The Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed Team Solar Cal Poly from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as a competitor in the 2015 Solar Decathlon in February 2014. The Solar Decathlon is a biennial collegiate competition to construct a net-zero home and operate it for a week of “normal use”. Solar Cal Poly needed assistance with passive and active HVAC systems for the design, and thermal load models. The competition will take place in Irvine, CA [33.67⁰, 117.82⁰ W] from September 27 – October 3, 2015. After the completion, a potential final location for the house will be Santa Ynez, CA [34.61⁰ N, 120.09⁰ W]. Ms. Willis assisted with a climate study for both locations and research passive and active HVAC systems and design elements for Team Solar Cal Poly. She modeled the final summer design in DesignBuilder to calculate the heating and cooling loads. The heating load was calculated to be 26.7 kBTU/h. The cooling load was calculated to be 2-tons. A mini-split HVAC system was selected for the final summer design based off the calculated heating and cooling loads. For this design, the Fujitsu Hybrid Halcyon Flex met the minimum requirements, and was a multi-zone system that could condition all three major spaces of the design. This report provides a summary of information and the basic design process for future Solar Decathlon designs considerations.

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of the event process on Cal Poly’s campus. An intrinsic case study method was used, and data were collected and analyzed using triangulation from three sources of information: documents, interviews, and participation research. Overall, the structure of the event management process on campus was found to be stable, but could use improvement. Cal Poly should consider establishing a specific, designated organization that would help centralize the event management process at Cal Poly. This organization could be in charge of training and updating event managers, approving events, monitoring volume of events on campus at a specific time, holding event managers accountable to following policies, and maintaining a website that would act as a hub for all event-related materials.

Global carbon emissions are higher than ever before and in the last decade of 21st century, focus has shifted on reducing these emissions in various ways possible. Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) has been identified as one of the important ways to reduce carbon emissions and meet climate targets. For a long time, Sweden has promoted the use of biomass as fuel for heat and power generation which has enabled it to meet its climate targets earlier than projected. Now, major Swedish energy companies are looking into coupling exiting biomass fired heat and power plants with CCUS. This opens up the possibility of attaining negative emissions, also known as Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). With the right policy framework in place, BECCS can be a major boon and help Sweden attaining net zero carbon emissions. As a contribution in meeting net zero targets, this thesis is aimed to evaluate the installation of a carbon capture plant to abate flue gas emissions from District heating facility in Jordbro which is a ~70 MW (fuel) CHP plant running on biomass.  Among the available carbon capture technologies, Calcium oxide-based carbon capture has been expected to show great promise due to its lower environmental impacts and possibility to extract high quality energy when installed. Hence a concept system for integration calcium looping at Jordbro has been developed through the use of modeling tools like ASPEN. A techno economic assessment was needed to be performed to give conclusive results on the overall viability of the process. Further, key process indicators like energy penalty, plant footprint and cost of capture per tonne of CO2 were identified for making the final evaluation. Finally, through a strategic collaboration with SaltX, major process improvements were introduced and applied to the modeled process.  It was concluded that with the current average flowrates at Jordbro it was possible to capture 154,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. The required amount of energy input to the calciner is 48MW (7.29 MW/kg-CO2 captured) which is one of the major findings of this study. Even though a significant amount of heat is recovered, the main boiler is not capable of producing heat over 900 οC and additional biomass needs to be combusted, leading to an additional CO2 emission of about 125 000 tonnes annually. Considering an optimal integration, the energy penalties became 6.25 %.  However, the plant footprint increased substantially due to requirement for burning additional biomass in the regeneration reactor and addition of several auxiliary units that come along with calcium-based carbon capture. Further, the total capital investment for this project is 1,219 MSEK with reactor costs being most capital intensive. Assuming a plant life of 25 years, the cost of capture per tonne of CO2 (excluding the costs for carbon transport and storage) was evaluated at 988 SEK, which is 58% higher than the reference Mono-ethanol amine based chemical absorption case. The innovative improvements from SaltX substantially reduced the plant footprint but capture costs did not reduce since material transport costs proved to be the major bottleneck.  Upon comparison of this technology with the amine-based technology it was found that Calcium oxide-based carbon capture would need further research and improvements to be more viable than amine-based carbon capture. Integration of thermal energy storage and process intensification can be the possible paths for further improvement.

The NASA SeaWinds scatterometer is a radar remote sensor which operates on two satellites; NASA's QuikSCAT launched in June 1999 and on Japan's ADEOS-II satellite launched in December 2002. The purpose of SeaWinds is to provide global measurements of the ocean surface wind vector. On QuikSCAT, a ground data processing algorithm was developed, which allowed the instrument to function as a QuikSCAT Radiometer (QRad) and measure the ocean microwave emissions (brightness temperature, Tb) simultaneously with the backscattered power. When SeaWinds on ADEOS was launched, this same algorithm was applied, but the results were anomalous. The initial SRad brightness temperatures exhibited significant, unexpected, ascending/descending orbit Tb biases. This thesis presents an empirical correction algorithm to correct the anomalous SeaWinds Radiometer (SRad) ocean brightness temperature measurements. I use the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) as a brightness temperature standard to calibrate and then, with independent measurements, validate the corrected SRad Tb measurements. AMSR is a well-calibrated multi-frequency, dual-polarized microwave radiometer that also operates on ADEOS-II. These results demonstrate that, after tuning the Tb algorithm, good quality SRad brightness temperature measurements are obtained over the oceans.

Civil rights have long been an important focus of historical scholarship. As the United States continues to grapple with issues of racism and the complicated legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, it is imperative that a variety of perspectives are incorporated into scholarship on the subject. Traditional scholarship on the subject has focused on the large organizations, individuals, marches, and activities that have come to characterize the Civil Rights movement. This study seeks to integrate the perspectives of a case study population, African Americans in San Luis Obispo, California, to assess the ways in which African Americans away from large population centers were able to participate in the Civil Rights movement. This study draws primarily on contemporary newspapers, NAACP records, and government documents to assess the relationship between the local civil rights movement and its national counterpart. Civil rights activities at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo also reveal important instances of discrimination and exclusion on campus. Research has shown that, despite relative isolation and a miniscule population, African Americans in San Luis Obispo experienced similar discrimination, isolation, and economic exclusion as their urban and rural counterparts throughout the nation. They also attempted to bring attention to their plight using nationally established organizations and tactics. Though African Americans in San Luis Obispo met with limited success, their previously undocumented struggle has revealed a population determined to fight for their rights. The continuity between the experiences of African Americans throughout the country renders a more complete understanding of racism in the United States.

A computational model of the micro-ion thruster MiXI has been developed, analyzed, and partially verified. This model includes submodels that govern the physical, magnetic, electrostatic, plasma physics, and power deposition of the thruster. Over the past few years, theses have been conducted with the goal of running tests and analyzing the results; this model is used to understand how the thruster components interact so as to make predictions about, and allow for optimization of, the thruster operation. Testing is then performed on the thruster and the results are compared to the output of the code. The magnetic structure of the thruster was analyzed and numerous different configurations generated which were also evaluated by the optimizer and tested. Using the different configurations, models, and optimization tools, the total efficiency of the thruster is theoretically able to reach 69.4%. Operational testing of the thruster at many different throttle settings demonstrated a maximum total efficiency of 45.9 ±24.6%, discharge loss values as low as 109 ±25 eV/ion, and total power required as low as 50.5 ±0.1W to maintain thruster operation with beam extraction. Measurements of the plasma were taken using a Langmuir probe and the interpretation of the tests are used to verify the plasma physics submodel. Power draw measurements and analysis of the throttle inputs during testing are compared to the performance model outputs but were not accurate or consistent enough to fully verify the power deposition and plasma physics models. Analysis of the models and operational testing in this study have led to an increased understanding of the performance and operation of the MiXI-CP-V3 thruster, furthering the effort to create an efficient, flight capable micro-ion thruster.

Legged robotics creates the demand for high torque compact actuators able to develop high instantaneous torque. Proprioceptive actuator design theory is a design theory that removes the need for a torque feedback device and relies on the stiffness in the leg for absorbing the high Ground Impact Forces created by walking locomotion. It utilizes a high torque density motor paired with a gearbox with a high gear ratio for torque multiplication. Previously work has been done to design a proprioceptive actuator design that utilizes a planetary gearbox to create a modular low-cost actuator for legged robotics. The purpose of this thesis is to design and analyze a proprioceptive actuator that utilizes a cycloidal gearbox design to test the feasibility of the gearbox design and look at the advantages it might bring over a planetary gearbox design. A cycloidal gearbox utilizes eccentric motion of cycloidal disks, made of epicycloids, to create a high gear ratio in a very limited space without having to rely on expensive gears for torque multiplication purposes. A prototype low-cost actuator was developed using a 2-disk cycloidal gearbox in its design. It was tested for wear life and torque control and was able to meet the torque and operation requirements of the Cal Poly legged robotics project. The design was also optimized to be made using low-cost additive manufacturing techniques rather than relying on conventional machining.

No / Multiproxy palaeohydrological records from three raised bogs in Northern Ireland indicate that a major shift to wetter/cooler climatic conditions postdated the rapid decrease in solar activity at 2800 cal. BP by ~100 years. This event is bracketed by two wiggle-match radiocarbon-dated cryptotephra layers in each profile, enabling a high degree of chronological precision. These replicated data corroborate previous findings based on Irish peat humification profiles, and may indicate spatial complexity in the climatic response to solar activity between oceanic and continental areas.

The high demand of the video decoding has pushed the developers to implement the decoders on parallel architectures. This thesis provides the deliberations about the implementation of an MPEG-4 decoder on a massively parallel processor array (MPPA), Ambric 2045, by converting the CAL actor language implementation of the decoder. This decoder is the Xilinx model of the MPEG-4 Simple Profile decoder and consists of four main blocks; parser, acdc, idct2d and motion. The parser block is developed in another thesis work [20] and the rest of the decoder, which consists of the other three blocks, is implemented in this thesis work. Afterwards, in order to complete the decoder, the parser block is combined with the other three blocks. Several methods are developed for conversion purposes. Additionally, a number of other methods are developed in order to overcome the constraints of the ambric architecture such as no division support. At the beginning, for debugging purposes, the decoder is implemented on a simulator which is designed for Ambric architecture. Finally the implementation is uploaded to the Ambric 2045 chip and tested with different input streams. The performance of the implementation is analyzed and satisfying results are achieved when compared to the standards which are in use in the market. These performance results can be considered as satisfying for any real-time application as well. Furthermore, the results are compared with the results of the CAL implementation, running on a single 2GHz i7 intel processor, in terms of speed and efficiency. The Ambric implementation runs 4,7 times faster than the CAL implementation when a small input stream (300 frames with resolution of 176x144) is used. However, when a large input stream (384 frames with resolution of 720x480) is used, the Ambric implementation shows a performance which is approximately 32 times better than the CAL implementation, in terms of decoding speed and throughput. The performance may increase further together with the size of the input stream up to some point.

[pt] Esta dissertação mostra estudos de aplicações e revestimento do fibrobarro em diferentes contextos dentro do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Através da pesquisa efetuada dentro e fora do Laboratório de Investigação em Livre Desenho (LILD) foram desenvolvidas possibilidades de aplicação do fibrobarro aproveitando os recursos disponíveis. A pesquisa relata alguns materiais já utilizados para a cobertura de construções em materiais biocompatíveis. Durante o processo da pesquisa avergou-se possibilidades para a fabricação de compósitos, principalmente na abrangência de possíveis fibras quando o fibrobarro não for utilizado como principal elemento estrutural. O revestimento também é pesquisado com destaque para o uso da pasta de cal hidratada. Ao efetuar a pesquisa de campo em paralelo aos estudos em laboratório foi possível perceber a importância do gestual no ato de fazer artesanalmente objetos que buscam ser perenes respeitando o ambiente local e considerando-se o seu descarte. Durante o processo de pesquisa também foi observado a construção dos objetos arquitetônicos com voluntários de diferentes contextos socioeconômicos o que possibilitou perceber a importância dessa diversidade para atingir a convivencialidade (Illich, 1976) e como uma metodologia atenta e sensível, fundamental para desenvolvermos uma verdadeira ciência de construção respeitando as características sociais e ambientais de cada região. / [en] This master thesis studies shows applications and finishes of fibersoil in different contexts inside the State of Rio de Janeiro. Through the work done inside and outside the Laboratory of Research in Free Drawing (LILD) investigate possible applications of fibersoil using the resources available. At the beginning of the work trace is already some materials used for covering buildings made with biocompatible materials inside and outside the LILD. During the process of research we discovered some possibilities for the manufacture of composites, especially in the range of possible using of fibers when it is not used as the main structural element. We also researched some possibilities for finishing construction of fibrosoil more careful in the use of hydrated lime paste. When we make the field research in parallel with laboratory studies we realized the importance of the gestures in the act of making objects that seek to be a evergreen respecting the local environment and considering your disposal. During the research process we also observed the construction of architectural objects with volunteers from different socioeconomic contexts which enabled us to realize the importance of gesture and an attentive and sensitive methodology is important to develop a true science of construction respecting the social and environmental characteristics of each region.