Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-161).

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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Sept. 2, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).

1. There is a crisis in economics. The discipline evolved in nineteenth century Europe and is difficult to adapt to modern conditions, even in the West, and particularly in alien cultures. Application of conventional economic analysis to economic activity in a culture as alien as traditional China highlights the biases in assumptions of the paradigm. 2. The concepts, models and vocabulary evolved over one hundred years ago predate important developments in the natural sciences. It is now necessary for economists to concede no goods can ever be 'produced', and they are not 'consumed' either. In clear terms matter is transformed, but is not created or destroyed (First Law of Thermodynamics). 3. When people transform matter, in lay language we say energy is 'used'. In a simple cottage industry, 'raw material' is transformed into a commodity in front of our eyes by the use of human energy and the release of energy from a 'fuel'. In modem complex economic activity, it is difficult or impossible to keep track of the processes from raw matter to transformed 'product' although the principle is the same. 4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in any transformation, energy is not created or destroyed, but becomes 'less available'. In short, entropy increases. This appears to work well for pure physics and chemistry, but its application to analysis of economic activity has only been notional. 5. There is a reason why economists borrowing terms from hard science experience difficulty. It is because physicists and chemists have addressed specific laboratory and engineering problems, but not the broader economic issues. The hypothesis gradually evolved in this research program that not only economic concepts and terms needed reworking, but those in physics as well. The definitions of energy as 'ability to do works and of entropy as 'unavailable energy' jar the logic of our commonsense. 6. The notion of 'available energy' was traced back to the phenomenon in physical chemistry known as exothermicity, or the release of energy during a chemical reaction. It was reasoned that while scientists had focussed on this phenomenon and measured it carefully they saw no need to ask where the energy came from, or to measure its transformation. From the perspective of analysing economic activity, the question was important. 7. It was hypothesised that the energy released from a fuel as electromagnetic radiation (mainly heat) was the residual of the set of coulombic forces within atoms that maintain the structure of shells of electrons around the protons. This idea in turn came from the presumption that molecular bonding is a residual of vectors of the set of coulombic forces within atoms, and the likelihood that in an exothermic reaction, after the reactants are said (by scientists) to 'seek equilibrium', product molecules have a portion of the coulombic forces 'left over' and not required to maintain their structures. An estimate was made of the coulombic forces extant in various fuels, and compared with the known data for their release of energy. 8. The idea was developed in detail. The concept we call in economics, 'production', and should call 'transformation' can only occur when forces locked within atoms are released as electromagnetic forces. (Gravitational forces exist because matter has been put 'there' by electromagnetic radiation). When 100 grams of dry grass fuel is burnt, about 2 megajoules of electromagnetic radiation are released. It was estimated that the coulombic forces between each electron and proton in that amount dry grass total 150 gigajoules (or giganewtons, since the reference is to forces). 9. Within the boundary of a simple economic activity, the ratio of aggregated coulombic forces locked up within atoms to the electromagnetic forces radiated out was estimated at the beginning of the activity, and then after a duration. The ratio of forces always tends towards 'evening out'. This measurement captures the entropy phenomenon which has been said by Georgescu-Roegen to be the basis of all economic activity. 10. At the roots of the economic paradigm founded by Adam Smith is the premise that the material world, as a set of substances, is a stage on which economic actors 'add value', bid prices up and down, and by their rational perception manage their livelihoods and surroundings well. From the findings of this research program it is contended that the surroundings of economic actors can be classed into two categories: locked up (coulombic) electromagnetic forces, and radiated electromagnetic forces. The former has a tendency to convert to the latter. All action, including all economic activity, and all life can be traced to a point in space and time where this conversion is (naturally) occurring. The phenomenon is analogous to a slope where water cascades, and gravitational potential energy converts to other (either useless or useful) forms of energy. To appreciate the nature of this phenomena, and to attempt to fathom its dimensions, sets our perceptions of ourselves as economic actors in a quite different and very humbling context.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Mechanical Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, we aim to create a framework for the derivation of thermodynamically consistent anisotropic viscoelastic models. As an example we propose simple models extending the isotropic Oldroyd-B and Giesekus models to illustrate the models' behavior and the process of finding the correct equations. We show what behavior in sheer we can expect and continue with a 3D simulation inspired by the experiment on a real liquid crystal mixture. Finally, we compare the simulation and the experiment to find similarities and possible further research topics.

Many industrial processes have low-temperature waste heat sources that cannot be efficiently recovered. Low grade waste heat has generally been discarded by industry and has become an environmental concern because of thermal pollution. This has led to the lookout for technologies which not only reduce the burden on the non-renewable sources of energy but also take steps toward a cleaner environment. One approach which is found to be highly effective in addressing the above mentioned issues is the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), which can make use of low- temperature waste heat to generate electric power. Similar in principle to the conventional cycle, ORC is found to be superior performance-wise because of the organic working fluids used in the cycle. The focus of this study is to examine the ORC using different types of organic fluids and cycle configurations. These organic working fluids were selected to evaluate the effect of the fluid boiling point temperature and the fluid classification on the performance of ORCs. The results are compared with those of water under similar conditions. In order to improve the cycle performance, modified ORCs are also investigated. Regenerative ORCs are analyzed and compared with the basic ORC in order to determine the configuration that presents the best thermal efficiency with minimum irreversibility. The evaluation for both configurations is performed using a combined first and second law analysis by varying certain system operating parameters at various reference temperatures and pressures. A unique approach known as topological method is also used to analyze the system from the exergy point of view. Effects of various components are studied using the exergy-wheel diagram. The results show that ORCs using R113 as working fluid have the best thermal efficiency, while those using Propane demonstrate the worse efficiency. In addition, results from these analyses demonstrate that regenerative ORCs produce higher efficiencies compared to the basic ORC. Furthermore, the regenerative ORC requires less waste heat to produce the same electric power with a lower irreversibility.

<p dir="ltr">In holographic quantum field theories, a bulk geometric semiclassical spacetime emerges from strongly coupled interacting conformal field theories in one less spatial dimension. This is the celebrated AdS/CFT correspondence. The entanglement entropy of a boundary spatial subregion can be calculated as the area of a codimension two bulk surface homologous to the boundary subregion known as the RT surface. The bulk region contained within the RT surface is known as the entanglement wedge and bulk reconstruction tells us that any operator in the entanglement wedge can be reconstructed as a non-local operator on the corresponding boundary subregion. This notion that entanglement creates geometry is dubbed "ER=EPR'' and has been the driving force behind recent progress in quantum gravity research. In this thesis, we put together two results that use Tomita-Takesaki modular theory and quantum ergodic theory to make progress on contemporary problems in quantum gravity.</p><p dir="ltr">A version of the black hole information loss paradox is the inconsistency between the decay of two-point functions of probe operators in large AdS black holes and the dual boundary CFT calculation where it is an almost periodic function of time. We show that any von Neumann algebra in a faithful normal state that is quantum strong mixing (two-point functions decay) with respect to its modular flow is a type III₁ factor and the state has a trivial centralizer. In particular, for Generalized Free Fields (GFF) in a thermofield double (KMS) state, we show that if the two-point functions are strong mixing, then the entire algebra is strong mixing and a type III₁ factor settling a recent conjecture of Liu and Leutheusser.</p><p dir="ltr">The semiclassical bulk geometry that emerges in the holographic description is a pseudo-Riemannian manifold and we expect a local approximate Poincaré algebra. Near a bifurcate Killing horizon, such a local two-dimensional Poincaré algebra is generated by the Killing flow and the outward null translations along the horizon. We show the emergence of such a Poincaré algebra in any quantum system with modular future and past subalgebras in a limit analogous to the near-horizon limit. These are known as quantum K-systems and they saturate the modular chaos bound. We also prove that the existence of (modular) future/past von Neumann subalgebras also implies a second law of (modular) thermodynamics.</p>