Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 1981. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-73). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The study of combinatorial patterns of words has raised great interest since the early 20th century. In this master's thesis presentation we study two combinatorial patterns. The first pattern is “abelian k-th power free” and the second one is “representability of sets of words of equal length”. For the first pattern we study the context-freeness of non-abelian k-th powers. A word is a non-abelian k-th power if it cannot be factorized in the form w1w2...wk where the wi are permutations of w1 for 2 ≤ i ≤ k. We show that neither the language of non-abelian squares nor the language of non- abelian cubes is context-free. For the second pattern we study the representability of a set of words of fixed length. A set S of words of length n is representable if there exists some word w such that the set of length-n factors of w equals S. We will give lower and upper bounds for the number of such representable sets. Furthermore, we study a variation of the problem: we fix a length t, and try to evaluate the number of sets of words of length n such that there exists some word w of length t such that the set of length-n factors of w equals S. We give a closed-form formula in the case where n ≤ t < 2n. In particular, we give a characterization on two distinct words having the same subset of length-n factors.

Two kinds of companding filters are presented in this dissertation. The first one is a square-root domain filter based on operational transconductance amplifier (OTA). This one is compact and simple. The total are of the circuit excluding pads is 0.013 mm2. The supply voltage is 1.5V and the cutoff frequency can be tuned from 1.1 kHz to 35.2 kHz when the external capacitance C is 1nF. The total harmonic distortions is 0.93% and the power consumption is 152.29 £gW for a 10£gA DC input current. The other one is a tunable log-domain filter. The log domain filters uses parasitic vertical bipolar junction transistor (VBJT) in standard CMOS process for high frequency. The cut-off frequency is from 8.6 MHz to 25.8 MHz and the power dissipation is 585 £gW. All experimental results in a TSMC 0.35 £gm 2P4M CMOS process confirm the feasibility of the methodology.

Three investigations were conducted on the nature of the radiance field in clear ocean water. It is important to understand the sunlight intensity below the sea surface because this leads to an understanding of how ocean creatures navigate in shallow and deep water. The nature of the radiance field is also gives an understanding of the living environment for ocean animals. Hydrolight 4.1, a simulation software developed by Curtis D. Mobley, was used to calculate the spectral radiance in clear ocean water for multiple wavelengths from the surface down through the asymptotic region. The first study found, as expected, that Raman scattering has little effect on wavelengths of light that are less than 500 nm. The effect of Raman scattering increases with increasing wavelength, and with increasing depth. The second study found the region of the water column where the radiance field is asymptotic. The third investigation found the effect of changing the mean square slope, or variance of the water-wave slope distribution. This effect is greatest near the surface and for a more truncated mean square slope integral. There are three peaks in percent difference to the ideal case, near the surface, one in the solar beam and the others near the critical angle of water.

The objective of this project is to design a tool for moderate cross section reduction of bars that are deformed within a channel slider tool that is used for equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE). The bars that are deformed via ECAE have an initial square cross section with a nominal value of 1.00 in2 and aspect ratios (length/width) ranging between 4 and 6. A systems engineering design methodology is used to generate a topbottom approach in the development of the tool's design. This includes defining a need statement, which is the "Need for an area reduction extrusion tool to replace the current practices of machining ECAE processed billets". The system functions and requirements are defined next and used to generate three concepts that are compared to select the winning concept for further refinement. Major components of the selected tool are: a container, ram, base plate, punch plate, four die-inserts, four wedges and four flange locks. For materials, such as copper (C10100) and aluminum (Al6061-T6), that can be processed by this tool, the upper bound extrusion pressure, which is derived by limit analysis, is set at 192 ksi. The upper bound extrusion pressure is constrained by the buckling limit of the ram, which is 202 ksi. The maximum wall stress experienced by the container is 113 ksi. For materials with the same cross section and dimensions, fixed end conditions of the Ram support larger bucking loads when compared to other end conditions such as rounded ends or rounded-fixed ends. With the application of the upper bound method, an increase in the extrusion ratio of the tool causes a corresponding rise in the optimal cone angle of the die further translating to a rise in the extrusion pressure.

Conventional gm-c filters have limited voltage swings in low voltage operation. CMOS companding filters replace gm-c filters in low voltage environment for high dynamic range. The square-root domain filter and log-domain filter belongs to this companding filter category. In this thesis, a second order low pass square root domain filter (SRD filter) based on the up-down TL (translinear loop) circuit structure is presented. The SRD filter consists of four geometric-mean cells and three squarer/divider cells. The advantages of the proposed circuits are low supply voltage, low power consumption, high bandwidth, and low total harmonic distortion (THD). The circuit has been fabricated with 0.35£gm CMOS technology. It operates with a supply voltage of 1.5V, and the bias current varies from 0.5£gA to 30£gA. Measurement results show that the cutoff frequency can be tuned from 3.12MHz to 8.11MHz when the Capacitance (C) is 5pF.The total harmonic distortion is 0.28%, and the power consumption is 1.09mW.

In this thesis, we investigate the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) multi- user detection scheme where the DD (Decorrelating Detector) is used to eliminate the multiple access interference. The DD algorithm need to compute the inverse of the matrix involves a great deal of computation, especially when the number of users is large. A recursive method with the LMS (Least-Mean-Square) algorithm, namely the decorrelating transversal filter, to detect users¡¦ signals adaptively can reduce greatly the computational complexity of a CDMA multi-user detector. In this thesis, we focus on the hardware FPGA (Fdield Programmable Gate Array) implementation of the decorrelating transversal filter. The functional system simulation of the decorrelating transversal filter is carried out by using Matlab first. Then this filter is implemented by the Xilinx FPGA and its system performance is also verified.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

The objective of the study is to analyze the effect of remittances on socio-economic conditions of rural families in Peshawar, and how remittances change the decision-making process of families. This study examines the effects of remittances on local population in three towns of Peshawar, i.e. Hayatabad, Faqir-Abad and Gulberg-area. The study is basically conducted to see how remittances bring changes in the life of the recipients. The research is quantitative, data was collected through questionnaires. For the research, a sample of 300 respondents was selected from three towns in Peshawar District. The results of the research were interpreted through statistical tools, regression model. The Ordinary least square method (OLS) was used to find out the effect of remittances on health sector and investment made by respondents in the form of purchased property and investment made in establishing their own businesses. Along with that, the simple Logit Model was also used. The result is generalized on linear model with link logit and binomial response. Findings stated that the literacy level of the emigrant’s household positively impacted on children’s probability to move to private education. The results reveals that the recipient invest 4% of their income on investment as a form of business and purchasing property while educated people appears not to be interested in investing money in businesses as they want to continue their jobs. Respondent are not using a large portion of their remittances for health perhaps mostly people are entitled to free services from the government. Remittances changed their standard of living and socio economic affairs of the remittances receiving respondents. According to my demographic information about respondents life, the remittances mostly brings changes in the physical part of people life such as Private Education, Personal transport, new houses, investment in buying properties, more electric appliances, bank balance etc., but culturally people are still conservative and believe in cultural values that have been practices by local population for centuries. Following are some main recommendations that this research has identified, Foreign remittances are improving the socio-economic conditions and decision making of rural families, however, their consumption behavior is not inclined towards investment, they rather prefer to enjoy luxurious household’s equipment. Therefore, it is recommended that these families should utilize their resources in more efficient way, and should go for short and long term investment avenues. Government must design policies in order to educate these families and create awareness among them that will enable them to look for sustainable domestic income, which would help the families in the long run. These families follow the norms and traditions, and they prefer sending their children abroad for earning purposes, which in turn is comparatively less profitable idea as compared to sending these children for higher education purpose.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.