Vibration in Spark-Blown Closed Quill Tubes: Electric Oscillation

Drawing a spark from darkness: John Walsh and electric fish.

John Walsh's research on electric fish, carried out between 1772 and 1775, proved fundamental for demonstrating that electricity might be involved in animal physiology, and, moreover, in favouring a period of great progress in both the physiology and physics of electrical phenomena. However, Walsh is hardly known to modern neuroscientists and is largely neglected by science historians also. One...

Fire in the Quill

The interest that the discipline ‘‘history of neuroscience’’ receives today among students and teachers of the neurosciences can be witnessed during the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, where the rows reserved for posters on the topic are fully deserted, and serve as space for a quiet lunch rather than an information and discussion forum. This disinterest is of course partially forced b...

Electrostatic vibration-to-electric energy conversion

Ultra-Low-Power electronics can perform useful functions with power levels as low as 170 nW. This makes them amenable to powering from ambient sources such as vibration. In this case, they can become autonomous. Motivated by this application, this thesis provides the necessary tools to analyze, design and fabricate MEMS devices capable of electrostatic vibration-to-electric energy conversion at...

Vibration Diagnostics for Industrial Electric Motor Drives

Oscillation Mitigation in Electric Power Grids via Semidefinite Programming

Inter-area oscillation of angle differences between groups of power generators is considered the precursor of large-scale blackouts. Because of the wide-area interconnection of generators, merely attenuating oscillation at individual sites is insufficient. In this paper, we consider the design of generator parameters and the interconnection strength such that the spectrum of the power system is...