Emerging connected and autonomous vehicle technologies (CAV) provide an opportunity to improve highway capacity and reduce adverse impacts of stop-and-go traffic. To realize the potential benefits of CAV technologies, this study provides insightful methodological and managerial tools in microscopic and macroscopic traffic scales. In the macroscopic scale, this dissertation proposes an analytical method to formulate highway capacity for a mixed traffic environment where a portion of vehicles are CAVs and the remaining are human-driven vehicles (HVs). The proposed analytical mixed traffic highway capacity model is based on a Markov chain representation of spatial distribution of heterogeneous and stochastic headways. This model captures not only the full spectrum of CAV market penetration rates but also all possible values of CAV platooning intensities that largely affect the spatial distribution of different headway types. Numerical experiments verify that this analytical model accurately quantifies the corresponding mixed traffic capacity at various settings. This analytical model allows for examination of the impact of different CAV technology scenarios on mixed traffic capacity. We identify sufficient and necessary conditions for the mixed traffic capacity to increase (or decrease) with CAV market penetration rate and platooning intensity. These theoretical results caution scholars not to take CAVs as a sure means of increasing highway capacity for granted but rather to quantitatively analyze the actual headway settings before drawing any qualitative conclusion. In the microscopic scale, this study develops innovative control strategies to smooth highway traffic using CAV technologies. First, it formulates a simplified traffic smoothing model for guiding movements of CAVs on a general one-lane highway segment. The proposed simplified model is able to control the overall smoothness of a platoon of CAVs and approximately optimize traffic performance in terms of fuel efficiency and driving comfort. The elegant theoretical properties for the general objective function and the associated constraints provides an efficient analytical algorithm for solving this problem to the exact optimum. Numerical examples reveal that this exact algorithm has an efficient computational performance and a satisfactory solution quality. This trajectory-based traffic smoothing concept is then extended to develop a joint trajectory and signal optimization problem. This problem simultaneously solves the optimal CAV trajectory function shape and the signal timing plan to minimize travel time delay and fuel consumption. The proposed algorithm simplifies the vehicle trajectory and fuel consumption functions that leads to an efficient optimization model that provides exact solutions. Numerical experiments reveal that this algorithm is applicable to any signalized crossing points including intersections and work-zones. Further, the model is tested with various traffic conditions and roadway geometries. These control approaches are then extended to a mixed traffic environment with HVs, connected vehicles (CVs), and CAVs by proposing a CAV-based speed harmonization algorithm. This algorithm develops an innovative traffic prediction model to estimate the real-time status of downstream traffic using traffic sensor data and information provided by CVs and CAVs. With this prediction, the algorithm controls the upstream CAVs so that they smoothly hedge against the backward deceleration waves and gradually merge into the downstream traffic with a reasonable speed. This model addresses the full spectrum of CV and CAV market penetration rates and various traffic conditions. Numerical experiments are performed to assess the algorithm performance with different traffic conditions and CV and CAV market penetration rates. The results show significant improvements in damping traffic oscillations and reducing fuel consumption.

Today’s state of the art additive manufacturing (AM) systems have the ability to fabricate multi-material devices with novel capabilities that were previously constrained by traditional manufacturing. AM machines fuse or deposit material in an additive fashion only where necessary, thus unlocking advantages of mass customization, no part-specific tooling, near arbitrary geometric complexity, and reduced lead times and cost. The combination of conductive ink micro-dispensing AM process with hybrid manufacturing processes including: laser machining, CNC machining, and pick & place enables the fabrication of printed electronics. Printed electronics exploit the integration of AM with hybrid processes and allow embedded and/or conformal electronics systems to be fabricated, which overcomes previously limited multi-functionality, decreases the form factor, and enhances performance. However, AM processes are still emerging technologies and lack qualification and standardization, which limits widespread application, especially in harsh environments (i.e. defense and industrial sectors). This dissertation explores three topics of electronics integration into AM that address the path toward qualification and standardization to evaluate the performance and repeatable fabrication of printed electronics for resilience when subjected to harsh environments. These topics include: (1) the effect of smoothing processes to improve the as-printed surface finish of AM components with mechanical and electrical characterization—which highlights the lack of qualification and standardization within AM printed electronics and paves the way for the remaining topics of the dissertation, (2) harsh environmental testing (i.e. mechanical shock, thermal cycling, die shear strength) and initiation of a foundation for qualification of printed electronic components to demonstrate survivability in harsh environments, and (3) the development of standardized methods to evaluate the adhesion of conductive inks while also analyzing the effect of surface treatments on the adhesive failure mode of conductive inks. The first topic of this dissertation addresses the as-printed surface roughness from individually fusing lines in AM extrusion processes that create semi-continuous components. In this work, the impact of surface smoothing on mechanical properties and electrical performance was measured. For the mechanical study, surface roughness was decreased with vapor smoothing by 70% while maintaining dimensional accuracy and increasing the hermetic seal to overcome the inherent porosity. However, there was little impact on the mechanical properties. For the electrical study, a vapor smoothing and a thermal smoothing process reduced the surface roughness of the surfaces of extruded substrates by 90% and 80% while also reducing measured dissipative losses up to 24% and 40% at 7 GHz, respectively. The second topic of this dissertation addresses the survivability of printed electronic components under harsh environmental conditions by adapting test methods and conducting preliminary evaluation of multi-material AM components for initializing qualification procedures. A few of the material sets show resilience to high G impacts up to 20,000 G’s and thermal cycling in extreme temperatures (-55 to 125ºC). It was also found that coefficient of thermal expansion matching is an important consideration for multi-material printed electronics and adhesion of the conductive ink is a prerequisite for antenna survivability in harsh environments. The final topic of this dissertation addresses the development of semi-quantitative and quantitative measurements for standardizing adhesion testing of conductive inks while also evaluating the effect of surface treatments. Without standard adhesion measurements of conductive inks, comparisons between materials or references to application requirements cannot be determined and limit the adoption of printed electronics. The semi-quantitative method evolved from manual cross-hatch scratch testing by designing, printing, and testing a semi-automated tool, which was coined scratch adhesion tester (SAT). By cross-hatch scratch testing with a semi-automated device, the SAT bypasses the operator-to-operator variance and allows more repeatable and finer analysis/comparison across labs. Alternatively, single lap shear testing permits quantitative adhesion measurements by providing a numerical value of the nominal interfacial shear strength of a coating upon testing while also showing surface treatments can improve adhesion and alter the adhesive (i.e. the delamination) failure mode of conductive inks.

<p>The goal of this work has been to improve the accuracy of a pre-existing algorithm for vehicle pose estimation, which uses intrinsic measurements of vehicle motion and measurements derived from far infrared images.</p><p>Estimating the pose of a vehicle, based on images from an on-board camera and intrinsic measurements of vehicle motion, is a problem of simultanoeus localization and mapping (SLAM), and it can be solved using the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The EKF is a causal filter, so if the pose estimation problem is to be solved off-line acausal methods are expected to increase estimation accuracy significantly. In this work the EKF has been compared with an acausal method for solving the SLAM problem called smoothing and mapping (SAM) which is an optimization based method that minimizes process and measurement noise.</p><p>Analyses of how improvements in the vehicle motion model, using a number of different model extensions, affects accuracy of pose estimates have also been performed.</p>

<p>Bakgrund: De finansiella rapporterna som företagen publicerar ligger hos investerare till grund för ekonomiska beslut. Det är därför viktigt att ha kunskap om och förståelse för vilka effekter som olika redovisningsalternativ ger upphov till. Resultatplanering i företag innebär att det redovisade resultatet avsiktligt påverkas i en för företaget önskvärd riktning. Denna planering kan ta sig uttryck i både öppna och dolda taktiska åtgärder. De valmöjligheter som erbjuds i regler och rekommendationer skapar utrymmen för att företagen aktivt kan välja det redovisningsalternativ som passar dem bäst. </p><p>Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka resultatutjämning som företeelse i svenska publika företag och koncerner utifrån ett externt perspektiv. </p><p>Metod: En fallstudie har genomförts i form av en liten N-studie för att få en djup förståelse för undersökningsområdet resultatutjämning. Studien innehåller även två dokumentstudier, den ena är en ren empirisk dokumentstudie i form av granskning av publika företags årsredovisningar för år 2003. Den empiriska studien har kompletterats med intervjuer med revisorer på revisionsbolagen KPMG och Ernst&Young samt Skatteverket. Den andra är en teoretisk studie av existerande litteratur rörande fenomenet resultatutjämning. </p><p>Resultat: Studien visar att det finns en närvaro av resultatutjämnande åtgärder i de finansiella rapporter som presenteras för de externa intressenterna. I ett tidsperspektiv kan det utrönas att utvecklingen av redovisningsnormerna även har inneburit att de taktiska åtgärder företag vidtar följer den samma. En mer restriktiv tillämpning av regler och rekommendationer motverkar förekomsten av öppet redovisade åtgärder i syfte att påverka det redovisade resultatet.</p>

We develop an extension to the tactical planning model (TPM) for a job shop by the third author. The TPM is a discrete-time model in which all transitions occur at the start of each time period. The time period must be defined appropriately in order for the model to be meaningful. Each period must be short enough so that a job is unlikely to travel through more than one station in one period. At the same time, the time period needs to be long enough to justify the assumptions of continuous workflow and Markovian job movements. We build an extension to the TPM that overcomes this restriction of period sizing by permitting production control over shorter time intervals. We achieve this by deriving a continuous-time linear control rule for a single station. We then determine the first two moments of the production level and queue length for the workstation. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Bakgrund: De finansiella rapporterna som företagen publicerar ligger hos investerare till grund för ekonomiska beslut. Det är därför viktigt att ha kunskap om och förståelse för vilka effekter som olika redovisningsalternativ ger upphov till. Resultatplanering i företag innebär att det redovisade resultatet avsiktligt påverkas i en för företaget önskvärd riktning. Denna planering kan ta sig uttryck i både öppna och dolda taktiska åtgärder. De valmöjligheter som erbjuds i regler och rekommendationer skapar utrymmen för att företagen aktivt kan välja det redovisningsalternativ som passar dem bäst. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka resultatutjämning som företeelse i svenska publika företag och koncerner utifrån ett externt perspektiv. Metod: En fallstudie har genomförts i form av en liten N-studie för att få en djup förståelse för undersökningsområdet resultatutjämning. Studien innehåller även två dokumentstudier, den ena är en ren empirisk dokumentstudie i form av granskning av publika företags årsredovisningar för år 2003. Den empiriska studien har kompletterats med intervjuer med revisorer på revisionsbolagen KPMG och Ernst&amp;Young samt Skatteverket. Den andra är en teoretisk studie av existerande litteratur rörande fenomenet resultatutjämning. Resultat: Studien visar att det finns en närvaro av resultatutjämnande åtgärder i de finansiella rapporter som presenteras för de externa intressenterna. I ett tidsperspektiv kan det utrönas att utvecklingen av redovisningsnormerna även har inneburit att de taktiska åtgärder företag vidtar följer den samma. En mer restriktiv tillämpning av regler och rekommendationer motverkar förekomsten av öppet redovisade åtgärder i syfte att påverka det redovisade resultatet.

In this thesis, we consider problems connected to navigation and tracking for autonomousrobots under the assumption of constraints on sensors and kinematics. We study formation controlas well as techniques for filtering and smoothing of noise contaminated input. The scientific contributions of the thesis comprise five papers.In Paper A, we propose three cascaded, stabilizing formation controls for multi-agent systems.We consider platforms with non-holonomic kinematic constraints and directional rangesensors. The resulting formation is a leader-follower system, where each follower agent tracksits leader agent at a specified angle and distance. No inter-agent communication is required toexecute the controls. A switching Kalman filter is introduced for active sensing, and robustnessis demonstrated in experiments and simulations with Khepera II robots.In Paper B, an optimization-based adaptive Kalman filteringmethod is proposed. The methodproduces an estimate of the process noise covariance matrix Q by solving an optimization problemover a short window of data. The algorithm recovers the observations h(x) from a system˙ x = f (x), y = h(x)+v without a priori knowledge of system dynamics. The algorithm is evaluatedin simulations and a tracking example is included, for a target with coupled and nonlinearkinematics. In Paper C, we consider the problem of estimating a closed curve in R2 based on noisecontaminated samples. A recursive control theoretic smoothing spline approach is proposed, thatyields an initial estimate of the curve and subsequently computes refinements of the estimateiteratively. Periodic splines are generated by minimizing a cost function subject to constraintsimposed by a linear control system. The optimal control problem is shown to be proper, andsufficient optimality conditions are derived for a special case of the problem using Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory.Paper D continues the study of recursive control theoretic smoothing splines. A discretizationof the problem is derived, yielding an unconstrained quadratic programming problem. Aproof of convexity for the discretized problem is provided, and the recursive algorithm is evaluatedin simulations and experiments using a SICK laser scanner mounted on a PowerBot from ActivMedia Robotics. Finally, in Paper E we explore the issue of optimal smoothing for control theoretic smoothingsplines. The output of the control theoretic smoothing spline problem is essentially a tradeoff between faithfulness to measurement data and smoothness. This tradeoff is regulated by the socalled smoothing parameter. In Paper E, a method is developed for estimating the optimal valueof this smoothing parameter. The procedure is based on general cross validation and requires noa priori information about the underlying curve or level of noise in the measurements. / QC 20100722

Prior empirical research, mainly conducted in US under the US GAAP, has indicated that managers in listed banks use loan loss provisions as a primary tool for income smoothing activities. Since 2005 the accounting environment in the European Union (EU) changed, as all listed companies are required to comply with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Some arguments envisage that IFRS is a set of high quality standards that plug some inconsistencies relative to national General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The overall objective of the present study is to examine earnings management and in particular income smoothing through the use of loan loss provisions (LLP) to manage earnings under IFRS and national GAAPs. The sample consists of twenty large commercial banks listed in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) for the years 2004-2012 (including early adopters) and sixteen banks for the years 1996-2003 under each country’s national reporting regime. Furthermore we present the body of earning management literature in conjunction with agency theory in order to grasp managers’ opportunistic behavior. Finally we assess the institutional role of financial reporting standards and the arguments of how IFRS could restrict earnings management activities as proposed by some authors. Overall, our results indicate some degree of income smoothing activities through loan loss provisions by bank managers both under national GAAPs and IFRS. The study contributes to the broad literature body on earnings management, while testing income-smoothing activities on a single industry compared to previous studies where the samples comprises a variety of firms in different industries.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become the most important social policy in Latin America, and their influence has spread to countries around the world. A number of studies provide strong evidence of the positive impacts of these programs on the main targeted outcomes, education and health, and have proved successful in other outcomes such as nutrition, household income, and child labor. As we expect CCT programs to remain a permanent aspect of social policy for the foreseeable future, demand for evidence of the indirect effects of CCT programs has grown beyond the initial emphasis of these programs. My research pays particular attention to these relevant but unintended outcomes, which have been discussed less extensively in the literature. Familias en Accion (FA), a CCT program in Colombia, started operating in 2002 and has benefited approximately 1,500,000 households since its beginning. The results of the program’s evaluation survey, representative of poor rural households in Colombia, are a very good source or investigating not only the unintended effects of the program but also the microeconomic behavior of poor households and social policy issues in the country. Using a panel dataset from FA, I address three empirical policy questions: (i) to what extent is consumption of beneficiary households better insured against income shocks? (ii) has the program displaced child labor as a risk-coping instrument?, and (iii) are there any incentive effects of the cash transfers and the associated conditionalities on the labor supply of adults in recipient households? Each of my research questions is addressed separately; however, the results, taken together, can be informative in understanding the safety net value of the program and their potentialities to reduce poverty in the long term. I find that the program serves as an instrument for consumption smoothing. In particular, FA is effective in protecting food consumption, but not nonfood consumption, and it reduces consumption fluctuations in response to idiosyncratic shocks but not to covariate shocks. Results also reveal that FA works as insurance for the schooling of the poor but is not able to completely displace child labor. Finally, the results also show that beneficiary mothers are devoting more time to household chores and that girls and female adult labor are complementary. Male labor supply has increased while boys have increased leisure time as a response to the program.

In spite of increasingly sophisticated workforce management tools, a significant gap remains between the goal of effective staffing and the present difficulty predicting the stochastic demand of inbound calls. We have investigated the hypothesized nonhomogeneous Poisson process model of modem pool callers of the University community. In our case, we tested if the arrivals could be approximated by a piecewise constant rate over short intervals. For each of 1 and 10-minute intervals, based on the close relationship between the Poisson process and the exponential distribution, the test results did not show any sign of homogeneous Poisson process. We have examined the hypothesis of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process by a transformed statistic. Quantitative and graphical goodness-of-fit tests have confirmed nonhomogeneous Poisson process. <p>Further analysis on the intensity function revealed that linear rate intensity was woefully inadequate in predicting time varying arrivals. For sinusoidal rate model, difficulty arose in setting the period parameter. Spline models, as an alternative to parametric modelling, had more control of balance between data fitting and smoothness, which was appealing to our analysis on call arrival process.