This thesis deals with coplanar directional and hybrid couplers. Firstly, the thesis describes the theory of hybrid microwave integrated circuits with their advantages and disadvantages in comparison with other types of microwave circuits. Next, the thesis deals with basic microstrips and individual types of coplanar strips and waveguides are also more closely analyzed. The thesis also explains a theory of directional and hybrid couplers and analyses particular kinds of directionality and attributes of the real directional couplers. The following chapter shows a method of design of a few coplanar directional coupler types. Attributes of the types are then verified in CST Microwave Studio. The last chapter includes measured parameters of the couplers and their comparison with the theoretical values from the previous part. The next aim of the thesis is to create laboratory tasks which deals with coplanar directional couplers. The laboratory task is found in the appendix.

The aim of this master’s thesis is to build stand-alone impedance analyzer for mesasuring antennas’ impedance. The vector network analysis is used as measuring method. Analog (with directional coupler and gain and phase detector) and digital (with 8bit AVR microcontrollers) part of analyzer are described and then build.

This work deals with high-frequency power amplifiers. In the theoretical part are briefly summarized the general characteristics and properties of particular working classes of amplifiers focusing on their efficiency. The next section is aimed on design of high-frequency power amplifier for 1296MHz band and its individual components. In this part is desribed design of hybrid combiners - splitters, directional couplers of the coupled lines, amplifiers with RA18H1213G module and power amplifier with transistor BLV958. The work also includes the results of simulations of designed circuit, realization procedure and the measured parameters of manufactured components. In conclusion of this work the theoretical and measured values are compared.

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is defined as pain, muscle tension, or stiffness localized below the costal margin and above the inferior gluteal folds, with or without sciatica, that lasts for at least twelve weeks.1 It is the leading cause of disability and loss of productivity in the United States.2 There is conflicting evidence on what is the most effective nonpharmacological treatment for CLBP. Many studies have shown that any general exercise routine is effective for improving symptoms, but the literature provides conflicting evidence about what specific type of exercise is best.3 A few studies have demonstrated decreased pain and disability with supervised directional preference exercise routines compared to non-directional preference routines. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a home directional preference exercise/stretch program for reducing disability in mechanical CLBP in patients in a residency clinic and to expand on the limited evidence of directional preference exercise effectiveness. Unlike other directional preference interventional studies, this program’s simplicity and convenience of performing at home potentially could increase patient compliance and therefore effectiveness. Patients were screened at a routine clinic visit and considered eligible if they had a known diagnosis of CLBP. They were excluded if they were in an acute exacerbation. Participating patients were categorized on directional range of motion preference based on their physical exam, either flexion or extension, whichever improved their pain. They were given a simple routine with instructions and pictures consisting of three exercises and stretches that emphasized their specific directional preference. Subjects performed three sets of each routine two to three days per week. Degree of disability score was measured at initial visit by completing the gold standard disability index questionnaire, the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). Degree of disability was reassessed with ODI at a follow-up assessment four to eight weeks later with five follow-up questions regarding compliance and acute exacerbation. Patients were excluded if they were in an acute exacerbation. Pre-interventional disability scores were then compared to post-interventional disability scores. Twelve total patients enrolled in the program. Seven were lost to follow up. Five completed the study at the proper follow up interval; however, one was in an acute exacerbation so was excluded. Of the four patients included, two had extension and two had flexion preference. Three out of four patients had decreased disability scores at follow up. Total post-intervention score on ODI improved by an average of 10 points compared to pre-intervention score for the patients who improved. The most improved post-interventional ODI score category was walking and changing degree of pain. Seventy-five percent of the patients who completed the study had an improvement in their CLBP disability score. However, due to a small sample size and study power, the results are not statistically significant. Therefore, a conclusion cannot be appropriately drawn about the effectiveness of performing a home directional preference exercise/stretch program for reducing disability in mechanical CLBP in patients at a residency clinic. Nevertheless, the results are promising and deserve further investigation with a larger sample size.

LKAB Wassara AB, förkortat Wassara, är ett dotterbolag till det statligt ägda LKAB. Wassara utvecklar och tillverkar borrsystem som bland annat används för spränghålsborrning i LKAB:s gruvor. Borrtekniken som Wassara utvecklat använder sig av trycksatt vatten för att driva en slaghammare vilken slår på en borrkrona. Wassaras system möjliggör rak borrning med hög precision. Nästa steg är att utveckla ett borrsystem där borrens riktning kan kontrolleras vilket ska resultera i en mer fördelaktig borrhålslayout och därmed ökad produktivitet. Detta examensarbete är en del av ett utvecklingsprojekt inom Wassara kallat ”Framtida borrsystem” som syftar till att ta fram nästa generations styrda borrsystem. Arbetet som beskrivs i denna rapport behandlar en omvärldsanalys av området styrd borrning samt konceptutveckling för den mekaniska styrprincipen vilka har till syfte att ligga till grund för ett beslut gällande möjligheten till implementering av styrd borrning i Wassaras system. Genom en omfattande omvärldsanalys lades en kunskapsgrundgrund för en konceptgenerering vilken resulterade i fem koncept för styrningsmekanismen. Koncepten analyserades och utvärderades och ledde fram till ett slutkoncept för vidare utveckling. Detta koncept visualiserades med hjälp av 3D-modeller och funktionsprototyper för att ge en bättre bild av, samt verifiera, geometrin. Vidare gjordes hållfasthetsanalyser, gränssnittsutformningar och förslag till drivsystem för den mekaniska styrprincipen.Det slutkoncept som beskrivs i rapporten uppfyllde de krav som ställdes initialt. Konceptet jämfördes med ett antal existerande system, vilka studerades i omvärldsanalysen, och visade på fördelaktiga egenskaper med avseende på de förhållanden som gäller för ”Framtida borrsystem”. / LKAB Wassara AB, abbr. Wassara, is a subsidiary of the state owned LKAB. Wassara develops and manufactures drilling technology, which is used for blast hole drilling in LKAB's mines. The drilling technique Wassara developed uses pressurized water to drive a percussion hammer which strikes on a drill bit. Wassara’s system allows straight drilling with high precision. The next step for Wassara is to develop a drilling system where the drill direction can be controlled, which will result in a more favourable borehole layout and thus increased productivity. This thesis is part of a development project at Wassara called "Framtida borrsystem" that aims to develop a next generation directionally controlled drilling system. The work described in this report covers an analysis of the area of directionally controlled drilling as well as concept development for the mechanical control principle. These are intended to be the basis for a decision regarding the possibility to implement directional drilling in the Wassara system. Through an extensive background research process, a foundation of knowledge was created and used as a basis for concept generation. The concept generation resulted in five concepts for the control mechanism which were analysed and evaluated and led to a final concept for further development. This concept was visualized using 3D models and functional prototypes to provide a better picture of, and to validate, the geometry. Furthermore, stress analysis, interface designs and a draft of an actuation system for the mechanical control principle were conducted. The final concept described in the report met the requirements that were stated initially. The concept was compared to a number of existing systems, which were studied in the analysis of the area of directional drilling, and showed advantageous properties with respect to the circumstances of the project "Framtida borrsystem”.

This paper adopted second language acquisition theories and research methods to investigate how second-language (L2) Chinese learners acquire Chinese directional complements (DCs). It included two main parts: a corpus study and a questionnaire survey. The corpus came from the compositions of 47 Chinese learners at intermediate and advanced levels at a New England university. And the data also included the questionnaire survey of 82 novice, intermediate, and advanced levels’ Chinese learners and 15 native Chinese speakers who study in the same university. The corpus study shows that L2 learners at intermediate and advanced level preferred to use DCs with extended meanings. Moreover, they preferred to combine verb with DC as an entirety rather than placing the object between verb and DC. The error analysis based on the survey data shows that omission errors of DCs accounted for the largest percentage, the percentage of misordering errors and misuse errors were very close, and addition errors were limited. Moreover, a relative acquisition sequence was constructed according to accuracy rate and the usage rate. This acquisition sequence reflects several phenomena: 1) the position of the object influenced the acquisition significantly; 2) some errors were caused vi by interlingual transfer 3) DCs with extended meanings were easier than DCs with directional meanings in some cases; 4) the type of DC was not an important factor to affect the acquisition sequence; 5) L2 learners’ comprehension competence was better than the expression competence at all level; 6)and some DC patterns’ average accuracy increased at higher level, however, the errors of certain DC patterns were fossilized. Since the presentation of the DCs in the textbooks can impact the acquisition. The researcher evaluated the presentation of DCs in participants’ textbooks. There were some deficiencies, such as overwhelming introduction in one lesson, repeating introduction of the same DC, and so on. At last, some implications to teaching DCs were provided based on the findings in previous chapters.

Wave models are an integral part of coastal engineering due to their ability to quantify information that is either unobtainable or unavailable. However, these models rely heavily on the input of a directional wave spectrum that describes the variation of energy with frequency and direction. This study investigated how five methods for computing the directional wave spectrum perform within the nearshore spectral wave model, STWAVE. The results of the five experimental runs showed that overall, the greatest differences between spectra were observed in the significant wave height parameter. The mean wave direction showed greater differences at the offshore model domain boundary and lesser differences as the wave enters the nearshore; and the peak period had fewer differences at the boundary, but at the nearshore the differences were dependent upon the presence of wind forcing. Winds had a significant impact on observed differences between the spectra in the domain by dominating the wave field variation.

In this dissertation, new digital image processing methods for hyperdimensional imagery are developed and experimentally tested on remotely sensed Earth observations and medical imagery. The high dimensionality of the imagery is either inherent due to the type of measurements forming the image, as with imagery obtained with hyperspectral sensors, or the result of preprocessing and feature extraction, as with synthetic aperture radar imagery and digital mammography. In the first study, two omni-directional adaptations of gray level co-occurrence matrix analysis are developed and experimentally evaluated. The adaptations are based on a previously developed rubber band straightening transform that has been used for analysis of segmented masses in digital mammograms. The new methods are beneficial because they can be applied to imagery where the region of interest is either poorly segmented or not segmented. The methods are based on the concept of extracting circular windows s around each pixel in the image which are radially resampled to derive rectangular images. The images derived from the resampling are then suitable for standard GLCM techniques. The methods were applied to both remotely sensed synthetic aperture radar imagery, for the purpose of automated detection of landslides on earthen levees, and to digital mammograms, for the purpose of automated classification of masses as either benign or malignant. Experimental results show the newly developed methods to be valuable for texture feature extraction and classification of un-segmented objects. In the second study, a new technique of using spatial information in spectral band grouping for remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery is developed and experimentally tested. The technique involves clustering the spectral bands based on similarity of spatial features extracted from each band. The newly developed technique is evaluated in automated classification systems that utilize a single classifier and systems that utilize multiple classifiers combined with decision fusion. The systems are experimentally tested on remotely sensed imagery for agricultural applications. The spatial-spectral band grouping approach is compared to uniform band windowing and spectral only band grouping. The results show that the spatial-spectral band grouping method significantly outperforms both of the comparison methods, particularly when using multiple classifiers with decision fusion.

No description available.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第23482号 / 工博第4894号 / 新制||工||1765(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科社会基盤工学専攻 / (主査)教授 森 信人, 准教授 原田 英治, 准教授 志村 智也 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM