Sharif Digital Repository

The present research aims to examine the washback effect of TEFL M.A. entrance examination on university professors` and B.A English students` perceptions towards material preparation and instruction. With this end in view, a questionnaire and some interviews were used to gather information about the issue at point. The questionnaire includes a set of questions developed to help gain insight into the research questions. The interviews were held with B.A English state-university professors to provide additional and complementary information. The research tools enjoy expert judgment in terms of validity and as for the reliability, the questionnaire was proved to have an acceptable degree of... 

One of the important questions in mathematics is generalized. In case of metric spaces, one of the questions is: Can we extend notions of Riemannian geometry to arbitrary metric spaces smoothly? Ricci curvature is one of the most important concepts in differential geometry. Ricci curvature is defined for the Riemannian manifold and has many applications in mathematics and physics like Einstein’s equation in relativity theory. There is a good notion for a metric space having “sectional curvature bounded below by K” or “sectional curvature bounded above by K”, due to Alexandrov. Can we define the concept of Ricci curvature in metric space? A motivation for this question comes from Gromov’s... 

Seismic design codes reduce loads by using response modification factor. Because of the reserved strength in structural elements and capacity of structure to dissipate energy, structures can be designed for lower seismic loads. This factor has modified over time. In this thesis, the effect of the reduction in behavior factor on the response of two kinds of reinforced concrete systems were evaluated. Moment resisting frames and dual systems with different heights and regularity in plan, heve been design according to the behavior factor which is recommended in the 3rd edition of the Iranian codes of practice for seismic resistance design of buildings (Standard No. 2800). Drift and... 

Generally, nowadays, machine learning methods are used in many different areas for their superiority over other methods of prediction. Although being a tough task, stock market prediction with machine learning approaches is being spread due to satisfying results published ever yday. Machine learning methods usually use varied kinds of data ,including structured data such as market data, technical indicators and some fundamental data as well as unstructured one entailing text and graph data in order to enhance their predictability capacity. In this thesis we aimed to find out more about the importance and the contribution of structured data in prediction and we tried to attain a framework... 

This thesis presents an inventory control system which is based on Meta-heuristic Algorithms.In this thesis we will optimize the input values of our tree-echelon inventory model (keeping costs,stock worth,reorder costs,...) with these Algorithms. The presented method is able to determine the optimal stock level, costs of system and number of shipments in the system. The method is basically a decision support system (DES) and it is able to provide the order scheduling parameters of goods at operational level. The aim of the current research is to demonstrate that a Meta-heuristic algorithmis capable of solving complex inventory problems and with future improvements it is able to achieve... 

The new lateral load resisting system introduced in this dissertation is a kind of squat composite shear wall consisting of a concrete core as filler and two steel corrugated sheets as cover. Reinforced bars are not used in this kind of construction. Load resisting process of the walls is provided by 3 factors: concrete core, steel corrugated covers on both sides of the central core and shear-friction interaction between the core and covers. There is not any specific formula for their design because of their novelty and few researches on this kind of walls and absence of code provisions. In this project, squat composite walls were constructed with dimensions of 106.8×90 (cm2) from corrugated... 

A tsunami is a series of tides most commonly caused by the deformation of the sea floor during a submarine earthquake. They are extremely long waves with the distance between successive peaks or troughs on the order of 10’s to 100’s of miles. They are also generated by landslides, volcanic eruptions or more rarely by asteroid impact. These causes change in location on the surface of the water which in turn creates numerous waves that spread out from the zone of turbulence. Few current design codes for coastal structures include tsunami. Even those that do, the bases for taking the hydrodynamic loads into the design are often grossly simplified and may be overly conservation and/or... 

Post-tensioning is the most versatile form of prestressing, a technique which enables engineers to make the most effective use of the material properties of concrete, and so to design structural elements which are strong, slender, and efficient. Design of post-tensioned concrete structures is not difficult and, if done properly can contribute significantly to the economy and the aesthetic qualities of a structure. Post-tensioned building floors and bridge girders have found widespread use in office buildings, parking structures and bridges. They are also frequently employed in warehouses and public buildings. Now a days bridges and other type of structures, in many countries are designed... 

Using mixed building system of structural steel and reinforced concrete improves the resistance of the structure in comparison with using either material alone. Coupled shear walls is one of these new systems. Coupled shear walls by definition is a series of walls coupled by beams as a central core structure with opening to accommodate doors, elevator wells, windows and corridors. Coupled shear walls can provide an efficient structural system to resist horizontal force due to axial and seismic loads. One type of coupled beams is Steel Coupling Beams (SCB) which consists of steel beams and reinforced concrete shear walls which represents a cost and time-effective type of construction. Some... 

Acidity values of some compound (e.g., alkanes, alcohols, carboxylic acids and amines) with or without boron substitute have been studied theoretically to evaluate the influence of boron on acidity of organic functional groups. We have derived the unoccupied reactive orbital that show the maximum localization on the boron pπ atomic orbital overlapping with the lone-pair orbital of an electron donor. Localization of unoccupied reactive orbital on the boron pπ atomic and the polarizability of the boron center are two factors which affect acidity values of functional groups. Conformational searching was performed using MM (Molecular Mechanics). The most important conformations were optimized at... 

Reinforced concrete bridge columns located in regions of high seismicity are designed with large ductility capacity for adequate protection against collapse. This type of design tends to result in large permanent displacements. To maximize post-event operability and to minimize repair costs, new design strategies to reduce these residual displacements are necessary. Even though seismic codes ensure life safety for bridges, large residual displacement after severe earthquake may make the bridge useless. For example, after 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake (Japan), more than 100 reinforced concrete bridge columns experienced a tilt angle of more than 1 degree (1.75% drift). These columns had to... 

Nowadays best using of fossil fuels sources of the country (and) importance of comparison against lack of capacity in petrol production make determined the programmers and the directors to foresee and design expanded programs of the goals, to use natural gas for car fuels. To reach fulfillment of these programs, the confirmed needs of the natural gas cylinders are improved and make it essential to invest on producing compressive natural gas cylinders. In this way economical and technical change researches has been done in order to construct on department to produce 200,000 compressive natural gas cylinders in a year during two sets.(shifts) According to the results of technical researches... 

Different molybdenum oxide nano/micro structure thin films were synthesized by thermal evaporation method under various growth conditions such as deposition time, temperature and evaporation source-substrate distance. Molybdenum oxide nanostructures grown on Si(100) such as nanowalls, nanostars and nanowires were characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Shape and type of nanostructures were determined with SEM, AFM and HRTEM analysis. XPS analysis showed that the synthesized nanostructures contained Mo6+, Mo5+, Mo4+ and... 

One of the most important parts of a cement factory is the cement rotary kiln which plays a key role in quality and quantity of produced cement. In this part, the physical exertion and bilateral movement of air and materials, together with chemical reactions take place. Thus, this system has immensely complex and nonlinear dynamic equations. These equations have not worked out yet. Only in exceptional case; however, a large number of the involved parameters were crossed out and an approximation model was presented instead. This issue caused many problems for designing a cement rotary kiln controller. In this thesis, we employed a nonlinear system identification method for identification,... 

ZnO is a wide and direct band gap (3.37 eV) semiconducting material with a large exciton binding energy (60 meV). It has been extensively studied in the last few years owing to its potential applications in various fields such as surface acoustic wave devices (SAW), transparent electrode, solar cell windows, photovoltaic devices, gas sensors and photoelectrochemical cells. Recently, much attention has been paid to rare-earth (RE) doped ZnO for possible applications in visible emitting phosphors in displays, high power lasers, and other optoelectronic devices. In this thesis, initially ZnO thin films were deposited on glass and ITO substrates using sol-gel dip-coating method. Optical and... 

It is believed that intramolecular hydrogen bonding and also conjugation can affect the acidity power of organic molecules. But simultaneous effects of intramolecular hydrogen bonding and conjugation have not investigated systematically yet. In this project, we choose Ascorbic acid as a basic structure. Then we have changed its structure conveniently, and have explored the roles of hydrogen bonding and conjugation on the acidity of this molecule by using B3LYP functional with the 6-311++G(d,p) basis set. After that we similarly investigate these effects on the acidity of three different systems, including enols, enamines and alcohols. In this project we probe the effect of different hydrogen... 

Because of absence of adequate studies, design of deep beams with web openings has not yet been covered by most codes of practice. The most studies have been on simply supported deep beams with web openings and have been set up experimentally. There are very few tests of continuous deep beams available in the literature. So it was decided in this thesis the behaviour of concrete continuous deep beams with web openings using finite element software ANSYS to be investigated. Primary purpose of this thesis has been evaluating the use of finite element analysis method for analysis of concrete continuous deep beams with web openings. The next target of this thesis has been assessment of... 

Over the Recent Decade, the embedded systems have expanded to include a wide variety of products, ranging from digital cameras, to medical systems, to Radar and telecommunication systems, to sensor networks. Engineers strive to create ever smaller and faster products, many of which, such as battery operated systems, have stringent power requirements. Coupled with increasing pressure to decrease costs and time-to-market, the design constraints of embedded systems pose a serious challenge to embedded systems designers. Dynamic reconfigurable hardware can provide a flexible and efficient platform for satisfying the area, performance, cost, and power requirements of many embedded systems.... 

An interesting theoretical and practical set of problems in computer science is concerned with the study of spatial relations among objects in a geometric space. Examples of such problems for a set of points P are finding the closest pair of the points P, partitioning space into regions such that all points of a region have minimum distance to the same point in P, and computing the Euclidean minimum spanning tree on P. Moreover, we need mechanisms to efficiently update these properties when the points P are allowed to move or may be inserted or deleted. This is to avoid re-computation of these properties from scratch. Here, we consider the Euclidean minimum spanning tree (EMST) of a set of... 

The purpose of this study was to find out the effective factors on customer satisfaction and its consequences in Kish Island (IRAN).In this research the researcher had used two different kind of sample the first sample is customers of three different hotels of 3 star, 4 star, 5 star and The second sample are managers of these hotels. The sample size was 285 of hotel customers and 11 of hotel managers. The first purpose of this study was to identify the drivers and results of customer satisfaction and also identifying there relationship with customer satisfaction. The second goal of this study was to propose a customer satisfaction model for hotel industry in kish island (IRAN). In this...