Sharif Digital Repository

In project-based organizations, many practical cases show there is a considerable knowledge gap between project-level and organization level. To bridge such gap, organizations can exploit knowledge intensive human resources, new organizational structures and new information and communication technologies. But all these three dimensions could have trivial effect when there is no central attention toward the content of knowledge that is to be managed. In this paper, we postulated a three layer framework for this problem that its main contribution is that the content of knowledge is at the center of attention, while all other three dimensions of any knowledge management system (HR, Organization... 

Porter's model of Competitive advantage of nations (named as Diamond Model) has been widely used and criticized as well, over recent two decades. On the other hand, non-mainstream economists have tried to propose new frameworks for industrial analysis, that among them, Sectoral Innovation System (SIS) is one of the most influential ones. After proposing an assessment framework, we use this framework to compare SIS and Porter's models and apply them to the case of second mobile operator in Iran. Briefly, SIS model sheds light on the innovation process and competence building and focuses on system failures that are of special importance in the context of developing countries, while Diamond... 

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to review the knowledge management literature from a content-related perspective using cluster analysis. Design/methodology/approach: A critical analysis of previous review articles in KM provided a conceptual framework with nine dimensions. A survey was then administered to 120 KM authors asking them to review which dimensions they considered in their own research. Findings: Three clusters of KM research were identified as follows: the socialization school, the collaboration school, and the codification school. Research limitations/implications: The study does not consider the dimension of strategic versus operational KM issues nor does it consider... 

It is beyond dispute that technological change acts as a driver of economic growth. In developing countries where highly suffer from lack of this process, incremental innovation is considered as main source of technology capability building and development In moving toward this pass and to meet with time pressure of catching up, developing countries acquire the initial required knowledge base through technology absorption from outside sources; On the other hand as development is a lengthy process, it is important that the absorbed knowledge still has the potential of more advancement in future. Therefore a selection instrument with ability of assessing different knowledge base or... 

We study the problem of finding a target t from a start point s in street environments with the cooperation of two robots which have a minimal sensing capability; that is, robots do not know any information about the workspace including information on distances, edges, coordinates, angles etc. They just can detect the discontinuities in the visibility region of their location. The robots can detect target point t as soon as it enters their visibility region and have communication peripherals to send messages to each other. Our aim is to minimize the length of the path passed by the robots. We propose an online algorithm for robots such that they move in the workspace and find the target.... 

As Gregory Bateson, the British social scientists, once said "You can't live without an eraser", the process of learning is not a unidirectional way toward accumulation of knowledge, rather, organizations should critically evaluate the value of their knowledge and if necessary, actively forget no-longer-useful knowledge. A brief review of related literature shows that the concept of knowledge active forgetting (KAF) is a crucial aspect of organizational learning and knowledge management. However, many aspects of this topic deserve more attention by researchers. The main gap in the literature seems to be related to the linkage between peculiar aspects of knowledge (such as stickiness, context... 

The elastic behaviors of a two-axes dipole of wedge disclinations and an individual wedge disclination located inside the shell of a free standing core-shell nanowire is studied within the surface/interface elasticity theory. The corresponding boundary value problem is solved using complex potential functions, defined through modeling the disclination dipole by two finite walls of infinitesimal edge dislocations. The stress field, disclination strain energies and image forces acting on the disclinations, are calculated and studied in detail. It is shown that the stresses are rather inhomogeneous across the nanowire cross section, change their signs and reach local maxima and minima far from... 

In this paper we consider the problem of joint location and pricing optimization for a firm in a heterogeneous market producing a single product. We assume that customers have a different willingness to pay for the product. We consider two classes of customers who are not uniformly distributed in the market and develop an analytical framework to determine the relationship between the optimal price and location of the firm. We demonstrate that the optimal price and location are closely related to each other, and thus there is a need for simultaneous optimization of the price and location. We provide both analytical and numerical results to illustrate the impact of transportation cost and the... 

Unwanted vibrations of vehicles are regarded as harmful threats to human health in biomechanical and psychophysical terms. Road roughness is considered as the main cause of unwanted vibrations of bus vehicles. Vertical seat vibrations were found via simulating a 10-Degree-Of-Freedom (10-DOF) model of an intercity bus vehicle under harmonic and random excitations caused by road roughness. To suppress undesirable vibrations, mass-spring-damper passive absorbers were proposed in a 13-Degree-Of- Freedom (13-DOF) model of the bus. Following the optimization of the characteristics of embedded passive absorbers under each seat and implementation of the designed absorbers, the vertical displacement... 

An efficient, green, novel and rapid vortex-assisted dispersive solid-phase extraction (VADSPE) technique was used for the preconcentration and determination of trace levels of Cu2+ followed by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Graphene oxide (GO) was synthesized from graphite and then modified by pectic acid (poly-d-galacturonic acid, PA) to synthesize the pectic acid–graphene oxide (PA-GO) nanocomposite. The Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry, field emission scanning electron microcopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis were used to characterize the synthesized GO-PA nanocomposite. By using VADSPE technique, PA-GO was used as an adsorbent for... 

We investigate the average frequency of positive slope ν +α, crossing the velocity field in the Burgers equation. The level crossing analysis in the inviscid limit and the total number of positive crossings of the velocity field before the creation of singularities are given. The main goal of this paper is to show that this quantity, ν+α, is a good measure for the fluctuations of velocity fields in the Burgers turbulence. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd  

Small Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generators (PMSG's) are widely used in low power wind turbines. In order to inject the electrical power, generated by PMSG, to the grid, a back-To-back AC/AC power electronic converter is required. In this paper, a novel low cost efficient AC/DC converter is proposed for rectifier stage to obtain the maximum power per ampere of PMSG by using Power Factor Correction method. The new structure is based on DCM SEPIC converter. Reducing the number of semi-conductor switches has decreased converter cost. Additionally, other advantages of this Converter are employing easy control method to obtain the maximum power per ampere and using Synchronous inductance of... 

In this paper the structure of Maximum Likelihood (ML) CFAR for lognormal clutter is derived assuming that some reference samples are censored to avoid destructive effect of interfering targets. It is shown that under some acceptable approximations we will achieve in a simple structure for this detector which is suitable for real time processing. The proposed detector is compared with non censored ML CFAR (i.e. logt CFAR) via simulation. It is shown that while the proposed detector is a little weaker than logt CFAR in homogeneous clutter, in non homogeneous clutter it outperforms the logt CFAR  

In this paper, we consider the problem of making simultaneous decisions on the location, service rate (capacity) and the price of providing service for facilities on a network. We assume that the demand for service from each node of the network follows a Poisson process. The demand is assumed to depend on both price and distance. All facilities are assumed to charge the same price and customers wishing to obtain service choose a facility according to a Multinomial Logit function. Upon arrival to a facility, customers may join the system after observing the number of people in the queue. Service time at each facility is assumed to be exponentially distributed. We first present several... 

Based on the code specifications, in moment-resisting frames the span-to-depth ratio has to be larger than a minimum value to make sure of adequate plastic hinging at beam-ends. This provision poses a restriction on the use of deep beams with short spans, especially for the framed-tube system in tall buildings. In this paper, a new energy dissipation method is introduced for moment-resisting frames by modifying the mid-span of the beam by two different methods, resulting in: (i) Perforated Shear Links (PSLs) and (ii) Slit Shear Links (SSLs). The links dissipate energy through shear yielding of the web, weakened by perforation or slitting, respectively. A thorough study is conducted on the... 

This paper presents a powerful application of genetic algorithm (GA) for the minimization of the total harmonic current distortion (THCD) in high-power induction motors fed by voltage source inverters, based on an approximate harmonic model. That is, having defined a desired fundamental output voltage, optimal pulse patterns (switching angles) are determined to produce the fundamental output voltage while minimizing the THCD. The complete results for the two cases of three and five switching instants in the first quarter period of pulse width modulation (PWM) waveform are presented. Presence of harmonics in the stator excitation leads to a pulsing-torque component. Considering the fact that... 

Background and objective: In this study, the effect of the second excitation frequency mode under different conditions on the fluid streaming and its microparticles displacement is investigated. Methods: For this purpose, some variable parameters such as the particle diameter, microchannel aspect ratio, and applied frequency modes have been selected to study. The resulted acoustic streaming was scrutinized to understand the physics of the problem under different geometrical and input conditions. Finally, the effect of the increasing the microparticle size and aspect ratio of the microchannel, simultaneously, has been evaluated. Results: The results demonstrated that increasing the... 

Applying integrated variational principles on fluid and deck plate to the large deflection analysis of floating roofs, this paper investigates the significance of the flexural and membrane components in the formulations of the deck plate. Integrated variational principles facilitate the treatment of the compatibility of deformation between floating roof and supporting liquid. Analysis results show that different assumptions about deck plate formulation commonly used in the literature, results in considerably different deflection and stress patterns on the floating roof. The results show that modeling of the deck plate as a flexural element rather than the membrane, by eliminating the need... 

We consider a two-echelon inventory system with a manufacturer operating from a warehouse supplying multiple distribution centers (DCs) that satisfy the demand originating from multiple sources. The manufacturer has a finite production capacity and production times are stochastic. Demand from each source follows an independent Poisson process. We assume that the transportation times between the warehouse and DCs may be positive which may require keeping inventory at both the warehouse and DCs. Inventory in both echelons is managed using the base-stock policy. Each demand source can procure the product from one or more DCs, each incurring a different fulfilment cost. The objective is to... 

A known theorem in probability is adopted and through a probabilistic approach, it is generalized to develop a method for generating random deviates from the distribution of any continuous random variable. This method, which may be considered as an approximate version of the Inverse Transform algorithm, takes two random numbers to generate a random deviate, while maintaining all the other advantages of the Inverse Transform method, such as the possibility of generating ordered as well as correlated deviates and being applicable to all density functions, regardless of their parameter values. © Sharif University of Technology, October 2008