The Ca²⁺-mobilising messenger NAADP has been shown to play a key role in the regulation of mammalian physiology. Recently, the two-pore channels (TPCs) have been proposed as an NAADP-gated Ca²⁺ channel. Chapter 1 introduces the TPCs as the major candidates in governing NAADP-mediated Ca²⁺-release from acidic stores. Chapter 2 explains the methodologies developed and used. Chapter 3 demonstrates the successful immunopurification of HsTPC2 and its incorporation into an artificial lipid bilayer. K⁺ and Ca²⁺ currents were seen in reponse to nM - μM concentrations of NAADP; with the open probability (P₀) fitting a bell-shaped concentration-response curve. Ligand sensitivity was shown to be regulated by luminal [Ca²⁺], whereby a 20-fold increase in [Ca²⁺] _lumen (10 μM to 200 μM) caused a 100-fold reduction in the EC₅₀ from ≈ 500 nM to 5 nM. Furthermore, a reduction in luminal pH from 7.2 to 4.8 reduced the P₀ but 1 μM Ned-19 inhibiting all channel activity. Chapter 4 investigates the in situ properties of HsTPC2 by the purification and patch clamp of intact lysosomes from cells overexpressing HsTPC2. Three methods of purification were compared: differential centrifugation, whole lysosome immunoprecipitation and magnetic chromatography. Techniques involving lysosomal swelling and whole cell homogenisation were also optimised to ensure minimal contamination by non-lysosomal proteins. Whole lysosome patch clamping revealed NAADP-induced, Ca²⁺-specific currents in response to NAADP, but not cADPR, IP₃ or Ned-19. High concentrations of NAADP (mM) and Ned-19 (μM) showed prolonged ≈ 5 minutes) inhibition of channel activity. Chapter 5 explores the protein-protein interactions of the purified HsTPC2 and identifies a heterodimeric interaction between HsTPC1 and HsTPC2 was further dissected by coimmunoprecipitation, colocalisation and FRET studies. Despite clear evidence that both isoforms independently form homodimers, it is likely that heterodimerisation is a dynamic interaction only seen in a subset of the channel population. Chapter 6 discusses the results obtained in the wider context of cell physiology.

The main objectives of this study were to obtain new experimental data for conditions not previously tested for discharging two-phase flow through two 6.35 mm diameter branches with centrelines falling in an inclined plane and to assess the applicability of ANSYS CFX in modelling discharging two-phase flow through various single and multiple branch geometries. The present results are relevant to many industrial applications including headers and manifolds, multichannel heat exchangers and small breaks in horizontal pipes. In the experimental investigation, onsets of liquid and gas entrainment data were obtained, analyzed and correlated for two different branch spacings and two different angles between the branches. For each combination of branch spacing and angle between the branches, a wide range of Froude numbers was used. Two-phase mass flow rate and quality results were also obtained and analyzed for a range of interface heights for 16 different combinations of branch spacing, inclination angle, test section pressure and pressure drop across each branch. New correlations were developed to predict the dimensionless mass flow rate and the quality. The new correlations show good agreement with the present data and with previous correlations. Using ANSYS CFX, the inhomogeneous, free surface model was used to model discharging two-phase flow through horizontal branches with the following configurations: a single short branch of square cross-section (G1), a single long branch of square cross-section (G2), a single long branch of round cross section (G3), two round branches located one on top of the other (G4), and two round branches with their centreplane angled 30° from the horizontal. For these five geometries, results were compared with previous and present results and showed good agreement for Geometries G1, G2, G3 and G5. For Geometry G4, CFX was unable to predict results when the interface was located such that the two phases flowed through both branches simultaneously. Under these conditions, the flow phenomena were too complicated and further investigations are necessary. / February 2017

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1967 C33

Wang Jia = 有质量的相互作用双粒子系统产生的量子纠缠 / 王佳. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-86). / Text in English; abstracts in English and Chinese. / Wang Jia = You zhi liang de xiang hu zuo yong shuang li zi xi tong chan sheng de liang zi jiu chan / Wang Jia. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Review of quantum entanglement --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1 --- Schmidt decomposition and entangled pure states --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2 --- Detecting the quantum entanglement of pure states --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3 --- Quantifying the quantum entanglement of pure states --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Von Neumann entropy --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Purity --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Effective Schmidt number --- p.12 / Chapter 2.4 --- Purity of systems consisting of two interacting particles --- p.13 / Chapter 3 --- The pseudopotential method of two-body interactions --- p.16 / Chapter 3.1 --- S-wave pseudopotential in free space --- p.17 / Chapter 3.2 --- An example --- p.19 / Chapter 3.3 --- Pseudopotential for bound states --- p.21 / Chapter 3.4 --- S-wave pseudopotential in harmonic traps --- p.23 / Chapter 3.5 --- Two examples --- p.26 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Hard-sphere potential --- p.26 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Square well potential --- p.28 / Chapter 3.6 --- Feshbach resonance and two-channel scattering --- p.30 / Chapter 4 --- Quantum entanglement of ultracold particles in a harmonic trap --- p.35 / Chapter 4.1 --- Regularized Hamiltonian and energy eigenstates --- p.37 / Chapter 4.2 --- Schmidt Decomposition of wave functions with spherical symmetry --- p.39 / Chapter 4.3 --- Numerical Results --- p.41 / Chapter 4.4 --- Infinite scattering length limit --- p.45 / Chapter 5 --- Entanglement generated by wave packet scattering at low energies --- p.47 / Chapter 5.1 --- Scattering between two gaussian wave packets --- p.48 / Chapter 5.2 --- Loss of purity --- p.50 / Chapter 5.3 --- Enhancement of entanglement by resonance --- p.54 / Chapter 6 --- Quantum entanglement in molecular dissociation process --- p.57 / Chapter 6.1 --- Morse potential model --- p.57 / Chapter 6.2 --- Numerical method --- p.60 / Chapter 6.3 --- Excitation and dissociation process --- p.61 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Weak field transition and Rabi oscillations --- p.62 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Multiphoton dissociation by a moderately strong field --- p.63 / Chapter 6.3.3 --- Strong field dissociation --- p.72 / Chapter 6.4 --- Schmidt decomposition of dissociated wave function --- p.74 / Chapter 6.4.1 --- Dissociated wave function for the moderated field strength --- p.75 / Chapter 6.4.2 --- Dissociated wave function for the strong field strength --- p.76 / Chapter 7 --- Summary and Conclusions --- p.81 / Bibliography --- p.83 / Chapter A --- Analytical solution of two coupled square-well potentials --- p.87

The work described in this thesis aims to conduct a systematic study of the two stage turbocharging system to improve the Diesel engine transient performance as well as NOX and CO2 emissions with a focus on the improved turbocharger matching and the control of the charging system, through the use of high fidelity engine models backed by experimental results. To perform the analytical study, commercial 1D simulation software has been used in the process of system characterisation and control strategy design. To validate the analytical results, a two stage turbocharging system was installed on a production diesel engine and tested on a transient engine test bench. The test results were then used to further calibrate the 1D engine/turbocharger model. Several other technologies were also investigated in simulation to explore their potential to further improve the system. Unlike most studies in the literature, this project focused on the system benefit of the engine and turbochargers, instead of conducting optimisation solely at the component level. The engine global parameters, such as the engine fuel consumption, emission levels and the transient response were the main parameters to be considered and were also best suited to the strengths of the 1D simulation method. The interactive use of both the analytical and experimental methods was also a strong point of this study. A novel control strategy for the system was proposed and demonstrated in the simulation. Experiments confirmed the validity of this control strategy and provided data for further model calibration. The comparison of the test results of the baseline engine to those obtained with the two stage turbocharged engine system verified the benefits of the novel turbocharging arrangement and control scheme. Transient response (T1090) was improved, with a 50% faster torque rise at 1000 rpm; the fuel consumption over the NEDC was 4% lower and NOx emissions over the NEDC were 28% lower. In the meantime, the study also revealed shortcomings of the system, such as the lack of EGR control at low speed, low load condition and a mid-speed fuel consumption deterioration of 13% on average at 3000 rpm due to excessive back pressure. With a novel 1D model corroborated using test results, exploratory simulation was done to rectify the aforementioned shortcomings and to further improve the system. Simulation results showed that by implementing VGT and ball bearing technology in the high pressure stage of the two stage system, the EGR controllability at low speed was regained and the excessive back pressure at high speed was improved. Consequently, the fuel consumption was only increased by 1.3% compared to the baseline NEDC operation and the transient response was on par with the original two stage system, with only 0.05s slower in torque rise at 1000 rpm, and still 48% faster than the baseline VGT system. Furthermore, the NOx emission can be expected to be greatly improved in the upcoming more intensive drive cycles compared to the NEDC cycle, with simulation showing NEDC NOX emissions dropped by 1%, comparing to a substantial reduction of 11% in WLTC.

With the emergence of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models, precision of image classification tasks has been improved significantly over these years. Regional CNN (RCNN) model is proposed to solve object detection tasks with a combination of Region Proposal Network and CNN. This model improves the detection accuracy but suffer from slow inference speed because of its multi-stage structure. The Single Stage Detection (SSD) network is later proposed to further improve the object detection benchmark in terms of accuracy and speed. However, SSD model still suffers from high miss rate on small targets since datasets are usually dominated by medium and large sized objects, which don’t share the same features with small ones. On the other hand, geometric analysis on dataset images can provide additional information before model training. In this thesis, we propose several SSD-based models with adjusted parameters on feature extraction layers by using geometric analysis on KITTI and Caltech Pedestrian datasets. This analysis extends SSD’s capability on small objects detection. To further improve detection accuracy, we propose a two-stream network, which uses one stream to detect medium to large objects, and another stream specifically for small objects. This two-stream model achieves competitive performance comparing to other algorithms on KITTI and Caltech Pedestrian benchmark. Those results are shown and analysed in this thesis as well.

This thesis investigates fascist Jewish policy in Italian-occupied southeastern France between November 1942 and August 1943. The fascist government repeatedly refused to hand over to its Nazi ally or to its French enemy foreign Jewish refugees in the Italian occupation zone. This decision, which was tantamount to a refusal to collaborate in the extermination of the Jews, was partially overturned in mid-July 1943. This thesis seeks to explain the rationale for the fascist government’s decisions concerning the fates of foreign Jewish refugees in southeastern France. Current scholarship justifies the fascist government’s decisions as a manifestation either of humanitarianism or political expediency. This thesis argues instead that the Italian refusal to partake in the extermination of the Jews was ideological. As the fascist and Nazi leaderships attributed different relevance to the ‘Jewish question’, they consequently prescribed different methods to ‘solve’ it, in the context of their common military effort to win the war. Through the in-depth reconstruction of fascist Jewish policy in southern France, this thesis argues that although the fascist rulers acknowledged the existence of a ‘Jewish problem’, they never considered its solution as vital to their effort to win the war. Unlike the Nazis who considered their war against the Jew as the pivotal issue, thus rendering the physical eradication of all Jews as a conceivable action in the context of a total war, the Italians considered Jews as a secondary threat compared to communists or enemy aliens residing in their occupation zone. In turn, by analysing fascist Jewish policy in the broader geopolitical, diplomatic and military context of the occupation of southeastern France, this thesis demonstrates how, and to what extent, other ethical and practical considerations interacted with the larger ideology in operation. The overall result was a policy in which the murder of Jews was considered politically inexpedient and morally unacceptable, but which was, nevertheless, still persecutory (the Italian authorities interned foreign Jewish refugees in southern France and took measures to prevent their arrival in the Italian occupation zone). At the same time, this thesis reveals that, although the Jewish policy was consistent with the regime’s declared goal to ‘discriminate, but not persecute’ the Jews, it was not a necessary consequence of that goal. Instead, this policy could be negotiated and adjusted should the political need arise, as proved by the decision (ultimately without consequences) to surrender German Jews in mid-July 1943.

Thesis. 1976. Sc.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Engineering. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 122-128. / Sc.D.

Every two-bridge knot or link is characterized by a rational number p/q, and has a fundamental group which has a simple presentation with only two generators and one relator. The relator has a form that gives rise to a formula for the Alexander polynomial of the knot or link in terms of p and q [15]. Every two-bridge knot or link also has a corresponding “up down” graph in terms of p and q. This graph is analyzed combinatorially to prove several properties of the Alexander polynomial. The number of two-bridge knots and links of a given crossing number are also counted.

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