Sharif Digital Repository

The goal of a speaker diarization system is to detect the number of speakers of a conversation and also assign each segment of the conversation to one of the speakers. In these types of systems it is assumed that the identity of the speakers is completely unknown. Usually speaker diarization systems operate in an offline mode. The system assumes that it does have the whole conversation at hand and then it starts processing the conversation. This method is effective for applications like spoken document retrieval, but it is not applicable to speech/speaker recognition systems which require online operating. In this dissertation, an online speaker diarization system is implemented. This... 

In this thesis, active guidance of a reentry vehicle using fuzzy logic is investigated. The guidance commands of the reentry vehicle (pitch and bank angles) are computed based on estimation of the final conditions, including range and cross-range errors and time-to-go. The final conditions are predicted utilizing a neural network. Inputs of this neural network are the current states of the vehicle and flight time. The first advantage of this approach is that no reference trajectory is required, which is mostly generated optimally for ideal conditions. Moreover, the methods based on keeping the nominal trajectory produce severe guidance commands for sudden disturbances (e.g. wind gusts),... 

The goal of crowd labeling is to find labels of given samples using humans’ mind power.Since crowds are not necessarily experts, their provided labels are rather noisy and erroneous.This challenge is usually resolved by collecting multiple labels for each sample and aggregating them to estimate its true label. Although this mechanism leads to high-quality labels, it is not actually cost effective. Adaptive methods consider that only some samples are challenging and require more labels. They spend the budget more wisely, and iteratively collect the required labels. Using adaptive methods approach, we utilize statistical latent models to model and analyze the collected labels and low-rank... 

A decade after discovery of graphene, the unique properties and characteristics of two-dimensional materials, particularly an emerging family of carbides and nitrides (MXenes), have attracted the attention of researchers. MXenes are two-dimensional structures of two or more layers of transition metals, with interstitial carbon and/or nitrogen atoms, with exceptional properties such as high specific surface area, excellent elastic modulus, metallic conductivity, and various termination groups. These properties can be altered by various factors, including chemical composition and synthesis processes, and any changes in these factors significantly affect the properties of MXene sheets. In this... 

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive debilitating neurological disorder that causes motor and cognitive impairment. Administration of dopaminergic medication (Levodopa) has been reported to be effective in attenuating the excessive pathological synchronization in basal ganglia. However, long term levodopa therapy has its pitfalls. High frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been suggested as an effective alternative for reducing motor symptoms in PD. In this method, distinct brain regions involved in the pathophysiology of the disease are stimulated electrically at high frequencies (i.e. at 130 Hz). While several studies have been carried out on the effects of DBS and its clinical... 

Nowadays, GPUs are used in applications such as graph computations and deep learning that require large data processing. These applications necessitate transferring a considerable amount of data between memory and computational units, which increases the average memory access latency. On the other hand, the poor performance of the L1 cache causes many reservation fails, resulting in increased energy consumption and reduced performance. In this thesis, we propose Smart Cache, a new smart cache management in GPUs. This approach models the cache replacement problem as a sequence labeling problem. Then, a machine learning model that combines support vector machine with one-hot encoding and... 

In the current research, colloidal stability of two different types of coating on the surface of Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) was studied. In the first triumph, a dual-layer coating was achieved by utilizing optimum amount of Dextran and different PEG (Poly(ethylene glycol)) concentrations which the weight ratios of iron oxide/PEG were 1/1, 2/1, 4/1, 8/1, and 16/1. Then, the presence of the coating was characterized by XRD, FT-IR, DLS and FE-SEM methods. These results together with the TGA ones revealed that as the concentration of PEG surfactant increases, the thickness of coating increases. Moreover, VSM test was performed to specify the effect of coating on the... 

The use of clean energy sources has become increasingly popular around the world in recent years. One of the most important of these sources is wind energy. Due to the high wind potential in offshore areas than on land, this study uses the integration of multi-criteria decision-making methods and GIS to identify the best areas for developing offshore wind farms in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Criteria applied in this study are divided into two categories: restrictive criteria, such as recommended transportation routes and anchored restricted areas, and technical criteria, such as wind speed and water depth. After removing the inappropriate areas using restrictive criteria, the... 

Over the past several years, TiO2 has become a focus of considerable researches as it possesses unique optical, catalytic and electrical properties in different applications such as sensors, water purification and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The goal of this research was synthesis of 1-Dimentional TiO2 nanostructure with suitable properties for DSSC applications. Two different TiO2 powders including micron-size anatase and mesoporous powders (produced from reaction of TiC and HNO3) along with KOH or NaOH were employed in hydrothermal process. The process was performed in two different containers including autoclave and balloon-shaped flask. The products were characterized by X-Ray... 

Improvement of semiconductors photocatalytic activity by different means has always been one of the challenges for researchers. Semiconductors doping for band-gap engineering and changing morphology to increase specific surface area and photocatalytic reaction sites are amongst these efforts. In this research simultaneous effect of these two parameters for three morphologies containing nanoparticle, nanowire and micro dandelion, simultaneously doped with carbon and nitrogen has been investigated. Final purpose of this thesis is to decrease the band-gap energy close to soft UV photon energies to make surface photodynamic therapy possible. Nanoparticle morphology with size distribution between... 

The objective of the short-term scheduling of generation units has been changed with the restructuring of power systems. Minimizing the total operation cost while satisfying system operation constraints is the main objective of short-term scheduling of generation units in an integrated or centralized power system. Unlike the vertically integrated power systems, the main objective of Generation Company (GenCO) is maximizing the total profit in the restructured system. Two new approaches, called time varying acceleration coefficients iteration particle swarm optimization (TVAC-IPSO) and Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) are proposed to solve power systems static and dynamic economic... 

Photodynamic therapy that has developed over last century, now has become more widely used medical tool for the treatment of various diseases such as cancer. This technique involves delivery of photosensitizing drugs, irradiation of light and motivation of drugs. The limitation of light penetration in body tissue, may resolve by application of upconversion nanoparticles. Upconverting nanoparticles could help treatment of cancer tumors in deep or critical points of body by converting high penetrating Near-Infrared emissions to higher energy visible emissions.In this research Er3+-Yb3+ Co-doped titanium dioxide upconversion nanoparticles prepared by Sol-gel method. The phase structure and... 

Wind power is site dependent and is by nature partially dispatchable. Furthermore, good wind sites are far from grid. Due to these problems, and along with the existing limitations in the transmission networks, a comprehensive analysis over an extended time is needed to properly explore all potential wind sites for wind capacity allocation. This problem is computationally expensive and decomposition methods are required to break down this problem. Here Benders decomposition approach is used, which is a popular technique for solving large-scale problems, to decompose the original problem into a master and a subproblem. The master problem is a linear problem, which allocates wind capacity to... 

Single nucleotide polymorphs, There are changes caused by a mutation in a nucleotide in the Dena sequence. Mononucleotide polymorphisms are the most common type of genetic variation. Some of these changes have little or no effect on cells, while others cause significant changes in the expression of cell genes that can lead to disease or resistance to certain diseases. Because of the importance of these changes and their effect on cell function, the relationships between these changes are also important. Over the past decade, thousands of single disease-related mononucleotide polymorphisms have been identified in genome-related studies. Studies in this field have shown that the expression of... 

In the past few years, many research works on the controllable integration of metal nanoparticles and metal-organic frameworks were done, since the obtained composite material shows a synergism effect in catalysis and photocatalysis, drug delivery applications, gas, and energy storage, as well as sensing. For the first time, in this study, we employed template-assisted growth to synthesize Au-HKUST-1 Nanocomposite. XRD analysis entirely confirms that employing this strategy in synthesizing Au-HKUST-1 was wholly successful, and the plasmonic properties of this nanostructure were studied via UV-visible spectroscopy. In the course of synthesis, gold nanoparticles with 70nm diameter were...