The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method (FDTD) is a very powerful numerical method for the full wave analysis electromagnetic phenomena. Due to its flexibility, it can be used to solve numerous electromagnetic scattering problems on microwave circuits, dielectrics, and electromagnetic absorption in biological tissue at microwave frequencies. However, it needs so much computation time to simulate microwave integral circuits by applying the FDTD method. If the structure we simulated is complicated and we want to obtain accurate frequency domain scattering parameters, the simulation time will be so much longer that the efficiency of simulation will be bad as well. Therefore, in the thesis, we introduce an artificial neural networks (ANN) method called ¡§Infinite Impulse Response Neural Networks (IIRNN)¡¨ can speed up the FDTD simulation time. In order to boost the efficiency of the FDTD simulation time by stopping the simulation after a sufficient number of time steps and using FIRNN as a predictor to predict time series signal.

Abstract Japan is the second largest economic power in the world. It has a great deal of FDI outflows but few FDI inflows. Therefore, Japan is in the serious situation of ¡§FDI balance of payments deficit.¡¨ In terms of inward FDI stocks as a percentage of GDP and gross fixed capital formation, Japan is the lowest place of G-7. The purpose of this research is focusing on discussing the shortage of FDI inflows and causing factors which lower the desires of investments in Japan by using the simplest way which is based on the actual situation and the limit of the information in Japan. This paper takes the quarterly data of Japan from 1978 to 2005 and four variables (wage index, real exchange rate, trade and FDI inflows). In this research, the unit root test is used to check if the data have the stationarity or not, and then it uses vector autoregression model (VAR) to proceed impulse response function and forecast error variance decomposition. According to the result of these two approaches, we can figure out the influences of four variables for each other, and then find out the causing factors which lead Japan to have less FDI inflows. The calculation shows that the reason which leads Japanese wages to increase gradually results not only from real exchange rate, trade and FDI inflows, but also from Japanese labor system (lifetime employment system and payment according to working seniority) and the labor quantities. The causality runs from real exchange rate to trade is greater than vice versa. Trade has a positive impact from the real exchange rate which means that the depreciation can accelerate trade. However, the main factor of hindering FDI inflows is Japanese high wages rather than real exchange rate or trade. Therefore, in order to get rid of the depression which was caused by the bubble economy in 1990s, Japanese government not only opens up the restrictions in policy but also takes the control of the prime costs into the most important consideration.

The major purpose of this study is focused on the characteristics of the breaker and the impulse caused by wave breaking. Two-dimensional surface regular gravity water waves propagating on a gentle sloping bottom are considered and the consecutively temporal-spatial evolution of wave traveling form deep water to shallow water is also investigated. Two perturbation parameters, bottom slope and the deep water wave amplitude , proposed by Chen et al.(1992~2005), are introduced in this problem. Also, two different systems in fluid mechanics are used and the theoretical results are corrected to order , including nonlinear quantities, in both of Eulerian and Lagrangian systems. Considering the point of view that the horizontal velocity of a specified fluid particle is equal to the wave celerity while the wave begins to break, some important physical phenomena, such as the evolution of wave profile, the trajectory of fluid particle, and the water wave pressure, are described in this analytical analysis. Furthermore, the wave length, wave height, water depth and wave steepness of breaking wave are solved. To modify the insufficiency of former semi-empirical formula for the impulse due to wave breaking, a theoretical formula is proposed by integrating the resulting water wave pressure form mean still water level to free surface. Previous experimental studies are employed to verify the theoretical results. For wave for a further verification on the characteristics of wave breaking, some measurements on the movement of fluid particle, wave force and impulse wave conducted. Reasonable agreements can be found from the comparisons. It is concluded that consideration of wave nonlinearity is necessary while dealing with wave breaking problem.

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The recent financial and economic turmoil driven by housing market has led the economists to refocus on the issue about monetary policy and asset price, especially housing price. In this dissertation I investigate the various relationships between monetary policy and asset prices in U.S. economy through steady state Bayesian VAR (SS BVAR) and revised Taylor-typed interest rate rule (Forward-looking rule) based on Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) methodology. In chapter II, steady state Bayesian VAR (SS BVAR) methodology is introduced and multi step-ahead forecasts are executed. Upon usual squared error loss methodology the forecasting performances of SS BVAR are evaluated in comparison with standard BVAR and conventional VAR. Equal predictive ability tests following Giacomini and White (2006) verify that the SS BVAR is superior in forecasting power especially in long-horizons. In chapter III, identification issue involving housing sector is explored through two different ways: economic theory-based approach and algorithms of inductive causations. Despite the different approaches the housing sector’s specifications are somewhat similar. Impulse response analyses demonstrate that monetary shock to housing price is relatively smaller, less significant, and less lasting when compared to Choleski identification. Also historical decomposition and conditional forecast analyses indicate that the housing price shock itself is crucial in accounting the sharp increase and sudden drop of housing price since 2003. Upon the estimated evidences I conjecture that there are much uncertainty between monetary policy and housing price, recalling the consideration of institutional factors when trying to accounting housing sectors. In chapter IV, following Dupor and Conley (2004), I explore how Fed responds to stock price and inflation movements differently across high and low inflation sub-periods. Replicated linear estimation results of Dupor and Conley (2004)’s indicate that Fed raises its target interest rate responding to stock price gap with statistical significance. Linear estimation results, however, are not robust to small change of chosen breakpoint especially in inflation coefficient. So I construct nonlinear model as an alternative way to relax this problem and carry out test of structural change with the nonlinear framework. Consequently both nonlinearity and structural change matter in explanation of Fed’s behavior in this type of reaction function analysis. Given structural change, inflation coefficients movement shows that Fed has responded to expected inflation pressure nonlinearly across sub-period, while stock price gap coefficient shows explicit break around early ’90 in line with Dupor and Conley (2004)’s finding.

<p>Impulse technology is a process in which water is removedfrom a wet paper web by the combined action of mechanicalpressure and intense heat. This results in increased dewateringrates, increased smoothness on the roll side of the sheet, andincreased density. Although the potential benefits of impulsepressing have been debated over the past thirty years, itsindustrial acceptance has been prevented by web delamination,which is defined as a reduction in the z-directional strengthof paper.</p><p>This thesis deals with the mechanism of heat transfer withphase change during impulse pressing of wet paper. The resultsof four complementary experimental studies suggest that littleor no steam is formed in an impulse nip prior to the point ofmaximum applied load. As the nip is unloaded and the hydraulicpressure decreases, hot liquid water flashes to steam. Weadvance the argument that the force expressed upon flashing canbe used to displace liquid water, in a mechanism similar tothat originally proposed by Wahren. Additionally, modelexperiments performed in a novel experimental facility suggestthat the strength of flashing-assisted displacement dewateringcan be maximized by controlling the direction of steam venting.If this solution could be exploited in a commercially viableimpulse press, delamination would cease to be an issue ofconcern.</p><p>The thesis includes a study of the web structure ofdelaminated paper. Here, we characterized delaminated paper bythe changes in transverse permeability and cross-sectionalsolidity profiles measured as a function of pressingtemperature. We found no evidence that wet pressing and impulsepressing induced stratification in non-delaminated sheets andconcluded that the parabolic solidity profiles observed weredue to capillary forces present during drying. Further, thepermeability of mechanically compressed never-dried samples wasfound to be essentially constant for pressing temperatureslower than the atmospheric boiling point of water and toincrease significantly at higher pressing temperatures. Wepropose this to be a result of damage to the cell wall materialdue to flashing of hot liquid water in the fiber walls andlumina.</p><p>Finally, we present a method and an apparatus formeasurement of the thermal properties of water-saturated paperwebs at temperatures and pressures of interest for commercialhigh-intensity processes. After validation, the method wassuccessfully applied to measure the thermal conductivity,thermal diffusivity and volumetric heat capacity ofwater-saturated blotter paper as functions of temperature andsolids content. Here, we found that the thermal conductivityincreased with solids content in the range from 30%\ to 55%,which is in conflict with the commonly stated assumptions of adecreasing trend. We propose that this discrepancy could be dueto the thermal conductivity of air-free fibers wetted byunpressable water only, being significantly different from thatof dry cellulose.</p>

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Psychology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Vector autoregression (VAR) models are widely used in an attempt to identify and measure the effect of monetary policy shocks on an economy and to forecast economic times series. However, the sparse information sets used in the VAR approach have been subject to criticism and in recent decades, the use of factor models as a means of dimension reduction has been a subject of greater focus. The method of summarizing information contained in a large set of macroeconomic time series by principal components, and use these as regressors in VAR models, has been pointed out as a potential solution to the problems of limited information and estimation of too many parameters. This paper combines the standard VAR methodology with dynamic factor analysis on Swedish data for two purposes, to assess the effects of monetary policy shocks and to examine the forecasting properties. Latent factors estimated by the principal components method are in this study found to contribute to a more coherent picture in line with economic theory, when examining monetary policy shocks to the Swedish economy. The factor-augmented models can on the other hand not be shown to increase the forecasting accuracy to a great extent compared to standard models.

This thesis presents how to estimate the length of a power cable using the MaximumLikelihood Estimate (MLE) technique by using Matlab. The model of the power cableis evaluated in the time domain with additive white Gaussian noise. The statistics havebeen used to evaluate the performance of the estimator, by repeating the experiment fora large number of samples where the random additive noise is generated for each sample.The estimated sample variance is compared to the theoretical Cramer Raw lower Bound(CRLB) for unbiased estimators. At the end of thesis, numerical results are presentedthat show when the resulting sample variance is close to the CRLB, and hence that theperformance of the estimator will be more accurate.

The present investigation aims at modeling the sales response to advertising and, in the process, sheds some light on the sales-advertising relationship subject, which has been at the center of a decades-long controversy due to its inherent complexities. We studied three Colorado Lottery games, Lotto, Powerball, and Scratch, over a four-year period of operation. To synthesize a model that appropriately described the sales-advertising behavior of each one of these games, we addressed three fundamental questions driving the modeling process itself: 1. Is there a relationship between sales and advertising? 2. If such relationship exists, is there an advertising "carryover effect" on sales? And, 3. What is the shape of the sales-advertising relationship? We put forward two general-response models (Current Effects and Koyck's) in combination with eight functional forms (one linear and seven nonlinear forms) to address the above questions and test the respective hypotheses. Employing the available time series data corresponding to game sales, game advertising expenditures, state population, state unemployment rate, and jackpot (for the relevant games), we performed the respective regression analyses. We, then, evaluated the posited relationships and selected the best predictive model for each game, when statistical evidence supported a significant sales-advertising association. Using this final model, we addressed the three research questions at the core of this study. The results of this investigation suggested the existence of a significant positive and nonlinear (concave-downwards) Scratch sales-advertising relationship. No sales-advertising association was found for the Lotto or Powerball games. The data analyzed did not seem to support either the advertising "carryover effect" on sales on any of the games studied. From the theoretical point of view, these findings extend prior empirical research that has generally assumed, for simplification purposes, a linear sales-advertising relationship with its corresponding consequences. From the practical perspective, this study highlights advertising’s contribution to sales, which can help debunk mistaken beliefs frequently stigmatizing advertising as a resource-spending function and quell the long-established skepticism about its financial accountability. / text