No description available.

In detail this thesis emphasizes on the following questions: 1.) Effects of different handwriting tasks und differences in clinical subtypes (1st study). For the first study the spectrum consisted of repetitive writing of simple symbols and letters to copying a given text. Procedures were kinematic and kinetic handwriting analyses. 2.) Analysis of the new parameter pen grip force and the correlation to other kinetic and kinematic parameters (2nd study). In this study the test sentence was used. 3.) Analysis of grip forces in three different fine motor tasks: handwriting, lifting and vertical arm movement (3rd study).

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Habitat fragmentation is widely recognised as a major threat to global biodiversity and by decreasing the size of habitat patches and disrupting important ecological processes through exposure to edge effects, is detrimental to many taxonomic groups, including insects. This research aimed to determine the influence of edge effects on the ecology of the wood ant, Formica rufa L. through an intensive study of a single site in Northamptonshire. The study focused upon the impact of both aspect and distance-related edge effects, measured along three edge to interior transects, a total of 82 sample nests and five control points within four study aspects located around the wood. Nest location and characteristics, density, colony structure, and the phenology of activities were also recorded. Overall, southern transects received more light but lower wind speeds than the other aspects and also supported a greater diversity of tree species. Southern nests also received significantly more light in the early and late parts of the year than nests in other aspects. At the random sampling points, nests received significantly more light and lower wind speeds than the controls. Compared with the controls, nests supported a higher plant species richness, but in terms of abundance, only sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) and elder (Sambucus nigra) were found in greater numbers at nest sites than controls. The south also supported significantly higher nest densities and had a higher percentage of polydomous colonies than the other aspects. The results showed that aspect mediated edge effects caused differences in wood ant phenology. Colonies in the south left hibernation earlier, began reproduction earlier, and had completed the reproductive cycle before colonies in the other aspects had begun theirs. Overall, these results are the first to show the impacts of aspect and distance related forest edge effects on F. rufa

Energy is undoubtedly the driving force at the core of the development of any nation. There is a direct relation between per capita income and energy consumption. The way this energy is produced, supplied and consumed, affects the local and global environment and is therefore a key issue in sustainable development. The Kingdom of Morocco which is not an oil-producing country is heavily dependent on imported energy to meet its energy demand. Morocco relies on imports for nearly 90 % of its hydrocarbon needs, with the total cost of its imports fluctuating between US$1 billion and US$1.5 billion per year. Electricity supplies are based largely on the combustion of imported coal, which is mainly obtained from South Africa, and imported crude oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Nigeria, together with electricity imports from Spain and Algeria. This dependence has had an unusually large impact on its economy and environment, affecting foreign exchange, the national debt and government revenues and investment budgets according to the Moroccan Government. In Morocco, the renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy, and biomass are plentiful, widely distributed and environmentally attractive. These resources add no net contributions to the atmospheric carbon dioxide and add no heat to the global environment. Levels of solar insolation exceed 5.00 kWhJm2/day on a horizontal plane in much of the country throughout much of the year, wind resources are favourable for both small scale and wind farm developments in some locations, hydro resources for micro applications are for the most part unexplored but likely to be available in the mountainous regions with good precipitation. Whilst bio-energy reserves are scarce throughout much of the arid and semi arid regions of the country, urban waste is abundant and offers good opportunity for processmg. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of renewable energy sources in meeting Morocco's primary energy demand. In this thesis, the energy, electricity, environmental and renewable energy budget for Morocco against the global backdrop is discussed and the related institutional, implementation and policy frameworks including assessment of barriers are analysed. The thesis also addresses renewable energy resource assessment which is a prerequisite to undertake any meaningful exercise to integrate renewable energy technologies into rural energy plan within the overall national energy scenario in Morocco. Furthermore, a comprehensive and scientific model for all important renewable resources such as solar, wind, biomass and micro-hydro throughout the country has been developed, which is a starting point for all future initiatives including private sector participation and market development in this sector. The proposed renewable energy plan could set Morocco on the path to a sustainable energy system with associated economic benefits setting a model for other African and developing countries to follow. The plan clearly contributes to the envisaged purpose of increasing renewable energy contribution in the primary energy balance bringing significant social and environmental benefits into the process. Plentiful wind and solar radiation resources and the proximity to Europe put Morocco in a strong position. Import of technology from and export of electricity to Europe could become a promlSlng strategy to limit the global greenhouse effect and to boost the Moroccan economy.

ABSTRACT Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are of major interest in fuel cell development due to their high energy conversion efficiency, wide range of fuels and environmental friendliness. One important obstacle for their industrial development is their processing difficulties. These difficulties have recently been addressed by employing a novel technique namely electroless nickel - yttria-stabilised zirconia (YSZ) co-deposition which eliminates multi-layer processing and high temperature sintering. The novel work carried out in this research programme investigates the effects of different processing parameters on the co-deposited anodes for SOFCs. In particular, YSZ particle size, electroless bath agitation method, electroless bath pH and substrate surface condition are investigated. These variables were investigated for their effect on (i) the ceramic to metal ratio – important in terms of matching the coefficient of thermal expansion of the anode and substrate, as well as providing electronic conductivity, and (ii) the porosity content in the deposited layers – required for fuel and exit gas penetration through the anode. The experimental work was based on a full factorial Design of Experiment (DoE) approach and consisted of three phases – namely, designing, running and analysing. A 16 run 24 full factorial DoE with five replications was constructed with YSZ particle sizes of 2 and 10 µm; bath agitation of air bubbling and mechanical stirring; bath pH of 4.9 and 5.4; and substrate surface treatment of hydrofluoric acid etching and mechanical blasting. A total of 80 samples were analysed for nickel content by energy dispersive X-ray analysis and porosity content by Archimedes buoyancy measurement. The DoE was analysed by the ANOVA statistical tool in Minitab 15 software. The co-deposition conditions that produced anodes with (i) the lowest volume percentage of nickel and (ii) the highest level of porosity were determined. Linear regression models for both nickel to YSZ content and porosity responses were built to estimate the correlation between experimental and predicted data. The coefficient of determination, R2 for nickel to YSZ content indicated a reasonable correlation between experimental and predicted values while the regression model for porosity response was less reliable. One anode containing 50 vol.% nickel recorded an electronic conductivity at 400oC in air that is comparable to the published data. Another series of tests at higher temperatures (up to 800oC) in air and nitrogen resulted in encouraging electronic conductivities being recorded.

The objective of this thesis is to apply near Shannon limit Error-Correcting Codes (ECCs), particularly the turbo-like codes, to energy-constrained wireless devices, for the purpose of extending their lifetime. Conventionally, sophisticated ECCs are applied to applications, such as mobile telephone networks or satellite television networks, to facilitate long range and high throughput wireless communication. For low power applications, such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), these ECCs were considered due to their high decoder complexities. In particular, the energy efficiency of the sensor nodes in WSNs is one of the most important factors in their design. The processing energy consumption required by high complexity ECCs decoders is a significant drawback, which impacts upon the overall energy consumption of the system. However, as Integrated Circuit (IC) processing technology is scaled down, the processing energy consumed by hardware resources reduces exponentially. As a result, near Shannon limit ECCs have recently begun to be considered for use in WSNs to reduce the transmission energy consumption [1,2]. However, to ensure that the transmission energy consumption reduction granted by the employed ECC makes a positive improvement on the overall energy efficiency of the system, the processing energy consumption must still be carefully considered. The main subject of this thesis is to optimise the design of turbo codes at both an algorithmic and a hardware implementation level for WSN scenarios. The communication requirements of the target WSN applications, such as communication distance, channel throughput, network scale, transmission frequency, network topology, etc, are investigated. Those requirements are important factors for designing a channel coding system. Especially when energy resources are limited, the trade-off between the requirements placed on different parameters must be carefully considered, in order to minimise the overall energy consumption. Moreover, based on this investigation, the advantages of employing near Shannon limit ECCs in WSNs are discussed. Low complexity and energy-efficient hardware implementations of the ECC decoders are essential for the target applications.