This project explores how to use band-pass filtering with a variety of filters to filter both two and three dimensional surface data. The software developed collects and makes available these filtering methods to support a larger project. It is used to automate the filtering procedure. This paper goes through the work-flow of the program, explaining how each filter was implemented. Then it demonstrates how the filters work by applying them to surface data used to test correlation between friction and roughness [Berglund and Rosen, 2009]. It also provides some explanations of the mathematical development of the filtering procedures as obtained from literature.

In an attempt to demonstrate the interconnecting nature of the pillars of sport (Hacker, 2000) this thesis explores the relationship between physical, psychological and technical variables. Five National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Women’s Soccer players were analyzed in four conference matches. The athlete's rate of perceived exertion (RPE) values were correlated to pass completion percentages (PC%) to investigate the potential effect that psychological satisfaction or dissatisfaction of technical performance has on perceived exertion ratings. PlayerLoadTM (PL) values, gathered through the utilization of a Catapult Minimax S4 GPS device (miniMax-10 Hz, Catapult Innovations, Melbourne, Australia), were used as a measure of actual workload in order to determine the accuracy of perceived exertion ratings. Results exhibited a trivial correlation (r = 0.028) and large variability (R2 = 0.00077) between RPE and PC% in comparison to PL and PC% (r = 0.50; R2 = 0.2502). The results indicate that an athlete's PC% does not correspond to how physically demanding they perceived a match to be. However, it is possible that performance variables may influence the RPE ratings a player provides.

Little information is available regarding the consequences of new nursing graduates who fail the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). The purpose of this study was to understand how these graduates could successfully pass this examination in subsequent attempts. Guided by Fisher's personal change model, the key research questions addressed the consequences of failing the NCLEX-RN exam and the actions the new graduate took after failing it. A phenomenological design was employed with a purposive sample of 17 new nursing graduates in the metropolitan area who had failed the NCLEX-RN. An inductive approach using a constant comparison, content analysis was used to analyze data. NVivo software was used to assist in identifying and clustering codes to form a thematic label. Emergent themes were extracted and then triangulated with those themes emerging from each respondent's interview. Results of the study indicated that students who failed the NCLEX-RN exam were depressed, isolated, and financially strained as they continued to pay their student loans during their unemployment. The findings indicated that schools of nursing seldom offer support for graduates who do not pass the exam. This finding informed the development of an NCLEX-RN preparation course to aid students to pass the NCLEX-RN exam, either on their first attempt or after failing the exam. Positive social change may occur as nursing school program directors and faculty use the results of the study to modify curriculum and develop strategies to ensure higher NCLEX-RN success rates.

First excavated in 1938, the site of Muscupiabit (CA-SBR-425/H) has long been a subject of archaeological research in the San Bernardino Mountains. Previous excavations at the site have either been unpublished or limited in scope. A primary goal was to obtain a radiocarbon date for the site, giving a definitive age to the site. Other goals included determining the population size of Muscupiabit as well as the function of the site and its place in the Serrano settlement system. To obtain dateable material, an excavation was conducted in hopes of locating a thermal feature. An intact thermal feature was found and charcoal was recovered. In order to adequately address the proposed research questions, museum collections were used to gain a larger sample size. A large quantity of artifacts had been excavated in the 1980s but were never analyzed. Between those excavations and the 2017 excavations, 7 units were analyzed. Additionally, population records from the Spanish mission system were analyzed to address research questions about population size. Based on a radiocarbon date, shell bead types, and population records, it appears that Muscupiabit was occupied in the late 17th/early 18th century and was likely abandoned by 1815. Despite its location along a trade route, the site does not appear to have been controlling trade. Muscupiabit was intermarried with other villages but it’s level of political independence cannot be determined at this time.

Expectations regarding the relationship between exchange rates and the prices of traded goOds in small open economies have traditionally been derived from the idea of the relative unimportance of a single small country when trading in much larger international markets. This concept has led to the use of distinct 'small-country' or 'dependent-economy' models to analyse the effects of macroeconomic changes. Thus for small economies like Australia, it is usually assumed that the foreign-currency prices of traded goods are fixed in perfectly competitive international markets. Accordingly, exchange rate movements must be completely absorbed in domestic-currency prices. In other words, the pass-through of exchange rate changes to destination-currency prices must be zero for Australian exports, and complete for Australian imports. Such expectations regarding the degree of exchange rate pass-through contrast sharply with those found in conventional macroeconomic models for large countries, in which pass-through is assumed to be complete for all traded goods. Moreover, they conflict with the results derived from the large theoretical and empirical literature on the microeconomic determinants of pass-through, which suggests that much international trade takes place in imperfectly competitive markets, in which the degree of less-than-complete pass-through depends on industry-specific factors. This study explores these apparent conflicts by re-examining the small-country assumption, with particular emphasis on export prices as the area of greatest divergence. Specifically, it addresses three research questions: 1) What are the theoretical conditions that underlie the small-country assumption? 2)What are the implications for the macroeconomic models of small economies if this assumption is violated? 3) In practice, is the data more consistent with the validity or otherwise of the assumption? The analysis focuses on Australia as a practical example of a small open economy with a high proportion of commodity exports. In summary, the theoretical and empirical results reported in this study suggest that the small-country assumption is unlikely to hold in practice. That is, exchange rate pass-through is more likely to be determined by industry-specific factors, rather than by the universal conclusion of zero pass-through for all Australian exports that is derived from the small-country assumption. Further, they imply that the movement in internal prices required to restore equilibrium in a small country following an external shock is likely to be both larger and more uncertain than has previously been expected. Under such circumstances, the full flexibility of the exchange rate, as the primary and most rapid source of the required adjustments, becomes particularly significant. An important policy implication for small open economies that are subject to frequent terms of trade shocks, such as Australia, is that attempts to manage the exchange rate in order to reduce apparently excessive movements may in fact result in a longer and more protracted process of adjustment through the labour market.

The dissertation consists of three essays on Dutch Disease and exchange rate pass-through. Dutch Disease refers to the adverse effects of the natural resource booms on the tradable sectors (manufacturing industries) which may occur mainly through the subsequent appreciation of the real exchange rate.<p> The first essay aims to investigate whether Canadian manufacturing industries have experienced Dutch Disease over the period 1992-2007 as a result of the oil boom. After a review of the literature and discussion of the theoretical considerations, the paper presents a two part empirical analysis to estimate the short- and long-run Dutch Disease effects for the Canadian manufacturing industries at three, four and few cases of five-digit levels of NAICS (about 80 industries), using quarterly data. The first part of the empirical analysis estimates the relationship between real exchange rate and energy prices as well as the other related factors and the second part estimates the effect of real exchange rate on output of the manufacturing industries. Based on these two estimated relationships, the Dutch Disease effect is derived by calculating the effect of energy prices on output of the manufacturing industries. The results indicate that the direction and magnitude of the Dutch Disease effect varies substantially across industries likely, as theory explains, because of differences in market structure in terms of the market power. Specifically, 53 out of the 80 industries suffer from the Dutch Disease with the elasticity of -0.18 in average, while Dutch Disease is beneficial for 24 industries with the elasticity of 0.21 in average. The simulation results reveal that, among the industries suffering (benefiting) from the Dutch Disease, each industry could have more annual output growth by 0.93 (-1.07) percent in average if energy prices remained at its level in 1992. This simulated value for the whole sample is 0.30 percent which is significant compared to 2.8 percent as the average of annual industrial production growth during 1992-2007.<p> The second and third essays together aim to model and estimate the degree of exchange rate pass-through into Canadian producer prices in manufacturing industries. The second essay, as a theoretical one, presents a literature review and contributes to the literature by developing a relatively more general theoretical framework. The provided model, which extends Yangs model (1997) by incorporating the role of the tradable inputs, is able to show all the major determinants of exchange rate pass-through together, while the previous studies have only analyzed the role of one or some of these factors. Specifically, the theoretical model indicates that the exchange rate pass-through should be between one and zero, while it is positively affected by the share of tradable inputs in total cost, and the domestic firms' market share and negatively by the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output. The sign for the degree of substitutability among the variants is not theoretically clear and remains as an empirical question.<p> Finally, the third essay presents the empirical framework for estimation of the exchange rate pass-through and its determinants in Canadian manufacturing industries. In this essay, the short- and long-run exchange rate pass-through elasticities to the domestic producer prices are estimated for the industries at three, four and few cases of five-digit levels of NAICS (about 100 industries), using quarterly data from 1992-2007. Then, the pass-through variation across industries is explained by regressing the estimated pass-through elasticities on the variables that are hypothesized to affect the pass-through elasticities according to the developed theoretical model. The results indicate that incomplete pass-through is observed in most cases although its magnitude is different across industries. The average short- and long-run pass-through elasticities are 0.24 and 0.36 respectively. The share of intermediate materials, as the tradable inputs, in production costs (with positive effect) and the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output (with negative effect) are the most important determinants of the exchange rate pass-through across industries.

The dissertation consists of three essays on Dutch Disease and exchange rate pass-through. Dutch Disease refers to the adverse effects of the natural resource booms on the tradable sectors (manufacturing industries) which may occur mainly through the subsequent appreciation of the real exchange rate.<p> The first essay aims to investigate whether Canadian manufacturing industries have experienced Dutch Disease over the period 1992-2007 as a result of the oil boom. After a review of the literature and discussion of the theoretical considerations, the paper presents a two part empirical analysis to estimate the short- and long-run Dutch Disease effects for the Canadian manufacturing industries at three, four and few cases of five-digit levels of NAICS (about 80 industries), using quarterly data. The first part of the empirical analysis estimates the relationship between real exchange rate and energy prices as well as the other related factors and the second part estimates the effect of real exchange rate on output of the manufacturing industries. Based on these two estimated relationships, the Dutch Disease effect is derived by calculating the effect of energy prices on output of the manufacturing industries. The results indicate that the direction and magnitude of the Dutch Disease effect varies substantially across industries likely, as theory explains, because of differences in market structure in terms of the market power. Specifically, 53 out of the 80 industries suffer from the Dutch Disease with the elasticity of -0.18 in average, while Dutch Disease is beneficial for 24 industries with the elasticity of 0.21 in average. The simulation results reveal that, among the industries suffering (benefiting) from the Dutch Disease, each industry could have more annual output growth by 0.93 (-1.07) percent in average if energy prices remained at its level in 1992. This simulated value for the whole sample is 0.30 percent which is significant compared to 2.8 percent as the average of annual industrial production growth during 1992-2007.<p> The second and third essays together aim to model and estimate the degree of exchange rate pass-through into Canadian producer prices in manufacturing industries. The second essay, as a theoretical one, presents a literature review and contributes to the literature by developing a relatively more general theoretical framework. The provided model, which extends Yangs model (1997) by incorporating the role of the tradable inputs, is able to show all the major determinants of exchange rate pass-through together, while the previous studies have only analyzed the role of one or some of these factors. Specifically, the theoretical model indicates that the exchange rate pass-through should be between one and zero, while it is positively affected by the share of tradable inputs in total cost, and the domestic firms' market share and negatively by the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output. The sign for the degree of substitutability among the variants is not theoretically clear and remains as an empirical question.<p> Finally, the third essay presents the empirical framework for estimation of the exchange rate pass-through and its determinants in Canadian manufacturing industries. In this essay, the short- and long-run exchange rate pass-through elasticities to the domestic producer prices are estimated for the industries at three, four and few cases of five-digit levels of NAICS (about 100 industries), using quarterly data from 1992-2007. Then, the pass-through variation across industries is explained by regressing the estimated pass-through elasticities on the variables that are hypothesized to affect the pass-through elasticities according to the developed theoretical model. The results indicate that incomplete pass-through is observed in most cases although its magnitude is different across industries. The average short- and long-run pass-through elasticities are 0.24 and 0.36 respectively. The share of intermediate materials, as the tradable inputs, in production costs (with positive effect) and the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output (with negative effect) are the most important determinants of the exchange rate pass-through across industries.

<p>This dissertation consists of three chapters relating to dynamic demand models of storable goods and their application to taxes that are imposed on soft drinks. Broadly speaking, the first chapter builds the estimation strategy for dynamic demand models of storable goods that allows for unobservable heterogeneous preferences in household's tastes. The second chapter uses the estimation strategy developed in the first chapter to study the policy implications of taxes that are imposed on sugary soft drinks. The last chapter explores and provides an explanation for the level of pass-through for soda taxes. </p><p>To be more specific, the first chapter develops techniques for incorporating systematic brand preferences in dynamic demand models of storable goods. Dynamic demand models are important for correctly measuring price elasticities of products that can be stockpiled. However, most of the literature excludes systematic preferences over consumers' brand tastes. This chapter resolves this issue by incorporating random coefficient Logit models into a dynamic demand framework and hence allows for realistic demand substitution patterns. It builds on Hendel and Nevo's 2006 Econometrica paper, where the authors introduce a model of dynamic demand that flexibly incorporates observable heterogeneity and estimates it via a three-step procedure that separates brand and volume choices. While a powerful tool, this method is tricky to execute. Therefore, this chapter also discusses the difficulties that may face implementers.</p><p>The second chapter predicts the effects of taxes on sugar sweetened soft drinks (sugar taxes) on both total consumption and the welfare of different types of consumers. It specifies and estimates a structural dynamic demand model of storable goods with rational and forward-looking households. It flexibly incorporates persistent heterogeneous consumer preferences and develops a computationally attractive method for estimating its parameters. Sugar taxes have been proposed at both the national and state-level, and passed in three states, as a means of slowing or reversing the growth in obesity and diabetes. To accurately analyze the effects of these policies, this chapter takes two specific aspects of soft drinks into account: storability and differentiation. It compares the results from this model to two benchmark studies: a static model with consumer heterogeneity and a dynamic model without households' persistent heterogeneous tastes. It finds that failing to account for dynamics (i.e. storability) results in overestimated reduction in consumption and failing to account for persistent heterogeneous preferences (i.e. differentiation) results in overestimated reduction in consumption and underestimated welfare loss. The model and method developed here are readily applicable to many studies involving storable goods, such as firms' optimal pricing behavior and anti-trust policies analyses.</p><p>The third and last chapter focuses on the incidence of soda taxes by studying the pass-through level of these taxes. It lays out a framework for thinking about the determinants of the pass-through level. More specifically, it builds theoretical models that examine the pass-through under more complex supply structures with multiple manufactures and retailers. In addition to providing some intuition behind theoretical predictions of the models, this chapter also presents empirical results found in the data along with their implications.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis proposes a new variable-order prediction method to predict the Shannon expansion order during the BDD tree generator. Combining this method with the original minimum width method, we can generator a better BDD tree to be used in our pass-transistor logic synthesizer. Also we propose two partitioning methods to reduce the length of the critical paths. The first method can effectively reduce the critical path delay at the cost of much higher area cost. The second method explores the common factors in the Boolean functions to reduce the critical path delay with reasonably increased area cost. Furthermore, we discuss the methods of inserting regenerating inverters/buffers along the path in BDD tree by selecting inverter cells and MUX cells of proper driving strength to optimize the area/cost/power performance. Finally, the automatic layout generation is considered to produce the physical layout more efficiently compared with that using commericial automatic place-and-route tools.

In this thesis, a brand new first-order low pass square root domain filter (SRD filter) based on operational transconductors amplifiers (OTAs) is presented. The SRD filter consists of a translinear filter and two OTAs. We improve Cruz¡¦s SRD filter [15], reduce the number of transconductors from 3 to 2, and replace Class-AB linear transconductors with OTAs. The circuit has the least number of transistors up to date, therefore, the least power consumption and least chip area. The circuit has been fabricated with 0.35£gm CMOS technology. It operates with a supply voltage 1.5V and the biasing current varies from 0.05uA to 15uA. Measurement results show that the cutoff frequency of the filter can be tuned from 250 Hz to 29 kHz when the external capacitance C is 1nF and the cutoff frequency can be tuned from 1.8 kHz to 237kHz when the external capacitance C is 100pF. The total harmonic distortion is 1.03% and 1.01% when the external capacitance C is 1nF and 100pF and the power consumption is 116£gW.