainties remain key challenges to their practical use. This study has three main objectives: to select an ensemble of input parameters for ANN metamodels consisting of meteorological variables that are predictable by conventional weather forecast models and variables that properly describe the complex nature of pollutant source conditions in a major city, to... 

Currently PM2.5 is a major air pollution concern in Tehran, Iran due to frequent high levels and possible adverse impacts. In this study, which is the first of its kind to take place in Tehran, composition and sources of PM2.5 and carbonaceous aerosol were determined, and their seasonal trends were studied. In this regard, fine PM samples were collected every six days at a residential station for one year and the chemical constituents including organic marker species, metals, and ions were analyzed by chemical analysis. The source apportionment was performed using organic molecular marker-based CMB receptor modeling. Carbonaceous compounds were the major contributors to fine particulate mass... 

In radio channels modelings, the phases and amplitudes of the rays undergo some modifications when they are reflected from or transmitted through a particular material. These reflection and transmission coefficients make use of the electrical properties of the materials, thus, it is essential to know the values of the relative dielectric constant and of the conductivity or the loss tangent of the materials that appear in the propagation environments. In this paper, a theoretical model based on the inter-molecule interactions, has been developed and used to estimate the dielectric parameters of glass. ©2009 IEEE  

In this study the optical beam transfer and imaging in an optical fiber coupling is discussed. In coupling two fibers, some measurements from intensity perspective are performed and intensity profile is investigated. A theoretical model for the power transmission in fiber coupling is developed and theoretical function is compared with the experimental results. The amount of light delivered to the receiving fiber depends on the acceptance angle of the receiving fiber and the core cross sections of both fibers. Intensity profile function obtained theoretically agrees well with the measured results. The intensity variation as a function of the air gap variation is investigated in this article.... 

Employing a biharmonic boundary integral method with linear elements, coarsening dynamics of nanodroplets on topographical step heterogeneity is investigated. It is shown that the step height and droplet configuration have an influential effect on the dynamics. Increasing the step height slows down the process while locating the droplets close to the step boosts the coarsening rate. Considering a slip boundary condition enhances the dynamics and reveals a transition in the droplet migration direction. Our results reveal that increasing the surface wettability weakens the dynamics. Various types of the disjoining pressure over the step are also considered and their effects on the coarsening... 

Optical fiber doped with lead salts quantum dots (QDs) of different radii, has previously been proposed as a wide-band amplifier in the optical communication range. The emission and absorption spectra of QDs are size-dependent. Optical fiber amplifier doped with QDs of different sizes is an inhomogeneous gain medium. This inhomogeneity is the principle of operation of wide-band quantum-dot-doped fiber amplifiers (QDFAs). To study the effects of inhomogeneity such as spectral hole burning on the amplifier behavior, a fiber amplifier with an arbitrary size distribution of QDs is taken into consideration. The light propagation equations and rate equations for the inhomogeneous medium are... 

Emission factors (EFs) are fundamental, necessary data for air pollution research and scenario implementation. With the vision of generating national EFs of the Iranian transportation system, a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) was used to develop the basic EFs for a statistically significant sample of Iranian gasoline-fueled privately owned light duty vehicles (LDVs) operated in Tehran. A smaller sample size of the same fleet was examined by chassis dynamometer (CD) bag emission measurement tests to quantify the systematic differences between the PEMS and CD methods. The selected fleet was tested over four different routes of uphill highways, flat highways, uphill urban streets,... 

Abnormalities in the topology of brain networks may be an important feature and etiological factor for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). To explore this possibility, we applied a graph theoretical approach to functional networks based on resting state EEGs from 13 PNES patients and 13 age- and gender-matched controls. The networks were extracted from Laplacian-transformed time-series by a cross-correlation method. PNES patients showed close to normal local and global connectivity and small-world structure, estimated with clustering coefficient, modularity, global efficiency, and small-worldness metrics, respectively. Yet the number of PNES attacks per month correlated with a... 

Purpose. Drug release from nanosystems at the sites of either absorption or effect biophase is a major determinant of its biological action. Thus, in vitro drug release is of paramount importance in gaining insight for the systems performance in vivo. Methods. A novel in vitro in vivo correlation, IVIVC, model denoted as double reciprocal area method was presented and applied to 19 drugs from 55 nano formulations with total 336 data, gathered from literature. Results. The proposed model correlated the in vitro with in vivo parameters with overall error of 12.4 ± 3.9%. Also the trained version of the model predicted the test formulations with overall error of 15.8 ± 3.7% indicating the...