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A disproportionate number of Americans drive to work alone – at the individual state level, the figure ranges from a low of 58% in New York to 85% in Alabama. What factors explain this travel behavior and what sort of policy responses are required to effect changes? In responding to this question, we used multiple test beds and made the case for a demand side management approach to remedy parking problems particularly observed in cities central business districts. To this end, we provide an overview of travel behavior and information on policy levers by generating detailed profiles that capture the travel behavior of commuters in the Pacific states of the continental United States. Building off the result that revealed San Francisco as an outlier, we examine the efficacy of modifying parking rates, via elasticity measures, to influence the demand for parking by developing a two-stage panel data regression optimization model for managing parking in the City of San Francisco. A key contribution of the research is deriving these price elasticities of parking demand estimates using panel data methods. Coefficient estimates from the panel data regression are used to fit a linear prediction model that is the primary input to the optimization model. The balance of the thesis focuses on parking information by discussing the design and implementation of ParkPGH, a novel smart parking application that provides real time and predictive information on garage parking availability in downtown Pittsburgh. At its core is a predictive model that uses as input historical parking, weather and event data to provide estimates of available parking spaces. We provide an example of the model implementation using data from the Theater Square garage where we utilize neural network-based predictors and multiple net searches to generate both continuous and binary estimates of parking availability. Provision was made for the binary classifier given the need to reduce the possibility of Type II errors.

Thesis advisor: Marc Snapper / Monoalkylation of 1,2diols: No method for an asymmetric monoalkylation has been previously reported. Attempts here were made to develop this transformation by using a copper catalyst and BOX ligand to impart chirality. Design of First Aid Smart Fabrics: A cellulose filter paper would be linked through a cleavable linker to a bioactive agent. This linker would cleave upon the presence of blood to release the drug directly onto the body. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Chemistry.

Ce travail concerne la mise en place de plateformes professionnelles informatiques et le développement de la plate-forme SunRise pour la gestion d'une Smart City. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet SunRise qui vise à transformer le campus Cité Scientifique de l'Université de Lille en une «ville intelligente et durable». Le campus est représentatif d'une petite ville de 25 000 habitants et de 100 km de réseaux urbains.Cette thèse comprend cinq parties.La première partie comprend un état de l’art concernant les Smart Cities avec ses définitions et ses composantes.La deuxième partie présente le rôle des données dans les villes intelligentes, ainsi que les dernières technologies utilisées pour la gestion des villes intelligentes. Il présente également les différentes architectures et plateformes existantes pour la gestion d'une Smart City.La troisième partie présente le démonstrateur SunRise Smart City, sur lequel s’appuie cette thèse. La partie détaille l'instrumentation du site de démonstration ainsi que le modèle SIG du démonstrateur.La quatrième partie concerne l'architecture des deux plateformes professionnelles PI System et OpenDataSoft ainsi que leur mise en place et leur utilisation pour l'analyse de la consommation d'eau.La dernière partie décrit l'architecture de la plateforme SunRise et détaille ses couches. Il présente également les étapes du développement et de l’implémentation de la plateforme. / This work concerns the implementation of professional platforms and the development of SunRise platform for managing a Smart City. It is a part of SunRise project, which aims at turning the Scientific Campus of the University of Lille into a large-scale demonstrator site of the "Smart and Sustainable City". The campus is representative to a small town of 25000 inhabitants and 100 km of urban infrastructure.This thesis includes five parts. The first part includes a literature review concerning the Smart Cities with its definitions and components. The second part presents the role of data in Smart Cities, as well as the latest technologies that are used for Smart City management. It presents also the different existing architectures and platforms for management a Smart City.The Third part presents the SunRise Smart City demonstrator, which is used as a basis for this thesis. The part details the instrumentation installed in the demo site as well as the GIS model of the demonstrator. The fourth part concerns the architecture of the two professional platforms PI System and OpenDataSoft as well as their implementation and use for the analysis of water consumption.The last part describes the architecture of the platform SunRise and details its layers. It presents also the stages of the platform development and implementation.

Along with the current trend of wireless technology innovation, wideband, compact size, low-profile, lightweight and multiple functional antenna and array designs are becoming more attractive in many applications. Conventional wireless systems utilise omni-directional or sectored antenna systems. The disadvantage of such antenna systems is that the electromagnetic energy, required by a particular user located in a certain direction, is radiated unnecessarily in every direction within the entire cell, hence causing interference to other users in the system. In order to limit this source of interference and direct the energy to the desired user, smart antenna systems have been investigated and developed. This thesis presents the design, simulation, fabrication and full implementation of a novel smart antenna system for future mobile applications. The design and characterisation of a novel antenna structure and four-element liner array geometry for smart antenna systems are proposed in the first stage of this study. Firstly, a miniaturised microstrip-fed planar monopole antenna with Archimedean spiral slots to cover WiFi/Bluetooth and LTE mobile applications has been demonstrated. The fundamental structure of the proposed antenna element is a circular patch, which operates in high frequency range, for the purpose of miniaturising the circuit dimension. In order to achieve a multi-band performance, Archimedean spiral slots, acting as resonance paths, have been etched on the circular patch antenna. Different shapes of Archimedean spiral slots have been investigated and compared. The miniaturised and optimised antenna achieves a bandwidth of 2.2GHz to 2.9GHz covering WiFi/Bluetooth (2.45GHz) and LTE (2.6GHz) mobile standards. Then a four-element linear antenna array geometry utilising the planar monopole elements with Archimedean spiral slots has been described. All the relevant parameters have been studied and evaluated. Different phase shifts are excited for the array elements, and the main beam scanning range has been simulated and analysed. The second stage of the study presents several feeding network structures, which control the amplitude and phase excitations of the smart antenna elements. Research begins with the basic Wilkinson power divider configuration. Then this thesis presents a compact feeding network for circular antenna array, reconfigurable feeding networks for tuning the operating frequency and polarisations, a feeding network on high resistivity silicon (HRS), and an ultrawide-band (UWB) feeding network covering from 0.5GHz to 10GHz. The UWB feeding network is used to establish the smart antenna array system. Different topologies of phase shifters are discussed in the third stage, including ferrite phase shifters and planar phase shifters using switched delay line and loaded transmission line technologies. Diodes, FETs, MMIC and MEMS are integrated into different configurations. Based on the comparison, a low loss and high accurate Hittite MMIC analogue phase shifter has been selected and fully evaluated for this implementation. For the purpose of impedance matching and field matching, compact and ultra wideband CPW-to-Microstrip transitions are utilised between the phase shifters, feeding network and antenna elements. Finally, the fully integrated smart antenna array achieves a 10dB reflection coefficient from 2.25GHz to 2.8GHz, which covers WiFi/Bluetooth (2.45GHz) and LTE (2.6GHz) mobile applications. By appropriately controlling the voltage on the phase shifters, the main beam of the antenna array is steered ±50° and ±52°, for 2.45GHz and 2.6GHz, respectively. Furthermore, the smart antenna array demonstrates a gain of 8.5dBi with 40° 3dB bandwidth in broadside direction, and has more than 10dB side lobe level suppression across the scan. The final stage of the study investigates hardware and software automatic control systems for the smart antenna array. Two microcontrollers PIC18F4550 and LPC1768 are utilised to build the control PCBs. Using the graphical user interfaces provided in this thesis, it is able to configure the beam steering of the smart antenna array, which allows the user to analyse and optimise the signal strength of the received WiFi signals around the mobile device. The design strategies proposed in this thesis contribute to the realisation of adaptable and autonomous smart phone systems.

Masters Research - Master of Engineering (Research) / This thesis considers a number of related problems in the area of passive and semi-active vibration control of piezoelectric laminates. The thesis consists of three main parts. The first part of the thesis develops a mathematical model of a physical resonant system-piezoelectric laminated simply supported beam. It is essential to have a good understanding of the physical system so that the associated problems with passive and semi-active shunt damping can be addressed. The second part of the thesis is concerned with problems related with current passive shunt damping techniques using a single piezoelectric laminate. One of the current problems with multiple mode techniques is determining the correct resistive damping for each resonant mode. Therefore, a systematic method is presented for determining the optimal resistance elements by minimizing the H2 norm of the damped system. After the design process, shunt circuits are normally implemented using discrete resistors, capacitors and virtual inductors (Riordan Gyrators). The difficulty in constructing the shunt circuits and achieving reasonable performance has been an ongoing problem. A new approach to implementing piezoelectric shunt circuits is presented. A “synthetic impedance”, consisting of a voltage controlled current source and digital signal processor (DSP) system, is used to synthesize the terminal impedance of a required shunt network. The third part of the thesis is concerned with the semi-active vibration control of piezoelectric laminated. This part addresses a number of associated problems with the current passive shunt damping schemes. The foremost being the complexity of the shunt circuits required to dampen multiple modes. They generally act to minimize structural vibration at a specific frequency – which are rarely stationary. Therefore, a new broadband semi-active shunt technique for controlling multiple modes has been developed. The “negative capacitor” controller is proposed theoretically, and then validated experimentally. The negative capacitor is simular in nature to a passive shunt damper as it uses a single piezoelectric transducer to dampen multiple modes of a flexible structure.

This research investigates adoption and integration of a range of building environmental systems in healthcare facilities in India. Based on detailed case studies of eight selected healthcare facilities developed at different times in India, this research traces the evolution of hospital designs in a specific geographic context through the lens of adoption of building environmental systems over the internal shell and external skins of healthcare buildings in India. By documenting and analyzing changes in building designs over time, the research develops a comparative understanding of trends of adoption of environmental technologies and their impacts on building form and performance.

The current well planning practice is usually done section by section with limited help of some knowledge-based tools. This thesis presents an integrated approach and a software prototype developed for well planning. It considers the geological input, i.e. pore pressure, over burden etc., to generate a step by step interactive drilling plan. The implemented well planning stages include the casing setting depth, casing and hole size determination, casing selection and then drill string design and modeling. The system is integrated with a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system for generating three-dimensional parametric model. The conceptual design and CAD modeling system are integrated in such a way that any changes in the design will be reflected to the CAD model. Such intelligent CAD design practice is new in the drilling industry. An Operational Parameters module is also attached with the system to predict the drilling coefficients by using offset well data and determine the optimum weight on bit, and the drill string rotation that minimizes drilling cost per foot for a single bit run. Based on this approach, an integrated well planning system can be fully developed and it will be very useful for the decision making of drilling companies.