Sharif Digital Repository

Fontan operation is a final palliative surgical treatment for patients with a single ventricle (SV) physiology. One of the common disadvantages of Fontan operation is to generate a non-pulsatile flow instead of the normal pulsatile flow produced by contraction of the ventricle. Theoretically, in SV patients, maintaining the antegrade flow through pulmonary valve can produce flow pulsatility in the right and left pulmonary arteries. However, it not only increases the energy loss in the Fontan of total cavopulmonary pathway (TCPC), but also imposes an extra load on pulmonary arteries as well as the ventricle. In this study, the potential capability of pulmonary valve of the patient that can be... 

Single-ventricle anomaly is a hereditary heart disease that is characterized by anatomical malformations. The main consequence of this malformation is desaturated blood flow, which without proper treatment increases the risk of death. The classical treatment is based on a three-stage palliative procedure which should begin from the first few days of patient’s life. The final stage is known as Fontan procedure, in which inferior vena cava is directly connected to pulmonary arteries without going through the ventricle. This connection is called total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC). After surgery, the single ventricle supplies adequate and saturated systemic blood flow to the body; however,... 

An efficient algorithm for the design optimization of the compressible fluid flow problem through a flexible structure is presented. The methodology has three essential parts: first the behavior of compressible flow in a supersonic diffuser was studied numerically in quasi-one-dimensional form using a flux splitting method. Second, a fully coupled sequential iterative procedure was used to solve the steady state aeroelastic problem of a flexible wall diffuser. Finally, a robust Genetic Algorithm was implemented and used to calculate the optimum shape of the flexible wall diffuser for a prescribed pressure distribution. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

Nowadays, the number of digital images has increased so that the management of this volume of data needs an efficient system for browsing, categorising and searching. Automatic image annotation is designed for assigning tags to images for more accurate retrieval. Non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) is a traditional machine learning technique for decomposing a matrix into a set of basis and coefficients under the non-negative constraints. In this study, the authors propose a two-step algorithm for designing an automatic image annotation system that employs the NMF framework for its first step and a variant of K-nearest neighbourhood as its second step. In the first step, a new multimodal... 

Gas detectors play an important role in safety of process plants. In-time detection of flammable gas releases may prevent major fire and explosion as well as property loss in process plants. One of the challenges of the gas detection system design is determining the best layout for detectors in order to reduce the risk of gas releases as much as possible. However, current methods do not address the risk concept in placement of detectors quantitatively. A risk-based methodology is proposed for optimal placement of point type flammable gas detectors in which first the risk (defined as a combination of scenario frequency, delayed ignition probability and damage) is estimated for any release... 

In automatic image annotation (AIA) different features describe images from different aspects or views. Part of information embedded in some views is common for all views, while other parts are individual and specific. In this paper, we present the Mvg-NMF approach, a multi-view-group non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method for an AIA system which considers both common and individual factors. The NMF framework discovers a latent space by decomposing data into a set of non-negative basis vectors and coefficients. The views divided into homogeneous groups and latent spaces are extracted for each group. After mapping the test images into these spaces, a unified distance matrix is... 

In automatic image annotation (AIA) different features describe images from different aspects or views. Part of information embedded in some views is common for all views, while other parts are individual and specific. In this paper, we present the Mvg-NMF approach, a multi-view-group non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) method for an AIA system which considers both common and individual factors. The NMF framework discovers a latent space by decomposing data into a set of non-negative basis vectors and coefficients. The views divided into homogeneous groups and latent spaces are extracted for each group. After mapping the test images into these spaces, a unified distance matrix is... 

Automatic Image Annotation (AIA) helps image retrieval systems by predicting tags for images. In this paper, we propose an AIA system using Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) framework. The NMF framework discovers a latent space, by factorizing data into a set of non-negative basis and coefficients. To model the images, multiple features are extracted, each one represents images from a specific view. We use multi-view graph regularization NMF and allow NMF to choose a different number of basis vectors for each view. For tag prediction, each test image is mapped onto the multiple latent spaces. The distances of images in these spaces are used to form a unified distance matrix. The... 

Real time road traffic monitoring is one of the challenging problems in machine vision, especially when one is using commercially available PCs as the main processor. In this paper, we describe a real-time method for extracting a few traffic parameters in highways such as, lane change detection, vehicle classification and vehicle counting. In addition, we will explain a real time method for multiple vehicles tracking that has the capability of occlusion detection. Our tracing algorithm uses Kalman filter and background differencing techniques. We used morphological operations for vehicle contour extraction and its recognition. Our algorithm has three phases, detection of pixels on moving... 

With the significant role that warehouse plays in connection to suppliers, distributors, and clients, and considering the costliness of storage systems, efforts have focused on the reduction of procedural expenses. Among the most significant expenses, one involves the distance traveled by operators or S/R machinery for the selection of ordered items; the common solution to which has been through the classification of stored items. Previous articles have focused on linear solutions to the abovementioned problem, such as P-Median. This article shall focus on the problems arising from the said solution, and instead a non-linear method proposed. Further, a heuristic algorithm is produced for the... 

Veronica genus (Plantaginaceae) is broadly distributed in different habitats. In this study, the inhibitory activity of free soluble and conjugated phenolic extracts of Veronica persica on key enzymes associated to type 2 diabetes (α-glucosidase and α-amylase) and hypertension (angiotensin I converting enzyme, ACE) was assessed, as well as their antioxidant power. Our results showed that both the extracts inhibited α-amylase, α-glucosidase and ACE in a dose-dependent manner. In particular, free phenolic extract significantly (P < 0.05) inhibited α-glucosidase (IC50 532.97 μg/mL), whereas conjugated phenolic extract significantly (P < 0.05) inhibited a-amylase (IC50 489.73 μg/mL) and ACE... 

Pipelines are one of the most important and efficient ways for transporting energy like water, gas, oil and etc. between different places all across the world. As these pipelines are located in different conditions and situations, they are all sensitive to a wide variety of damages like vibration, so monitoring their structural behavior is an essential task. Monitoring pipeline vibration caused by cavitation through an orifice by a piezoelectric sensor is presented in this paper  

The suspension of titania nanoparticles in different alcohols (methanol, ethanol, and butanol) was prepared and triethanolamine (TEA) was used as a dispersant. The suspensions were characterized by different tests such as sedimentation, zeta potential, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The electrophoretic deposition (EPD) was performed at various voltages and times. EPD from butanolic suspension (0.8 g/L TEA) showed the slowest kinetics, because of the low electrophoretic mobility of titania nanoparticles in it (2.40 × 10-5 cm2·(V·s)-1). Also, it was observed that at low voltages (5, 10, and 20 V), the EPD kinetics from methanolic suspension (0 g/L TEA) was the fastest; however,... 

The alcoholic suspensions of titania nano-particles were prepared using the methanol, ethanol, isopropanol and butanol as the solvents as well as triethanolamine (TEA) as an dispersant. The colloidal stability of suspensions, both in the absence as well as presence of TEA, was studied by measuring the zeta potential, sedimentation, pH and electrical conductivity of suspensions, dispersant adsorption and particles size distribution. Results showed that in the absence of TEA, the stability of the suspensions increases with the molecular size of alcohol (from methanol to butanol), while the zeta potential decreases. It was also observed that with the addition of TEA up to the optimum dosage (4... 

In this paper, we list four different interpretations of synchronizability, study their profile in different network structures and give evidence that they do not coincide, in general. By changing the network topological properties, their behavior is tracked and compared with each other. It is shown that their trend goes in different directions in heterogeneous networks such as scale-free ones, whereas in homogeneous ones such as random networks they go hand in hand, as networks' structural parameters change. We also consider networks whose synchronization properties are enhanced through proper weighting or rewiring. The weighting procedure considers information on the node-degrees, node and...