Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, an extensive experimental tests were performed to determine the aerodynamic characteristics of an airfoil undergoing static, dynamic pitch, dynamic plunge and dynamic combined pitch and plunge motions for various cases. This paper, however, focuses on the effects of reduced frequencies and mean angles of attack on the surface pressure distribution and on the corresponding lift of the airfoil oscillating in either pure pitch or in combined pitch–plunge motions. The angles of attack variations were set such that the model motion would be ceased lower than the static stall, near the static stall and beyond the static stall angles of attack. All tests were conducted at a constant... 

Enzymatic decolorization of the monoazo dye, acid orange 7 (AO7) by the fungal peroxidase from Coprinus cinereus NBRC 30628 is a complex system, which is greatly affected by temperature, pH, enzyme activity and the concentrations of H2O2 and dye concentration. The study of these factors and investigating the combined interactions between them by applying one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) method and two other statistical methods including 2-factorial method and response surface methodology (RSM) were aimed in this work. Through OFAT analysis the optimized conditions were a temperature of 25 °C, pH 9.0 with H2O2 concentration of about 3.9 mM and AO7 concentration of 40 mg/l. A complete... 

Corner-case analysis is a well-known technique to cope with occasional deviations occurring during the manufacturing process of semiconductors. However, the increasing amount of process variation in nanometer technologies has made it inevitable to move toward statistical analysis methods, instead of deterministic worst-case-based techniques, at all design levels. We show that by statically considering statistical effects of random and systematic process variation on performance and power consumption of a Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC), significant power improvement can be achieved by static software-level optimizations such as task and communication scheduling. Moreover, we analyze... 

In this study, H4Ti5O12 nanotubes have been prepared as Li+ adsorbent by acid treatment of Li4Ti5O12 nanotubes. Li4Ti5O12 nanotubes were synthesized via a hydrothermal method in which TiO2(B) nanNotubes were used as a precursor. The prepared Li-ion sieve showed a significant high ion-exchange capacity (160.6 mgg-1) for lithium ions due to its large specific surface area of 115.4 m2 g-1 compared to the other related studies. The kinetics and isotherm investigation revealed that the pseudo-second-order equation well described the adsorption kinetics, and the Langmuir model well fitted the isotherm data. Furthermore, the low value of adsorption energy obtained from the Dubinin-Radushkevitch... 

In this work, the inhibitory activity of pyridine N-oxide derivatives against human severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is predicted in terms of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models. These models were developed with the aid of multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) combined with shuffling cross-validation technique. A shuffling MARS algorithm is utilized to select the most important variables in QSAR modeling and then these variables were used as inputs of ANFIS to predict SARS inhibitory activities of pyridine N-oxide derivatives. A data set of 119 drug-like compounds was coded with over hundred calculated... 

A dataset of 365 laboratory tests for scour hole depth (SHD) around pile groups (PGs) under unidirectional aligned flow is compiled, and the performances of the existing equations are comparatively evaluated on the dataset using several statistical indices. A formulation based on a correction of HEC-18 equation provides the best estimate with a correlation factor of 0.58. The test durations of the considered data ranged between 4 and 389 h. A time factor (Kt) is proposed to take into account the temporal variation of the SHD around different PGs. Among the datasets, 51 long-duration experiments are scrutinized to show the temporal variation of scour depth toward equilibrium state. The time... 

This study presents a novel method for fault location of transmission lines by multiple fault current measurements. In contrast to conventional methods, it is proposed to utilise several current measurements, which may be far from the faulted line. The circuit equations of the network are used to express each fault current as a function of fault location. Fault location is then estimated using a least-squares estimation technique. To achieve a robust estimation of fault location, statistical hypotheses-testing is employed for identifying erroneous measurements. The method is applicable to both synchronised and unsynchronised measurements. Moreover, fault location can be estimated regardless... 

In this study a review of the developed methods to estimate groundwater withdrawal (GWW) from aquifers by pumping wells is provided. Then, a method adopted by Iran's Basic Studies Bureau of Water Resources Management Company for estimation of GWW through 536 aquifers across Iran is presented and modified. This so-called “representative pumping wells network” (RPWN) approach is a combination of statistical and rate-and-time methods which has been implemented for all aquifers in Iran since 2007. The RPWN approach is based on the overlaying of 10 important features in a GIS environment and classified in a number of zones in which their withdrawals are statistically different. The representative... 

A dense monitoring network is vital for the reliable assessment of PM10 in different parts of an urban area. In this study, a new idea is employed for the re-construction of the 20 shut-down PM10 monitoring stations of Berlin. It endeavours to find the non-linear relationship between the hourly PM10 concentration of both the still operating and the shut-down PM10 monitoring stations by using a fuzzy modelling technique, called modified active learning method (MALM). In addition, the simulations were performed by using not only raw PM10 databases but also log-transformed PM10 databases for skewness reduction. According to the results of hourly PM10 simulation (root mean square error about... 

Abnormalities in the topology of brain networks may be an important feature and etiological factor for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). To explore this possibility, we applied a graph theoretical approach to functional networks based on resting state EEGs from 13 PNES patients and 13 age- and gender-matched controls. The networks were extracted from Laplacian-transformed time-series by a cross-correlation method. PNES patients showed close to normal local and global connectivity and small-world structure, estimated with clustering coefficient, modularity, global efficiency, and small-worldness metrics, respectively. Yet the number of PNES attacks per month correlated with a... 

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... 

Geologic sequestration of CO2 in deep saline aquifers is becoming increasingly important as a method with the greatest potential to economically sequester large volumes of anthropogenic CO2. The interfacial tension (IFT) between the formation brine in the aquifer and the injected CO2 phase has a significant influence on the displacement, and its precise determination is essential for accurate modeling and evaluation of such a process. This paper presents two new mathematical models to calculate the brine/CO2 IFT. The two models differ in input parameters; pressure, temperature, and salinity for the first model, and pressure, temperature, and brine composition for the second one. The proposed... 

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has a large peak to mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR), which can result in significant signal distortion in presence of nonlinear amplifiers. In this paper, we will show that peak of the continuous envelope of OFDM signal can be bounded by maximum of corresponding oversampled sequence. This fact is then used as the corner stone of our study in two parts. In the first part, statistical analysis is used to find probability upper bound for complementary cumulative distribution function of PMEPR. It is also proven that for large number of subcarriers, only one redundant bit is necessary to limit PMEPR within %10 of its maximum value. In the... 

In this study, the effectiveness of PASylation in enhancing the potency and plasma half-life of pharmaceutical proteins has been accredited as an alternative technique to the conventional methods such as PEGylation. Proline, alanine, and serine (PAS) chain has shown some advantages including biodegradability improvement and plasma half-life enhancement while lacking immunogenicity or toxicity. Although some experimental studies have been performed to find the mechanism behind PASylation, the detailed mechanism of PAS effects on the pharmaceutical proteins has remained obscure, especially at the molecular level. In this study, the interaction of interferon α-2a (IFN) and PAS chain is... 

Autocorrelation receiver (AcR) is usually used as the general receiver for transmitted reference (TR) communication systems on a quite intuitive basis. In this paper, we apply the principle of statistical invariance to obtain the optimum TR receiver on a decision-theoretic basis, and it is shown that the autocorrelation receiver is optimal only in a special case. Performance of the optimum receiver and the suboptimum AcR for some important modulation schemes is also evaluated. The results imply that allocating a part of the transmitted energy and bandwidth to reference pulses would not help improve the performance of the system and the optimal performance might be achieved via much simpler... 

In this paper, two methods to solve multi-response statistical problems are presented. In these methods, desirability function, genetic algorithm and simulation methodology are applied. The desirability function is responsible for modeling the multi-response statistical problem, the genetic algorithm tries to optimize the model and, finally, the simulation approach generates the required input data from a simulated system. The methods differ from each other in controlling the randomness of the problem. In the first method, replications control this randomness, while, in the second method, the randomness is controlled by a statistical test. Furthermore, these methods are compared by designed... 

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled to gas chromatography (GC) was applied to the extraction of phenol and some of its volatile derivatives in water samples. The SPME fiber consisted of a thin layer of polyaniline, which was electrochemically coated on a fine Pt wire. The stability of the coating was such that it could be used at temperatures as high as 325 °C, without any deterioration. The effects of various parameters affecting the extraction efficiency were studied, simultaneously. From these, optimization of the extraction temperature, extraction time, coating thickness, sample pH, salt concentration and desorption time was carried out by means of a (26-2) fractional factorial... 

Paenibacillus polymyxa ATCC 21830 was used for the production of curdlan gum for first time. A Box-Behnken experimental design was applied to optimize six variables of batch fermentation culture each at three levels. Statistical analyses were employed to investigate the direct and interactive effects of variables on curdlan production. Optimum cultural conditions were temperature (50. °C), pH (7), fermentation time (96. h), glucose (100. g/L), yeast extract (3. g/L) and agitation speed (150. rpm). The yield of curdlan production was 6.89. g/L at optimum condition medium. Response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural network (ANN) were used to model cultural conditions of curdlan... 

Statistical and biochemical studies have revealed non-random patterns in codon assignments. The canonical genetic code is known to be highly efficient in minimizing the effects of mistranslation errors and point mutations, since it is known that when an amino acid is converted to another due to error, the biochemical properties of the resulted amino acid are usually very similar to those of the original one. In this study, using altered forms of the fitness functions used in the prior studies, we have optimized the parameters involved in the calculation of the error minimizing property of the genetic code so that the genetic code outscores the random codes as much as possible. This work also... 

Applying nonlinear statistical analysis methods in estimating the performance of structures in earthquakes is strongly considered these days. This is due to the methods' simplicity, timely lower cost and reliable estimation in seismic responses in comparison with time-history nonlinear dynamic analysis. Among nonlinear methods, simplified to be incorporated in the future guidelines, Modal Pushover Analysis, known by the abbreviated name of MPA, simply models nonlinear behavior of structures; and presents a very proper estimation of nonlinear dynamic analysis using lateral load pattern appropriate to the mass. Mostly, two kinds of connecting joints, 'hinge' and 'rigid', are carried out in...