This project explores methods to build habitats on the moon. It specifically explores the design of an interior modular system for inflatable habitats. Lunar Architecture can broadly be divided into three stages, pre-integrated, semi-integrated and built on site. Pre-integrated habitats, are fully assembled on earth and shipped with a rocket to the Moon, which has initial practicality, but constrains structure size to a rockets cargo space. Inflatable habitats fall under the semi-integrated category, which means that all the added interior volume created after inflation, will need to be built out onsite. It makes most sense to design a well-functioning modular system for this purpose, as modularity can provided the required redundancy and minimize the total amount of unique parts needed. The system needs to be lightweight, compact when stored, yet versatile enough to create flexible and engaging interiors. The project asks what a self-sufficient architecture in a lunar context would look like, if it were built with a modular approach and if it is possible to create sustainable, engaging environments through modularity.

This thesis addresses innovation in affordable housing. Many people face homelessness or suffer from the burden of renting a house that they cannot afford. In Boston, Massachusetts only 35% of the population are homeowners, resulting in more people renting in the city if they manage to find housing there at all. The increasing cost of housing in the United States presents a significant obstacle for immigrant families, many of whom are already struggling to make a living due to language barriers and limited access to employment opportunities. As housing prices continue to rise across the country, immigrant families face mounting challenges in securing safe and affordable housing, which can result in overcrowding, homelessness, and other adverse outcomes that exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities. To address the housing problem this research engages the solution of high-quality affordable housing for immigrant families in Chelsea, MA (a suburban neighborhood of Boston) by analyzing density and methods of prefabrication. Along with the solution of affordability, the intellectual node of the thesis also discusses the importance of suburbia and its advantage vi of providing a nurturing community. This thesis intends to develop certain functional parameters of design using a Prefabricated Panelized Approach. The prefabricated design for affordability approach provides a technique which can save time and money using off-site manufacturing of products and on-site assembly. This kind of development offers an opportunity to optimize the construction process and an efficient way to build affordable housing. Through this approach, the thesis intends to provide opportunities for home ownership, promote a sense of community among immigrant families, and offer language support to facilitate their growth.

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) play a critical role in various industries, automating processes and efficiency optimization. However, these systems have security vulnerabilities that make them prone to cyber attacks, so it is crucial to have strong access control mechanisms in place. This master thesis focuses on the investigation, development, and evaluation of workflow-driven dynamic authorization for modular automation systems. The authorization enables specifying of policies that can adapt in real-time to the dynamic security environment of ICSs. Furthermore, the thesisexplores the efficiency of authorization in terms of execution time, memory consumption, andtoken size through experimental evaluation. The experimental evaluation compares three variationsof token population: a baseline approach that directly encodes accesscontrol list permissions into the token, and two token population algorithms that aim to reduce thetoken size by replacing permissions with overlapping roles. The results show that the baseline approach achieves the shortest execution time and lowest memory consumption, but leads to increased token sizes. On the other hand, the token population algorithms reduce the token size at the costof increased execution time and memory consumption. The choice between these approaches wouldinvolve trade-offs and would depend on the specific requirements of the ICSs environment. / InSecTT

Research suggests a link between gratitude and subjective well-being exists. Research on gratitude practices have shown to increase gratitude, subjective well-being, and other related outcomes. However, the efficacy of gratitude practices may be limited by the rote application of the gold standard gratitude practice--the gratitude journal. Such findings suggest that a more comprehensive, adaptable, and flexible gratitude practice may be needed. This study examined the efficacy of the My Best Self 101 (MBS101) gratitude module: an online gratitude resource that provides psychoeducation about gratitude along with a menu of empirically based gratitude practices. Using a randomized controlled design method, this study compared using the MBS101 gratitude module to using a gratitude journal for 21 days. The sample consisted of 225 adults recruited online and through university research systems. Seemingly unrelated regression models were used to analyze gratitude and subjective well-being outcomes between groups as well as the interaction between time spent on gratitude practice and group assignment. Compared to the gratitude journaling group, the MBS101 group had significantly better outcomes on gratitude and subjective well-being. Additionally, when the time and group interaction was added, the MBS101 group had greater increases in benefits for gratitude and subjective well-being with increased time spent. Further research is required to support these findings.

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The design of modular products has recently become the focus of significant research in the area of design theory and methodology. This focus is the result of increased awareness of the potential power of modularity to achieve certain product objectives. However, there continues to be a gap between the results of academic research and industrial application. The refinement, consolidation, and extension of this academic research would help design teams who are charged with developing modular products to use these academic findings in real world, industrial applications. The research presented in this document focuses on developing design tools, based on past and present academic research, for use in industrial settings where the design of a modular product is the goal. In this document the many definitions and methods for classifying modular products are consolidated and refined. Through thisrefinement and consolidation a new scheme for classifying modularity types, the Modularity Type Space (MTS), is developed that not only succinctly defines the types of modularity, but shows the relationships between them. Metrics and heuristics are also presented that are helpful in identifying the type of modularity a product uses in its architecture. The MTS is presented as a tool to help design teams screen modular product designs for the purposes of concept selection based on the strategic goals that the product must achieve. Several examples, as well as a case study, are presented in this document to show how to use the tools contained herein and to illustrate their usefulness. With the modular product design tools developed in this document, design teams will be able to more quickly and cost-effectively design modular products that meet their desired strategic objectives.

Serre's conjecture on the modularity of Galois representations makes a connection between two-dimensional Galois representations and modular forms. A conjecture by Ash, Doud, and Pollack generalizes Serre's to higher-dimensional Galois representations. In this paper we discuss an explicit computational example supporting the generalized claim. An ambiguity in a calculation within the example is resolved using a method of complex approximation.

Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) is a common reliability technique for mitigating single event upsets (SEUs) in FPGA designs operating in radiation environments. For FPGA systems that employ configuration scrubbing, majority voters are needed in all feedback paths to ensure proper synchronization between the TMR replicates. Synchronization voters, however, consume additional resources and impact system timing. This work introduces and contrasts seven algorithms for inserting synchronization voters while automatically performing TMR. The area cost and timing impact of each algorithm on a number of circuit benchmarks is reported. The work demonstrates that one of the algorithms provides the best overall timing performance results with an average 8.5% increase in critical path length over a triplicated design without voters and a 29.6% area increase. Another algorithm provides far better area results (an average 3.4% area increase over a triplicated design without voters) at a slightly higher timing cost (an average 14.9% increase in critical path length over a triplicated design without voters). In addition, this work demonstrates that restricting synchronization voter locations to flip-flop output nets is an effective heuristic for minimizing the timing performance impact of synchronization voter insertion.

Natural and predictable changes in consumer needs often require the development of new products. Providing solutions that anticipate, account for, and allow for these changes over time is a significant challenge to manufacturers and design engineers. Products that adapt to these changes through the addition of modules reduce production costs through product commonality and provide a set of products that cater to customization and adaptation. In this thesis, a multiobjective optimization design method using s-Pareto frontiers – sets of non-dominated designs from disparate design models - is developed and used to identify a set of optimal adaptive product designs that satisfy changing consumer needs. The novel intent of the method is to design a product that adapts to changing consumer needs by moving from one location on the s-Pareto frontier to another through the addition of a module and/or reconfiguration. The six-step method is described as follows: (A) Characterize the multiobjective design space. (B) Identify the anticipated regions of interest within the search space based on predicted future needs. (C) Identify the platform design variables that minimize the performance losses due to commonality across the anticipated regions of interest. (D) Assemble the s-Pareto frontier within each region of interest. (E) Determine the values of all design variables for the optimal product design in each region of interest by multiobjective optimization. (F) Identify the module design variables, and identify the platform and module designs by constrained module design. An example of the design of a simple unmanned air vehicle is used to demonstrate application of the method for a single Pareto frontier case. The design of a manual irrigation pump is used to demonstrate application of the method for a s-Pareto frontier case. In addition, these examples show the ability of the method to design a product that adapts to changing consumer needs by traversing the s-Pareto frontier.

The use of multiobjective optimization in identifying systems that account for changes in customer needs, operating environments, system design concepts, and analysis models over time is generally not explored. Providing solutions that anticipate, account for, and allow for these changes over time is a significant challenge to manufacturers and design engineers. Products that adapt to these changes through the addition and/or subtraction of modules can reduce production costs through product commonality, and cater to customization and adaptation. In terms of identifying sets of non-dominated designs, these changes result in the concept of dynamic Pareto frontiers, or dynamic s-Pareto frontiers when sets of system concepts are simultaneously evaluated over time. In this dissertation, a five-step optimization-based design method identifying a set of optimal adaptive product designs that satisfy the predicted changes by moving from one location on the dynamic s-Pareto frontier to another through the addition of a module and/or through reconfiguration is developed. Development of this five-step method was separated into four phases. The first two phases of developments respectively focus on Pareto and s-Pareto cases, where changes in concepts, models, and environments that would effect the Pareto/s-Pareto frontier are ignored due to limitations in traditional optimization problem formulations. To overcome these limitations, and allow for these changes, the third phase of developments presents a generic optimization formulation capable of identifying a dynamic s-Pareto frontier, while the fourth phase adapts the phase three method to incorporate this new dynamic optimization formulation. Example implementations of the four phases of developments were respectively provided through the design of a modular UAV, a hurricane and flood resistant modular residential structure, a simple aircraft design example inspired by the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, and a modular truss system. Noting that modular products only represent one approach for dealing with changes in preferences, environments, models, and concepts, the final research contribution connects the presented method with parallel research developments in collaborative product design and design principles identification, followed by two case study implementations of this unifying design approach in the development of a modular irrigation pump and a modular plywood cart for developing countries.