The federal photovoltaics commercialization program

The dissertation presents a political and economic history of the federal government's program to commercialize photovoltaic energy for terrestrial use. Chapter 1 is a detailed history of the program. Chapter 2 is a brief review of the Congressional roll call voting literature. Chapter 3 develops PV benefit measures at the state and Congressional district level necessary for an econometric analysis of PV roll call voting. Chapter 4 presents the econometric analysis.

Because PV power was considerably more expensive than conventional power, the program was designed to make PV a significant power source in the long term, emphasizing research and development, although sizeable amounts have been spent for procurement (direct government purchases and indirectly through tax credits). The decentralized R and D program pursued alternative approaches in parallel, with subsequent funding dependent on earlier progress. Funding rose rapidly in the 1970s before shrinking in the 1980s. Tax credits were introduced in 1978, with the last of the credits due to expire this year.

Major issues in the program have been the appropriate magnitude of demonstrations and government procurement, whether decentralized, residential use or centralized utility generation would first be economic, the role of storage in PV, and the role of PV in a utility's generation mix.

Roll call voting on solar energy (all votes analyzed occurred from 1975-1980) was influenced in a cross-sectional sense by all the influences predicted: party and ideology, local economic benefits of the technology, local PV federal spending and manufacturing, and appropriations committee membership. The cross-sectional results for ideology are consistent with the strongly ideological character of solar energy politics and the timing of funding increases and decreases discussed in Chapter 1. Local PV spending and manufacturing was less significant than ideology or the economic benefits of the technology. Because time series analysis of the votes was not possible, it is not possible to test the role of economic benefits to the nation as a whole.

On the local Tamagawa number conjecture for Tate motives

There is a wonderful conjecture of Bloch and Kato that generalizes both the analytic Class Number Formula and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. The conjecture itself was generalized by Fukaya and Kato to an equivariant formulation. In this thesis, I provide a new proof for the equivariant local Tamagawa number conjecture in the case of Tate motives for unramified fields, using Iwasawa theory and (φ,Γ)-modules, and provide some work towards extending the proof to tamely ramified fields.

A comparison of the costs of operation of the motor bus, Birney safety car, and trolley bus on the local transportation routes in Pasadena

With the installation by the Pacific Electric Railway of a bus system in Pasadena to supplant most of its trolley lines, the problem of the comparison of the costs of the two systems naturally presented itself. The study here undertaken was originally started as just a comparison of the motor bus and Birney Safety Car, but as the work progressed it seemed advisable to include the trolley bus as well - a method of transportation that is comparatively new as far as development is concerned, but which seems to be finding increasing favor in the East.

Influence of local geology on earthquake ground motion

As a simplified approach for estimating theoretically the influence of local subsoils upon the ground motion during an earthquake, the problem of an idealized layered system subjected to vertically incident plane body waves was studied. Both the technique of steady-state analysis and the technique of transient analysis have been used to analyze the problem.

In the steady-state analysis, a recursion formula has been derived for obtaining the response of a layered system to sinusoidally steady-state input. Several conclusions are drawn concerning the nature of the amplification spectrum of a nonviscous layered system having its layer stiffnesses increasing with depth. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effect of layer parameters on the amplification spectrum of a layered system.

In the transient analysis, two modified shear beam models have been established for obtaining approximately the response of a layered system to earthquake-like excitation. The method of continuous modal analysis was adopted for approximate analysis of the models, with energy dissipation in the layers, if any, taken into account. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the accuracy of the models and the effect of a layered system in modifying the input motion.

Conditions are established, under which the theory is applicable to predict the influence of local subsoils on the ground motion during an earthquake. To demonstrate the applicability of the models to actual cases, three examples of actually recorded earthquake events are examined. It is concluded that significant modification of the incoming seismic waves, as predicted by the theory, is likely to occur in well defined soft subsoils during an earthquake, provided that certain conditions concerning the nature of the incoming seismic waves are satisfied.

Structure theorems for noncommutative complete local rings

If R is a ring with identity, let N(R) denote the Jacobson radical of R. R is local if R/N(R) is an artinian simple ring and ∩N(R)ⁱ = 0. It is known that if R is complete in the N(R)-adic topology then R is equal to (B)_n, the full n by n matrix ring over B where E/N(E) is a division ring. The main results of the thesis deal with the structure of such rings B. In fact we have the following.

If B is a complete local algebra over F where B/N(B) is a finite dimensional normal extension of F and N(B) is finitely generated as a left ideal by k elements, then there exist automorphisms g_i,...,g_k of B/N(B) over F such that B is a homomorphic image of B/N[[x₁,…,x_k;g₁,…,g_k]] the power series ring over B/N(B) in noncommuting indeterminates x_i, where x_ib = g_i(b)x_i for all b ϵ B/N.

Another theorem generalizes this result to complete local rings which have suitable commutative subrings. As a corollary of this we have the following. Let B be a complete local ring with B/N(B) a finite field. If N(B) is finitely generated as a left ideal by k elements then there exist automorphisms g₁,…,g_k of a v-ring V such that B is a homomorphic image of V [[x₁,…,x_k;g₁,…,g_k]].

In both these results it is essential to know the structure of N(B) as a two sided module over a suitable subring of B.

Lurking in ULIRGs: Molecular Gas in local Merging Galaxies

Mergers and interacting galaxies are pivotal to the evolution of galaxies in the universe. They are the sites of prodigious star formation and key to understanding the starburst processes: the physical and chemical properties and the dynamics of the molecular gas. ULIRGs or Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies are a result of many of these mergers. They host extreme starbursts, AGNs, and mergers. They are the perfect laboratory to probe the connection between starbursts, black hole accretion and mergers and to further our understanding of star formation and merging.

NGC 6240 and Arp 220 can be considered the founding members of this very active class of objects. They are in different stages of merging and hence are excellent case studies to further our understanding about the merging process. We have imaged the dense star-forming regions of these galaxies at sub-arcsec resolution with CARMA C and B Configurations (2" and 0.5 - 0.8"). Multi-band imaging allows excitation analysis of HCN, HCO⁺, HNC, and CS along with CO transitions to constrain the properties of the gas. Our dataset is unique in that we have observed these lines at similar resolutions and high sensitivity which can be used to derive line ratios of faint high excitation lines.

Arp 220 has not had confirmed X-ray AGN detections for either nuclei. However, our observations indicate HCN/HNC ratios consistent with the chemistry of X-ray Dominated Regions (XDRs) -- a likely symptom of AGN. We calculated the molecular Hydrogen densities using each of the molecular species and conclude that assuming abundances of HNC and HCO⁺ similar to those in galactic sources are incorrect in the case of ULIRGs. The physical conditions in the dense molecular gas in ULIRGs alter these abundances. The derived H2 volume densities are ~ 5 x 10⁴ cm^-3 in both Arp 220 nuclei and ~ 10⁴ cm^-3 in NGC 6240.