Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-185).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-79).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Denise Nicholson. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 73 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-47).

No description available.

In this research programme, a small-scale laboratory test was carried out to investigate the phenomenon of negative skin friction through studying the interaction between a pile and the surrounding soil and to obtain, by means of an instrumented 50mm diameter model pile, an expression for the magnitude and distribution of negative skin friction for an end-bearing pile in soft clay. The programme included measurements of pore water pressures using miniature piezometers, both vertically along the pile shaft and laterally from it, as the pattern of dissipation of this pressure controls the distribution of negative skin friction along pile length at any given time. Two testing programmes were conducted. Each testing programme consisted of applying load increments on the soil up to 90 kPa as surcharge pressures. Pore pressures, settlements and pile loads were monitored until 90% consolidation had been achieved. From test results, expressions relating the surcharge pressure and soil shear strength with the developed negative skin friction have been established. The study has been extended to include predictions of negative skin friction and pore water pressures by the use of Numerical Methods such as the Finite Element Method and the Finite Difference Method. Results obtained by these methods have been compared with those measured.

No description available.

This study purports to explore how apprentices in microbiology, through interaction and multimodal activities, acquire the knowledge and skills that are necessary for doing scientific experiments. It aims to examine the ways novices learn to scrutinize and discuss the data under investigation, how experts communicate scientific knowledge about microbes to novices, and how experts and novices together create new scientific knowledge during the apprenticeship. Furthermore, this study aims at explaining the various ways narratives contribute to the socialization of the apprentice into the workplace and the scientific field, and how stories help retain knowledge, gained in one situation, to be used in other contexts and situations. To achieve this aim, I videotaped daily activities in a small microbiology lab, focusing on detailed observations of experts and novices as they engaged in teaching and learning. I was especially interested in what kinds of innovative symbolic communication resources would be invoked during such educational activities. In addition, I collected data pertaining to how the apprentice was socialized into this particular community of practice. I applied a ‘situated learning’ approach to the analysis of the instructional data, as well as discourse analytic and social semiotic methods of analyzing verbal and nonverbal, embodied interaction. I found that researchers, by using embodied and semiotic resources, created moments of shared participation between themselves and their scientific objects. Likewise I found that gestures shaped objects and concepts, and brought these into an intersubjective space where researchers, tools, instruments, and concepts interacted in a collaborative architecture. I named the specific literacy prevalent in scientific experimentation (reading and understanding graphs, diagrams, pictures, etc.) as ‘science literacy’, to distinguish it from the term ‘scientific literacy’, a general understanding of popularized scientific topics. Blurred boundaries were discovered between the living organisms and their semiotic representations whenever the expert and the novice referred to the living organisms in their discussions concerning graphs and diagrams. The researchers changed their terminology, depending on the bacteria changing from animate to inanimate status. Finally, I discovered the significance of contextual tellability in narratives functioning both as introduction to the workplace and as memory devices. / text

abstract / Biological Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Our increasing ability to construct large and complex computer and information systems suggests that the classical manner in which such systems are understood and architected is inappropriate for the open and unstructured manner in which they are often used. With the appearance of mathematically complex and, more importantly, high scale, non-deterministic systems, such as the World Wide Web, there is a need to understand, construct and maintain systems in a world where their assembly and use may not be precisely predicted. In Addition, few have thus far attempted to study such Web-scale systems holistically so as to understand the implications of non-programmable characteristics, like emergence and evolution – a matter of particular relevance in the new field of Web Science. This collection of prior published works and their associated commentary hence brings together a number of themes focused on Web Science and its broader application in systems and software engineering. It primarily rests on materials presented in the book The Web’s Awake, first published in April 2007.