Sharif Digital Repository

A novel approach for selecting proper cover images in steganography is presented in this paper. The proposed approach consists of two stages. The first stage is an evolutionary algorithm that extracts the signature of cover images against stego images in the form of fuzzy if-then rules. This algorithm is based on an iterative rule learning approach to construct an accurate fuzzy rule base. The rule base is generated in an incremental way by optimizing one fuzzy rule at a time using an evolutionary algorithm. In the second stage of the proposed approach, the fuzzy rules generated in the first stage are used for selecting suitable cover images for steganography. We applied our approach to some... 

It is well known that the use of formal methods in the software development process results in a high-quality software product. However, since formal approaches are just reasoning mechanisms, they do not offer defined ordered steps and guidance for moving between them. Refinement is a technique for moving between specifications but it bears very little resemblance to the real process of software design. An automatic translator from a specification language to an executable code would be highly useful in maximizing the benefits of formal methods. In the domain of database applications, we propose a rule-based algorithm to translate software requirements written in Z specifications to... 

Using stochastic point source and finite fault modeling, the stochastic stress drop is estimated for 52 large shallow earthquakes listed in the 'Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) Next Generation Attenuation of Ground Motions (NGA)' database. The Pseudo Spectral Acceleration (PSA) of 541 accelerograms, recorded at National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) C-class sites from 52 earthquakes are simulated and compared with the PSA listed in the PEER NGA database. The magnitude of the analyzed earthquakes ranged from M4:4 to M7:6. The stress drop is calibrated by trial and error and based on the analysis of residuals where the residual is defined as the log of the... 

Facial Action Coding System consists of 44 action units (AUs) and more than 7000 combinations. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) classifier has been used successfully to recognize facial action units (AUs) and expressions due to its ability to deal with AU dynamics. However, a separate HMM is necessary for each single AU and each AU combination. Since combinations of AU numbering in thousands, a more efficient method will be needed. In this paper an accurate real-time sequence-based system for representation and recognition of facial AUs is presented. Our system has the following characteristics: 1) employing a mixture of HMMs and neural network, we develop a novel accurate classifier, which can... 

Boosting is a general method for improving the accuracy of any given learning algorithm. In this paper, we have proposed the boosting method for face recognition (FR) that improves the linear discriminant analysis (LDA)-based technique. The improvement is achieved by incorporating the regularized LDA (R-LDA) technique into the boosting framework. R-LDA is based on a new regularized Fisher's discriminant criterion, which is particularly robust against the small sample size problem compared to the traditional one used in LDA. The AdaBoost technique is utilized within this framework to generalize a set of simple FR subproblems and their corresponding LDA solutions and combines the results from... 

Detection and classification of ventricular complexes from the ECG is of considerable importance in Holter and critical care patient monitoring, being essential for the timely diagnosis of dangerous heart conditions. Accurate detection of premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) is particularly important in relation to life-threatening arrhythmias. In this paper, we introduce a model-based dynamic algorithm for tracking the ECG characteristic waveforms using an extended Kalman filter. The algorithm can work on single or multiple leads. A "polargram"--a polar representation of the signal--is introduced, which is constructed using the Bayesian estimations of the state variables. The polargram... 

The challenges of water resources sustainable development are enormous. Around the globe, the increasing use of water coupled with environmental deterioration calls for sustainable development of the limited water resources. As a significant part of the world's population still lacks access to safe water and adequate sanitation, and as global urbanization continues to increase, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated and cooperative water resources management is required for the sustainable future of urban areas. The objective of this study was to assess water resources sustainable development for selected urban areas around the world. Using centralized databases of international agencies for... 

In this paper, we propose a novel method for extracting fiducial points (FPs) of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We propose the use of multi hidden Markov model (MultiHMM) as opposed to the traditional use of Classic HMM. In the MultiHMM method, each segment of an ECG beat is represented by a separate ergodic continuous density HMM. Each HMM has different state number and is trained separately. In the test step, the log-likelihood of two consecutive HMMs is compared and a path is estimated, which shows the correspondence of each part of the ECG signal to the HMM with the maximum log-likelihood. Fiducial points are estimated from the obtained path. For performance evaluation, the Physionet... 

Software architecture patterns present solutions for software architecture problems and help to document architectural design decisions. Complexity and variability of patterns, and the required expertise for selecting an appropriate pattern, would cause some difficulties in utilizing architectural patterns. Using an ontology for registering architectural patterns is an efficient step in solving those problems. However, the mentioned difficulties make the process of constructing the architectural patterns ontology even more complicated. This paper proposes an approach that considers the construction of the architectural patterns ontology from four perspectives in order to overcome this... 

Nowadays, a large volume of an organization's sensitive data is stored in databases making them attractive to attackers. The useful information attackers try to obtain in the preliminary steps, is the database structure or schema. One of the popular approaches to infer and extract the schema of a database is to analyze the returned error messages from its DBMS. In this paper, we propose a framework to handle and modify the error messages automatically in order to prevent schema revealing. To this aim, after identifying and introducing an appropriate set of categories of error messages, each error message that is returned from a DBMS is placed in a proper category. According to the policy... 

Dynamic thermal rating (DTR) of transmission system facilities is a way to maximally realize the equipment capacities while not threatening their health. With regards to transmission lines, the allowable current of conductors is forecasted based on the environmental situations expected in some forthcoming time periods. Due to the fact that weather conditions continuously vary, sampling points are very limited against many line spans, and the measurements have an inherent error, uncertainties must be appropriately included in the DTR determination. This paper adopts the fuzzy theory as a strong and simple tool to model uncertainties in the DTR calculation. Since DTR intends to determine the... 

The current double JPEG compression detection techniques identify whether or not an JPEG image file has undergone the compression twice, by knowing its embedded quantization table. This paper addresses another forensic scenario in which the quantization table of a JPEG file is not explicitly or reliably known, which may compel the forensic analyst to blindly reveal the recompression clues. To do this, we first statistically analyze the theory behind quantized alternating current (AC) modes in JPEG compression and show that the number of quantized AC modes required to detect double compression is a function of both the image’s block texture and the compression’s quality level in a fresh... 

This paper presents a method to determine material of an unknown sample object. The main objective of this study is to design a database for specifying material of an object. We produce the database for different materials which is subjected to different forces. For this purpose we use a Polyvinidilene Fluoride (PVDF) sensor which is a piezoelectric material. Also we study the effect of changing place of sensor on our study. The detailed design was performed using finite element method analysis. Furthermore, if we have an object which we do not know its material by use of this database we can find out what this object is and how much its Yanoung's modules is. This study will be suitable for... 

This work presents a method to increase the face recognition accuracy using a combination of Wavelet, PCA, KPCA, and RBF Neural Networks. Preprocessing, feature extraction and classification rules are three crucial issues for face recognition. This paper presents a hybrid approach to employ these issues. For preprocessing and feature extraction steps, we apply a combination of wavelet transform, PCA and KPCA. During the classification stage, the Neural Network (RBF) is explored to achieve a robust decision in presence of wide facial variations. At first derives a feature vector from a set of downsampled wavelet representation of face images, then the resulting PCA-based linear features and... 

We propose an efficient and effective nonlinear feature domain noise suppression algorithm, motivated by the minimum mean square error (MMSE) optimization criterion. Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network in the log spectral domain minimizes the difference between noisy and clean speech. By using this method as a pre-processing stage of a speech recognition system, the recognition rate in noisy environments is improved. We can extend the application of the system to different environments with different noises without re-training it. We need only to train the preprocessing stage with a small portion ofnoisy data which is created by artificially adding different types of noises from the... 

In this paper, we have proposed an efficient and effective nonlinear feature domain noise suppression algorithm, motivated by the minimum mean square error (MMSE) optimization criterion. A Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network in the log spectral domain has been employed to minimize the difference between noisy and clean speech. By using this method, as a pre-processing stage of a speech recognition system, the recognition rate in noisy environments has been improved. We extended the application ofthe system to different environments with different noises without retraining HMMmodel. We trained the feature extraction stage with a small portion of noisy data which was created by... 

This work presents a method to increase the face recognition accuracy using a combination of Wavelet, PCA, and SVM. Pre-processing, feature extraction and classification rules are three crucial issues for face recognition. This paper presents a hybrid approach to employ these issues. For pre-processing and feature extraction steps, we apply a combination of wavelet transform and PCA. During the classification stage, SVMs incorporated with a binary tree recognition strategy are applied to tackle the multi-class face recognition problem to achieve a robust decision in presence of wide facial variations. The binary trees extend naturally, the pairwise discrimination capability of the SVMs to... 

In recent years, analyzing genome-wide expression profiles to find genetic markers has received much attention as a challenging field of research aiming at unveiling biological mechanisms behind complex disorders. The identification of reliable and reproducible markers has lately been achieved by integrating genome-scale functional relationships and transcriptome datasets, and a number of algorithms have been developed to support this strategy. In this paper, we present a promising and easily applicable tool to accomplish this goal, namely CytoGTA, which is a Cytoscape plug-in that relies on an optimistic game theoretic approach (GTA) for identifying subnetwork markers. Given transcriptomic...