The principle of sustainability in the built environment has become much more significant in the past decade, resulting in a push to develop building systems that are more energy efficient, durable, and use fewer natural resources. For residential and light commercial buildings, insulated concrete forms (ICF) have enjoyed increasing popularity for their ability to meet these new demands. ICFs are a stay-in-place concrete formwork system for building structural walls that are also highly insulated, among other benefits. Screen-grid ICFs (SGICF) are a small subset of ICFs that tend to use less concrete than standard ICFs and are sometimes made of recycled materials. These traits make SGICFs attractive, but there is a lack of understanding of their structural characteristics due to their irregular internal concrete structure. Because of this, structures using SGICFs are limited to heights no higher than two stories. Further study should show whether SGICFs structures can safely built to greater heights. This investigation studied two types of SGICFs at a component level in order to gain understanding of their lateral force and drift ratio capacities under cyclic loading. Several variables, including steel reinforcement details, the type of concrete, and the presence of the forms, were altered to measure their impact on the performance of the systems. Test results suggested that the ICF formwork increased lateral strength by up to 100% and lateral deformation capacity by up 60% when compared to identical specimens tested with the formwork removed. Results also showed that confinement of the cement, either by mesh hoops, spiral wire, or fiber-reinforced concrete improved the drift ratio at failure up to 500% when compared to specimens with no confinement material. Computer models were created to gauge their ability to replicate the behavior of the experimental test results. The models typically overestimated the lateral load resistance of the samples by 50-100%, and even more in some cases, depending on the reinforcement. The models were not reliable in determining the drift ratio at which the sample was considered to have failed. In some cases the model failed at 50% lower lateral deformations than the test specimen, while in others the model did not fail at all. Future studies should explore refinements of the models to increase their accuracy and usefulness, as well as accounting for the contributions do to the form material. Future studies should also include using spiral wires, mesh hoops, or fiber reinforced concrete in full-scale walls to verify their efficacy in improving overall wall performance.

The thesis describes the development of a questionnaire to evaluate the services provided by Clackamas County Children's Services Division, including the process of interviewing past clients, examining caseworker statistics sheets, and developing the evaluation instrument.

Notre travail de recherche propose d'envisager et d'étudier la danse en tant qu'activité constructrice de sens. Cette notion complexe a été diversement thématisée et explorée au cours de l'histoire de la danse, mais n'a que rarement été questionnée frontalement. Nous nous appuyons, pour mener à bien cette entreprise, sur les travaux de Susanne Langer, philosophe américaine du XXe siècle dont les ouvrages explorent la question du symbolique. Elle a développé au sujet de la danse une pensée originale, et élaboré des concepts proposant de circonscrire au mieux les processus symboliques à l'oeuvre dans les pratiques non discursives, et en particulier dans l'art. Nous choisissons, plutôt que d’aborder la danse d’un point de vue ontologique, comme une catégorie en soi sous laquelle seraient subsumés certains mouvements, de la considérer comme un événement, dont la survenue peut être intermittente. Approcher la danse sous cet angle offre la possibilité de rendre compte de son éventuelle apparition dans toute forme de mouvement, de la danse artistique à la danse festive, du mime au cinéma, du rite à la création numérique. Ce choix de ne pas réduire a priori le champ d'étude permet a posteriori de redessiner une frontière nette entre la danse et les autres formes de mouvement ou de pratiques corporelles. En effet, notre travail tend à réaffirmer la spécificité fondamentale de la danse, quels que soient les environnements, moments et corps dans lesquels elle apparaît – une spécificité tenant à ses processus symboliques uniques, et aux sens qu'elle peut ainsi construire ou faire émerger. / The aim of our work is to consider and study dance as a sense-Building activity. Sense is a complex notion, which has been variously conceptualized in the course of dance history but merely investigated. In order to do so, we build upon the works of Suzanne Langer, a 20th century American philosopher whose writings explore the concept of “symbol”. She elaborated an original thought about dance and came up with concepts that allowed her to circumscribe the symbolic processes happening during the non-Discursive practices, in art especially. Rather than looking at dance from an ontological point of view or as a category that gathers certain types of moves, we choose to study it as something that may appear on an intermittent basis. Watching dance this way makes it possible for us to give an account of the possibility of its emergence in any kind of movement, whether it happens in the course of artistic dance, festal dance, mime, cinema, rite or within a digital creation. This decision not to reduce a priori the field of study allows us to draw a posteriori a clear distinction between dance and any other kind of moves or bodily practices. Indeed, our work tends to claim the fundamental specificity of dance, whatever environments, moments or bodies in or during which it occurs – a specificity that may be explained by its unique symbolic processes and the meanings or senses it may build or give birth to.

Thesis Title: Liability in Labour Law This diploma thesis deals with the issue of liability in labour law. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the legal regulation of liability in selected areas in the light of current legal regulation as valid in Czech Republic. The thesis is divided into two key parts. The introduction chapters are devoted to the interpretation of generally used terms regarding the legal liability in labour law and also its specifications. This part of the thesis focuses also at the system of prevention, including responsibilities of employers and employees during its execution, and at basic functions of labour law with focal point on the protection function that pervades the whole system of labour law. The conclusion of this first half deals with the summary of current legal regulation of employer's and employee's liability in Czech labour law. The detailed analysis of selected topics, in the view of labour law, is presented in the second part of the thesis. These include remote work, home office and job sharing. In case of remote work and home office we speak about flexible forms of work performance. Despite the popularity and rich use of these abovementioned forms, they are almost omitted by the legislator. Legal regulation is to be found only in one single paragraph of...

Modern cities are under the pressure of big social and building development. The thesis is based on aspects of housing and living of society in 21th century cities. Now China has been an extreme example of rapid urbanization. It gives us an opportunity to gain knowledge about urban development. Based on the analysis of selected examples of urban housing the thesis shows the options for the future alternatives of living. The work was process during my academic internship at Southeast University in Nanjing, China.

Vertical farms, vertical, a word describing the essence of the meaning of this type of cultivation. So why are we building vertical farms in sheet metal halls and using only the potential of racks stacked on top of each other? Let's use the potential of this technology and the great adaptability of plants to the new environment and create a new food source operating locally and in continuous operation. Not only would this benefit from the availability of local and foreign food regardless of the season or the changing climate, but the changes it would bring to the economic gap would have a major impact on reducing intercontinental and intracontinental traffic. This would reduce carbon emissions and reduce agricultural areas that could replace forests that are more environmentally friendly.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第20151号 / 理博第4236号 / 新制||理||1609(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科数学・数理解析専攻 / (主査)准教授 伊藤 哲史, 教授 池田 保, 教授 雪江 明彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in ful llment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering, Johannesburg, 2016 / The aim of this research project is evaluating the application of the Crum-based transformation in solving engineering systems modelled as two-point boundary value problems. The boundary value problems were subjected to the various combinations of Dirichlet, Non-Dirichlet and Affine boundary conditions. The engineering systems that were modelled were in the elds of electrostatics, heat conduction and longitudinal vibrations. Other methods such as the Z-transforms and iterative methods have been discussed. An attractive property of the Crum-based transformation is that it can be applied to cases where the eigenparameters (function of eigenvalues) generated in the discrete case are negative and was therefore chosen to be explored further in this dissertation. An alternative matrix method was proposed and used instead of the algebraic method in the Crum- based transformation. The matrix method was tested against the algebraic method using three unit intervals. The analysis revealed, that as the number of unit intervals increase, there is a general increase in the accuracy of the approximated continuous-case eigenvalues generated for the discrete case. The other observed general trend was that the accuracy of the approximated continuous- case eigenvalues decrease as one ascends the continuous-case eigenvalue spectrum. Three cases: (Affine, Dirichlet), (Affine, Non-Dirichlet) and (Affine, Affine) generated negative eigenparameters. The approximated continuous-case eigenvalues, derived from the negative eigenparameters, were shown not to represent true physical natural frequencies since the discrete eigenvalues, derived from negative eigenparameters, do not satisfy the condition for purely oscillatory behaviour. The research has also shown that the Crum-based transformation method was useful in approximating the shifted eigenvalues of the continuous case, in cases where the generated eigenparameters were negative: since, as the number of unit intervals increase, the post-transformed approximated eigenvalues improved in accuracy. The accuracy was also found to be better in the post-transformed case than in the pre-transformed case. Furthermore, the approximated non-shifted and shifted continuous- case eigenvalues (except the approximated continuous-case eigenvalues generated from negative eigenparameters) satis ed the condition for purely oscillatory behaviour. / MT2017

This thesis examines how usability and design improvements affect user engagement on a website. By conducting interviews and analysing user behaviour and feedback related to a job application form, the study demonstrates that enhancements in usability and design can lead to improved quality in user responses. Specifically, an increase in the length and quality of text field input was observed, along with improved responses regarding profile pictures, links, and documents. However, there are certain limitations to consider, including the fact that participants were aware of the monitoring during the interviews, which could influence the authenticity of the results. Additionally, other factors that could have influenced user engagement were not taken into account, making it difficult to solely attribute the changes to usability and design improvements.