Sharif Digital Repository

A two-stage anaerobic-aerobic sequencing reactor system was developed in order to enhance the removal of biological phosphorus in the sequencing of combined reactors. Combining both aerobic and anaerobic designs in one reactor improved the efficiency and reduced the construction and operating costs. The combination of an upflow anaerobic fixed bed (UAFB) and a floating activated sludge aerobic bioreactor was designed with respective Kaldnes packing ratios of 90 and 30% for the anaerobic and aerobic sections. The controlled parameters were pH levels within a neutral range, a temperature of 37°C, mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) of 1220 and 1030 mg/L for the aerobic and anaerobic sections,... 

Over the past few decades, anaerobic-aerobic wastewater treatment systems have been widely used in industrial and municipal wastewater treatment. This study was conducted to examine the effects of combined anaerobic-aerobic bio-reactors in the removal of chemical oxygen demands (COD) while reducing phosphate concentrations in synthetic wastewater. In this project, a bioreactor with the dimensions of 10 cm × 10 cm × 80 cm with respective Kaldnes packing ratios of 90 and 30% for the anaerobic and aerobic sections was designed. A combined anaerobic-aerobic reactor’s structure made changing hydraulic re-tention times only possible by adjusting the volume of its aerobic and anaerobic sections. In... 

In this paper, we present a concretely efficient protocol for private set intersection (PSI) in the multi-party setting using oblivious pseudorandom function (OPRF). In fact, we generalize the approach used in the work of Chase and Miao [CRYPTO 2020] towards deploying a lightweight multi-point OPRF construction for two-party PSI. Our protocol only includes oblivious transfer (OT) extension and garbled Bloom filter as its main ingredients and avoids computationally expensive operations. From a communication pattern perspective, the protocol consists of two types of interactions. The first type is performed over a star-like communication graph in which one designated party interacts with all... 

A miniaturized patch antenna is proposed and its radiation properties are experimentally investigated. A new metamaterial configuration based on circular spiral inclusion is used as the patch antenna substrate. The proposed antenna has not only a lighter profile but also a higher gain in comparison with its previously reported counterparts. It is shown that by using this new configuration a miniaturization factor of 3.1 can be realized. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc  

This paper investigates the optimal operation of distribution feeder reconfiguration (DFR) strategy in the smart grids with high penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and correlated wind power generation. The increased utilization of PEVs in the system with stochastic volatile behavior along with the high penetration of renewable power sources such as wind turbines (WTs) can create new challenges in the system that will affect the DFR strategy greatly. In order to reach the most efficiency from the PEVs, the idea of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is employed in this paper to make a bidirectional power flow (either charging/discharging or idle mode) strategy when providing the main charging... 

Distribution feeder reconfiguration (DFR) is a precious operation strategy that can improve the system from different aspects including total cost, reliability, and power quality. Nevertheless, the high complexity of the new smart grids has resulted in much uncertainty in the DFR problem that necessities the use of a sufficient stochastic framework to deal with them. In this way, this paper proposes a new stochastic framework based on cloud theory to account the uncertainties associated with multiobjective DFR problem from the reliability point of view. Cloud theory is constructed based on fuzzy theory and probability idea. In comparison with the Monte Carlo simulation method, cloud models... 

The rapid development of scientific fields in this modern era has raised the concern for prospective scholars to find a proper research field to conduct their future studies. Thus, having a vision of future could be helpful to pick the right path for doing research and ensuring that it is worth investing in. In this study, we use article keywords of computer science journals and conferences, assigned by INSPEC controlled indexing, to construct a temporal scientific knowledge network. By observing keyword networks snapshots over time, we can utilize the link prediction methods to foresee the future structures of these networks. We use two different approaches for this link prediction problem.... 

The drug discovery process faces challenges due to its length, cost, and experimental failures. Researchers are addressing these issues through 'drug repurposing,' seeking new applications for existing pharmaceuticals. To predict drug-target interactions, computational methods, like drug-target interaction prediction, utilize bipartite graphs and link prediction. In this paper, we propose BiProSimGCN, a framework based on convolutional graph neural networks, to predict drug-protein interactions. BiProSimGCN integrates data from the bipartite drug-protein network and the protein similarity network, aiming to reveal latent factors of drugs and proteins. The performance of BiProSimGCN is... 

In the past few years, the study of complex networks has attracted the attention of researchers. Many real networks, ranging from technological networks such as the Internet to biological networks, have been considered as special types of complex networks. Through application of the network science, important structural properties of such networks have been analyzed and the mechanisms that form such characteristics have been introduced. In this paper, we address the structural characteristics of a technological network called Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Recent studies reveal that the communication graph of VANETs has some interesting characteristics including: the Gaussian degree... 

In 2008, Diaconis and Isaacs introduced the notion of a supercharacter theory of a finite group in which supercharacters replace with irreducible characters and superclasses by conjugacy classes. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for constructing supercharacter theories of a finite group by which all supercharacter theories of groups containing up to 14 conjugacy classes are calculated. © 2020 Society of Mathematicians, Physicists and Astronomers of Slovenia. All rights reserved  

Foliar characteristics, especially the overall leaf shape, are useful features for the taxonomic identification of plants. Computer-aided plant species identification systems make it possible to investigate a large number of leaves in a short period of time. In this study, a fully automatic system was developed to accurately classify eight species of maples (Acer L.) in Iran using the leaf shape characteristics of harvested leaves. Maples show a broad range of leaf morphology, and the provided dataset is a diverse collection of simple leaves which can be a good representative of woody plant leaves with any overall shape and margin pattern. The applied method consisted of preprocessing,...