Sharif Digital Repository

Rapidly improving video-editing software tools and algorithms have made video content manipulation and modification feasible even by inexpert users. Detecting video tampering and recovering the original content of the tampered videos is, thus, a major need in many applications. Although detection and localization of the tampering in certain types of video editing have successfully been addressed in the literature, attempts for recovering the tampered videos are bound to methods using watermarks. In this paper, a scheme for the reconstruction of the tampered video through watermarking is proposed. The watermark payload, which consists of highly compressed versions of keyframes of the video... 

Rapidly improving video-editing software tools and algorithms have made video content manipulation and modification feasible even by inexpert users. Detecting video tampering and recovering the original content of the tampered videos is, thus, a major need in many applications. Although detection and localization of the tampering in certain types of video editing have successfully been addressed in the literature, attempts for recovering the tampered videos are bound to methods using watermarks. In this paper, a scheme for the reconstruction of the tampered video through watermarking is proposed. The watermark payload, which consists of highly compressed versions of keyframes of the video... 

Median filtering has received extensive attention from forensics analyzers, as a common content-preserving, smoothing, and denoising manipulation. We propose a detection scheme for median filtering of video sequences in compressed domain based on the singular value decomposition of the process matrix, which approximates the median filtering. Projection over some of the eigenspaces of the process matrix gives a set of features of small dimension, even as small as three, making the proposed scheme a fast and suitable detector for video median filtering. The experimental evaluations show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art detectors of median filtering, and its edge... 

Silica composite membranes and BaCe0.9Y0.1O3-δ (BCY) perovskite membranes were successfully synthesized to separate hydrogen in an equimolar mixture of H2, CH4, CO, and CO2 at temperature range of 500–900 °C and pressure difference of 1 bar. The phase structure of both membranes was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was used to evaluate phase stability of perovskite membrane. FESEM images confirmed graded structure of silica membrane and uniform, dense structure of perovskite membrane. H2 permeation in semi-dense silica layer deposited on alumina substrate indicated that permeation in top selective layer follows a diffusion mechanism which is based on... 

A hydrogen-selective nano-composite ceramic membrane was prepared by depositing a dense layer composed of SiO2 and Al2O 3 on top of a graded multilayer substrate using co-current chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The multilayer substrate was made by dip-coating a macroporous α-alumina tubular support by a series of boehmite solutions to get a graded structure. Using DLS analysis, it was concluded that decreasing hydrolysis time and increasing acid concentration lead to smaller particle size of boehmite sols. XRD analysis was carried out to investigate the structure of intermediate layer and an optimized calcination temperature of 973 K was obtained. SEM images indicated the formation... 

Tubular ceramic membranes were synthesized by depositing a dense layer of silica-alumina on top of a multilayer substrate using co-current chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The multilayer substrate was prepared by coating with a series of bohemite sols with certain particle sizes. Cross-sectional and surface images obtained from high resolution FESEM showed that the intermediate layer had a thickness of about 1μm and the top selective layer was uniform and dense with a thickness of less than 100nm. Permeance tests, which were carried out with H 2, CO 2, N 2 and CH 4 at a high temperature range of 923-1073K, indicated that gas permeation took place via different mechanisms through... 

As the demand for hydrogen increases, a practical way of separating pure hydrogen from a gas mixture, e.g., synthesis gas, is becoming more important. Among the various separation techniques, dense membranes with mixed protonic-electronic conductors offer a simple way for obtaining hydrogen from gas streams at high temperatures. The hydrogen permeation and stability of BaCe0.8Y0.1M0.1O3-δ (M= Fe, Ni, Co, Yb) perovskite-type membranes were studied at high temperatures. A single phase perovskite structure with orthorhombic configuration for all membranes was observed. For BaCe0.8Y0.1M0.1O3-δ (M = Ni, Yb) membrane, the permeation flux increased by increasing temperature due to the higher... 

The BaCe0.9Y0.1O3-δ (BCY) perovskite membrane was successfully synthesized by liquid citrate method. The phase structure of the powder was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to characterize microstructures of the membrane sintered under various conditions. Sintering temperatures and dwell time during sintering influence the final microstructure of the ceramic. Results showed that increasing sintering temperature resulted in a dense membrane with clear grains. An increase of dwell time was favorable to produce membranes with larger grains in the sintered ceramics. A density of 5.87 g/cm3 was reached for the membrane after sintering at 1200 °C... 

Hydrogen permeation through ACe0.9Y0.1O3-δ (A = Sr, Ba, La, and BaSr) perovskite-type membranes was studied at high temperatures. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) were used to characterize phase structure and phase stability of the membrane. The XRD results showed the formation of a single phase of perovskite structure with configuration orthorhombic for BCY and BSCY membranes. Based on the TGA results, it was found that the phase stability increases in the order of LCY < SCY < BCY < BSCY. The microstructure examinations of the synthesized membranes studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed the formation of a dense-like... 

A catalytic membrane reactor was synthesized by coating a 4-5 micron thick Ni/γ-Al2O3 layer on top of a hydrogen selective SiO2/Al2O3 composite membrane using a sol-gel method. Mercury intrusion and BET analysis indicated a uniform size distribution with an average pore size of 285 nm and average surface area of 279 m2 g-1. Single-component permeation tests were carried out for H2, CH4 and CO2 in the temperature range of 650-800 °C and the results showed the same permeance and selectivity values for hydrogen as the composite membrane without a catalytic layer. Performance of the catalytic membrane was evaluated by using as a membrane reactor for the methane steam reforming reaction with a... 

This paper investigates a multi-cluster Wireless Powered Communication Network (WPCN) where user clusters cooperate with a Cluster Head (CH) and a Hybrid Access Point (HAP). Employing beamforming, the HAP supplies energy in the downlink phase, while users transmit signals to the HAP and CHs in the uplink phase. We optimize the Energy Beamforming (EB) matrix, user transmit covariance matrices, and time slot allocation to enhance both max-min and sum network throughput. To tackle the non-convexity of the optimization problems, we decompose them into two subproblems and reformulate each as convex Second Order Cone Programming (SOCP) and Quadratic Constraint Quadratic Programming (QCQP) for the... 

This paper is a counterfactual analysis investigating the consequences of the formation of a currency union for Canada and the USA: whether outputs increase and prices decrease if these countries form a currency union. We use a two-country cointegrated model to conduct the counterfactual analysis, where the conditional forecasts are generated based on the Gaussian assumption. To deal with structural breaks and model uncertainty, conditional forecasts are generated from different models/estimation windows and the model-averaging technique is used to combine the forecasts. We also examine the robustness of our results to parameter uncertainty using the wild bootstrap method. The results show...