Sharif Digital Repository

The anisotropic (Nd,MM)2(Fe,Co,Ni)14B-type magnets were produced using the binary alloy sintering method (MM denotes a Misch-metal). The composition of the master alloy was close to stoichiometric Nd2Fe14B compound, while that of the sintering aid was MM38.2Co46.4Ni15.4. The microstructures of sintered magnets were investigated using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDX). X-ray diffractometry (XRD) was also employed for phase analysis. The optimum magnetic properties were obtained for a composition of Nd11.9MM2.9Fe73.9Co3.3Ni1.1B6.9 made of 90 wt.% master alloy and 10 wt.% sintering aid. The two main phases, i.e. the (RE)2(TM)14B phase... 

Integrating high spatial resolution of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and high temporal resolution of electroencephalogram (EEG) is promising in simultaneous EEG and fMRI analysis, especially for epileptic patients. The EEG recorded inside an MR scanner is interfered with MR artifacts. In this article, we propose new artifact reduction approaches and compare them with the conventional artifact reduction methods. Our proposed approaches are based on generalized eigenvalue decomposition (GEVD) and median filtering. The proposed methods are applied on experimental simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings of an epileptic patient. The results show significant improvement over... 

In many fast MR imaging techniques, K-space is sampled sparsely in order to gain a fast traverse of K-space. These techniques use non-Cartesian sampling trajectories like radial, zigzag, and spiral. In the reconstruction procedure, usually interpolation methods are used to obtain missing samples on a regular grid. In this paper, we propose an iterative method for image reconstruction which uses the black marginal area of the image. The proposed iterative solution offers a great enhancement in the quality of the reconstructed image in comparison with conventional algorithms like zero filling and neural network. This method is applied on MRI data and its improved performance over other methods... 

Utilizing the Finite Element Method (FEM), the strain field in the radial forging process of tube is calculated at different process conditions and compared with the experimental results achieved using the microhardness test. The effect of various process parameters such as friction, axial feed, back push and front pull forces and die angles on the strain field are investigated. Using the results of the analysis, it is shown that the deformation inhomogeneity, introduced by an Inhomogeneity Factor (IF), is maximum in the inner zone of tube, while the minimum and the maximum effective strains are appeared at the inner zone of tube and about the core of the tube thickness, respectively. Also,... 

Motivated by the bus escape routing problem in printed circuit boards, we revisit the following problem: given a set of n axis-parallel rectangles inside a rectangular region R, find the maximum number of rectangles that can be extended toward the boundary of R, without overlapping each other. We provide an efficient algorithm for solving this problem in O(n2 log3 n log log n) time, improving over the current best O(n3)-time algorithm available for the problem  

We explore the dictionary learning problem for sparse representation when the signals are dependent. In this paper, a first-order Markovian model is considered for dependency of the signals, that has many applications especially in medical signals. It is shown that the considered dependency among the signals can degrade the performance of the existing dictionary learning algorithms. Hence, we propose a method using the Maximum Log-likelihood Estimator (MLE) and the Expectation Minimization (EM) algorithm to learn the dictionary from the signals generated under the first-order Markovian model. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed method in comparison with the... 

Data are presented on the solidification of aluminum alloys and their macro segregation behavior. Three alloys with different solidification ranges were prepared in two temperatures. Two types of molds were also prepared by sand and metallic materials. The solidification of Al alloys were studied and the effects of four parameters were determined, including cooling rate, casting temperature, degassing and nucleation effects on solidification and a comparison was conducted to Scheil model performance. Three types of aluminum alloys (Al-12.1%Si, Al-6.9%Si and Al-4.4% Cu) with short, medium and wide solidification ranges were studied and the results showed that degassing, nucleation, increasing... 

Motivated by the bus escape routing problem in printed circuit boards, we study the following rectangle escape problem: given a set S of n axis-aligned rectangles inside an axis-aligned rectangular region R, extend each rectangle in S toward one of the four borders of R so that the maximum density over the region R is minimized. The density of each point p∈R is defined as the number of extended rectangles containing p. We show that the problem is hard to approximate to within a factor better than 3/2 in general. When the optimal density is sufficiently large, we provide a randomized algorithm that achieves an approximation factor of 1+ε with high probability improving over the current best... 

Following Gorokhovsky and Lott and using an extension of the b-pseudodifferential calculus of Melrose, we give a formula for the Chern character of the Dirac index class of a longitudinal Dirac type operators on a foliated manifold with boundary. For this purpose we use the Bismut local index formula in the context of noncommutative geometry. This paper uses heavily the methods and technical results developed by E. Leichtnam and P. Piazza  

In this paper we show how the higher index theory can be used to prove results concerning the non-existence of a complete Riemannian metric with uniformly positive scalar curvature at infinity. By improving some classical results due to M. Gromov and B. Lawson we show the efficiency of these methods to prove such non-existence theorems  

In this paper we state and prove delocalized Morse type inequalities for Morse functions as well as for closed differential 1-forms. These inequalities involve delocalized Betti numbers. As an immediate consequence, we prove the vanishing of delocalized Betti numbers of manifolds fibering over the circle under a vanishing condition on the delocalizing conjugacy class  

Development of novel engineering techniques that can promote new clinical treatments requires implementing multidisciplinary in-vitro and in-vivo approaches. In this study, we have implemented microfluidic devices and in-vivorat model to study the mechanism of neural stem cell migration and differentiation.These studies can result in the treatment of damages to the neuronal system. In this research, we have shown that by applying appropriate ranges of biochemical and biomechanical factors as well as by exposing the cells to electromagnetic fields, it is possible to improve viability, proliferation, directional migration and differentiation of neural stem cells. The results of this study can... 

In this short note we apply methods introduced by B. Hanke and T. Schick to prove the vanishing of (low degree) higher Â-genera for spin manifolds admitting a positive scalar curvature metric. Our aim is to provide a short proof for this beautiful result  

We revisit the problem of finding (Formula presented.) paths with a minimum number of shared edges between two vertices of a graph. An edge is called shared if it is used in more than one of the (Formula presented.) paths. We provide a (Formula presented.)-approximation algorithm for this problem, improving the best previous approximation factor of (Formula presented.). We also provide the first approximation algorithm for the problem with a sublinear approximation factor of (Formula presented.), where (Formula presented.) is the number of vertices in the input graph. For sparse graphs, such as bounded-degree and planar graphs, we show that the approximation factor of our algorithm can be... 

We revisit the problem of finding k paths with a minimum number of shared edges between two vertices of a graph. An edge is called shared if it is used in more than one of the k paths. We provide a ⌊k/2⌋-approximation algorithm for this problem, improving the best previous approximation factor of k - 1. We also provide the first approximation algorithm for the problem with a sublinear approximation factor of O(n3/4), where n is the number of vertices in the input graph. For sparse graphs, such as bounded-degree and planar graphs, we show that the approximation factor of our algorithm can be improved to O(√n). While the problem is NP-hard, and even hard to approximate to within an O(log n)... 

In this paper, we address theoretical limitations in estimating the mixing matrix in noisy Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) in the two-sensor case. We obtain the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) error estimation of the mixing matrix based on the observation vector x=(x1,x2)T. Using the Bernoulli-Gaussian (BG) sparse distribution for sources, and some reasonable approximations, the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) is approximated by a diagonal matrix. Then, the effect of off-diagonal terms in computing the CRB is investigated. Moreover, we compute an oracle CRB versus the blind uniform CRB and show that this is only 3 dB better than the blind uniform CRB. Finally, the CRB, the approximated CRB, the...