McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 2007

A high frequency, large amplitude helium filled RFQ (Radio Frequency Quadrupole) beam cooler and buncher was developed and tested for use in the TITAN (TRIUMF's Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear science) Penning trap mass spectrometer facility. This device will cool and bunch radioactive ion beams for use in TITAN's high precision mass measurements of short-lived isotopes and other experiments. A test stand was built to test the transmission and properties of ions from a surface ion source through injection optics, the linear Paul trap RFQ and the extraction optics in both continuous and pulsed modes. The efficiency of the …  Read more

Zilic, Zeljko (Internal/Supervisor)  Read more

Currently, the system that developing countries use to map coffee crops is expensive, tedious and inaccurate; therefore coffee maps cannot be updated frequently and production cannot be accurately estimated. If such countries could map coffee crops in a cost-effective way, they would have an advantage in terms of setting the prices and getting a higher return for their product. Here I hypothesize that coffee systems can be properly characterized and mapped using the spectral and spatial information derived from satellite images and topographic data. I also believe that during the spatial analysis of the data, the additional information provided by …  Read more

The AspectOPTIMA project aims to build an aspect-oriented framework that provides run-time support for transactions. The previously established decomposition of the ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) properties into ten well-defined reusable aspects had one limitation: it didn't take into account the concerns of transaction life-time support, resulting in the creation of a cross-cutting concern among the aspects. This thesis removes the cross-cutting concern by integrating the transactional life cycle management issues such as determining the transaction boundaries, maintaining a well-defined state and managing the involvement of the participants. The integration process results in the creation of new aspects that serve …  Read more

The ribosome recruitment phase of translation initiation is the rate-limiting step of protein synthesis and involves binding of the 40S ribosomal subunit and associated factors to the 5'end of mRNAs. Ribosome recruitment to mRNA templates is catalyzed by the eIF4 class of initiation factors comprising eIF4F, a multisubunit complex that binds to the 5'end of mRNAs and prepares transcripts to receive ribosomes, as well as eIF4B and eIF4H, which help eIF4F in its task. mRNA preparation by eIF4F is thought to be accomplished by the eIF4A subunit of the eIF4F complex, an RNA helicase believed to unwind secondary structure close …  Read more

Inquiry pedagogy encompasses many strategies and approaches (e.g., student-centered learning, a participatory role among students and teachers in constructing the curriculum, fostering autonomy) that have been identified to increase intrinsic motivation and mastery goal-oriented approaches to learning. However, little if any investigation has been conducted to investigate the motivation that is experienced among bright and average achieving students when engaged in this learning environment. Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory is considered an optimal form of intrinsic motivation and has been linked to bright students because they appear to exhibit high motivation when engaged in challenging and interesting material. The purpose of the …  Read more

In the first of three experiments, four Holstein multiparous dairy cows, equipped with ruminal and duodenal cannulas, were used to determine the impact of different methods of treating soybean meal (SBM) on ruminal degradability and intestinal digestibility of CP and amino acids (AA). Solvent extracted SBM (SE), expeller SBM (EP), lignosulfonate SBM (LS) and heat and soy hulls SBM (HS) were incubated in the rumen, in nylon bags, for various intervals up to 48h. Additional samples incubated for 16 h were pre-treated with pepsin HCI, and then used for determination of intestinal digestibility either in situ (mobile bag technique) or …  Read more

This thesis presents a quantitative protocol of proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) that allows the determination of human amniotic fluid metabolite concentrations, which are then used in a metabonomic study to establish patient health during gestation. 1H NMR free inductive decays (FIDs) of 258 human amniotic fluid samples from a 500MHz spectrometer are acquired. Quantitative analyses methods in both the frequency- and time-domain are carried out and compared. Frequency-domain analysis is accomplished by integration of the metabolite peaks before and after the inclusion of a known standard addition of alanine. Time-domain analysis is accomplished by the direct exponential curve …  Read more

Microbial mats exist in freshwater pools atop the Ward Hunt and Markham ice shelves in the Canadian high Arctic. In this study, culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques were used to describe the microbial diversity and activity of these mat communities.Bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA gene clone libraries were constructed from Markham and Ward Hunt mat samples. Bacterial libraries from both mats had high diversity, though the Markham library appeared more diverse than the Ward Hunt library. Over 95% of sequences in both bacterial libraries, and all isolates from both mats, grouped within the phyla Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria. Archaeal diversity appeared …  Read more

Verbrugge, Clark (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

Ivermectin (IVM) is the only safe drug for mass-treatment of onchocerciasis. IVM-resistance has been reported in gastrointestinal nematode parasites of animals. A reduction in response to IVM in Onchocerca volvulus could have significant consequences for the onchocerciasis control programs. Over the last few years, studies have reported genetic selection or reduced responses to IVM in some O. volvulus populations. The risk of a recrudescence of the disease was recently reported with the emergence of resistant adult parasite population in Ghana. It is important to understand the effects of IVM on O. volvulus populations to be able to identify genetic markers …  Read more

In this thesis, the implication of chiral symmetry implementation for the pion-induced dissociation of the J/psi is examined. A brief introduction of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and relativistic heavy ion collisions is first presented followed by a discussion on charmonium modification in nuclear matter. For the latter, a particular emphasis is put on describing the various models used to evaluate the J/psi-dissociation by a meson gas. The consequence of chiral symmetry on the dissociation cross-section by a pion is then explicated. In particular, it is shown that the low-energy dynamics of pions is constrained by the symmetry and that this …  Read more

Atherosclerosis, a vascular disease which may lead to coronary artery occlusion and consequent myocardial infarction is primarily caused by dyslipidemia. Ischemic cardiomyopathy due to atherosclerosis is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the western world today. Vasoactive factors are increasingly being recognized not only as contributors to atherosclerotic plaque formation, but also to cardiac function and remodeling following ischemic cardiac injury. Urotensin II (UII) is one such vasoactive factor. UII possesses a wide range of cardiovascular effects, from contraction of the rat aorta to complete cardiovascular collapse in cynomolgus monkeys. UII binds a seven transmembrane spanning G-protein coupled …  Read more

Vodou, the religious tradition of Haiti, has been maligned throughout history. However, a growing interest in Afro-Caribbean religions is carving out new avenues of access to this formerly secret and subjugated religion. Altered States: Travel, Transcendence and Technology in Contemporary Vodou is an ethnographic study of Vodou in North America that documents the shifting boundaries between a religion and its representations as it gains contemporary popularity. Contemporary Vodou communities are filled with practitioners who have consciously sought out new religious experiences and allegiances. This text charts their journey to and from Vodou. Altered States examines how Vodou practitioners navigate popular …  Read more

It has been claimed that internationalized, or "hybrid" courts, courts which mix international and local personnel and international and domestic law, can be used to replace or complement the work of the International Criminal Court. Four such hybrid courts---courts located in Kosovo, East Timor, Cambodia and Sierra Leone, have either just completed their work or are far enough along in their operation to provide a type of "justice laboratory" to test this claim. Analysis reveals that the performance of these courts has been poor. It shows that the courts in Kosovo and East Timor were doomed to failure, that the …  Read more

Incremental step load testing was used in accordance with ASTM F1940 to rank a number coating processes used in the fastener industry for their propensity to cause internal hydrogen embrittlement. The results showed that coating permeability has a first order effect, while the quantity of hydrogen introduced by the process has a second order effect. Pure zinc electroplating processes, alkaline and acid, were found to be the most embrittling, owing to the low permeability of zinc. The least embrittling processes were zinc-nickel, alkaline and acid, owing to the high permeability of Zn-Ni coatings. Non-electrolytic processes, namely phosphating, mechanical galvanising, DacrometRTM …  Read more

Les hydrates gazeux font partis de la catégorie des complexes d’inclusion. Ce type de molécule se forme lorsque des molécules d’eau se structurent par liaisons hydrogène pour former une cage pouvant accepter une molécule «invité» d’une grandeur appropriée. Ces complexes sont thermodynamiquement stable à basse temperatures (~ 0°C) et pressions relativement élevées. Ces conditions sont reproduites dans les fonds marins. Ceux-ci abritent une énorme quantité d’hydrates gazeux, ce qui en fait la plus grande source d’hydrocarbures sur terre. Les hydrates gazeux sont également étudiés parce qu’ils se forment dans les conduits transportant du gaz ou du pétrole causant plusieurs problèmes. …  Read more

La participation des organisations non gouvernementales (ONG) aux travaux des organisations intergouvernementales et des grandes conferences internationales est un phenomene desormais connu, reconnu et etudie. En revanche, leur contribution a l'edification du systeme judiciaire international, a sa bonne marche et au developpement des nonnes internationales par voie de recours judiciaire reste encore a conceptualiser. La presente etude s'y attelle donc en demontrant a travers l'analyse du role et de l'impact des ONG, leur contribution a la "judiciarisation" de la societe internationale, a la collectivisation de la justice internationale et a sa communautarisation. Se faisant, ce travail s'inscrit dans une approche …  Read more

Aging is often associated with the decline of numerous cognitive functions, especially learning and memory. Stable forms of long-term plasticity require the induction of a cascade of genes to produce and maintain structural changes associated with memory formation in the hippocampus, a brain area essential for spatial memory. Using a microarray approach, global alterations in gene expression were investigated in two animal models of memory deficits; namely Long-Evans rats with memory impairments following systemic administration of scopolamine (a muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist), and a cohort of aged Long-Evans rats which naturally develop memory impairments during aging. Among the various hippocampal …  Read more

We introduce a weighted model of random trees and analyze the asymptotic properties of their heights. Our framework encompasses most trees of logarithmic height that were introduced in the context of the analysis of algorithms or combinatorics. This allows us to state a sort of "master theorem" for the height of random trees, that covers binary search trees (Devroye, 1986), random recursive trees (Devroye, 1987; Pittel, 1994), digital search trees (Pittel, 1985), scale-free trees (Pittel, 1994; Barabasi and Albert, 1999), and all polynomial families of increasing trees (Bergeron et al., 1992; Broutin et al., 2006) among others. Other applications include …  Read more

This thesis evaluates how equitably market efficiency education reforms deliver the public good of education. It critiques extreme market education initiatives for prioritizing efficiency above equality and for neglecting matters of equality, and then conducts a case study on the McKay Scholarship Program, a voucher designed for students with disabilities, evaluating the program against a framework of educational equality. Overall, study finds that this voucher program seriously neglects its students equality, comments on the challenges of efficiency-based reforms being able to equitably distribute public goods such as education and calls for further research to be done on this issue.  Read more

This thesis examines the interaction between brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and yellow perch (Perca flavescens). The goal of the thesis was to add to our understanding of the food web dynamics of intraguild predation in fish communities through an exploration of the trophic ecology of brook trout. Results suggest brook trout and yellow perch interact as intraguild predator and prey---juvenile brook trout and yellow perch compete for shared resources and adult brook trout prey on yellow perch---and that the outcome of the interaction is dependant upon yellow perch abundance and ecosystem size. In the presence of yellow perch, juvenile brook …  Read more

This study examined the relationships between social physique anxiety (SPA) and physical activity and sedentary behaviours among older adolescents. The research was grounded in self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985). Three hundred and eighty one males and females completed scientifically-supported questionnaires. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance revealed that male adolescents reported lower SPA and higher competence, relatedness, self-determined motivation, and physical activity levels compared to females. Regression analyses supported the integration of SPA in SDT, and the main tenets of SDT were maintained. Specifically, the basic psychological needs were important correlates of motivation, and motivation was a positive …  Read more

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between women's perceptions of their childbirth experiences and their early postpartum parenting behaviours and to determine the factors that predict the birth experience. Methods. Of all women giving birth on Prince Edward Island between October 27, 2004 and December 31, 2005, 652 women and their newborns were recruited from the postpartum units of two general hospitals. Initial data were collected at 12 to 48 hours postpartum using three self-report questionnaires and chart review. Women's childbirth perceptions were then scored, and a sub-sample of these mother-infant pairs (n=175) was assigned …  Read more

The thesis submitted undertakes an analysis of legal discourse in Quebec filiation Law. In particular, the author seeks to understand why this field---in marked contrast to other sectors of the civil law---continues to be influenced by natural law theories. The principle focus of the study is the period from 1980 to the present. The discourse analysis approach helps to shed light on the considerable number of reforms which took place in a relatively short period of time and gives context to contemporary interrogations of the foundations of the Law of filiation. Given that many scholars are now questioning the incoherence …  Read more

Asymmetric localization of messenger RNA (mRNA) is a post-transcriptional means of regulating gene expression. It is an important mechanism used early in development by a wide range of organisms to convert cellular asymmetry into complex patterns of cell fate. Some of the best-known examples of asymmetric transcript localization occur during the formation of the egg in Drosophila melanogaster. For example, during mid-oogenesis gurken mRNA, which encodes the Drosophila homologue of the vertebrate Transforming growth factor alpha (TGF-alpha), becomes asymmetrically localized to the presumptive dorsal anterior region of the oocyte. Localized gurken mRNA is translated, resulting in local activation of the …  Read more

In recent years, nanostructured and amorphous metals have become more prominent in scientific research. Their unique characteristics and their vastly superior mechanical properties have lead to emerging technical applications however the use of these materials is only in its infancy. To further growth the industrial applications for these advanced materials, joining processes capable of maintaining the unique aspects of the microstructure are required. Joining of two beveled plates has been accomplished by use of the Cold Spray process. This process uses a converging diverging nozzle to accelerate micron sized powder towards a substrate. The strength of the resulting joint has …  Read more

Postnatal handling of rat litters during the first week of life greatly decreases behavioural fearfulness to novelty in the adult offspring. Our first question was to what extent the Benzodiazepine/GABAA receptor complex, a system critical for the expression of fear, might be involved in mediating the observed reduced fearfulness in handled animals (H). Benzodiazepine receptor (BZ) binding was reduced in the amygdala and locus coeruleus (LC), regions important for the expression of fear in non-handled (NH) and maternally separated animals (MS). Moreover, levels of the mRNA for the gamma2 sub-unit of the GABAA receptor complex, which confers high affinity BZ …  Read more

The widespread use of ordinary differential equation (ODE) models has long been underrepresented in the statistical literature. The most common methods for estimating parameters from ODE models are nonlinear least squares and an MCMC based method. Both of these methods depend on a likelihood involving the numerical solution to the ODE. The challenge faced by these methods is parameter spaces that are difficult to navigate, exacerbated by the wide variety of behaviours that a single ODE model can produce with respect to small changes in parameter values. In this work, two competing methods, generalized profile estimation and Bayesian collocation tempering …  Read more

Various surgical options exist to correct pathologies of the aortic valve, including mechanical or biological valve implantation, reconstruction of the native vessels, and a combination of the two. Additionally, finite-element analysis and, to some extent, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analyses have been used in the past to analyze how these procedures may affect various engineering metrics such as tissue stresses and opening and closing dynamics of the valves. In this work, a similar type of model and analysis is performed, however, in addition to modeling the actions of the aortic valve, coronary flows are also considered. By incorporating these vessels, it …  Read more

For Milan Kundera, the question of identity is one of the essential questions around which a novel is constructed. The novelist attempts to define the issue by exploring the existential themes that are tied to it. These themes are examined from different angles with the aid of what the author calls "motifs". Our study is centered on one of those motifs, that of the mirror, through which the author explores the "enigma of the ego". The typological analysis of this motif in Kundera's ten novels brings out in the characters two fundamental attitudes with regard to their identity. The first …  Read more

Ricard, François (Supervisor)  Read more

Delivery of soluble lysosomal proteins from the Golgi apparatus to the lysosomes is dependent primarily on the mannose 6-phosphate receptor (M6PR). The M6PR has been demonstrated to achieve and be recycled from the endosomal compartment through interactions with GGA, AP-1, and retromer adaptor proteins. However, in I-cell disease (ICD), in which the M6PR pathway is non-functional, many soluble lysosomal proteins continue to traffic to the lysosomes. The novel sortilin sorting receptor has been implicated in the M6PR-independent targeting of sphingolipid activator proteins. We therefore tested the hypothesis that soluble proteases that exhibit M6PR-independent trafficking are targeted to the lysosomes by …  Read more

La perturbation des systèmes endocriniens est un problème qui gagne de plus en plus d'importance dans l'environnement naturel. Les scientifiques continuent de trouver bien des effets néfastes dans les poissons et la faune qui ont été exposé à une grande variété de composants toxiques ayant été rejetés dans les systèmes aquatiques à travers les effluents municipaux et industriels et le ruissellement agricole. Les estrogènes qu'excrètent les humains et qui se retrouvent ensuite dans les systèmes aquatiques après avoir passé à travers les usines de traitement d'eaux usées sont particulièrement intéressantes d'un point de vue de recherche car cette excrétion ne …  Read more

Accelerometer arrays are used in biomechanics and other fields to estimate the rigid-body acceleration field and, thence, all kinematic variables describing the rigid-body displacements. However, the progress of this technology has been limited by that of micromachined gyroscopes, which turn out to be more accurate than accelerometer arrays in most applications. The work reported in this thesis aims at improving the accuracy of the angular velocity estimates provided by accelerometer arrays. The approach is twofold: A class of accelerometer mechanical architectures is proposed, with the goal of reducing the accelerometer cross-axis sensitivity, and robust algorithms are proposed to estimate the …  Read more

This research aims at three goals: (1) To know if the placement trajectory of children in foster care until majority influences their social and personal adjustment; (2) To know the impact of maintaining, or not maintaining contact with at least one of the biological parents on the child's social and personal adjustment; (3) To understand these children's perspectives concerning the advantages and disadvantages of having contact, or not with one or both biological parents. This exploratory and transversal research is conducted with children from the Centres jeunesse de 1'Outaouais. It contains a quantitative part which describes the characteristics, socio-demographic data …  Read more

We compute, to next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, the rate of energy loss suffered by a heavy quark moving nonrelativistically in the quark-gluon plasma. This quantity is essentially a measure of the scattering rates of this quark against plasma constituents, and of their efficiency in slowing it down. The next-to-leading order correction is sensitive to the physics of overlapping scatterings, as well as to the self-interactions of gauge fields with small momenta (of order the electric screening scale). We find the next-to-leading order correction to be remarkably large, suggesting that the perturbative series is unreliable unless the coupling constant of …  Read more

The Basin of Mexico, where the Mexico City Metropolitan Zone (MCMZ) and its 20 million inhabitants are located, has had a two-sided approach towards water management, as it has struggled to drain the lakes that once covered this region while at the same time it started to transport in water from adjacent basins in the 1950s for water supply. In addition, the large amount of water extracted from the Basin's aquifer has caused drawdown of the groundwater table and consequently, land subsidence which reaches 40 cm/yr in some areas.The inhabitants of the Basin of Mexico, which comprises five different political …  Read more

In this inquiry, I examined how young children use their personal, social and material resources to solve a music notational task. I asked 13 children, ages 5-9 to notate a song they learned the previous week, sing it back, explain what they did and then teach the song to a classmate the following week. I used Lightfoot and Davis' concept of portraiture as a qualitative research methodology to collect, code, analyze and interpret my data. Data included the children's invented notations and videotaped transcripts of their actions as they created their notations and taught the song to a classmate. Sociocultural …  Read more

Cette dissertation est une étude herméneutique et philosophique sur l'émergence du musée narratif à la fin du XVIIIe siècle en France. Un des premiers exemples de ce genre, le Musée des Monuments français (1795-1816) a été créé par Alexandre Lenoir à partir d'une collection de sculptures d'un dépôt post-révolutionnaire au # 14 de la rue de Petite-Seine sur la Rive Gauche de Paris. Ce musée prétendait présenter l'histoire de la nation française par l'arrangement chronologique et esthétique d'une collection de sculptures, de monuments funéraires, et de fragments architecturaux. Depuis le mois d'octobre 1790, ces objets avaient trouvé refuge dans l'ancien …  Read more

The present project investigated the effect of glucose, high dose insulin and normoglycemia (GIN) therapy in patients undergoing coronary revascularization surgery. A reduction in myocardial injury as measured by cardiac troponin I was the primary end point. Cardiac function based on hemodynamics and vasoactive drug requirements as well as clinical outcome were evaluated. Hormones and metabolites and cardiac metabolism were investigated concurrently as potential mechanisms of GIN therapy. The major findings of the present study are that GIN therapy reduced post-operative myocardial injury and myocardial dysfunction leading to a decrease in major complications following coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. The …  Read more

The present thesis explores the relationship between occupational rhinitis and occupational asthma under the postulates of the "united airways disease" concept that refers to the multiple links observed between rhinitis and asthma. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the concomitant expression of significant changes in nasal patency and bronchial calibre following exposure to occupational agents during specific inhalation challenges, complementing the assessment with the investigation of changes in markers of airways inflammation in nasal lavage. To achieve the objectives, we set up a protocol to diagnose occupational rhinitis and conducted a study from January 2005 to …  Read more

A new reactor and a novel in-situ sampling technique were developed for the study of the synthesis of CeO2 powders produced from dissolved cerium nitrate salts. The reactor minimized particle recirculation and provided a highly symmetric and undisturbed plasma flow suitable for the analysis of the phenomena affecting the formation of CeO2 powders. The sampling probe provided in-situ sampling of in-flight CeO2 particles and allowed continuous sampling without cross contamination. The sampled particles were collected using a wet collection system composed of a mist atomizer acting as a scrubber and a custom-made spray chamber. The entire collection system is portable …  Read more

A new reactor and a novel in-situ sampling technique were developed for the study of the synthesis of Ce02 powders produced from dissolved cerium nitrate salts. The reactor minimized particle recirculation and provided a highly symmetric and undisturbed plasma flow suitable for the analysis of the phenomena affecting the formation of Ce02 powders. The sampling probe provided in-situ sampling of in-flight CeCb particles and allowed continuous sampling without cross contamination. The sampled particles were collected using a wet collection system composed of a mist atomizer acting as a scrubber and a custom-made spray chamber. The entire collection system is portable …  Read more

L'algorithme Anticor pour la sélection de portefeuilles, développé par Borodin, El-Yaniv et Gogan, est empiriquement étudié. Dans la présentation originale de cet algorithme, Borodin et autres donnent des résultats basés sur des marchés financiers historiques qui démontrent que l'algorithme Anticor non seulement "bat le marché" mais peut aussi surperformer le meilleur titre. Notre étude de l'algorithme Anticor ajoute à ces résultats de plusieurs faons. Premièrement, nous examinons comment l'algorithme Anticor performe sur les marchés financiers récents. Deuxièmement, nous appliquons l'algorithme Anticor à des marchés simulés afin de tenter d'expliquer ce qui détermine une "bonne" performance. Finalement, nous examinons comment la …  Read more

Panangaden, Prakash (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

This thesis examines the ways in which a group of male youths from Montreal interpret the world and construct their identities through the lens of hip-hop. The theoretical framework draws mainly from discussions of youth subcultural theory as articulated by the Center for Cultural Studies in Birmingham, as well as current research on hip-hop culture and youth identities. Using narrative inquiry as a methodological framework, this study highlights how the participants' perceive their neighbourhoods through gangster rap culture, and construct their identities according to these perceptions. This study also reveals how the participants' create original rap lyrics as a self-reflexive …  Read more

Described in this thesis is the development of a key Diels-Alder reaction for use in a total synthesis of the potently immunosuppressant marine alkaloid palau'amine. This study focuses on the originally proposed structure of palau'amine. The strategy utilizes a computationally designed thiohydantoin dienophile as the 2pi component and a thermally stable 2-silyloxy-5-(silyloxymethyl)cyclopentadiene as the 4pi component in the critical Diels-Alder reaction. Essential to the design and study of these partners was the use of computational density functional theory (DFT) predictions. Four families of dienophiles---oxazolones, dehydroalanines, hydantoins and thiohydantoins---were investigated. The hydantoins and thiohydantoins react with cyclopentadiene with up to 13:1 …  Read more

As wind energy penetration levels increase, there is a growing interest in using storage devices to aid in managing the fluctuations in wind turbine output power. Vanadium-Redox batteries (VRB) and Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries are two emerging technologies which can provide power smoothing in wind energy systems. However, there is an apparent gap when it comes to the data available regarding the design, integration and operation of these batteries in wind systems. This thesis presents suitable battery electrical models which will be used to assess system performance in wind energy applications, including efficiency under various operating conditions, transfer characteristics and transient …  Read more

In this thesis we consider two outstanding problems in the statistical analysis of random field data. The first relates to inference for the mean function, the second to inference for the covariance function. We propose a modification to the Gaussian random field (GRF) theory for computing the p-value of a supra-threshold test when there are departures from normality in the data. Specifically, we derive a saddlepoint approximation to the expected Euler characteristic (EC) of the excursion set at a level u > 0 of a normalized sum of n i.i.d. stationary random fields. We show that as u and n …  Read more