Sharif Digital Repository

There are mainly two major issues in contemporary epistemology: knowledge and justification. Many necessary and sufficient conditions have been suggested in order to define “knowledge”. Knowledge often has been defined as “justified true belief”. But Gettier by some counter examples showed that these conditions are not sufficient for knowledge’s analysis. Many different answers are offered to solve Gettier’s problems. Theories about justification can be divided into two classes: internalist and externalist. Virtue epistemology is a new approach in epistemology that focus on epistemic and moral virtues. It seems that Linda Zagzebski is one of the best theorists in this approach. In this... 

There are various versions of moral particularism, this dissertation deals with Jonathan Dancy's version of moral particularism. Dancy's particularism is a meta-ethical view maintains that the possibility of moral thought and judgment does not depend on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles. This view is in contradiction to generalism. Dancy's particularism has two other main claims: there is no good reason to think that there is any suitable supply of moral principles, and moral principles, if there are any, are not useful. These claims are independent, but each of them depends on the doctrine of holism in the theory of reasons. This doctrine maintains that a feature that... 

While the science–religion debate on human creation has been widely explored in the Muslim world، Iranian Muslim opinions have been missed in the mainstream literature. To see whether they follow the lead of the majority of Muslim thinkers or not، here is an overview of the Qur’anic Perspective of Iranian Muslim Scholars. After reviewing the previously categorized approaches of Muslims encountering evolution mentioned in the literature، this thesis will survey the Qur’anic verses related to the biological creation of man with the “scientific-lexical” method of all possible states. Afterward، the views of the most-cited Iranian scholars، such as Saḥābī، Ṭabāṭabā’ī، Muṭahharī، and Jawādī، will... 

Intelligent design theory is based on this idea that Darwinian theory of evolution can not explain Irreducibly complexities in organisms. Intelligent design theory in explaining these complexities conclude the existence of an intelligent designer. It is claimed that by remaining officially agnostic about the nature of the designer, intelligent design theory can be offered as a scientific claim, rather than a religious one, which could make it a viable alternative to Darwinism. In this thesis we study sober's point of view on intelligent design. Sober believes that, initially, we shoud present the strongest formulation of intelligent design theory and then evaluating whether this theory is a... 

Aerodynamics loads and aeroheating during reentry, are one of the challenging issues in designing One of the main challenges in the design and application of reusable spacecrafts is the aerodynamic and thermal loads acting on their structures during reentry into the atmosphere. For this reason, all the concepts/prototypes presented in the 20th century were either not fully reusable, or were partially canceled, or did not have economic justification. In this report, the aerodynamic loads on the first stage of a launch vehicle during the launch and return phases have been investigated. Due to the fact that the main part of the first stage of the vehicle includes fuel and oxidizer tanks, the... 

The collision of moderately large asteroids and comets also referred to as Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) with earth would have catastrophic consequences. Such events have occurred in the past and may occur again in the future. However, for the first time in known history, humanity may have the technology required to counter this threat. Methods studied for mitigation of this hazard are based on deflecting asteroid's trajectory and are normally divided into two basic categories: high energy impulsive methods, and long-duration low-thrust methods. Two parts of mission to be optimized are the trajectory of spacecraft to reach the target and the deflection strategy which could be analyzed by the... 

The main purpose of the present thesis is to establish a decentralized controller for some car–like multi robots to follow and hunt moving targets. Robots are very similar to actual cars considering geometric dimensions, mass and moment of inertia and so on; and outputs of the controller are steering-wheel and driving-wheel torques appropriately. Dynamics of the moving target is so that it escapes from the robots. Robots are equipped with antenna for getting wireless sensory signals, including range and bearing sensors. Kalman filter is used for estimation the target relative position and speed and robots state variables. The controller is designed for doing the above mentioned group... 

In recent years the advent of internet and web has transformed the process of data collection and make organizational and environmental data more accessible. On the one hand, many organizations have realized that the knowledge in these huge databases is key to supporting the various organizational decisions. Particularly, the knowledge about customers from these databases is critical for the marketing function. But, much of this useful knowledge is hidden and untapped. On the other hand, the intense competition and increased choices available for customers have created new pressures on marketing decision-makers and there has emerged a need to manage customers in a long-term relationship.... 

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are a type of marine vehicles which are currently being used for exploration, maintenance, repairing of marine structures and military appliances. Unmanned underwater vehicles categorize in two types: ROVs and AUVs, ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) usually are connected to the mother vessel with a cable, conduction signals transfer through this cable and there is an operator in the control loop. The vehicle may be fed up with this cable, AUVs are modern underwater vehicles which the operator on controlling and conducting is removed, there is no connection between the vehicle and mother vessel, energy sources and controlling orders are set up in the... 

The aeroelastic behavior of wings made of functionally graded materials in supersonic flow is studied. For this purpose the flutter speed is calculated and in the next step the post flutter behavior is investigated. The structural model is based on the classical plate theory and material properties are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according the power law distribution in terms of the volume fraction of material constituents. The linear piston theory which is modified to include thickness effects is used for supersonic aerodynamic modeling. The nonlinear structural model based on the Von-Karman strains is considered for prediction of the post-flutter behavior of the wing.... 

Facility location decisions play a prominent role in strategic planning of many firms, companies and governmental organizations. Since in many real-world facility location problems, the data are subject to uncertainty, in this thesis, we consider the P-center problem under uncertainty of demand nodes. Using Bertsimas and Sim approach, we modeled the problem as a linear optimization model. Furthermore, we develop a tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. Finally we designed some experiments to adjust the parameters of tabu search algorithm. We presented the numerical result accordingly  

Success in forecasting and analyzing sales for a given good or service can mean the difference between profit and loss for an accounting period and, ultimately, the success or failure of the business itself. Therefore reliable prediction of sales becomes a very important task. This thesis presents a novel sales forecasting approach by integration of Genetic Fuzzy Systems (GFS) and Data Clustering to construct a sales forecasting expert system. At first, we use stepwise regression analysis (SRA) to determine factors which have most influence on sales. At the next stage we divide our raw data into k clusters by means of K-means algorithm. Finally, all clusters will be fed into independent... 

Dynamic and vibration behavior of AFM microcantilever beam subject to the tip-sample interaction and/or contact is systematically investigated. An Euler-Bernoli microcantilever in 2D plane is considered with longitudinal and bending displacements. Inextensibility assumption and extended Hamilton’s principle is utilized to extract the single-variable integro partial equation of motion under: 1) tip-nanoparticle interactions, 2) tip-surface interactions in non-contact mode and 3) tip-surface interactions and contacts in intermittent-contact mode. Galerkin’s first mode approximation is then used to discretize the derived equations; and multiple time scales method is adopted to analyze the... 

In this research, an anistropic thin-walled beam composite is used to consider the effects of fiber orientation and lay-up configuration on the aeroelastic stability and response of an aircraft wing. The circum ferentially asymmetric stiffness (CAS) model consists of a group of non-classical effects; such as transverse shear, material anisotropic, warping inhibition, etc. The aerodynamic load has been modeled based on the strip theory and compressible unsteady flow in the finite- state form. In addition, to form the mass, stiffness and damping matrices of non-conservative aeroelastic systems the extended Galerkin’s method (EGM) and the method of separation of variables has been used. After...