Sharif Digital Repository

Meteorological droughts due to the concurrent occurrence of low-precipitation and high-temperature events can lead to severe negative impacts on agriculture, economy, ecosystem, and society. This study proposes a novel framework to characterize such drought conditions based on the joint variability of precipitation–temperature, particularly under climate change. Generalized hierarchical linear model is used to downscale precipitation and temperature at multiple stations from the outputs of nine General Circulation Models (GCMs) under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5. A bivariate drought index called Precipitation–Temperature Deciles Index (PTDI) is developed using... 

Meteorological droughts due to the concurrent occurrence of low-precipitation and high-temperature events can lead to severe negative impacts on agriculture, economy, ecosystem, and society. This study proposes a novel framework to characterize such drought conditions based on the joint variability of precipitation–temperature, particularly under climate change. Generalized hierarchical linear model is used to downscale precipitation and temperature at multiple stations from the outputs of nine General Circulation Models (GCMs) under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5. A bivariate drought index called Precipitation–Temperature Deciles Index (PTDI) is developed using... 

Nucleic acid amplification using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method has been widely used in different fields such as agricultural science, medicine, pathogen identification, and forensics to name a few. Today, it seems inevitable to have a robust, simple PCR system for diagnostics at the point-of-care (POC) level. Many photonic PCR systems have been proposed in the literature that benefit from plasmonic photothermal heating to achieve the common PCR thermal cycling. However, non-homogeneous temperature distribution is a challenge in some of them. In the present work, to achieve more efficient gene amplification, the effect of adding TiO2 nanoparticles has been investigated in a photonic... 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new model that contributes to connect heterogeneous objects and devices. It can share information with any device globally. Furthermore, the sensor technologies, communications, networks, and cloud computing technology in the IoT are expected to be integrated into large-scale monitored spaces. The main infrastructure of monitoring in the IoT is based on wireless sensor networks. Saving energy and expanding the lifetime are significant properties of the sensor’s nodes in these systems. The efficient energy saving projects should develop appropriate energy consumption’s algorithms to improve the lifetime of the networks in the IoT systems. In this paper, a... 

This paper introduces the concept of mapping of Artificially Intelligent (AI) computational systems. The concept of homunculus from human neurophysiology is extended to AI systems. It is assumed that an AI system behaves similarly to a mini-column or ganglion in the natural animal brain that comprises a layer of afferent (input) neurons, a number of interconnecting processing cells, and a layer of efferent (output) neurons or organs. The objective of the present study was to identify the correlation between the stimulus to each afferent neuron and the corresponding response from each efferent organ when the intelligent system is subjected to certain stimuli. To clarify the general concept, a... 

This study describes an adaptive sliding mode technique for attitude and position control of a rigid body insect-like flapping wing model in the presence of uncertainties. For this purpose, a six-degrees-of-freedom nonlinear and time-varying dynamic model of a typical hummingbird is considered for simulation studies. Based on the quasi-steady assumptions, three major aerodynamic loads including delayed stall, rotational lift and added mass are presented and analyzed, respectively. Using the averaging theory, a time-varying system is then transformed into the time-invariant system to design the adaptive controller. The controller is designed so that the closed-loop system will follow any... 

In this paper, a novel spatial six-degree-of freedom parallel manipulator actuated by three base-mounted partial spherical actuators is studied. This new parallel manipulator consists of a base platform and a moving platform, which are connected by three legs. Each leg of the manipulator is composed of a spherical joint, prismatic joint and universal joint. The base-mounted partial spherical actuators can only specify the direction of their corresponding legs. In other words, the spin of each leg is a passive degree-of-freedom. The inverse pose and forward pose of the new mechanism are described. In the inverse pose kinematics, active joint variables are calculated with no need for... 

Skin detection is a difficult and primary task in many image processing applications. Because of the diversity of various image processing tasks, there exists no optimum method that can perform properly for all applications. In this paper, we have proposed a novel skin detection algorithm that combines color and texture information of skin with cellular learning automata to detect skin-like regions in color images. Skin color regions are first detected, by using a committee structure, from among several explicit boundary skin models. Detected skin-color regions are then fed to a texture analyzer which extracts texture features via their color statistical properties and maps them to a skin... 

Topology Control (TC) is one of the most important techniques used in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks to reduce energy consumption and radio interference, The goal of this technique is to control the topology of the graph representing the communication links between network nodes with the purpose of maintaining some global graph property (e.g., connectivity), while reducing energy consumption and/or interference that are strictly related to the nodes' transmitting range. In this paper we present a new distributed learning based method to choose nodes transmitting range, in this method we run a range adjustment mechanism periodically to choose a near optimal transmitting range, we don't... 

In this paper, we present new adaptive linear discriminant analysis (LDA) algorithm and apply them for adaptive facial feature extraction. Adaptive nature of the proposed algorithm is advantageous for real world applications in which one confronts with a sequence of data such as online face recognition and mobile robotics. Application of the new algorithm on feature extraction from facial image sequences is given in three steps: i) adaptive image preprocessing, ii) adaptive dimension reduction and iii) adaptive LDA feature estimation. Steps 1 and 2 are done simultaneously and outputs of stage 2 are used as a sequence of inputs for stage3. The proposed system was tested on Yale and PIE face... 

There are several methods for assessing ecosystem tolerance level, each method is defined according to the target of the ecosystem development. This paper seeks a way to plan for the development of the existing ecosystems modified for human activities. For this purpose, two methods have been applied to assess the effects of local development on the local ecosystem tailored to the different demands. Thus, after gathering data in a coastal region all technologies being capable to be applied in this region regarding ecotourism development (population growth) were determined. Via different indicators, the quality of the ecosystem was evaluated. The Ecosystem Quality Index (EQI) and Technique for... 

Paraplegic users of mechanical walking orthoses, e.g. advanced reciprocating gait orthosis (ARGO), often face high energy expenditure and extreme upper body loading during locomotion. We studied the effect of kinematical pattern on the mechanical performance of paraplegic locomotion, in search for an improved gait pattern that leads to lower muscular efforts. A three-dimensional, four segment, six-degrees-of-freedom skeletal model of the advanced reciprocating gait orthosis-assisted paraplegic locomotion was developed based on the data acquired from an experimental study on a single subject. The effect of muscles was represented by ideal joint torque generators. A response surface analysis...