This thesis is a continuation of design automation studies within research projects financed by VINNOVA (the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems) and Knowledge foundation that contributed to the development of producibility assessment system at a global aerospace products supplier, GKN Aerospace Sweden. A case study was carried at the company on Turbine Rear Structure (TRS) component design of a jet engine with the main objective to evaluate weld producibility assessment tools and to demonstrate system’s performance in multi-disciplinary design environment. The context of this thesis is a set-based product design development where several studies, i.e. thermal, structural, aerodynamic etc. are carried concurrently to gather knowledge between their parameter relations. The thesis contributes to the goal of fully integrated producibility assessment in multi-disciplinary studies to support product development process. The problems encountered during the thesis execution involved systematic analysis setup to extract and verify CAD geometry data, assessment of meaningfulness of producibility indicators, development of semi-automated data post-processing module and relating product design to its manufacturing aspects. Commercial and in-house developed software were used extensively to demonstrate the results of the system with the help of continuous company support to mitigate indispensable bottlenecks along the way. The work has led to systematic improvements, determined assessment limitations and most relevant weld producibility aspects. Collected feedback to evaluate prepared demonstrator showed promising results to support product design decisions considering both performance and producibility.

Dans un contexte d’économie des connaissances, le brevet est utilisé de différentes manières par les pouvoirs publics et les inventeurs pour l’incitation à l’innovation, la protection et la diffusion des connaissances. Le but est de cette thèse de faire une analyse du système de brevet. Pour ce faire, nous proposons une nouvelle approche du brevet qui prend en compte, les spécificités sectorielles. Nous appelons ainsi cette approche, système sectoriel de brevets. Partant de l’analyse standard fondée sur le principe du « one size fits for all », nous élaborons une grille d’analyse qui tient compte de la nature des connaissances à protéger. Le processus d’apprentissage, la base de connaissances, les opportunités technologiques, la spécificité du savoir et les conditions générales d’appropriation, sont les constitutifs de la grille. Ils permettent de classer les technologies en deux types : technologies complexes et technologies discrètes. De cette classification, nous en déduisons les stratégies et les usages sectoriels de brevets. Nous montrons que, dans les technologies discrètes, cas de la pharmacie et des biotechnologies, les brevets protègent efficacement les inventeurs, et les stratégies de brevets dominantes sont de type fencing, evergreening. Tandis que, pour les technologies complexes, cas de l’électronique et des logiciels, le brevet est considéré comme étant peu efficace. De ce fait, il est complété par d’autres moyens de protection comme la complexité technologique, l’avance technologique, le secret, le copyright, pour lutter contre l’imitation, l’invention autour. Les stratégies de brevets font apparaître des phénomènes de type patent thicket. / In a context of knowledge economy, patents are used in different ways by the government and inventors the incentive for innovation, protection and dissemination of knowledge. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the patent system. To do this, we propose a new approach to the patent which takes into account sectoral specificities. We thus call this approach, sectoral system of patents. Starting from the standard analysis, based on the principle of "one size fits for all", we develop an analytical framework that takes into account the nature of knowledge to protect. The process of learning, knowledge base, technological opportunities, the specificity of knowledge and general conditions of appropriability, are the base of the model. They allow to classify the technologies into two types : complex technologies and discrete technologies. In this classification, we deduce strategies and sectoral uses of patents. We show that in discrete technologies, like the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnologies, patents effectively protect inventors and the dominants types of patent strategies are fencing and evergreening. While for complex technologies, electronics and software, the patent is considered inefficient. Thus, it is supplemented by other means of protection such as technological complexity, technological advance, the secret, copyright, to fight against copying the invention around. The patent strategies reveal phenomena such patent thicket, bulks.

This dissertation describes a research study conducted to determine the benefits and use of ontology technologies to support a simulation environment that evaluates countermeasures employed to protect military aircraft. Within the military, aircraft represent a significant investment and these valuable assets need to be protected against various threats, such as man-portable air-defence systems. To counter attacks from these threats, countermeasures are deployed, developed and evaluated by utilising modelling and simulation techniques. The system described in this research simulates real world scenarios of aircraft, missiles and countermeasures in order to assist in the evaluation of infra-red countermeasures against missiles in specified scenarios. Traditional ontology has its origin in philosophy, describing what exists and how objects relate to each other. The use of formal ontologies in Computer Science have brought new possibilities for modelling and representation of information and knowledge in several domains. These advantages also apply to military information systems where ontologies support the complex nature of military information. After considering ontologies and their advantages against the requirements for enhancements of the simulation system, an ontology was constructed by following a formal development methodology. Design research, combined with the adaptive methodology of development, was conducted in a unique way, therefore contributing to establish design research as a formal research methodology. The ontology was constructed to capture the knowledge of the simulation system environment and the use of it supports the functions of the simulation system in the domain. The research study contributes to better communication among people involved in the simulation studies, accomplished by a shared vocabulary and a knowledge base for the domain. These contributions affirmed that ontologies can be successfully use to support military simulation systems / Computing / M. Tech. (Information Technology)

No description available.

O presente trabalho propõe pesquisar a relação entre processos mentais, improvisação musical e performance. Realiza essa investigação partindo da perspectiva da psicologia cognitiva das décadas de 1980 e 1990 que concebe a improvisação musical enquanto um sistema de expertise. Incorpora à pesquisa as novas abordagens fundamentadas em princípios da neurociência realizadas na primeira década do século XXI, que investigam a improvisação enquanto um comportamento criativo espontâneo e, através de experimentos com neuroimagem funcional, buscam as possíveis bases cerebrais para a criatividade. O objetivo deste estudo é apropriar-se de parte do conhecimento produzido pela psicologia cognitiva e pela neurociência acerca dos mecanismos psicológicos e neurobiológicos que geram a improvisação, a fim de sugerir possíveis interfaces entre esse conhecimento, as rotinas de estudo do músico improvisador e as estratégias pedagógicas do professor de improvisação. / This paper intends to research the relationship between mental processes, musical improvisation and performance. The investigation starts from the cognitive psychology perspective in the 1980s and 1990s, considered a system of expertise, and go forward on new approaches, based on principles of neuroscience from the first decade of this century, that understood the cognitive psychology as a creative and spontaneous behavior. Through experiments with functional neuroimaging, the study reffered here in seeks the possible cerebral basis for creativity. The aim of this study is to appropriate part of the knowledge, produced by cognitive psychology and neuroscience, about the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that generate improvisation. The research suggests, eventually, possible interfaces between cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the routines of study for an improvising musician and the pedagogical strategies of a teacher of improvisation.

Verification of knowledge-bases is a critical step to ensure the quality of a knowledge-based system. The success of these systems depends heavily on how qualitative the knowledge is. Manual verification is however cumbersome and error prone, especially for large knowledge-bases. This thesis provides a design theory, based upon the suggested framework by Gregor and Jones (2007). The theory proposes a general design of automated verification tools, which have the abilities of verifying heuristic knowledge in rule-based systems utilizing certainty factors. Included is a verification of completeness and consistency technique customized to this class of knowledge-based systems. The design theory is instantiated in a real-world verification tool development project at Uppsala University. Considerable attention is given to the design and implementation of this artifact – uncovering issues and considerations involved in the development process. For the knowledge management practitioner, this thesis offers guidance and recommendations for automated verification tool development projects. For the IS research community, the thesis contributes with extensions of existing design theory, and reveals some of the complexity involved with verification of a specific rule-based system utilizing certainty factors.

This work presents mainly two contributions to Description Logics (DLs) research by means of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) methods: supporting bottom-up construction of DL knowledge bases, and completing DL knowledge bases. Its contribution to FCA research is on the computational complexity of computing generators of closed sets.

The focus of this thesis is on describing and analysing recently graduated physicians’ and engineers’ experiences of the relationship between the professional education programs and the respective professional practices. The aim is to explore the professionals’ reasons for their educational and career choices, what they learn in professional education, the demands they encounter in the workplace, and the perceived needs and opportunities for learning and further development in their professional practices. This study is based on a comparative design and the empirical data have been collected in interviews with physicians and master’s level engineers in information technology. The theoretical framework is structured around three parts, consisting of theories of professionalisation, theories concerned with the functions of higher education, and theories concerned with the concepts of knowledge, competence and qualifications. There is a close relationship between the process of professionalisation, the authority of the professions, the legitimacy of professional knowledge, and the higher education institutions. The results indicate that theory and practice are intimately integrated in the physicians’ professional education, whereas the engineers’ experiences of the educational program are characterised by little overlap between theory and practice. Furthermore, the physicians emphasise the importance of theoretical specialist knowledge and socio-communicative competence while the engineers instead stress the importance of generalist competence. The educational knowledge base is relatively static for both physicians and engineers. However, whereas there is a correspondence between the educational and the professional knowledge base in the case of the physicians they are only a loosely coupled in the case of the engineers. This can be attributed to the changing nature of the engineers’ professional knowledge base, which is characterised by constant change. The physicians regard their professional education as a rational preparation for the world of work. Although education does provide a general foundation for further professional development and learning, the engineers associate their professional education more with a symbolic ritual. For physicians, the formal credentials are a legal requirement to practise the profession. Education is regarded as constituting an important credential also for the engineers as it increases individual employability. The physicians tend to emphasise the use value of the educational program, while the engineers instead stress the exchange value of their educational program.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:35:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4495.pdf: 942091 bytes, checksum: 081323303118fcd38c830ac4fe44e9e0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-04-20 / According to current scenery on knowledge production about teachers education, especially on initial formation within courses of degree, this work has intended to defend that there is an opportunity of diversification and deepening of the knowledge basis for the teaching during long duration supervised traineeship determined by Biological Sciences graduation in UFSCar. The research was oriented by the following question: Which elements of the teaching knowledge basis have been constructed by Biological Sciences Graduation students in the end of their initial formation process? From this question, the objective was developed: (1) to identify the dialogical construction of knowledge (that comprises the knowledge base) revealed by students writings and speeches from the dialogical construction process. Lee Shulman (Knowledge Basis) served as Theoretical Reasons, consider the processes of pedagogical reasoning and action. The process of teacher formation includes shared long duration regencies besides traineeship of observation. In order to investigate this process, we required some data generator instruments: (a) interpretation of eighteen participants metaphors and (b) the second year of traineeship closure conversation with seven students. Our study presents the category General Pedagogical Knowledge as the most representative regarding to teaching knowledge basis, when both the self-dialogue and the face to face dialogue were considered. The Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge were categories with lower expressiveness. The dialogically constructed outlines within knowledge basis were: (1) on teaching planning, (2) on elements of teaching-learning and (3) on students and their history. / Partindo do contexto recente da produção de conhecimentos sobre a formação de professores, especificamente sobre a formação inicial em cursos de licenciatura, esta investigação pretendeu defender a tese da possibilidade de construção da base de conhecimento para o ensino desde a sua formação inicial, com condução dialogada baseada na ação-reflexão-ação, nos períodos de estágio supervisionado de longa duração previstos pelo projeto pedagógico do curso de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas da UFSCar. A seguinte questão orientou a pesquisa: Quais elementos da base de conhecimento para o ensino são construídos por estudantes de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas ao final de seu processo de formação inicial com condução dialogada, em estágio supervisionado com regência de longa duração? Desdobraram-se desta questão os seguintes objetivos: (1) identificar evidências de conhecimentos construídos por meio dos processos de raciocínio pedagógico, que compõem a base de conhecimento para o Ensino, reveladas pelas mentes de estudantes de licenciatura participantes desta investigação a partir de instrumentos que trazem suas escritas e falas contextualizadas em processo inicial de aprendizagem da docência; especificamente, (2) identificar os processos de raciocínio pedagógicos envolvidos na construção da base inicial de conhecimento para o ensino e (3) considerar as ações de ensinar e de ser professor, que compõem a docência, na construção de conhecimentos das mentes de estudantes de licenciatura. Assumimos nesta investigação como fundamentação teórica estudos de Lee Shulman (base de conhecimento e processo de raciocínio pedagógico). O contexto de formação em estágio previa não apenas estágio de observação, mas também regências compartilhadas de longa duração. Metodologicamente, para a investigação utilizou-se como instrumentos geradores de dados: (a) interpretação de metáforas dos 18 participantes e (b) uma conversa de encerramento do segundo ano de estágio com 7 estudantes, dos 18, que estagiaram num mesmo ano do Ensino Fundamental. Como resultados, considerando a docência e suas ações de Ensinar e de Ser Professor, evidenciou-se a categoria Conhecimentos Pedagógicos Gerais que compõem a base de conhecimento da docência, como a mais representativa, dados os instrumentos de coleta de dados. As outras duas categorias, Conhecimento do Conteúdo Específico e Conhecimento Pedagógico do Conteúdo, foram evidenciadas com menor expressividade. Alguns dos principais elementos construídos nas categorias da base foram conhecimentos (1) sobre planejamento de ensino, (2) sobre elementos constitutivos do processo de ensino e de aprendizagem e (3) sobre os alunos e seu contexto, correspondendo e identificando como centrais os processos do raciocínio pedagógico de transformação, instrução e reflexão.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:35:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5091.pdf: 2353289 bytes, checksum: a03a2b48adaadd1d406e11e67b689dbe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-28 / In this investigation, the aim is to analyse the contributions and limits of a continuous online training project for the professional development of teachers of the 1st year of basic education. The research question is: What are the limits and contributions of an online teacher-training course in the professional development of teachers? This development is related to the learning and teaching processes and of being a professional teacher, and acts as a knowledge basis for teaching. The methodological reference adopted is supported by a constructive-collaborative interaction model between teachers and researchers and focusses on the construction of investigation strategies and the promotion of professional development processes for teachers. The training strategies used were carried out in distance mode through the digital learning environment of the Teachers portal of the UFSCar. The course, with a total of 120 hours and focussing on teaching the initial years of primary education, was developed in the period between Sept. 2010 and May 2011. It was based on the understanding that professional teacher development takes place throughout their careers and continuous teacher training can contribute to this process. Its contributions and limitations are being investigated through the eyes of the teachers, that is, we take into account what they told us in the different data collection instruments and at different points of the training process. Our interpretations are based on the learning, the difficulties and the teacher knowledge required to teach the 1st year of primary education. The narratives constructed during the interventions by three experienced teachers represent the data interpreted in the study. Other instruments used in this process are: reflective memorials, training reports, teaching cases, reflective journals, a forum, individual summaries on a reference framework on the student knowledge base, and an initial questionnaire. As a result of the investigation, it was found that there was a contribution to professional teacher development in the following aspects: the training content contextualized to the teaching work carried out in the initial years; the feedback on what the participating group`s investigation found; sharing experiences on literacy with teachers from different Brazilian states; the possibility of reviewing the inherent role when teaching the 1st year of basic education; the discussion of the knowledge that composes the teaching basis; the specifics of the teaching content; the overall pedagogy and the pedagogical content. The limits are related to the difficulties in obtaining effective participation from all the teachers and the challenges presented by the dynamic and flexible digital learning environments used to create a collaborative network. / Nesta investigação, objetiva-se analisar as contribuições e limites de um projeto de formação continuada on-line para o desenvolvimento profissional de professores do 1º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Tal desenvolvimento está relacionado aos processos de aprendizagem de aprender a ensinar e a ser um profissional docente e serve como base de conhecimento para o ensino. O referencial metodológico adotado apoia-se num modelo construtivo-colaborativo de interação entre professores-pesquisadores e teve como foco a construção de estratégias de investigação e de promoção de processos de desenvolvimento profissional docente. Essas foram realizadas em curso na modalidade à distância, com acesso viabilizado pelo ambiente digital de aprendizagem do Portal dos Professores/UFSCar. O curso, com enfoque na docência dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental, com carga horária de 120 horas, foi desenvolvido no período de setembro de 2010 a maio de 2011. Com a compreensão que o desenvolvimento profissional docente acontece ao longo da carreira e a formação continuada de professores pode contribuir nesse processo. Numa perspectiva em que as contribuições e limites estão sendo investigados na ótica das falas das professoras, ou seja, o que elas nos informaram em diferentes instrumentos de coletas, como também em diferentes momentos do processo formativo. Nossas interpretações tem base nas aprendizagens e dificuldades, bem como, nos conhecimentos docentes necessários para atuar no 1º ano do Ensino Fundamental. As narrativas docentes, de três professoras experientes, construídas durante a intervenção são os dados interpretados na pesquisa. Os instrumentos utilizados nesse processo são: memorial reflexivo, relato de formação, casos de ensino, diário reflexivo, fórum, síntese individual em quadro de referência sobre a base de conhecimento do estudante e questionário. Como resultado da investigação, constatou-se a contribuição, para o desenvolvimento profissional docente, dos seguintes aspectos: o conteúdo da formação, contextualizado ao trabalho do docente em exercício nos anos iniciais e em particular no 1º ano; os feedbacks com devolutivas que inquiriram o grupo participante; o compartilhamento de experiências sobre alfabetização com professores de diferentes estados do Brasil; a possibilidade de revisitar o processo de ensino e aprendizagem no exercício da docência do 1º ano do Ensino Fundamental; a discussão dos conhecimentos que compõem a base da docência: o específico do conteúdo, o pedagógico geral e o pedagógico do conteúdo. E os limites estão relacionados às dificuldades na participação efetiva de todas as professoras e aos desafios pertinentes aos ambientes digitais de aprendizagem dinâmicos e flexíveis, para formação de uma rede colaborativa.