Sharif Digital Repository

The dependence of the mobility of DNA molecules through an hexagonal array of micropillars on their length and the applied electric field was investigated and it was found that mobility is a nonmonotonic function of their length. Results also revealed that the size dependence of the DNA mobility depends on the applied electric field and there is a crossover around E ≈ 25 V/cm for the mobility of λ-DNA and T4-DNA. These observations are explained in terms of the diffusion process inside the structure affected by the solvent and are modeled using the Langevin and its corresponding Fokker-Planck equations. The phenomenon is generalized under three regimes in a phase diagram relating the... 

We present sliding experiments of a sledge on wetted sand and describe that the frictional response is controlled by the penetration hardness of the granular medium. Adding a small amount of water to sand increases the hardness which results in a decrease of the sliding friction. Pouring even more water to sand results in a decrease of the hardness and a subsequent increase of the friction. This inverse correlation between hardness of a wetted granular material and its frictional response to sliding is found to be due to ploughing of the sledge. When the load of the sledge exceeds the penetration hardness of the water-sand mixture the granular material is irreversibly deformed, which is... 

Pushing a fluid with a less viscous one gives rise to the well known Saffman-Taylor instability. This instability is important in a wide variety of applications involving strongly non-Newtonian fluids that often exhibit a yield stress. Here we investigate the Saffmann-Taylor instability in this type of fluid, in longitudinal flows in Hele-Shaw cells. In particular, we study Darcy's law for yield stress fluids. The dispersion equation for the flow is similar to the equations obtained for ordinary viscous fluids but the viscous terms in the dimensionless numbers conditioning the instability now contain the yield stress. This also has repercussions on the wavelength of the instability as it... 

Patterns formed by the flow of an inhomogeneous fluid (suspension) over a smooth inclined surface were studied. It was observed that fractal patterns are formed. There exists a threshold angle for the inclination above which global fractal patterns are formed. This angle depends on the particle size of the suspension. We observed that there are two fractal dimensions for these patterns, depending on the area from which the pattern is extracted. If the pattern is taken from the top which only consists of the beginning steps of the pattern forming, one finds two fractal dimensions, i.e. 1.35-1.45 and 1.6-1.7, in which the first one is dominant. And if the entire pattern is taken, then fractal... 

Patterns formed by the flow of an inhomogeneous fluid (suspension) over a smooth inclined surface were studied. It was observed that fractal patterns form. There exists a threshold angle for the inclination above which global fractal patterns are formed. This angle depends on the particle size of the suspension. We observed that there are two fractal dimensions for these patterns, depending on the area from which the pattern is extracted. If the pattern is taken from the top which only consists of the beginning steps of the pattern forming, one finds two fractal dimensions, i.e. 1.35-1.45 and 1.6-1.7, in which the first one is dominant while, if the entire pattern is taken, then a fractal... 

The wet granular material creates networks in which interstitial liquid provides capillary bridges needed to hold grains together. There is an optimal fraction of the interstitial liquid in which the bridges are formed and the friction coefficient is minimal. We found that the size of the grains affects the friction of wet granular media. Our observations demonstrates that the optimum volume fraction, in which the friction coefficient is minimized, increases with grain size, but for sand immersed in water, this minimum friction coefficient itself increases with size and for glass beads immersed in silicone oil it decreases, indicating that the shape of the grains also has an effect on this... 

We report the rheological properties of ferro-fluid (FF) containing iron oxide nano-particles. At first, a FF was synthesized by using chemical co-precipitaton[1]. The microstructure study using SEM revealed that the FF contained nano-particles with the mean particle size of 35nm. The XRD study revealed that we have well crystallized structures of magnetite; they appeared to be approximately single crystalline structures. The rheological results proved that the FF has non Newtonian behavior, it is a shear thinning fluid in all magnetic fields, Moreover, the magnetic field increases the viscosity in a definite shear rate due to the nano-particles agglomerations and formation of chain-like... 

We report the observation of the oscillatory and irregular motion of solid spheres settling under the influence of gravity in a thixotropic yield-stress fluid, namely, a suspension of Laponite. The size of the ball and the aging time of the Laponite suspension are found to be two important parameters that determine whether oscillations occur. The irregular motion may be related to the existence of an unstable flow region and shear banding as is concluded from comparisons with rheological measurements, namely, the flow curve and creep tests, using the same Laponite suspensions. © 2017 The Japan Society of Applied Physics  

The inertial microfluidic technique, as a powerful new tool for accurate cell/particle separation based on the hydrodynamic phenomenon, has drawn considerable interest in recent years. Despite numerous microfluidic techniques of particle separation, there are few articles in the literature on separation techniques addressing external outlet geometry to increase the throughput efficiency and purity. In this work, we report on a spiral inertial microfluidic device with high efficiency (>98%). Herein, we demonstrate how changing the outlet geometry can improve the particle separation throughput. We present a complete separation of 4 and 6 μm from 10 μm particles potentially applicable to... 

Use of computational modeling with a few experiments is considered useful to obtain the best possible result for a final product, without performing expensive and time-consuming experiments. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) can produce clean electricity, but still require further study. An oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) takes place at the cathode, and carbon-supported platinum (Pt/C) is commonly used as an electrocatalyst. The harsh conditions during PEMFC operation result in Pt/C degradation. Observation of changes in the Pt/C layer under operating conditions provides a tool to study the lifetime of PEMFCs and overcome durability issues. Recently, artificial neural networks... 

To address one of the most challenging industry problems, we develop an enhanced training algorithm for anomaly detection in unlabelled sequential data such as time-series. We propose the outputs of a well-designed system are drawn from an unknown probability distribution, U, in normal conditions. We introduce a probability criterion based on the classical central limit theorem that allows evaluation of the likelihood that a data-point is drawn from U. This enables the labelling of the data on the fly. Non-anomalous data is passed to train a deep Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) autoencoder that distinguishes anomalies when the reconstruction error exceeds a threshold. To illustrate our... 

Anchored wall system is one of the common methods used for deep excavation stabilization adjacent to sensitive structures in urban areas. A key aspect of the stability analysis of deep excavations is the amount of deformations occurring on the facing wall and the adjacent structures. In this research, a large number of parametric studies considering all aspects of soil-structure interaction is carried out for different excavation geometries to find the optimal design, and the outcome is shown in the form of design tables and charts. Also, by a GA-PSO algorithm and using the large database obtained from the numerical simulations, a simple equation is developed that can predict the deflections... 

The COVID-19 pandemic cast doubts on governments' traditional crisis responses and sparked a surge in citizen-led, participatory, bottom-up responses. Iran's experience is worth investigating because it relied significantly on citizen groups to manage the crisis despite long-term sanctions and extremely restricted resources. The authors undertook an exploratory case study using the grounded theory (GT) method and an online survey to explore Iran's confrontation. The central notion discovered was referred to as 'faith-driven civic engagement.’ The response was characterized by adaptability, promptness, and comprehensiveness. The causes and strategic orientations included intrinsic motives,... 

Myocardial infarction is a major cause of death worldwide and remains a social and healthcare burden. Injectable hydrogels with the ability to locally deliver drugs or cells to the damaged area can revolutionize the treatment of heart diseases. Herein, we formulate a thermo-responsive and injectable hydrogel based on conjugated chitosan/poloxamers for cardiac repair. To tailor the mechanical properties and electrical signal transmission, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with an average diameter of 50 nm were physically bonded to oxidized bacterial nanocellulose fibers (OBC) and added to the thermosensitive hydrogel at the ratio of 1% w/v. The prepared hydrogels have a porous structure with open... 

Public Bicycle Sharing System has recently been developed and installed in many cities as a workable and popular transportation system. There are still some noticeable challenges associated with the operation of the system, like responding to all renting requests and all demands of vacant docks for returning bikes. Balancing the inventory of stations is necessary to minimize the rejected demands of bikes and the empty lockers. Here, critical levels are defined to control requests of different routes in which a demand of a specified destination is accepted if the inventory of the original station is higher than the route's critical level. The capacity of stations and the fleet size are... 

Much efforts have been made in the area of energy security in recent years, but due to its wide scope, it is necessary to review relevant knowledge activities and to analyze the state of knowledge of the field of energy security measurement. The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive map of knowledge in the field of energy security. For this reason, many documents and articles have been collected during the period 2002–2019 using 7 large and reputable scientific databases as well as 53 different journals, 90% white Q1 quality. There is employed meta-synthesis, scientometrics and network analysis. In the initial survey stage where 1290 articles were found, after analyzing the... 

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