Sharif Digital Repository

The performance of cellular solids in biomedical applications relies strongly on a detailed understanding of the effects of pore topology on mechanical properties. This study aims at characterizing the failure mechanism of scaffolds based on nodal connectivity (number of struts that meet in joints) and geometry of the pores. Plastic models of scaffolds having the same relative density but different cubic and trigonal unit cells were designed and then fabricated via three dimensional (3-D) printing. Unit cells were repeated in different arrangements in 3-D space. An in-situ imaging technique was utilized to study the progressive deformation of the scaffold models. Different nodal... 

Rapid prototyping is a promising technique for producing tissue engineering scaffolds due to its capacity to generate predetermined forms and structures featuring distinct pore architectures. The objective of this study is to investigate the influences of different pore geometries and their orientation with respect to the compressive loading direction on mechanical responses of scaffolds. Plastic models of scaffolds with cubic and hexagonal unit cells were fabricated by three-dimensional (3-D) printing. An in situ imaging technique was utilized to study the progressive compressive deformation of the scaffold models. In both cubic and hexagonal geometries, organized buckling patterns relevant... 

Three-dimensional biocompatible porous structures can be fabricated using different methods. However, the biological and mechanical behaviors of scaffolds are the center of focus in bone tissue engineering. In this study, tricalcium phosphate scaffolds with similar porosity contents but different pore morphologies were fabricated using two different techniques, namely, the replica method and the pore-forming agent method. The samples fabricated using the pore-forming agent showed more than two times higher compressive and bending strengths and more than three times higher compressive moduli. Furthermore, a thin layer of agarose coating improved the compressive and bending strength of both... 

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is one of the most common hematologic malignancies among children, caused by uncontrolled growth of leukocytes. Since the main hallmarks of the disease is not specific, a considerable number of patients have been being misdiagnosed. Early diagnosis of the disease is usually made by morphological investigation of leukocytes under microscope. In light of the facts that decrease in cytoplasm-to-nucleus ratio is one of the main indicators of cancerous cells, and an accurate segmentation phase will lead to extraction of representative features, segmentation step is acknowledged as being crucial in design of a computer aided diagnosis (CAD). Previous researches have... 

A precise model of the behavior of complex systems such as solar chimney power plants (SCPP) would be much beneficial. Also, such a model would be quite contributing to the control of solar chimney operation. In this paper, the identification and modeling of SCPP utilizing ANN and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) are discussed. The modeling is based on the data of three working days which were taken of a built pilot in University of Zanjan, Iran. The input parameters are time, radiation and ambient temperature, while the output is the air velocity at the inlet of the chimney. The results of ANN model and ANFIS model were compared; it was found that ANFIS model exhibited better... 

Background: Autonomous grasping of soft tissues can facilitate the robotic surgery procedures. The previous attempts for implementing auto-grasping have been based on a simplistic representation of the actual surgery maneuvers. Method: A generalized three-zone grasp model was introduced to consider the effect of the pull force angulation on the grasp mode, that is, damage, slip, or safe grasp. Also, an extended auto-grasping algorithm was proposed in which the trigger force is automatically controlled against the pull force magnitude and direction, to achieve a safe and secure grasp. Results: The autonomous grasping experiments against a varying pull force in a phantom study indicated a good... 

Peer-to-peer networks (P2P) are beginning to form the infrastructure of future applications. One of the problems with unstructured P2P networks is their scalability limitation. This is also the problem in structured P2P networks that use broadcasting to find objects. These networks can't contain a large number of nodes because of the large amount of traffic that they have to handle. Local indexing is a method to reduce this traffic. But local indexes tend to become large with the growth of the network. Also limiting the size of these indexes causes loss of indexing information. In this paper we introduce a novel ontology based local index which limits the size of the local indexes without... 

Allostery describes altered protein function at one site due to a perturbation at another site. One mechanism of allostery involves correlated motions, which can occur even in the absence of substantial conformational change. We present a novel method, "MutInf", to identify statistically significant correlated motions from equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. Our approach analyzes both backbone and side chain motions using internal coordinates to account for the gear-like twists that can take place even in the absence of the large conformational changes typical of traditional allosteric proteins. We quantify correlated motions using a mutual information metric, which we extend to... 

In this paper, a nonlinear controller, which can be updated online by means of fuzzy logic, has been proposed for tracking the trajectory of a car-like robot. The advantage of this control scheme is that it eliminates the effects of model disturbances and uncertainties, which cannot be avoided; and especially when we consider the difficult task of determining the exact kinematic and dynamic models of car-like robots. The proposed approach comprises a robust nonlinear section that uses the sliding mode control and a fuzzy section that can update, online, parameters of the nonlinear controller. The stability and the error convergence of the closed-loop system are verified through the Lyapunov...