Sharif Digital Repository

People use social networks to share millions of stories every day, but these stories rarely become viral. Can we estimate the probability that a story becomes a viral cascade If so, can we find a set of users that are more likely to trigger viral cascades These estimation and maximization problems are very challenging since both rare-event nature of viral cascades and efficiency requirement should be considered. Unfortunately, this problem still remains largely unexplored to date. In this paper, given temporal dynamics of a network, we first develop an efficient viral cascade probability estimation method, VICE, that leverages an special importance sampling approximation to achieve high... 

People use social networks to share millions of stories every day, but these stories rarely become viral. Can we estimate the probability that a story becomes a viral cascade? If so, can we find a set of users that are more likely to trigger viral cascades? These estimation and maximization problems are very challenging since both rare-event nature of viral cascades and efficiency requirement should be considered. Unfortunately, this problem still remains largely unexplored to date. In this paper, given temporal dynamics of a network, we first develop an efficient viral cascade probability estimation method, ViCE, that leverages an special importance sampling approximation to achieve high... 

Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities and people shares millions of message in a short time; however this information rarely goes viral. The diffusion process begins with an initial set of source nodes and continues with other nodes. In addition, the viral cascade is triggered when the number of infected nodes exceeds a specific threshold. Then, we find an initial set of source nodes that maximizes the number of infected nodes given the source nodes. This study aims to answer the following questions: how does a spread like a viral cascade propagate in a network? Do the structural properties of the propagation pattern play an important role in virality? If so, can we... 

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are well-promising future networks especially for ubiquitous connection to Internet. In this paper, we propose an analytical model in order to evaluate the maximum stable throughput of a WMN based on a simplified version of IEEE 802.11s MAC protocol. Our modeling approach is based on a multi-class open queueing network. In this respect, we map some of the important features of IEEE 802.11s MAC protocol, esp., its contention-based and contention-free periods onto different parameters of the proposed queueing network. By solving the related traffic equations and applying the stability condition, we determine the maximum stable throughput, i.e., the maximum packet... 

Background: Performance indices provide quantitative measures for the quality of motion, and therefore, assist in analyzing and monitoring patients' progress. Measurement of performance indices requires costly devices, such as motion capture systems. Recent developments of sensors for game controllers, such as Microsoft Kinect, have motivated many researchers to develop affordable systems for performance measurement applicable to home and clinical care. In this work, the capability of Kinect in finding motion performance indices was assessed by analyzing intra-session and inter-session test-retest reliability. Method: Eighteen stroke patients and twelve healthy subjects participated in this... 

In this study, conductive sodium alginate/polyaniline/graphene (PAG) NGCs were fabricated utilizing a straightforward solution extrusion method. The 4 point-probe test revealed that the addition of PAG has increased the conductivity of the NGCs up to 9.7 × 10−3 S.cm−1. The results also showed a remarkable increase in the Young modulus and SEM images revealed that the suggested process could produce NGCs continuously and uniformly with desirable porosity. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy spectrum proved a good interaction between PAG and the polymeric matrix. Furthermore, the addition of PAG slightly prevented biodegradation of the NGCs. Finally, the cell viability assay confirmed...