published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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In this dissertation, I draw on comparative studies of English to establish a framework for looking at how Portuguese studies and teaching are shaped by political economies, cultural hierarchies, and educational institutions in Brazil and Cape Verde. I examine how English and Portuguese are constructed as world languages and how English and Portuguese rhetorics shape language teaching. People who are locally engaged contest these global constructions. As a result, diverse people construct world languages by adopting, adapting, resist, and transforming it in specific locations (Pennycook). First, I identify compositionists in the U.S. with what I call a rhetoric of multilingualism in which teachers of English should view English in relation to other Englishes and other languages. Secondly, I examine how the transnational organization for Portuguese-speaking countries perpetrates lusotropicalism--Gilberto Freyre's social theory of the Portuguese exceptionality to create a hybrid culture in the tropics. Despite fostering adaptability to local cultures, peoples, and languages, Freyre's lusotropical rhetoric eschews diversity by maintaining that a culture and a language should promote homogeneity. Then, I analyze the linguistic contexts, educational policies, and data gathered from questionnaires and interviews with language teachers in Brazil and Cape Verde. In light of higher education expansion and the maintenance of excellence, I argue that language teachers should promote the writing of Portuguese as a rhetorical construction in which grammar and mechanical correctness is only one aspect of writing instruction. Lastly, I propose the use of code meshing as a pedagogical strategy in academic discourse because it values language in its diversity and its relation to other languages. I argue that students' multilingual strategies deserve a place in academic writing. The rhetorical construction of language in academia could also become multilingual--globally networked and locally engaged. This study contributes to the internationalist discussions about how to teach writing in different languages and educational contexts.

Currently, four areas of Texas have been designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as non-attainment areas because they exceeded the national one-hour ground-level ozone standard of 0.12 parts-per-million (ppm). Ozone is formed in the atmosphere by the reaction of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) in the presence of heat and sunlight. In May 2002, The Texas State Legislature passed Senate Bill 5, the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP), to reduce the emissions of NOx by several sources. As part of the 2001 building energy performance standards program which is one of the programs in the TERP, the Texas Legislature established the 2000 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) as the state energy code. Since September 1, 2001, the 2000 IECC has been required for newly constructed single and multifamily houses in Texas. Therefore, this study develops and applies portions of a methodology to calculate the energy savings and NOx emissions reductions from the adoption of the 2000 IECC to new single family houses in non-attainment and affected counties in Texas. To accomplish the objectives of the research, six major tasks were developed: 1) baseline data collection, 2) development of the 2000 IECC standard building simulation, 3) projection of the number of building permits in 2002, 4) comparison of energy simulations, 5) validation and, 6) NOx emissions reduction calculations. To begin, the 1999 standard residential building characteristics which are the baseline construction data were collected, and the 2000 IECC standard building characteristics were reviewed. Next, the annual and peak-day energy savings were calculated using the DOE-2 building energy simulation program. The building characteristics and the energy savings were then crosschecked using the data from previous studies, a site visit survey, and utility billing analysis. In this thesis, several case study houses are used to demonstrate the validation procedure. Finally, the calculated electricity savings (MWh/yr) were then converted into the NOx emissions reductions (tons/yr) using the EPA's eGRID database. The results of the peak-day electricity savings and NOx emissions reductions using this procedure are approximately twice the average day electricity savings and NOx emissions reductions.

IT industry all time is looking for ways to improve software development productivity as well as the quality and longevity of the software that it creates. OMG announced Model Driven Architecture as its strategic direction. It is software development methodology that provides new viewpoint in software development process. The modeling of problem domain and model transformation are key elements of MDA architecture and they are analyzed in this work using OMG specifications and other resources. The purpose of this work is to evaluate benefits of MDA framework in software development process. The new MDA framework is developed according to the results of MDA architecture analysis. Experimental usage of new MDA framework concentrates on productivity of software development process, automation of repeated tasks and required skill set of application developers.

Lithuanian people do not speak pure Lithuanian language. In all districts there are used different dialects. Traditional dialects are used almost only in suburbs, because contacts between people are rarer. In towns and cities people speak interdialects. Interdialects are the result of interaction between language and dialects. How often people switch codes, depends on lots of reasons. We think that the main are situational, demographic and social factors, exactly the situation of conversation, age and intelligence of communicants., In this linguistic work as the primary factor we chose the situation of conversation, which can be unofficial and official. We investigated how interdialect can be stimulated by situation – what kind of influence can one communicants do to the other’s language. Other very important factor is the age, which we divided into four conditional groups: children, youth, middle – aged and elderly people. It is established that middle – aged and elderly people use interdialects, which are closest to traditional dialects. But this fact is valid almost only in unofficial situations. Children and youth more often use Lithuanian language forms of the phonetics, morphology, wordbuilding and vocabulary. The intelligence (education and profession) of communicants can be the reason why people switch codes, especially during official conversations. It is found that people, who studied in university and have university degree use interdialects, which are close... [to full text]

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