A través de las acciones emprendidas por la Unión Europea en el área del multimedia off-line se pretende obtener una visión de conjunto de cómo ha podido influir esta política en la creación y consolidación de un potencial mercado español.Para ello, la primera parte de la tesis se centra en el análisis de los diferentes Programas Marco de investigación y desarrollo tecnológico emprendidos por la Unión Europea y su incidencia en el área de las nuevas tecnologías. Se ha llevado a cabo un análisis de la evolución presupuestaria de los Programas Marco y de sus principales líneas de acción.La segunda parte pretende acercarse al campo más concreto de las acciones unidas al multimedia off-line, todo ello gracias al análisis de los programas específicos vinculados con este sector.Finalmente, en el último apartado se aborda la forma en la que las diferentes empresas e instituciones españolas se han podido beneficiar o no de tales ayudas. Concretamente, se establece un perfil del solicitante tipo español y de los productos realizados.Con todo ello se pretende cumplir uno de los principales objetivos: comprobar hasta qué punto la política europea en materia de multimedia off-line ha sido eficaz para el mercado español. / Through the actions started by the European Union in the off-line multimedia field we want to get a whole vision of the influences of this policy in the creation and consolidation of the potencial spanish market.Because of that, the first part is centered in the analysis of the various RTD Frameworks started by the European Union and its influence in the field of new technologies. We have carried an analysis of the budgetary evolution of the different Frameworks and the main action lines.The second part wants to take a closer view of the off-line multimedia actions, analyzing the specifics programmes linked to this field.Finally, the last part examines the way of differents spanish companies and institutions have profited or not from those grants. We defined a profile of the spanish producers and their products.With all the previous studies we want to check if the off-line multimedia policy has been effective in tne spanish market.

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Sustainable development is concerned with acknowledging economic, social and environmental development aspects, catering for the current needs of society without damaging the well-being of future generations. Ecotourism is a niche market that emerged because of increased market demands for sustainable tourism practices. It serves to provide tourism products and services while accommodating for the economic, social and environmental aspects of society. However, earlier research suggests that it is difficult to handle the three dimensions of sustainable development, indicating that trade-offs may occur. Furthermore, as tour operators are able to affect local development prospects, it is of interest to examine how they handle sustainable development, and more specifically, contribute to trade-offs between the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development. This thesis was aimed at answering the following research question; “How do ecotourism tour operators contribute to trade-offs between the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development?”, with the objective of examining how ecotourism tour operators handle the dimensions of sustainable development, and what trade-offs that may occur between economic, social and environmental concerns. This qualitative research was carried out in the context of ecotourism tour operators in Costa Rica through semi-structured interviews. Nine respondents participated in this research, representing seven local ecotourism tour operators. The data collected on the trade-offs of ecotourism and sustainable development has in turn been analysed with reference to a pre-established theoretical framework. This study has revealed that ecotourism tour operators are actively engaging in initiatives supporting the idea of sustainable development. The tour operators handle the economic, social and environmental concerns through different initiatives. One conclusion that can be derived from this research is that all pillars of sustainable development are important to acknowledge. However, this is difficult as the three dimensions are somewhat contradicting. Therefore, depending on how ecotourism tour operators prioritise different initiatives, trade-offs are inevitable as both inter- and intragenerational needs are difficult to align.

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A MATLAB code for calculating neutron energy spectra from JET discharges was developed. The code uses the fuel ion distribution calculated by the computer code SELFO to generate the spectrum through a Monte-Carlo simulation. The calculated spectra were then compared against experimental results from the neutron spectrometer TOFOR. In the calculations, the exact orbits of the fuel ions are taken into account, in order to investigate what effects this has on the spectrum. The reason for this is that, for certain plasma heating scenarios, large populations of fast fuel ions are formed. These fast ions may have Larmor radii of the order of decimeters, which is comparable to the width of the sight line of TOFOR, and may therefore affect the recorded neutron spectrum. A JET discharge with both NBI and 3rd harmonic ICRF heating was analyzed. The results show that the details of the line of sight of the detector indeed affects the neutron spectrum. This effect is probably important for other diagnostics techniques, such as gamma-ray spectroscopy and neutral particle analysis, as well. Good agreement with TOFOR data is observed, but not for the exact same time slice of the discharge, which leaves some questions yet to be investigated.

This thesis is a case study of a 230 kV transmission line in Lao P.D.R. Grounding of electrical systems is essential for safety and reliability of the system. Several standards are developed for designing a grounding system when building new facilities but it is harder to find references when it is an expansion of an old system or when the area for grounding is inferior. The transmission line is routed over a high resistive limestone ridge, where the requirements from the design standard can not be fulfilled. During normal conditions, each tower can be properly grounded to earth with ground electrodes, but in this case the resistivity of the solid rock is too high. By studying different shield wires of different materials and improve the down lead conductor in each side of the mountain, a suitable solution can be found. The importance of grounding, general description of grounding techniques and the risks for human and equipment due to an electrical fault is also presented in this thesis.

<p>With the ever increasing demand for data communication methods, power line communication has become an interesting alternative method for data communication. Power line communication falls into two categories: one for data transmission between sites in the power grid and the other for home or office networking. When considering home or office networking, existing methods are either too slow for tasks other than simple automation, or are very fast with a higher cost than necessary for the desired function. The objective in this work is to develop a lower cost communication system with an intermediate data transmission rate.</p><p>At first glance, power line communication looks like a good option because of the availability of power outlets in every room of a building. However, the power conductors were installed solely for the purpose of distributing 60 Hz mains power and, for data signals, they exhibit very high attenuation, variable impedance and there is radio frequency shielding. Furthermore, many of the 60 Hz loads produce radio frequency interference that impedes data communication. Previous research has shown that much of the noise is time synchronous with the 60 Hz mains frequency and that the majority of data errors occur during these periods of high noise.</p><p> This work develops a power line communication protocol that coordinates transmissions and uses only the predictable times of lower noise. Using a central control strategy, the power line 60 Hz mains signal is divided into 16 timeslots and each timeslot is monitored for errors. The central controller periodically polls all stations to learn which timeslots have low noise and it then controls all transmissions to make the best use of these good timeslots. The periodic polling allows the system to adapt to changes in electrical loading and noise. This control strategy has been achieved with modest complexity and laboratory measurements have shown throughput approaching 70% of the modem bit rate.</p>

The introduction of deregulation and subsequent open access policy in electricity sector has brought competition in energy market. Allocation of transmission loss has become a contentious issue among the electricity producers and consumers. A closed form solution for transmission loss allocation does not exist due to the fact that transmission loss is a highly non-linear function of system states and it is a non-separable quantity. In absence of a closed form solution different utilities use different methods for transmission loss allocation. Most of these techniques involve complex mathematical operations and time consuming computations. A new transmission loss allocation tool based on artificial neural network has been developed and presented in this thesis. The proposed artificial neural network computes loss allocation much faster than other methods. A relatively short execution time of the proposed method makes it a suitable candidate for being a part of a real time decision making process. Most independent system variables can be used as inputs to this neural network which in turn makes the loss allocation procedure responsive to practical situations. Moreover, transmission line status (available or failed) was included in neural network inputs to make the proposed network capable of allocating loss even during the failure of a transmission line. The proposed neural networks were utilized to allocate losses in two types of energy transactions: bilateral contracts and power pool operation. Two loss allocation methods were utilized to develop training and testing patterns; the Incremental Load Flow Approach was utilized for loss allocation in the context of bilateral transaction and the Z-bus allocation was utilized in the context of pool operation. The IEEE 24-bus reliability network was utilized to conduct studies and illustrate numerical examples for bilateral transactions and the IEEE 14-bus network was utilized for pool operation. Techniques were developed to expedite the training of the neural networks and to improve the accuracy of results.

In today's semiconductor-based computer and communication technology, system performance is determined primarily by two factors, namely on-chip and off-chip operating frequency. In this dissertation, time-domain measurement-based methods that enable gigabit data transmission in both the IC and package have been proposed using Time-Domain Reflectometry (TDR) equipment. For the evaluation of the time-domain measurement-based method, a wafer level package test vehicle was designed, fabricated and characterized using the proposed measurement-based methods. Electrical issues associated with gigabit data transmission using the wafer-level package test vehicle were investigated. The test vehicle consisted of two board transmission lines, one silicon transmission line, and solder bumps with 50um diameter and 100um pitch. In this dissertation, 1) the frequency-dependent characteristic impedance and propagation constant of the transmission lines were extracted from TDR measurements. 2) Non-physical RLGC models for transmission lines were developed from the transient behavior for the simulation of the extracted characteristic impedance and propagation constant. 3) the solder bumps with 50um diameter and 100um pitch were analytically modeled. Then, the effect of the assembled wafer-level package, silicon substrate and board material, and material interfaces on gigabit data transmission were discussed using the wafer-level package test vehicle. Finally, design recommendations for the wafer-level package on integrated board were proposed for gigabit data transmission in both the IC and package.

An acoustic field is used to increase the critical heat flux of a copper boiling heat transfer surface. The increase is a result of the acoustic effects on the vapor bubbles. Experiments are being performed to explore the effects of an acoustic field on vapor bubbles in the vicinity of a rigid heated wall. Work includes the construction of a novel heater used to produce a single vapor bubble of a prescribed size and at a prescribed location on a flat boiling surface for better study of an individual vapor bubble s reaction to the acoustic field. Work also includes application of the results from the single bubble heater to a calibrated copper heater used for quantifying the improvements in critical heat flux.