Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-196). Also available on the Internet.

Between 1984 and 1986 the legislatures of several southern states enacted changes to their banking laws that enabled banking companies in Southern Region states to acquire and be acquired by banking companies in other Southern Region states, as long as these companies qualified as “Southern.” The purpose of the compact was to allow some southern banking companies an opportunity to grow and gain financial strength before full interstate banking was permitted. This study shows that the compact was successful. In 1985 no southern banking companies were among the top ten banks in the country, but by 2005 four were. Furthermore, no major southern bank has been acquired by a U.S. banking company outside of the South, although several southern banking companies have bought banks in other regions. The southern economy and its banking industry have benefited, although the benefits have been unevenly spread among states.

Incandescent lamps are now being gradually replaced by Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) as CFLs consume less power to produce the same light output and its lifetime is much longer than that of an incandescent lamp. However, current CFLs have the following drawbacks: (1) the line current drawn from the CFL produce a large amount of unwanted harmonics that results in very poor input power factor; (2) the dimming performance of a CFL with conventional incandescent lamp dimmers is very poor. The performance of the CFL depends on the design of the electronic ballast circuit that is located at the base of each CFL. For a CFL electronic ballast to be practical, its size and cost is of utmost importance. Thus, the main challenge in the design of practical dimmable CFL ballasts is to solve the aforementioned CFL performance issues while minimizing its size and cost. In the first part of this dissertation, two novel high power factor single-stage electronic ballast topologies are proposed to solve the poor power factor issue of the CFLs that are currently on the market. Both proposed circuits have the following advantages: (1) only one switch is required in the power circuit; (2) the switch has both lower current and voltage stress than other conventional circuits; (3) the built-in power factor correction (PFC) circuit allows incandescent phase-cut dimmer to be used for dimming the CFL; (4) the circuit design is simple and it requires less system space compared to other conventional high PF electronic ballast topologies. The second part of this dissertation proposes a new control circuit that enables the lamp to maintain high power factor throughout the majority of the dimming range. In the proposed control scheme, the dimmer phase-cut angle is fed-forward to the control circuit. The controller then determines the proper duty cycle based on the phase-cut angle to facilitate the desired dimming operation. This novel control circuit was first implemented using analog circuitry. After assessing the performance of the analog version of the proposed controller, it was then digitally implemented through the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technique. The feasibility and performance of both the proposed electronic ballasts and control concept have been verified through theoretical analysis, simulation and experimental results on a 13W 4-pin D/E CFL from Osram Sylvania. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-30 12:51:59.682

We give a Bishop-style constructive analysis of the statement that a continuous homomorphism from the real line onto a compact metric abelian group is periodic; constructive versions of this statement and its contrapositive are given. It is shown that the existence of a minimal period in general is not derivable, but the minimal period is derivable under a simple geometric condition when the group is contained in two dimensional Euclidean space. A number of results about one-one and injective mappings are proved en route to our main theorems. A few Brouwerian examples show that some of our results are the best possible in a constructive framework.

Solar radiation offers phenomenal potential for energy conversion with energy densities on the order of 1000W/m2 in locations with regularly clear skies. As always, the difficulty lies in finding a solar-electric conversion technology capable of producing electricity at a competitive cost. The SolarCAT (Solar Compressed Air Turbine) system produces electricity by releasing stored compressed air through a series of turbines with solar dish concentrators providing the required heat for efficient conversion to electricity. To minimize impact on capital cost, high recuperator effectiveness targets are sought but unlike typical fuel-fired micro-turbines, raising the recuperator effectiveness of the solar power system yields a benefit in overall system capital cost. Improving efficiency lowers the size and cost of the largest element of the system, namely the dish. In this study potential techniques for achieving a highly compact heat-transfer media were reviewed. Folded fin, packed beds, micro-tubes, lattice frame structures, metal foams, woven textile, and micro-machining techniques were assessed. Textile structures were selected as an appropriate medium to replace the internal folded fin of the SolarCAT recuperator. The relatively long flow (>150mm) path through the proposed screen wafers requires a model for fully-developed forced convective flow between parallel plates. A mathematical model was developed by integrating the results from the work of several authors in the field of textiles and porous media. #100 mesh sintered screen wafers were brazed between two 0.25mm stainless steel sheets and destructively tested to assess their tensile strength. Although iii optimization of the braze parameters was not completed, it was found that many samples survived exposure to internal pressures in excess of 50MPa. This study found that the use of sintered screen wafers to replace the internal folded fin of the SolarCAT recuperator would have advantages over the current design with respect to both overall recuperator effectiveness, size, and cost. Textile structures can be tailored to have wide range of fluid and heat-transfer properties depending on the application. The manufacturing process is relatively simple and could be cost-effective for high-volume production.

We give a Bishop-style constructive analysis of the statement that a continuous homomorphism from the real line onto a compact metric abelian group is periodic; constructive versions of this statement and its contrapositive are given. It is shown that the existence of a minimal period in general is not derivable, but the minimal period is derivable under a simple geometric condition when the group is contained in two dimensional Euclidean space. A number of results about one-one and injective mappings are proved en route to our main theorems. A few Brouwerian examples show that some of our results are the best possible in a constructive framework.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2005. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (ℓ. 69-70)

Otto-Friedrich-Univ., Diplomarbeit--Bamberg, 2007.

Solar radiation offers phenomenal potential for energy conversion with energy densities on the order of 1000W/m2 in locations with regularly clear skies. As always, the difficulty lies in finding a solar-electric conversion technology capable of producing electricity at a competitive cost. The SolarCAT (Solar Compressed Air Turbine) system produces electricity by releasing stored compressed air through a series of turbines with solar dish concentrators providing the required heat for efficient conversion to electricity. To minimize impact on capital cost, high recuperator effectiveness targets are sought but unlike typical fuel-fired micro-turbines, raising the recuperator effectiveness of the solar power system yields a benefit in overall system capital cost. Improving efficiency lowers the size and cost of the largest element of the system, namely the dish. In this study potential techniques for achieving a highly compact heat-transfer media were reviewed. Folded fin, packed beds, micro-tubes, lattice frame structures, metal foams, woven textile, and micro-machining techniques were assessed. Textile structures were selected as an appropriate medium to replace the internal folded fin of the SolarCAT recuperator. The relatively long flow (>150mm) path through the proposed screen wafers requires a model for fully-developed forced convective flow between parallel plates. A mathematical model was developed by integrating the results from the work of several authors in the field of textiles and porous media. #100 mesh sintered screen wafers were brazed between two 0.25mm stainless steel sheets and destructively tested to assess their tensile strength. Although iii optimization of the braze parameters was not completed, it was found that many samples survived exposure to internal pressures in excess of 50MPa. This study found that the use of sintered screen wafers to replace the internal folded fin of the SolarCAT recuperator would have advantages over the current design with respect to both overall recuperator effectiveness, size, and cost. Textile structures can be tailored to have wide range of fluid and heat-transfer properties depending on the application. The manufacturing process is relatively simple and could be cost-effective for high-volume production.

<p> Let G be a locally compact group (= locally compact Hausdorff topological group). By the measure algebra of G we mean the Banach *-algebra M(G) of bounded regular Borel measures on G. The major results of this work are a structure theorem for norm decreasing isomorphisms of measure algebras, and a characterization of those Banach algebras which are isometric and isomorphic to the measure algebra of some locally compact group. We also obtain some results on subalgebras of M(G) and on representations of G.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)