Sharif Digital Repository

An important security challenge in database outsourcing scenarios is the correctness verification of query results. The proposed approaches in the literature, impose high overhead on both the service provider and specially the clients. In this paper, we propose the Trust-Based Fake Tuples approach to audit the correctness of query results. In this approach, some fake tuples are included among the real ones in order to verify the correctness of the results. The experience learnt from past results is used in this paper to evaluate the trust toward the service provider. This trust value is used to tune the number of fake tuples and subsequently the imposed overhead. As the trust value toward... 

The infrastructure provided by a Grid enables researchers to collaboratively solve various research problems through sharing their resources and establishing virtual organizations (VOs). However, the distributed and dynamic nature of a Grid VO is a challenge for access control systems. All users in a VO have responsibilities which correspond to their rights. While they should be able to make use of all VO resources, irresponsibility and permission misuse (insider attack) impose costs and losses on the affected resources. Hence, the history of users' behavior and the possibility of misuse need to be considered in the resource providers' risk management process. In this paper, we propose the... 

Security is one of the important issues in developing and implementing software systems especially in highly critical applications. Quantification and measurement of security is one of the approaches adopted to achieve the desired degree of security. In this paper, Stochastic Activity Networks (SANs) are used to formally model the attacks on the system under investigation. To this end, the semi-Markov attack model is sketched. Having the semi-Markov model, Probability of Attack Success (PAS), Mean Time to First Breach (MTFB), and System Misuse Proportion (SMP) are measured according to the appropriate transformation of the model to a SAN model. As a case study, we have studied a high-level... 

Uncertainty and its imposed risk have significant impacts on decision-making. However, both are disregarded in many trust-based applications. In this paper, we propose a risk-aware approach to explicitly take uncertainty of trust and its effects into account. Our approach consists of a trust, a confidence, and a risk model. We do not prescribe a specific trust model, and any probabilistic trust model can be empowered by our approach. The confidence model calculates the uncertainty of the trust model in the form of a confidence interval, and is independent of the inner-workings of the trust model. This interval is used by the utility-based risk model which assesses the effects of uncertainty... 

The infrastructure provided by a Grid enables researchers to collaboratively solve various research problems through sharing their resources and establishing virtual organizations (VOs). However, the distributed and dynamic nature of a Grid VO is a challenge for access control systems. All users in a VO have responsibilities which correspond to their rights. While they should be able to make use of all VO resources, irresponsibility and permission misuse (insider attack) impose costs and losses on the affected resources. Hence, the history of users' behavior and the possibility of misuse need to be considered in the resource providers' risk management process. In this paper, we propose the... 

Computational models of trust try to transfer the concept of trust from the real to the virtual world. While such models have been widely investigated in the past decade, the uncertainty involved in trust computation has been overlooked in the literature. In this paper, uncertainty of probabilistic trust models is quantified using confidence intervals and its factors are determined through simulation. The results confirm the importance and highlight the amount of uncertainty in the Beta and HMM (Hidden Markov Model) trust models. In addition, an uncertainty-driven method is proposed which reduces the risk involved in the trust-based utility maximization according to uncertainty  

The mechanism of flow around a pier structure is so complicated that it is difficult to establish a general empirical model to provide accurate estimation for scour. Interestingly, each of the proposed empirical formula yields good results for a particular data set. Hence, in this study, alternative approaches, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), are proposed to estimate the equilibrium and time-dependent scour depth with numerous reliable data base. Two ANN models, multi-layer perception using back-propagation algorithm (MLP/BP) and radial basis using orthogonal least-squares algorithm (RBF/OLS), were used. The equilibrium scour depth was... 

The unsymmetrical Schiff base 1′-hydroxy-2′-acetonaphthoneacetylacetone-ethylendiimine (Hhan)(Hacac)en and its complexes with some transition metals have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analyses, conductometric measurements, infrared and electronic absorption, NMR and mass spectroscopy  

In this study, corrosion behaviour of porous NiTi modified by plasma sprayed alumina coating has been investigated. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques were applied for the morphology and microstructure characterisation, while linear sweep voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were used for investigation of corrosion behaviour of coated and uncoated NiTi specimens. Induced couple plasma was conducted to measure ion release of the specimens in simulated body fluid at 37°C. The plasma sprayed Al2O3 coating on the porous NiTi improved the surface characteristics for biomedical applications. The alumina coating significantly hampered Ni ion release from... 

The major section of the city of Tehran, Iran has been developed on cemented coarse-grained alluvium. This deposit consists of gravely sand to sandy gravel with some cobbles and is dominantly cemented by carbonaceous materials. In order to understand the mechanical behaviour of this soil, a series of undrained triaxial compression tests and unconfined compression tests were performed on uncemented and artificially cemented samples. Portland cement type I was used as the cementation agent for preparing artificially cemented samples. Uncemented samples and lightly cemented samples (1.5% cement) tested at high confining pressure showed contractive behaviour accompanied with positive excess pore... 

A vast amount of death in the world has been attributed to atherosclerosis. This disease causes plaque formation and finally lack of blood supply to an organ. The prominent aim of this study is proposing an accurate and simple model to investigate the process of arterial wall thickening. In order to investigate LDL (low density lipoprotein) accumulation in arterial wall which is considered the first stage of atherosclerosis, a four layer model for arterial wall consisting of endothelium, intima, IEL and media is presented. All layers are treated as homogenous porous media. The four-layer arterial wall model is the most powerful and reliable tool for modeling LDL transport within arterial... 

Quantification of spatial and temporal concentration profiles of vapor clouds resulting from accidental loss of containment of toxic and/or flammable substances is of great importance as correct prediction of spatial and temporal profiles can not only help in designing mitigation/prevention equipment such as gas detection alarms and shutdown procedures but also help decide on modifications that may help prevent any escalation of the event. The most commonly used models - SLAB (Ermak, 1990), HEGADAS (Colenbrander, 1980), DEGADIS (Spicer & Havens, 1989), HGSYSTEM (Witlox & McFarlane, 1994), PHAST (DNV, 2007), ALOHA (EPA & NOAA, 2007), SCIPUFF (Sykes, Parker, Henn, & Chowdhury, 2007), TRACE... 

Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) were used to investigate the interaction between copper(II) complex of compartmental Schiff base ligand (L), N,N′-bis(3-hydroxysalicylidene)ethylenediamine, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) in 0.1 mol dm-3 phosphate buffer solution adjusted to physiological pH 7.0 containing 20% (w/w) dimethylsulfoxide at room temperature. CD spectra show that the interaction of the copper(II) complex with BSA leads to changes in the α-helical content of BSA and therefore changes in secondary structure of the protein with the slight red shift (2 nm) in CD spectra. From the voltammetric data, i.e. changes in... 

We investigate the multiple use of a ferromagnetic spin chain for quantum and classical communications without resetting. We find that the memory of the state transmitted during the first use makes the spin chain a qualitatively different quantum channel during the second transmission, for which we find the relevant Kraus operators. We propose a parameter to quantify the amount of memory in the channel and find that it influences the quality of the channel, as reflected through fidelity and entanglement transmissible during the second use. For certain evolution times, the memory allows the channel to exceed the memoryless classical capacity (achieved by separable inputs) and in some cases it... 

In the present study, the thermodynamics and mechanisms of vanadium extraction by a mixture of bis-2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) and tri-n butyl phosphate (TBP) from sulfate medium were investigated. It was found that the maximum extraction percent of vanadium occurs at pH 1.8 under ambient conditions; this phenomenon was ascribed to the predominant presence of cationic species of vanadium (VO2+) at this pH. Based on the Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectrums, the POH bond of D2EHPA was found responsible for the extraction of VO2+ species through a cationic exchange mechanism. Employing the slope analysis method showed that the stoichiometric reaction... 

Preparation, characterization and evaluation of new generation of micro-filters based on polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofiberous membrane (ENM) were thoroughly investigated. First, quantitative relationships between average diameter, bead area density of nano-fibers and certain electrospinning parameters, i.e., concentration, voltage, spinning distance, and feed rate, were established by empirical modeling based on a central composite design. The analysis revealed that concentration, voltage and distance are the significant parameters. Also, adequacy checking indicated the appropriateness of fit for the models. Afterwards, bead-free ENMs with diameter of 100-500 nm were prepared and... 

Preparation, characterization and evaluation of new generation of micro-filters based on polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofiberous membrane (ENM) were thoroughly investigated. First, quantitative relationships between average diameter, bead area density of nano-fibers and certain electrospinning parameters, i.e., concentration, voltage, spinning distance, and feed rate, were established by empirical modeling based on a central composite design. The analysis revealed that concentration, voltage and distance are the significant parameters. Also, adequacy checking indicated the appropriateness of fit for the models. Afterwards, bead-free ENMs with diameter of 100-500 nm were prepared and... 

Network-on-Chip (NoC) is a precious approach to handle huge number of transistors by virtue of technology scaling to lower than 50nm. Virtual channels have been introduced in order to improve the performance according to a timing multiplexing concept in each physical channel. The incremental effect of virtual channels on power consumption has been shown in literatures. The issue of power saving has always been controversial to many designers. In this paper, we introduce a new technique which tries to adaptively mange the number of virtual channels in order to reduce the power consumption while not degrading the performance of the network without any reconfiguration. Our experimental results...