Sharif Digital Repository

Apatite-coated Ag/AgBr/TiO2 was prepared by deposition of Ag as novel metal to generate electron-hole pairs by extending the excitation wavelength to the visible-light region, AgBr, and hydroxy apatite as photosensitive material and adsorption bioceramic, respectively. The energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry clearly showed the presence of Ti, Ag, Ca, and P elements on the surface of catalyst. The bactericidal experiments in dark media indicated that only the novel catalyst shows inhibiting growth of bacteria in this case. A transmission electron microscopy image illustrated that catalyst nanoparticles adhere to the outer membrane of the cell and act as an inhibitor to the nourishment of... 

TiO2-based photocatalysts are seen as the most common agents for the photodegradation of bacteria. In this study, AgCl/TiO2, hydroxyapatite(Hp)/AgCl/TiO2, AgI/TiO2, and Hp/AgI/TiO2 were prepared by the deposition-precipitation method on P25 TiO2 nanoparticles and were characterized by XRD, SEM, FT-IR, EDX and BET methods. The prepared composites showed high efficiency for the inactivation of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria under visible light and in dark media with different catalyst amounts of 12 and 24 mg, respectively. In less than 30 min, AgI/TiO2, prepared by the combination of cationic surfactant and PVPI2, disinfected 1 × 107 colony-forming units of E. coli completely. However,... 

An invisible image watermarking scheme tends to insert the mark in a transparent manner, with the highest possible energy. Several watermarking algorithms use human visual models as perceptual masks to maximize the power of watermark. We take advantage of inhibitory and excitatory characteristics of eye receptors which yield an extra capacity, for amplifying watermark power, while still satisfying imperceptibility constraint. Spatial-domain image entropy is used as a measure of strength of inhibitory effect. The principle of our idea is based on the decomposition of mark sequence into two parts, corresponding to two complementary sets of pixels in spatial-domain. These sets are determined... 

Transparent, robust watermarking schemes tend to insert invisible watermarks with the highest possible energy. Singular values, in singular value decomposition (SVD), are shown to be robust to intentional and unintentional attacks. However, none of the algorithms proposed in the literature considered the visual imperceptibility constraint imposed by the human visual models. In this paper, we introduce an optimal SVD-based embedding framework, based on the well-known linear programming concept. Given a binary sequence of the mark, we show how to insert the message with the highest possible magnitude, without outlawing the just noticeable thresholds driven by the human visual system models in... 

The concern over fossil energy shortage for the next decade leads to the extensive research activities in the area of enhanced oil recovery. Steam injection as one of well known EOR process has been used for about five decades to improve the oil production rate and recovery efficiency. Steam flooding is applied to heavy and extra-heavy oil reservoirs; however it could be used in light oil reservoirs in which water injection do not work effectively. Regardless of different performances, this method is an efficient EOR process for both heavy and light oil reservoirs. In this work, two separate numerical models were prepared to investigate steam flooding performance for the recovery of light... 

The resonant frequencies and torsional sensitivities of an atomic force microscope (AFM) with assembled cantilever probe (ACP) are studied. This ACP comprises a horizontal cantilever, a vertical extension and two tips located at the free ends of the cantilever and the extension which makes the AFM capable of simultaneous topography at top-surface and sidewalls of microstructures especially microgears which consequently leads to a time-saving swift scanning process. In this work, the effects of the sample surface contact stiffness and the geometrical parameters such as the ratio of the vertical extension length to the horizontal cantilever length and the distance of the vertical extension... 

The resonant frequencies and flexural sensitivities of an atomic force microscope (AFM) assembled cantilever probe which comprises a horizontal cantilever, a vertical extension and two tips located at the free ends of the cantilever and the extension are studied. This probe makes the AFM capable of simultaneous topography at top-surface and sidewalls of microstructures especially microgears which leads to a time-saving swift scanning process. In this work, the effects of the sample surface contact stiffness and the geometrical parameters such as the ratio of the vertical extension length to the horizontal cantilever length and the distance of the vertical extension from clamped end of the... 

The resonant frequencies and flexural sensitivities of an atomic force microscope (AFM) with assembled cantilever probe (ACP) are studied. This ACP comprises a horizontal cantilever, a vertical extension and two tips located at the free ends of the cantilever and the extension, which makes the AFM capable of simultaneous topography at top surface and sidewalls of microstructures especially microgears, which consequently leads to a time-saving swift scanning process. In this work, the effects of the sample surface contact stiffness and the geometrical parameters such as the ratio of the vertical extension length to the horizontal cantilever length and the distance of the vertical extension... 

An economic-statistical design with multiple assignable causes following exponential distribution is presented in this paper for linear profiles. For this purpose, a tri-objective optimization model is proposed to minimize the cost with desired statistical performances. Average Run Length (ARL) as the primary statistical measure is employed for the appraisal of the designed linear profiles. The first objective to be minimized is a cost function that models the implementation cost in different states. The second objective is to maximize ARL or the in-control average run-length of the monitoring scheme. The third objective to be minimized is ARL 1 or the out-of-control average run-length of... 

Multi-component photocatalysts based on apatite-coated Ag=AgBr=TiO 2 were prepared by the deposition method. The effects of various kinds of apatites, with hydroxyl and fluoro substituents, on photocatalytic activity were investigated. The antibacterial processes in the dark, and under visible light, on two types of bacteria indicate that the multi-composites can inhibit the growth of bacteria by two different mechanisms. TEM images and optical microscopic data demonstrate that by attaching the nanosize catalyst to the outer membrane of the cell, the bacteria could not derive nourishment from surrounding media, i.e. this component acts as bacteria-static. The mechanism for deactivation of... 

We study the statistical mechanics of binary systems under the gravitational interaction of the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) in three-dimensional space. Considering the binary systems in the microcanonical and canonical ensembles, we show that in the microcanonical systems, unlike the Newtonian gravity, there is a sharp phase transition, with a high-temperature homogeneous phase and a low-temperature clumped binary one. Defining an order parameter in the canonical systems, we find a smoother phase transition and identify the corresponding critical temperature in terms of the physical parameters of the binary system. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland  

TiO2-based photocatalysts are seen as the most common agents for the photodegradation of bacteria. In this study, AgCl/TiO2, hydroxyapatite(Hp)/AgCl/TiO2, AgI/TiO2, and Hp/AgI/TiO2 were prepared by the deposition-precipitation method on P25 TiO2 nanoparticles and were characterized by XRD, SEM, FT-IR, EDX and BET methods. The prepared composites showed high efficiency for the inactivation of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria under visible light and in dark media with different catalyst amounts of 12 and 24 mg, respectively. In less than 30 min, AgI/TiO2, prepared by the combination of cationic surfactant and PVPI2, disinfected 1 × 10(7) colony-forming units of E. coli completely. However,... 

Zeolite-based Ag/AgBr and Ag/AgBr/TiO 2 photocatalysts were prepared by sol-gel and deposition methods and were characterized. Their photocatalytic activities were evaluated by inactivation of Escherichia (E.) coli and the photodegradation of Acid Blue 92 and potassium permanganate. The composites containing Ag/AgBr showed the antibacterial activity in the dark by releasing Ag ions into the medium. The results for inactivation of E. coli indicated that Ag/AgBr/TiO 2 modified photocatalyst had better antibacterial activity than Ag/AgBr/zeolite, while zeolite and TiO 2/zeolite did not show any antibacterial activity under visible light and dark conditions. Photodecolarization rate was affected... 

With the advent of various advanced materials, the idea of flying like birds has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In addition, aeroacoustics has become an important issue and is being widely studied. In this work, based on the shape of Owls’ wings, an attempt was made to improve the aeroacoustic and aerodynamic performances of conventional aircraft wings. For this purpose, wings with different elements, namely, square, triangular, and semicircular, on their top surface were examined. In addition, three different spatial distributions of the elements according to the Owl’s wings shape were considered. For incompressible airflow, aerodynamic and aeroacoustic parameters of wing... 

In our previous work, we presented a Z-based formalism, called NZ, by which one can explicitly specify bounded, unbounded, erratic, angelic, demonic, loose, strict, singular, and plural nondeterminism. The NZ notation is mainly based on a new notion of operation schemas, called multi-schema. Since the operations of the Z schema calculus do not work on multi-schemas anymore, in this paper we augment NZ with a new set of schema calculus operations that can be applied on multi-schemas as well as ordinary operation schemas. To demonstrate the usability of the resulting formalism, we show how this formalism can assist to model game-like situations and concurrent systems as two well-known classes... 

In this paper, we introduce a refinement approach to develop probabilistic programs formally. To achieve this goal, we first present a way to specify probabilistic programs in a Z-based notation. We then use an existing method of translating Z into a refinement calculus to transform our Z-style specifications of probabilistic programs into specification statements of the refinement calculus. We finally add new laws to the refinement calculus helping us to refine the resulting specification statements into probabilistic choice constructs of a probabilistic imperative language. In this way, we will provide a completely formal way for developing probabilistic programs. ©2009 IEEE  

The abstraction inherent in most specifications and the need to specify nondeterministic programs are two well-known sources of nondeterminism in formal specifications. In this paper, we present a Z-based formalism by which one can specify bounded, unbounded, erratic, angelic, demonic, loose, strict, singular, and plural nondeterminism. To interpret our specifications, we use a constructive set theory, called CZ set theory, instead of the classical set theory Z. We have chosen CZ since it allows us to investigate the notion of nondeterminism from the formal program development point of view. In this way, we formally construct functional programs from Z specifications and then probe the... 

Due to the high level of abstraction involved in formal specification of software systems, nondeterminism comes as an inevitable part of formal specifications. Therefore, support for nondeterminism should be provisioned in developing programs from their formal specifications. In this paper, an existing translation of CZ set theory into Martin-Löf's theory of types is extended to consider nondeterministic specifications in CZ language. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

This paper studies the effective parameters of a skilled service in playing tennis and determines their relationship with skill deals. Effective service in tennis plays an important role in gaining more desirable result and the most important factor of success in getting scores depends on the player's skills in serving an effective service. The characteristics of a good service are the high speed of the ball and the precision of landing the ball. The several parameters affecting on these two characteristic in the service, are studied in this paper. Therefore, the Kinematic parameters of 8 Iranian professional tennis athletes of first division tennis league and also 8 non-professional Iranian... 

Tin sulfide (SnS2) has recently attracted considerable attention due to its layered structure that may form two dimensional morphologies. It is an n-type semiconductor with band gap and electron affinity similar to CdS and In2S3; therefore can be regarded as an alternative for these materials in thin film solar cells. Here, we synthesis of SnS2 nanoparticles with different morphology in different ratio of water-ethanol mixed solution by solvothermal method, and observe that more ethanol leads to large sheet like morphologies, while water based synthesis results in very small nanosheets. A challenge in wet deposition of device-quality thin films of SnS2 is the requirement for highly dispersed...