Sharif Digital Repository

In parallel to the depletion of potable water reservoirs, novel technologies have been developed for seawater softening, as it is the most abundant source for generating deionized water. Although salt removal at subosmotic pressures and ambient temperatures by applying low-operating potentials with high energy efficiency made capacitive deionization (CDI) an advantageous water-softening process, its practical application is limited by insufficient ion removal capacity and low concentration influent. The performance of a CDI system is in progress with engineering the electrode active materials, also facilitating the advance design in highly saline- and seawater study. Herein, an innovative... 

This paper addresses a conceptual study on different aspects of a novel smart treatment method for a relatively new challenge of saline water production from low permeability lenses of high flow gas wells. Selective sealing of such lenses along with minor effect on gas productivity usually faces practical difficulties due to the inherent permeability contrast. Engineered application of salt sensitive gellan biopolymer through a smart treatment scenario that includes a protective gas flow proved its ability for treating such challenge. This paper investigates the importance of the gel rigidity and its coverage in the smart treatment scenario through considering the brine salinity and the... 

For both water softening and energy storage, to date, a variety of capacitive devices have been developed; however, their dual functionality has been rarely investigated. An enhanced selective sodium-ion removal along with charge-storage was achieved by combining sodium-ion capture and release through sorption and regeneration steps of a capacitive deionization (CDI) process, respectively. Leveraging their unique and reversible Na+-removal capability, sodium superionic conductors (NASICONs) hold immense promise for hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI). Despite the great desalination ability of HCDI systems, the unbalanced ion-capture and the possibility of co-ion expulsion have led to a... 

In the present research, the effects of spot-welding process parameters on the nugget diameter and electrode penetration depth of spot-welded joints were investigated. To achieve this, a spot-welded joint of three-thin sheet low carbon steels (same thicknesses of 0.8 mm) was simulated as an electerical-thermal-mechanical coupling of 3D finite element model. After validating the finite element simulation presented in this study by comparison with the experimental results for the spot diameter, various cases of spot welds were analyzed based on the design on experiment (i.e., Taguchi method). Six variables including electrode force, electric current, and quadrilateral times (squeeze, up-slope,... 

Echo and sound resonance in a conference room cause obscure speech and make listeners tired. Thus, the acoustical properties of a conference room are vitally important. The conference room 412 at Sharif University Physics Department failed to meet basic acoustical standards. The aim of this research is to improve reverberation time (RT) of the conference room using Helmholtz resonators with defined dimensions, diffusers, and sound absorbers. Helmholtz resonators are widely used to absorb sound noise especially at low frequencies. They are particularly useful when noise has a narrow-frequency band. One of the advantages of using Helmholtz resonators is their capacity to be tuned on different... 

In vivo dose-dependent effects of nanoscale graphene oxide (NGO) sheets on reproduction capability of Balb/C mice were investigated. Biodistribution study of the NGO sheets (intravenously injected into male mice at dose of ∼2000 μg/mL or 4 mg/kg of body weight) showed a high graphene uptake in testis. Hence, in vivo effects of the NGO sheets on important characteristics of spermatozoa (including their viability, morphology, kinetics, DNA damage and chromosomal aberration) were evaluated. Significant in vivo effects was found at the injected concentrations ≥200 μg/mL after (e.g., ∼45% reduction in sperm viability and motility at 2000 μg/mL). Observation of remarkable DNA fragmentations and... 

Asian red ginseng was used for green reduction of chemically exfoliated graphene oxide (GO) into reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The reduction level and electrical conductivity of the ginseng-rGO sheets were comparable to those of hydrazine-rGO ones. Reduction by ginseng resulted in repairing the sp 2 graphitic structure of the rGO, while hydrazine-rGO showed more defects and/or smaller aromatic domains. The ginseng-rGO sheets presented a better stability against aggregation than the hydrazine-rGO ones in an aqueous suspension. Whilst the hydrophobic hydrazine-rGO films exhibited no toxicity against human neural stem cells (hNSCs), the hydrophilic GO and ginseng-rGO films (as more... 

Vigorous debates have taken place within and between many countries about regulatory policy regimes covering the assessment and approval of genetically modified (GM) crops. In Iran, a very vigorous and hotly contested policy debate concerning legislation covering GM crops occurred between 2004 and 2009, but it was confined within government circles with almost no public discussion. This paper analyses the Iranian policy-making process in the period 2006-9. It explains how and why a stalemate arose in disputes between ministries and departments. The chosen analytical framework draws mainly on the regulation of technological risks and the analysis of public policy-making. It deploys the... 

A μ-way latin trade of volume s is a set of μ partial latin rectangles (of inconsequential size) containing exactly the same s filled cells, such that if cell (i, j) is filled, it contains a different entry in each of the μ partial latin rectangles, and such that row i in each of the μ partial latin rectangles contains, set-wise, the same symbols and column j, likewise. In this paper we show that all μ-way latin trades with sufficiently large volumes exist, and state some theorems on the non-existence of μ-way latin trades of certain volumes. We also find the set of possible volumes (that is, the volume spectrum) of μ-way latin trades for μ = 4 and 5. (The case μ = 2 was dealt with by Fu,... 

The set of integers k for which there exist three latin squares of order n having precisely k cells identical, with their remaining n2 -k cells different in all three latin squares, denoted by I3[n], is determined here for all orders n. In particular, it is shown that I3[n] = {0,.,n2 -15}U [n2 - 12,n2-9,n2], for n ≫8. ©2002 Eisevier Science B.V. All rights reserved  

Coronary angiography is a vital instrument to detect the prevailing of vascular diseases, and accurate vascular segmentation acts a crucial role for proper quantitative analysis of the vascular tree morphological features. Level set methods are popular for segmenting the coronary arteries, but their performance is related to suitable start-up and optimum setting of regulating parameters, essentially done manually. This research presents a novel fuzzy level set procedure with the objective of segmentation of the coronary artery tree in 2-D X-ray angiography as automatically. It is clever to clearly develop from the early segmentation with spatial fuzzy grouping. The adjusting parameters of... 

Visual attributes are great means of describing images or scenes, in a way both humans and computers understand. In order to establish a correspondence between images and to be able to compare the strength of each property between images, relative attributes were introduced. However, since their introduction, hand-crafted and engineered features were used to learn increasingly complex models for the problem of relative attributes. This limits the applicability of those methods for more realistic cases. We introduce a deep neural network architecture for the task of relative attribute prediction. A convolutional neural network (ConvNet) is adopted to learn the features by including an... 

We present the first public code for the calculation of the astrometric centroid shift occurring during microlensing events. The computation is based on the contour integration scheme and covers single and binary lensing of finite sources with arbitrary limb darkening profiles. This allows for general detailed investigations of the impact of finite source size in astrometric binary microlensing. The new code is embedded in version 3.0 of vbbinarylensing, which offers a powerful computational tool for extensive studies of microlensing data from current surveys and future space missions. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society  

The possibility of real-time tuning of optical devices has attracted a lot of interest over the last decade. At the same time, coming up with simple lithography-free structures has always been a challenge in the design of large-area compatible devices. In this work, we present the concept and the sample design of an electrically tunable, lithography-free, ultra-thin transmission-mode color filter, the spectrum of which continuously covers the whole visible region. A simple Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) cavity configuration is used. It is shown that using the electro-optic dielectric material of 4-dimethyl-amino-N-methyl-4-stilbazoliumtosylate (DAST) as the dielectric layer in this... 

Magnetic flux leakage is the most widely used method for oil and gas pipeline non destructive testing. The saturation level of the sample under test has a significant effect on its efficiency; therefore, the magnetizing yoke requires an elaborate design. The finite element method is the conventional approach used for this purpose, but it is very time consuming. In this article, a neuro-fuzzy method is presented to model the behavior of the magnetizing yoke. Modeling a few different designs with the finite element method and using the results for training the neuro-fuzzy model eradicates the necessity of modeling a huge number of designs with the finite element method. The acquired... 

The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions to decompose a complete tripartite graph K(r, s, t) into 5-cycles was first considered by Mahmoodian and Mirzakhani (1995). They stated some necessary conditions and conjectured that these conditions are also sufficient. Since then, many cases of the problem have been solved by various authors; however the case when the partite sets r ≤ s ≤ t have odd and distinct sizes remains open. A necessary condition is t ≤ 3r. Billington and Cavenagh (2011) have shown that when r, s, and t are all odd and r ≤ s ≤ t ≤ κr, where κ ≈ 1.0806, then the conjectured necessary conditions for decomposing are also sufficient. We extend this result... 

The heat and mass transfer through the hybrid nanofluid (Hnf) flow with the significance of magnetic field across two spinning parallel plates has been described. The Hnf is prepared by the dispersion of SiO2 (Silicon dioxide) and MoS2 (Molybdenum Disulfide) nanoparticles (NPs) in the ethylene glycol (EG). The MoS2 is anti-friction compound used in automobiles and other types of heavy machineries in industry. It reduces the engine noise, reduces fuel consumption and enhances engine life. Similarly, SiO2 is used in structural materials, food processing, pharmaceutical industries and as an electrical insulator in microelectronic apparatus. Based on the remarkable applications of the hybrid...