Sharif Digital Repository

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  

In this paper, we suggest a general model for the fixed-valued impulse noise and propose a two-stage method for high density noise suppression while preserving the image details. In the first stage, we apply an iterative impulse detector, exploiting the image entropy, to identify the corrupted pixels and then employ an Adaptive Iterative Mean filter to restore them. The filter is adaptive in terms of the number of iterations, which is different for each noisy pixel, according to the Euclidean distance from the nearest uncorrupted pixel. Experimental results show that the proposed filter is fast and outperforms the best existing techniques in both objective and subjective performance measures... 

Background: To date, no specific exercises have been designed to selectively strengthen the vastus medialis muscle. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to provide a clear answer to the question: Is it truly impossible to strengthen the vastus medialis independently of the entire quadriceps muscle group? Methods: Thirty-three females with lateral patellar compression syndrome were randomly divided into 2 groups: one focused on selective strengthening of the vastus medialis (n = 16) and the other on general strengthening of the quadriceps (n = 17). The intervention lasted 8 weeks. Muscles cross-sectional area and electrical activity were assessed using ultrasound and electromyography,... 

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to compare the effect of two types of quadriceps strengthening protocols on morphological characteristics of the knee vastus muscles in patients with lateral patellar compression syndrome. Methods: 48 female patients were randomly divided into 3 groups: selective (16), general (17) and control (15). The selective group participated in an isokinetic knee extension training protocol at the last 30° knee extension arc with maximum leg external rotation at high speed with the aim of selectively strengthening the vastus medialis muscle. The general group participated in an exercise protocol aimed at strengthening the entire quadriceps muscle. Both these... 

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Abstract In this paper, the solution of multi-group neutron/adjoint equation using Finite Element Method (FEM) for hexagonal and rectangular reactor cores is reported. The spatial discretization of the neutron diffusion equation is performed based on two different Finite Element Methods (FEMs) using unstructured triangular elements generated by Gambit software. Calculations are performed using Galerkin and Generalized Least Squares FEMs; based on which results are compared. Using the power iteration method for the neutron and adjoint calculations, the neutron and adjoint flux distributions with the corresponding eigenvalues are obtained. The results are then validated against the valid... 

Currently, the main portion of knowledge is stored in electronic texts and documents and for transferring that knowledge effectively, we must use proper methods to gather and retrieve relevant information. Ontologies provide means to produce structured documents and use intelligent search instead of keyword search. Ontology defines the common words and concepts used to describe and represent an area of knowledge. However, developing ontologies is a time consuming and labor work. So, many ontology developers try to facilitate and speed up this process by reusing other resources. In fact, thesaurus contains semantic information and hierarchical structure that make it an appropriate resource... 

Probabilistic thermal buckling analysis of composite plates with temperature-dependent properties under stochastic thermal fields is performed by developing a new temperature increment-based algorithm for solving the stochastic nonlinear equation. The temperature distribution is assumed to be a stochastic Gaussian field which leads to spatially varying stochastic mechanical properties. The stochastic thermal field is decomposed by applying the Karhunen–Loeve theorem. The combination of stochastic assumed mode method and polynomial chaos is proposed as an alternative solution for the time-consuming stochastic finite element method. The uncertainty of the critical temperature is studied by... 

Protein separation and purification technologies play an essential role in various industries including but not limited to pharmaceuticals, dairy as well as the food sector. Accordingly, a wide variety of techniques such as chromatography and electrophoresis have been developed and utilized extensively over the years for this purpose. Despite their widespread acceptance, conventional techniques still suffer from major limitations and complexities such as short lifetime, low productivity, high-pressure drop and difficulty in scale-up among others. Membrane separation processes have received significant attention in recent years as a promising alternative that can potentially overcome the... 

In this paper, a novel fast straightforward method for thermal generating units scheduling is presented. The new method decomposes the solution of the unit commitment (UC) problem into three subproblems. In the first subproblem, the quadratic cost functions of units are linearized and hourly optimum solution of UC is obtained considering all constraints except the minimum up/down time constraints. In the second subproblem, the minimum up/down times are enforced through a novel optimization process by modifying the schedule obtained in the first step. Finally, in the third subproblem, the extra reserve is minimized using a new decommitment algorithm. For testing the proposed method, the... 

Due to high surface to volume ratio and tunable band gap, two dimensional (2D) layered materials such as MoS2, is good candidate for gas sensing applications. This research mainly focuses on variation of Density of States (DOS) of MoS2 monolayes caused by ethanol adsorption. The nanosheets are synthesized by liquid exfoliation, and then using Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) and Density Functional Theory (DFT), local electronic characteristic such as DOS and band gap in non-vacuum condition are analyzed. The results show that ethanol adsorption enhances DOS and deform orbitals near the valence and conduction bands that increase transport of carriers on the sheet. © 2018 IOP Publishing... 

Geometry of different electromagnetic parts of Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) is a major factor of VSM output voltage. In this paper design, geometry optimization and implementation of a sensitive, versatile and relatively inexpensive VSM system has been described. Considering all effective geometrical parameters in the system output voltage, the induced voltage in the pick-up coils has been obtained analytically and the geometry of the pick-up coils has been optimized for maximum output induced voltage. Two opposite series of pick-up coils, piezoelectric based vibration system and required electronic circuits have been designed and the VSM system has been implemented. The implemented... 

We propose and theoretically and experimentally demonstrate a novel tunable spurious-free single-loop optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with low drift and low-phase noise. In the proposed transposed-frequency OEO (TF-OEO), a nonreciprocal bias unit and an optical phase modulator in a fiber Sagnac interferometer function jointly as an intrinsically drift-free intensity modulator, which improves the long-term drift. Besides, a transposed-frequency low-noise filtered amplifier is used which replaces the conventional radio frequency (RF) bandpass filter (BPF) and RF amplifier with an intermediate frequency (IF) BPF, an ultralow phase noise IF amplifier, and a tunable local oscillator, to attain... 

A low-drift optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is developed and experimentally shown. In the proposed OEO, a fiber Sagnac interferometer, including an optical phase modulator (PM) and a nonreciprocal bias unit, functions as an intrinsically drift-free intensity modulator. The phase noise of the proposed OEO is modeled in phase space, which is verified by experiments. Phase noise and frequency stability of the photonically generated microwave signals are measured. The single-sideband phase noise of the generated microwave signal is -106.6 dBc/Hz at 10-kHz offset from the 10.833-GHz carrier, with 120-fs rms timing jitter integrated from 1 kHz to 10 MHz. Frequency drift measurements show ±0.85-ppm... 

In this paper, an optimized topology for switched-capacitor (SC) multilevel inverter is proposed. The proposed topology, which is referred to as Optimized Switched-Capacitor Multilevel Inverter (OSC-MI), offers a boosted staircase voltage by using only one dc source and fewer switches count. Since each industrial load requires a specific power factor (PF), an optimal converter can be designated in a way that it both satisfies the required PF and employs fewer switches and gate drivers. Therefore, the main strategy of reducing switches count in the proposed topology is to design the converter according to the required PF value. In this paper, the theoretical analytics and comparison results... 

One of the most important issues in planning the reservoir type of Medium Hydro-Power Plants (MHPP) is to determine the optimal installation capacity of the MHPP and estimate its optimal annual energy value. In this paper, a method is presented to calculate the annual energy. A computer program has been developed to analyse energy calculation and estimation of the most important economic indices of an MHPP using the sensitivity analysis method. Another program, developed by Matlab software, calculates the reliability indices for a number of units of an MHPP with a specified load duration curve using the Monte Carlo method. Ultimately, comparing the technical, economic and reliability indices... 

The inhibition effects of sodium dodecylbenzenesulphonate (SDBS) and hexamethylenetetramine (HA) on the corrosion of mild steel in sulphuric acid solution have been studied using weight loss, electrochemical impedance and Tafel polarisation measurements. For HA, a monotonous increase in inhibition efficiency is observed as a function of concentration. For SDBS, however, an optimum in the inhibition efficiency is observed for a concentration close to 250 ppm, which is ascribed to the formation of hemi-micellar aggregates that provoke inhibitor desorption from the metal/solution interface at higher concentrations. Upon mixing HA and SDBS, concentration regions showing synergistic and... 

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a medical radio chemotherapeutic method that uses light, photosensitizing agents, and oxygen to produce cytotoxic compounds, which eliminate malignant cells. Recently, Microfluidic systems have been used to analyse photosensitizers (PSs) due to their potential to replicate in vivo environments. While prior studies have established a strong correlation between reacted singlet oxygen concentration and PDT-induced cellular death, the effects that the ambient fluid flow might have on the concentration of oxygen and PS have been disregarded in many, which limits the reliability of the results. Herein, we coupled the transport of oxygen and PS throughout the ambient...