Sharif Digital Repository

The first paper is entitled “ElCore: Dynamic Elastic Resource Management and Discovery for Future Large-Scale Manycore Enabled Distributed Systems” by Javad Zarrin, Rui L. Aguiar, and João Paulo Barraca, addresses the problem of resource management for the upcoming large-scale many-core computing environments by exploring different resource allocation schemes. This work presents an elastic, dynamic, and fully decentralized resource management architecture which can be exploited in such distributed environments. The proposed architecture comprises a set of modules which can dynamically be instantiated on or allocated to an arbitrary node on demand. Experimental results demonstrate that the... 

Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relays are a promising emerging technology that has gained widespread research attention due to its zero leakage current, sharp ON-OFF transitions, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatibility. As a result, NEM relays have been significantly investigated as highly energy-efficient design solutions. A major shortcoming of NEMs preventing their widespread use is their limited switching endurance. Hence, in order to utilize the low-power advantages of NEM relays, further device, circuit, and architectural techniques are required. In this paper, we introduce the concept of shadow NEM relays, which is a circuit-level technique to leverage the energy... 

We present a feasible full step interior-point algorithm to solve the (Formula presented.) horizontal linear complementarity problem defined on a Cartesian product of symmetric cones, which is not based on a usual barrier function. The full steps are scaled utilizing the Nesterov-Todd (NT) scaling point. Our approach generates the search directions leading to the full-NT steps by algebraically transforming the centring equation of the system which defines the central trajectory using the induced barrier of a so-called positive-asymptotic kernel function. We establish the global convergence as well as a local quadratic rate of convergence of our proposed method. Finally, we demonstrate that... 

One of the methods newly introduced in pavement technology to address environmental concerns and reduce total gas emission is warm mix asphalt (WMA) technology. In this study, polyethylene wax is used to produce WMA mixtures. Although this technology has several positive features, moisture and rutting resistance of WMA mixtures are always questionable. To evaluate moisture and rutting resistance of polyethylene-modified mixtures, indirect tensile strength and dynamic creep tests were used, respectively. Results indicated that polyethylene has positive effect at low compaction temperature on moisture resistance, and also has negative effect on rutting resistance  

In this paper, we propose an adaptive object tracking algorithm in crowded scenes. The amplitudes of of Undecimated Wavelet Packet Tree coefficients for some selected pixels at the object border are used to create a Feature Vector (FV) corresponding to that pixel. The algorithm uses these FVs to track the pixels of small square blocks located at the vicinity of the object boundary. The search window is adapted through the use of texture information of the scene by finding the direction and speed of the object motion. Experimental results show a good object tracking performance in crowds that include object translation, rotation, scaling and partial occlusion. Copyright - World Automation... 

All-flash storage (AFS) systems have become an essential infrastructure component to support enterprise applications, where sub-millisecond latency and very high throughput are required. Nevertheless, the price per capacity ofsolid-state drives (SSDs) is relatively high, which has encouraged system architects to adoptdata reduction techniques, mainlydeduplication andcompression, in enterprise storage solutions. To provide higher reliability and performance, SSDs are typically grouped usingredundant array of independent disk (RAID) configurations. Data reduction on top of RAID arrays, however, adds I/O overheads and also complicates the I/O patterns redirected to the underlying backend SSDs,... 

Let G be a graph with v vertices. If there exists a collection of list of colors S1, S1,..., Sv on its vertices, each of size k, such that there exists a unique proper coloring for G from this list of colors, then G is called a uniquely k-list colorable graph. In this note we present a uniquely 3-list colorable, planar and K4-free Graph. It is a counterexample for a conjecture by Ch. Eslahchi, M. Ghebleh and H. Hajiabolhassan [3]  

This study aims to study the waste management process and recycling of municipal waste in Tehran. Currently, Kahrizak is the defined landfill area which collects the waste generated from 22 districts of Tehran. The organic wastes undergo to the windrow composting method in order to manage the partial of the waste generated in the city. Samples from the compost pile generated in Kahrizak were examined to evaluate its fertilizer value to be used further by the farmers. The results show that the obtained compost does not reach the acceptable quality to be used further in agriculture, due to lack of homogeneity, aeration and presence of heavy metals. Overall, it has been concluded that, due to... 

Improvement of mechanical properties and microstructure of 2024 aluminum alloy by performing a severe plastic deformation method, called multidirectional forging (MDF), and heat treatment was the aim of this research. In this work, the effects of different heat treatments such as annealing, solid solution, peak ageing and over ageing before MDF on mechanical properties and microstructure of the alloy were studied. Microstructure evolution during severe plastic deformation was considerably affected by the precipitates and non-shearable particles. On the other hand, the severe plastic deformation had different effects on precipitates in the microstructure. Fragmentation, scattering and... 

Using mixed method research the current study has analyzed Iranian researchers' information searching behavior on the Web. Based on extracted concepts, the model of their information searching behavior was revealed. Forty-four participants, including academic staff from universities and research centers were recruited for this study selected by purposive sampling. Data were gathered from questionnaires including ten questions and semi-structured interview. Each participant's memos were analyzed using grounded theory methods adapted from Strauss & Corbin (1998). Results showed that the main objectives of subjects were doing a research, writing a paper, studying, doing assignments, downloading... 

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between research in Iranian medical universities, together with their Web Impact Factor (WIF). Design/methodology/approach - The Altavista search engine was chosen because of its advanced search facilities for counting links and having a wider scope of academic web sites than other search engines. It was searched for determining the number of pages, in-links and self-links of 42 web sites of Iranian medical universities. The Web Impact Factor (WIF) was calculated by two formulas and the relationship between the two grades of universities (WIF and ISI) was calculated by using the Spearman's correlation coefficient. Findings -... 

Improvement of mechanical properties and microstructure of 2024 aluminum alloy by performing a severe plastic deformation method, called multidirectional forging (MDF), and heat treatment was the aim of this research. In this work, the effects of different heat treatments such as annealing, solid solution, peak ageing and over ageing before MDF on mechanical properties and microstructure of the alloy were studied. Microstructure evolution during severe plastic deformation was considerably affected by the precipitates and non-shearable particles. On the other hand, the severe plastic deformation had different effects on precipitates in the microstructure. Fragmentation, scattering and... 

Evaluation of workers’ body posture in workstations is a prerequisite to estimate spinal loads and assess risk of injury for the subsequent design of preventive interventions. The Microsoft Kinect™ sensor is, in this regard, advantageous over the traditional skin-marker-based optical motion capture systems for being marker-less, portable, cost-effective, and easy-to-use in real workplaces. While several studies have demonstrated the validity/reliability of the Kinect for posture measurements especially during gait trials, its capability to adequately drive a detailed spine musculoskeletal model for injury risk assessments remains to be investigated. Lumbosacral (L5-S1) load predictions of a... 

Asphalt binders are known to exhibit an inherent ability to repair damage. Such self-healing potentially affects the fatigue damage performance of bituminous materials. There are contradicting findings about the effects of aging and polymer modification on healing. The effectiveness of rejuvenating agents also has not been sufficiently addressed. In the present study, three healing indices have been defined to provide a more complete representation with which to quantify the healing potential of binders. These indices have been defined using damage characteristic curves derived from interrupted linear amplitude sweep tests. Initial healing (IH) describes the immediate reduction in the damage... 

The purpose of this article is to investigate the shielding performance of the B2O3-Bi2O3-ZnO-Li2O glasses against the gamma-ray. To this end, the attenuation parameters of the gamma-ray inside the B2O3-Bi2O3-ZnO-Li2O glasses were evaluated in the energy range of 200–1500 keV. It was found that the mass attenuation coefficient of the composites increases with increasing the Li2O content. The relative percent deviation between the results of simulation using the MCNPX and XCOM database in most cases was less than 2%. Additionally, the Mean Free Path (MFP) and Half-Value Layer (HVL) parameters were evaluated, and the shielding efficiency of samples was compared with some conventional shielding... 

Model-Driven Development (MDD) has become a familiar software engineering term in recent years, thanks to the profound influence of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Yet MDD, like MDA itself, defines a general framework, and as such is a generic approach rather than a concrete development methodology. Methodology support for MDA has been rather slow in coming, yet even though several MDA-based methodologies have emerged, they have not been objectively analyzed yet. The need remains for a critical appraisal of these methodologies, mainly aimed at identifying their achievements, and the shortcomings that should be addressed. We provide a review of several prominent MDA-based methodologies,...