Sharif Digital Repository

Novel types of highly swelling hydrogels were prepared by grafting crosslinked polyacrylamide-co-poly-2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid (PAAm-co-PAMPS) chains onto sodium alginate (Na-Alg) through a free radical polymerization method. The superabsorbent formation was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic (FTIR). The controlled release behavior of diclofenac sodium (DS) from superabsorbent polymer was factinvestigated, and shown that the release profiles of DS from superabsorbent polymer were slow in simulated gastric fluid (SGF, pH 1.2) over 3 h, but nearly all of the initial drug content was released in simulated intestinal fluid (SIF, pH 7.4) within 21 h after... 

Noise interference and data loss are two major problems that affect the processing results of image data transmission and storage. Restoration of the lost information of an image based on the existing information is the essence of inpainting. In this paper a new algorithm based on Sample and Hold interpolation and Iteration is proposed for reconstructing damaged images from existing regions and is compared to some other methods. The experimental results show the superiority of the visual quality and PSNR performance of the proposed method. It is observed that this approach can efficiently fill in the holes with visually plausible information  

The conventional delay-line discriminator method for phase noise measurement is modified to achieve better sensitivity. In the proposed technique, to decrease delay-line loss, the under-test oscillator's microwave frequency is down-converted by another oscillator, and delay-line is implemented in the IF range. Full validation of the technique is presented. In adition, we experimentally demonstrate that system sensitivity is considerably improved compared to the conventional method  

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition causes many serious problems to the petroleum industry from the reservoir to the surface facilities. Therefore, it is important to bring it under control by finding a method to accelerate or slow down its precipitation and deposition. For achieving this purpose two parameters play an important role; onset point of the precipitation and amount of the deposited phase. When asphaltene precipitates, it is capable of depositing in the solution. After the deposition, the solution split into two phases; asphaltene-rich and asphaltene-lean. Determining the amount of the deposited phase needs to distinguish the interface between two phases. In this study, a... 

Petroleum industry is moving toward enhancing oil recovery methods, especially water-based methods, including low salinity and smart water flooding which water with an optimized composition is injected into the reservoir for improving oil recovery. Injection of water into the target formation is also a common operation in geothermal energy production. As the water is being injected into the reservoir, pressure and temperature change along the well column and cause scale formation. Mineral scale precipitation and deposition is a common problem for water injection wells which reduces the effective radius of the wellbore and affects the injection efficiency. In this paper, modeling scale... 

Recently, super gas wet and gas wet surfaces have been extensively attended in petroleum industry, as supported by the increasing number of publications in the last decade related to wettability alteration in gas condensate reservoirs. In many cases, contact angle measurement has been employed to assess the wettability alteration. Even though contact angle measurement seems to be a straightforward approach, there exist many misuses of this technique and consequently misinterpretation of the corresponding results. In this regard, a critical inspection of the most recent updated concepts and the intervening parameters in the contact angle based wettability evaluation of liquid-solid-gas... 

Recently, super gas wet and gas wet surfaces have been extensively attended in petroleum industry, as supported by the increasing number of publications in the last decade related to wettability alteration in gas condensate reservoirs. In many cases, contact angle measurement has been employed to assess the wettability alteration. Even though contact angle measurement seems to be a straightforward approach, there exist many misuses of this technique and consequently misinterpretation of the corresponding results. In this regard, a critical inspection of the most recent updated concepts and the intervening parameters in the contact angle based wettability evaluation of liquid-solid-gas... 

The dynamics driven interaction between the bubbles in a cavitation cluster is known to be a complex phenomenon indicative of a highly active nonlinear as well as chaotic behavior in ultrasonic fields. By considering the cluster of encapsulated microbubble with a thin elastic shell in ultrasonic fields, in this paper, the dynamics of microbubbles has been studied via applying the methods of chaos physics. Bifurcation, Lyapunov exponent, and time series are plotted with respect to variables such as amplitude, initial bubble radius, frequency and viscosity. The findings of the study indicate that a bubble cluster undergoes a chaotic unstable region as the amplitude and frequency of ultrasonic... 

QBism is one of the main candidates for an epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to QBism, the quantum state or the wavefunction represents the subjective degrees of belief of the agent assigning the state. But, although the quantum state is not part of the furniture of the world, quantum mechanics grasps the real via the Born rule which is a consistency condition for the probability assignments of the agent. In this paper, we evaluate the plausibility of recent criticism of QBism. We focus on the consequences of the subjective character of the quantum state, the issue of realism and the problem of the evolution of the quantum state in QBism. In particular, drawing upon... 

To investigate the biomarker detection capability of the 2D MoSe2 monolayer as the lung cancer detection sensor, the interaction between the biomarker molecules and the surface of the sensor has been studied by first-principles calculations in three scenarios namely i) pristine MoSe2, ii) Nb-doped MoSe2, iii) Nb-decorated MoSe2 monolayers. In this study, it is proposed that Nb-decorated MoSe2 is a promising biosensor for detecting the two most prominent lung cancer biomarkers in the breath namely 2-butanone (C4H8O) and 1-propanol (C3H8O). The adsorption energy, charge transfer, and the equivalent sensitivity for C3H8O adsorption on Nb-decorated MoSe2 were calculated as −1.907 eV, 0.026e, and... 

The synthesis of pure α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (30 nm) using a superabsorbent nanopolymer (SANP) by the thermal decomposition is reported. Synthesized α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) and thermogravimetric analysis (TG) techniques. The applicability of this nanostructure material was assessed by its catalytic effect on the Friedel-Crafts acylation. ©2009 Sociedade Brasileira de Química  

An analysis is presented of the effective electromagnetic parameters of high-permittivity, anisotropic artificial dielectrics which are built by stacking arrays of metallic elements and conventional dielectric films, with adjacent arrays shifted with respect to each other. The effective parameters of the artificial dielectric are extracted from the scattering coefficients of plane electromagnetic waves which are normally or obliquely incident on a slab of the artificial material with finite thickness. These coefficients are derived from the generalised scattering matrix of a single layer of metallic elements which is computed using the integral equation technique. Both two-dimensional and... 

Semiconductor gas sensors have been developed so far on empirical bases, but now recent innovative materials for advancing gas sensor technology have been made available for further developments. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have gained immense attention since the advent of graphene. This attention inspired researchers to explore a new family of potential 2D materials. The superior structural, mechanical, optical and electrical properties of 2D materials made them attractive for next-generation smart device applications. There are considerable improvements and research studies on graphene, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), tungsten disulfide (WS2), tin sulfide (SnS2), black phosphorus and other... 

In order to plan precise treatment or accurate tumor removal surgery, brain tumor segmentation is critical for detecting all parts of tumor and its surrounding tissues. To visualize brain anatomy and detect its abnormalities, we use multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as input. This paper introduces an efficient and automated algorithm based on the 3D bit-plane neighborhood concept for Brain Tumor segmentation using a rule-based learning algorithm. In the proposed approach, in addition to using intensity values in each slice, we consider sets of three consecutive slices to extract information from 3D neighborhood. We construct a Rule base using sequential covering algorithm. Through... 

In order to plan precise treatment or accurate tumor removal surgery, brain tumor segmentation is critical for detecting all parts of tumor and its surrounding tissues. To visualize brain anatomy and detect its abnormalities, we use multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as input. This paper introduces an efficient and automated algorithm based on the 3D bit-plane neighborhood concept for Brain Tumor segmentation using a rule-based learning algorithm. In the proposed approach, in addition to using intensity values in each slice, we consider sets of three consecutive slices to extract information from 3D neighborhood. We construct a Rule base using sequential covering algorithm. Through... 

Glioma is one of the most frequent primary brain tumors in adults that arise from glial cells. Automatic and accurate segmentation of glioma is critical for detecting all parts of tumor and its surrounding tissues in cancer detection and surgical planning. In this paper, we present a reliable classification framework for detection and segmentation of abnormal tissues including brain glioma tumor portions such as edemas and tumor core. This framework learns weighted features extracted from the 3D cubic neighborhoods regarding to gray-level differences that indicate the spatial relationships among voxels. In addition to intensity values in each slice, we consider sets of three consecutive... 

Space environments have a significant influence on advanced composite structures and adhesive joints. Degradation in the mechanical properties of aerospace materials changes the dynamic behavior of the structures and adhesive joints. In this paper, a typical tubular adhesive joint with material degradation due to geostationary orbit (GEO) thermal cycles has been studied numerically with Python scripts. Adhesive joint geometry and boundary conditions are the main parametric study parameters. The results show that the first non–zero natural frequencies of the clamped-free tubular adhesive joint decreased due to mechanical property degradation. A dynamic behavior comparison of the degradation... 

Glioma is a common type of tumor that develops in the brain. Due to many differences in the shape and appearance, accurate segmentation of glioma for identifying all parts of the tumor and its surrounding tissues in cancer detection is a challenging task in cancer detection. In recent researches, the combination of atlas-based segmentation and machine learning methods have presented superior performance over other automatic brain MRI segmentation algorithms. To overcome the side effects of limited existing information on atlas-based segmentation, and the long training and the time consuming phase of learning methods, we proposed a semi-supervised learning framework by introducing a... 

This paper presents a novel Cyber-Physical System (CPS) equipped with an advanced Distributed Model Predictive Control (DMPC) method with reduced order computational complexity, zero steady-state error, reduced start-up energy consumption and improved transient response for the optimal heating-cooling of buildings. The satisfactory application of this method for the optimal heating-cooling of a large-scale (6-story) building with 40 rooms is illustrated. Smart Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) -based thermostats, a gateway and a general Quadratic Programming (QP) solver are developed. Using this hardware set-up, the simulation results for the 6-story building are verified in a small scale...