Sharif Digital Repository

Ion-exchange membrane-based reverse electrodialysis (RED) shows great potential for harvesting osmotic energy from seawater and converting it to electricity. However, their low energy conversion efficiency and huge ionic resistance hinder their application on large scales. The implementation of nanofluidic channels in RED devices can significantly improve the performance of osmotic power generators due to their selective and fast ion transport. However, technical challenges in scalable processing at the nanoscale and ion-selective membranes restrict their development in economically viable generators. Here, we report fibrous-based channels as positively and negatively charged MXene fibers... 

This paper addresses the problem of recovering sparse link vectors with network topological constraints that is motivated by network inference and tomography applications. We propose a novel framework called UCS-NT in the context of compressive sensing for sparse recovery in networks. In order to efficiently recover sparse specification of link vectors, we construct a feasible measurement matrix using this framework through connected paths. It is theoretically shown that, only O(k log(n)) path measurements are sufficient for uniquely recovering any k-sparse link vector. Moreover, extensive simulations demonstrate that this framework would converge to an accurate solution for a wide class of... 

Motivation: The interactions among proteins and the resulting networks of such interactions have a central role in cell biology. Aligning these networks gives us important information, such as conserved complexes and evolutionary relationships. Although there have been several publications on the global alignment of protein networks; however, none of proposed methods are able to produce a highly conserved and meaningful alignment. Moreover, time complexity of current algorithms makes them impossible to use for multiple alignment of several large networks together.Results: We present a novel algorithm for the global alignment of protein-protein interaction networks. It uses a greedy method,... 

We have studied the phase formation of a CoSi2 layer by solid-state reaction of ternary Co/WxTa(1-x)/Si(1 0 0) systems. The effect of cosputtered WxTa(1-x) nanometric interlayers, with different values of x (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1), on the degree of texturing of a CoSi2 layer and disilicide formation of the refractory metals has been investigated. The annealed samples, in a temperature range of 400-1000 °C, were analysed by x-ray diffraction, sheet resistance measurement, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive x-ray techniques. Using W0.25Ta0.75 and W interlayers, the best (1 0 0) texture of the CoSi2 layer with a thermal stability in the range of 900-1000 °C was produced. In... 

Single-crystal epitaxial quality of CoSi 2 films grown on Si(100) by refractory-interlayer-mediated epitaxy has been investigated. Thin layers of 10 nm co-sputtered W x Ta (1-x) , as refractory metal interlayers deposited on the Si, were followed by 25 nm of evaporated Co layer. The fabricated Co/W x Ta (1-x) /Si(100) systems were annealed in a temperature range from 400 to 1000°C in an N 2 (80%) + H 2 (20%) ambient for 1h. The annealed samples were analyzed and compared by sheet resistance measurement, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and wavelength dispersive spectroscopy techniques. In Co/W 0.25 Ta 0.75 /Si(100) system, with the best thermal stability, the grown CoSi 2... 

Comparison of the traditional linear heating method of TPD with an original stepwise heating scheme was reported for the first time. Stepwise heating TPD was carried out by keeping the temperature constant as soon as ammonia desorption signal rises until the signal returns to the baseline. More ammonia desorption peaks on a SAPO-34 catalyst were identified using TPD with stepwise heating. The effect of temperature ramp on desorption peak broadening in TPD curve was also addressed. The more distinct ammonia desorption peaks in stepwise TPD indicates that ammonia adsorbs in about five or six different ways on SAPO-34, and attribution of different adsorptions may be explained considering some... 

Most part of Iran is dominated by arid and semi-arid areas due to low annual rainfall. The need for production of fresh water from brackish water is considerably high, especially in dry regions. In this study 1 month daily-based experimental data from a solar still site has been reported. The technical and operational problems of this site which finally contributed to the total cease of the site are described. Then a detailed analysis is investigated on progress of a prototype which constructed in order to solve the site's problems. The results of 1 month of experimental data of the final design showed that the last prototype could be used to solve the current problems of the site. The... 

Hydrocracking is one of the most versatile petroleum refining processes for production of valuable products including gasoline, gas oil, and jet fuel. In this paper, a five-parameter continuous lumping model was used for kinetic modeling of hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil (VGO). The model parameters were estimated from industrial data obtained from a fixed bed reactor operating at an average temperature of 400°C and residence time of 0.3 h. Product distributions were obtained in terms of the weight fraction of various boiling point cuts. The model parameters were estimated using the Nelder-Mead optimization procedure and were correlated with temperature. Comparison of experimental and... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present an improved methodology for design of custom-made hip prostheses, through integration of advanced image processing, computer aided design (CAD) and additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Design/methodology/approach - The proposed methodology for design of custom-made hip prostheses is based on an independent design criterion for each of the intra-medullary and extra-medullary portions of the prosthesis. The intra-medullar part of the prosthesis is designed using a more accurate and detailed description of the 3D geometry of the femoral intra-medullary cavity, including the septum calcar ridge, so that an improved fill and fit performance... 

In this letter, we propose a method for real-time high density impulse noise suppression from images. In our method, we first apply an impulse detector to identify the corrupted pixels and then employ an innovative weighted-average filter to restore them. The filter takes the nearest neighboring interpolated image as the initial image and computes the weights according to the relative positions of the corrupted and uncorrupted pixels. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the best existing methods in both PSNR measure and visual quality and is quite suitable for real-time applications  

The disposal of used tires is a major environmental problem. With increasing interest on recovery of wastes, pyrolysis is considered as an alternative process for recovering some of the value in scrap tires. An accurate kinetic model is required to predict product yields during thermal or catalytic pyrolysis of scrap tires. Pyrolysis products contain a variety of hydrocarbons over a wide boiling range. A common approach for kinetic modeling of such complex systems is lumping where each lump is defined by a boiling point range. Available experimental data for thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of scrap tires from the literature were used to evaluate two types of lumping models; discrete and... 

Compared with flat linear structures, tubular linear machines do not face edge effects, making their performance better than their flat counterparts. In this article, a novel linear variable-reluctance resolver with tubular configuration is proposed. To optimize the design of an electromagnetic structure, modeling methods are used. Thus, in this article, an analytical model for the proposed resolver is presented. This model is based on the magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) method and is considerably less time-consuming than finite element analysis (FEA), yet provides accurate results. A conformal mapping is employed to compute the permeance of the air-gap. The proposed model is then utilized... 

In Brukner and Zeilinger's interpretation of quantum mechanics, information is introduced as the most fundamental notion and the finiteness of information is considered as an essential feature of quantum systems. They also define a new measure of information which is inherently different from the Shannon information and try to show that the latter is not useful in defining the information content in a quantum object. Here, we show that there are serious problems in their approach which make their efforts unsatisfactory. The finiteness of information does not explain how objective results appear in experiments and what an instantaneous change in the so-called information vector (or catalog of... 

Low silicon content SAPO-34 was successfully synthesized using the conventional hydrothermal crystallization in the static condition. Effects of different synthesis conditions including crystallization temperature and the silicon source were investigated through X-ray diffraction patterns. It was concluded that the silicon source had a significant effect on silicon incorporation into the alumino-phosphate building blocks in the course of crystallization. Using precipitated silica instead of silica sol resulted in the formation of impurities of alumino-phosphates phases whose crystalline structures collapse at the high temperature of calcination. For the low silicon SAPO-34 synthesis, the... 

Let R be a left Noetherian ring and ZD(R) be the set of all zero-divisors of R. In this paper, it is shown that if RZD(R) is finite, then R is finite