Sharif Digital Repository

Al86Ni10MM4 (MM: Mischmetal) amorphous ribbons were prepared by melt spinning on a child copper wheel. Non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of the amorphous alloy was studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The crystallized phases were determined by X-ray diffraction method and transmission electron microscopy. DSC traces were analyzed by Kissinger method to determine the apparent activation energy of crystallization. Changes in the activation energy (Eα) with progression of crystallization were also evaluated by differential iso-conversional method of Friedman. For the precipitation of nanometer-sized Al particles, the activation energy slightly increased with increasing the... 

The burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline, coal, oil, natural gas in combustion reactions results in the production of carbon dioxide. The phase behavior of the carbon dioxide + water system is complex topic. Unlike methane, CO2 exhibits a minimum in the water content. These minima cannot be predicted by existing methods accurately. In this communication, two mathematical-based procedures have been proposed for accurate computation of CO2 water content for tempe-ratures between 273.15 and 348.15 K and the pressure range between 0.5 and 21 MPa. The first is based on least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) algorithm and the second applies multilayer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural... 

Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) systems are engineered nanobiosystems to mimic the physiochemical environment of a specific organ in the body. Among various components of OOC systems, biomimetic membranes have been regarded as one of the most important key components to develop controllable biomimetic bioanalysis systems. Here, we review the preparation and characterization of biomimetic membranes in comparison with the features of the extracellular matrix. After that, we review and discuss the latest applications of engineered biomimetic membranes to fabricate various organs on a chip, such as liver, kidney, intestine, lung, skin, heart, vasculature and blood vessels, brain, and multiorgans with... 

An electro membrane extraction (EME) methodology was utilized to study the isolation of some environmentally important pollutants, such as chlorophenols, from aquatic media based upon the electrokinetic migration process. The analytes were transported by application of an electrical potential difference over a supported liquid membrane (SLM). A driving force of 10 V was applied to extract the analytes through 1-octanol, used as the SLM, into a strongly alkaline solution. The alkaline acceptor solution was subsequently analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet (HPLC-UV) detection. The parameters influencing electromigration, including volumes and pH of the donor and... 

This paper proposes a hybrid optimization method that combines the power of the harmony search (HS) with the mine blast algorithm (MBA). The resulting mine blast harmony search (MBHS) uses MBA for exploration and HS for exploitation. The HS is inspired by the improvisation process of musicians, while the MBA is derived based on explosion of landmines. The HS used in the hybrid algorithm is an improved version, introducing a new concept for the harmony memory size, while the MBA is modified in terms of its mathematical formulation. Several numerical problems and benchmarks with many design variables and constraints are used to validate MBHS, and the optimization results are compared with... 

Asymmetric Half-Bridge converters are widely used as the front-end DC-DC converter in Distributed Power Systems. Added Range windings are proposed to increase the efficiency of these converters. Activating and deactivating these windings produce transient effect in the output voltage. In this study, an optinml controller based on the Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method is designed for the efficient regulation of the output voltage of an asymnetric half-bridge controller. The intent of implementing LQG control is to ninimize the output voltage transient produced by range switch operation due to input voltage variations. Simulation results are presented to compare the performance of the new... 

Natural gas is a very important energy source. The production, processing and transportation of natural gas can be affected significantly by gas hydrates. Pipeline blockages due to hydrate formation causes operational problems and a decrease in production performance. This paper presents an improved artificial neural network (ANN) method to predict the hydrate formation temperature (HFT) for a wide range of gas mixtures. A new approach was used to define the variables for formation of a hydrate structure according to each species presented in natural gas mixtures. This approach resulted in a strong network with a precise prediction, especially in the case of sour gases. This study also... 

There are mathematical errors in eqn (17) and (19) in the original article and within the text. The corrected equations and text are as given below: (formula presented) where z is the dynamic exponent and F is a scaling function. Additionally, the exponential function on the fifth page of the article, line 43 should read: The Royal Society of Chemistry apologises for these errors and any consequent inconvenience to authors and readers.. © 2021 Royal Society of Chemistry. All rights reserved  

Owing to the local/heterogeneous structures in supercooled liquids, after several decades of research, it is now clear that supercooled liquids are structurally different from their conventional liquid counterparts. Accordingly, an approach based on a local probe should provide a better understanding about the local mechanical properties as well as heterogeneous structures. Recently, the superiority of active microrheology over global rheology has been demonstrated [Yu et al., Sci. Adv., 2020, 6, 8766]. Here, we elaborate this new avenue of research and provide more evidence for such superiority. We report on the results of an extensive molecular dynamics simulation of active microrheology... 

In this article, a 5G compact millimeter-wave dipole antenna with high gain and its array filter-antenna is proposed, following a theoretical discussion is proposed. To increase the gain and focused mainbeam, the double dipole is inserted at the ground plane. The results show that the proposed antenna has an impedance band-width (IBW) of around 7.14% and 6.7 dBi gain at 28 GHz. Next, a 5G filter is proposed with 4% IBW and lower than 0.6 dB gain insertion loss. A simple phase-shifter with 2-bit structure is designed in an 8-elemens array filter-antenna with 0.35 spacing between the two elements which uses a meander-line to reduce mutual-coupling. First, the phased-array filtenna... 

For elastic scattering of 133Cs atoms by 85Rb and 87Rb atoms, interacting via the X 1Σ+ and a 3Σ+ molecular states of RbCs, calculations are presented of the scattering length and the effective range and also of two volume parameters, one for low energy p-wave scattering and one for the energy of an ensemble of fermions. The calculations are performed by various methods, with several representations of the interatomic potentials, including new ab initio potentials presented here. It is shown how the calculated data may be corrected to include the influence of the long range interactions, thus removing the need for numerical solutions of the radial Schrödinger equation at very large... 

Deep learning (DL) has been employed for a wide range of tasks in dentistry. We aimed to systematically review studies employing DL for periodontal and implantological purposes. A systematic electronic search was conducted on four databases (Medline via PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Embase) and a repository (ArXiv) for publications after 2010, without any limitation on language. In the present review, we included studies that reported deep learning models' performance on periodontal or oral implantological tasks. Given the heterogeneities in the included studies, no meta-analysis was performed. The risk of bias was assessed using the QUADAS-2 tool. We included 47 studies: focusing on... 

Cell separation is a key step in many biomedical research areas including biotechnology, cancer research, regenerative medicine, and drug discovery. While conventional cell sorting approaches have led to high-efficiency sorting by exploiting the cell's specific properties, microfluidics has shown great promise in cell separation by exploiting different physical principles and using different properties of the cells. In particular, label-free cell separation techniques are highly recommended to minimize cell damage and avoid costly and labor-intensive steps of labeling molecular signatures of cells. In general, microfluidic-based cell sorting approaches can separate cells using “intrinsic”... 

Pure copper processed by a twist extrusion process with a reduced twist-line slope is investigated. Twist extrusion is a severe plastic deformation technique which is promising for scale-up because it allows for processing of relatively large metallic bars. On the way to commercialization, decreasing costs associated with processing is critical for twist extrusion. As one of the measures, reducing the twist-line slope - an important geometrical feature of twist extrusion - can be advantageous in terms of processing costs. The current study seeks to elucidate effects of reducing the twist-line slope on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and their heterogeneity in the processed metal,... 

Producing mature and functional cardiomyocytes (CMs) by in vitro differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using only biochemical cues is challenging. To mimic the biophysical and biomechanical complexity of the native in vivo environment during the differentiation and maturation process, polydimethylsiloxane substrates with 3D topography at the micrometer and sub-micrometer levels are developed and used as cell-culture substrates. The results show that while cylindrical patterns on the substrates resembling mature CMs enhance the maturation of iPSC-derived CMs, sub-micrometer-level topographical features derived by imprinting primary human CMs further accelerate both the... 

Situational Method Engineering (SME) addresses the need for custom-built software development methodologies that are tailored to fit specific project situations. A process pattern is a description of a recurring development process fragment that can be used as a generic model or a building block for engineering development processes. Software development process patterns are extensively used in SME, mainly as process components assembled to form bespoke methodologies; however, the SME field itself has not been scrutinized as to the methodology development process fragments frequently encountered. Situational method engineering knowledge captured in the form of SME process patterns is not... 

MXenes have recently witnessed significant evolution and advances in terms of their applications in different areas such as flexible electronics, energy storage devices, and coatings. Here, the mechanical properties of both pristine and functionalized Tin+1CnO2 and Tin+1NnO2 (n = 1, 2) are investigated utilizing classical molecular dynamics simulations. For eight different MXene structures, the stress-strain curves are calculated including Young's modulus, strength, and fracture strain. It is found that Ti2N holds the highest Young's modulus with the value of 517 GPa while Ti3C2 has the lowest one with the amount of 133 GPa. In addition, the strongest MXene structure is Ti2N while the... 

The widespread need for flexibility and adaptability in software development processes has resulted in the emergence of Agile practices and principles. Although different in fine-grained detail, all agile methodologies follow a common approach in their processes. To expose the common paradigm behind the design of agile processes, we have developed FRAME (FRactal Agile MEtamodel), a generic fractal process metamodel for agile process frameworks. Recursive application of FRAME at different levels of process design results in the specification of a configurable process framework; this framework serves as a basis for constructing agile methodologies through paradigm-based Situational Method... 

Supercritical water was used for simultaneous fragmentation and reduction of graphene oxide (GO) sheets into water-dispersible graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with tunable sizes. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) demonstrated that by increasing the temperature above the critical point of water, the average size and thickness of the GQDs were decreased and the size uniformity and production yield were increased. The results of thermal conductivity measurement of GQD nanofluids with different weight fractions indicated that the GQDs prepared at supercritical condition could enhance the thermal conductivity of water by 65% as compared to 35% for the GQDs synthesized at sub-critical... 

Although demand responsive feeder bus operation is possible with human-driven vehicles, it has not been very popular and is mostly available as a special service because of its high operating costs due to intensive labor costs as well as requirement for advanced real-time information technology and complicated operation. However, once automated vehicles become available, small-sized flexible door-to-door feeder bus operation will become more realistic, so preparing for such automated flexible feeder services is necessary to take advantage of the rapid improvement of automated vehicle technology. Therefore, in this research, an algorithm for optimal flexible feeder bus routing, which...