Sharif Digital Repository

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  

Transaction cost theory is largely used to investigate the formal domain of land and housing. In the informal domain, however, this perspective has been employed largely as a supplement in addressing the other fundamental notion in new institutional economics—property rights—despite the possibility that informality in land development can emerge regardless of the informality or formality of such rights. To cover this gap, this study developed a theoretical framework based on transaction cost theory to explain the formal–informal dichotomy in land development. The proposed framework maintains that land development depends on engaging in transactions that involve total or partial ownership of... 

Transaction cost theory is largely used to investigate the formal domain of land and housing. In the informal domain, however, this perspective has been employed largely as a supplement in addressing the other fundamental notion in new institutional economics—property rights—despite the possibility that informality in land development can emerge regardless of the informality or formality of such rights. To cover this gap, this study developed a theoretical framework based on transaction cost theory to explain the formal–informal dichotomy in land development. The proposed framework maintains that land development depends on engaging in transactions that involve total or partial ownership of... 

Multisensor arrays employing various sensing principles are a rapidly developing field of research as they allow simple and inexpensive quantification of various parameters in complex samples. Quantitative analysis with such systems is based on multivariate regression techniques, and deriving of traditional analytical figures of merit (e.g., sensitivity, selectivity, limit of detection, and limit of quantitation) for such systems is not obvious and straightforward. Nevertheless, it is absolutely needed for further development of the multisensor research field and for introducing these instruments into the general context of analytical chemistry. Here, we report on the protocol for... 

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods have been widely used around the world to improve oil production from petroleum reservoirs. Recently, the injection of the low salinity/smart water has gained popularity among the EOR methods. Different mechanisms are believed to exist during low salinity/smart water injection, including dissolution, precipitation, and ion exchange at the rock surface. In this study, a coupled geochemical-transport model is presented for the detailed analysis and investigation of the interactions between brine, sandstone and carbonate rocks. The proposed model presents the coupling of a geochemical software (PHREEQC) and a species transport model. This coupled method makes... 

The direct laser sintering of Al-7Si-0.3Mg/SiC composites was studied. It is shown that the densification rate obeys first-order kinetics. The rate constant is found to increase at low SiC fractions but abruptly decreases at >∼5 vol.%. In the presence of ceramic particles, the melt track becomes more stable and a more continuous sintered surface is obtained. Meanwhile, significant reaction occurs between the aluminum melt and the reinforcement particles, leading to formation of Al4SiC4 and silicon particles. The solidification microstructure is also altered. © 2008 Acta Materialia Inc  

Pool fire modeling and risk assessment is very important and essential especially in systems with large flammable fuel inventories, e.g., refineries, offshore oil platforms, or fuel transportation systems. Results obtained from pool fire risk assessment can be used in setting up safety measure or emergency planning. Pool fire modeling is used to evaluate the heat flux at various target points around the fire source. The two major approaches in pool fire modeling are semi-empirical models and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which are called field models. Semi-empirical models are based on correlations fitted to data from large-scale Experiments and are used more frequently than CFD models... 

A major challenge for designers of competitive electricity markets is to devise market rules that limit the capability of electricity producers to exercise market power. Market power is the ability of a firm owning generation assets to raise the market price by its bidding behavior and to profit from this price increase. In addition, an important plan of market monitoring units in long term and competition policy framework is to persuade the participants to bid prices near to their marginal costs. Therefore, estimation of marginal cost function is important in way that Regulatory use it to increase competition in electricity markets. Bid price of the power plant to the power market contains... 

In this paper, the existence of periodic solutions of autonomous ordinary differential equations of a 4th and 5th order is investigated. The method used is based on the Brower's degree theorem using the homotopy invariant a property of a topological degree. © Sharif University of Technology, April 2008  

The adaptive capability of filters is known to be increased by incorporating a neural network into the filtering procedure. In this paper, an adaptive algorithm for tracking maneuvering targets based on neural networks is proposed. This algorithm is implemented with two filters based on the current statistical model and a multilayer feedforward neural network. The two filters track the same maneuvering target in parallel and the neural network automatically considers all the state information of the two filters and adaptively adjusts the process variance of one of them to achieve better performance in different target maneuver tracking. Simulations results show that the proposed adaptive... 

In this paper, the optimization of long term operation and determination of the reliability level of a hydro-thermal power system are integrated into a unified model. Inflow to reservoirs is modeled as a random variable. Furthermore, the demand for energy is also assumed to be a random variable with normal distribution. In order to minimize the total cost, the reliability level of the system is determined, rather than considering it as a priori input data. Since the resulting model is a large-scale stochastic nonlinear programming, it is necessary to develop a special method to solve it. This method, which provides an optimal solution within three stages, consists of a decomposition... 

Vibration analysis of a gantry crane subjected to a moving trolley hoisting a swinging object is studied in this paper. The finite element method is used to model the dynamical system. Newmark's and Runge-Kutta techniques are used for direct integration of the equation of motion of the structure and the moving object respectively. The moving suspended load is modeled with a non-linear equation of motion including two degrees of freedom i.e. hoisting in conjunction with swinging. A series of numerical simulations are carried out to provide a comprehensive parametric study. The study is directed to identify dynamic characteristics of the coupled non-linear system as well as to provide... 

This article investigates optimization of long-term operation of hydrothermal power systems consisting of cascaded reservoirs. Due to stochasticity of reservoir inflows, demand for energy, and unit forced outages, the uncertainty of this system is so significant that reliability of demand satisfaction becomes an indispensable component of the modelling process. On the other hand, existence of stochastic parameters, especially in the case of cascaded reservoirs, makes the problem very difficult to solve by applying existing optimization techniques. A hybrid genetic algorithm with dynamic tuning of its control parameters is developed that incorporates real number encoding and an analytical... 

The arithmetic mean of the first n Fibonacci numbers is not an integer for all n. However, for some values of n, it is. In this paper we consider the sequence of integers n for which the average of the first n Fibonacci numbers is an integer. We prove some interesting properties and present two related conjectures. © 2022, University of Waterloo. All rights reserved  

Although there is extensive experimental, theoretical and numerical research on dynamics of drop formation in liquid-liquid systems, the evaluation of mass transfer during drop formation is rather complex and there has been little research on that. The various mathematical models developed for this problem are generally based on a solution of the diffusion equation without any allowance for circulation within the drop. This is the main reason for the poor prediction of these models in many cases for which internal convection has an important effect on mass transfer rate. In this paper an attempt was made to define a parameter related to the extent of the convective mixing within the growing... 

In this paper, the third order differential equation x‴ + ψ (x′)x″ + (κ2 +ø (x))x′ + f(t, x = e(t) is considered. Under certain conditions on the functions appearing in the differential equation, the existence of periodic solutions is proved. Similar problems have been treated by authors in [4,6,7]. However, the method employed here is used by Reissig [1] and the results obtained are, in fact, a generalization of those in [1-3]. The conditions imposed on the nonlinear terms do not require the ultimate boundedness of all solutions. © Sharif University of Technology  

In this article the interaction of branes at angles with respect to each other with non-zero internal gauge fields are calculated by construction of the boundary states in spacetime in which some of its directions are compact on tori. The interaction depends on both angle and fields. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V  

In this paper we study and evaluate the performance of a spectral-phase encoded optical CDMA (SPE-OCDMA) system using advanced receiver structures based on second harmonic generation (SHG) effect imposed in a Thick or Thin crystal. This receiver structure is employed as the nonlinear pre-processor prior to the conventional low-speed photodetector. In our performance evaluation amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) of the optical amplifiers, receiver front end thermal noise and photodetector shot noise which are effective in low power conditions, and multiple access interference (MAI) noise which is the dominant source of noise in high power conditions in any coherent OCDMA communications... 

On July 24th, 2010, several explosions and fires devastated a hydrocarbon processing plant in Kharg Island, Iran. Four workers were killed and many others were severely injured. The plant became out of service for 80 days. The way the accident happened and its sequence was representing as a domino accident. In this paper, events leading up to the disaster have been analyzed in details. Graphic presentation techniques such as Fish Bone Analysis and Event Sequence Diagram (ESD) have been utilized to enhance the understanding of the accident mechanism. Finally major lessons learnt from this domino accident have been addressed