Sharif Digital Repository

Human error including driving misbehavior contributes to over 90 percent of road vehicle accidents, and speeding is considered to be risky. Smart technologies, such as Connected Vehicle System (CVS) are among the interesting technical options to improve driving behavior, and Pay-As-You-Speed (PAYS) is an effective economic incentive to reduce speed violations. We investigated the acceptability of CVS with and without the presence of economic incentives, such as PAYS, in the context of a middle-income country: Iran. We used a Zero-Inflated Ordered Probit model (ZIOP) to estimate drivers’ willingness to pay for a CVS, and a hazard-based model for predicting the incentive level needed for... 

We insert some asymmetries into the continuous Abelian sandpile models, such as directedness and ellipticity. We analyze probability distribution of different heights and also find the corresponding field theories. Also we find the fields associated with some height variables. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd  

Appreciation of stochastic Loewner evolution (SLEκ), as a powerful tool to check for conformal invariant properties of geometrical features of critical systems has been rising. In this paper we use this method to check conformal invariance in sandpile models. Avalanche frontiers in Abelian sandpile model are numerically shown to be conformally invariant and can be described by SLE with diffusivity κ=2. This value is the same as value obtained for loop-erased random walks. The fractal dimension and Schramm's formula for left passage probability also suggest the same result. We also check the same properties for Zhang's sandpile model. © 2009 The American Physical Society  

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of structural lightweight concrete with glass fiber reinforcement (GFRP) bar for prefabricated single footing. In this study, seven full scale concrete single footings specimens, which were reinforced by GFRP bar located on a bed of soil, were tested. One of the specimens was made of normal weight concrete and the others were made of structural lightweight concrete. Four of the lightweight footing specimens contained polymer fibers. Also, two of the lightweight footing specimens contained shear reinforcement. Results indicated that the maximum GFRP strain on normal weight and lightweight concrete footing with polypropylene fibers are... 

We check the universality properties of the two-dimensional Abelian sandpile model by computing some of its properties on the honeycomb lattice. Exact expressions for unit-height correlation functions in the presence of boundaries and for different boundary conditions are derived. Also, we study the statistics of the boundaries of avalanche waves by using the theory of SLE and suggest that these curves are conformally invariant and described by SLE 2  

A new gelator based of oleylamide has been introduced, which was gelled nonpolar hydrocarbon and CCl4 solvents through self-assembly. Also, the gelator formed a two-component hydrogel in combination with SDS, an anionic surfactant. UV-Vis studies revealed that the H-type and J-type aggregation of organogels in hexane and hydrogel in water, respectively. The xerogel, obtained by evaporating the solvent of organogel, selectively gelled and adsorbed oil spills on water surfaces. The effect of the various parameters, including temperature, water acidity and pH on the oil spill adsorption was studied, revealing the high ability of the xerogel to removing the oil contamination from water in up to... 

While standard Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) training is proven effective for image classification on in-distribution data, it fails to perform well on out-of-distribution samples. One of the main sources of distribution shift for image classification is the compositional nature of images. Specifically, in addition to the main object or component(s) determining the label, some other image components usually exist, which may lead to the shift of input distribution between train and test environments. More importantly, these components may have spurious corre-lations with the label. To address this issue, we propose Decompose-and-Compose (DaC), which improves robustness to correlation... 

We have investigated the "weak chaos" exponent to see if it can be considered as a classification parameter of different sandpile models. Our simulation results show that the (Abelian) BTW sandpile model, the (non-Abelian) Zhang model, and the ("Abelian") Manna model possesses different "weak chaos" exponents, so they may belong to different universality classes. Finally, we show that getting off the critical point destroys this behavior in these models  

We have considered the Abelian sandpile model on a small-world network. To obtain a small-world network, we have added a few long-ranged bonds to an ordinary square lattice. It is observed that the probability distribution of the avalanches has two distinct power-law regimes: one corresponding to the ordinary BTW model and another that emerges because of the small-world structure of the network  

In this paper we investigate the effect of the number of dissipative sites in an Abelian sandpile model. The dissipative sites are considered to be in the bulk rather than in the boundary. In such systems, statistics of avalanches smaller than a certain size obey a power law. We have seen that the exponents associated with these power law behaviors change slightly as the number of dissipative sites is decreased. We have found that the zero dissipation limits of these exponents are independent of size. Therefore we suggest that the previously-seen dependence of the exponent on the system size is because of the number of dissipative sites rather than the system size. Also it is observed that... 

In this paper we consider the Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld (BTW) sand-pile model with local violation of conservation through annealed and quenched disorder. We have observed that the probability distribution functions of avalanches have two distinct exponents, one of which is associated with the usual BTW model and another one which we propose to belong to a new fixed point; that is, a crossover from the original BTW fixed point to a new fixed point is observed. Through field theoretic calculations, we show that such a perturbation is relevant and takes the system to a new fixed point  

We consider an interacting system of spin variables on a loopy interaction graph, identified by a tree graph and a set of loopy interactions. We start from a high-temperature expansion for loopy interactions represented by a sum of non-negative contributions from all the possible frustration-free loop configurations. We then compute the loop corrections using different approximations for the nonlocal loop interactions induced by the spin correlations in the tree graph. For distant loopy interactions, we can exploit the exponential decay of correlations in the tree interaction graph to compute loop corrections within an independent-loop approximation. Higher orders of the approximation are... 

In this paper we consider sandpile models and modify the drive mechanisms to control the size of avalanches. The modification to the drive mechanism is local. We have studied the scaling behavior of the BTW and Manna models. We have found that the BTW model is more sensitive to the modification than the Manna model. Furthermore we have assigned a cost function to each avalanche and have found an optimum value for the modification to arrive at the lowest cost © 2019  

In the presence of interactions the frequency of a simple harmonic oscillator deviates from the noninteracting one. Various methods can be used to compute the changes to the frequency perturbatively. Some of them resemble the methods used in quantum field theory (QFT) where the bare values of the parameters of the theory run when an interaction is added. In this paper, we review some of these techniques and introduce some new ones in line with QFT methods. Moreover, we investigate the case of more than one oscillator to see how the frequencies of small oscillations change when non-linear terms are added to a linear system and observe an interesting beat phenomenon in degenerate coupled... 

The Abelian sandpile model (ASM) is a paradigm of self-organized criticality (SOC) which is related to c ≤ -2 conformal field theory. The conformal fields corresponding to some height clusters have been suggested before. Here we derive the first corrections to such fields, in a field theoretical approach, when the lattice parameter is non-vanishing, and consider them in the presence of a boundary. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd  

Working with tree graphs is always easier than with loopy ones and spanning trees are the closest tree-like structures to a given graph. We find a correspondence between the solutions of random K-satisfiability problem and those of spanning trees in the associated factor graph. We introduce a modified survey propagation algorithm which returns null edges of the factor graph and helps us to find satisfiable spanning trees. This allows us to study organization of satisfiable spanning trees in the space spanned by spanning trees. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd  

How can we remove some interactions (generate shorter clauses) in a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) such that it still remains satisfiable? In this paper we study a modified survey propagation algorithm that enables us to address this question for a prototypical CSP, i.e., random K -satisfiability problem. The average number of removed interactions is controlled by a tuning parameter in the algorithm. If the original problem is satisfiable then we are able to construct satisfiable subproblems ranging from the original one to a minimal one with minimum possible number of interactions. The minimal satisfiable subproblems will directly provide the solutions of the original problem. © 2006... 

In this paper we study biased random K-satisfiability (K-SAT) problems in which each logical variable is negated with probability p. This generalization provides us a crossover from easy to hard problems and would help us in a better understanding of the typical complexity of random K-SAT problems. The exact solution of 1-SAT case is given. The critical point of K-SAT problems and results of replica method are derived in the replica symmetry framework. It is found that in this approximation αcp-(K-1) for p→0. Solving numerically the survey propagation equations for K=3 we find that for p