Sharif Digital Repository

A genetic programming technique was employed to develop empirical models for predicting specific wear rate and coefficient of friction on brake friction materials. The models consist of independent variables representing the volume fraction of the ingredients. The average absolute relative error for specific wear rate and coefficient of friction were found to be 1.93% and 1.92%, respectively. The models were also verified by the experimental data used for further control of the formulation. Utilizing Tornado plots, the models were found to be able to properly demonstrate the role of the ingredients on overall tribological performance of the brake friction materials. Moreover, a non-dominated... 

We describe several return code schemes for secure vote submission in electronic voting systems. We consider a unified treatment where a return code is generated as a multiparty computation of a secure MAC tag applied on an encrypted message submitted by a voter. Our proposals enjoy a great level of flexibility with respect to various usability, security, and performance tradeoffs. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG  

Hill is a classical cipher which is generally believed to be resistant against ciphertext-only attack. In this paper, by using a divide-and-conquer technique, it is first shown that Hill with d×d key matrix over Z26 can be broken with computational complexity of O(d26d), for the English language. This is much less than the only publicly known attack, i.e., the brute-force with complexity of O(d326d2). Then by using the Chinese Remainder Theorem, it is shown that the computational complexity of the proposed attack can be reduced down to O(d13d). Using an information-theoretic approach, it is shown that the minimum ciphertext length required for a successful attack increases by a factor of... 

We investigate the dynamic localization of light in the sinusoidal bent squeezed-like photonic lattices, a class of inhomogeneous semi-infinite waveguide arrays. Our findings show that, dynamic localization takes place for the normalized amplitude of sinusoidal profile (α) above a critical value α c. In this regime, for any normalized amplitude α>αc, there is a specific spatial period (ℓ) of waveguides, in which the dynamical oscillation, with the same spatial period occurs. Moreover, the specific spatial period is a decreasing function of the normalized amplitude α. Accordingly, the dynamical oscillation and self-imaging is realized, in spite of the existence of inhomogeneous coupling... 

Poly(vinyl alcohol)/graphene oxide mixed matrix membranes have been prepared and applied for the pervaporation of isooctane (aliphatic) and toluene (aromatic) mixtures. Characteristics of the membranes such as crystallinity, morphology, and swelling have been investigated, and the results have been used to describe pervaporation performance. Experimental tests evidenced that incorporation of low content of graphene oxide nanoplates (0.5 wt%) in poly(vinyl alcohol) increases affinity of the membrane to aromatics by S and π bonds and selectivity increase to about four times. Moreover, interaction of graphene oxide with toluene results in increasing of swelling and decreasing of permeation... 

Removal of aromatic compounds from fuel is an essential requirement in new environmental policies. In the present study, poly(vinyl alcohol)/graphene oxide (GO) mixed matrix membranes were prepared and applied to the separation of toluene from iso-octane by pervaporation, considering the similarity and interaction between graphene and aromatics. The effects of crosslinking and GO content on separation efficiency have been investigated in detail. Owing to the high affinity of GO with toluene through s and π bonds, the selectivity of the membranes was increased by incorporating a low amount of GO. The results also indicated that noncrosslinked membranes have higher selectivity and permeation... 

Formation of the amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide aggregations represents an indispensable role in appearing and progression of Alzheimer disease. β-sheet breaker peptides can be designed and modified with different amino acids in order to improve biological properties and binding affinity to the amyloid beta peptide. In the present study, three peptide sequences were designed based on the hopeful results of LIAIMA peptide and molecular docking studies were carried out onto the monomer and fibril structure of amyloid beta peptide using AutoDock Vina software. According to the obtained interactions and binding energy from docking, the best-designed peptide (D-GABA-FPLIAIMA) was chosen and... 

Karyotype is a genetic test that is used for detection of chromosomal defects. In a karyotype test, an image is captured from chromosomes during the cell division. The captured images are then analyzed by cytogeneticists in order to detect possible chromosomal defects. In this paper, we have proposed an automated pipeline for analysis of karyotype images. There are three main steps for karyotype image analysis: image enhancement, image segmentation and chromosome classification. In this paper, we have proposed a novel chromosome segmentation algorithm to decompose overlapped chromosomes. We have also proposed a CNN-based classifier which outperforms all the existing classifiers. Our...