Sharif Digital Repository

Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) has an unusual genotype representation which makes it more efficient than Genetic programming (GP) in digital circuit design problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, all methods used in evolutionary design of digital circuits deal with rugged, complex search space, which results in long running time to obtain successful evolution. Therefore, employing a method to guide evolution in these spaces can facilitate achieving more reasonable results. It has been claimed that a two-step evolutionary scenario caused by benefit and cost of learning called Baldwin effect can guide evolution in the biology and artificial life. Therefore, we have been motivated... 

One of the most famous approaches for the segmentation of color images is finding clusters in the color space. Shapes of these clusters are often complex and the time complexity of the existing algorithms for finding clusters of different shapes is usually high. In this paper, a novel clustering algorithm is proposed and used for the image segmentation purpose. This algorithm distinguishes clusters of different shapes using a two-stage clustering approach in a reasonable time. In the first stage, the mean-shift clustering algorithm is used and the data points are grouped into some sub-clusters. In the second stage, connections between sub-clusters are established according to a dissimilarity... 

This work is conducted with evaluation of different turbulence models capabilities in predicting three dimensional jet-into-crossflow (JICF) interactions. For this purpose, first of all, comprehensive discussions on the near wall flow complexities due to discharge of a jet into a crossflow are presented. In this regards, large scale coherent structures such as: counter rotating vortex pairs (CRVP's), near wall secondary motions, horseshoe vortices, and wall jets like are discussed. Secondly, the abilities of different turbulence models in predicting such flows (JICF) are evaluated. Our evaluation is based on three points of view including: 1) JICF characteristics, 2) computed location, and... 

With large amounts of experimental data, modern molecular biology needs appropriate methods to deal with biological sequences. In this work, we apply a statistical method (Pearson's chi-square test) to recognize the signals appear in the whole genome of the Escherichia coli. To show the effectiveness of the method, we compare the Pearson's chi-square test with linguistic complexity on the complete genome of E. coli. The results suggest that Pearson's chi-square test is an efficient method for distinguishing genes (coding regions) form pseudogenes (noncoding regions). On the other hand, the performance of the linguistic complexity is much lower than the chi-square test method. We also use the... 

The water-soluble cobalt(II) tetradentate Schiff base complex [Co(II)L](ClO4)2, L: (N,N′-bis{5-[(triphenylphosphonium)-methyl]salicylidine}-o-phenylenediamineperchlorate has been synthesized and characterized. This complex forms charge transfer (CT) complexes with imidazole and 1-methylimidazole. The formation constant, molar absorptivity (ε′), and thermodynamic parameters for charge transfer complexes formation of cobalt(II) Schiff base complexes with imidazole derivatives were determined by using UV-vis spectrophotometric method in aqueous solutions at constant ionic strength (I = 0.2 mol dm-3 KNO3) at pH 6.0 and various temperatures between 292 and 315 K. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights... 

Two-stage chemical deposition (TSCD) technique is used to produce ZnO, Mn2O3 and NiO films on soda-lime glass (SL-G) from an aqueous solution of zinc, manganese and nickel complex, respectively. The TSCD method enables the deposition of metal oxide thin films with a thickness which can be controlled during the preparation procedure. The ZnO, Mn 2O3 and NiO thin films were polycrystalline films which were adherent well to the substrates. The SEM micrographs clearly indicate that the zinc oxide layer is composed of oval shaped crystallites preferably orientated perpendicular to the surface of the substrate. The Mn 2O3 and NiO layers were closely packed on the substrate. These particles seem to... 

In New applications of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes may decide not to cooperate in routing protocols in order to save their limited resources while still using the network to relay their own traffic. Exhibiting such a selfish behavior by even a few nodes may degrade network performance and other cooperating nodes may find themselves unfairly loaded. To cope with such a situation, we propose a Stable path, Low overhead, Truthful, and Cost efficient (SLTC) routing protocol which stimulates nodes to cooperate and act truthfully by utilizing the game theoretic notion of mechanism design. To the best of our knowledge, SLTC is the first protocol attaining the message complexity of O(nd),... 

In this work we present results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations on dicopper patellamides and their affinity for molecular oxygen and carbonate. Patellamides are cyclic octapeptides that are produced by a cyanobacterium, and may show promise as therapeutics. Thus, carbonate binding to a dicopper patellamide center gives a stable cyclic octapeptide with a twist of almost 90°. The system exists in close-lying open-shell singlet and triplet spin states with two unpaired electrons in orthogonal σ* orbitals on each metal center. Subsequently, we replaced carbonate with dioxygen and found a stable Cu2(μ-O)2 diamond shaped patellamide core. In this structure the original dioxygen... 

TiO2 deposited on a membrane of Ag fibers was prepared as a photoelectrochemical cell electrode. Ag fibers were made by reduction of Ag complexes on cellulose fibers, followed by burning out the template. TiO 2 photocatalyst layers were grown on the fibers by electrophoretic deposition of TiO2 nanoparticles. Ag fibers could be uniformly deposited. Photocatalytic tests by dye decomposition and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) under UV illumination demonstrate that Ag fibers act as a good substrate that provides both high surface area and good separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs and causes the enhancement of photocatalytic activity in comparison with a thin film of... 

This paper presents efficient algorithms for learning low-coherence dictionaries. First, a new algorithm based on proximal methods is proposed to solve the dictionary learning (DL) problem regularized with the mutual coherence of dictionary. This is unlike the previous approaches that solve a regularized problem where an approximate incoherence promoting term, instead of the mutual coherence, is used to encourage low-coherency. Then, a new solver is proposed for constrained low-coherence DL problem, i.e., a DL problem with an explicit constraint on the mutual coherence of the dictionary. As opposed to current methods, which follow a suboptimal two-step approach, the new algorithm directly... 

The continuing process of software systems enlargement in size and complexity becomes system design extremely important for software production. In this way, the role of software architecture is significantly important in software development. It serves as an evaluation and implementation plan for software development and software evaluation. Consequently, choosing the correct architecture is a critical issue in software engineering domain. Moreover, software architecture selection is a multicriteria decision-making problem in which different goals and objectives must be taken into consideration. In this paper, more precise and suitable decisions in selection of architecture styles have been... 

In this paper, our main purpose is to embed data in the frequency domain of audio signals. Data was embedded by means of Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) in the frequency domain. With this aim, the spectrum of the audio signal was divided into two parts. The first part consisted of the first 19 Barks and the second included the remaining 6 Barks. Each of these parts had a different quantization step size. In order to have large quantization step sizes which yield more robustness, Human Auditory System (HAS) has been used. Decoder detects the watermark signal, without using the original audio signal. Simulation results have shown that this watermarking scheme has better robustness against... 

The pyramid network is one of the most important interconnection topologies used as hardware architecture or software data structure. It has a combined tree-mesh structure making it suitable for solving many parallel problems and applications. This paper proposes a parallel algorithm for Hermite Interpolation on the Pyramid network which has at least N nodes. The proposed algorithm has 3 phases: initialization, main, and final. The algorithm is optimal with a time complexity of O(N) for an N-point interpolation. ©2007 IEEE  

Given an undirected graph with weights associated with its edges, the Steiner tree problem consists of finding a minimum weight subtree spanning a given subset of (terminal) nodes of the original graph. Minimum Spanning Tree Heuristic (MSTH) is a heuristic for solving the Steiner problem in graphs. In this paper we first review existing algorithms for solving the Steiner problem in graphs. We then introduce a new parallel version of MSTH on three dimensional mesh of trees architecture. We describe our algorithm and analyze its time complexity. The time complexity analysis shows that the algorithm's running time is O(lg2 n) which is comparable with other existing parallel solutions. © 2007... 

In this paper, we describe a real-time Gradient-based Multiple Faces Tracking (GMFT) algorithm in complex background. In GMFT method first faces are detected by combination of morphological facial feature extraction and gradient-based edge detection methods. After a face is reliably detected, it is tracked over time with a novel real-time algorithm. The algorithm has been implemented and tested under a wide range of real-world conditions. The resulting system runs in real-time on a standard PC, being robust to face scale variations, rotations in depth, and fast changes in subject/camera position. It has consistently provided performance which satisfies the following requirements: 1) able to... 

In this paper with the use of fuzzy genetic algorithm combination with evolutionary algorithms, as a method for local searching, it has been tried to exploit high capabilities of genetic algorithm, as a search algorithm, beside to other evolutionary algorithms, as local search algorithms, in order to increase efficiency of a rule learning system. For this purpose three hybrid algorithms have been used for solving the intrusion detection problem. These three algorithms are combination of genetic algorithm and SFL and PSO as three evolutionary algorithms which try to introduce efficient solutions for complex optimization problems by patterning from natural treatments. © 2007 IEEE  

All of the man-made objects and anthropogenic activities related to the oil industries in water bodies (e.g. drilling, equipment installation, construction of oil platfonns and especially oil spillages) have enviromnental impacts on water ecosystems. The assessment of oil field operations and oil platfonns impacts on water quality have become a necessity throughout the world. Phytoplanktons have the lowest trophic level in water enviromnent; therefore the life of all of the other marine animals is highly relevant to phytoplanktonic population. Hence it seems necessary to monitor the spatiotemporal effects of different activities and events, related to oil industries on phytoplanktons.... 

A major class of image and video watermarking algorithms, i.e. content-based watermarking, is based on the concept of Human Visual System (HVS) in order to adapt more efficiently to the local characteristics of the host signal. In this paper, a content-based video watermarking scheme is developed and the concept of entropy masking effect is employed to significantly improve the use of the HVS model. Entropy masking effect states that the human eye's sensitivity decreases in high entropy regions, i.e. regions with spatial or temporal complexity. The spatial entropy masking effect has been exploited in a number of previous works in order to enhance the robustness of image-adaptive watermarks.... 

This paper applies the genetic-fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy systems to analyze a disaggregate mode choice problem for work trips. These two artificial intelligence methods have been widely used in many complex engineering problems recently. Some key points in developing genetic-fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy systems to analyze the mode choice problem for a large city are explained. Shiraz urban trips database is applied to prepare the data needed for the models. Results show that the developed models have good ability to estimate the existing situation and also to present reliable predictions for the future conditions of an urban transportation system  

Adaptive scheduling schemes which consider channel conditions are examples of cross-layer design in wireless networks. Research work which has been done on optimizing the performance of scheduling systems have shown that in each time slot it is better to transmit to the users with the best channel condition. In order to realize such schemes, most of earlier works have considered perfect feedback channels to send Channel State Information (CSI) to the scheduler. However, in practical systems there are some sources of imperfectness in feedback channels such as delay and quantization error. In this paper, we consider the effect of CSI delay on the performance of such systems. A new delay-aware...