Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1923. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-110).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Adviser: Joseph P. Noonan. Submitted to the Dept. of Electrical Engineering. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-149). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / From implementation of Polytechnic teaching in Rio Grande do Sul, note if a need crescent way the need to work in the interdisciplinary way, performing articulations among different disciplines and the topics studied in basic school. Thus, it appeared the need to do a link between topics studied in Math with those studied in Nature Sciences field, since these need the mathematical concepts to be developed. This paper does some connections between these disciplines using share knowledge to become the contents more attractive and connected to the students reality. This was done by means of workshops, applied to students of first and second years of high polytechnic education in a public school in Santa Maria, RS, using the apprehended concepts in the study of function topic, and applying these concepts in the Nature Sciences field, that is, in Physics, Biology and Chemistry, by means, mainly of graph analysis, developed with the software Geogebra. This way the students were capable to establish relations between the content studied in Mathematics and the different contents studied in Nature Sciences field, applying the acquired knowledge to interpret the proposed problems in other disciplines. / A partir da implantação do ensino Politécnico no Rio Grande do Sul, nota-se de maneira crescente a necessidade de trabalharmos de forma interdisciplinar, realizando articulações entre as diferentes disciplinas e os assuntos estudados na escola básica. Assim, surgiu a necessidade de fazer uma ligação entre conteúdos estudados em Matemática com aqueles vistos em disciplinas da área das Ciências da Natureza, uma vez que essas necessitam de conceitos matemáticos para serem desenvolvidas. Este trabalho realiza algumas conexões entre estas disciplinas utilizando-se dos conhecimentos compartilhados para tornar os conteúdos mais atrativos e conectados à realidade dos alunos. Isso foi feito por meio de oficinas, aplicadas a alunos de primeiro e segundos anos do ensino médio politécnico de uma escola pública se Santa Maria, RS, utilizando os conceitos apreendidos no estudo do tema Funções e aplicando estes conceitos na área das Ciências da Natureza, ou seja, em Física, Biologia e Química, por meio, principalmente da análise dos gráficos, realizada com o auxílio do software GeoGebra. Dessa forma, os alunos foram capazes de estabelecer relações entre o conteúdo estudado em Matemática e os diferentes conteúdos estudados nas Ciências da Natureza, aplicando os conhecimentos adquiridos para interpretar os problemas propostos das outras disciplinas.

This thesis presents a new integrated tool and decision support framework to approach complex problems resulting from the interaction of many multi-criteria issues. The framework is embedded in an integrated tool called OUTDO (Oxford University Tool for Decision Organisation). OUTDO integrates Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), decision rationale management with a modified Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) representation, and probabilistic forecasting to effectively capture the essential reasons why decisions are made and to dynamically re-use the rationale. In doing so, it allows exploration of how changes in external parameters affect complicated and uncertain decision making processes in the present and in the future. Once the decision maker constructs his or her own decision process, OUTDO checks if the decision process is consistent and coherent and looks for possible ways to improve it using three new semantic-based decision support approaches. For this reason, two ontologies (the Decision Ontology and the Energy Ontology) were integrated into OUTDO to provide it with these semantic capabilities. The Decision Ontology keeps a record of the decision rationale extracted from OUTDO and the Energy Ontology describes the energy generation domain, focusing on the water requirement in thermoelectric power plants. A case study, with the objective of recommending electricity generation and steam condensation technologies for ten different regions in the UK, is used to verify OUTDO’s features and reach conclusions about the overall work.