Sharif Digital Repository

One of the most important issues in railway wheels is residual stresses. It is desirable to produce less residual stresses when possible and to decrease the remaining residual stresses in the wheels. The objective of this paper is to provide an estimation of the residual stresses in the rail wheel caused by the stress field from heat treatment process of a railway wheel. A three-dimensional nonlinear stress analysis model has been applied to estimate stress fields of the railway mono-block wheel in heat treatment process. After forging or casting, railway wheels are heat-treated to induce the desirable circumferential compressive residual stress in the upper rim. Finite element analysis... 

Automatic cell segmentation has various applications in different parts of science. The development of automated methods for cell segmentation, remains challenging in situations where there are touching cells. In this paper we propose a new method for separating touching cells. As the first step, we use a combination of graph segmentation algorithm and thresholding for segmenting foreground objects and producing a binary image. Next, boundary points of separation zone are selected by using a corner detection algorithm. Finally, the marker controller watershed transform is applied to separate touching cells at selected points. © 2008 IEEE  

Inferring the structure of molecular networks from time series protein or gene expression data provides valuable information about the complex biological processes of the cell. Causal network structure inference has been approached using different methods in the past. Most causal network inference techniques, such as Dynamic Bayesian Networks and ordinary differential equations, are limited by their computational complexity and thus make large scale inference infeasible. This is specifically true if a Bayesian framework is applied in order to deal with the unavoidable uncertainty about the correct model. We devise a novel Bayesian network reverse engineering approach using ordinary... 

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,... 

Purpose: Endometriosis is a gynecological disease that causes the uterine lining to appear in other organs outside the uterus. As DNA methylation has an important role in this disorder, its profiling can reveal new information to improve the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis patients. Methods: We conducted a genome-wide methylation profiling of ectopic and eutopic endometrial tissues from women with and without endometriosis using Infinium Human Methylation 450K BeadChip arrays. DNA methylation samples were collected from nine ectopic and nine eutopic endometrial tissues of endometriosis and six endometrial tissues of healthy controls. Results: Correlation heatmaps and the principal... 

In this work, magnetite nanoparticles (mean particle size about 20 nm) were synthesized via coprecipitation method. In order to investigate the kinetics of nanoparticle formation, variation in the amount of reactants within the process was measured using pH-meter and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) instruments. Results show that nanoparticle formation behavior can be described by Avrami equations. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were performed to study the chemical and morphological characterization of nanoparticles. Some simplifying assumptions were employed for estimating the nucleation and growth rate of magnetite nanoparticles  

We propose a hybrid graphene molybdenum disulphide-based photoconductive antenna to overcome the restrictions of metallic photoconductive antennas and graphene-based photoconductive antennas, simultaneously. The structure is composed of a hybrid graphene-MoS2 strip as the antenna deposited on a low-temperature gallium arsenide substrate. A full-wave electromagnetic solver, namely, high frequency structural simulator (HFSS) is used to analyze the whole structure. It is shown that the proposed photoconductive antenna provides us with not only high input impedance and reconfigurability but also high values of matching efficiency and radiation efficiency. The impact of increasing MoS2 layers on... 

In this paper, we report on a novel resonant THz sensor for label-free analysis. The structure consists of a silicon nitride dielectric ring resonator vertically coupled to a thin layer of graphene strip ring resonator on top. The cladding is assumed to be porous alumina on the top of the graphene strip, which enhances the interaction of the surface plasmon wave and the target molecules. Finite difference time domain analysis is used to systematically design the structure and to investigate the performance of the sensor. Our simulations show that the proposed structure has larger refractive index sensitivity and lower intrinsic quality factor with respect to the similar optical structure. It... 

Design and implementation of Architecture is a knowledge-driven process. Evaluation and verification the knowledge, in order to ensure its quality, have important role in improving overall design process. Furthermore, Architectural decision making is a complex and multi-criteria decision making problem in which multiple stakeholders make decisions from their perspectives causing overlaps and conflicts in the adopted decisions. Therefore, the requirement for strategies to manage these issues and also to improve coordination and cooperation among the various stakeholders to improve the overall process design is necessary. In this regard, there have been several activities that focus on... 

Superparamganetic iron oxide-based contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have offered new possibility for early detection of lymph nodes and their metastases. According to important role of nanoparticle size in biodistribution, magnetite nanoparticles coated with different polyethylene glycol (PEG) concentrations up to 10/1 PEG/iron oxide weight ratio in an ex situ manner. To predict the PEG-coated nanoparticle behavior in biological media, such as blood stream or tissue, colloidal stability evaluation was performed to estimate the coating endurance in different conditions. Accordingly, optical absorbance measurements were conducted in solutions with different values of pH and... 

Dirential frequency hopping (DFH) was introduced as a new technology for reliable high data rate transmission. Since the system utilizes lower transmitting power relative to the other spread spectrum techniques and also principle part of the technique, frequency transition function (FTF), is designed privately and uniformly, the scheme is said to be safe and secure. In spite of previous researches, this paper shows that an intelligent eavesdropper may threat the security of the system by finding FTF and sending jamming signal toward authorized receivers. As a result, regular DFH can not provide consumers with security in wireless networks and hence we propose that FTF should be designed with... 

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation in (1 + 1) dimensions dynamically develops sharply connected valley structures within which the height derivative is not continuous. We develop a statistical theory for the KPZ equation in (1 + 1) dimensions driven with a random forcing that is white in time and Gaussian-correlated in space. A master equation is derived for the joint probability density function of height difference and height gradient P(h-h̄,∂xh,t) when the forcing correlation length is much smaller than the system size and much larger than the typical sharp valley width. In the time scales before the creation of the sharp valleys, we find the exact generating function of h-h̄ and ∂xh.... 

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation in [formula presented] dimensions dynamically develops sharply connected valley structures within which the height derivative is not continuous. We develop a statistical theory for the KPZ equation in [formula presented] dimensions driven with a random forcing that is white in time and Gaussian-correlated in space. A master equation is derived for the joint probability density function of height difference and height gradient [formula presented] when the forcing correlation length is much smaller than the system size and much larger than the typical sharp valley width. In the time scales before the creation of the sharp valleys, we find the exact... 

Intermittency of height fluctuations in stationary state of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation with infinitesimal surface tension in 1+1 dimensions was discussed. Stochastic differential equations were used for the study. It was found that the probability density function [in 1+1] is independent of the coefficient of the linear term. When the random force with smooth spatial correlation was considered, the problem changed to a more complicated one  

By detailed analytical treatment of the shock dynamics in the Burgers turbulence with large scale forcing we calculate the velocity structure functions between pairs of points displaced both in time and space. Our analytical treatment verifies the so-called Taylor's frozen-flow hypothesis without relying on any closure and under very general assumptions. We discuss the limitation of the hypothesis and show that it is valid up to time scales smaller than the correlation time scale of temporal velocity correlation function. We support the analytical calculation by performing numerical simulation of the periodically kicked Burgers equation. © 2008 The American Physical Society  

Dynamic vibration absorbers are used as semi-active controllers to reduce the undesirable vibrations in many applications such as electrical transmission lines, helicopters, gas turbines, engines, bridges and etc. One type of these absorbers is tunable vibration absorber (TVA). In this paper, regenerative chatter in an orthogonal turning process is suppressed using a (TVA). It is shown that TVA can modify the frequency response function of the cutting tool so as to improve cutting stability in turning process. In addition, tool wear is an important factor which works as a positive damping and helps the chatter suppression beside exertion of the TVA. Finally, using the SIMULINK Toolbox of... 

Dynamic vibration absorbers are used as semi-active controllers to reduce the undesirable vibrations in many applications such as electrical transmission lines, helicopters, gas turbines, engines, bridges and etc. One type of these absorbers is tunable vibration absorber (TVA). In this paper, regenerative chatter in an orthogonal turning process is suppressed using a (TVA). It is shown that TVA can modify the frequency response function of the cutting tool so as to improve cutting stability in turning process. In addition, tool wear is an important factor which works as a positive damping and helps the chatter suppression beside exertion of the TVA. Finally, using the SIMULINK Toolbox of... 

The production of protease by Bacillus licheniformis BBRC 100053 was studied. The most appropriate medium for the growth and protease production is composed of: lactose 1%, yeast extract 0.5%, peptone 0.5%, KH2PO 4 0.1%, MgSO4.7H2O 0.02%. Enzyme production corresponded with growth and reached a maximums level (589 U/ml) during the stationary phase at 35°C, pH equivalent to 10 and with 150 rpm after 73 hours. Protease activity was highest at pH 8 and 45°C. The best carbon sources are respectively lactose and maltose and the best nitrogen source is peptone. The protease was highly active and stable from pH 7.0 to 11.0 with an optimum at pH 7-8.... 

A simple and effective ratiometric fluorescence sensor for selective detection of dopamine (DA) in alkaline media has been developed by simply mixing thioglycolic acid (TGA) functionalized orange fluorescent cadmium telluride (CdTe) quantum dots (QDs) with amino-functionalized blue fluorescent carbon nanodots (CDs). Under a single excitation wavelength of 365 nm, the sensor exhibits dual-emissions centered at 445 and 603 nm. The fluorescence of CdTe QDs is selectively quenched by DA, whereas the fluorescence of CDs is insensitive to the analyte. In the presence of different amounts of DA, the variations in the dual emission intensity ratios exhibit a continuous color change from pink to...