Using a measure of the jet energy resolution that relies on momentum balance in direct photon events, a correction to the modelled detector resolution is developed. The correction is produced by iteratively unfolding the model from the measured data. Jets in the model are then smeared using this correction, and the result is compared to the data using a χ2 test. This method is shown to be effective at improving the agreement between the data and the model, even when the model initially shows poor agreement to the data. / Graduate / 0798 / bmoir@ualberta.net

This thesis is concerned with large strain soil consolidation and a large portion of the work is devoted to the theoretical development in modelling this phenomenon. An experimental programme based on a specially designed oedometer is also included. The governing equations are formulated in Chapter 2, where both the material and the space coordinates are considered. In space coordinate the problem is a moving boundary problem, and special numerical techniques for the idealized case of a thin soil layer are developed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 the consolidation of a normally consolidated stratum and a dredged fill are considered with a linear soil model, and the consolidation of a deposit undergoing continuous sedimentation is considered in Chapter 5. The material coordinate is used in the analysis which also includes the effect of self weight of soil. These problems are again considered in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 with a nonlinear soil model. A specially designed oedometer for testing very soft soil is described in Chapter 8, and the experimental results are discussed in Chapter 9. These are compared with the theoretical solutions developed in Chapter 3, and good agreement has been obtained.

We investigate how the evolution of ownership structure affects corporate financial and operating performance and corporate strategies. In particular, we study whether the shift in control rights away from the dominant shareholder mitigates agency problems and accordingly expropriation of minority investors by the controlling shareholder. More specifically, does the increase in power of the second large shareholder manifest in the firm’s operating and financial performance, and financing and operating strategies? Using ownership data for 1996 and 2008 representing 403 firms from nine East Asian countries, we find strong and robust evidence that the change in the voting rights of the second largest shareholder over these twelve years is associated with higher firm valuation, better operating performance, better access to long term financing, more efficient operation management strategies and a higher dividend payout ratio. Consistent with prior literature that finds multiple large shareholders play an internal governance role and mitigate agency problems, our findings imply that an increase in the voting rights of the second large shareholder improves firm’s corporate governance and mitigates agency problems consequently increasing firm performance and improving strategies.

Large displays and information kiosks are becoming increasingly common installations in public venues to provide an efficient self-serve means for patrons to access information and/or services. They have evolved over a relatively short period of time from non-digital, non-interactive static displays to more elaborate media-rich digital interactive systems. While the content and purposes of kiosks have changed, they are still largely based on the traditional single-user-driven design paradigm despite the fact that people often venture to these venues in small social groups, i.e., with family and/or friends. This often limits how groups collaborate and forces transactions to be serialized. This thesis explores design constraints for interaction by multiple social groups in parallel on shared large vertical displays. To better understand design requirements for these systems, this research is separated into two parts: a preliminary observational field study and a follow-up controlled study. Using an observational field study, fundamental patterns of how people use existing public displays are studied: their orientation, positioning, group identification, and behaviour within and between social groups just-before, during, and just-after usage. These results are then used to motivate a controlled experiment where two individuals or two pairs of individuals complete tasks concurrently on a low-fidelity large vertical display. Results from the studies demonstrate that vertical surface territories are similar to those found in horizontal tabletops in function, but their definitions and social conventions are different. In addition, the nature of use-while-standing systems results in more complex and dynamic physical territories around the display. We show that the anthropological notion of personal space must be slightly refined for application to vertical displays.

Civil infrastructure systems are the foundation of economic growth and prosperity in all nations. In recent years, infrastructure rehabilitation has been a focus of attention in North America and around the world. A large percentage of existing infrastructure assets is deteriorating due to harsh environmental conditions, insufficient capacity, and age. Ideally, an assets management system would include functions such as condition assessment, deterioration modeling, repair modeling, life-cycle cost analysis, and asset prioritization for repair along a planning horizon. While many asset management systems have been introduced in the literature, few or no studies have reported on the performance of either optimization or heuristic tools on large-scale networks of assets. This research presents an extensive comparison between heuristic and genetic-algorithm optimization methods for handling large-scale rehabilitation programs. Heuristic and optimization fund-allocation approaches have been developed for three case studies obtained from the literature related to buildings, pavements, and bridges with different life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) formulations. Large-scale networks were constructed for comparing the efficiency of heuristic and optimization approaches on large-scale rehabilitation programs. Based on extensive experiments with various case studies on different network sizes, the heuristic technique proved its practicality for handling various network sizes while maintaining the same efficiency and performance levels. The performance of the genetic algorithm optimization approach decreased with network size and model complexity. The optimization technique can provide a high performance level, given enough processing time.

Large phased array antennas are widely used in many military and commercial applications. The analysis of large arrays containing many antenna or frequency-selective (FSS) surface elements is inefficient or intractable when brute force numerical methods are used. For the efficient analysis of such structures hybrid methods (analytic and numerical, numerical and numerical) can be used. In this thesis, a hybrid method combining the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction (UTD) and the moment method (MoM) used for the analysis of large, finite arrays is modified for the efficient yet accurate analysis of large printed dipole arrays. In the present hybrid UTD-MoM approach, the number of unknowns to be solved is drastically reduced as compared to the conventional MoM approach, which provides a great efficiency on the computational cost. This extreme reduction in the number of MoM unknowns is carried out by introducing a few UTD-ray type global basis functions for the unknown array element currents. In this study, this hybrid UTD-MoM method is applied to the analysis of a finite, planar periodic array of printed dipoles on a grounded dielectric substrate. The efficiency and accuracy of this hybrid method are demonstrated with some numerical results.

There exist various models for Microwave MESFET equivalent circuit representations. These models use different mathematical models to describe the same MESFET and give similar results. However, there are some differences in the results when compared to the experimental measurements. In this thesis, various theoretical models are applied to the same MESFET and comparison made with measured data. It is shown that some models worked better on some parameters of the MESFET, while the others were more effective on other parameters. Altogether eight models were examined and data optimized to fit these theoretical models. In using optimization algorithms MATLAB FMINSEARCH and GENETIC ALGORITHM CODE were used alternatively to solve the initial value problem.

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Bibliography: leaves 195-210. / xviii, 210 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / A systematic view of all design levels, from the pixie level to the architectural level of vision chips. Important issues in the design of analog VLSI (AVLSI) vision chips, including mismatch and digital noise are addressed. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1998

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis considers transmission techniques for current and future wireless and mobile communications systems. Many of the results are quite general, however there is a particular focus on code-division multiple-access (CDMA) and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. The thesis provides analytical techniques and results for finding key performance metrics such as signal-to-interference and noise power ratios (SINR) and capacity. This thesis considers a large-system analysis of a general linear matrix-vector communications channel, in order to determine the asymptotic performance of linear fixed and adaptive receivers. Unlike many previous large-system analyses, these results cannot be derived directly from results in the literature. This thesis considers a first-principles analytical approach. The technique unifies the analysis of both the minimum-mean-squared-error (MMSE) receiver and the adaptive least-squares (ALS) receiver, and also uses a common approach for both random i.i.d. and random orthogonal precoding. The approach is also used to derive the distribution of sums and products of free random matrices. Expressions for the asymptotic SINR of the MMSE receiver are derived, along with the transient and steady-state SINR of the ALS receiver, trained using either i.i.d. data sequences or orthogonal training sequences. The results are in terms of key system parameters, and allow for arbitrary distributions of the power of each of the data streams and the eigenvalues of the channel correlation matrix. In the case of the ALS receiver, we allow a diagonal loading constant and an arbitrary data windowing function. For i.i.d. training sequences and no diagonal loading, we give a fundamental relationship between the transient/steady-state SINR of the ALS and the MMSE receivers. We demonstrate that for a particular ratio of receive to transmit dimensions and window shape, all channels which have the same MMSE SINR have an identical transient ALS SINR response. We demonstrate several applications of the results, including an optimization of information throughput with respect to training sequence length in coded block transmission.