published_or_final_version / Electrical Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Industrial Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

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During soft ground tunnel construction, if the face pressure of a tunnel boring machine is not strictly controlled, excessive ground movements will propagate vertically upwards causing significant damage to adjacent buried infrastructure and surface structures. In order to investigate the face pressure - ground deformation relationship for tunnels in sands, the construction process was modelled using the technique of geotechnical centrifuge modelling and the resulting ground deformations were recorded using digital image correlation. In these tests a unique tunnel face boundary condition was developed which allowed the boundary condition to be initially set as a zero strain condition before it was transformed into a load-controlled boundary to investigate the instability of the face. Tests were preformed at four different burial depths in dry sand, corresponding to cover depths of 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 times the tunnel diameter. These results indicate that the face pressure at failure is largely independent of burial depth over the values tested. The ground deformation at the onset of tunnel face instability was found to be very small, and once initiated, the zone of ground deformations was observed to propagate upwards in a narrow chimney in front of the tunnel until it reached the ground surface causing subsidence. Further tests investigated the variation in ground deformations to be expected if a tunnel were to be passing through more complex ground conditions, including unsaturated sand, saturated sand, and the unique case of sand / clay mixed ground conditions. Ground deformations at tunnel face instability were much lower for the case of unsaturated sand, than for either the saturated or dry cases which showed broadly similar responses. In the mixed ground condition of a clay layer over topping a sand layer, the clay layer was found to only influence the tunnel face pressure – deformation response if the bottom of the clay layer was closer than 0.5 diameters above the tunnel crown. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2007-12-20 15:09:06.156

Humans routinely make movements to targets that have different accuracy requirements in different directions. Examples extend from everyday occurrences such as grasping the handle of a coffee cup to the more refined instance of a surgeon positioning a scalpel. The attainment of accuracy in situations such as these might rest upon the nervous system's capacity to regulate the limb's resistance to displacement, or impedance. To test this idea, subjects made movements from random starting locations to targets that had shape dependant accuracy requirements. A robotic device was used to assess both limb impedance and patterns of movement variability just as the subject reached the target. Impedance was seen to increase in directions where required accuracy was high. Furthermore, independent of target shape patterns of limb stiffness were seen to predict spatial patterns of movement variability. The nervous system was thus seen to modulate limb impedance in wholly predictable environments to shape movement variability and achieve reaching accuracy.

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The aim of the thesis is to explain short and medium term movements of the U.K. real effective exchange rate index from 1972 to 1984, within a relative purchasing power parity framework. This index is measured using both consumer and wholesale price indices. Movements are examined within a model that incorporates trade flow and asset market mechanisms. In order to validate the model, consideration of time series analysis, the measurement of expectations and the econometric estimation of the model are undertaken. The time series characteristics of the U.K. real and nominal effective exchange rate index are examined using regression, correlation, spectral and non-parametric statistical techniques. These imply that U.K. real exchange rate movements follow a quasi-random walk. Violations from the random walk occur partly due to the use of period averages in the construction of the index and partly from medium term time dependence. The empirical analysis of expectations is undertaken in a rational expectations framework. It is found that the best short term predictor of the nominal effective exchange rate index is a constructed forward effective exchange rate index. However, short term exchange rate movements appear largely due to 'news'. In the longer term, exchange rate expectations appear to be influenced by movements in the real current balance of goods and serVIces. The econometric analysis gives results broadly consistent with the model. This supports the view that the U.K. real effective exchange rate index returns to its equilibrium value in the long term, with movements in the short and medium terms eventually being corrected by trade flow and asset market mechanisms

The Israelites of the New Universal Covenant are a New Religious Movement founded in 1968. A presentation of the Inca Empire, the Spanish Conquest of Peru, the subsequent colonial period and post-independence era acts as background to a global understanding of the Israelites. Israelite membership is drawn from Andean Indians who came to be open to religious change in the twentieth century. Ideas on indigenism coupled with social reforms, urbanization, and migrations led to a greater Andean self-identity and preparation for membership in the newly formed religion. An idealized view of the Inca past (encapsulated in the <i>Inkarri </i> myth) and a return of the same is envisaged as part of the solution for the Indian. These elements combined with the Indians' interaction with other Christian traditions (folk Catholicism with segments of Protestantism) to produce the Peruvian Israelites and the concept of Privileged Peru. The thesis traces the life of Ezequiel Ataucusi Gamonal (the Israelite founder), through folk Catholicism, 'miraculous' experiences, to membership in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (when a migrant worker in the Jungle), contact with other Protestant groups, to the foundation of the Peruvian Israelites and through their subsequent history. The Israelite religion functions within a harmonious system of 'seven pillars of wisdom'. The pillars are the five feasts of Trumpets, Passover,Pentecost, Cabins and the Day of Expiation, with the weekly Sabbath and the Thousand Year Reign of Christ. Israelites are not a by-form of either Catholicism, Protestantism or Judaism, nor a political party in a religious guise. Ezequiel represents a new Christ-figure who interprets the Bible to offer salvation and a place in this world to Andean Indians, and the promise of entry into the Thousand Year Reign of Christ through observing the Israelite laws and through his own future death and resurrection.

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