L'objectiu bàsic d'aquesta tesi és l'estudi de la dinàmica a l'entorn de tors de dimensió baixa de sistemes hamiltonians analítics. Per aquest estudi l'eina fonamental és l'ús de formes normals al voltant d'aquests objectes.La formulació dels resultats d'aquesta memòria s'ha fet de manera adient per a la seva aplicació a models de mecànica celeste del món real. Per aquest motiu els resultats no es redueixen només al cas autònom, sinó que algun d'ells pren en consideració la possiblitat que les diferents perturbacions pugin dependre del temps de forma periòdica o quasiperiòdica. Aquests resultats s'apliquen per descriure la dinàmica d'alguns problemes d'interes per la Astronàutica. Per tant, els resultats obtinguts inclouen també aplicacions numèriques.Els resultats assolits en cadascun del capítols de la memòria es poden sintetitzar de la forma següent:Capítol 1.- Estudi de la dinàmica entorn d'un tor parcialment el.líptic d'un sistema Hamiltonià autònom. Es donen cotes inferiors pel temps de difusió entorn d'un tor totalment el.líptic, així com estimacions, en el cas general, de la densitat de tors invariants (de qualsevol dimensió) al voltant del tor inicial. Les estimacions en la velocitat de difusió i en la proximitat a 1 d'aquesta densitat, són exponencialment petites respecte la distància al tor inicial.Capítol 2.- Computació numèrica de formes normals al voltant d'òrbites periòdiques. Es desenvolupa un mètode per a calcular formes normals al voltant d'òrbites periòdiques el.líptiques de sistemes hamiltonians. Aquesta metodologia és aplicada numèricament a una òrbita periòdica del Problema Restringit de tres Cossos espaial. Els resultats d'aquest capítol es poden veure com una implementació numèrica del Capítol 1.Capítol 3.- Persistència de tors de dimensió baixa sota perturbacions quasiperiòdiques. Es mostra que un tor de dimensió baixa d'un sistema hamiltonià sotmès a una perturbació quasiperiòdica és pot continuar respecte el paràmetre perturbatiu, tot afegint a les freqüències bàsiques inicials les de la perturbació, excepte per un conjunt de mesura petita pel paràmetre. Al igual que en el Capítol 1 també s'estima la densitat de tors en el problema perturbat. En ambdós casos, les cotes obtingudes per la mesura dels tors pels qual no és possible provar existència són de tipus exponencialment petit.Apèndix. Es presenta un resultat obtingut de forma conjunta amb Rafael Ramírez-Ros sobre la reducció a coeficients constants de sistemes d'equacions lineals autònoms perturbats quasiperiòdicament. Es mostra que tal reducció és possible excepte un reste exponencialment petit en el tamany de la perturbació.

Thermally enhanced greases made of dispersions of small conductive particles suspended in fluidic polymers can offer significant advantages when used as a thermal interface material (TIM) in microelectronics cooling applications. A fundamental problem which remains to be addressed is how to predict the effective thermal conductivity of these materials, an important parameter in establishing the bulk resistance to heat flow through the TIM. <br /><br /> The following study presents the application of two simple theorems for establishing bounds on the effective thermal conductivity of such inhomogeneous media. These theorems are applied to the development of models which are the geometric means of the upper and lower bounds for effective thermal conductivity of base fluids into which are suspended particles of various geometries. <br /><br /> Numerical work indicates that the models show generally good agreement for the various geometric dispersions, in particular for particles with low to moderate aspect ratios. The numerical results approach the lower bound as the conductivity ratio is increased. An important observation is that orienting the particles in the direction of heat flow leads to substantial enhancment in the thermal conductivity of the base fluid. Clustering leads to a small enhancement in effective thermal conductivity beyond that which is predicted for systems composed of regular arrays of particles. Although significant enhancement is possible if the clusters are large, in reality, clustering to the extent that solid agglomerates span large distances is unlikely since such clusters would settle out of the fluid. <br /><br /> In addition, experimental work available in the literature indicates that the agreement between the selected experimental data and the geometric mean of the upper and lower bounds for a sphere in a unit cell are in excellent agreement, even for particles which are irregular in shape.

Background: Nowadays, humanitarian relief organizations are more and more present in people’s lives due to the number of recorded natural disasters increasing over the last 30 years. Although there are several actors involved in humanitarian aid, the need to integrate logistics service providers into humanitarian relief operations has been recognized. Howev- er, the literature lacks particular attention concerning the coordination roles and objectives between humanitarian relief organizations and LSPs during disaster relief operations. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between UNICEF and its LSP(s) during disaster relief operations. More specifically, this study aims to understand the elements that drive, facilitate, constrain and affect the relationship UNICEF has with its LSPs. Method: A qualitative, exploratory research approach was used, using a real-context case study as the research design. The empirical data was collected through in-depth semi- structured interviews with four respondents representing both UNICEF and its LSPs. Conclusion: The researchers present a revised version of the conceptual framework used to conduct this research. One additional component was added to the list of compo- nents affecting the effectiveness of a relationship. In addition, some other influencers were discussed. This conceptual framework can be used to formulate an effective relationship between two humanitarian actors within disaster relief operations. Finally, forming a rela- tionship between UNICEF and its LSPs is nothing new. Recommendations for future re- search include investigating implementation efforts once a relationship is built, in order to improve disaster relief operations and save more lives.

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Purpose: The goal of this study is to emphasize the use of business simulation as a learning tool in educational institutions.  For instance, the two master’s programs (marketing &amp; entrepreneurship, provided by Umeå Business School at master’s level), comprised of four core courses each, but only one module out the four provided utilized simulation for learning purpose. Generally self study, class lectures and case studies are used as the main pedagogy tools in the class room setting. In case of Umeå Business School, the use of simulations and gaming was rather limited in Umea School of Business (USBE) despite the fact that simulations are used to the point of saturation in American universities. This research is focused towards exploring the perceptions of students who undertook a business simulation at Umeå Business School, Sweden. Furthermore, it also provides a model for an effective simulation from educational point of view. Method: Hypotheses were developed to investigate the perceptions held by the students at USBE regarding their perceived effectiveness of simulation as a learning tool. A deductive approach was followed by using theories and scientific research by which hypotheses were generated and tested for answering the literature gaps. Quantitative research strategy was used and questionnaires were sent only to qualified respondents (those students of USBE who had already taken simulation at least once in any modules of their study tenure). Hypotheses were generated to find out correlations between the variables and tested through Pearson coefficient using SPSS testing methods. Findings/conclusion: The findings revealed that students consider simulation the most learning tool compared to others. Simulation is considered practical learning, learning through a gaming approach, an exercise that replicates realistic environment in class room. It provides an enjoyable way of learning and the retention of learnt concept is in high to medium range. Empirical findings show that there is a positive correlation between the variable students who would like to use simulation again with the variable that students will register a course which provides simulation. There is a strong positive correlation among variable of perceiving simulation as exciting and variable perceiving it as a fun way of learning.   Positive correlation exists among variables of being excited to know of simulation in a course and variable of considering simulation being a learning experience.   Lastly we found that there is positive and highest correlation in perception of students regarding likeness and learning with regards to simulation.  This means that compared to other tools there is more likeness of simulation amongst students and they perceive it as most learning tool compared to class lectures, guest lectures, self study and group discussions.    The study concluded with providing a basic model of an effective simulation which was developed in line with literature review and empirical findings from this research

Thermally enhanced greases made of dispersions of small conductive particles suspended in fluidic polymers can offer significant advantages when used as a thermal interface material (TIM) in microelectronics cooling applications. A fundamental problem which remains to be addressed is how to predict the effective thermal conductivity of these materials, an important parameter in establishing the bulk resistance to heat flow through the TIM. <br /><br /> The following study presents the application of two simple theorems for establishing bounds on the effective thermal conductivity of such inhomogeneous media. These theorems are applied to the development of models which are the geometric means of the upper and lower bounds for effective thermal conductivity of base fluids into which are suspended particles of various geometries. <br /><br /> Numerical work indicates that the models show generally good agreement for the various geometric dispersions, in particular for particles with low to moderate aspect ratios. The numerical results approach the lower bound as the conductivity ratio is increased. An important observation is that orienting the particles in the direction of heat flow leads to substantial enhancment in the thermal conductivity of the base fluid. Clustering leads to a small enhancement in effective thermal conductivity beyond that which is predicted for systems composed of regular arrays of particles. Although significant enhancement is possible if the clusters are large, in reality, clustering to the extent that solid agglomerates span large distances is unlikely since such clusters would settle out of the fluid. <br /><br /> In addition, experimental work available in the literature indicates that the agreement between the selected experimental data and the geometric mean of the upper and lower bounds for a sphere in a unit cell are in excellent agreement, even for particles which are irregular in shape.

Current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of organic molecular glasses and solution processable materials embedded between two electrodes were studied to find materials possessing high charge-carrier mobilities and to design organic memory devices. The comparison studies between TOF, FET and SCLC measurements confirm the validity of using analyses of I-V characteristics to determine the mobility of organic semiconductors. Hexaazatrinaphthylene derivatives tri-substituted by electron withdrawing groups were characterized as potential electron transporting molecular glasses. The presence of two isomers has important implications for film morphology and effective mobility. The statistical isomer mixture of hexaazatrinaphthylene derivatized with pentafluoro-phenylmethyl ester is able to form amorphous films, and electron mobilities with the range of 10 E cm2/Vs are observed in their I-V characteristics. Single-layer organic memory devices consisting of a polymer layer embedded between an Al electrode and ITO modified with Ag nanodots (Ag-NDs) prepared by a solution-based surface assembly demonstrated a potential capability as nonvolatile organic memory device with high ON/OFF switching ratios of 104. This level of performance could be achieved by modifying the ITO electrodes with some Ag-NDs that act as trapping sites, reducing the current in the OFF state. Based upon the observed electrical characteristics, the currents of the low-resistance state can be attributed to a tunneling through low-resistance pathways of metal particles originating from the metal top electrode in the organic layer and that the high-resistance state is controlled by charge trapping by the metal particles including Ag-NDs. In an alternative approach, complex films of AgNO3: hexaazatrinaphthylene derivatives were studied as the active layers for all-solution processed and air-stable organic memory devices. Rewritable memory effects were observed in the devices comprised of a thin polymer dielectric layer deposited on the bottom electrode, the complex film, and a conducting polymer film as the top electrode. The electrical characteristics indicate that the accumulation of Ag+ ions at the interface of the complex film and the top electrode may contribute to the switching effect.

In this thesis, for the under-determined system Fx = b with the matrix F ∈m¡Ñn (m ≤ n), new error bounds involving the traditional condition number and the effective condition number are established. Such error bounds are simple than those of over-determined system. The errors results implies that for stability, the condition number and the effective condition numbers are important if the perturbation of matrix F and vector b are dominant, respectively. This thesis is also devoted to the application of Neumann problems, where the consistent condition holds to guarantee the existence of multiple solutions. For the traditional Neumann conditions, the discrete consistent condition has to be satisfied to guarantee the existence of numerical solutions. Such a discrete consistent condition can be removed, to greatly simplify the numerical algorithms, and to retain the same convergence rates. For Neumann Problems, we may solve its ordinal discrete linear equations, or the underdetermined systems by ignoring some dependent equations, or the fixed variables methods. Moreover, we may choose different equations to be ignored, and different variables to be fixed. The comparisons of these different methods and choices are important in applications. In this thesis, the new comparisons and relations of stability and accuracy are first explored, and some interesting results and new discoveries are found. Numerical examples of Neumann problem in 1D are carried out, to support the analysis made. However, the algorithms and stability analysis can be applied to the complicated Nuemann problems in 2D and 3D, such as the traction problems in linear elastic problems.

Long-haul optical fiber communication system is an important technology to support the latest broadband communication in the world, and there is strong competition in optical long-haul transmission to achieve high channel bit rates and large transmission capacity. Therefore, it is important to study a technology to improve the performance of such system. As we have already known, return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (RZ-DPSK) is an attractive solution to improve the long distance transmission system performance compared to the conventional on-off keying (OOK) in a 10-Gb/s system, because it has a high nonlinear tolerance. The dispersion flattened fiber (DFF) is attractive for its ability to improve the system performance. Therefore, it is possible to improve the transmission performance by a combination of the RZ-DPSK and the DFF, and one important technology of the current long-haul optical fiber communication system is the dispersion map. And it is widely deployed for already installed undersea optical fiber communication system in the world. A previous study reported that the blockless type dispersion map showed a superior performance than the block type dispersion map, and some efforts to improve the transmission performance of the block type map were conducted. Fundamental idea to improve the transmission performance of the block type map is to reduce the zero crossing points, and one idea is to shift the map toward the positive or the negative cumulative dispersion to reduce the zero crossing points within the map, but it was not so successful. The other idea is to tilt the dispersion map and it was more successful but not good enough. In this master thesis, I continued the study to improve the long-haul RZ-DPSK system performance using the block type dispersion map. One new idea of the dispersion map shifting, the split shifting, was tried, and another new idea of the dispersion map tilting, the split tilting, was examined. The performance with different repeater output power and different compensation scheme within the dispersion map was simulated by a numerical simulator .The goal is, following previous research, to clarify improved dispersion map design of the long-haul RZ-DPSK based transmission and find the effective method to improve the transmission performance. In addition, I also investigate tolerance of the effective area of the transmission fiber theoretically for the long-haul RZ-DPSK system based on the DFF.

In this thesis, we study channel estimation in time-varying cooperative network. Since channels vary with time, we insert training blocks periodically to trace channel variation. In this work, we adopt Kalman filter to trace channel variation due to its low complexity. By storing previous channel estimate, Kalman filter simply requires to process next received vectors to update current channel estimate. We use all past observations to estimate current channel state to avoid wasting information. In content of cooperation, we directly estimate effective channel from source through relay to the destination. The reason is that, we separately estimate the source-relay and relay-destination links, relays need extra efforts to estimate the channel and feedback estimates to the destination. It will increase the computational loading on relays, and the feedback channel may suffer channel fading, resulting in more distortion of estimates. Therefore, the destination directly estimate effective channel, using Kalman filter to trace variation. Furthermore, we design pre-coding scheme on relays for forwarding training symbols in order to reduce channel estimation errors and obtain more accurate channel information. To detect data symbols, we need to channel state information over each data block as well. Therefore, estimates over previous training blocks are interpolated to estimate channel over data blocks based on LMMSE criterion. Since estimates over training blocks are obtained from Kalman filter, it consequently improves estimation quality of the channel over the data blocks. The main contributions of the thesis are optimal training design to reduce the estimation error, the estimation based on Kalman filter, and linearly combing the estimates to provide more accurate estimates of the channels over data blocks.