Nonlinear response history analysis is considered as the most accurate analytical tool for estimating seismic response. However, there are several shortcomings in the application of nonlinear response history analysis, resulting from its complexity. Accordingly, simpler approximate nonlinear analysis procedures are preferred in practice. These procedures are called nonlinear static analysis or pushover analysis in general. The recently developed Generalized Pushover Analysis (GPA) is one of them. In this thesis study, GPA is presented and evaluated comparatively with the nonlinear time history analysis and modal pushover analysis. A generalized pushover analysis procedure was developed for estimating the inelastic seismic response of structures under earthquake ground excitations (Sucuoglu and G&uuml / nay, 2011). In this procedure, different load vectors are applied separately to the structure in the incremental form until the predefined seismic demand is obtained for each force vector. These force vectors are named as generalized force vectors. A generalized force vector is a combination of modal forces, and simulates the instantaneous force distribution on the system when a given response parameter reaches its maximum value during the dynamic response. In this method, the maximum interstory drift parameters are selected as target demand parameters and used for the derivation of generalized force vectors. The maximum value of any other response parameter is then obtained from the analysis results of each generalized force vector. In this way, this procedure does do not suffer from the statistical combination of inelastic modal responses. It is further shown in this study that the results obtained by using the mean spectrum of a set of ground motions are almost identical to the mean of the results obtained from separate generalized pushover analyses under each ground motion in the set. These results are also very close to the mean results of nonlinear response history analyses. A practical implementation of the proposed generalized pushover analysis is also developed in this thesis study where the number of pushovers is reduced in view of the number of significant modes contributing to seismic response. It has been demonstrated that the reduced generalized pushover analysis is equally successful in estimating maximum member deformations and member forces as the full GPA under a ground excitation, and sufficiently accurate with reference to nonlinear response history analysis.

Nonlinear response history analysis is regarded as the most accurate analysis procedure for estimating seismic response. Approximate analysis procedures are also available for the determination of seismic response and they are preferred over nonlinear response history analysis since much less computational effort is required and good response prediction is achieved by employing rather simple concepts. A generalized pushover analysis procedure is developed in this thesis study as an approximate analysis tool for estimating the inelastic seismic response of structures under earthquake ground excitations. The procedure consists of applying generalized force vectors to the structure in an incremental form until a prescribed target interstory drift demand is achieved. Corresponding generalized force vectors are derived according to this target drift parameter and include the contribution of all modes. Unlike many approximate analysis procedures, response of the structure is directly obtained from generalized pushover analysis results without employing a modal combination rule, eliminating the errors cultivating from these methods. Compared to nonlinear response history analysis, generalized pushover analysis is less demanding in computational effort and its implementation is simpler relative to other approximate analysis procedures. It is observed that the proposed analysis procedure yields results accurately in comparison to the other nonlinear pushover analysis methods. Accordingly it can be suggested as a convenient and sound analysis tool.

We propose a paraconsistent declarative semantics of possibly inconsistent generalized logic programs which allows for arbitrary formulas in the body and in the head of a rule (i.e. does not depend on the presence of any specific connective, such as negation(-as-failure), nor on any specific syntax of rules). For consistent generalized logic programs this semantics coincides with the stable generated models introduced in [HW97], and for normal logic programs it yields the stable models in the sense of [GL88].

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Capacity of CDMA system is limited to interference due to other users. System performance is degraded by near-far problem when undesired users are closer to base station. Beside, the channel parameters could not be estimated perfectly at receiver, refer to as mismatch problem, which would also degrade the system performance. We would like to consider the MAI and near-far interference cancellation by adaptive linear constraint algorithms to implement linear constraint minimum variance (LCMV) approach. To exploit the linearly constrained filtering, the structure of the generalized side-lobe canceller (GSC) has been employed, where the constrained problem is converted into an unconstrained form with fewer parameters. GSC structure is an indirect but simpler implementation of LCMV algorithm. Moreover, it is also known that the constant modulus (CM) criteria has advantage to combat the channel mismatch, and the performance of the adaptive constraint algorithm based on CM criteria will be investigate. In this thesis, we will derive a new GSC-IQRD-RLS algorithm to combat MAI and near-far problems by combining LC-IQRD-RLS algorithm [1][5] and GSC structure [17]; and prove that the GSC and LC structures based IQRD-RLS algorithms are equivalent, which means that the good performance of LC-IQRD-RLS algorithm can be achieved by a simpler GSC structure algorithm. We will also derive a new GSC-CM-IQRD-RLS algorithm to improve the system performance under mismatch problem by combining CM criteria [20] and GSC-IQRD-RLS algorithm.

The generalized theory of thermoelasticity was employed to characterize the coupled thermal and mechanical wave propagation in high performance microelectronic packages. Application of a Gaussian heat source of spectral profile similar to high performance devices was shown to induce rapid thermal and mechanical transient phenomena. The stresses and temporal gradient of stresses (power density) induced by the thermal and mechanical disturbances were analyzed using the Gabor Wavelet Transform (GWT). The arrival time of frequency components and their magnitude was studied at various locations in the package. Comparison of the results from the classical thermoelasticity theory and generalized theory was also conducted. It was found that the two theories predict vastly different results in the vicinity of the heat source but that the differences diminish within a larger time window. Results from both theories indicate that the rapid thermal-mechanical waves cause high frequency, broadband stress waves to propagate through the package for a very short period of time. The power density associated with these stress waves was found to be of significant magnitude indicating that even though the effect, titled short time scale effect, is short lived, it could have significant impact on package reliability. The high frequency and high power density associated with the stress waves indicate that the probability of sub-micron cracking and/or delamination due to short time scale effect is high. The findings demonstrate that in processes involving rapid thermal transients, there is a non-negligible transient phenomenon worthy of further investigation.

Bayesian approaches to the regression analysis for longitudinal measurements are considered. The history of measurements from a subject may convey characteristics of the subject. Hence, in a regression analysis with longitudinal measurements, the characteristics of each subject can be served as covariates, in addition to possible other covariates. Also, the longitudinal measurements may lead to complicated covariance structures within each subject and they should be modeled properly. When covariates are some unobservable characteristics of each subject, Bayesian parametric and nonparametric regressions have been considered. Although covariates are not observable directly, by virtue of longitudinal measurements, the covariates can be estimated. In this case, the measurement error problem is inevitable. Hence, a classical measurement error model is established. In the Bayesian framework, the regression function as well as all the unobservable covariates and nuisance parameters are estimated. As multiple covariates are involved, a generalized additive model is adopted, and the Bayesian backfitting algorithm is utilized for each component of the additive model. For the binary response, the logistic regression has been proposed, where the link function is estimated by the Bayesian parametric and nonparametric regressions. For the link function, introduction of latent variables make the computing fast. In the next part, each subject is assumed to be observed not at the prespecifiedtime-points. Furthermore, the time of next measurement from a subject is supposed to be dependent on the previous measurement history of the subject. For this outcome- dependent follow-up times, various modeling options and the associated analyses have been examined to investigate how outcome-dependent follow-up times affect the estimation, within the frameworks of Bayesian parametric and nonparametric regressions. Correlation structures of outcomes are based on different correlation coefficients for different subjects. First, by assuming a Poisson process for the follow- up times, regression models have been constructed. To interpret the subject-specific random effects, more flexible models are considered by introducing a latent variable for the subject-specific random effect and a survival distribution for the follow-up times. The performance of each model has been evaluated by utilizing Bayesian model assessments.

In this paper, we establish several strong convergence results of general approximate proximal algorithm and general Bregman-function-based approximate proximal algorithm for solving the generalized variational inequality problem with pseudomonotone multifunction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of finding a common element of the set of solutions of a generalized equilibrium problem (for short, GEP) and the set of fixed points of a nonexpansive mapping in a Hilbert space. First, by using the well-known KKM technique we derive the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the auxiliary problems for the GEP. Second, on account of this result and Nadler's theorem, we introduce an iterative scheme by the viscosity approximation method for finding a common element of the set of solutions of the GEP and the set of fixed points of the nonexpansive mapping. Furthermore, it is proven that the sequences generated by this iterative scheme converge strongly to a common element of the set of solutions of the GEP and the set of fixed points of the nonexpansive mapping.

In recent years, demands on all kinds of wireless communications become heavier due to the developments of new services and devices. At the same time, future wireless networks are expected to provide services with high quality and data rate. A possible solution which can attain these objectives is wireless communication systems that use multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas along with Alamouti¡¦s space-time block code and direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) modulation technique. In such systems, spatial diversity rendered by multiple antennas as well as coding in spatial and time domains are the keys to improve quality of transmission. Many multiuser detection techniques for the space-time block coded CDMA systems have been investigated. In [8], the blind Capon receiver was proposed, which consists of a two-branch filterbank followed by the blind Capon channel estimator. The design of blind Capon receiver is based on linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) criterion, which is known to be sensitive to inaccuracies in the acquisition or tracking of the desired user's timing, referred to as mismatch effect. In other words, the LCMV-based receiver may perform undesirably under mismatch effect. In this thesis, we propose a new blind adaptive MIMO-CDMA receiver based on the linearly constrained constant modulus (LCCM) criterion. This work is motivated by the robustness of LCCM approach to the mismatch effect. To reduce the complexity of receiver design, framework of the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) associated with the recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is adopted for implementing the adaptive LCCM MIMO-CDMA filterbank. Based on the GSC-RLS structure, we derive the proposed MIMO CM-GSC-RLS algorithm. For the purpose of comparison, an adaptive implementation of the blind Capon receiver proposed in [8] is also derived, which is referred to as the MIMO MV-GSC-RLS algorithm. We note that the signal model in [8] was constructed under assumption of frequency-flat channels. To obtain a more practical and realistic signal model, in this thesis we extend the system and channel model by including multipath effects in the beginning of our work. In completing this extension, inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by the special coding scheme of ST-BC will be specifically analyzed. Finally, a full discussion of the multipath signal model will be provided, including necessity of truncating the received signals as well as modifications in the signal model when considering time-varying channels. Via computer simulations, advantages of the proposed scheme will be verified. Compared to the conventional blind Capon receiver, we will show that the performance of the proposed CM-GSC-RLS algorithm is better. This is especially true when mismatch problem is considered in the MIMO-CDMA systems of interest. The proposed scheme show more robustness against the mismatch effects than the conventional blind Capon receiver. Moreover, the benefit resulted by truncating the received signals is also demonstrated, especially for binary phase-shift-keying (BPSK) modulated source symbol. Finally, simulations considering time-varying channels are provided to reveal that our proposed scheme can adapt itself to the time-varying environments appropriately.