The supply of energy is a key factor in modern societies. As the old fossil sources for energy are dwindling, conflicts arise between competing nations and regions. Fossil energy sources also contribute to the pollution of the environment and emission of greenhouse gases. With renewable energy sources many of these drawbacks with fossil fuels can be eliminated as the energy will be readily available for all without cost or environmental impact. Combining the renewable energy sources will be very effective, particularly in commercial areas where lake of electricity is high. The cost of combining onshore wind and solar power plant is affordable. Furthermore there is no power failure or load shedding situation at any times. When it is manufactured in a large scale, cost of this integrated natural resources power generation system is affordable. Moreover there is no power failure or load shedding situation at any times. Therefore, it is the most reliable renewable power or electricity resources with less spending and highly effective production. ref [1]. The thesis work would take planning of offshore renewable plant (Lillgrund) with considering the resources of renewable power. The study would take in account combining the Lillgrund wind farm with solar system and take close look into the advantage and disadvantage of combining the renewable resources together and figure out if such station can work in proper way and provide sufficient power production. The study would take in account the effect of each resource on other resource, also calculations would be done. The study site is Lillgrund in south of Sweden. The Lillgrund wind farm is the most important offshore wind power plant installed in Sweden with a total capacity of 110 MW, corresponding to 48 turbines. ref [2].

Human activity recognition is one of the intensively studied areas in computer vision. Most existing works do not assume video resolution to be a problem due to general applications of interests. However, with continuous concerns about global security and emerging needs for intelligent video analysis tools, activity recognition from low-resolution and low-quality videos has become a crucial topic for further research. In this dissertation, We present a series of approaches which are developed specifically to address the related issues regarding low-level image preprocessing, single person activity recognition, and human-vehicle interaction reasoning from low-resolution surveillance videos. Human cast shadows are one of the major issues which adversely effect the performance of an activity recognition system. This is because human shadow direction varies depending on the time of the day and the date of the year. To better resolve this problem, we propose a shadow removal technique which effectively eliminates a human shadow cast from a light source of unknown direction. A multi-cue shadow descriptor is employed to characterize the distinctive properties of shadows. Our approach detects, segments, and then removes shadows. We propose two different methods to recognize single person actions and activities from low-resolution surveillance videos. The first approach adopts a joint feature histogram based representation, which is the concatenation of subspace projected gradient and optical flow features in time. However, in this problem, the use of low-resolution, coarse, pixel-level features alone limits the recognition accuracy. Therefore, in the second work, we contributed a novel mid-level descriptor, which converts an activity sequence into simultaneous temporal signals at body parts. With our representation, activities are recognized through both the local video content and the short-time spectral properties of body parts' movements. We draw the analogies between activity and speech recognition and show that our speech-like representation and recognition scheme improves recognition performance in several low-resolution datasets. To complete the research on this subject, we also tackle the challenging problem of recognizing human-vehicle interactions from low-resolution aerial videos. We present a temporal logic based approach which does not require training from event examples. At the low-level, we employ dynamic programming to perform fast model fitting between the tracked vehicle and the rendered 3-D vehicle models. At the semantic-level, given the localized event region of interest (ROI), we verify the time series of human-vehicle spatial relationships with the pre-specified event definitions in a piecewise fashion. Our framework can be generalized to recognize any type of human-vehicle interaction from aerial videos. / text

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) micromirrors have been developed for more than two decades along with the development of MEMS technology. They have been used into many application fields: optical switches, digital light projector (DLP), adoptive optics (AO), high definition (HD) display, barcode reader, endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) and confocal microscope, and so on. Especially, MEMS mirrors applied into endoscopic OCT and confocal microscope are the intensive research field. Various actuation mechanisms, such as electrostatic, electromagnetic, electro bimorph thermal, electrowetting, piezoelectric (PZT) and hybrid actuators, are adopted by different types of micromirrors. Among these actuators, the electrostatic is easily understood and simple to realize, therefore, it is broadly adopted by a large number of micromirrors. This thesis reports the design, fabrication, and characterization of a 2-D Silicon-on-insulation (SOI) MEMS micromirror with sidewall (SW) electrodes for endoscopic OCT or confocal microscope imaging. The biaxial MEMS mirror with SW electrodes is actuated by electrostatic actuators. The dimension of mirror plate is 1000micron×1000micron, with a thickness of a 35micron. The analytical modeling of SW electrodes, fabrication process, and performance characteristics are described. In comparison to traditional electrostatic actuators, parallel-plate and comb-drive, SW electrodes combined with bottom electrodes achieve a large tilt angle under a low drive voltage that the comb-drive does and possess fairly simple fabrication process same as that of the parallel-plate. A new fabrication process based on SOI wafer, hybrid bulk/surface micromachined technology, and a high-aspect-ratio shadow mask is presented. Moreover, the fabrication process is successfully extended to fabricate 2×2 and 4×4 micromirror arrays. Finally, a biaxial MEMS mirror with SW electrodes was used into Confocal MACROscope for imaging. Studied optical requirements in terms of two optical configurations and frequency optimization of the micromirror, the biaxial MEMS mirror replaces the galvo-scanner and improves the MACROscope. Meanwhile, a new Micromirror-based Laser Scanning Microscope system is presented and allows 2D images to be acquired and displayed.

Tutoring and its influence to quality of education is rather topical subject for the educational system. This is the main topic of this master thesis. The aim of this research is to determine amount of additional occupation in an incidentally chosen schools in Siauliai. It was also interesting to discover what is pupil’s opinion about the services provided by tutors and their quality of education. There were arranged a set of tasks: to rate the amount of pupils who attended additional occupation, to determine the variety of tutoring forms and their distribution, to settle the efficiency and availability of tutoring and its influence on quality of education. There were used various methods of analysis, such as theoretical analysis and generalization, form questioning and mathematical statistics. A. Markeviciute’s questionnaire was applied for usage. 336 pupils from Siauliai schools were present in the research. All the received questioning data were processed with computer software SPSS 11.0. Obtained data shows that tutoring is very popular in Siauliai district schools. Almost about 33% of pupils are taking tutor services. On the basis of this research it is possible to state that “shadow education” is one of the quality of education indicators.

Šešėlinę ekonomiką daug kas supranta kaip nelegalų verslą ar kontrabandą. Tai nėra tik vogtų daiktų realizavimas, prostitucija ar narkotikai, kuriuos privalo kontroliuoti policija ir kitos valstybės institucijos. Tačiau ir legalus verslas taip pat tampa šešėlinės ekonomikos dalimi, kai jos veiklos rezultatai falsifikuojami siekiant išvengti mokesčių. Tai neteisėti sandoriai, nerealios jų vertės ir panašiai. Iš tiesų, tai sudėtingas reiškinys, iškreipiantis oficialiąją statistiką, stabdantis ekonomikos augimą. Šio darbo tikslas nustatyti ekonominius faktorius, reikšmingai įtakoja Lietuvos šešėlinę ekonomiką. Darbo eigoje apibrėžiama šešėlinė ekonomika, jos sudedamosios dalys bei vertinimo metodikos. Tyrimo metu sudaromas Lietuvos šešėlinės ekonomikos MIMIC (Multiple Indicator Multiple Causal) modelis. Tikrinamas jo suderinamumas su turimais statistiniais duomenimis. Taip pat pateikiamos trys skirtingos MIMIC modelio specifikacijos, remiantis statistiniais kriterijais jos palyginamos ir randama priimtiniausia. / There is considerable agreement internationally about the factors that determine the relative size of the underground economy and that evidence of underground activity will be captured in several economic indicators. Until recently, however, the methods that have been employed to measure the underground economy focused on only a few causal factors, one indicator, and only produced an estimate for one particular point in time. This paper presents the modeling technique that threats the underground economy as an unobservable or latent variable and incorporates multiple indicator and multiple causal variables – MIMIC model. Moreover this technique allows us to estimate the significance of each causal variable as well as each indicator. First of all the theoretical definition of the shadow economy is proposed. Further the MIMIC modeling technique is described and the emphasis is laid on the most common variables used for latter method. Subsequently, the model is defined and the corresponding economical variables of Lithuanian are chosen. Whereupon the model is estimated and respecified while nonsignificant variables and relations been removed. Finally the conclusions about the most suitable model and statistically significant variables are maid.

Light and shadow have the capacity to move us emotionally and create atmospheres that allow us to better understand stories. This thesis explores how light and shadow can propel the design of a music hall and museum space to commemorate the miners that lived and worked in the former industrial landscapes of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.

No description available.

Šio darbo tikslas – ištirti kaip vyksta naudotų automobilių verslas. Atliekant etnografiją paremtą antropologinį tyrimą ir analizuojant kasdienines automobilių turgaus erdvėje veikiančių dalyvių sąveikas bei tarpusavio santykius bus siekiama atsakyti į šiuos tyrimo klausimus: Kokie formaliai įvardinami ir neformaliai konstruojami žmonių, dalyvaujančių turgaus veikloje, tarpusavio santykių principai bei taisyklės struktūruoja turgaus veiklą ir apskritai dėvėtų automobilių verslą? Kiek egzistuojantys verslą reguliuojantys įstatymai iš vienos pusės, ir posovietiniai mąstymo ir verslo kultūros elementai iš kitos, modeliuoja dėvėtų automobilių verslą, jo sampratą ir legitimacijos būdus? Uždaviniai: 1. Aprašyti taisykles, struktūruojančias naudotų automobilių verslą ir turgų kaip bendro veikimo vietą, kaip verslo santykių modelį. 2. Aprašyti taisykles, pagal kurias yra konstruojami automobilių turgaus prekeivių tarpusavio santykiai. 3. Išsiaiškinti, kokią įtaką dėvėtų automobilių verslui ir turgaus funkcionavimui daro formalus (įstatyminis) ir neformalus (mąstymo ir verslo veiklos modeliavimo stereotipai, dominuojanti verslo kultūra) kontekstai. Šio darbo analizuojamas objektas yra Kauno automobilių turgaus prekiautojų kasdienybė. Apibendrinant atliktą tyrimą apie Kauno automobilių turgaus organizaciją – kaip atskirą instituciją, galima daryti prielaidą, kad turguje egzistuojantis šešėlinis verslas, yra tapęs kasdieniu kultūriniu reiškiniu. Formalių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This research study entitled – The Everyday Practices of Traders at the Kaunas Car Market: A “balance” Between the Formal and Informal Rules of Behavior – articulates the process of selling and buying used cars in The Kaunas Car Market. Within this overall context I have included a comparison of the rules at play for buying and selling used cars in the German state of Hesse (Hessen). Thus, my study is designed as a pioneer work on commerce in used cars in a post-Soviet society – namely, the city of Kaunas and in a western society located in the city of Frankenberg/Eder geographically situated between the cities of Kassel and Frankfurt/Main in the Germany state of Hesse. A short comparison serves to highlight differences of behavior in a Lithuanian and a German setting. Anthropological research based on ethnographic study revealed distinct differences on rules of behavior between written regulations dictated by the state and actual practices among sellers and buyers. The timeliness of my work is reflected by a lengthy two page article entitled: “Jei bus išguita šešėlinė ekonomika, trečdalis Lietuvos mirs badu” [If the shadow economy is hunted out, a third of Lithuania will die of starvation]. This is the title in www.lrytas.lt on 22 May 2013 by Arturas Jancys. It is worth noting that Jancys is Kupiškio rajono apylinkės teismo administracijos sekretorius. The English language translation of his position is Kupiskis Region District Secretary for Court... [to full text]

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems are now a proven area in current and future telecommunications research. MIMO wireless channels, in which both the transmitter and receiver have multiple antennas, have been shown to provide high bandwidth efficiency. In this thesis, we cover MIMO communications technology with a focus on cellular systems and the MIMO broadcast channel (MIMO-BC). Our development of techniques and analysis for the MIMO-BC starts with a study of single user MIMO systems. One such single user technique is that of antenna selection. In this thesis, we discuss various flavours of antenna selection, with the focus on powerful, yet straightforward, norm-based algorithms. These algorithms are analyzed and the results of this analysis produce a powerful and flexible power scaling factor. This power scaling factor can be used to model the gains of norm-based antenna selection via a single signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-based parameter. This provides a powerful tool for engineers interested in quickly seeing the effects of antenna selection on their systems. A novel low complexity power allocation scheme follows on from the selection algorithms. Named “Poor Man’s Waterfilling” (PMWF), this scheme can provide significant gains in low SNR systems with very little extra complexity compared to selection alone. We then compare a variety of algorithms for the MIMO-BC, ranging from selection to beamforming, to the optimal, yet complex, iterative waterfilling (ITWF) solution. In this thesis we show that certain algorithms perform better in different scenarios, based on whether there is shadow fading or not. A power scaling factor analysis is also performed on these systems. In the cases where the user’s link gains are widely varying, such as when shadowing and distance effects are present, user fairness is impaired when optimal and near optimal throughput occurs. This leads to a key problem in the MIMO-BC, the balance between user fairness and throughput performance. In an attempt to find a suitable balance between these two factors, we modify the ITWF algorithm by both introducing extra constraints and also by using a novel utility function approach. Both these methods prove to increase user fairness with only minor loss in throughput over the optimal systems. The introduction of MIMO systems to the cellular domain has been hampered by the effects of interference between the cells. In this thesis we move MIMO to the cellular domain, addressing the interference using two different methods. We first use power control, where the transmit power of the base station is controlled to optimize the overall system throughput. This leads to promising results using low complexity methods. Our second method is a novel method of collaboration between base stations. This collaboration transforms neighbouring cell sectors into macro-cells and this results in substantial increases in performance.

Fabrication of ordered anodic alumina nanopore arrays and anodization parameters including electrolyte, concentration, voltage, temperature and time have been investigated. Cobalt nanoparticles were electrodeposited at the bottom of the pores. Vertically aligned, open-tipped multi-walled carbon nanotube arrays of high density and uniformity were synthesized via a flame method on silicon substrates using a nanoporous template of anodized aluminum oxide. The diameter and length of the nanotubes are controlled by the geometry of the aluminum oxide template. It is the cobalt catalyst particles, not the porous aluminum templates, help the growth of carbon nanotubes through graphitization and bonding of carbon nanotubes to the silicon substrates. Fabrication of nano-structures has been demonstrated. Nano-trenches of 20 nm have been achieved using single-walled nanotube bundles as shadow masks, which were aligned across electrodes under high frequency AC voltage.