Sharif Digital Repository

The reactivity of different carboxylate esters for the Fries rearrangements has been investigated in a solvent-free reaction using sulfated zirconia as a solid acid catalyst  

Characterization and calcination behavior of a low-grade manganese ore, as a part of Mn ferroalloys production, was studied by XRF, ex-situ XRD, in-situ XRD, and SEM-EDS techniques. Calcination experiments were carried out at and up to 900 °C (1173 K) in air and argon atmospheres. The samples were in particles and powder forms. The results indicated that both quartz and calcite phases in the ore exhibit a bimodal spatial distribution; as relatively large regions and finely distributed in the Mn- and Fe-containing phases. By Rietveld analysis of the in-situ XRD data, the reactions occurring upon heating during the calcination process were deduced. Thermal decomposition and reactive diffusion... 

A mixture of MgO and graphite with a molar ratio (1:1) was subjected to planetary ball milling for 1, 2, 4, and 8 h with the intention of enhancing carbothermic reduction reaction of MgO during subsequent thermal treatment. Unmilled and milled mixtures were characterized using a combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), surface area analysis (SSA), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The reduction reaction of milled samples occurred at lower temperature than that of the unmilled sample. A longer milling time engenders a lower reaction temperature. These results are attributable to the increased interfacial area of the sample... 

Incorporating numerical simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics, the aggregation and detection of superparamagnetic nanoparticles in microfluidic channels are investigated. Considering the physical specifications of the implemented microchannels, the parameters which determine the ability of the system for aggregation and detection of the particles are examined and simulated. Based on the simulation results, we propose a new approach for both capturing and detecting of the magnetic nanoparticles passing through microchannels  

Let G be a graph on n vertices with r := [n/2] and let γ 1 ≥ · · · ≥ γ n be adjacency eigenvalues of G. Then the Ḧuckel energy of G, HE(G), is defined as [Equation presented] The concept of Hückel energy was introduced by Coulson as it gives a good approximation for the π-electron energy of molecular graphs. We obtain two upper bounds and a lower bound for HE(G). When n is even, it is shown that equality holds in both upper bounds if and only if G is a strongly regular graph with parameters (n, k, γ, μ) = (4t2 + 4t + 2, 2t2 + 3t + 1, t2 + 2t, t2 + 2t + 1), for positive integer t. Furthermore, we will give an infinite family of these strongly regular graph whose construction was communicated... 

This paper presents an effective control strategy for autonomous operation of a multi-bus medium voltage (MV) microgrid (MG) consisting of several dispatchable distributed generation (DG) units. Each electronically-coupled DG unit supplies the loads which can be unbalanced due to the inclusion of single-phase loads. The proportional resonance (PR) and droop controllers are, respectively, used to regulate the load voltage and share the average powers among the DG units. The virtual negative-sequence impedance controller (VNSIC) is proposed to effectively compensate the negative-sequence currents of the unbalanced loads. Moreover, the VNSIC minimizes the negative-sequence currents in the MV... 

Surgical simulators have been widely used in training and evaluation of physicians and surgeons. Virtual reality augmented with haptic technology has made it feasible to develop more realistic surgical simulators. In this context, we set out to design and develop a brain surgery bipolar electrocautery simulator using haptic technology. A 3D model of brain tissue was generated based on a brain craniotomy image. Bipolar forceps were also modeled to visually assimilate real forceps. An experiment was developed to assess the learning process of the participants. In this experiment, the volunteers were asked to cauterize a large blood vessel in the brain while minimizing the damage done to the... 

Background and objective There are many cells with various phenotypic behaviors in cancer interacting with each other. For example, an apoptotic cell may induce apoptosis in adjacent cells. A living cell can also protect cells from undergoing apoptosis and necrosis. These survival and death signals are propagated through interaction pathways between adjacent cells called gap junctions. The function of these signals depends on the cellular context of the cell receiving them. For instance, a receiver cell experiencing a low level of oxygen may interpret a received survival signal as an apoptosis signal. In this study, we examine the effect of these signals on tumor growth. Methods We make an... 

A huge amount of web services are deployed on the Web, nowadays. These services can be used to fulfill online requests. Requests are getting more and more complicated over time. So, there exists a lot of frequent request that cannot be fulfilled using just one web service. For using web services, composing individual services to create the added-value composite web service to fulfill the user request is necessary in most cases. Web services can be composed manually but it is a too tedious and time consuming task. The ability of automatic web service composition to create a new composite web service is one of the key enabling features for the future for the semantic web. There are some... 

Thin-film solar cells based on hybrid organo-halide lead perovskites achieve over 22% power conversion efficiency (PCE). A photovoltaic technology at such high performance is no longer limited by efficiency. Instead, lifetime and reliability become the decisive criteria for commercialization. This requires a standardized and scalable architecture which does fulfill all requirements for larger area solution processing. One of the most highly demanded technologies is a low temperature and printable conductive ink to substitute evaporated metal electrodes for the top contact. Importantly, that electrode technology must have higher environmental stability than, for instance, an evaporated silver... 

To study the mechanism of tsunami wave forces on round-ended piers and the force calculation method, a series of round-ended piers with different ratios of length to width (L/D, D is the diameter of the semicircle at both ends, L is the rectangular length between two end semicircles) are taken as the research object of this study. Firstly, a series of tsunami waves are experimentally generated over dry-bed and wet-beds with different water depths in a dam-break flume. Secondly, the pressure time histories on the outer sides of the round-ended piers are presented and explored. After that, the characteristics of the resultant force and moment at the pier bottom, the maximum force and moment as... 

In this study Al2O3-SiC micro/nanocomposites have been fabricated by mixing alumina nanopowders and silicon carbide micro/nanopowders, followed by hot pressing at 1550, 1600, 1650 and 1700°C. The density, mechanical properties and fracture mode of Al2O3-SiC composites containing different volume fractions (2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10% and 15%) of micro/nanoscale SiC particles were investigated and compared with those of alumina. The relative density of composites could reach values very close to theoretical density, especially after sintering at 1700°C. However, relative density declined by increasing the SiC fraction at the same sintering temperature. The flexural strength of composites was best for... 

This paper proposes a hybrid optimization method that combines the power of the harmony search (HS) with the mine blast algorithm (MBA). The resulting mine blast harmony search (MBHS) uses MBA for exploration and HS for exploitation. The HS is inspired by the improvisation process of musicians, while the MBA is derived based on explosion of landmines. The HS used in the hybrid algorithm is an improved version, introducing a new concept for the harmony memory size, while the MBA is modified in terms of its mathematical formulation. Several numerical problems and benchmarks with many design variables and constraints are used to validate MBHS, and the optimization results are compared with... 

In this paper, the energy absorption capacity of continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic auxetic structures is examined experimentally and the results compared with both numerical and analytical methods. To this extent, a 3 D printing technology of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is implemented for fabricating the auxetic honeycombs and quasi-static compression test is conducted to extract the load-displacement behavior of the structure. Both hollow and foam filled lattice structures are tested, and the results revealed that the absorbed energy increased by 20% for PLA and 70% for PA specimens, when using foam. Finite element analysis is also performed using the explicit solver. The onset... 

A unique combination of a supported cobalt complex and the first example of supported NHPI in acetic acid gives a surprisingly stable heterogeneous catalytic system for the selective aerobic oxidation of methylaromatics to benzaldehydes at atmospheric pressure. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2005  

An expression is proposed to evaluate the ordered-packed volume fraction of hard spheres of unequal diameters in multicomponent mixtures. This value can be used with different mixing rules and with any one-component hard-sphere equation of state (EOS) meeting the correct close-packed limit. It is shown that the new method improves the results produced by conventional mixing rules for the individual radial distribution functions (RDFs) at contact value of hard-sphere mixtures. Particular attention is given to the case of the large diameter ratio especially when the larger spheres are at low concentration. Based on the observation that, in a binary mixture, the value of the RDF at contact... 

The predictions of the pair radial distribution function (RDF) at contact value, compressibility factor, and chemical potentials for binary and ternary hard-sphere mixtures obtained with the Barrio-Solana, the Santos et al., and the generalized Lebowitz mixing rules are compared using the Carnahan-Starling, Kolafa, and Khoshkbarchi-Vera one-component hard-sphere EOS. An expression for the pair RDF at contact value for Barrio-Solana mixing rule and the expressions for the chemical potentials in multicomponent hard-sphere fluids are derived. As a general rule, the equations of state obtained based on the generalized Lebowitz mixing rule predict better the pair RDF at contact value simulated... 

Two new hard-sphere EOS are proposed and tested using the same attractive potential terms used by the SAFT EOS. Generalized expressions for the pair RDF at contact value, the compressibility factor, and the excess chemical potentials have been derived. Extension to mixtures is tested using three mixing rules for multicomponent hard-sphere fluids. The proposed EOS combined with the Santos et al. and the Barrio-Solana mixing rules reproduced the compressibility factors and the excess chemical potentials more accurately than the Boublik-Mansoori-Carnahan-Starling-Leland (BMCSL) EOS. However the pair RDF at contact value had larger deviations than those obtained with the BMCSL EOS. The... 

Recently, there has been a growing attention in frequent itemset mining in distributed systems. In this paper, we present an algorithm to extract frequent itemsets from large distributed datasets. Our algorithm uses gossip as the communication mechanism and does not rely on any central node. In gossip based communication, nodes repeatedly select other random nodes in the system, and exchange information with them. Our algorithm proceeds in rounds and provides all nodes with the required support counts of itemsets, such that each node is able to extract the global frequent itemsets. For local iteration and generation of candidate itemsets, a trie data structure is used, which facilitates the... 

Continuous shrinking of transistor size to provide high computation capability along with low power consumption has been accompanied by reliability degradations due to e.g., aging phenomenon. In this regard, with huge number of configuration bits, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are more susceptible to aging since aging not only degrades the performance, it may additionally result in corrupting the configuration cells and thus causing permanent circuit malfunctioning. While several works have investigated the aging effects in Look-Up Tables (LUTs), the routing fabric of these devices is seldom studied - even though it contributes to the majority of FPGAs' resources and configuration...