This thesis investigates the modelling of massive protostellar envelopes in dust and molecular emission. A detailed study is undertaken for a sample of 30 targets believed to contain young high-mass protostars. SCUBA observations of the dust emission are used to help distinguish…
Nowadays the ever increasing algorithmic complexity of embedded applications requires the designers to turn towards heterogeneous and highly integrated systems denoted as SoC (System-on-a-Chip). These architectures may embed CPU-based processors, dedicated datapaths as well as r…
Whiplash Associated Disorder (WAD) is a general term used to describe minor injuries to the neck, mostly as a result of a rear-end motor vehicle collision. Although the injury is defined as minor, the long-term symptoms such as neck pain, stiffness, headache, or concentration di…
The failure of oil well drillstrings due to torsional and longitudinal stresses caused by stick-slip phenomena during the drilling operation causes great expense to industry. Due to the complicated and harsh drilling environment, modelling of the drillstring becomes an essential…
Performance modelling and evaluation has long been considered of paramount importance to computer networks from design through development, tuning and upgrading. These networks, however, have evolved significantly since their first introduction a few decades ago. The Ubiquitous …
This thesis examines the determinants of institutional quality and the process of convergence in the ECOWAS in order to inform policy about the region's deep integration scheme. The first part of the thesis examines the historical changes that took place in the development of co…
The analysis of time series has long been the subject of interest in different fields. For decades time series were analysed with linear models, which have many advantages. Nevertheless, an issue which has been raised is whether there exist other models that can explain and fore…
Irrigation is an essential component of turfgrass management for golf. During dry periods, it helps maintain turf health, stimulates nitrogen uptake, promotes germination, reduces canopy temperature, as well as assures high standards of quality for playability. In recent years, …
This thesis documents research providing improvements in the field of accessibility modelling, which will be of particular interest as computing becomes increasingly ubiquitous. It is argued that a new approach is required that takes into account the dynamic relationship between…
Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more widely used in both military and civilian applications. Some of the largest UAVs have power systems equivalent to that of a military strike jet making power management an important aspect of their design. As they have developed, the…
Scheduling refinery operation promises a big cut in logistics cost, maximizes efficiency, organizes allocation of material and resources, and ensures that production meets targets set by planning team. Obtaining accurate and reliable schedules for execution in refinery plants un…
Alteration in the tone of pulmonary arteries may lead to disease such as pulmonary hypertension often associated with major cardiac complications. This dysfunction is partly in the pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) where the excitation-contraction coupling is modif…
Grazing by domestic livestock is one of the primary ways by which humans have modified landscapes. At low stocking rates livestock grazing can modify vegetation community composition, but at high stocking rates grazing can also reduce vegetation productivity and initiate soil er…
Globally fish production has continued to increase during recent years at a rate exceeding that of human population growth. However the contribution from capture fisheries has remained largely static since the late 1980s with the increase in production being accounted for by dra…
This thesis investigates innovative effluent point-source permitting approaches from an integrated urban wastewater system (UWWS) perspective, and demonstrates that three proposed permitting approaches based on optimal operational or control strategies of the wastewater system a…
Batch reactor is an essential unit operation in almost all batch-processing industries. Different types of reaction schemes (such as series, parallel and complex) and different order of model complexity (short-cut, detailed, etc. ) result in different sets of model equations and…
The current generation of Airbus long-range civil transport aircraft actively control the centre of gravity of the aircraft by adjusting the fuel distribution between the horizontal tail surface and the forward tanks in order to minimise cruise drag. Here, it is proposed that th…
This thesis reports on investigations carried out to study of the effect of horizontal wall jets on rough, fixed and mobile beds in open channel flow. Experimental tests were carried out, using fixed and mobile sediment beds. Computer simulation models for the flow within the je…
Analytical modelling and characterization of Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ) have recently received considerable attention by several researches since WFQ offers the minimum delay and optimal fairness guarantee. However, all previous work on WFQ has focused on developing approximat…