Sharif Digital Repository

Control charts are useful tools of monitoring quality characteristics. One of the problems of employing a control chart is that the time it alarms is not synchronic with the time when assignable cause manifests itself in the process. This makes difficult to search and find assignable causes. Knowing the real time of manifestation of assignable cause (change point) helps to find assignable cause(s) sooner and eases corrective actions to be taken. In this paper, a probabilistic neural network (PNN)-based procedure was developed to estimate the variance change point of a normally distributed quality characteristic. The PNN was selected based on trial and error among different types of... 

This Regular evaluation and analysis of river quality helps accurate management to reach acceptable quality. In this study, water quality indices (WQI) method applied to evaluate quality of Jajrood River which is one of the main sources of Tehran drinking water. It helps to subsidize management actions in Jajrood watershed. Sampling carried out for 9 years during 2001-2010 in 10 stations along the river in wet and dry stations to identify water quality and the main source of pollution. Results show water quality in all stations classifies as medium according to National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and water quality index in wet season is better than the corresponding value in dry seasons.... 

Smoking is known as a major cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and hence immediate and effective interventions are required for its elimination. This study aimed to collect valid data with regard to cigarette smoking in adult population of north of Iran for policy making by a meta-analysis of the documents of national non-communicable disease risk factors surveillance system. We investigated relevant evidences by searching in published and non-electronic databases. Data were extracted based on variables such as year of the study, sex, age group and prevalence of smoking habit. Based on results of heterogeneity, we applied fixed or random effects model to estimate the... 

Thorium dioxide (thoria) nano-particle was synthesized by employing supercritical water (SCW) as an excellent reaction environment for hydrothermal crystallization of metal oxide particles. This method is ideal for production of ultrafine powder having controlled stoichiometry, high quality, purity and crystallinity. The nano-crystalline thoria was prepared in a stainless steel (316 L) autoclave, fed with an aqueous solution of Th(NO 3) 4.5H 2O as a reactant and took place under SCW condition up to 450 °C for 45 min. The product was recovered and characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Thermal Gravimetry Analysis (TG/DTA) and Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) surface area analysis. The... 

In the recent researches HVAC with a based desiccant dehumidifier with a low ambient impact is more efficient in comparison to the traditional systems. Hybrid desiccant cooling systems can be used to control indoor air quality in buildings. This paper presents an integrated energy, entropy and exergy analysis of a hybrid desiccant cooling system compare to a compression system based on first and second laws of thermodynamic. The main objective is the use of a method called exergy costing applied to a conventional compression system that has been chosen to provide the proper conditioned air for a building in hot and humid condition. By applying the same method for the equivalent hybrid... 

Power control mechanisms play a critical role in underlay cognitive radio networks where primary users' quality of service should not be degraded by the secondary users transmission. Consequently, the inflicted interference power of the secondary transmitters on the primary receivers should be less than certain threshold levels that is required to be considered in designing power control algorithms for such networks. In this paper, we first propose a power reduction algorithm for the set of secondary transmitting links in order to guarantee that the members of this set do not violate the interference constraints set by primary users while maintaining their specific SINR quality of service... 

One of the most challenging problems in Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) is to design channel sensing-based protocol in multi secondary users (SUs) network. Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for SUs have significant implications on this protocol design. In this paper, we propose a new method to find joint policies for SUs which not only tries to guarantee QoS requirements but also maximize network throughput. We use Decentralized Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (Dec-POMDP) to formulate interactions between SUs. Meanwhile, a tractable approach for Dec-POMDP is utilized to extract sub-optimum joint policies for large horizons. Among these policies, the QoS-aware joint... 

In this article we present a new scheme to support multirate and multi-quality-of-service transmission in passive optical networks based on a hybrid wavelength-division multiplexing/ optical code-division multiplexing scheme. The idea is to use multilength variable-weight optical orthogonal codes as signature sequences of a hybrid WDM/OCDM system. To provide the requested classes of service, the code weight and code length of MLVW-OOCs are designed based on the characteristics of the requested classes of service. In order to mitigate multiple access interference, we propose to utilize a multilevel signaling technique and interference remover structure based on advanced optical logic gate... 

Cell culture feeds optimization is a critical step in process development of pharmaceutical recombinant protein production. Amino acids are the basic supplements of mammalian cell culture feeds with known effect on their growth promotion and productivity. In this study, we reported the implementation of the Plackett-Burman (PB) multifactorial design to screen the effects of amino acids on the growth promotion and productivity of a Chinese hamster ovary DG-44 (CHO-DG44) cell line producing bevacizumab. After this screening, the amino acid combinations were optimized by the response surface methodology (RSM) to determine the most effective concentration in feeds. Through this strategy, the... 

Data stream classification is one of the most challenging areas in the machine learning. In this paper, we focus on three major challenges namely infinite length, concept-drift and concept-evolution. Infinite length causes the inability to store all instances. Concept-drift is the change in the underlying concept and occurs in almost every data stream. Concept-evolution, in fact, is the arrival of novel classes and is an undeniable phenomenon in most real world data streams. There are lots of researches about data stream classification, but most of them focus on the first two challenges and ignore the last one. In this paper, we propose new method based on ensembles whose classifiers use... 

This paper presents a supervisory multi-agent control policy over an acoustic communication network subject to imperfections (packet dropout and transmission delay) for localisation of an underwater flow source (e.g., source of chemical pollution, fresh water, etc.) with an unknown location at the bottom of the ocean. A two-loop control policy combined with a coding strategy for reliable communication is presented to perform the above task. A simulator is developed and used to evaluate the trade-offs between quality of communication, transmission delay and control for a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles supervised over a noisy acoustic communication network by an autonomous surface... 

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the analysis of the major active components of saffron owing to their significant role in various industries, such as food, medicine and perfume. In other words, analysis of the major active components of saffron can give complete information about its chemical composition, which can be used as a reliable index for the quality control of different saffron samples (i.e., natural and commercial). The aim of the present work was to develop a simple, low cost, efficient and comprehensive strategy for the extraction and analysis of the bioactive components of saffron. In this regard, ultrasonic-assisted solvent extraction (UASE) combined... 

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the assembly of metallic nanoclusters using manipulation process. These particles are assumed as potential building blocks for bottom-up manufacturing of nanoscale structures. One of the key factors in the assembly of nanoclusters is their precise positioning by a manipulation system. Prediction of the corresponding behavior under the influence of working conditions is of crucial importance for planning of controlled positioning and assembly of nanoclusters. The focus of the present research is on ultra-fine metallic nanoclusters. The effects of material type and manipulation strategy on the success of the process are investigated by molecular... 

Taking account of uncertainty in multicriteria decision making problems is crucial due to the fact that depending on how it is done, ranking of alternatives can be completely different. This paper utilizes linguistic values to evaluate the performance of qualitative criteria and proposes using appropriate shapes of fuzzy numbers to evaluate the performance of quantitative criteria for each problem with respect to its particular conditions. In addition, a process to determine the weights of criteria using fuzzy numbers, which considers their competition to gain greater weights and their influence on each other is described. A new fuzzy methodology is proposed to solve such a problem that... 

Purpose - This paper aims to address the capability of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), which is a preventive maintenance design tool. Design/methodology/approach - A model named Plant Function Deployment (PFD) is developed, in which the methodology of quality function deployment (QFD) is added to RCM to improve RCM capability in preserving the functions of the plants. Findings - The objective of preserving the plant functions with least resources, in RCM, is attained more efficiently if the methodology of QFD is added to RCM. Practical implications - PFD is a model for designing a preventive maintenance program which uses RCM and QFD methodologies. PFD organizes all the important... 

In this paper, a semi-blind multiplicative watermarking approach for audio and speech signals has been presented. At the receiver end, the optimal maximum likelihood (ML) detector aided by the archived information for Gaussian and Laplacian signals in noisy environment is designed and implemented. The performance of the proposed scheme is analytically calculated and verified by simulation. Then, we adapt the proposed scheme to speech and audio signals. To improve robustness, the algorithm is applied to low frequency components of the host signal. Besides, the power of the watermark is controlled elegantly to have inaudibility using perceptual evaluation of audio quality (PEAQ) and perceptual... 

In some statistical process control (SPC) applications, quality of a process or product is characterized by contingency table. Contingency tables describe the relation between two or more categorical quality characteristics. In this paper, two new control charts based on the WALD and Stuart score test statistics are designed for monitoring of contingency table-based processes in Phase-II. The performances of the proposed control charts are compared with the generalized linear test (GLT) control chart proposed in the literature. The results show the better performance of the proposed control charts under small and moderate shifts. Moreover, new schemes are proposed to diagnose which cell... 

Estimanon of the origin-destination trip danad matrix (O-D) plays a key role in travel analysis and transportation planning and operations. Many researchers have developed different O-D maths estimation mediods using traffic counts, which allow simple data collection as opposed to die costly traditional direct estimation methods based on home and roadside interviews. In mis papet, a new fuzzy O-D matrix estimation model (FODMEM) is proposed to estimate die O-D matrix from traffic count. A gradient-based aigoridnn. containing 3 fuzzy rule based approach to control die estimated O-D matrix changes, is proposed to solve FODMEM Since link data only represents a snapshot situation, resulting in... 

An approximated quadratic programming optimization is proposed to determine a model predictive controller to guarantee end-to-end delay in the DiffServ architecture. The proposed algorithm, called the suboptimal model predictive control scheduler (SMPCS), regulates the service rates of aggregated traffic classes dynamically, such that some constraints on proportional or absolute delay can be guaranteed. This paper investigates SMPCS complexity and its implementation problems in high-speed routers. The main problem of model predictive control (and one which has limited its use to slow processes) is its complexity. Optimization is the most computationally complex part in a model predictive... 

In some statistical process control (SPC) applications, quality of a process or product is characterized by contingency table. Contingency tables describe the relation between two or more categorical quality characteristics. In this paper, two new control charts based on the WALD and Stuart score test statistics are designed for monitoring of contingency table-based processes in Phase-II. The performances of the proposed control charts are compared with the generalized linear test (GLT) control chart proposed in the literature. The results show the better performance of the proposed control charts under small and moderate shifts. Moreover, new schemes are proposed to diagnose which cell...