Transparent thin film transistors fabricated at room temperature by radio frequency magnetron sputtering using indium oxide material system were proposed. The electrodes of the transparent thin film transistors were obtained by depositing indium oxide with 10% tim doping. Resistivity as low as 4¡Ñ10-4£[-cm at room temperature was achieved. The channel layers of the transparent thin film transistors were fabricated using pure indium oxide target in an Argon and oxygen environment. Resistivity larger than 10-5£[-cm was obtained with 60% oxygen partial pressure. Silicon nitride prepared by room temperature radio frequency sputtering were used for the gate dielectric layer with low leakage current. Environmental-safe lift-off processes were used to fabricated the electrodes, the isolation layer, and the channel layer. The transistor characteristics were obtained by standard I-V measurement. The on-off ratio of the 30£gm ¡Ñ 150£gm transparent thin film transistor is 100.

Several novel designs of printed monopole antennas are proposed and experimentally studied. These antennas have the advantages of low profile, light weight and easy construction and can be printed on dielectric substrates and integrated with associated circuitry on the same substrates, which not only reduces the manufacturing cost but also decreases the required size of the complete system. This dissertation mainly consists of four sections and several novel designs are introduced in each section. First, a novel dual-band antenna with two stacked inverted-F strips and a CPW-fed folded inverted-F strip antenna are proposed. Second, a novel printed dual-band double-T monopole antenna, comprising two stacked T-shaped monopoles, is discussed. Third, three diversity antenna designs obtained by protruding a ground plane with optimal dimensions between two printed monopoles for WLAN communication applications in the 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz bands are presented. Good dual-polarized radiation with an enhanced port decoupling (isolation less than ¡V27 dB) for the two feeding ports is obtained. Finally, a novel printed ultra-wideband diversity monopole antenna is shown. The operating bandwidth of the ultra-wideband antenna reaches about 5.4 GHz, covering the WLAN bands at 2.4, 5.2 and 5.8 GHz, and the antenna can provide spatial diversity to combat the multipath fading problem.

In this thesis, two novel antennas and three advanced design concepts for further studies are presented. Firstly, the design of diversity dual-band inverted-F monopole antenna using two back-to-back stacked metallic strips for operating in the 2.4 and 5.2 GHz WLAN band is presented. Secondly, the diversity dual-band inverted-F monopole antenna mounted vertically at the edge of a system circuit board is studied. Finally, three advanced design concepts are discussed to demonstrate the methods of controlling radiation patterns to achieve better radiation characteristics of the antenna.

Several recently built inverted-T bent caps in Texas have shown significant inclined cracking triggering concern about current design procedures for such structures. The repair of such structures is very costly and often requires lane closures. For these reasons TxDOT funded Project 0-6416 aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the structural behavior of inverted-T bent caps and developing new design criteria to minimize such cracking in the future. Several tasks of the aforementioned project are addressed in this dissertation with particular focus on developing design criteria for strength and serviceability of inverted-T bent caps. Literature review revealed a scarcity of experimental investigation of inverted-T specimens. As part of this dissertation, an inverted-T database was assembled with experimental results from the literature and the current project. An extensive experimental program was completed to accomplish the objectives of the project with thirty one full-scale tests conducted on inverted-T beams. Experimental parameters varied in the study were: ledge length, ledge depth, web reinforcement, number of point loads, web depth, and shear span-to-depth ratio. The dissertation focuses on the effects of ledge length, ledge depth, number of point loads, and developing design criteria for strength and serviceability of inverted-T beams. Most inverted-T bent caps in Texas are designed using the traditional empirical design procedures outlined in the TxDOT bridge design manual LRFD (2011 current version) that follows closely the AASHTO LRFD bridge design specifications (2012 current version). Given the observed cracking in inverted-T bent caps, the accuracy and conservatism of the traditional design methods were evaluated based on experimental results. The accuracy and conservatism of STM design provisions recently developed in a TxDOT study (TxDOT Project 0-5253, Strength and Serviceability Design of Reinforced Concrete Deep Beams) were also evaluated. / text

Chromosomal fragile sites are specific loci associated with a high frequency of breakage and recombination. A cell's ability to repair and/or replicate through a lesion is prerequisite to the maintenance of genomic stability. An improved understanding of fragile site biology and its contribution to replication defects and genomic instability is critical for prevention, intervention, and diagnosis of genetic diseases such as cancer. This work seeks to identify and characterize both trans and cis fragile sites associated elements involved in instability onset and progression. An array of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isogenic DNA repair deficient mutants were utilized to identify genes contributing to the stability or instability of a natural fragile site ~ 403 kb from the left telomere on chromosome VII. Findings suggest that the RAD52 epistasis group, the MRX complex, non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathways, MUS81 and SGS1 helicases, translesion polymerases, and a majority of the post replication repair (PRR) proteins are all required for faithful replication of the 403 fragile site and likely other fragile sites as well. In contrast I found that MMS2, previously thought to be specific to the PRR pathway, is required to prevent the fusion of repetitive elements within the 403 site. mgs1 (homolog of the human Werner helicase interacting protein, WHIP) and pol3-13 (a subunit of the DNA polymerase delta) mutants also exhibited reduced instability in checkpoint deficient cells. These findings suggest previously uncharacterized function of Mgs1, Pol3 and Mms2 in regulation of genome regions at risk of replication damage. We further find the presence of inverted repeats (IR) are sufficient to induce instability. Two IR's proximal to the 403 site consistently fuse to generate acentric and dicentric chromosomes involving the 403 fragile site and a newly identified site on chromosome VII as well. The frequency of fusion events is aggravated by chromatin traffic stressors such as tRNA transcription induced fork stalling and replisome termination regions.

No description available.

This thesis focuses on implementing a program, using Python and the symbolic package SymPy, to evaluate balancing of a humanoid robot modelled as inverted pendulums. The balancing algorithm used to evaluate the program is the feedback controller LQR. The program has successfully implemented a working LQR algorithm together with features such as underactuation and a tilting plane as disturbance. We have shown that the energy is conserved for the falling pendulums and that it is possible to predict the behavior for certain parameter values of the pendulums, thus confirming that the program is working correctly. Furthermore we have shown that a fully-actuated system is more controllable than an under-actuated system, and for each actuator that is removed, the system becomes less controllable. Finally we discuss the program performance where some concern is given toward the seemingly poor execution time of the program. The program has been tested for up to five pendulums with successful results. Most of the results however, are revolving around three pendulum systems.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / In the past decade, there has been an increasing need for semantic-aware data search and indexing in textual (structured and NoSQL) databases, as full-text search systems became available to non-experts where users have no knowledge about the data being searched and often formulate query keywords which are different from those used by the authors in indexing relevant documents, thus producing noisy and sometimes irrelevant results. In this paper, we address the problem of semantic-aware querying and provide a general framework for modeling and processing semantic-based keyword queries in textual databases, i.e., considering the lexical and semantic similarities/disparities when matching user query and data index terms. To do so, we design and construct a semantic-aware inverted index structure called SemIndex, extending the standard inverted index by constructing a tightly coupled inverted index graph that combines two main resources: a semantic network and a standard inverted index on a collection of textual data. We then provide a general keyword query model with specially tailored query processing algorithms built on top of SemIndex, in order to produce semantic-aware results, allowing the user to choose the results' semantic coverage and expressiveness based on her needs. To investigate the practicality and effectiveness of SemIndex, we discuss its physical design within a standard commercial RDBMS allowing to create, store, and query its graph structure, thus enabling the system to easily scale up and handle large volumes of data. We have conducted a battery of experiments to test the performance of SemIndex, evaluating its construction time, storage size, query processing time, and result quality, in comparison with legacy inverted index. Results highlight both the effectiveness and scalability of our approach. / This study is partly funded by the National Council for Scientific Research - Lebanon (CNRS-L), by the Lebanese American University (LAU), and the Research Support Foundation of the State of Sao Paulo ( FAPESP ). Appendix SemIndex Weighting Scheme We propose a set of weighting functions to assign weight scores to SemIndex entries, including: index nodes , index edges, data nodes , and data edges . The weighting functions are used to select and rank semantically relevant results w.r.t. the user's query (cf. SemIndex query processing in Section 5). Other weight functions could be later added to cater to the index designer's needs. / Revisión por pares

This thesis focuses on implementation of the swing-up, switching and stabilizing controllers for the rotary inverted pendulum. An energy based method to swing-up the pendulum and a state feedback controller to keep the pendulum in the upright position are employed. The mixed H2/H∞; state feedback controller is used to stabilize the pendulum with reduced oscillations. The results have been compared with the standard full state feedback and LQR. The Quanser rotary inverted pendulum is used as the testbed. All controllers are implemented in real-time using dSPACE 1104 rapid prototyping system. Microstick II with dsPIC33FJ128MC802 and Simulink embedded target for Microchip® is used as a standalone way to implement the controllers.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-03-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:35:26Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 paula_fc_me_rcla.pdf: 631356 bytes, checksum: 37d2f07653025c4a4c953cfbd2fb8073 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / O interesse pela inulinase iniciou-se com a descoberta de sua habilidade de hidrolisar inulina, um polimero vegetal, em fmtose praticamente pura. A frutose é considerada uma alternativa segura como adoçante em relação à sacarose, sendo largamente utilizada na indústria de alimentos. As inulinases são geralmente tennoestáveis e comercialmente viáveis para aplicações industriais. Entretanto, uma produção contínua de frutose requer a utilização de uma inulinase imobilizada. Neste trabalho, o caldo fermentado, isento de células, de Kluyveromyces marxianus var. bulgaricus foi imobilizado em vários suportes: carvão ativado, diatomito, casca de ovo, amberlite, sílica de porosidade controlada e gelatina. A mais alta taxa de imobilização foi obtida em gelatina (82,60%). Os métodos restantes avaliados não foram bem sucedidos, seja pela ausência de ligação protéica ou perda de atividade provocados pelo processo de imobilização. O pH ótimo da inulinase imobilizada foi o mesmo da enzima livre (3,5). As temperaturas ótimas foram 55 °C para a enzima livre e 60 °C para a inulinase imobilizada. O gráfico de Arrhenius apresentou-se linear e as energias de ativação foram 56,20 KJ/mol.°K (enzima livre) e 20,27 KJ/mol.°K (enzima imobilizada). Os parâmetros cinéticos foram calculados pelo gráfico de LineweaverBurk e os valores de Km e Vmax foram de 20,68 mg/mL e 37,73 UA/mg para a enzima livre; e 50,05 mg/mL e 31,64 UA!mg para a enzima imobilizada, respectivamente. A estabilidade operacional da inulinase imobilizada foi avaliada em reator tubular de leito fixo, durante 782 horas, apresentando 58,12% de atividade enzimática residual. Foi realizada uma cromatografia de camada delgada para uma análise qualitativa dos produtos da reação. / The interest for inulinase began when it was discovered its ability to hydrolyse inulin, a vegetal polymer, in fructose practically pure. Fructose is considered as a safe altemative sweetener to sucrose, widely used in food industries. The inulinases are usually thermostable and cornmercially available for industrial applications. However, a continuous production of fructose requires the use of an immobilized inulinase. In this work, the crude enzyme broth free celis from Kluyveromyces marxianus var. bulgaricus was imrnobilized on various supports: activated carbon, diatomite, hen egg shell, amberlite, porous silica and gelatin. The highest irnrnobilization yield was obtained in gelatin (82,60%). The remaining methods screened were not successful either because no protem binding occurred or irnmobilization process resulted in activity loss. The optimum pH of immobilized inulinase remained the sarne as that of free enzyme (3,5). The optimum temperatures were 55 °C for free enzyrne and 60 °C for the imrnobilized inulmase. The Arrhenius plot were linear and activation energies were 56,20 KJ/mol.°K (Free enzyme) and 20,27 KJ/rnol.°K (Immobilized enzyme). The kinetic parameters were calculated from Lineweaver-Burk plots and the values of Km and Vmax were 20,68 mg/mL and 37,73 UA/rng for free inulinase; and 50,05 rng/rnL and 31,64 UA/rng for immobilized enzyme, respectively. The operational stability of the immobilized inulinase was studied in continuous fixed bed colurnn reactor for 782 hours with 58,12% of residual activity. Thin layer chromatography was used for qualitative analysis of the reaction products.