Microwave Acoustic SAW Resonators for Stable High-temperature Harsh-Environment Static and Dynamic Strain Sensing Applications

High-temperature, harsh-environment static and dynamic strain sensors are needed for industrial process monitoring and control, fault detection, structural health monitoring in power plant environments, steel and refractory material manufacturing, aerospace, and defense applications. Sensor operation in the aforementioned extreme environments require robust devices capable of sustaining the targeted high temperatures, while maintaining a stable sensor response. Current technologies face challenges regarding device or system size, complexity, operational temperature, or stability. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor technology using high temperature capable piezoelectric substrates and thin film technology has favorable properties such as robustness; miniature size; capability of mass production; reduced installation costs; battery-free operation; maintenance-free; and offer the potential for wireless, multi-sensor interrogation. These characteristics are very attractive for static and dynamic strain sensors targeted to operate in high-temperature harsh-environment conditions. The investigation of harsh-environment static and dynamic SAW strain sensors requires addressing the issues of: (i) sensor platform endurance and stability; (ii) development of durable packaging and attachment techniques; (iii) temperature compensation techniques, to mitigate temperature cross-sensing; and (iv) methods of sensor interrogation and calibration at high temperatures. In this work, langasite-based SAW resonator (SAWR) sensors have been investigated. A stable sensor platform was verified for two types of thin-film electrode configurations, namely: co-deposited Pt/Al2O3 (up to 750oC) and multilayered PtNi|PtZr (up to 1000oC). High-temperature sensor attachment solutions for strain sensor applications were developed for temperatures up to 500oC. The developed SAWR sensors were tested and calibrated for both static and dynamic strain up to 400oC. A temperature compensation technique and a novel finite element analysis was used to perform high-temperature static strain calibration. A high-temperature dynamic strain test rig using a constant stress beam was designed, implemented and used to characterize the SAWR strain sensor performance in measuring dynamic strain. Using the in-phase and quadrature strain sensor signal analysis technique proposed and developed in this study, the existence of both amplitude and frequency modulations of the SAWR RF signal by the dynamic strain signal was confirmed, and the two types of modulations separated and quantified

Analyzing the Relationship between change in Money Supply and Stock Market Prices

This paper examines the relationship between change in the money supply and the level of stock prices. This paper also dichotomizes change in the money supply into anticipated and unanticipated change and analyzes each of their relationships with stock market prices. Competing theories exist on how change in the money supply affects stock prices. The real activity theorists argue that change in the money supply and stock prices are positively related, where as the Keynesian economists argue otherwise. This study finds a positive relationship between change in the money supply and stock prices, agreeing with the real activity theorists. Economists also debate on the relationship of anticipated and unanticipated change in money supply with the stock market prices. The proponents of the Efficient Market hypothesis (EMH) argue that anticipated change in money supply would not have a significant impact on stock prices and only unanticipated change in the money supply would matter, whereas the opponents of EMH argue that anticipated change in money would matter too in determining the stock prices. This paper finds that anticipated change in money supply matter more than unanticipated change, failing to find efficiency in the stock market

THREE ESSAYS ON FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT

My dissertation investigates three separate issues pertaining to a country\u27s financial development. The first essay provides an introduction to the three essays. The second essay examines the combined effect of financial development and human capital on economic growth. While both financial development and human capital are individually positively correlated with growth, the literature has not emphasized their combined effect on growth. In this essay, I analyze the extent to which the effect of financial development on growth depends on a country\u27s level of human capital. Using dynamic panel difference and system GMM, as well as the pooled OLS, I find that an increase in human capital decreases the impact of financial development on growth and that countries that lack financial development can achieve greater economic growth through an improvement in human capital. The third essay analyzes how currency unions affect the financial development of a country. This essay tests two forms of asymmetries on the effect of currency unions on financial development; I analyze if currency unions have an equal effect on various forms of financial development, and whether high-income and low-income countries are impacted differently. I find some evidence in favor of both forms of asymmetries with pooled OLS and fixed effect estimation using data on 152 countries and territories over the 1970-2006 time period. The fourth essay tests how financial development affects firms\u27 export market participations and the volume of exports utilizing a firm-level data set which incorporates about 43,500 firms from 80 countries for the time period 2002-2009. Using an instrumental variable approach, I find that a country\u27s financial development negatively affects the extensive margin of trade and positively affects the intensive margin of trade. Furthermore, this study finds that financial development has a disproportionate positive affect on firms with a higher level of external dependence for both margins of trade. Finally, I find that financial development exerts an asymmetric effect on young and mature firms in their export participations but not on the volume of exports

Macro-Financial Links and Monetary Policy Management

For the past few decades, the nature of links between financial conditions and the real macro economy (the macro-financial link) has changed. The links have expanded and deepened significantly due mainly to the following two reasons. Firstly, financial liberalisation has expanded the availability of financial products and services, increasing the connection between financial markets, which in turn, has enhanced the channels through which financial conditions affect the real macro economy. Secondly, financial globalisation has amplified the adverse effect of financial contagion from one country to another, and subsequently, a financial crisis or turmoil in one country tends to easily affect the financial markets and the real macro economy of other countries through the above mentioned macro-financial links. The current US sub-prime mortgage crisis is a case in point of how the US financial crisis adversely affected, not only its domestic financial system and economy, but also the global financial system and economy. However, the current understanding of how the financial conditions affect the real macro economy seems to be insufficient. In particular, it is becoming more important to comprehend how monetary policy influences financial conditions. In light of these issues, this study explores the implication and nature of macro- financial links of SEACEN central bank policies and reviews the experiences of participating countries. The study highlights that the function of allocation of resources in some SEACEN members has expanded and broadened beyond that of the monetary and financial system as a whole. This suggests that monetary policy management needs to be better coordinated and fine-tuned. The paper thus proposes that the country-specific formulation and implementation of monetary policy should be coordinated with financial policy.

Foreign investment liberalization and incentives in selected Asia-Pacific Developing Countries:Implications for the health service sector in Nepal

The prime objective and main research questions of the study are: 1) What are the practices of service sector investment liberalization and incentives from selected developing countries, and 2) How those experiences can be applied to the investment liberalization and provision of incentives in the Nepalese services sector, with focus on the health service sector? It should be pointed out that a country’s liberalizing strategy refers to a dynamic policy process through a flow in time; however since this study is presently limited to focus on a point in time (e.g. 2003), attention is given to FDI incentives in selected developing countries to tease out lessons of a broad service related investment (health) liberalization strategy.AFTA,RTA,CEPT

Remittances, migration and inclusive growth : the case of Nepal

‘Inclusive growth’ is understood to encompass both a lasting reduction in absolute poverty and a more equitable distribution of the gains from growth. In other words, the focus has shifted from quantity to quality of growth. Remittances can have impacts beyond simply increasing household spending power: they can alter behavior in other social spheres as well, for example, by changing attitudes towards gender, education or participation in the labour market. These changes can also potentially contribute to reduction in poverty and income inequality

Multifragmentation of a very heavy nuclear system (I): Selection of single-source events

A sample of `single-source' events, compatible with the multifragmentation of very heavy fused systems, are isolated among well-measured 155Gd+natU 36AMeV reactions by examining the evolution of the kinematics of fragments with Z>=5 as a function of the dissipated energy and loss of memory of the entrance channel. Single-source events are found to be the result of very central collisions. Such central collisions may also lead to multiple fragment emission due to the decay of excited projectile- and target-like nuclei and so-called `neck' emission, and for this reason the isolation of single-source events is very difficult. Event-selection criteria based on centrality of collisions, or on the isotropy of the emitted fragments in each event, are found to be inefficient to separate the two mechanisms, unless they take into account the redistribution of fragments' kinetic energies into directions perpendicular to the beam axis. The selected events are good candidates to look for bulk effects in the multifragmentation process.Comment: 39 pages including 15 figures; submitted to Nucl. Phys.