Roads investment and economic growth : similarity or divergence between developed and developing countries : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Planning at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

This research investigates how arguments for economic growth are perceived and advanced to promote road investment. In particular, it addresses the question of whether there is similarity or divergence between developed and developing countries given their different growth trajectories. In literature, the relationship between building roads and achieving economic growth is heavily reliant on quantitative tools while ignoring the socio-economic and political contextual details of developed and developing countries. Using the Aristotelian concept of phronēsis, the research undertakes a comparative case study involving New Zealand and Pakistan. Phronēsis is an intellectual virtue capable of incorporating practical problems and contextual issues in everyday life. The concept was operationalized for this thesis by devolving it into three main questions in which the roads policy direction, the associated processes and discursive pragmatism was explored. Detailed analysis of two major roading infrastructure projects, MacKays to Peka Peka (M2PP) in the Wellington region of New Zealand and a Ring Road in Lahore, Pakistan, shows that roads investment is promoted on the basis of national visions and policies without robust evidence of how economic growth will be achieved. The findings indicate that the national visions, related to case study projects, are not based on robust analyses and research but rather on strategic needs that advance the agenda of the powerful. The research found that the discourse of economic growth in each project was based on similar arguments about travel time saving, efficiency and employment growth regardless of public consultations. The research concludes that ‘economic growth’ is a niche created, advanced, and interpreted by power to achieve its strategic objectives in road development without contextual differences being considered in developed and developing countries

Optimal Input Design for Active Parameter Identification of Dynamic Nonlinear Systems

There are many important aspects to be considered while designing optimal excitation signal for system identification experiment in control applications. Active parameter identification is an important issue in system and control theory. In this dissertation, the problem of optimal input design for active parameter identification of dynamic nonlinear system is addressed. Real life physical systems are identified by excitation with a suitable input signal and observing the resulting output behavior of the system. It is important to choose the input signal intelligently in the sense that it is responsible to determine the accuracy and nature of the unknown system characteristics. This leads to a spurred interest in designing such an optimal excitation signals that can yield maximal information from the identification experiment. The information obtained from parameter identification is usually not accurate due to incomplete knowledge of the system, disturbance as exogenous inputs and noisy measurements. Hence, the input spectrum is designed in such a way that it can improve the system performance and shape the quality of obtained information. A welldesigned input signal can maximize the amount of information and reduce the experimental cost and time. The input signal is usually given some a-priori characteristics (knowledge on the pdf) so that \u201cexcitation\u201d of the system is guaranteed. In this thesis, a closed-loop method is investigated which is able to improve the parameter identification on the basis of the actual system\u2019s behavior. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is presented by the experimental results which corresponds to the perfect identification of the unknown parameter vector. The major technical contribution of this work is to propose an optimal feedback input design method for active parameter identification of dynamic nonlinear systems. The proposed framework can design such optimal excitation signals, considering the information from the identified parameters, that can maximize the amount of information from the identified parameters, guarantee to meet the specified control performance and minimize some cost function of the error covariance matrix of the identified parameters. The problem is formulated in a receding horizon framework where extended Kalman filter is used for system identification and the optimal input is designed in a nonlinear model predictive control framework. In order to carry out a comparison study, also Unscented Kalman Filter and Gaussian Sum Filter are used for the active parameter identification of dynamic nonlinear system. Towards this end, a suitable optimality criterion related to the unknown parameters is proposed and motivated as an information measure. The aim of the optimal input design is to yield maximal information from the unknown system by minimizing the cost related to the unknown parameters while maintaining some process performance and satisfying the possible constraints. Simulations are performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm

C20 cluster-assembled solids and adsorption of C20 on 2D materials

C60具有优异的性能，如高温超导电性，因此它的发现激发了对碳团簇广泛的理论和实验研究。C60超导的特性来源于电子-声子耦合，而电声子耦合会随着团簇尺度的减小而增大，因此寻找最小的富勒烯引起了极大的关注。在众多碳团簇中，C20是最小、最简单并且是曲率最大的富勒烯结构。由于C20电声子耦合比C60强，因此可以预测C20是高温超导的更好的潜在材料。因此，本文研究了基于C20的团簇组装结构。另外，自从石墨烯问世以来，相比于其体相对应物而言，二维蜂窝状晶体由于其独特的对称性引起了广泛的兴趣。除了对这些纯二维材料本征性质的研究之外，吸附原子或者分子对这些二维材料带来的效应也得到极大的关注。由石墨烯和其他二...The discovery of fullerene C60 stimulated extensive theoretical and experimental studies of carbon clusters, because of its excellent properties such as high temperature carbon superconductivity. The possibility of superconductivity arising from electron-phonon coupling, and vibronic coupling becomes large as the cluster size decreases. So, tremendous attention has been focused to explore the smal...学位：理学博士院系专业：物理科学与技术学院_凝聚态物理学号：1982013015445

Assessment of knowledge & practice of contraceptives in females of reproductive age group at a tertiary care hospital

Abstract Objectives: To assess the knowledge & practice of contraceptives in females of reproductive age group.Study Design: Cross sectional descriptive. Place and Duration of Study: OPD of Fauji Foundation Hospital from February 2008 – September 2008.Subjects and Method: 339 Females of age b/w of 15 – 49 years attending OPD of Fauji Foundation Hospital were included in study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data.Results: Eighty eight percent of the females in our study sample were familiar with one or more methods of contraception (72.7%were familiar with combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP), 60.7% were aware of intra uterine contraceptive device (IUCD) &76% knew about condoms) whereas 12% showed ignorance. 64.6% of the study population was contraceptive users & 35.4% were not using any method of contraception. Regarding preferred method of contraception 34.6% of females said they are using COCP, about 21.8% females said their tubes had been liagated whereas 26.9%& 16.7% were using IUCD & Condoms respectively. Almost 46%of our study population said that contraceptive method they were using was suggested by their husbands, 44 % said by health professional .Only 10 % of the study population were using a method of their own choice.Conclusion: The present study concludes that there is a gap between knowledge (88%) and use (64.6%) of contraceptives among females of reproductive age group. Another important inference drawn from the study is that men should be made equal targets of such programs in since 46% females in our study population were using method of contraceptive suggested by their husban

Cladding Pumped Thulium-Ytterbium Short Pulse Fiber Lasers

This chapter describes double clad fiber along with cladding pump technique in which pump light is coupled in the inner cladding of fiber thereby interacting with doped core through total internal reflection. Lasers operating in continuous wave mode have limited output power. Their output power can be enhanced to a great extent by concentrating the available energy in a single or in a periodic sequence of optical pulses. This is achieved by Q-switch and modelock techniques. Q-switched and modelocked lasers can be realized by active and passive means. Active technique is based on active loss modulation by using mechanical, electro-optic or acousto-optic based modulators. However, such techniques require complicated electronic circuits and have limited gain bandwidth. The attention then moves towards the passive technique which is low cost, compact in size, gives reliable operation without high voltages and provides simple cavity design without need for external electronics. Passive technique employs a saturable absorber, based on materials like carbon nanotubes, graphene, molybdenum di-sulfide etc. A brief description of pulsed fiber lasers and solitons in view of modelocking are described in the text. Moreover examples of Q-switched and modelocked lasers are also presented by using Thulium-Ytterbium co-doped double clad fiber. A cladding pump technique is employed for the purpose

Towards Process Support for Migrating Applications to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an active area of research for industry and academia. There are a large number of organizations providing cloud computing infrastructure and services. In order to utilize these infrastructure resources and services, existing applications need to be migrated to clouds. However, a successful migration effort needs well-defined process support. It does not only help to identify and address challenges associated with migration but also provides a strategy to evaluate different platforms in relation to application and domain specific requirements. This paper present a process framework for supporting migration to cloud computing based on our experiences from migrating an Open Source System (OSS), Hackystat, to two different cloud computing platforms. We explained the process by performing a comparative analysis of our efforts to migrate Hackystate to Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. We also report the potential challenges, suitable solutions, and lesson learned to support the presented process framework. We expect that the reported experiences can serve guidelines for those who intend to migrate software applications to cloud computing.Muhammad Aufeef Chauhan, Muhammad Ali Baba