This thesis is a documentation of research, evaluation, and design for the Pahlavi National Library project for Tehran, Iran. The written section of the thesis externalizes the most critical issues and concerns gathered from the evaluation of traditional architecture in Iran and the examination of the needs of libraries in general. These two factors were combined with the given program to generate the design of the library. A conceptual framework of what a National Library should be is established in conjunction with a set of architectural criteria employed for decision making. The project requires a solution at three different levels: that of the building itself as a library; the building's adaptability in the context of a culture, and, especially, the building's relationship to the climate. On the whole, the design of this thesis has mainly generated from two major objectives. Primarily, to design a functional and social environment whose plan incorporates and reflects an understanding of traditional architecture--a facility that is adaptive for its purpose, its users, and its environments. Secondly, to document the process which has led to the design solution. / Master of Architecture

The buckling constant for neutron moderators in the shape of an elliptic cylinder, hemisphere, and"piggy-back" cylinder has been determined by experimental measurements using paraffin as a moderator. The pulsed neutron sources technique was used throughout the work; a fast neutron burst of short duration was injected into regular paraffin shapes (cylinders with diameter and height ratio equal approximately to one). An empirical curve of decay constant of the neutron population versus the buckling was obtained. The measured decay constant, λ, was fitted by the method of least square to a parabola in B² of the form: λ=Σ_av+ B²D - CB⁴ where λ= the decay constant B² = the buckling constant Σ_a = the macroscopic absorption cross section v = the neutron velocity D = diffusion coefficient C = diffusion cooling coefficient The resulting values of the diffusion parameters are: Σ_a v = 4858 ± 162 sec⁻¹ D = 25911 ± 202 sec⁻¹ cm² C = 1186 ± 2558 sec⁻¹ cm⁴ By measuring the decay constant, the buckling of the moderators with irregular shapes were determined from the above parameters. The result was in general accord with the theoretical approximations for such shapes. / Master of Science

This study is concerned with the design of cumulative sum charts based on a minimum cost criterion when there are multiple assignable causes occurring randomly, but with known effect. A cost model is developed that relates the design parameters (i.e. sampling interval, decision limit, reference value and sample size) of a cusum chart and the cost and risk factors of the process to the long run average loss cost per hour for the process. Optimum designs for various sets of cost and risk factors are found by minimizing the long run average loss-cost per hour of the process with respect to the design parameters of a cusum chart. Optimization is accomplished by use of Brown's method. A modified Brownian motion approximation is used for calculating ARLs in the cost model. The nature of the loss-cost function is investigated numerically. The effects of changes in the design parameters and in the cost and risk factors are also studied. An investigation of the limiting behavior of the loss-cost function as the decision limit approaches infinity reveals that in some cases there exist some points that yield a lower loss-cost than that of the local minimum obtained by Brown's method. It is conjectured that if the model is extended to include more realistic assumption about the occurrence of assignable causes then only the local minimum solutions will remain. This paper also shows that the multiple assignable cause model can be well approximated by a matched single cause model. Then in practice it may be sufficient to find the optimum design for the matched. single cause model. / Ph. D.

This study addresses the problem of assessing the economic future of the Social Security System using a representative sample of the United States Population. The characteristics of the people defined in this sample include age, sex, race, marital status, monthly salary, status under Social Security and the age and number of any dependents. The problem formulation deals with probabilistic events which may occur to an individual and will affect his status under Social Security. These events include marriage, divorce, death, birth of a child, retirement and disability onset and recovery. Each month, it is seen which events occur and the resulting benefits paid by the system is calculated. The difference between the intakes and outlays of the system are calculated and the resulting trust fund found. Using actual data from the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of the Census, the future of the system is evaluated by four representative case studies. The cases studied determine the effect on the system of changes in the birth rate and disability rate. / M.S.

This thesis presents the concepts of structured programming and illustrates how they can be used to develop efficient and reliable programs and aid in language selection. Topics are presented and used to compare several languages with each other rather than with some abstract ideal. Structured design is a set of concepts that aids the decomposition of a problem using basic block structures into manageable subproblems. Decomposition is a process whereby the large problem is decomposed into components that can be easily understood. This process is continued until the smallest component can be represented by a unit of code performing a single action. By means of the four basic building blocks the atom, concatenation, selection, and repetition one can produce a correct well structured program. In addition, the top-down approach and/or the bottom up approach can assist in producing a structured program that is easy to design, code, debug, modify, and maintain. These approaches minimize the number of bugs and the time spent in the debugging process. Various testing techniques supporting the structured programming process are presented to aid in determining a program's correctness. The languages must support structured programming. Microsoft FORTRAN, Microsoft QuickBASIC, Turbo Pascal, and Microsoft C are analyzed and compared on the basis of syntactic style, semantic structure, data types and manipulation, application facilities, and application requirements. Example programs are presented to reinforce these concepts. Frame programs are developed in these languages and are used to assist in the language evaluation. / Master of Science