Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper we study slotted ALOHA random access optical code division multiple access packet-switching networks with a chip-level receiver structure. We use generalized optical orthogonal codes (GOOCs) and the overlapping pulse position modulation (OPPM) signaling technique to improve system performance. The impact of physical layer parameters such as the GOOC cross-correlation value and the OPPM overlapping index on key performance benchmarks such as network throughput and delay are analyzed. We also study the stability of the network based on the number of backlogged users, using the expected state drift. It has been shown that using GOOC instead of strict optical orthogonal codes... 

Monomer grafting, a unique technique for polysaccharide modification, is always performed under inert (e.g., N2) atmosphere. This work is the first report related to evaluating the possibility and efficiency of the grafting of acrylonitrile (AN) onto starch in presence of oxygen. Thus, corn starch (in both granular and gelatinized states) as well as soluble starch were grafted by AN using a ceric-carbohydrate redox initiating system. Graft copolymerizations were performed under nitrogen, air, and oxygen atmospheres at similar conditions. Grafting occurrence was verified using chemical and spectral proofs. The polymerization mechanism and kinetics were investigated by recording the... 

Acrylonitrile (AN) was grafted onto various natural and modified polysaccharides (i.e., gum arabic, gum tragacanth, xanthan gum, sodium alginate, chitosan, sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxyethyl cellulose, methyl cellulose) by using ceric-carbohydrate redox initiating system. After overcoming practical problems, mainly from the high viscosity of the aqueous solutions of the different substrates, the graft copolymerization reactions were run either in air or in N2 atmosphere under similar conditions. Grafting was confirmed using chemical and spectral (FTIR) proofs. The reactions were kinetically investigated using semi-empirical expressions and time-temperature profiles. An anomalous... 

Homogenous dispersing of nanoparticles in a base fluid is an excellent way to increase the thermal performance of heat transfer devices especially Heat Pipes (HPs). As a wickless, cheap and efficient heat pipe, Pulsating Heat Pipes (PHPs) are important candidates for thermal application considerations. In the present research an Open Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe (OLPHP) is fabricated and tested experimentally. The effects of working fluid namely, water, Silica Coated ferrofluid (SC ferrofluid), and ferrofluid without surface coating of nanoparticles (ferrofluid), charging ratio, heat input, and application of magnetic field on the overall thermal performance of the OLPHPs are investigated.... 

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are increasingly used in medical applications, such as targeting delivery and imaging. In the future, patients are more likely to be exposed to pharmaceutical products containing such particles. The study of toxicity of SPIONs has become of great importance in recent years, although the published data in this arena is limited. The aim of the present work is to investigate the cytotoxicity of SPIONs and the effect of the particles on the cell medium components. For this purpose, uncoated and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) coated SPIONs with narrow size distribution were synthesized via a well-known coprecipitation method. The mouse fibroblast cell... 

Feed-forward is one of the best methods for linearizing microwave power amplifiers, but due to device tolerance in implementation of the system components, the practical Inter-Modulation Rejection (IMR) value may differ quite much from the theoretical IMR value. One of the methods to improve the practical performance of the system is using the multi-loop configuration. Here we have introduced the multi-loop feedforward systems and we have estimated the practical IMR values of the system using Monte-Carlo analysis. As the analysis shows, although the number of components in a multi-loop system is increased with respect to a simple feed-forward system, but the difference between the practical... 

A joint theoretical and experimental study of the kinetic and mechanism of the rearrangement of allyl p-tolyl ether was performed in order to study the kinetic and mechanism of the reaction. Experimental studies were performed in gas phase over a temperature range of 493.15–533.15 K. The experimental Arrhenius parameters of this reaction were measured to be Ea = 36.08 kcal mol−1, ΔS# = −7.88 cal mol−1 K−1, and Log A = 11.74, experimentally. Using GC for the mixture of the reaction with and without cyclohexene demonstrated that the reaction is clean without any radical intermediates. The experimental results show that the studied reaction is unimolecular and proceeds through a concerted... 

In the recent years, popularity and number of users of mobile social networks have grown significantly. Due to different types of communication on these networks, users share a lot of information with each other. One of the most critical challenges of social networks is disclosure and unauthorized access to information, data, and communication between users that is a kind of violation of their privacy, which can be done by social network providers, especially unauthorized users. One way to protect one's privacy is using encryption. Therefore, in the present paper, an improved secure design was presented for mobile social network using ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) and... 

Pulsating Heat Pipes (PHPs) are new and promising heat transfer devices. To implement the novel idea to vary the startup performance of a PHP using ferrofluid with and without the application of magnetic field, an experimental investigation is conducted. The effects of several important parameters including working fluid, charging ratio, heat input, ferrofluid concentration, internal pressure, and application of magnetic field on the startup performance of Open Loop Pulsating Heat Pipes (Open Loop PHPs) have been considered and described in detail. Obtained results show that using ferrofluid instead of distilled water can improve the startup performance of PHPs in certain conditions.... 

An eight-step synthetic strategy was followed to prepare a series of novel azobenzene-containing methacrylate monomers bearing spiroacetal-norbornene moiety and methylene spacers. Thus, the adduct 2, obtained from cyclopentadiene and acrolein, was converted to 1,3-diol 3. The diol was acetalized with nitrobenzaldehyde 4 under microwave irradiation to obtain nitro compound 5 that was then reduced to amino compound 6. Diazonium salt of 6 was coupled with phenol to produce phenolic compound 7 which was then reacted with n-dibromoalkanes (n=2, 4, 6, 8, 10) to yield bromo compounds 9a–e. Nucleophilic substitution reaction of the bromo compounds with lithium methacrylate produced the methacrylic... 

Al2O3-SiC composite ceramics were prepared by pressureless sintering with and without the addition of MgO, TiO2 and Y2O3 as sintering aids. The effects of these compositional variables on final density and hardness were investigated. In the present article at first α-Al2O3 and β-SiC nano powders have been synthesized by sol-gel method separately by using AlCl 3, TEOS and saccharose as precursors. Pressureless sintering was carried out in nitrogen atmosphere at 1600 °C and 1630 °C. The addition of 5 vol.% SiC to Al2O3 hindered densification. In contrast, the addition of nano MgO and nano TiO2 to Al 2O3-5 vol.% SiC composites improved densification but Y2O3 did not have positive effect on... 

Background: The aim of this study was comparison characteristics of family and demographics of children with antenatal hydronephrosis, in 2nd and 3rd trimester of pregnancy, in order to the need for postnatal management. Methods: This cross-sectional study described some information from family of children with antenatal hydronephrosis, at the Pediatric Urology Research Center of Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Data for 193 children, admitted in 2012-2013, were collected retrospectively. They were allocated to two groups of 2nd and 3rd trimester, based on the time of diagnosis antenatal hydronephrosis. Data analysis was done using SPSS.... 

Supercapacitors are environmentally friendly and safe energy storage devices for diverse applications. The electrode material's structural, microstructural, and electrochemical properties are crucial determinants of supercapacitor capacity. One effective method to improve electrode performance is introducing doping heteroatoms or synthesizing composite materials. In this study, three-dimensional reduced graphene oxide (3D rGO) doped with Phosphorus, Nitrogen, or both (N/P co-doped) was synthesized for high-efficiency, supercapacitors using a facile, fast, and cost-effective hydrothermal process. The hydrothermal reduction of graphene oxide involved substituting Phosphorus and Nitrogen... 

This article proposes a hybrid optimization algorithm based on a modified BFGS and particle swarm optimization to solve medium scale nonlinear programs. The hybrid algorithm integrates the modified BFGS into particle swarm optimization to solve augmented Lagrangian penalty function. In doing so, the algorithm launches into a global search over the solution space while keeping a detailed exploration into the neighborhoods. To shed light on the merit of the algorithm, we provide a test bed consisting of 30 test problems to compare our algorithm against two of its variations along with two state-of-the-art nonlinear optimization algorithms. The numerical experiments illustrate that the proposed... 

Three strategies were employed for the assembly of gold nanoparticles on silica-coated magnetite particles (SCMPs). In strategy I, citrate-coated gold nanoparticles were attached on the surface of amine-SCMPs. In strategy II, amine-SCMPs were coated with carboxylated gold nanoparticles via amide bond formation. In strategy III, the thiol-SCMPs surface was coated with gold nanoparticles. Among the above examined strategies, coating amine-SCMPs with gold nanoparticles via strategy I resulted in a better coverage and stronger intensity of absorption bands. Furthermore, results obtained through strategy I showed that decreasing the pH of the solution from 7 to 3 leads to a further red-shift of... 

In wireless sensor networks (WSN), individual sensor nodes are inherently unreliable and have very limited capabilities to ensure real-time properties. In fact, one of the most predominant limitations in wireless sensor networks is energy consumption, which hinders the capacity of the network to provide real-time guarantees (e.g. low duty-cycles, low transmission range). Many approaches have been proposed to deal with energy/latency trade-offs, but they are likely to be insufficient for the applications where reduced delay guarantee is the main concern. We present and evaluate a packet scheduling policy and routing algorithm called RACE that inherently accounts for time constraints. We show... 

Traditional analog computers that perform mathematical operations electronically or mechanically suffer from their relatively large size and slow response. Recently, the idea of spatial analog optical computing has overcome these restrictions. The different techniques to implement spatial analog optical computation can be categorized into two fundamental approaches: (I) metasurface (MS) approach and (II) Green's function (GF) approach. In the first approach, a metasurface is designed to implement the Green's function of the desired operator in the spatial domain. This means that this approach needs two sub-blocks to perform Fourier and inverse Fourier transform. On the other hand, in the... 

Structural and intermolecular interactions of solvatochromic probes 4-nitroaniline, 4-nitroanisole, and Reichardt’s dye were investigated in the binary mixtures of 2-hydroxy ethylammonium formate as an ionic liquid with N,N-dimethyl formamide, dimethyl amine, and dimethyl sulfoxide. Solvatochromic parameters (ETN, normalized polarity parameter; π*, dipolarity/polarizability; β, hydrogen-bond acceptor basicity; α, hydrogen -bond donor acidity) were determined in ionic liquid mixtures at 25 °C using UV−vis spectroscopy. ETN parameters obtained from absorbance of Reichardt’s dye within various mixtures of ionic liquid were observed to be higher than predicted values from ideal additive...