Sharif Digital Repository

Stress is a body's natural way of responding to any kind of demand or challenge that everyone experiences from time to time. Although short-Term stress typically does not impose a health burden, exposure to prolonged stress can lead to significant adverse physiological and behavioral changes. Coping with the impact of stress is a challenging task and in this context, stress assessment is essential in preventing detrimental long-Term effects. The public embracement of connected wearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices, as well as the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies, have generated new opportunities for personalized stress tracking and... 

Gasification of black liquor is an alternative recovery technology. Pulp and paper industries are turning their attention to black liquor gasification as a replacement for recovery boilers. Gasification-combined cycle exergoeconomic analyses have been used to study the economical and exergetical performance of black liquor. Both conventional iterative exergoeconomic optimization and multi objective evolutionary optimization have been applied. The iterative optimization results have been compared with evolutionary programming results in order to evaluate the accuracy. The strength of proposed optimization methods are elucidated in a case study applied to Mazandaran Wood and Paper Industries... 

Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) is the most commonly used technology for wind power generation due to the variable speed performance, decoupled control of active and reactive powers, and high efficiency. However, the DFIG originally cannot participate in damping of power system oscillations since it is not synchronously connected to the power system. This paper proposes an optimal and robust additional damping controller for the DFIG wind turbine to contribute it to damp power system oscillations. It is a fuzzy logic controller that its parameters are optimally tuned using the genetic algorithm (GA). The proposed controller modifies the DFIG active power output by using feedback from... 

Exploring efficient chemotherapy would benefit from a deeper understanding of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and its role in tumor progression. As in vivo experimental methods are unable to isolate or control individual factors of the TME, and in vitro models often cannot include all the contributing factors, some questions are best addressed with mathematical models of systems biology. In this study, we establish a multi-scale mathematical model of the TME to simulate three-dimensional tumor growth and angiogenesis and then implement the model for an array of chemotherapy approaches to elucidate the effect of TME conditions and drug scheduling on controlling tumor progression. The... 

Optimization methods for process integration of industrial networks presented so far have dealt with grass-root situation. For retrofit ones, the actual design of the existing heat exchanger network must be taken into account. Berntsson and Stromberg (1996) developed new Composite Curves for use in a targeting and options scanning in retrofitting. The aim of this development has been to create Pinch Technology based methods, with which the general problems with process integration in Retrofit can be treated. New Pinch Technology based curves for retrofitting of heat exchanger networks have provided a graphical representation of existing HEN, including heaters and utility levels, from which... 

Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) based wind turbines with traditional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control provide no inertia response under system frequency events. Recently, the DFIG wind turbines have been equipped with virtual inertia controller (VIC) for supporting power system frequency stability. However, the conventional VICs with fixed gain have negative effects on inter-area oscillations of regional networks. To cope with this drawback, this paper proposes a novel adaptive VIC to improve both the inter-area oscillations and frequency stability. In the proposed scheme, the gain of VIC is dynamically adjusted using fuzzy logic. The effectiveness and control performance of... 

In this paper, the impact of demand response programs (DRPs) on reliability improvement of the restructured power systems is quantified. In this regard, the demand response (DR) model which treats consistently the main characteristics of the demand curve is developed for modeling. In proposed model, some penalties for customers in case of no responding to load reduction and incentives for customers who respond to reducing their loads are considered. In order to make analytical evaluation of the reliability, a mixed integer DCOPF is proposed by which load curtailments and generation re-dispatches for each contingency state are determined. Both transmission and generation failures are... 

This paper presents a novel approach to optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) for state estimation. At first, an optimal measurement set is determined to achieve full network observability during normal conditions, i.e. no PMU failure or transmission line outage. Then, in order to consider contingency conditions, the derived scheme in normal conditions is modified to maintain network observability after any PMU loss or a single transmission line outage. Observability analysis is carried out using topological observability rules. A new rule is added that can decrease the number of required PMUs for complete system observability. A modified Binary Particle Swarm Optimization... 

Passive islanding detection schemes are more used in utilities due to their low costs and less harmonic problems although having larger Non Detection Zones (NDZ) relative to other schemes. Passive system measurements at the point of common coupling (PCC) are the basis of this scheme. A new approach in passive techniques is the use of intelligent based methods in data-mining to classify the system parameters which affect the islanding detection. As a result, by finding an efficient and robust data-mining algorithm, the passive schemes problem, which is their relatively large NDZ, will be minimized. In this paper, massive measurements are collected by simulation of IEEE standard distribution... 

Islanding detection methods are divided into three main groups as remote, active and passive. Although passive schemes have larger Non Detection Zones (NDZ) relative to other schemes, they are more used in utilities due to their low costs and less PQ problems than other schemes. Passive Schemes are based on the measurements of passive system parameters. These parameters are measured at the point of common coupling (PCC). A new approach in passive techniques is the use of data-mining to classify the system parameters. In this paper, massive indices are collected by simulation of a practical distribution system in PSCAD/EMTP environment. These indices include voltage, frequency, current,... 

In this paper a new algorithm for allocating energy and determining the optimum amount of network active power reserve capacity and the share of generating units and demand side contribution in providing reserve capacity requirements for day-ahead market is presented. In the proposed method, the optimum amount of reserve requirement is determined based on network security set by operator. In this regard, Expected Load Not Supplied (ELNS) is used to evaluate system security in each hour. The proposed method has been implemented over the IEEE 24-bus test system and the results are compared with a deterministic security approach, which considers certain and fixed amount of reserve capacity in... 

This study presents a passive model to detect islanding conditions of synchronous distributed generation resources in a distribution network or a microgrid. The proposed approach uses the classification and regression tree algorithm for distinguishing between islanding and non-islanding situations. It utilises the rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) and harmonic content of the equivalent reactance seen at the location of distributed generation as input features for decision tree construction. Indeed the thresholds of the proposed input features are extracted by the decision tree algorithm. The output if-then rules of the decision tree algorithm are then utilised to make a new relay logic for... 

A system protection scheme is proposed to mitigate cascaded voltage collapses. Based on the post-contingency conditions of either existence or non-existence of an equilibrium solution, and with regard to the stability and security criteria, the proposed scheme finds the optimal set of remedies. The proposed stabilising scheme brings the non-equilibrium post-contingency operating point back inside a stable region, and then passes this point to the securing scheme. Also, to enhance the performance of the stabilising scheme, a sensitivity analysis method is presented to detect the most effective remedies. The proposed securing scheme converts the stable, but insecure operating point, to a... 

In this paper, a system wide scheme is proposed to arrest voltage instability. This scheme consists of two stabilizing and securing parts. For post- contingency situations, where there are no equilibrium solutions, first, the stabilizing scheme finds the closest solvable operating point, and then passes this point to the securing scheme. The securing scheme brings the solvable, but insecure operating point, back to a secure and stable one. Also, a voltage stability indicator is proposed to monitor the available margin to the collapse point. The proposed stabilizing and securing model are solved using the sequential quadratic programming technique. ©2009 IEEE  

Under-voltage load shedding is one of the most important tools for avoiding voltage instability. In this paper, an optimal load-shedding algorithm is developed. This approach is based on the concept of the static voltage stability margin and its sensitivity at the maximum loading point or the collapse point. The traditional load-shedding objective is extended to incorporate both technical and economic effects of load shedding. The voltage stability criterion is modeled directly into the load-shedding scheme. The proposed methodology is implemented over the IEEE 14 and 118 bus test systems and solved using a mathematical (GAMS/CONOPT) and two heuristic (PSO and GA) methods. The heuristic... 

The search for efficient chemotherapy drugs and other anti-cancer treatments would benefit from a deeper understanding of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and its role in tumor progression. Because in vivo experimental methods are unable to isolate or control individual factors of the TME and in vitro models often do not include all the contributing factors, some questions are best addressed with systems biology mathematical models. In this work, we present a new fully-coupled, agent-based, multi-scale mathematical model of tumor growth, angiogenesis and metabolism that includes important aspects of the TME spanning subcellular-, cellular- and tissue-level scales. The mathematical model is... 

This chapter proposes a methodology for optimal dispatch of bilateral electricity contracts, which may endanger the system voltage stability in light of short-term operational planning of a deregulated power system. In this framework the value that each owner of a transaction is willing to pay reflects how much the electricity contract is important to be implemented physically. The proposed model dispatches optimally the bilateral transactions regarding the prices offered by owners of bilateral contracts for reactive power and transmission capacity utilization in one hand and, the total operational costs of reactive power resources in the other hand. The model also includes the limits... 

This paper proposes a methodology for optimal dispatch of bilateral electricity contracts, which may endanger the system voltage stability in light of short-term operational planning of a deregulated power system. In this framework the value that each owner of a transaction is willing to pay will reflect how much the electricity contract is important to be implemented physically. The proposed model dispatches optimally the bilateral transactions regarding the prices offered by owners of bilateral contracts for reactive power and transmission capacity utilization in one hand and, the total operational costs of reactive power resources in the other hand. The model also includes the limits... 

No-one likes being confined to a hospital bed. Children particularly can feel lonely, bored or frightened in these conditions. Hours feel like days, and they may not be able to fully comprehend why they are there. Among kids hospitalized because of distinct diseases, children with cancer have incomparable status and needs. They experience physical and mental problems caused by cancer and medications. Cancer treatment may cause distress which can lessen the effectiveness of the treatment. Utilizing social robots to interact with children in clinical environments has been verified to both diminish their distress level and enhance the effectiveness of the treatment process. To improve the...