Sharif Digital Repository

In addition to perfectly steering the output concentration of a process network to an exogenous set-point, a desired synthetically implemented biological controller should be able to robustly maintain this regulated output in the face of the extrinsic disturbances and inherent uncertainties due to an evervarying environment besides the imprecise modeling. Such an ability, which is called robust perfect adaptation (RPA), can be achieved by integral feedback control (IFC). Answering how IFC is (biochemically) constructible in generally unknown synthetic networks has been a research focus in the community. One of these answers, which has been well investigated previously, is to utilize a simple... 

When cells exposed to an electric field, localized changes in the distribution of the electric field will be induced and these changes in turn lead to electrical stresses on cell surface. The electrical stresses play a key role in the cell membrane structural changes which leads to important phenomena like hydrophilic pores formation on the cell membrane resulting in the cell permeability. In this work, protoplast cell interaction with direct current (DC) electric field is investigated. The electrical stresses acted on the cell membrane in the presence of electric field are investigated numerically by a modified finite difference method, fast Immersed Interface Method (IIM). Exact solution... 

In this study, dynamic pull-in instability and snap-through buckling of initially curved microbeams are investigated. The microbeams are actuated by suddenly applied electrostatic force. A finite element model is developed to discretize the governing equations, and Newmark time discretization is employed to solve the discretized equations. The static pull-in behavior is investigated to validate the model. The results of the finite element model are compared with finite difference solutions and their convergence is examined. In addition, the influence of different parameters on dynamic pull-in instability and snap-through buckling is explored  

In this study, the homotopy analysis method (HAM) is used to study dynamic pull-in instability in microbeams considering different sources of nonlinearity. Electrostatic actuation, fringing field effect and midplane stretching causes strong nonlinearity in microbeams. In order to investigate dynamic pull-in behavior, using Galerkin's decomposition method, the nonlinear partial differential equation of motion is reduced to a single nonlinear ordinary differential equation. The obtained equation is solved analytically in time domain using HAM. The problem is studied by two separate manners: direct use of HAM and indirect use of HAM in conjunction with He's Modified Lindstedt- Poincaré Method.... 

This letter deals with a novel variant of antithetic integral feedback controller (AIFC) motifs which can feature robust perfect adaptation, a pervasive (desired) ability in natural (synthetic) biomolecular circuits, when coupled with a wide class of process networks to be regulated. Using the separation of time-scales in the proposed kind of AIFC, here we find a reduced-order controller that captures the governing slow part of the original solutions under suitable assumptions. Inspired by Rössler systems, we then make use of such a simpler controller to show that the antithetic circuit can exhibit chaotic behaviors with strange attractors, where the bifurcation from a homeostatic state to... 

Viscosity of mixtures of biodiesels (admixtures) and mixtures of biodiesel/diesel (blends) is a important parameter for determining their combustion behavior. There is no universal and general model for prediction of viscosity of these systems at different conditions. Hence, developing simple, accurate, and general models for prediction of viscosity of these systems is of great importance. In this work, three computer-based models named multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP-NN), radial basis function optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO-RBF), and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system optimized by hybrid approach (Hybrid-ANFIS) were developed for prediction of viscosity of blends... 

Viscosity of mixed oil is an important parameter which is required in transportation and production processes of mixed crude oils. There is no universal and general model for prediction of viscosity of mixed oils at different conditions. Hence, developing simple, accurate and general models for prediction of mixed oil viscosity is of great importance. In this work three computer based models named MLP-NN, PSO-RBF and Hybrid-ANFIS were developed for prediction of viscosity of mixed oils. A number of 513 experimental data covering wide ranges of influencing parameters were utilized to develop the models. The accuracy of predictions of the developed models was examined by using different... 

In this study, influences of intermolecular forces on the dynamic pull-in instability of electrostatically actuated beams are investigated. The effects of midplane stretching, electrostatic actuation, fringing fields, and intermolecular forces are considered. The boundary conditions of the beams are clamped-free and clamped-clamped. A finite-element model is developed to discretize the governing equations, and Newmark time discretization is then employed to solve the discretized equations. The static pull-in instability is investigated to validate the model. Finally, dynamic pull-in instability of cantilevers and double-clamped beams are studied considering the Casimir and van der Waals... 

Many actions have been taken by researchers to design an appropriate controller for a quadruped robot. These efforts can be divided into two main categories: analytical and intelligent methods. The analytical method is based on the motion equations of the robot which are mostly complicated. These complication leads to difficulty in implementation. In contrast, there exists intelligent method which is based on the learning algorithms. Despite lots of improvements in the controlling of the quadruped robots, their ability of walking is still far less from the four legged animals' capability. Many researchers believe that four legged animals owe this priority to the learning attribute. Therefore... 

In this study, influences of intermolecular forces on dynamic pull-in instability of electrostatically actuated beams are investigated. Effects of midplane stretching, electrostatic actuation, fringing fields and intermolecular forces are considered. The boundary conditions of the beams are clamped-free and clamped-clamped. A finite element model is developed to discretize the governing equations and Newmark time discretization is then employed to solve the discretized equations. The results indicate that by increasing the Casimir and van der Waals effects, the effect of inertia on pull-in values considerably increases  

In this study, homotopy analysis method is used to derive analytic solutions to predict dynamic pull-in instability of electrostatically-actuated microsystems. The model considers midplane stretching, initial stress, distributed electrostatic force and fringing fields effect. Influences of different parameters on dynamic pull-in instability are investigated. Results are in good agreement with numerical and experimental findings. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

This paper presents a compact and cost effective method for on-chip separation of silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles (SMNPs) with different hydrodynamic size. Three types of SMNPs (Fe3O4@SiO2) with the same magnetic core but with different thickness of silica shells were successfully separated using the developed microfluidic platform. The innovative aspect of the presented separation method is that the induced velocity on the three different types of SMNPs while imposed to the same magnetic field gradient in a static fluid is inversely proportional to their overall, non-magnetic volume. This is due to the enhanced Stokes’ drag force exerted on the nanoparticles (NPs) resulting from their... 

The local electric field distorsion induced by a dielectric particle leads to particle–particle interactions and assembly which is very interesting for their useful applications on microfluidic devices. Particles behavior becomes more complicated if several particles interact at the same time. This paper presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of the assembly and particle–particle interactions for two similar and dissimilar dielectric particles immersed in a dielectric fluid using the immersed interface method based on two-dimensional direct-current dielectrophoresis. The immersed interface method is a finite-difference (or finite element) based numerical method which its key advantage... 

Active learning method (ALM) is a powerful fuzzy-based soft computing methodology suitable for various applications such as function modeling, control systems, clustering and classification. Despite considerable advantages, the main computational engine of ALM, ink drop spread (IDS), is memory-intensive, which imposes significant area overheads in the hardware realization of the ALM for real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a compressed model for ALM which greatly alleviates the storage limitations. The proposed approach employs a distinct inference algorithm, enabling a significant reduction in memory utilization from O(N2) to O(2N) for a multi-input single-output (MISO) system.... 

Bio-batteries are environmental friendly electricity generation devices that utilize energy from biological sources, like glucose[1] [2]. It consists of an anode with digesting enzymes and a cathode comprising oxygen-reducing enzymes. Immobilizing enzymes is a considerable issue in these kinds of devices. In this article, we propose two new methods for immobilizing and shifting particles likewise enzymes used in bio-batteries towards the anode or cathode end. Our experiments illustrate how tiny particles could be trapped in the nodes of the ultrasonic standing waves and by two methods of displacing the nodes, we can transfer the particles towards a desired location. First method is based on... 

Vibrations of electrostatically-Actuated microbeams are investigated. Effects of electrostatic actuation, axial stress and midplane stretching are considered in the model. Galerkin's decomposition method is utilized to convert the governing nonlinear partial differential equation to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation. Homotopy perturbation method (i.e. a special and simpler case of homotopy analysis method) is utilized to find analytic expressions for natural frequencies of predeformed microbeam. Effects of increasing the voltage, midplane stretching, axial force and higher modes contribution on natural frequency are also studied. The anayltical results are in good agreement with the...