No description available.

No description available.

Abstract not available

For thesis abstract select View Thesis Title, Contents and Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the implications of integral theory for sustainable development and climate change response. Integral theory seeks to integrate objective and subjective perspectives using a developmental orientation. It addresses issues of subjectivity that have received inadequate attention in mainstream approaches to sustainable development, while also providing theoretical grounding for the developmental aspect of sustainable development. According to integral theory, there are four main epistemological approaches to any problem: behavioural, systemic, psychological and cultural. The first is objective and individual, the second objective and collective, the third subjective and individual and the fourth subjective and collective. Development occurs within each of these realms. To test the value and implications of integral theory for sustainable development, I adopt a case study on climate change response in Australia. I begin the case study by using the four perspectives of integral theory to guide a review of the energy and climate change literature. I follow the literature review with a critical review of Australian energy and greenhouse policy, providing the starting point for development of an integral climate change response. While there is attention to subjectivity in the literature, it is not reflected in Australian policy practices. An objective perspective and an instrumental form of rationality dominate policy. In the literature review, I identify two gaps in the literature that deserve attention. The first is the role of public subsidies in creating the observed cost differential between renewable energy sources and fossil fuel energy. I examine the relative magnitude of subsidies to fossil fuels and renewable energy in the Australian energy and transport sectors and conclude that the distribution of these subsidies distorts the market in favour of fossil fuels, particularly in the transport sector. The second is the application of a developmental perspective to cultural theories of climate policy discourse. I introduce a method called meta-discourse analysis to identify consistencies and relationships across discourse descriptions by different authors and demonstrate that aspects of each discourse can be related developmentally. Drawing on the literature review, policy review and other work, I propose an integral policy response to climate change that could be applied in Australia. The policy response combines participatory integrated assessment, normative futures work, a modified version of the cooperative discourse model for public participation, an evolutionary policy orientation and several methods to promote subjective development. The proposed policy approach should be equally applicable to other sustainable development issues.

<p>In practice, many systems are modeled by first and second order models including a time delay. These low-order models can often be used to describe the most important and characteristic features of a system and be a base for control design. In industry, it is important to have fast, reliable, and easily applicable methods for estimating the parameters in such models. It is well-known that, for practical reasons, many systems can not be excited by an arbitrary input signal. However, a pulse-shaped input signal can most often be used. The aim with this thesis project is to study identification of low-order models based on pulse-shaped input signals.</p>

Classroom Response Systems (CRS) are devices that are relatively inexpensive and easy to use, yet allow full and anonymous participation by students while providing immediate feedback to instructors. These devices have shown promise as a tool to increase engagement in learners, an outcome that would be particularly useful among middle level learners. This study assessed the ability of CRSs to promote content among suburban, middle level students in science class, and it is the first known study of CRSs that used an alternating treatments design to improve the reliability of the findings. The study also assessed the acceptability of the technology. Quiz results did not support claims that that students learn more when using CRSs, but acceptability responses indicated that students preferred CRSs to traditional questioning practices, that students perceived their learning as greater when using CRSs, and that students felt somewhat lower levels of anxiety when using CRSs for review. / School of Education / Instructional Technology (EdDIT) / EdD / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Feb. 6, 2007). PDF text: vi, 218 p. : ill. UMI publication number: AAT 3218217. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche format.

This research investigates the performance of an existing structural damage detection method (SDIM) when only experimentally-obtained measurement information can be used to calculate the frequency response functions used to detect damage. The development of a SDIM that can accurately identify damage while processing measurements containing realistic noise levels and overcoming experimental modeling errors would provide a robust method for identifying damage in the larger, more complex structures found in practice. The existing SDIM program, GaDamDet, uses an advanced genetic algorithm, along with a two-dimensional finite element model of the structure, to identify the location and the severity of damage using the linear vibration information contained in frequency response functions (FRF) as response signatures. Datagen is a Matlab program that simulates the three-dimensional dynamic response of the four-story, two-bay by two-bay UBC test structure built at the University of British Columbia. The dynamic response of the structure can be obtained for a range of preset damage cases or for any user-defined damage case. Datagen can be used to provide the FRF measurement information for the three-dimensional test structure. Therefore, using the FRF measurements obtained from the UBC test structure allows for a more realistic evaluation of the performance of the SDIM provided by GaDamDet as the impact on performance of more realistic noise and model errors can be investigated. Previous studies evaluated the performance of the SDIM using only simulated FRF measurements obtained from a two-dimensional structural model. In addition, the disparity between the two-dimensional model used by the SDIM used to identify damage and the measurements obtained from the three-dimensional test structure is analyzed. The research results indicate that the SDIM is able to accurately detect structural damage to individually damaged members or to within a damaged floor, with few false damages identified. The SDIM provides an easy to use, visual, and accurate algorithm and its performance compares favorably to performance of the various damage detection algorithms that have been proposed by researchers to detect damage in the three-dimensional structural benchmark problem.

The objective of this research is to analyze the relationship between environ-mental heat exchange and vascular response in the pallid bat wing during systemicheating and to develop a simplied model of heat transfer for theoretical analysis.During heating experiments, metabolic activity, body temperature and alterations invessel diameter and blood ow were monitored. This research is very signicant, asit will correlate thermoregulation and vascular response in a way that has not beenstudied before.The wing of the pallid bat is selected because the microvascular bed performssimilar functions as that of the human skin in terms of thermoregulation; understand-ing vascular response to heat or cold allows to analyze vascular function, or arterialhealth, a response that is altered at early stages of several diseases in humans. Athigh body temperatures, bats can dissipate heat through their wings; the bat wingserves as a thermal window where heat exchange is determined by local blood owand vascular response in the wing.For this study, a lumped mathematical model to calculate body and skin tem-perature alterations in response to changes in environmental conditions has beendeveloped. In order to formulate this model, experiments have been proposed wherethe pallid bat is subjected to dynamic systemic heating with and without the wingextended. By having the wing extended outside a metabolic chamber during heating,the bats were able to maintain an equilibrated body temperature; having the wing enclosed caused body temperature to increase rapidly. The experiments were designedto obtain correlations between systemic and vascular responses and therefore learnabout the thermoregulatory mechanisms of the pallid bat.Results from experiments following Animal Use Protocols 2006-253 and 2007-110indicate that vascular responses to environmental temperature changes (changes inTchamber) maintain or reduce body temperature to basal conditions. Vessel diameter,centerline velocity, blood ow and heat ux increase with Tchamber therefore deliveringa greater volume of blood to the bat wing and increasing heat exchange with theenvironment. The positive responses in the wing to Tchamber signify that the pallidbat is regulating its body temperature as had been expected.