I started this project with the understandning that European hisory has become more important in government documents as a part in a larger European discourse, and that this fact is likely to be reflected in the chools textbooks. Therefore this essay deals with the task of comparing history textbooks over time trying to find changes. Firstly to find out how much space European history is afforded in the textbooks, and secondly how Europe is described and used in the textbooks. In my first task I will use a content analysis and in my second a conceptual analysis. My material consists of eight books and I have three pieces of older educational materials from the years 1949, 1954 and 1962. The contemporary educational material are from 1996, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2011. My overall purpose is to examine the image and the creation of ´Europe´ in textbooks. My hypothesis is that Europe appears more and has a geater significance in newer textbooks. My result shows that the amount of pages in which Europe appears changes between older and newer textbooks, and that the Scandinavian countries appear more at the expence of Europe. World history has also increased in page numbers but not that much. However, Europe apperas more often in the newer textbooks and the term is used in a different way han before. In the older textbooks the term Europe is not that important. But in the newer textbooks the term Europe is often used to explain geogaphical locations and define Europe as a cultural and political project. The older textbooks more foten use synonyms to describe Europe and do not need to define the term nor use it as a cultural and political unit.

J.O. Mallander’s Extended Play (1968) is a sound recording, a readymade, of the counting of votes in two presidential elections in Finland, during 1962 and 1968. A voice repeats monotonously: “Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen…” Although the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen represents, almost personifies, the politics of the post World War II period in Finland, Extended Play does not explicitly address the political. Rather, as this essay argues, it engages in the discourses of power and politics by providing a temporalization of its fixedness, or what Jacques Derrida terms the proper. Extended Play is, in parallel with Derrida’s critique of western metaphysics, a deconstruction in sound that challenges the state ideologies conveyed in the process of the counting of votes, where the presuppositions of the presence of the voice characterizes the ambiguities of power that Kekkonen’s politics of neutrality represent. Mallander’s readymade emerges as a double of the game theory strategies of the Cold War, a mimetic surplus of the administrative control mechanisms of sound recording. Through overturning the dialectics of the original and the copy, where repetition of sound also temporalizes the representation of the proper, it does not unequivocally reproduce its content. As an aural document, repeated and mass-produced as a record, it devalues, therefore, presumptions of origin. Derrida’s idea of “sous rature” initiates, in the discussion of Extended Play as a specific form of conceptual sound art, the notion of sound under erasure, which is not reducible to an auditory or medium-specific practice.

Aircraft conceptual design, as the first design stage, provides major opportunity to compress design cycle time and is the cheapest place for making design changes. However, traditional aircraft conceptual design programs, which are monolithic programs, cannot provide satisfactory functionality to meet new design requirements due to the lack of domain flexibility and analysis scalability. Therefore, we are in need of the next generation aircraft conceptual design environment (NextADE). To build the NextADE, the framework and the data management problem are two major problems that need to be addressed at the forefront. Solving these two problems, particularly the data management problem, is the focus of this research. In this dissertation, a distributed object-oriented framework is firstly formulated and tested for the NextADE. In order to improve interoperability and simplify the integration of heterogeneous application tools, data management is one of the major problems that need to be tackled. To solve this problem, taking into account the characteristics of aircraft conceptual design data, a robust, extensible object-oriented data model is then proposed according to the distributed object-oriented framework. By overcoming the shortcomings of the traditional approach of modeling aircraft conceptual design data, this data model makes it possible to capture specific detailed information of aircraft conceptual design without sacrificing generality. Based upon this data model, a prototype of the data management system, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of the NextADE, is implemented utilizing the state of the art information technologies. Using a general-purpose integration software package to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework and the data management system, the NextADE is initially implemented by integrating the prototype of the data management system with other building blocks of the design environment. As experiments, two case studies are conducted in the integrated design environments. One is based upon a simplified conceptual design of a notional conventional aircraft; the other is a simplified conceptual design of an unconventional aircraft. As a result of the experiments, the proposed framework and the data management approach are shown to be feasible solutions to the research problems.

Internal combustion (IC) engines that consume hydrocarbon fuels have dominated the propulsion systems of air-vehicles for the first century of aviation. In recent years, however, growing concern over rapid climate changes and national energy security has galvanized the aerospace community into delving into new alternatives that could challenge the dominance of the IC engine. Nevertheless, traditional aircraft sizing methods have significant shortcomings for the design of such unconventionally powered aircraft. First, the methods are specialized for aircraft powered by IC engines, and thus are not flexible enough to assess revolutionary propulsion concepts that produce propulsive thrust through a completely different energy conversion process. Another deficiency associated with the traditional methods is that a user of these methods must rely heavily on experts experience and advice for determining appropriate design margins. However, the introduction of revolutionary propulsion systems and energy sources is very likely to entail an unconventional aircraft configuration, which inexorably disqualifies the conjecture of such connoisseurs as a means of risk management. Motivated by such deficiencies, this dissertation aims at advancing two aspects of aircraft sizing: 1) to develop a generalized aircraft sizing formulation applicable to a wide range of unconventionally powered aircraft concepts and 2) to formulate a probabilistic optimization technique that is able to quantify appropriate design margins that are tailored towards the level of risk deemed acceptable to a decision maker. A more generalized aircraft sizing formulation, named the Architecture Independent Aircraft Sizing Method (AIASM), was developed for sizing revolutionary aircraft powered by alternative energy sources by modifying several assumptions of the traditional aircraft sizing method. Along with advances in deterministic aircraft sizing, a non-deterministic sizing technique, named the Probabilistic Aircraft Sizing Method (PASM), was developed. The method allows one to quantify adequate design margins to account for the various sources of uncertainty via the application of the chance-constrained programming (CCP) strategy to AIASM. In this way, PASM can also provide insights into a good compromise between cost and safety.

Taiwan public museums and print medias hold many ¡§blockbusters¡¨ one after another since 1990. This trend started from US then spread to all over the world. The considerable amount of visitors not only solved the financial problem, but also built the field for print media chasing the cultural capital and developing new business model. We can generalize this trend to three concepts, first, Issues of the Administrative Corporation of National Museum, second, the trend of museum marketing, third, new museology. Those concepts break the ossified museum organization system and the icy impression. However, a stream of people and money will bring some doubts, such like exhibition quality goes down, over commercialize, and unprofessional. Most of exhibition assessments about museum are overall assessments which include a wide range. But it's not applicable to blockbuster that happens only once, tours around, and needs inter-organizational cooperation. This study is a case study of ¡§Da Vinci Travelling Exhibition¡¨ which is held by United Daily News Group, National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and National Science and Technology Museum. The research design in this study is based on ¡§Conceptual Model of Service Quality¡¨ and ¡§Extended Model of Service Quality¡¨ which was brought out by Parasuraman, Zeithmal, & Berry. This study counts out the coefficients which existed in the service quality gap theory, then, establish regression. With the regression, we can judge which service gap character will effect customer¡¦s satisfaction of service quality. So that we can point out the way how to improve blockbuster's service quality and build an exhibition assessment driving from customer. This study also investigated the relation among demographic variables and customer¡¦s satisfaction of exhibition service quality. Three findings are revealed. First, demographic variables have significant effect on customer¡¦s attitude toward blockbuster service quality. Second, except for gap character 1(managerial perception), gap character 2(managerial standard)¡Bgap character 3(service performance) and gap character 4(external communication) has a function relationship to the gap 5 was confirmed. Third, Use service gap theory to establish an exhibition service quality assessment is possible.

Paul Ricoeur believes that metaphors not only provide information, but also convey truths. When people express non-image concepts with image-based language, they use metaphor. Reading Biblical metaphor is to look for God through reading. Metaphors are used throughout the Bible as a means of pointing to truths and as a tool to allow readers to recognize God. How has the Bible enabled millions of believers for centuries to serve God despite the limitations of human language? The answer is that God reveals Himself through metaphor, allowing people to know His value. The use of metaphor is not only a literary device designed for aesthetic purposes; the main purpose of metaphor is to express concepts that are difficult to describe directly. This article uses conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) from Metaphors We Live By (Lakeoff & Johnson, 1980, 2003) and blending theory (BT) by Fauconnier and Turner (1995) as analysis strategies for Biblical texts, they are also one kind of tool of organizing information at the same time. Metaphor is a type of inspirational linguistic phenomenon; a linguistic device that enables people¡¦s minds to ascend to a higher place. Biblical metaphors are extremely rich, and this article offers only an initial analytical interpretation of the four main themes of Biblical metaphors: The exploration of God¡¦s nature and attributes; to see the default table of the Old Testament and the intertextuality of the New Testament; the characteristics of believers; and the interactive relationship between God and man, including God¡¦s will for humanity. Using these four basic and essential themes, this study explores how the Bible uses metaphor to convey abstract concepts and relate communications between God and man, as well as exploring how moral lessons are conveyed through metaphors, enabling the average person to understand them. In addition, in a position of Biblical readers to explore how readers use their own experience and cognitive abilities regarding metaphors to ascertain the true meaning of faith, including metaphorical thinking of the solutions, the experience of faith is the extension of the metaphor. ¡¨Christ¡¨ is the necessary key for Biblical interpretation, as well as the metaphor is possible as an edge tool of cognition & expression, that is, Biblical readers can transfer the implication of belief through the modes of metaphor understanding per the information provided by Bible. Using the same principle, the reading technique of metaphorical cognition can be applied to other texts as a method of interpreting meaning¡Xespecially abstract meaning.

This study aims to develop assessment which measures learning progressions for important scientific concepts such as oxidation-reduction (redox) and to identify students¡¦ zone of proximal development (ZPD) through teaching practice incorporating assessment feedback. The assessment items of redox were developed based on the framework of the BEAR (Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research) Assessment System. Six experts from chemistry, science education, and educational assessment, and three high school chemistry teachers with fruitful instructional experiences were recruited into the assessment team. Through 24 panel discussions, 28 ordered multiple-choice items were developed. Two samples of Taiwanese middle-school students participated in the test development: one for item revision and the other for validation. Sample 1 and 2 consisted of 626 middle school students (304 8th graders and 322 9th graders) and 903 9th graders, respectively. The materials for instruction integrated assessment feedback were designed by the researcher and two middle-school science teachers through seven group meetings. A teaching experiment was implemented to examine the effect of assessment feedback on students¡¦ understandings of redox and to identify their ZPD. The teaching experiment employed a quasi-experiment with a non-equivalent-group pretest-posttest design. Participants were 196 eighth graders (101 boys and 95 girls) from three middle schools. The findings showed that (a) the BEAR assessment system and Rasch measurement approaches provided a feasible framework for developing validated tools to assess learning progressions; (b) the empirical data supported students¡¦ learning of redox concept usually progressed ¡§from uni-structure to multi-structure¡¨ and ¡§from discrete sub-concepts to integrated concepts¡¨; (c) the teaching practice integrated assessment feedback effectively facilitated students¡¦ understanding of scientific concepts; (d) the assessment of learning progressions provided a mechanism for identifying students¡¦ ZPD and helped realize the abtract idea of ZPD in teaching practices. The main contributions of the study included (a) demostrating how to carry out the idea of ZPD into teaching practices through linking learning progressions and ZPD; (b) presenting how to apply BEAR assessment system and Rasch techniques to develop tools for assessing learning progressions; (c) developing a set of items for assessing learning progressions of redox and a series of materials for teaching practices integrated assessment feedback.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has set up a mark in the construction industry over a decade. In order to gain benefit of BIM in estimating the project cost at the early stage of construction with the limited data available, a new concept of MacroBIM has been introduced in the industry. However, limited amount of research has been implemented to determine how MacroBIM has been accepted in the construction industry. Most research was focused on the accuracy of the conceptual estimation. This research attempted to determine the effectiveness of MacroBIM process applied at early stages of construction for conceptual cost estimation. Experts from the discipline of architecture, contractor and owners were interviewed and their professional opinions on MacroBIM were analyzed using grounded theory. The results show that, compared to the traditional conceptual estimating process, MacroBIM is an effective method for 1) saving labor hours, 2) conveying assumptions with the help of its visualization capabilities, 3) enhancing the collaboration among the project participants, and 4) evaluating multiple design scenarios. However, fear of using MacroBIM and trust in its outcome existed among some contractors, architects, and owners because this technology has not matured yet. Moreover, the need of interoperability between the MacroBIM tools and MicroBIM tools, such as Revit, has also surfaced in the study.

The subsurface environmental contamination investigation, assessment and remediation of petro-chemical contaminated site have been the most challenging environmental issues of environmental protection. If subsurface environmental mediums like soil and groundwater are contaminated, the investigation and remediation will always be time-consuming and costly even though they could not be cleaned up completely. Groundwater contaminated by chlorinated volatile solvents is more difficult to remedy owing to its property of dense non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL). This study focuses on petro-chemicals contaminated site whose subsurface environment is contaminated by chlorinated ethene. The study will also find out the efficient, effective and economic ways to identify and concretely delineate the characterization of subsurface environment and contamination, conduct human health risk management and take risk-based corrective action, so as to formulate an appropriate risk management strategy and solution. Firstly, this study applies a Triad approach to accelerate and streamline the investigation process of contaminated site. Introduction of project systematic planning, dynamic work strategy and in situ, real time survey or direct-push sampling like membrane interface probe, together with off-site measures like physical measurement and chemical analytic testing in laboratory, could reduce the key uncertain characteristics of subsurface environmental contamination and establish the conceptual cite models for health risk assessment cost-effectively. It is estimated that this method could save 6 million NTD and shorten 3 years¡¦ time in site characteristics delineation and remediation. If we wish to make the site defensible via managing the uncertain decision, the integration of Triad approach which is developed by United States Environmental Protection Agency, and Environmental Site Assessment, Accelerated Site Characterization, Health Risk Assessment and Risk-based Corrective action which were developed by American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), are proved in this study that they could help streamline the site characterization and remediation. This study is based on the conceptual site models of Triad Approach, the Risk-based corrective action of ASTM, the Health Risk Assessment and Evaluation Methods for Soil and Groundwater Contaminated Site, and also the software developed by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration. Through the health risk assessment of chlorinated ethenes contaminated site, this research aims to evaluate the quantitative health risk like chemical of concern, environmental medium, and human exposure pathway etc. The result of evaluation showed that the carcinogenic risk of tier 2 is 1.080E-01 which exceeds the acceptable risk-based standard, 1E-06; tier 2¡¦s non-carcinogenic risk, 1.819E+03, also exceeds the acceptable hazard index which is 1. Groundwater poses the highest risk among environmental media, followed by inhalation of vapor from contaminated soil and/or groundwater. The risk of inhalation of top soil particulates is the lowest. The most dangerous carcinogenic exposure of groundwater is using groundwater for shower and washing whose risk is 8.064E-02; the second highest carcinogenic pathway is groundwater ingestion. Trichloroethylene is the key chemical of concern which poses 95.6% of carcinogenic risk among all chemicals of concern. Groundwater ingestion poses the highest non-carcinogenic risk (8.919E+02), and the main chemical of concern is cis-1, 2-dichloroethylene. The main chemical of concern of soil volatilization is cis-1, 2-dichloroethylene, followed by trichloroethylene. If the site in this study wishes to reduce the health risk of human beings, it is suggested to simultaneously implement integrated risk-based corrective actions including institutional control, engineering control and remediation. For institutional control, prohibition of pumping groundwater and pumping well installation is the most cost-effective choice. For engineering control, concrete capping on uncovered surface soil is feasible when dealing with soil contamination. When it comes to groundwater contamination, steel sheet pile containment or pumping well installation could help intercept the migration of groundwater. Regarding remediation, in-situ chemical reduction injection or permeable reactive barrier, incorporated together with monitored natural attenuation are more practicable alternatives, however, they are time-consuming and costly. The process and result of this study could be the basis for managers and/or decision makers of contaminated site to conduct risk-based management and decision making.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of the conceptual change oriented instruction using hands-on activities and traditionally designed chemistry instruction on 10th grade students&rsquo / understanding of gases concept. Also, the effect of instruction on students&rsquo / attitude toward chemistry as a school subject was investigated. The sample of the study consisted of 59 tenth grade students from two chemistry classes in a public high school. This study was conducted during the 2006-2007 fall semester. The classes were randomly assigned as control and experimental groups. Students in the control group were instructed by traditionally designed chemistry instruction whereas students in the experimental group were instructed by the conceptual change oriented instruction accompanied with hands-on activities. Gases concept test and Attitude Scale Toward Chemistry were administered to both groups as a pre-test and post-test to assess the students&rsquo / understanding of gases concepts and to determine their attitudes toward chemistry, respectively. Science Process Skills Test was given only at the beginning of the instruction to determine students&rsquo / science process skills. v The hypotheses were tested by using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The post-test results showed that conceptual change oriented instruction using hands-on activities caused a significantly better acquisition of scientific conceptions related to gases concept. But it was found that treatment has no significant effect on students&rsquo / attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject.