Sharif Digital Repository

Sometimes, in our capacity as professionals, and under certain circumstances, we find ourselves faced with an ethical problem such as a conflict of interest in which codes of ethics or available ethical problem-solving methods cannot help us decide upon the moral course of action to take. Hence, either the codes or methods are flawed, or we are not using them appropriately. A method claimed to be helpful in such situations is The New York Times Test (NYTT). © 1982-2012 IEEE  

This communication addresses the focusing problem in the millimeter-wave imaging systems. We categorize the focusing problem into the frequency focusing for wideband systems and the range focusing for narrowband systems. In an out-of-focus wideband system, a shifted shadow of the object is present in the reconstruction, whereas for a range out of the focused system, the recovered images are blurred. To overcome these issues, first, we theoretically show that the defocusing variations for both categories are bounded. Then, we present a universal formulation for focusing problem, which covers both wideband and narrowband systems. As the true focused images are sharp at the boundaries of the... 

In this letter, the problem of non-coherent direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is investigated exploiting the sign of the measurements in order to resolve the inherent ambiguity of the problem. Although the phase values are inaccurate, the sign of real and imaginary parts of the measurements will most likely remain correct under limited phase errors. Furthermore, a new approach for solving the problem is proposed employing a modified version of the Majorization-Minimization (MM) technique, without any prior information about the number of incident signals. Some theoretical analyses of our proposed algorithm are also provided in the paper. Finally, the simulation results are presented,... 

In this paper, we describe the design, development and preliminary evaluation of a novel animation tool for smartphones and tablets, with the goal of improving creativity and problem-solving ability among novice users, mainly young children. The user first draws the objects with markers and crayons on paper and takes a photo with their mobile or tablet to import their drawings into the app as game sprites. They then design their animation scene and point to a part of the character and selecting its animation type from existing buttons. Hence the selected part is animated in a vertex shader while ensuring a smooth transition with the non-pointed part. The results of a preliminary evaluation... 

The sensor-source geometry has a significant effect on accuracy of source localization problems. In a sensor placement problem, one attempts to optimally place the sensors in the surveillance area so as to optimize a performance criterion. Sensor placement methods mainly solve the associated problems without taking any specific constraint on permissible location of sensors into account. In practical applications, however, possible location for deployment of the sensors are subject to such limitations as environmental, industrial, and communication constraints, which affects the optimal sensor-source geometry. In this article, we consider the problem of optimal sensor placement, based on time... 

Despite the importance of well-being, few studies have been conducted on the relationship between well-being and technology. In this paper, the development of technology from the perspective of well-being studies are divided into three generations. In higher generations, the main criterion of technology development becomes more comprehensive, in order to decrease the side effects of technology. We introduce the fourth generation in which well-being is the main criterion of the design process. Although it may not seem necessary to say that the purpose of most technologies is implicitly well-being, we show that the domination of physical pleasure in terms of “use and convenience” in the modern... 

A nonlinear integer programming model is developed in this article to solve redundancy allocation problems with multiple components having different failure rates in the series–parallel configuration using an active strategy. The main objective of this research is to select the number and the type of each component in subsystems so as the reliability of the system under certain constraints is maximized. To this aim, a weighted K-means clustering method is proposed, in which the analytical network process is employed to assign weights to the components of each cluster. As the proposed model belongs to the class of nondeterministic polynomial-time hardness problems, precise solution methods... 

This paper proposes a multi-item economic order quantity model with imperfect items in supply deliveries. The inspection process to classify the items is not perfect and involves two types of error: Type-I and Type-II. To cope with the uncertainty involved in real-world applications and to bring the problem closer to reality, operational constraints are assumed stochastic. The aim is to determine the optimal order and back order sizes of the items in order to achieve maximum total profit. As the proposed mathematical model is a constrained nonlinear programming, three different solution methods including an exact method named the interior-point and two novel meta-heuristics named grey wolf... 

Recently, Ghanbari and Mahdavi-Amiri (Appl Math Model 34:3363–3375, 2010) gave the general compromised solution of an LR fuzzy linear system using ABS algorithm. Here, using this general solution, we solve quadratic programming problems with fuzzy LR variables. We convert fuzzy quadratic programming problem to a crisp quadratic problem by using general solution of fuzzy linear system. By using this method, the crisp optimization problem has fewer variables in comparison with other methods, specially when rank of the coefficient matrix is full. Thus, solving the fuzzy quadratic programming problem by using our proposed method is computationally easier than the solving fuzzy quadratic... 

The great share of interruptions in distribution networks motivates distribution decision makers to establish various reliability enhancement strategies. Amongst these strategies, deploying remote controlled switch (RCS) can make a crucial contribution to the reduction of interruption costs. Nevertheless, the stochastic nature of contingencies affects RCS worth and imposes substantial financial risk to RCS deployment projects. This paper proposes a mathematical model to consider the risk in the optimal RCS deployment problem. The model determines the number and location of RCSs such that the expected profit is maximized while financial risk is minimized. The risk is modeled through... 

In rail transportation, the process of finding the optimal movement of freight goods is considered a tactical level of rail planning. Solving this problem requires one simultaneously to address the railroad blocking problem and the train dispatching problem, which is difficult. Additionally, when these problems are represented by mathematical relations, application of the solution leads to unexpected results in the real world. The main objective of this research was to build a simulation environment to represent the key behaviours of typical and applicable constraints of a railway system. This environment provides a tool with which to evaluate different decisions among a list of candidate... 

Incorporating outsourcing in scheduling is addressed by several researchers recently. However, this scope is not investigated thoroughly, particularly in the job shop environment. In this paper, a new job shop scheduling problem is studied with the option of jobs outsourcing. The problem objective is to minimise a weighted sum of makespan and total outsourcing cost. With the aim of solving this problem optimally, two solution approaches of combinatorial optimisation problems, i.e. mathematical programming and constraint programming are examined. Furthermore, two problem relaxation approaches are developed to obtain strong lower bounds for some large scale problems for which the optimality is... 

The problem of this paper deals with the multi-mode project scheduling problem under uncertainty of activity duration where only the renewable resources are taken into account and a given deadline has to be met at the cost of recruiting additional resources. A heuristic algorithm is employed to solve this problem, and to maintain the robustness of the baseline schedule, the concept of critical chain project management (CCPM) is applied in which a new definition to resource buffer is considered. A simulation methodology is used to determine the size and location of resource buffers in the schedules in which three different buffer sizes and three different uncertainty levels are considered.... 

Control problem in a biological system is the problem of finding an interventional policy for changing the state of the biological system from an undesirable state, e.g. disease, into a desirable healthy state. Boolean networks are utilized as a mathematical model for gene regulatory networks. This paper provides an algorithm to solve the control problem in Boolean networks. The proposed algorithm is implemented and applied on two biological systems: T-cell receptor network and Drosophila melanogaster network. Results show that the proposed algorithm works faster in solving the control problem over these networks, while having similar accuracy, in comparison to previous exact methods. Source... 

Green and sustainability issues are being considered extensively in industry and in the literature. Most of the green-related effects in the manufacturing sector can be modeled by the costs associated with the production machines due to their resource consumption and/or pollutant emission, as a part of the operation cost. Accordingly, taking into account the machine processing costs alongside the other production criteria is one of the main approaches to consider green issues in the production management problems. In the same way, scheduling as one of the major operational problems in the factories can benefit this point of view to involve sustainability aspects. In this paper, the... 

With the recent advancements in deep learning, high performance neural networks have been introduced. These neural networks also can be used to solve similar problems in a transfer learning approach. Recently, several state-of-The-Art Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are proposed for computer vision tasks. On the other hand, in-The-wild No-Reference (Blind) Image Quality Assessment (NR-IQA) problem is known as a challenging human perceptual problem. In this paper, a transfer learning approach is used to solve the problem of in-The-wild NR-IQA. With a few training times, the proposed neural network exceeds all the previous methods which are not using deep neural networks. Further, the... 

Disability and motor disorders are some of the problems that people may face due to some factors such as accident, spinal cord injuries, brain damage, and the presence of a problem in neurological commands due to stroke. One of the proposed methods for solving the problems of these people is the use of exoskeletons to generate movement. The main goal of this paper is the control of Sharif Exoskeleton Robot and the reduction of interaction force between user and robot by using human intent detection. This goal is done by estimating the knee torque of one degree of freedom in a swing phase using Hill model based on the EMG data from the thigh muscles. Accordingly, the calibration algorithm is... 

Laccase production by indigenous fungus, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, requires solving optimal problems to determine the maximum production of the enzyme within a definite time period and conditions specified in the solid-state fermentation process. For this purpose, parallel to response surface methodology, an analytical approach has been proposed based on the advanced concepts of Poisson geometry and Lie groups, which lead to a system of the Hamiltonian equations. Despite the dating of the Hamiltonian approach to solving biological problems, the novelty of this paper is based on the expression of a Hamiltonian system in notions of Poisson geometry, Lie algebras and symmetry groups and... 

In this paper, we consider a multiple-input single-output (MISO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system in the presence of an external single-antenna eavesdropper. We study secure downlink transmission strategies. The challenge is that the multiple antenna configurations make the successive interference cancellation (SIC) condition, which is necessary for applying NOMA schemes, much complex. We formulate the transmission power minimization problem under the quality of service (QoS), SIC and secrecy constraints. In particular, the transmission power minimization problems are formulated under both perfect channel state information (CSI) and the bounded CSI error models. These problems... 

Simulation optimization is an endeavor to determine the best combination of inputs that result in the best system performance criterion without evaluating all possible combinations. Since simulation optimization applies to many problems, it is extensively studied in the literature with different methods. However, most of these methods ignore the uncertainty of the systems’ parameters, which may lead to a solution that is not robustly optimal in reality. Motivated by this uncertainty, we propose a robust simulation optimization algorithm that follows the well-known Taguchi standpoint but replaces its statistical technique with a minimax method based on the kriging (Gaussian process)...