Sharif Digital Repository

Background: Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is a health problem that is increasing around the world. Introduction: Prevention of GDM, rather than treatment, could have several benefits in terms of both health and economic cost. Even a slight reduction in maternal glucose in non-diabetic women, particularly in women at high risk for GDM, may have significant benefits for pregnancy results and the future health of off-springs. Probiotics are a relatively new intervention, which are assessed by mothers’ metabolism, and can reduce blood sugar levels, prevent gestational diabetes and reduce the maternal and fetal complications resulting from it. The aim of this study was to review the studies... 

Time management can be effective in a project when the project schedule is based on comprehensive time scheduling. In the industries with complicated processes, many uncertainties and risks affect the timing of projects. Considering the very low reliability of the project planning in certainty-based approach, using more secure models for control and interact with uncertainty should be placed on the agenda. Iranian Gas Company has been using risk management to manage probable uncertainties in construction projects but in the field of possible uncertainties, actions are very scarce. This article aims to propose an optimum model based on the integrated risk management and fuzzy expert systems... 

Nowadays, the construction industry has started to embrace IBS as a method of attaining better construction quality and productivity and reducing risks related to occupational safety and health. The built of pre-fabricated component in factories reduces many problems related to lack of purposing uncertainty in scheduling calculation and time management of projects. In the case of using IBS method for managing time in projects, former studies such as Allan Tay's research, indicates that this method can save up at least 29% of overall completion period versus the conventional method. But beside mentioned advantages of this technical method, the projects could be optimized more and more in... 

Although it is widely accepted that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) improves firm performance, scholars have advised that particular attention should be paid to the context. In this research, we investigate a less explored context of franchising where business systems and procedures are usually dictated to franchisees by franchisors. Therefore, whether a franchisor should allow franchisees to pursue EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy) is not clear. In the context of franchising, the majority of prior studies have mainly focused on the employment of EO as a unidimensional construct and at the franchisor level. In this research, we take a... 

Although it is widely accepted that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) improves firm performance, scholars have advised that particular attention should be paid to the context. In this research, we investigate a less explored context of franchising where business systems and procedures are usually dictated to franchisees by franchisors. Therefore, whether a franchisor should allow franchisees to pursue EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy) is not clear. In the context of franchising, the majority of prior studies have mainly focused on the employment of EO as a unidimensional construct and at the franchisor level. In this research, we take a... 

Electrochemical activity of TiO2 nanotube arrays (NTAs) is restricted by a wide band gap of TiO2. To overcome this restriction, we considered systematic research on two effective methods of doping of TiO2 NTAs such as the N-doping and electrochemical reductive doping and predicting the proper application of them. Band gap narrowing was occurred from 3.16 eV for undoped TiO2 NTAs to 2.9 and 2.7 eV at N-doped and self-doped TiO2 ones respectively. The electrochemical responses of the TiO2 NTAs before and after doping were examined by cyclic Voltammetry (CV) curve. To understand the electrochemical behavior of the undoped and doped TiO2 NTAs, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was... 

Although morphological disorder of nanotube structure is further down than the nanoparticular electrode, its density of traps are the hindering effects in the charge transport. In this study, crack-free TiO2 nanotube membranes, which obtained through a re-anodizing process, are fixed on transparent fluorine–tin-oxide glass by applying a few drops of Titanium Isopropoxide without needing the TiO2 powder paste. Front-side illuminated dye sensitized solar cells fabricated by undoped, N-doped and blue TiO2 nanotube membranes are investigated. The electrical characteristics of TiO2 nanotube based dye sensitized solar cells are followed by theoretical analysis using simple one-diode model.... 

In feature-based image registration, feature selection and reduction methods play an important role in decreasing computational burden of these operations. In this paper, a new approach is introduced to reduce the dimension of extracted feature vectors of MR images. This approach is based on the selection of the maximum and minimum responses of the alpha stable filter for the MR images over the extracted features with different orientation in frequency domain. This algorithm selects the rotation invariant features which are suitable for image registration purposes. It has been shown that these features could efficiently describe the image elements. The discriminating ability of the features... 

Iran as one of the countries located on the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt has recently experienced a few number of catastrophic earthquakes. A well-known index of how buildings are affected by earthquakes is through assessment of probable Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and structures' response spectra. In this research, active faults around Kerman and Birjand, two major cities in eastern parts of Iran, have been considered. Seismic catalogues are gathered to categorize effects of surrounding faults on seismicity of the region. These catalogues were further refined with respect to time and space based on Knopoff-Gardner algorithm in order to increase statistical independency of events.... 

This paper introduces a new method for improving the inertial navigation system errors using information provided by the camera. An unscented Kalman filter is used for integrating the inertial measurement unit data with the features’ constraints extracted from the camera’s image. The constraints, in our approach, comprise epipolar geometry of two consecutive images with more than 65% coverage. Tracking down a known feature in two consecutive images results in emergence of stochastic epipolar constraint. It emerges in the form of an implicit measurement equation of the Kalman filter. Correctly matching features of the two images is necessary for reducing the navigation system errors because... 

The novel mixed ligand complexes [M(bpy)(phen-dione)](PF6)2 (M = Zn(II), Cd(II) and Hg(II), bpy = 2,2′-bipyridine and phen-dione = 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6-dione) have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, IR, 1H NMR and electronic absorption spectroscopies. The ν(C=O) of coordinated phen-dione in these complexes are very similar to the free phen-dione ligand showing that phen-dione is not coordinated to metal ion from its C=O sites. Absorption spectra of the complexes show two absorption bands for intraligand transitions. These absorption bands show dependence to the dielectric constant of solvent. These complexes exhibit an intensive fluorescence band around 535 nm in... 

The mononuclear complexes of Zn(II), Cd(II) and Hg(II), [Zn(phen-dione)Cl2], [Cd(phen-dione)Cl2] and [Hg(phen-dione)Cl2], where phen-dione = 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6-dione, have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis and IR, 1H NMR and electronic absorption spectroscopies. The ν(C=O) of coordinated phen-dione ligands in these complexes shows that the phen-dione is not coordinated to metal ion from its C=O sites. Electronic spectra of the complexes show two absorption bands for intraligand transitions. These absorption bands show dependence on the dielectric constant of solvents. These complexes exhibit an intense fluorescence band around 545 nm in DMSO when the excitation... 

Purpose - This paper aims to develop an adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) formulation for orientation estimation of aircraft and UAV utilizing low-cost attitude and heading reference systems (AHRS). Design/methodology/approach - A recursive least-square algorithm with exponential age weighting in time is utilized for estimation of the unknown inputs. The proposed AUKF tunes its measurement covariance to yield optimal performance. Owing to nonlinear nature of the dynamic model as well as the measurement equations, an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is chosen against the extended Kalman filter, due to its better performance characteristics. The unscented transformation of the UKF is shown...