Traditional smart antennas are complicated, bulky, power hungry and expensive, as they require a large number of radio frequency (RF)/microwave phase shifters, and trans-mit/receive (T/R) modules. For wide applications in civilian wireless communications, it is important to investigate novel designs of electronically beam-steerable smart antennas which feature compact size, low power, and low cost. This dissertation presents novel designs and implementation of low-cost smart anten-nas for wireless communications. Four different designs of low-cost smart antennas have been presented, and these smart antennas can be categorized into two different types: The first type is electronically beam-switching antenna based on the concept of electrically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR). The design utilizes the strong mutual coupling between the driven element and reconfigurable parasitic elements to electronically steer the beams. A polarization-reconfigurable square patch is employed as the driven element which is surrounded by reconfigurable parasitic dipoles. The antenna does not require any micro-wave phase shifters and is shown to be able to achieve electronic beam switching and polarization reconfigurability by electronically controlling the PIN diodes. The second type is an electronically beam-switching antenna using active frequency selective surfaces (FSS). Omnidirectional feeders are employed to illuminate reconfigurable FSS cylinders which consist of a number of unit cells loaded by PIN diode or varactors. By controlling the DC bias of individual columns of the FSS cylinder, directive beams can be swept across the entire azimuth plane. Based on different active FSS unit cells, three different low-cost smart antennas have been designed, including a dual-band electronically beam-switching antenna, a 3-D beam scanning antenna, and an electronically beam-switching antenna with continuous frequency tuning. In this thesis, in order to evaluate the antenna performance, comprehensive full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations are carried out using commercial software. Furthermore, prototypes are fabricated and tested to validate the design concepts. Good agreement between the simulation and measurement results is achieved, and demonstrates that the smart antennas designed in this thesis have advantages of low cost and low power, thus rendering them promising for applications in wireless communications.

There has been only a minimal amount written in academic circles on the connections between political anarchism and cinema. Alan Lovell focuses on allegorical readings of films by Jean Vigo, Luis Bunuel, and Georges Franju. Richard Porton examines the historical representation of anarchists and their ideas. More recently, Nathan Jun lays out ideas for a proposed ‘cinema of liberation’. Yet these three writers, who provide the most notable attempts at wrestling with the subject, barely refer to one another. This means that there are disconnections in the areas of existing scholarly research, and it fails to fully analyse the complex series of relationships that exist between anarchism and film. My thesis attempts to address these gaps, and suggests ways in which anarchist theory can be used as a framework to inform our understanding of cinema as a cultural and industrial institution, and also provide an alternative process of reading and interpreting films. In analysing the dynamics between anarchist theory and film, it focuses on three key areas. Firstly, it considers the notion that cinema is an inherently anarchic space, based around fears of unruly (predominantly working class) audiences. Secondly, it attempts to delineate what the criteria for an anarchist film could be, by looking at a range of formal characteristics and content featured in a number of popular movies. And thirdly, it examines the place of grassroots and DIY filmmaking in the wider context of an anarchist cinema. My thesis finds the continuities that exist between radical film culture of the present and the past, and I propose that there is an innately anarchic undercurrent to several key aspects of cinematic culture. The thesis concludes by stressing the distinction that exists between film as a text, and cinema as a range of cultural activities. I propose that the ultimate embodiment of a study of an anarchist cinema should combine film analysis with that of an examination of cinema as a social and physical space. In turn, this can help us to consider the ways in which film and cinema may form part of a culture of resistance – one which fully articulates the concerns and questions surrounding anarchist political theory.

Plasmon enhanced micromanipulation addresses some of the drawbacks associated with more traditional optical based methods, particularly in regard to the nature of laser excitation required for actuation. The resonant electromagnetic field enhancement observed as a result of the plasmon resonance phenomenon, enables trapping of nanoscale objects, and reduces the risk of photoinduced sample damage by reducing excitation power required for trapping. Plasmon resonance introduces an unavoidable heating effect which hinders stable trapping in microfluidic environments as a result of phenomena such as convection. In this work, the heating associated with plasmon resonance is used constructively, to devise a new micromanipulation technique. Plasmonic nanostructures are patterned on pyroelectric substrates which create an electric field in response to changes in temperature. This electric field results in the generation of local and global electrokinetic phenomena which are used in high throughput trapping of suspended particles. To demonstrate the versatility of this technique, particles are patterned into arbitrary shapes. A suggested application for this technique is as an optically controlled photoresist free lithographic method for use in microfluidic environments.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the impact of riverbank vegetation densities, which can vary greatly in natural river systems, on the flow hydrodynamics across the whole channel. A series of flume experiments are conducted with various riverbank vegetation densities and configurations. Flow velocities across the whole channel are recorded by either acoustic Doppler velocimetry (ADV) or acoustic Doppler velocimetry profiler (ADVP). Firstly, the performances of ADV and ADVP are assessed, before the impact of probe configurations on experimental results is evaluated for ADVP. The accuracy of the probe is discussed, and the best probe configurations for the given flow are suggested. The flow velocity progressively reduces at the vegetated riverbank and slightly increases at the main channel with increasing riverbank vegetation density. Turbulence intensity at the middle of the main channel and the riverbank toe increases with increasing vegetation density. However, at the riverbank region, turbulence intensity decreases due to the dramatic reduction of flow velocity. Geomorphic process feedback is given in the form of a case study, and practical recommendations for river restoration are provided. Bulk velocity, which is relevant to flow conveyance, is evaluated at each portion (main channel and riverbank) of the channel. In general, bulk velocity slightly increases at the main channel but dramatically decreases at the riverbank with increasing vegetation densities. The result of Nikuradse’s equivalent roughness also shows an increasing trend with increasing vegetation density. Bed shear stress is estimated using several methods, including the log Law of the Wall, turbulent kinetic energy and Reynolds stresses. The results obtained using all three methods show that bed shear stress considerably increases at the main channel and sharply decreases at the riverbank region for the shear stress with dense riverbank vegetation compared to the no vegetation case. Impulse is introduced as a new criterion to assess sediment transport both at the free stream portion and at the vegetated region in turbulent flow. With a range of reasonably assumed critical velocities and critical impulses, the frequency of impulse closely follows the same trend observed for shear stresses across the channel width.

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate multilingual mobile learning applications by using the wireless response system (WRS) as a case study. This application is developed and internationalised into fourteen languages, to allow students and teachers from different languages to use this application, with a view towards enhancing the educational environment. Additionally, one related aim is to detect the usability of the multilingual mobile learning application in these languages, by measuring the effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction and comprehensibility of the WRS, through the adoption of the Fuzzy theory. Drawing on a survey of 295 participants, the results indicate significant differences between the original language of the interface (i.e., English) and certain other language interfaces, in terms of its effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction and comprehensibility. These variances make the usability level of the WRS in the English language interface significantly better and statistically different from the Netherlands, Dutch, French, Italian, Swedish, Russian, Romanian, Spanish and Turkish languages. However, the results show that the usability level of the WRS interface in the English language is not significantly better and statistically different from the Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Malay and Polish languages. These results encourage future studies to further improve the mobile learning application in languages that demonstrated low usability values. These results will help researchers in this field to recognise the problems and weaknesses of multilingual mobile learning applications, towards improving and solving them. The significance of this thesis lies in making the WRS application available in fourteen languages, and also in measuring the usability of these fourteen languages through the application of (1) Fuzzy theory and (2) SPSS software. The use of the Fuzzy theory to measure the collected data leads to obtaining accurate and precise results, facing the vagueness and ambiguities of the user‟s language surrounding the analysis process. In other words, this theory adds a clearer and more accurate understanding of the vagueness of language‟s uncertainty, opinion and ambiguous expressions that are hidden in different users‟ backgrounds.

Today, one of the biggest challenges that E-management systems face is the explosive growth of operating data and to use this data to enhance services. Web usage mining has emerged as an important technique to provide useful management information from user's Web data. One of the areas where such information is needed is the Web-based academic digital libraries. A digital library (D-library) is an information resource system to store resources in digital format and provide access to users through the network. Academic libraries offer a huge amount of information resources, these information resources overwhelm students and makes it difficult for them to access to relevant information. Proposed solutions to alleviate this issue emphasize the need to build Web recommender systems that make it possible to offer each student with a list of resources that they would be interested in. Collaborative filtering is the most successful technique used to offer recommendations to users. Collaborative filtering provides recommendations according to the user relevance feedback that tells the system their preferences. Most recent work on D-library recommender systems uses explicit feedback. Explicit feedback requires students to rate resources which make the recommendation process not realistic because few students are willing to provide their interests explicitly. Thus, collaborative filtering suffers from “data sparsity” problem. In response to this problem, the study proposed a Web usage mining framework to alleviate the sparsity problem. The framework incorporates clustering mining technique and usage data in the recommendation process. Students perform different actions on D-library, in this study five different actions are identified, including printing, downloading, bookmarking, reading, and viewing the abstract. These actions provide the system with large quantities of implicit feedback data. The proposed framework also utilizes clustering data mining approach to reduce the sparsity problem. Furthermore, generating recommendations based on clusters produce better results because students belonging to the same cluster usually have similar interests. The proposed framework is divided into two main components: off-line and online components. The off-line component is comprised of two stages: data pre-processing and the derivation of student clusters. The online component is comprised of two stages: building student's profile and generating recommendations. The second stage consists of three steps, in the first step the target student profile is classified to the closest cluster profile using the cosine similarity measure. In the second phase, the Pearson correlation coefficient method is used to select the most similar students to the target student from the chosen cluster to serve as a source of prediction. Finally, a top-list of resources is presented. Using the Book-Crossing dataset the effectiveness of the proposed framework was evaluated based on sparsity level, and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) regarding accuracy. The proposed framework reduced the sparsity level between (0.07% and 26.71%) in the sub-matrices, whereas the sparsity level is between 99.79% and 78.81% using the proposed framework, and 99.86% (for the original matrix) before applying the proposed framework. The experimental results indicated that by using the proposed framework the performance is as much as 13.12% better than clustering-only explicit feedback data, and 21.14% better than the standard K Nearest Neighbours method. The overall results show that the proposed framework can alleviate the Sparsity problem resulting in improving the accuracy of the recommendations.

Device to device (D2D) links density is expected to increase dramatically in future networks. The D2D user equipments (DUEs) reuse frequency resources to cover the next generation D2D-enabled cellular network requirements. The cellular user equipments (CUEs) and DUEs experience in-band emission interference (IEI) from DUEs that use adjacent frequencies. In this thesis, the IEI impact in D2D-enabled cellular network is investigated comprehensively. In the first part, the IEI from the DUEs to cellular links is initially mitigated for all time slots. An open loop power control (OLPC)-based scheme is introduced for the D2D discovery scenario to mitigate the IEI and compared with recent proposed methods. The scheme defines time slots to boost the DUEs transmission power, where the IEI is mitigated and the D2D link performance is improved. A simulation system is used to evaluate the IEI impact. The IEI from DUEs to cellular links is mitigated without taking into account the proposed power control can affect the DUEs that use the same frequency resource and the constraints can affect the D2D link performance. Therefore, the second part expands the IEI investigation, where the D2D-enabled cellular network is modelled by taking into account the IEI interferers using the stochastic geometry tool. The IEI impact is analysed and mitigated for all time slots by taking into account the D2D links performance. The IEI impact is evaluated theoretically in terms of coverage probability and data rate for cellular link side, successful probability and data rate for D2D link side. The IEI intra-cell and IEI inter-cell are investigated separately to detect the dominant part of IEI. The expected reuse factor of the D2D resource blocks (DRBs) is derived to examing the number of DUEs that can be served when the IEI is or is not taken into account. Following, a power-density based (PDB) strategy is proposed to mitigate the IEI by controlling the number of DUEs that use each DRB, and by allocating predefined DRBs to the DUEs that cause lowest interference power at the serving BS. The thinning process and Poisson hole process (PHP) are employed to remodel the network. The performance improvement can be achieved by employing this strategy is evaluated. The optimal DRBs setting is found that mitigates the IEI and improves the cellular link performance. Furthermore, the optimal power allocation (OPA) algorithm is proposed to mitigate the IEI by calculating the optimal DUEs transmission power profile that maximizes the DUEs sum rate and maintains the interference level at the BS below a predefined threshold. The performance improvement that can be achieved by employing this algorithm is also evaluated. It is concluded that, in a D2D-enabled cellular network, the IEI impact is significant and needs to be considered to evaluate the performance of the future network accurately. Thus, the proposed model can be used to represent and evaluate the future network. Also, by employing the PDB strategy, the IEI can be mitigated effectively if the D2D links performance has higher priority than the number of DUEs required to be served for D2D discovery and transmission data scenarios. In case the required number of served DUEs in one time slot cannot be covered by PDB, the OPA algorithm and the OLPC-based strategy can be used for D2D data transmission and D2D discovery scenarios, respectively.

International Technology Transfer (the transfer of technology across national borders) is extensively believed to be necessary for the industrialisation of any country. The experiences of some successful countries in rapid economic and industrial development show that the acquisition of a significant amount of foreign technology has played a crucial role in promoting their managerial and technical expertise as well as increasing their productivity level In particular, the experiences of some successful East Asian Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) during the past three decades indicate that they could achieve rapid industrialisation and technological development through the adoption of a set of appropriate policies and strategies. The experiences of these countries can have valuable lessons and policy implications for other countries which wish to follow the same path of rapid industrialisation and technological development. Although many Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have realised the great importance of technological transformation for their rapid economic and industrial development, they have not designed effective and efficient policies and strategies for the transfer of appropriate and high-level technologies. Therefore, it seems necessary for decision makers in these countries to formulate appropriate policies for effective and successful transfer of technology as well as rapid industrialisation. Iran, as a developing country with large natural and human resources has also attempted to adopt the best approach of technology transfer to improve and promote its technological capability and achieve rapid industrialisation. However, like many other countries, the industrial base of Iran can be characterised as being heavily dependent on importing their required parts and components for manufacturing outputs, which in tum is due to the assembly nature of many of its industries. In other words, Iran as wen as many other developing countries has been faced with heavy technological dependency. The main purpose of this study is to identify and examine the critical success factors for the effective technology transfer and rapid industrialisation of the LDCs in general and Iran in Particular. Firstly, some of the most important and relevant theoretical frameworks as well as conceptual issues of technology transfer and industrialisation of LDCs are analysed. The empirical and practical experiences of some selected countries in particular East Asian first and second tier Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) as well as Mexico and Turkey are also studied. The critical success factors of these countries in rapid industrialisation and technological development are identified. Moreover, the past and present industrialisation policies as well as technology transfer status of Iran is investigated in detail to identify and determine the most important strengths and weaknesses which are needed for designing its future plan. Finally, a framework of an appropriate policy and strategy for international technology transfer to LDCs in general and Iran in particular is proposed. Some overall recollections and suggestions derived from the research findings and results for the effective and succesful technology transfer and industrialisation of LDCs in general and Iran in particular is also included.

The thesis presents analytical and experimental methods of studying various aspects of the optical and thermal performance of a transwall passive solar system. Some of these methods are applicable to other solar systems. Two ray-tracing techniques, 1-dimensional and 3-dimensional, are presented for an accurate calculation of the optical properties of a transwall module with its outside glass plate(s). These techniques calculate not only the reflected, absorbed or transmitted fractions of the incident radiation but also the spectrum of the transmitted radiation. This information is required for a better assessment of the transwall system as an illuminating source and as a thermal system. Both techniques are applied to a particular transwall module with one outside glass plate and the importance of various features of the incident solar radiation (such as spectrum, angular variation, polarization, etc.) are discussed. The difficulties associated with the nature of the diffuse solar radiation coming from the sky, or the ground , are overcome by employing a discretization method in which the continuous diffuse radiation is divided into discrete pencils of radiation. An analytical thermal model of a passive solar system is presented and its verification is established by using a test-box containing a full size transwall module. The outcome of this verification is satisfactory given the uncertainties of the optical and thermal properties of the various elements of the test-box. The success of the analytical modelling depends on accounting for the 3-dimensional solar radiation field outside and inside the passive solar system. The methods developed, accompanied by the two ray-tracing techniques, allow for an accurate distribution of the total incident radiation among the semitransparent elements and the external and internal surfaces of any passive system. The method of distributing the solar radiation among the internal surfaces of an enclosure is applied to the convex parallelepiped enclosure of the test-box and, as additional example of the method, also applied to the non-convex enclosure of a typical glasshouse with E-w transwalls. The phenomenon of the natural convection of a fluid inside a transwall module induced by the absorption of radiation is predicted by a numerical method, first introduced by Patankar. Examples of the temperature, pressure and velocity fields of three transwall modules filled with distilled water under the irradiance conditions of 400 to 500 W/m2 are presented. By introducing the effective conductivity concept the complicated phenomenon of the fluid convection inside the module is simplified to a conduction phenomenon. This is also necessary for the long term-days or months - analytical modelling of the total transwall passive system because the numerical prediction of the former phenomenon requires an excessive amount of computer time. The calculation of the effective conductivity is obtained by employing an analytical approach which makes use of the data collected from the application of the numerical method, mentioned above. Values of the ratio of the effective conductivity to the conductivity of the still water are calculated at two interfaces inside the water of four different transwall modules. Measurements of the temperature and the velocity at certain points in a small transwall module irradiated by a solar simulator have been performed to support some of the numerical predictions.

There are many harmful airborne microorganisms which can be breathed in by animals or humans and lead to illness or even death. Such organisms can land on surfaces or in liquid leading to other opportunistic routes to infection such as touch and ingestion. Consequently, there is a need to develop novel forms of decontamination and detection of pathogens in air, on surfaces and in liquids. The present work investigates these areas and in particular assesses the impact of novel laser and plasma decontamination systems on inactivation of Bacillus atropheaus spores, an anthrax simulant, in aerosols and on surfaces. To further evaluate the performance of the methods, it was necessary to identify how the spores flowed through the systems. Experiments were devised to quantify the effect of flow shaping and the electrode’s surface roughness, on the spore deposition. The spatial distribution of B. atropheaus spores on the electrodes was determined by using two methods, either a membrane filter or an imprinting (pressing) technique. Rougher surfaces allowed a higher level of microorganisms adhesion compared to smooth surfaces. The angle of incidence of the flowshaping on the spore distribution was investigated by using two angles, 10° and 30°. The capture was quantified by the number of spores that were counted on agar plates following incubation. The number of colony forming unit CFU was greatest near the entry point, and generally reduced along the electrodes’ length and was also greater for the 30° inlet angle. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques were applied to model the particular flow through the electrode geometry and for the laser decontamination system. Methods of spatial detection of microorganisms on surface were further developed using microscopy methods. Three methods were used in this research: optical microscopy examination to find the minimum detectable level of B. atrophaeus spores on surfaces, a fluorescence technique using LEDs was developed to investigate the spatial detection of spores and microalgae and a flow chamber system was developed that was used for cell counting of microalgae in liquid. The effect of excimer laser radiation on Escherichia coli vegetative cells and Bacillus atrophaeus spores was investigated. E. coli or B. atrophaeus spores were lawned onto agar plates and treated with pulsed excimer laser radiation at 248 nm. The plates were incubated overnight at 37 °C and assessed for areas of clearing or inactivation. The applied pulse energy was 37 mJ, the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) was either 20 or 100 Hz, exposures were from 1-10 pulses, or up to 1 min. The range of applied energy densities was from 0.31 to 18500 Jcm-2. Image processing techniques were developed to determine the cleared area, major and minor axis and fractional clearing away from the region directly exposed to the laser beam. The area of clearing was approximately linear for treatment against E. coli, and was non-linear against B. atrophaeus. Increasing the PRF increased the area of clearing, as did increasing the exposure time. Interestingly, these areas of clearing were much greater than the beam area (2 x 6 mm), suggesting that scattering of the radiation played a significant role in contributing towards inactivation away from the directly laser exposed region. The results showed that excimer lasers offer the potential for rapid decontamination of microorganisms and spores on surfaces. Simple protocols allow direct comparison of the inactivation efficacy of different laser sources and image processing techniques can be applied to accurately quantify these results. Growing and harvesting microalgae is important for sustainable and secure biofuel and food production. There is a wide spread interest in growing and exploiting the microalgae. The lipid, protein, carbohydrate and vitamin content of microalgae are not only species dependent but are also a function of their growth parameters such as nutrient, light, temperature and CO2. The importance of detection of microalgae on assessing optimal growth conditions was investigated, along with the impact of harvesting and lipid extraction. Image processing systems were developed to quantify the size distribution of microalgae as a determinant of growth efficiency.