Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-283). / This dissertation concerns the role of place in scientific practice. Ideas of place, I argue, shape and are shaped by science. I specifically look at the community of planetary scientists who, though they cannot step foot on the objects they study, transform planets into places. This is an ethnographic work that draws on 18 months of fieldwork during which time I encountered several different communities of planetary scientists. At MIT, I worked alongside astronomers looking for planets around other stars. These "exoplanet" astronomers transformed numerical counts of photons into complex worlds with atmospheres and weather. Data visualizations characterized the work of a community learning to see unseen planets in specific, place-based ways. I also traveled with an astronomer to a Chilean observatory where she studied the night sky hoping to find a "habitable planet." Many other astronomers share this goal and have designed various ways to detect a planet like Earth. The importance of these projects signifies that exoplanet astronomers are more interested in finding planetary kin - planets that are familiar places - than exotic aliens. To determine how the planetary places created by exoplanet astronomers differ from those in our own Solar System, I spent time at the NASA Ames Research Center with a group of computer scientists who create high resolution and three-dimensional maps of Mars. These maps reflect the kind of place Mars is today: it is available to everyone to explore, it is displayed such that you can imagine standing on the surface, and it is presented as geologically dynamic in ways similar to Earth. Even though these maps help give Mars a sense of place, Martian science is still stymied by the inability to send humans to its surface. Instead, planetary scientists travel to terrestrial sites deemed to be "Mars-like" to approximate performing geologic fieldwork on Mars. I went to one of these locations to see how, during these outings, Mars and Earth become entwined as scientists forge connections between two planetary places. These diverse scientific activities, I conclude, are transforming our view of the cosmos. Outer space is becoming outer place. / by Lisa Rebecca Messeri. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51). / The topic of this thesis is focused around the new possibilities in the field of market research opened with the advent of the internet, in particular around the use of web interfaces to perform conjoint analysis, a market research technique based on comparisons between pairs of potential product configurations to compute the perceived relative utility of each of several product design attributes. We first overview conjoint analysis and the online market research industry in general, so see how the use of the internet for this purpose can reduce the cost of these analyses in more than an order of magnitude due to a better accessibility to test customers, a cleaner and faster interface, and the possibility of reducing the number of questions necessary to compute the utility functions using an adaptive technique that generates optimal questions with dynamic web content as the test proceeds. We then study the issues related with the automation of web sites for performing this type of analyses without having to redesign the interface, with the introduction of dynamic content web technology for adaptive conjoint analysis, and with the possibilities offered by this technique towards fast segmentation of incoming customers. Finally, we report the first implementation - to the best of our knowledge - of an actual web architecture that uses a novel adaptive conjoint algorithm and automates the whole analysis setup process. / by Julio M. Faura. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-293). / "Negotiating Nature" explores resource management in action and the intertwined roles of law and science in environmental conflicts in the Upper Klamath River Basin in southern Oregon. I follow disputes over the management of water and endangered species. I develop several themes: first, how these disputes demonstrate the growing connections between scientific and legal authority in environmental matters. This occurs because environmental laws often limit participation in disputes to those who can offer "scientific data" in support of their claims. I call this situation "scientific legality" and suggest that increasingly, one's ability to make legal claims is closely tied to one's ability to muster scientific authority behind those claims. Second, how the growing importance of scientific expertise in environmental decision-making has affected the ways that groups frame environmental claims. Third, how negotiations over environmental rights, regulations, and policies shape not only management efforts, but also narratives of environmental relationships. In Part One, I discuss the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which legally mandates that only scientific considerations can be taken into account in certain aspects of endangered species management. As a result, the Act has impacted the ways people frame claims about endangered species. I then discuss how the Klamath Tribes of American Indians have responded this situation, and the implications of this for presumed divisions between the environmental knowledge of scientists and native peoples. In Part Two, I examine a 1975 water rights case, United States v. Adair et al. I explore how the court drew on and reproduced prominent narratives of American Indian history, and the ways these narratives bounded the agency of the Klamath in relation to the environment and the colonial process. In Part Three, I examine a dispute in 2001 over endangered species. In this conflict, a dispute over policy quickly became a dispute over the scientific claims that legitimated the policy. Expert disagreement ensued. Although political explanations for expert disagreement were common, I suggest that a more underlying cause was the unavoidable uncertainties of ecological claims. These uncertainties were politically useful to those who wanted to stall management action and maintain the status quo. / by Nicholas Seong Chul Buchanan. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-83). / by Russell Brian Olwell. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82). / The strategy adopted for national energy supply is one of the most important policy choice for the US. Although it has been dismissed in the past decades, nuclear power today has key assets when facing concerns on energy dependence and global warming. However, reactor licensing regulations need to be changed to get all the advantages of the most promising technologies. After reviewing the well-known drawbacks of the current regulatory system, the ongoing reforms from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are presented. We argue that full benefice of modem risk analysis methods could not be obtained unless adopting a more ambitious and risk-based regulatory framework. A risk-based licensing framework is then presented, based on previous research from MIT. Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) analyses are used to drive the design toward more safety, and serve as a vehicle for a constructive discussion between designers and the NRC. Mandatory multilevel safety goals are proposed to ensure that adequate safety and adequate treatment of uncertainties are provided. A case-study finally illustrates how this framework would operate. It is based on the Gas- cooled Fast Reactor (GFR) project developed at MIT. We show how PRA provides guidance for the design. Especially, PRA work makes designers consider otherwise overlooked uncertainties and find proper solutions. In a second phase, a simulation of the review by the regulator is conducted. Few new safety concerns are brought. The discussion shows that the proposed risk-based framework has been effective. However, it also highlights that improvements of PRA methodology and clarification over the treatment of key uncertainties are needed. / by Grégoire Jourdan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-167). / Intelligent driver warning systems can be found in many high-end vehicles on the road today, which will likely rapidly increase as they become standard equipment. However, introducing multiple warning systems into vehicles could potentially add to the complexity of the driving task, and there are many critical human factors issues that should be considered, such as how the interaction between alarm alerting schemes, system reliabilities, and distractions combine to affect driving performance and situation awareness. In addition, there are also questions with respect to whether there should be any minimum safety standards set to ensure both functional and usage safety of these systems, and what these standards should be. An experiment was conducted to study how a single master alert versus multiple individual alerts of different reliabilities affected drivers' responses to different imminent collision situations while distracted. A master alert may have advantages since it reduces the total number of alerts, which could be advantageous especially with the proliferation of intelligent warning systems. However, a master alert may also confuse drivers, since it does not warn of a specific hazard, unlike a specific alert for each warning systems. / (cont.) Auditory alerts were used to warn of imminent frontal and rear collisions, as well as unintentional left and right lane departures. Low and high warning reliabilities were also tested. The different warning systems and reliability factors produced significantly different reaction times and response accuracies. The warning systems with low reliability caused accuracy rates to fall more than 40% across the four warning systems. In addition, low reliability systems also induced negative emotions in participants. Thus, reliability is one of the most crucial determinants of driving performance and the safety outcome, and it is imperative that warning systems are reliable. For the master versus distinct alarms factor, drivers responded statistically no different to the various collision warnings for both reaction times and accuracy of responses. However, in a subjective post-experiment assessment, participants preferred distinct alarms for different driver warning systems, even though their objective performance showed no difference to the different alerting schemes. This study showed that it was essential to design robust and reliable intelligent warning systems. However, there are no existing safety standards today to ensure that these systems are safe before they are introduced into vehicles, even though such systems are already available in high-end cars. / (cont.) Even though there are tradeoffs in having standards, such as increased time-to-market and possible loss of innovation, I recommend that safety standards be set nonetheless, since standards will ensure the safety performance of warning systems, to an extent. In terms of functional safety, safety standards should be performance-based, and should specify a minimum level of reliability. In terms of usage safety, the standards should also be performance-based, where driving performance can be indicated by measures such as reaction time, lane position, heading distance and accuracy of responses. In addition, multiple threat scenarios should also be tested. In terms of design guidelines, the various human factors guidelines from different countries should be harmonized internationally to ensure that manufacturers have access to a consistent set of guidelines. Finally, it is also important that these standards, especially for usage safety, specify tests with not just the average driver, but also with peripheral driving populations including novice and elderly drivers. / by Angela Wei Ling Ho. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / Emergency responders have suffered from a lack of cross-agency radio communications for the past three decades. After numerous firefighters died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, partially due to a lack of interoperability with police officers on the scene, the federal government began implementing policies, programs, and funding to improve interoperability amongst state and local first responders. This thesis explores the scope and the effectiveness of many of the federal efforts towards interoperability that have occurred between 2001 and 2006. Since 2001, the federal government has made progress in a number of areas relating to the national interoperability of first responders. These include: creating and reorganizing interoperability programs, such as SAFECOM within DHS; promoting open standards for equipment manufacturers; freeing radio spectrum for first responder use; and partially funding the purchase of new, interoperable communication equipment through grant programs and national initiatives. However, these efforts were slow to start, with the majority of progress only occurring within the past two years. Furthermore, the government has not set broad interoperability goals, and there are continuing questions about the amount of financial support that the government has offered and will continue to offer towards the problem. / (cont.) The European Union and the U.S. military have both dealt with interoperability as well, and comparisons between these two entities and the U.S. federal government show that a lack of interoperability is both complex and has some possible solutions that remain untested in the United States. Five recommendations are presented to help the federal government forge a path forward. The government, through both the Department of Homeland Security and Congress, should: encourage collaboration between local public safety agencies; encourage better industry participation through equipment endorsements and public/private partnerships; create an interoperability grants program within DHS; prepare for a large increase in funding requests by 2009; and, establish a National Interoperability Goal with measurable results. / by Tristan Weir. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Technology and Policy Program, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-113). / Users have been shown to be a significant source of technology based innovations. Over the last seven years developments on the Internet have demonstrated the viability of software products that are designed, developed, distributed and supported by Users. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how and why user developed software is supported on the Usenet newsgroup discussion service of the Internet. The context of this research was the Usenet newsgroup based user support mechanism for Apache web server software. Over 55% of all World Wide Web sites on the Internet are hosted on Apache web server software. The research for this thesis was based on an analysis of four weeks of Usenet help postings for Apache software and a survey questionnaire regarding outcomes and motivations that was sent to the individuals that participated on the Usenet. Newsgroup analysis indicates that over 70% of all queries on the Usenet get at least one public reply. A majority of the replies are in the form of technical opinions. A majority of information seekers receive their first public Usenet reply within the next day of the original posting. Survey results indicate that the technical help provided is relatively low-cost to the provider, and typically involves transferring information that is already known to that help-provider rather than conducting new problem-solving at the behest of a help seeker. Typical time spent on providing help is less than five minutes. Seventy one percent of information seekers noted that they had received full or partial help in their problem solving process through their Usenet posting. Frequent helpers indicated the following were the top three reasons for their motivation to help; 1) Knew related information already, 2) Answering problems is fun and 3) Obligation - they have been helped before and now want to reciprocate. The research results are framed within the literature of technology innovation and virtual communities in cyberspace. The implications for Open Source software development and further research recommendations are provided. / by Karim R. Lakhani. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-208). / by Rebecca M. Herzig. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-328). / This dissertation examines the mutually reinforcing connections between science and law and their construction of pain in British regulation of animal experimentation. It investigates the Home Office's implementation of the Cruelty to Animals Act (1876), the first effort anywhere in the world to impose legal restrictions on vivisection, during the three decades following its enactment. The study ends in 1912 with the findings of a second Royal Commission that evaluated the workings of the Act. The Commission reaffirmed many of the Home Office polices regarding vivisection and their underlying premises. The Act mandated official supervision of scientific experiments that "calculated to give pain" to animal subjects. Implementing the Act therefore necessitated the identification and quantification of pain. This requirement created what I term the "bureaucracy of empathy," an attempt to systemize the understanding of animal suffering through administrative mechanisms. Practicing empathy was integral to some bureaucratic tasks, for example, attaching the right certificate to an inoculation experiment. Additionally, various factors including legal settings and scientific knowledge informed and situated this empathy with animals, when, for instance, an inspector drafted a report about mutilated monkeys while visiting a physiology laboratory. My analysis unravels that defining animal pain was often intertwined with the definition of an experiment. Law and science co-constitution of pain and experiments conditioned both the daily work of administering the law and the practices of experimenters. This dynamic led to the adoption of technologies such as anesthesia and pain scoring models, which provided legal-medical means to control pain in research and to ostensibly create a cruelty free experimental fact. A new pain-based ethical order was established, designed by law officers, civil servants, and court judges as much as by physiologists, remaking the relationships between experimenters, state representatives, and laboratory animals. / by Shira Dina Shmuely. / Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)