Sharif Digital Repository

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an imaging tool that is used to analyze the brain’s functions. Brain functional connectivity analysis based on fMRI signals often calculated correlations among time series in different areas of the brain. For FC analysis most prior research works generate the brain graphs based on linear correlations, however, the nonlinear behavior of the brain can lower the accuracy of such graphs. Usually, the Pearson correlation coefficient is used which has limitations in revealing nonlinear relationships. One of the proper methods for nonlinear analysis is the Kernel trick. This method maps the data into a high dimensional space and calculates the linear... 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an imaging tool that is used to analyze the brain’s functions. Brain functional connectivity analysis based on fMRI signals often calculated correlations among time series in different areas of the brain. For FC analysis most prior research works generate the brain graphs based on linear correlations, however, the nonlinear behavior of the brain can lower the accuracy of such graphs. Usually, the Pearson correlation coefficient is used which has limitations in revealing nonlinear relationships. One of the proper methods for nonlinear analysis is the Kernel trick. This method maps the data into a high dimensional space and calculates the linear... 

Partial discharge (PD) activity can be destructive to the transformer insulation, and ultimately may result in total breakdown of the insulation. Partial discharge sources identification in a power transformer enables the operator to evaluate the transformer insulation condition during its lifetime. In order to identify the PD source; in the case of presence of multiple sources; the first step is to capture the PD signals and to extract their specific features. In this contribution, the frequency domain analysis, the time domain analysis and the wavelet transform are employed for feature extraction purpose. In practice, there might be plenty of features, and in each scenario, only some of... 

Abnormalities in the topology of brain networks may be an important feature and etiological factor for psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). To explore this possibility, we applied a graph theoretical approach to functional networks based on resting state EEGs from 13 PNES patients and 13 age- and gender-matched controls. The networks were extracted from Laplacian-transformed time-series by a cross-correlation method. PNES patients showed close to normal local and global connectivity and small-world structure, estimated with clustering coefficient, modularity, global efficiency, and small-worldness metrics, respectively. Yet the number of PNES attacks per month correlated with a... 

Thermodynamical optimization for energy conversion system can be performed by decreasing entropy generation. For calculation of entropy, we need to know entropy of ideal gases at 298 K as a reference point. Entropy is a thermodynamic quantity which is not easily measured and prediction of entropy by molecular structures for new designed molecules may be a challenge. An easy and accurate equation for prediction of absolute entropy of pure ideal gas at 298 K was introduced for the first time based on the quantitative structure property relationship (QSPR) approach. Thousand seven hundred pure chemical compounds and 3224 molecular descriptors were used for finding this easy equation by genetic... 

Objective: To translate the Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM) into Persian and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of FAAM. Methods: 93 patients with a range of foot and ankle disorders, completed the Persian version of the FAAM and Short-Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36) in the test session. With an interval of 2-6 days, 60 patients filled out the FAAM in the retest session. The FAAM is composed of two subscales including activities of daily living (ADL) and SPORTS. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, test-retest reliability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and standard error of measurement (s.e.m.), item internal consistency... 

The aims of this study were to culturally adapt and validate the Persian version of Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS) and present data on its psychometric properties for patients with different foot and ankle problems. The Persian version of FAOS was developed after a standard forward-backward translation and cultural adaptation process. The sample included 93 patients with foot and ankle disorders who were asked to complete two questionnaires: FAOS and Short-Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36). To determine test-retest reliability, 60 randomly chosen patients completed the FAOS again 2 to 6 days after the first administration. Test-retest reliability and internal consistency were assessed using... 

The quantification of carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolution in oil is crucial in predicting the potential and long-term behavior of CO2 in reservoir during secondary and tertiary oil recovery. Accurate predicting carbon dioxide molecular diffusion coefficient is a key parameter during carbon dioxide injection into oil reservoirs. In this study a new model based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) is designed and developed for accurate prediction of carbon dioxide diffusivity in oils at elevated temperature and pressures. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) as population based stochastic search algorithms was applied to obtain the optimal ANFIS model parameters. Furthermore, a simple... 

In this study, the self-adaptive evolutionary (SaE) agent is employed to structure the contributing elements to process the management of extreme learning machine (ELM) architecture based on a logical procedure. In fact, the SaE algorithm is utilized for possibility of enhancing the performance of the ELM to estimate daily soil temperature (ST) at 6 different depths of 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 cm. In the developed SaE-ELM model, the network hidden node parameters of the ELM are optimized using SaE algorithm. The precision of the SaE-ELM is then compared with the ELM model. Daily weather data sets including minimum, maximum and average air temperatures (Tmin, Tmax and Tavg), atmospheric... 

In this study a membrane biological reactor (MBR) was operated at 25±1 °C and pH = 7.5±0.5 to treat synthetic wastewater containing high phenol concentrations. Removal efficiencies of phenol and chemical oxygen demand (COD)were evaluated at four various hydraulic retention times (HRTs) of 24, 12, 8, and 4 hours. The removal rate of phenol (5.51 kg-Phenol kg-VSS-1 d-1), observed at HRT of 4 h,was the highest phenol degradation rate in the literature.According toCODtests, therewere no significant organic matter in the effluent, and phenol was degraded completely by mixed culture. Substrate inhibition was calculated from experimental growth parameters using the Haldane, Yano, and Edward... 

A dense monitoring network is vital for the reliable assessment of PM10 in different parts of an urban area. In this study, a new idea is employed for the re-construction of the 20 shut-down PM10 monitoring stations of Berlin. It endeavours to find the non-linear relationship between the hourly PM10 concentration of both the still operating and the shut-down PM10 monitoring stations by using a fuzzy modelling technique, called modified active learning method (MALM). In addition, the simulations were performed by using not only raw PM10 databases but also log-transformed PM10 databases for skewness reduction. According to the results of hourly PM10 simulation (root mean square error about... 

A novel UWB MIMO antenna with band-notched characteristic operating in the frequency range between 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz is presented. The designed MIMO antenna has two ports and the size of 32×14 mm2 which is fabricated on an FR-4 printed-circuit-board. The feeding system of the proposed antenna is a microstrip line. The two antennas are positioned face to face but laid reversely upon the substrate in order to have a good isolation, less cross polarization, high gain and good envelope correlation coefficient. S-parameters describe the input-output relationship between ports (or terminals) in a MIMO antenna. The effects of the strip feed line width on the variations in reflection coefficient... 

Various parameters affect thermal conductivity of nanofluid; however, some of them are more influential such as temperature, size and type of nano particles and volumetric concentration. In this study, artificial neural network as well as least square support vector machine (LSSVM) are applied in order to predict thermal conductivity ratio of alumina/water nanofluid as a function of particle size, temperature and volumetric concentration. LSSVM, Self-Organizing Map and Levenberg-Marquardt Back Propagation algorithms are applied to predict thermal conductivity ratio. Obtained results indicated that these algorithms are appropriate tool for thermal conductivity ratio prediction. The... 

A carbon-paste electrode (CPE) modified with iron(II) phthalocyanine was used for the sensitive voltammetric determination of epinephrine (EN). The electrochemical response characteristics of the modified electrode toward EN, ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA) were investigated by cyclic and differential pulse voltammetry (CV and DPV). The results show an efficient catalytic activity of the electrode for the electro-oxidation of EN, which leads to improvement of reversibility of the electrode response and lowering its overpotential by more than 100 mV. The effect of pH and potential sweep rate on the mechanism of the electrode process was investigated. The modified electrode exhibits an... 

Lake Urmia (LU) is the second largest hypersaline lake in the world. Lake Urmia's water level has dropped drastically from 1277.85 m to 1270.08 m a.s.l (equal to 7.77 m) during the last 20 years, equivalent to a loss of 70% of the lake area. The likelihood of lake-groundwater connection on the basin-scale is uncertain and understudied because of lack of basic data and precise information required for physically-based modeling. In this study, cross-correlation analysis is applied on a various time-frames of water level of the lake and groundwater levels (2001–2018) recorded in 797 observation wells across 17 adjacent aquifers. This provides insightful information on the lake-groundwater... 

The process kinetics of a lab-scale upflow aerobic immobilized biomass (UAIB) reactor using simulated sugar-manufacturing wastewater as feed was investigated. The experimental unit consisted of a 22 l reactor filled with high porosity pumice stone. The UAIB reactor was tested under different organic loads and different hydraulic retention times (HRT) and the substrate loading removal rate was compared with prediction of Stover-Kincannon model, second-order model and the first order substrate removal model. After obtaining steady-state conditions, organic loading rate was increased from 750 to 4500 g COD/m3 day to resemble wastewater from sugar production lines, and hydraulic retention time... 

Jacket-type offshore platforms play an important role in oil and gas industries in shallow and intermediate water depths such as Persian Gulf region. Such important structures need accurate considerations in analysis, design and assessment procedures. In this paper, nonlinear response of jacket-type platforms against extreme waves is examined utilizing sensitivity analyses. Results of this paper can reduce the number of random variables and consequently the computational effort in reliability analysis of jacket platforms, noticeably. Effects of foundation modeling have been neglected in majority of researches on the response of jacket platforms against wave loads. As nonlinear response of... 

Analytical Jacobian, nonlinear least square and three layer artificial neural network models are employed to predict deformation of mouse embryos under needle injection, based on experimental data captured from literature. The Maximum Absolute Error (MAE), coefficient of determination ( R2), Relative Error of Prediction (REP), Root Mean Square Error of Prediction (RMSEP), NashSutcliffe coefficient of efficiency ( Ef) and accuracy factor ( Af) are used as the basis for comparison of these three models. Analytical Jacobian, nonlinear least square and ANN models have yielded the correlation coefficient of 0.9985, 0.9964 and 0.9998, respectively. The REP between the models predicted values and... 

Background: Comparison of the kinematic variability and dynamic stability of the trunk between healthy and low back pain patient groups can contribute to gaining valuable information about the movement patterns and neuromotor strategies involved in various movement tasks. Methods: Fourteen chronic low back pain patients with mild symptoms and twelve healthy male volunteers performed repeated trunk flexion-extension movements in the sagittal plane at three different speeds: 20 cycles/min, self-selected, and 40 cycles/min. Mean standard deviations, coefficient of variation and variance ratio as variability measures; maximum finite-time Lyapunov exponents and maximum Floquet multipliers as... 

Herein, Kiwi peel activated carbon (AC), Materials Institute Lavoisier (MIL-88B (Fe), and AC/MIL-88B (Fe) composite were synthesized and used as catalysts to degrade Reactive Red 198. The material properties were analyzed by the FTIR, BET-BJH, XRD, FESEM, EDX, TGA, and UV–Vis/DRS. The BET surface area of AC, MIL-88B (Fe) and AC/MIL-88B (Fe) was 1113.3, 150.7, and 199.4 m2/g, respectively. The band gap values (Eg) estimated by Tauc plot method, were obtained 5.06, 4.19 and 3.79 eV for AC, MIL-88B (Fe) and AC/MIL-88B (Fe), respectively. The results indicated that the AC/MIL-88B (Fe) composite had higher photocatalytic activity (99%) than that of pure AC (79%) and MIL-88B (Fe) catalysts (87%)....