Functional Verification of Power Electronic Systems

This project is the final work of the degree in Industrial Electronics and Automatic Engineering. It has global concepts of electronics but it focuses in power electronic systems. There is a need for reliable testing systems to ensure the good functionality of power electronic systems. The constant evolution of this products requires the development of new testing techniques. This project aims to develop a new testing system to accomplish the functional verification of a new power electronic system manufactured on a company that is in the power electronic sector . This test system consists on two test bed platforms, one to test the control part of the systems and the other one to test their functionality. A software to perform the test is also designed. Finally, the testing protocol is presented. This design is validated and then implemented on a buck converter and an inverter that are manufactured at the company. The results show that the test system is reliable and is capable of testing the functional verification of the two power electronic system successfully. In summary, this design can be introduced in the power electronic production process to test the two products ensuring their reliability in the market

The causes of civil war

The dominant hypothesis in the literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main cause of civil wars. The authors instead analyze the effect of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per capita. In their set up, institutions are endogenous and colonial origins affect civil wars through their legacy on institutions. Their results indicate that institutions, proxied by the protection of property rights, rule of law and the efficiency of the legal system, are a fundamental cause of civil war. In particular, an improvement in institutions from the median value in the sample to the 75th percentile is associated with a 38 percentage points'reduction in the incidence of civil wars. Moreover, once institutions are included as explaining civil wars, income does not have any effect on civil war, either directly or indirectly.Population Policies,Peace&Peacekeeping,Children and Youth,Services&Transfers to Poor,Inequality

- A THEORY OF RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND ITS EFFECT ON GROWTH

This paper analyzes the role of religious conflict in the process of development of a country. We construct an index of religious polarization using data on the proportions of each religion in a country. The index of polarization is an alternative to the usual fragmentation index. We argue that for the case of religious conflict the fragmentation index is less appropriate than the polarization measure. We include the religious polarization index in a growth regression specification to determine the effect of religious conflicts on growth. The main finding is that religious conflict is an important factor in explaining economic growth and it is also an important explanation for the so called ¿Africa¿s growth tragedy¿. Moreover, religious polarization has a larger explanatory power on growth than ethnolinguistic and and religious fragmentation. Este trabajo analiza el papel de los conflictos religiosos en el desarrollo de un país. Hemos construido un índice de polarización religiosa utilizando los datos de proporción de cada religión en un país. El índice de polarización es una alternativa al habitual índice de fragmentación. Sostenemos que para el caso de conflictos religiosos, el índice de fragmentación es menos apropiado que el de polarización. Incluimos el índice de polarización religiosa en una regresión de crecimiento para determinar el efecto de los conflictos religiosos sobre el crecimiento. El resultado principal es que el conflicto religioso es un factor importante al explicar el crecimiento económico y también al explicar la llamada 'tragedia del crecimiento de África'. Además, la polarización religiosa tiene mayor poder explicativo sobre el crecimiento que la fragmentación etnolingüística y religiosa.índice de polarización religiosa, índice de fragmentación, crecimiento económico. index of religious polarization, fragmentation index, economic growth.

FIGHTING AGAINST MALARIA: PREVENT WARS WHILE WAITING FOR THE "MIRACULOUS" VACCINE

The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million clinical cases of malaria occur annually and its incidence increased during the 90's. There are basically two factors behind the incidence of malaria: "geographical destiny", or ecological conditions, and social conditions, which are related with unstable populations or movements of people. In this paper we explore the influence of civil wars and refugees from wars on the incidence of malaria in the asylum countries using a large panel data. The panel structure helps to separate "geographical destiny" from other social conditions. The results of the estimation show the importance of civil wars? refugees on the increase of malaria during recent years. La Organización Mundial de la Salud estima que cada año se producen 300 millones de nuevos casos de malaria y su incidencia ha aumentado durante los años 90. Hay básicamente dos factores explicativos de la incidencia de la malaria: ¿destino geográfico¿, o condiciones ecológicas, y el contacto social, que está relacionado con movimientos de la población. En este trabajo estudiamos la influencia de las guerras civiles y los refugiados generados por dichas guerras sobre la incidencia de la malaria en los países de asilo usando datos de panel. Esta estructura ayuda a separar el ¿destino geográfico¿ de las condiciones sociales. Los resultados de la estimación muestran la importancia de los refugiados de guerras civiles sobre el incremento de la incidencia de la malaria.malaria, migraciones, condiciones ecológicas. Malaria, migrations, ecological conditions.

Fighting against Malaria: Prevent wars while waiting for the "miraculous" vaccine

The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million clinical cases of malaria occur annually and observed that during the 80's and part of the 90's its incidence increased. In this paper we explore the influence of refugees from civil wars on the incidence of malaria in the refugee-receiving countries. Using civil wars as an instrumental variable we show that for each 1,000 refugees there are between 2,000 and 2,700 cases of malaria in the refugee receiving country. On average 13% of the cases of malaria reported by the WHO are caused by forced migration as a consequence of civil wars.Civil wars, forced migration, economic impact

Ethnic polarization, potential conflict and civil wars

This paper analyzes the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict. In recent years many authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can explain this nexus is the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on rent-seeking activities and the increase in potential conflict, which is negative for investment. However the empirical evidence supporting the effect of ethnic fractionalization on the incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the channel is not through an increase in potential ethnic conflict. We discuss the appropriateness of indices of polarization to capture conflictive dimensions. We develop a new measure of ethnic heterogeneity that satisfies the basic properties associated with the concept of polarization. The empirical section shows that this index of ethnic polarization is a significant variable in the explanation of the incidence of civil wars. This result is robust to the presence of other indicators of ethnic heterogeneity, other sources of data for the construction of the index, and other data structures.Ethnic diversity, conflict, indices of diversity

Ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars

The authors analyze the relationship between ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars. Several recent papers have argued that the uncertainty about the relative power of the contenders in a war will tend to increase its duration. In these models, uncertainty is directly related to the relative size of the contenders. The authors argue that the duration of civil wars increases the more polarized a society is. Uncertainty is not necessarily linked to the structure of the population but it could be traced back to the measurement of the size of the different groups in the society. Given a specific level of measurement error or uncertainty, more polarization implies lengthier wars. The empirical results show that ethnically polarized countries have to endure longer civil wars than ethnically less polarized societies.Social Conflict and Violence,Population Policies,Peace&Peacekeeping,Post Conflict Reintegration,Services&Transfers to Poor

A review of RFI mitigation techniques in microwave radiometry

Radio frequency interference (RFI) is a well-known problem in microwave radiometry (MWR). Any undesired signal overlapping the MWR protected frequency bands introduces a bias in the measurements, which can corrupt the retrieved geophysical parameters. This paper presents a literature review of RFI detection and mitigation techniques for microwave radiometry from space. The reviewed techniques are divided between real aperture and aperture synthesis. A discussion and assessment of the application of RFI mitigation techniques is presented for each type of radiometer.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version