This thesis argues that Chinese firms can catch up with the technological frontier in the scope of new climate friendly energy technologies and provides a detailed study of the case of wind power.

Existing surveys demonstrate that in the United States, most homeowners believe that their home insurance coverage will cover the complete costs to rebuild their home in the event of a total loss. Yet, most dwellings are insured for an amount…

This research looks at the efficiency and effectiveness of the United States Child
Welfare System. Specifically, it focuses on the lack of standardization in the system
as well as the relationship between the two main institutions involved in the
system—Child…

GPUs are flexible parallel processors capable of accelerating real applications. To exploit them, programmers rewrite programs in new languages using intimate knowledge of the underlying hardware. This is a step backwards in abstraction and ease of use from sequential programming.…

In this paper, a human action recognition method is presented in which pose representation is based on the contour points of the human silhouette and actions are learned by making use of sequences of multi-view key poses. Our contribution is…

To investigate the influence of input from fellow group members in a constrained decision-making context, we develop four 2-armed bandit tasks in which subjects freely select one of two options (A or B) and are informed of the resulting reward…

This dissertation concerns itself with the effects of education and wealth on health in Africa. The first two chapters focus on the impact of adult education levels on the HIV epidemic in four sub-Saharan countries. The last chapter turns to…

Human neurocysticercosis is a disease caused by the ingestion of Taenia solium eggs, which are released in faeces within the final segments or proglottids of the parasite. Since sewage has been used to irrigate vegetables, it was considered for a…

Purpose: This paper is the result of empirical research funded by The British Academy. The overall purpose of the study is to investigate the initial barriers to internationalization experienced and perceived by small retailers based in the UK and the…

Using the underlying idea of the current-mode control, a new dynamical, sliding-mode control for the boost dc-dc converter is proposed. Such controller is easy to design, robust under load and input voltage variations, exhibits fast response, does not depend on…