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... 

This research proposes a novel hybrid method for stock price index forecasting relying on technical analysis, the fundamental analysis of capital market, neural networks technology, and fuzzy logic. The new method shows a good performance comparing complicated and time-consuming forecasting methods. Several factors influence stock price; for example, an important one is the previous trend of stock price. Fortunately, by developing technical analysis and introducing the various indices of this method the maximum use of historical data is made in order to forecast future prices. Another kind of factors is macro-economic variables that their influence on the long-term trends of the stock... 

In this thesis control of wheeled mobile manipulators for cooperative object transportation is investigated. Full dynamic model of a mobile manipulator with a three wheeled mobile base and a three DOF manipulator is derived using Gibbs-Appell method. Input-output linearization technique is used to control individual robots. Transporting the object is divided into two steps, first robots use a decentralized behavior-based method to approach and surround the object. Then virtual structure method is used to control the robots to transport the object cooperatively. Simulation results with three robots handling an object are presented to show the effectiveness of proposed method  

In this work dynamic behavior of a two body TSS with main satellite as rigid body is studied and effects of tether elasticity and tension on the satellite dynamic are indicated in station keeping phase and circular orbit. Also a simplified modeling is introduced which could be used in nonlinear controller design. Lagrange and extended Lagrange method is used to derive equations of motion. It is shown that longitudinal vibration of tether has small effect on satellite attitude and angular velocity and because of high frequency it can be decoupled from satellite dynamic. In the simplified model, orbital motion is decoupled from equations of TSS and main satellite dynamic. Effect of decoupling... 

Separate analysis of modern systems by continuous or discrete theories is not possible, because they cannot solely express the detailed descriptions of a system. As a result of this, researchers are motivated to study hybrid systems. Specific class of hybrid systems which consists of several continuous subsystems and a rule that specifies how to switch between them, is called a switched system. Recently, many studies have been done on the stability and control of switched systems. In this regard, the goal of present study is presenting applications of switched systems using two control methods. The first application is control of a chemical reactor system with multiple modes. We presented... 

The application of manipulators is becoming more and more popular in objects handling especially when it is desired to have access to remote areas in destructive or hazardous taskspaces. For this purpose, a hand-like mechanism must be designed to be used as an end-effector, which can grasp objects. In this paper a cable driven grasping mechanism has been presented. In the proposed mechanism each finger consists of three phalanxes which are actuated by a single motor. Also, locking and unlocking constraints are used in the mechanism in order to generate an anthropomorphic motion, in which, the order of reaching phalanxes to the object is sequential, in such a way that each phalanx starts... 

Sensor Observation Service (SOS) which is defined by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement group is a Web service specification in order to standardize the way sensors and sensor data are discovered and accessed on the Sensor Web. Multiple instances of this service can be implemented around the world, providing huge amount of data every moment. Each of these services operates in specific domain of knowledge (thematic), spatial and temporal dimensions. One way to reveal the underlying data over all of them is to provide an architecture for data integration to allow the user to query sensor data without the knowledge of the infrastructure components. In this research, a novel... 

Rotating machinery are found in most industrial units, that are highly susceptible to transverse cross sectional cracks due to fatigue. The vibration pattern of a rotor system reflects the mechanical parameter changes in the system. These vibrations can be used for identifying the cracks and appropriate actions can be taken to prevent more damage to the system. The dynamic behavior of cracked rotor is a subject of considerable current interest. Several researchers have developed models of cracked rotor systems. Therefore, In this thesis, the influence of the presence of transverse cracks in a simple Jeffcott rotor is analyzed. In first, on the basis of fracture mechanics, the direct and...