Sharif Digital Repository

Good knowledge of fracture parameters and cracking behavior of self-compacting concrete (SCC) from early ages until the SCC becomes mature plays an important role in design of SCC structure and also in evaluation of durability and consequently prevention of damage. In this paper, variation of fracture parameters and corresponding ductility behavior of SCC at different ages (e.g. 3days, 7days, 28days and 90days) for SCC mixes with w/c ratios of 0.45 and 0.65 have been experimentally studied. To do so, three-point bending tests were carried out on 120 notched beams. Then, size effect method (SEM) and work of fracture method (WFM) were applied to interpret the results. The results of analyses... 

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, detailed studies of its properties have been ongoing. Besides its mass, its width—related to its lifetime—is an important parameter. One way to determine this quantity is to measure its off-shell production, where the Higgs boson mass is far away from its nominal value, and relating it to its on-shell production, where the mass is close to the nominal value. Here we report evidence for such off-shell contributions to the production cross-section of two Z bosons with data from the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We constrain the total rate of the off-shell Higgs boson contribution beyond the Z boson pair production threshold,... 

Context: Tangled commits are changes to software that address multiple concerns at once. For researchers interested in bugs, tangled commits mean that they actually study not only bugs, but also other concerns irrelevant for the study of bugs. Objective: We want to improve our understanding of the prevalence of tangling and the types of changes that are tangled within bug fixing commits. Methods: We use a crowd sourcing approach for manual labeling to validate which changes contribute to bug fixes for each line in bug fixing commits. Each line is labeled by four participants. If at least three participants agree on the same label, we have consensus. Results: We estimate that between 17% and... 

Tissue adhesives have been widely used for preventing wound leaks, sever bleeding, as well as for enhancing drug delivery and biosensing. However, only a few among suggested platforms cover the circumstances required for high-adhesion strength and biocompatibility, without toxicity. Antibacterial properties, controllable degradation, encapsulation capacity, detectability by image-guided procedures and affordable price are also centered to on-demand tissue adhesives. Herein we overview the history of tissue adhesives, different types of polysaccharide-based tissue adhesives, their mechanism of gluing, and different applications of polysaccharide-based tissue adhesives. We also highlight the... 

There is growing interest in applying distributed machine learning to edge computing, forming federated edge learning. Federated edge learning faces non-i.i.d. and heterogeneous data, and the communication between edge workers, possibly through distant locations and with unstable wireless networks, is more costly than their local computational overhead. In this work, we propose ${{sf DONE}}$DONE, a distributed approximate Newton-type algorithm with fast convergence rate for communication-efficient federated edge learning. First, with strongly convex and smooth loss functions, ${{sf DONE}}$DONE approximates the Newton direction in a distributed manner using the classical Richardson iteration... 

A novel approach for mesoscale modelling of concrete composites is proposed by combining enriched scaled boundary finite element methods with quad-tree mesh. The concrete meso-structures are comprised of randomly distributed aggregates, mortar matrix, and interface transition zone. An improved random aggregate generation technique is developed to construct digital images of mesoscale concrete models. Based on the quadtree decomposition algorithm, meshes can be generated automatically from the digital images of concrete mesostructure. The whole mesh generation process is highly efficient without any artificial interference and eliminates the issue of hanging nodes faced by standard finite... 

The authors regret that there is an error with the caption of Figure 10 in the article. The magnification of the SEM image shown in Figure 10(b) is 100×. Furthermore, Ameri et al. [1] is the original source of the image. The correct caption is as follows: Fig. 10. Morphology of pumice aggregate: (a) 30× magnification, (b) 100× magnification [1]. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. [1] F. Ameri, P. Shoaei, S.A. Zareei, B. Behforouz, Geopolymers vs. alkali-activated materials (AAMs): A comparative study on durability, microstructure, and resistance to elevated temperatures of lightweight mortars, Constr. Build. Mater. 222 (2019) 49–63.... 

Aim of study: Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is an aggressive brain cancer in adults that kills most patients in the first year due to ineffective treatment. Different clinical, biomedical, and image data features are needed to analyze GBM, increasing complexities. Besides, they lead to weak performances for machine learning models due to ignoring physicians' knowledge. Therefore, this paper proposes a hierarchical model based on Fuzzy C-mean (FCM) clustering, Wrapper feature selection, and twelve classifiers to analyze treatment plans. Methodology/Approach: The proposed method finds the effectiveness of previous and current treatment plans, hierarchically determining the best decision for... 

In the bone tissue engineering field (BTE), it is of significant importance to develop bioactive multifunctional scaffolds with enhanced osteoconductivity, osteoinductivity, and antibacterial properties required for lost bone tissue regeneration. In this work, a bioactive glass-ceramic scaffold was manufactured via a novel polymer-derived ceramics (PDC) manufacturing method. To gain antibacterial properties, the silver ions were incorporated in controlled amount along with other precursors in the PDC processing stage. Microstructural and structural properties of the fabricated silicate-phosphate glass-ceramic scaffold were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy... 

The growing environmental concerns, governmental regulations, and significant cost savings are the primary motivations for companies to consider the reuse and recovery of products in their inventory system. The previous research ignored several realistic features of reusable items inventory systems, such as the presence of multiple products and operational constraints. For the first time, this paper presents a new multiproduct economic order quantity inventory model for an inventory system of reusable products. The goal of the model is to determine the optimal replenishment quantity and reuse quantity of each item so that the system's total cost is minimized. Several operational constraints... 

Introduction: Diabetic neuropathy is a common complication of diabetes mellitus. It is associated with nerve damage due to oxidative stress and high levels of pro-inflammatory mediators. In the present study, we examined the anti-nociceptive effects of Fullerene nanoparticle, as a potent anti-oxidant, during diabetic neuropathy. Methods: Diabetes mellitus induced through injection of streptozotocin (STZ) (40 mg/kg). Four groups were used in the study as follows: the control, control+fullerene, diabetes, and diabetes +fullerene groups. All four groups received sesame oil. Treatment rats received fullerene C60 (1mg/kg/day) for 9 weeks by intra-gastric gavage. Then, cold allodynia, histology,... 

Intensity-modulated radiation therapy is a well-known technique for treating cancer patients worldwide. A treatment plan in this technique requires decision-making for three main problems: selection of beam angles, intensity map calculation, and leaf sequencing. Previous works investigated these problems sequentially. We present a new integrated framework for simultaneous decision-making of directions, intensities, and aperture shape, called direct angle and aperture optimization, and develop a mixed-integer nonlinear mathematical model for the problem. Due to the nonlinearity and the dimension of the problem, three efficient metaheuristics based on differential evolution (DE) called classic... 

Central Nervous System (CNS) malignant tumors are a leading cause of death worldwide with a high mortality rate. While numerous strategies have been proposed to treat CNS tumors, the treatment efficacy is still low mainly due to the existence of the Blood–Brain Barrier (BBB). BBB is a natural cellular layer between the circulatory system and brain extracellular fluid, limiting the transfer of drug particles and confining the routine treatment strategies in which drugs are released in the blood. Consequently, direct drug delivery methods have been devised to bypass the BBB. However, the efficiency of these methods is not enough to treat deep and large brain tumors. In the study at hand, the... 

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of the acidic components found in the flue gas that can harm industrial facilities and the environment. SO2 adsorption by metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is an emerging method to effectively remove SO2 in low concentrations from the gas mixtures. In this study, amino-functionalized MIL-53(Al), i.e., NH2-MIL-53(Al), was synthesized through the solvothermal method and examined for SO2 adsorption at relatively moderate pressure and temperature (up to 2 bar, 25-80 °). According to the results of XRD, FT-IR, TGA, and DSC analysis, NH2-MIL-53(Al) demonstrated appropriate water, acid, and thermal stability. The SO2 adsorption capacity of NH2-MIL-53(Al) was 5.21 mmol.g-1... 

Snakebite envenoming is an important cause of preventable death. The World Health Organization (WHO) set a goal to halve snakebite mortality by 2030. We used verbal autopsy and vital registration data to model the proportion of venomous animal deaths due to snakes by location, age, year, and sex, and applied these proportions to venomous animal contact mortality estimates from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study. In 2019, 63,400 people (95% uncertainty interval 38,900–78,600) died globally from snakebites, which was equal to an age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) of 0.8 deaths (0.5–1.0) per 100,000 and represents a 36% (2–49) decrease in ASMR since 1990. India had the greatest number... 

Significant attempts have been made to improve the production of ion-selective membranes (ISMs) with higher efficiency and lower prices, while the traditional methods have drawbacks of limitations, high cost of experiments, and time-consuming computations. One of the best approaches to remove the experimental limitations is artificial intelligence (AI). This review discusses the role of AI in materials discovery and ISMs engineering. The AI can minimize the need for experimental tests by data analysis to accelerate computational methods based on models using the results of ISMs simulations. The coupling with computational chemistry makes it possible for the AI to consider atomic features in... 

Visual object tracking remains an active research field in computer vision due to persisting challenges with various problem-specific factors in real-world scenes. Many existing tracking methods based on discriminative correlation filters (DCFs) employ feature extraction networks (FENs) to model the target appearance during the learning process. However, using deep feature maps extracted from FENs based on different residual neural networks (ResNets) has not previously been investigated. This paper aims to evaluate the performance of 12 state-of-the-art ResNet-based FENs in a DCF-based framework to determine the best for visual tracking purposes. First, it ranks their best feature maps and... 

Results are presented from a search for charged-lepton flavor violating (CLFV) interactions in top quark production and decay in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The events are required to contain one oppositely charged electron-muon pair in the final state, along with at least one jet identified as originating from a bottom quark. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1, collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This analysis includes both the production (q → eμt) and decay (t → eμq) modes of the top quark through CLFV interactions, with q referring to a u or c quark. These interactions are parametrized using an effective field theory approach. With... 

Integrated treatment planning for cancer patients has high importance in intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Direct aperture optimization (DAO) is one of the prominent approaches used in recent years to attain this goal. Considering a set of beam directions, DAO is an integrated approach to optimize the intensity and leaf position of apertures in each direction. In this paper, first, a mixed integer-nonlinear mathematical formulation for the DAO problem in IMRT treatment planning is presented. Regarding the complexity of the problem, two well-known metaheuristic algorithms, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evolution (DE), are utilized to solve the model. The...