Sustainability and environmental concerns are critical issues in energy sector. Limited availability of fossil resources, environmental pollution caused by the greenhouse gases emitted as a result of fossil fuel usage and safety issues of nuclear power plants cause the seek of new resources in energy industry. Renewable energy sources emerge as the alternative energy resources for the industry. The unlimited availability of most of the renewable resources meets the sustainability needs in the energy sector. Energy generation from renewable resources causes low greenhouse gas emissions, which eliminates the environmental concerns. Moreover, use of renewable resources does not involve risks like radioactive emissions. Despite all these factors, renewable energy resources are not competitive yet. The cost of energy generation from renewable resources is high compared to the cost of using conventional resources like coal for energy generation. This situation acts as a barrier for the development of renewable energy technologies and cost reduction. In order to bring renewable energy to a competitive level in the energy market, some supportive mechanisms have been developed and implemented in various countries. This thesis work examines the mechanisms in the EU, the USA and Turkey. An examination has been performed on the current laws and policies effective on renewable energy sector in Turkey. As a result of the examinations, recommendations have been made to improve the legislative framework for the promotion of renewable energy in Turkey.

With the developments in space technology, the capabilities of spacecrafts have been increased considerably which in turn have entailed the development of more efficient spacecrafts in terms of cost, mass, size and power. One way to achieve such a development is the replacement of body mounted appendages with the deployable ones, which greatly reduces the size, mass and cost of the spacecraft especially when large appendages are considered. In order to obtain these deployable structures, deployment mechanisms and deployment mechanism drivers are used. A deployment mechanism is a combination of electrical and/or mechanical structures which hold the appendages in the stowed position before launch and deploys them after the launch with the power and commands supplied by the deployment mechanism driver. This necessary power of the deployment mechanism driver is produced by the Power Stage of the deployment mechanism driver and the necessary commands required by the deployment mechanism are supplied by the Control Stage of the deployment mechanism driver. In this thesis, the power stage of a deployment mechanism driver will be designed and implemented taking into account of the requirements for Low Earth Orbit Satellites such as temperature tolerance, reliability and radiation limits. In order to acquire a cost, mass and size efficient Power Stage, different deployment mechanism topologies will be studied and the most convenient one among these topologies will be chosen as the deployment mechanism driver load and the design will be performed accordingly.

<p>The main goal in this thesis is to select and test Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes suitable for network video transmission over RTP/UDP. There is a general concern in communication networks which is to achieve a tradeoff between reliable transmission and the delay that it takes. Our purpose is to look for techniques that improve the reliability while the realtime delay constraints are fulfilled. In order to achieve it, the FEC techniques focus on recovering the packet losses that come up along any transmission. The FEC schemes that we have selected are Parity Check algorithm, ReedSolomon (RS) codes and a Convolutional code. Simulations are performed to test the different schemes.</p><p>The results obtained show that the RS codes are the more powerful schemes in terms of recovery capabilities. However they can not be deployed for every configuration since they go beyond the delay threshold. On the other hand, despite of the Parity Check codes being the less efficient in terms of error recovery, they show a reasonable low delay. Therefore, depending on the packet loss probability that we are working with, we may chose one or other of the different schemes. To summarize, this thesis includes a theoretical background, a thorough analysis of the FEC schemes chosen, simulation results, conclusions and proposed future work.</p>

La thèse est consacrée aux divers problèmes de la théorie des systèmes dynamiques. On commence par étudier l'intégrabilité méromorphe du problème des trois corps. Alors, la renormalisation des applications unimodales asymétriques est analysée. Quelques résultats dans la théorie des fractions continues sont exposés y compris la réponse à une conjecture de Ramanujan sur les fractions infini-périodiques.

The project has shown that it is possible to create applications for different mobile operating systems and linking the devices to the signal handler Data Engine . Using Qt as a framework and development environment allows doing this with only one code base, which can be made to work on different platforms. This creates great opportunity to save time and to reach a wider audience. The creation of a demonstrator application, a tutorial and a template for new projects has been the main goals for this project. These will serve as examples and guides for applications to come on how to deploy to mobile devices and connect to Data Engine using Wi-Fi. Though support for Windows Phone was not achieved, due to both development-wise difficulties and choices made during the project's course, the project was considered a success.

Step-Flash Imprint Lithography (S-FIL[trademark]) is a low-cost, high-resolution, high-throughput pattern replication process with the potential to become the savior for the future of integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing where continued success ultimately depends on improvements in lithographic resolution. Traditional, optical lithography has driven projection imaging to its physical limits, and a new, disruptive lithography technique is needed for continued growth of the semiconductor industry. The revolutionary S-FIL process is based on the fast, in-situ polymerization of a liquid imprint material in contact with a high-resolution mold or template. The templates, fabricated by direct-write lithography, present the greatest expense when implementing an S-FIL process in manufacturing; therefore, the template lifetime must be maximized to distribute costs over a large number of products. Degradable cross-linking materials allow imprint resist contaminated templates to be cleaned without the risk of inorganic residues becoming lodged on the template surface. Cured imprint resist is insoluble in all non-reactive solvents due to its highly cross-linked structure. A polymer contaminate may be rendered soluble by degrading the cross-links and reducing the molecular weight. Several degradable cross-linker candidates were examined for compatibility with S-FIL processing and utility for wafer imprint reworking and template cleaning. The properties of the imprint resists formulated with degradable cross-linkers are reported. Tertiary ester and acetal containing moieties were di-functionalized with acrylate groups to form S-FIL compatible and acid degradable imprint precursors. Both ester and acetal cross-linkers are neat, low-viscosity ([less than or equal to] 20 cP) liquids at room temperature and are miscible with common imprint precursor components. Classical gel theory predicts that greater than 99% de-cross-linking reaction conversion is necessary to achieve solubility in a cured imprint resist formulation with 10 wt% degradable cross-linker. Concentrated sulfuric acid and heat was used to successfully strip tertiary ester cross-linkers from wafer and model template surfaces. Acetal cross-linkers were demonstrated to strip in the presence of trifluoroacetic acid at room temperature. Three-dimensional patterning is an integral benefit of S-FIL, which enables the streamlining of dual damascene processing with the use of multi-level templates. Multi-level imprint patterning allows the removal of over 100 unit process steps from the fabrication of interconnect structures in a modern IC chip. Multi-level S-FIL can be integrated into existing copper damascene interconnect fabrication using two different strategies. One technique requires an imprint resist and etch process for transferring multi-level imprints into an industry standard low-k dielectric. Some of the considerations for designing the multi-level resist and etch process are briefly described. The second strategy leverages the broad variety and flexibility of the imprint materials set, which is not available in photoresist materials technology. New “functional” imprint materials may be used with multi-level S-FIL to produce interconnect structures by directly imprinting an interlayer dielectric (ILD) precursor. The challenges associated with introducing new dielectric materials into a copper damascene process are presented. The design, processing, characterization and integration of novel materials is documented. Multi-level S-FIL with a directly patternable dielectric (DPD) enables low-cost fabrication of interconnect structures in an IC manufacturing back end of line. DPD’s based on either sol-gel or benzocyclobutane and acrylate functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes show promise for integration as ILD’s based on sufficient thermal and mechanical properties. Electrical test vehicle integration with sol-gel formulated DPD’s shows promising yield of interconnect structures with vias ranging from 2 to 0.12 [mu]m. Examination of interconnect structure revealed an acceptable via profile and sufficient contact with metal one for integration in IC devices. / text

This thesis presents the extension of WebCrow into the English language. WebCrow is an automatic crossword solver developed at the University of Siena, and makes use of the vast quantity of information on the world wide web to find answers to crossword puzzle clues. It has been demonstrated to be competitive against human opponents in solving Italian crossword puzzles, and new improvements are being actively developed. This thesis focuses on the development of the English-language extension of WebCrow, as well as some issues with multilingual crossword solving in general. This extension will help WebCrow to become a competitive crossword solver for English language (specifically American) crosswords and demonstrate that the use of web-based information can help effectively solve natural language problems in various languages. / text

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Oxygen hole-doping effects on a spin-chain system, Ca[subscript 2+chi]Y[2-chi]Cu₅O[subscript 10-delta](CaYCuO) are reported. CaYCuO is a good specimen to study the magnetic properties of the CuO₂ chain at the ground state because it has no complex structure other than the chain and it has hole dopability up to the formal copper valence number of +2.4. Specifically, we can dope holes into the CuO₂ chain by substituting Ca²⁺ for Y³⁺ or by utilizing oxygen deficiency. After a systematic study of the two methods to dope holes, we found that oxygen doping makes a more critical change in magnetic ordering in the chain than the replacement of Ca²⁺. Oxygen deficiency effects of the chain on the magnetic properties were explained using a mean field theory. A new relation for the effective hole doping was found as p = x - [alpha delta], where a = 3/2(x - [delta]) - 1/4. We study the anisotropy of magnetic properties of single crystal Li-cathode material (LiFePO₄) for g-factor, Curie-Weiss temperature, and effective moment. Magnetic properties Au/SiO₂ coated [gamma]-Fe₂O₃ are compared with pure [gamma]-Fe₂O₃ finding a decrease in the blocking temperature and the irreversible temperature for the coated nanoparticles. / text

The aim of this research was to invetigate the clinical decision-making processes used in podiatry and hence to investigate if a computer expert system could be used to aid the process of clinical decision-making. This was achieved through a sequence of four empirical studies. The initial study used card sorts to investigate seven expert podiatrists’ perceptions of and attitudes toward diagnostic aids, and in particular how podiatrists viewed expert systems. The results showed that expert systems are perceived as different in kind from other diagnostic aids such as X-rays or blood tests. The second study was conducted using one expert and one novice podiatrist and used a task analysis to investigate the types of tasks and skills undertaken by a podiatrist during the diagnosis of a patient in different clinical environments. The results indicate that the work is highly schematised and involves routine tasks such as nail care and callus reduction. In clinic, podiarists perform many tasks quickly. There was little difference between the number of tasks per minute undertaken in a general clinic and the number of tasks in a specialist diabetes clinic. Considering the speed of diagnosis, it is postulated that both expert and novice podiatrists’ use of schemata, pattern matching, and tacit and implicit knowledge dominates their diagnostic activity during consultations. The third study focused on how clinical reasoning and decision-making occur during consultations with a patient. Think-aloud protocols were used to investigate the differences in the clinical reasoning process between five expert and nine novice podiatrists. The speed of diagnosis and general lack of causal assertions suggest that use of schemata and tacit knowledge dominate the diagnosis process for both experts and novices. In a general setting, the novices produced four common clinical reasoning themes. These indicate that pattern recognition is a common method of diagnosis. However, there was an increase in the number of clinical reasoning themes used by experts in a specialist setting, indicating novice—expert differences. The fourth study used laddering interviews on a mixture of twelve NHS and private podiatrists to investigate why podiatrists used certain clinical reasoning themes. A hierarchical value map was derived, showing that, at an initial response level to the laddering questions, certain values were important: the palpation of the foot, building a picture of the foot condition, and being able to use clinical reasoning frequently and immediately. The emphases on palpation and immediacy of reasoning suggest that an expert system is unlikely to serve podiatrists’ needs in clinics. This research has provided a new understanding of the clinical reasoning processes used in podiatry. A podiatrist has a very busy timeline when diagnosing a patient and predominantly uses (and values) tacit knowledge, implicit learning, and compiled skills during consultations. There is little evidence for the need or desire for an expert system in clinical podiatry practice. However, if such an expert system were to be created, then: (a) it would have to be fast and non-intrusive so it can fit into a very busy consultation timeline, (b) it would need a knowledge base that could account for diagnosis of foot and leg conditions based on pattern recognition, and (c) it might be most valuable in the form of a decision support system for professional development that included the full range of expert diagnostic themes