Sharif Digital Repository

The price elasticity of gasoline demand is a key parameter in evaluation of various policy options. However, most of the literature uses aggregate data to identify this elasticity. Temporal and spatial aggregation make elasticity estimates unreliable. We employ a unique dataset of all gasoline transactions in Iran during a four-month period around an unexpected exogenous price change to identify price elasticity. After controlling for date and individual fixed effects we estimate a robust significant price elasticity of -0.127. Aggregation of the same data by week, month, and city yields an estimate of -0.3 indicating a significant bias in earlier studies. We also identify a significant... 

In a GAN, the generator receives random noise data and produces outputs similar to real data. The generated output data, along with the original dataset, is fed to the discriminator, which distinguishes between real and fake data. The two networks have opposing objectives, but they help each other learn in practice, continuously improving each other's performance. Each of the two networks aims to minimize its own error while maximizing the other's error. John Nash mathematically proved that the optimal solution to these problems occurs when neither agent can further increase its utility. This situation is referred to as Nash equilibrium. If the training data is limited, the GAN cannot... 

Frequently using Personal Identification Information has escalated the security concerns of bank accounts, emails, daily transactions, and other activities. Therefore, user access to such apps must be controlled. Traditional personal verification methods offer limited security because they might need to be remembered or stolen. Therefore, Biometric authentication, which identifies persons by their unique biological information, is gaining popularity. However, palm vein identification is highly secure because the vein patterns are not duplicated in other people, even in monozygotic twins. Moreover, it has a liveness detection and is convenient since the vein pattern cannot be faked,... 

The purpose of this research is to monitor the health of structures using the updated finite element model, in which digital images are used to optimize the numerical model. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is always an important and significant issue that has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. In general, some researches have been conducted in this field using physical sensors that provide discrete data to the system for analysis. Using cameras to monitor the structure makes it possible to extract continuous and integrated data from the structure using digital images, which is a significant advantage compared to physical sensors.In this research, a steel... 

Network forensic analysts employ Payload Attribution Systems (PAS) as an investigative tool. With such tool large amount of network traffic, including full packet payload, is summarized and stored. Hence an investigator could query the system for a specific string and see whether any packets transmitted previously in the network contained that specific string. Wildcards are an important type of query that allows the investigator to locate strings in the payload when only part of the string is known. In this thesis we present a new payload attribution technique, named character based bloom filter, which in addition to improving on previously proposed techniques is able to support wildcard... 

Seismic resistant structural systems or lateral load-bearing systems must enjoy adequate resistance and hardness against lateral forces and displacements in addition to resisting large deformations to absorb and dissipate energy. Since Iran is located in a seismic area and almost all metropolises of Iran are located in the vicinity of faults, it is critically important to pay close attention to development and application of efficient seismic systems in the constructional system of Iran. The HKB (Hat Knee Bracing) system is a lateral load-bearing system, the construction of which is inspired from divergent bracing systems. In other words, as in... 

Aluminum Bronzes have many applications in marine environments. These alloys suffer from both hot cracking and cold cracking. In order to overcome the hot cracking and cold cracking, Semisolid Stir Joining method and a proper thermal cycle was used respectively. Effects of temperature, stirring rate, and tool type were investigated in Semisolid Stir joining method. In this method, butt joint design was used in order to place specimens, and the specimens were heated up to specific temperatures (920, 925, 930°C). A stirrer (Cylindrical and Grooved tool) with three rotational speeds (800, 1200, 1600 RPM) was introduced into the stir weld seam. Welded specimens were cooled to the 900°C... 

This article investigates the production of a novel nerve regeneration scaffold by using biodegradable and biocompatible components. In this research, we have provided different methods like electrospinning and PE hydrogels to fabricate it. Electrospun fibers are made of PLLA and CS/Gel combinations. ZnO nanoparticles were used as the piezoelectric agent. Piezoelectricity plays an important part in the strcture of neurons giving them the ability to transfer electrical messages throughout the body. NPs were completely dispersed in the PLLA solution. ZnO particles could increase produced voltages as the concentration increases. PLLA is biodegradable and provide good mechanical properties.... 

Nowadays, one of the problems of network designers and users is the correctness of network equipment functionality. Since routers play an important role in information transfer between various networks and communicate with each other through a routing protocol, any violation of such protocol can result in the network's failure or defective transfer of data. Thus, being assured of the conformance of the implemented protocol in a router with what has been defined in the protocol's standard is of great significance. To this end, before using or exposing a router, network equipment testers should run protocol conformance tests on it and insure its correct functionality. This brings up the... 

In order to increase the network performance, to discover network security threats, to guarantee the quality of services, to simulate networks and develop new network protocols, network designers and operators need software tools to analyze the network traffic. The first step to do this analysis is network monitoring. This can be done by using various software and hardware tools.
In this research we developed a tool which analyzes the network traffic using appropriate statistical methods. The models which are analyzed in this application are: Poisson, Self-similar and Weibull. This application analyzes the network traffic based on this statistical models and calculates their parameters.... 

The increasing number of road accidents and fatalities have yielded the introduction of several solutions by related industries such as automobile manufacture. Proposed solutions can be classified into two categories: passive, such as airbags, and active such as ABS ad ITS-based technologies. Inter vehicles communication let the communication between vehicles(V2V) or between vehicles and road infrastructure (V2I) by relying on DSRC technology and standards. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) has three main types of applications namely safety, traffic and commercial. Safety applications are the main goal of vehicular communication, and real time guarantee in safety applications is so... 

In real-time systems, jobs that miss their deadline are considered worthless or ineffective. Nowadays, real-time applications (such as multimedia) that communicate through software-defined networks (SDN) are widely used and will continue to expand in the future. SDN is an emerging network architecture in which control plane is separated from data plane to manage it directly. In this research, we make changes to the controller and the switch used in such network to deliver real time packets or real-time flows (such as video) on time, as much as possible. As missed deadline packets are worthless and they waste bandwidth, dropping them is a solution. Moreover, the controller can drop flows that... 

In the process of Additive manufacturing for metals, the ability to predict and control the microstructure can reduce the need for subsequent heat treatment and accelerate the component quality assessment process. The ability to predict and control the microstructure of materials in the laser deposition method needs to understand the thermal conditions during the solidification process. For this purpose, the present study investigated the relationship between cooling rate and temperature gradient during local solidification, and control parameters of the laser deposition process such as power, beam radius, scanning speed and strategy of laser, ambient temperature and preheating temperature.... 

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a new paradigm in computer networks for implementing network functions on general-purpose common-of-the-shelf processors. The revolutionized NFV architecture has shown to be a suitable replacement for hardware middleboxes. NFV is in high demand because of its lower costs, increased flexibility, and more scalability. However, the ever-growing volume of network traffic and increased data transfer speed in computer networks have made achieving high performance the major issue in this area. With thousands of processing cores and high memory bandwidth, Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) are potentially an appropriate solution to accelerate network... 

In recent decades, local, regional and national research programs have discovered stormwater runoff as the principal cause of water pollution in most urban areas. To solve urban stormwater runoff problems, we should use revisory measures. This is possible by using Best Management Practices (BMPs). BMPs are innovative technologies to reduce the movement of pollutants from land into surface or groundwaters, in order to protect water quality within natural and economic limitations.Three types of BMPs are discussed in this study; swale, bioretention systems and pond. They have different installation requirements, costs and pollutant removal efficiency. The main objective of this research is to...