<p>This thesis deals with the development of a Conceptual Design Tool for unmanned helicopters, so called VTOL UAVs. The goal of the Design Tool is:</p><p>• Quick results</p><p>• Good accuracy</p><p>• Easy to use</p><p>The two first points of the goal are actually more or less dependent on each other. In almost all cases a high accuracy gives a slow calculator and vice versa. In order to fulfill the goal a compromise between calculation accuracy and calculation time needs to be done.</p><p>To make the Design Tool an easy to use program a graphical user interface is used. The graphical user interface allows the user to systematically work his way thru the program from a fictive mission to a complete design of a helicopter. The pre-requirements on the user have been eliminated to a minimum, but for the advanced user the possibilities to create more specific and complex helicopters are good.</p><p>In order to develop a Conceptual Design Tool the entire helicopter needs to be seen as a complete system. To see the helicopter as a system all of the sub parts of a helicopter need to be studied. The sub parts will be compared against each other and some will be higher prioritized than other.</p><p>The outline of this thesis is that it is possible to make a user friendly Conceptual Design Tool for VTOL UAVs. The design procedure in the Design Tool is relatively simple and the time from start to a complete concept is relatively short. It will also be shown that the calculation results have a good agreement with real world flight test data.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-151). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Sc.) -- University of Alberta, 2010. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Psychology, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on January 5, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.) in Spatial Information Science and Engineering--University of Maine, 2009. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-151). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 323-346).

This dissertation examines genericity from a textual perspective. The material consists of popular science texts about species of animals. The investigation concerns both the distribution of different forms of generic noun phrases and the boundary between generic and non-generic noun phrases. The analytical tools are taken from Accessibility Theory and Blending Theory. Two separate studies have been undertaken. The results of the first study indicate that generic reference on the whole follows the same principles of accessibility as non-generic reference, although there are some differences that can be attributed to the distinction between generic and non-generic reference. Some results suggest that our mental representations of generic referents are generally less accessible than those of non-generic referents. Factors other than accessibility influencing the choice of generic noun phrases are also identified. While genericity is generally treated as an all-or-nothing phenomenon, an important experience of this first study concerns the difficulties facing anyone who tries to distinguish between generic and non-generic noun phrases in authentic texts. These difficulties are the centre of attention in the second study, which shows that genericity is an extremely context-dependent phenomenon. The sentence context may clearly indicate a particular, non-generic reference, while the wider context of the text reveals that the noun phrase in question is in fact generic. Not infrequently, chains of reference involve a great deal of shifting and slithering between a generic and a non-generic meaning, although the references are seemingly coreferential. It is sometimes difficult to decide on the real referents intended. At times there are also clear cases where the noun phrase must be analysed as referring to both generic and non-generic entities at the same time. This implies that it is unlikely that we actually decide for every reference if it is generic or non-generic.

There are always differences between conceptual design estimates and the performance of a final product. These differences may result in constraint violations, which can have severe financial impacts. Such violations may necessitate downstream changes to recover aircraft performance. The ability to estimate the likelihood and impact of late-stage changes is key to mitigating the overall risk of a design. Reliability methods can treat design uncertainty; however, existing methods do not account for aspects of aircraft design such as sizing processes, the design freeze after conceptual design, and late-stage ``mitigation actions'' taken when a performance constraint is violated. By accounting for these elements, new reliability metrics can be developed. In addition to the probability of compliance, the designer can determine the probability of recovery through mitigation actions, which helps determine the true likelihood that a design can meet the requirements. Hypotheses are developed to fill the identified gaps, resulting in Aircraft Recovery through Mitigation & Optimization under Uncertainty for Reliability. ARMOUR augments reliability methods by integrating aircraft sizing, uncertainty margins, and mitigation actions. ARMOUR is demonstrated on the conceptual design of a large civil transport and is exercised to explore previously obscured relationships. The field of probabilistic aircraft design is enhanced by the concurrent quantification of three elements in one design environment: probability of compliance, probability of recovery after failure, and traditional design criteria. ARMOUR enables the identification of designs which both meets reliability goals and optimizes a traditional performance metric, selecting a design that efficiently meets reliability requirements.

This paper presents a framework for literacy skill development relating to both monolingual and dual language learners. The purpose of this study was to identify the differences that may exist between monolingual and dual language learners' performance on literacy tasks, before having a significant amount of exposure to the preschool curriculum. The sample included 78 monolingual language learners and 44 dual language learners who were assessed using the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R). The researcher used scoring methods that took into consideration split vocabulary in dual language learners where a conceptual scoring technique was used (Bedore, Pena, Garcia, & Cortez, 2005). The research design employed was casual comparative where the effects of dual language learning on letter knowledge, concepts of print, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and broad language development were investigated. Findings from two Multivariate Analysis of Variances indicated that there were significant differences between monolingual and dual language learners on early language and literacy skills. This study contributes to the literature regarding dual language development and the use of appropriate scoring methods. Particularly, the outcomes from this study provide guidance regarding best practices for assessment of dual language learners to identify learning and language difficulties.

Students’ struggle with learning mathematics is often cast in a negative light. Mathematics educators and researchers, however, suggest that struggling to make sense of mathematics is a necessary component of learning mathematics with understanding. In order to investigate the possible connection between struggle and learning, this study examined students’ productive struggle as students worked on tasks of higher cognitive demand in middle school mathematics classrooms. Students’ productive struggle refers to students’ “effort to make sense of mathematics, to figure something out that is not immediately apparent” (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007, p. 287) as opposed to students’ effort made in despair or frustration. As an exploratory case study using embedded multiple cases, the study examined 186 episodes of student‐teacher interactions in order to identify the kinds and nature of student struggles that occurred in a naturalistic classroom setting as students engaged in mathematical tasks focused on proportional reasoning. The study identified the kinds of teacher responses used in the interaction with the students and the types of resolutions that occurred. The participants were 327 6th and 7th grade students and their six mathematics teachers from three middle schools located in mid‐size Texas cities. Findings from the study identified four basic types of student struggles: get started, carry out a process, give a mathematical explanation, and express misconception and errors. Four kinds of teacher responses to these struggles were identified as situated along a continuum: telling, directed guidance, probing guidance, and affordance. The outcomes of the student‐teacher interactions that resolved the students’ struggles were categorized as: productive, productive at a lower level, or unproductive. These categories were based on how the interactions maintained the cognitive level of the implemented task, addressed the externalized student struggle, and built on student thinking. Findings provide evidence that there are aspects of student‐teacher interactions that appear to be productive for student learning of mathematics. The struggle‐response framework developed in the study can be used to further examine the phenomenon of student struggle from initiation, interaction, to its resolution, and measure learning outcomes of students who experience struggle to make sense of mathematics. / text