358 research outputs found

    Chinese dequity: transaction structure and two applications

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    In recent years, the financial market has been under the dual pressure of macro-economic downturn and deleveraging of industry entities. In this context, the regulating authorities have been encouraging enterprises to resort to debt replacement in order to lower financing cost. Therefore, the financing instrument characterized by "Chinese dequity" came into existence (Chen & Kensinger, 1991). As an innovative investment business, it has significantly contributed to China's economic development by making financing easier for enterprises and relieving the financial pressure on governments and banks. However, many problems have surfaced in its application in China, most notably the uneven distribution of each party’s control rights and interests, poor risk control and management, and a yet-to-be-perfected theoretical system. Further optimization is thus needed. In the above context, this thesis intends to ensure the consistency between the ultimate financing result and the expected goal by designing a transaction structure for "Chinese dequity" in construction projects. Such financing transaction structures of two projects are studied as cases, namely, the PPP Project of the Underground Utility Tunnel in HS City and XNY Private Chemical Construction Project. The author studies many theories, introduces the concept of "control rights preference", and constructs the optimal control rights allocation model by adopting stochastic cooperative games. On this basis, the designed transaction structure in infrastructure construction, allocation of control rights of participants, and existing problems are analyzed. In the end, a conclusion is made and suggestions for further research given.Nos últimos anos, o mercado financeiro tem estado sob a dupla pressão da recessão macroeconómica e da desalavancagem de entidades industriais. Neste contexto, as autoridades reguladoras vêm incentivando as empresas a recorrer à substituição de dívidas para reduzir o custo de financiamento. Portanto, surgiu o instrumento de financiamento caracterizado pela "deidade chinesa" (Chen & Kensinger, 1991). Como um negócio de investimento inovador, tem contribuído significativamente para o desenvolvimento económico da China fazendo mais fácil o financiamento para empresas e aliviando a pressão financeira sobre governos e bancos. No entanto, muitos problemas têm surgido em sua aplicação na China, principalmente a distribuição desigual dos direitos de controle e interesses de cada parte, o insatisfatório controle e gerenciamento de risco e, um sistema teórico ainda a ser aperfeiçoado. Otimização adicional é, portanto, necessária. No contexto acima, esta tese pretende garantir a consistência entre o resultado definitivo do financiamento e o objetivo esperado, projetando uma estrutura de transação para a "deidade chinesa" em projetos de construção. Tais estruturas de transação de financiamento de dois projetos são estudadas como casos, para esclarecer, o Projeto PPP do Túnel Utilitário Subterrâneo na cidade de HS e o Projeto Privado de Construção Química de XNY. O autor estuda muitas teorias, introduz o conceito de “preferência de direitos de controle” e constrói o modelo ótimo de alocação de direitos de controle adotando jogos cooperativos estocásticos. Com base nisso, a estrutura de transação projetada na construção de infraestrutura, a alocação de direitos de controle dos participantes e os problemas existentes são analisados. No final, uma conclusão é feita e sugestões para mais pesquisas são dadas

    Carrier Recovery in burst-mode 16-QAM

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    Wireless communication systems such as multipoint communication systems (MCS) are becoming attractive as cost-effective means for providing network access in sparsely populated, rugged, or developing areas of the world. Since the radio spectrum is limited, it is desirable to use spectrally efficient modulation methods such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) for high data rate channels. Many MCS employ time division multiple access (TDMA) and/or time division duplexing (TDD) techniques, in which transmissions operate in bursts. In many cases, a preamble of known symbols is appended to the beginning of each burst for carrier and symbol timing recovery (symbol timing is assumed known in this thesis). Preamble symbols consume bandwidth and power and are not used to convey information. In order for burst-mode communications to provide efficient data throughput, the synchronization time must be short compared to the user data portion of the burst. Traditional methods of communication system synchronization such as phase-locked loops (PLLs) have demonstrated reduced performance when operated in burst-mode systems. In this thesis, a feedforward (FF) digital carrier recovery technique to achieve rapid carrier synchronization is proposed. The estimation algorithms for determining carrier offsets in carrier acquisition and tracking in a linear channel environment corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) are described. The estimation algorithms are derived based on the theory of maximum likelihood (ML) parameter estimation. The estimations include data-aided (DA) carrier frequency and phase estimations in acquisition and non-data-aided (NDA) carrier phase estimation in tracking. The DA carrier frequency and phase estimation algorithms are based on oversampling of a known preamble. The NDA carrier phase estimation makes use of symbol timing knowledge and estimates are extracted from the random data portion of the burst. The algorithms have been simulated and tested using Matlab® to verify their functionalities. The performance of these estimators is also evaluated in the burst-mode operations for 16-QAM and compared in the presence of non-ideal conditions (frequency offset, phase offset, and AWGN). The simulation results show that the carrier recovery techniques presented in this thesis proved to be applicable to the modulation schemes of 16-QAM. The simulations demonstrate that the techniques provide a fast carrier acquisition using a short preamble (about 111 symbols) and are suitable for burst-mode communication systems

    An improved mixture of probabilistic PCA for nonlinear data-driven process monitoring

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    An improved mixture of probabilistic principal component analysis (PPCA) has been introduced for nonlinear data-driven process monitoring in this paper. To realize this purpose, the technique of a mixture of probabilistic principal component analyzers is utilized to establish the model of the underlying nonlinear process with local PPCA models, where a novel composite monitoring statistic is proposed based on the integration of two monitoring statistics in modified PPCA-based fault detection approach. Besides, the weighted mean of the monitoring statistics aforementioned is utilized as a metrics to detect potential abnormalities. The virtues of the proposed algorithm are discussed in comparison with several unsupervised algorithms. Finally, Tennessee Eastman process and an autosuspension model are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme further

    Process monitoring based on orthogonal locality preserving projection with maximum likelihood estimation

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    By integrating two powerful methods of density reduction and intrinsic dimensionality estimation, a new data-driven method, referred to as OLPP-MLE (orthogonal locality preserving projection-maximum likelihood estimation), is introduced for process monitoring. OLPP is utilized for dimensionality reduction, which provides better locality preserving power than locality preserving projection. Then, the MLE is adopted to estimate intrinsic dimensionality of OLPP. Within the proposed OLPP-MLE, two new static measures for fault detection TOLPP2 and SPEOLPP are defined. In order to reduce algorithm complexity and ignore data distribution, kernel density estimation is employed to compute thresholds for fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by three case studies

    Charlton Fire Department Resident Expectations: Survey and Analysis

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    The Town of Charlton is located in the heart of the Massachusetts with a resident population of just under 14,000 people. The Charlton Fire Department serves the town for needs related to fire fighting, fire prevention, burning permits and inspection services along with emergency medical services. The Department has requested the assistance of the Clark University COPACE Capstone students in creating and conducting survey in order to get a sense of what the resident of the town know about the fire department and to better gauge their expectations about what the department can provide for them. The survey was formulated in conjunction with the Fire Department and was conducted for a two-week period in April 2016. This report seeks to summarize and analyze the survey formulation process, the results of the survey and recommend best practices for the Charlton Fire Department in their resident engagement efforts in the future

    Numerical and experimental investigation on self-synchronization of two eccentric rotors in the vibration system

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    In this paper, we study the coupling dynamic characteristic of a single mass vibration machine driven by two eccentric rotors rotating oppositely. According to the coordinate of rotor flux, we deduce the electromagnetic torque of an induction motor in the steady state operation. From three ways of numerical analysis, model simulation and experiment, we discuss the coupling dynamic characteristic by using the actual parameters of this vibration machine. The results show that when the synchronization condition is satisfied, not only the vibration synchronization transmission can be achieved, but also the synchronization motion of the two motors with different power supply frequencies also can be achieved. The phase of the bigger mass-radius product lags behind that of the smaller one, the phase of the bigger distance between the rotation center of eccentric rotor and the mass center of the vibration rigid body lags behind that of the smaller one, and the phase difference decreases with increasing the synchronization velocity. We present a new method that adjusting the power supply frequencies of the two motors to make the vibration system with different structure parameters carry out the 0 phase difference, and its feasibility is verified by experiment

    Differential Responses of Net N Mineralization and Nitrification to Throughfall Reduction in a Castanopsis Hystrix Plantation in Southern China

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    Background Many regions in the world are experiencing changes in precipitation pattern, which likely impact soil nitrogen cycling and availability. However, we know little about how soil nitrogen processes respond to drought stress under climate change. Methods A continuous 5-year experiment of throughfall reduction treatment (TRT) was conducted in a Castanopsis hystrix plantation in subtropical China to assess how soil nitrogen processes responded to a change in precipitation. Net nitrogen transformation, soil properties, microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and nitrogen (MBN), and microbial community phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs as bacteria, fungi and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)) were investigated in the wet and dry seasons over the period of the manipulation experiment. Results TRT had no significant effects on net ammonification rate (NAR) and nitrogen mineralization rate (NMR), and the unchanged NAR and NMR were mainly caused by the no change of soil nitrogen availability (i.e. NH4+-N, NO3−-N and dissolved organic nitrogen). However, TRT significantly increased net nitrification rate (NNR) in the wet season primarily due to the increase in NO3− concentration, and might be further caused by reduced NO3− leaching, denitrification or NO3−-N uptake in the TRT. Differently, TRT significantly decreased the NNR in the dry season, which might be linked to the limited SWC that resulted in greater microbial nitrate immobilization than gross nitrate mineralization. In addition, TRT significantly influenced the soil microbial community composition in 0–10 cm soil layer in the wet season, primarily due to the variations in NO3−-N, DOC and DON. Conclusions Precipitation reduction affected the NNR rather than NAR and NMR, and consequently, further affected soil N availability and N uptake by Castanopsis hystrix

    Nitrogen-Doped Porous Carbon Derived from Bamboo Shoot as Solid Base Catalyst for Knoevenagel Condensation and Transesterification Reactions

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    Highly porous nitrogen-doped carbons derived from bamboo shoots (BSNCs) were prepared through an in-situ synthesis method. The results showed that BSNCs had a large specific surface area, a relatively high nitrogen content and hierarchically porous structures. The catalytic properties of BSNCs were evaluated based on Knoevenagel condensation and transesterification reactions. Deprotonated BSNC-700 exhibited high efficiency for the model reactions as a solid base catalyst, and the superior sample deprotonated in tBuOK solution with a concentration of 0.1 increased the conversion rate from 16.1% to 76.0% for Knoevenagel condensation. The two reactions proceeded smoothly in the presence of deprotonated BSNC-700. The results also showed that the catalyst could be recycled for several times for Knoevenagel condensation. The results from this research will provide a guideline to develop bamboo shoot as a precursor to fabricate a superb solid base catalyst
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