Sharif Digital Repository

We study the volume averaging of inhomogeneous metrics within GR and discuss its shortcomings, such as gauge dependence, singular behavior as a result of caustics, and causality violations. To remedy these shortcomings, we suggest some modifications to this method. As a case study we focus on the inhomogeneous structured FRW model based on a flat LTB metric. The effect of averaging is then studied in terms of an effective backreaction fluid. It is shown that, contrary to the claims in the literature, the backreaction fluid behaves like a dark matter component, instead of dark energy, having a density of the order of 10-5 times the matter density, and, most importantly, it is gauge-dependent.... 

We present a new model universe based on the junction of FRW to flat Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) solutions of Einstein equations along our past light cone, bringing structures within the FRW models. The model is assumed globally to be homogeneous, i.e. the cosmological principle is valid. Local inhomogeneities within the past light cone are modeled as a flat LTB, whereas those outside the light cone are assumed to be smoothed out and represented by a FRW model. The model is singularity free, always FRW far from the observer along the past light cone, gives way to a different luminosity distance relation as for the CDM/FRW models, a negative deceleration parameter near the observer, and... 

Effect of different conditions on shear behaviour of rock has been investigated by various researchers. As known, in larger scale the continuity of the rock material is interrupted by separated planes such as bedding planes, faults, shear zones, closure and the behaviour converts to be inelastic and anisotropic. Generally, discontinuities appear repeatedly in more than one preferential direction, creating a three dimensional structure, reducing its stiffness and shear strength as mechanical effects and increasing its transport velocity associated with discontinuity flow as hydraulic effects. They also make rock behavior more complex and different compared to the behavior of soil. According... 

This paper presents results from a series of constant normal load direct shear tests on artificially created rock joints, in an attempt to quantify the effects of different factors that contribute to the shear strength along "ideal" rock joints. Particular focus is given to the effect of asperity orientation with respect to the direction of shearing. In many historical rock joint shear strength criteria, the effect of a joint's roughness on the joint shear strength is described based on analysis of only a single profile in the direction of shearing. More recent studies have observed that the distribution of sheared area on a joint surface during shear is significantly affected by the... 

Self-adaptive systems are systems that automatically adapt in response to environmental and internal changes, such as possible failures and variations in resource availability. Such systems are often realized by a MAPE-K feedback loop, where Monitor, Analyze, Plan and Execute components have access to a runtime model of the system and environment which is kept in the Knowledge component. In order to provide guarantees on the correctness of a self-adaptive system at runtime, the MAPE-K feedback loop needs to be extended with assurance techniques. To address this issue, we propose a coordinated actor-based approach to build a reusable and scalable model@runtime for self-adaptive systems in the... 

This letter investigates the deterministic design of pilot power and pattern for sparse channel estimation in OFDM systems based on minimizing the coherence of the DFT sub-matrix. It has been suggested that the pilot pattern forming a cyclic difference set (CDS) or almost difference set (ADS) is optimal. So, we proposed a deterministic procedure that jointly optimized for pattern and power of pilots as a solution. First, pilot patterns forming CDS/ADS were gathered through a search. Then, the power was numerically allocated to the different pilots from all the patterns. Finally, the pilot pattern and power pair leading to minimum coherence was selected from the available pairs. Simulation... 

In this paper, the problem of finding the shortest path between two points in the presence of single-point visibility constraints is studied, In these types of constraint, there should be at least one point on the output path from which a fixed viewpoint is visible. The problem is studied in various domains, including simple polygons, polygonal domains and polyhedral surfaces. The method is based on partitioning the boundary of the visibility region of the viewpoint into a number of intervals. This is done from the combinatorial structure of the shortest paths from the source and destination to the points on the boundary. The result for the case of simple polygons is optimal with O(n) time... 

In this paper, we study the problem of finding the shortest path between two points inside a simple polygon such that there is at least one point on the path from which a query point is visible. We provide an algorithm which preprocesses the input in O (n2 + n K) time and space and provides logarithmic query time. The input polygon has n vertices and K is a parameter dependent on the input polygon which is O (n2) in the worst case but is much smaller for most polygons. The preprocessing algorithm sweeps an angular interval around every reflex vertex of the polygon to store the optimal contact points between the shortest paths and the windows separating the visibility polygons of the query... 

We study a constrained version of the shortest path problem in polygonal domains, in which the path must visit a given target polygon. We provide an efficient algorithm for this problem based on the wavefront propagation method and also present a method to construct a subdivision of the domain to efficiently answer queries to retrieve the constrained shortest paths from a single-source to the query point. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg  

We study a constrained version of the shortest path problem in simple polygons, in which the path must visit a given target polygon. We provide a worst-case optimal algorithm for this problem and also present a method to construct a subdivision of the simple polygon to efficiently answer queries to retrieve the shortest polygon-meeting paths from a single-source to the query point. The algorithms are linear, both in time and space, in terms of the complexity of the two polygons. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

Computing the period of the periodic functions is the main reason of using Simon’s algorithm to attack symmetric-key cryptographic primitives. However, if the target function does not satisfy Simon’s promise completely or if the number of superposition queries of the adversary is limited, Simon’s algorithm cannot compute the actual target period, unambiguously. These problems may lead to the failure of period-finding-based quantum attacks.Our main aim in this paper is to relax Simon’s algorithm so that quantum adversaries can still carry out the mentioned attacks without any assumptions (Simon’s promise) on the target function. To that end, we use two different methods, each of which is...