Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1984. / Supervised by Noam Chomsky. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-284).

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The aim of this study was to determine how the performance of the Egyptian high jumpers is depending on the kinematic parameters of a take-off phase. The sample of the study has been selected from competitors of the high jump event - three jumpers representing the Egyptian international athletic team. The researcher has studied the sample using a direct measurement by a synchronized 3D video system to measure the kinematic parameters. The researcher has found a relation between record level and vertical velocity components with improvement in technique and better fitness levels, thus the Egyptian jumpers can achieve further progress in their results. This raises optimism because Omer Samir (A2) is very young and his current record 2.02m gives hope for future World - Class. Key words High jump, kinematic parameters, take-off phase.

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Dam failure mechanism produces the rapidly varied unsteady flow situation and the appropriate analysis to determine the flow condition is necessary. Over the world, more than 80,000 dams were constructed. There have been more than 200 distinguished dam failures occurred within the twentieth century. The history of dam construction exists together with the probability of dam failure causing casualties and catastrophic situations. As climate change effect has caused the change in flow situations, the safety concern in the dam is also necessary. Casualties and damages due to dam break events depend upon the depth, flow velocity, population distribution as per geography and warning time related to the time to reach the peak flow to the downstream areas. Prediction of actual breaching scenario is not certain and is related to the geographical and geological features of the site, embankment type, type of breach, reservoir storage and flow conditions. Estimating the accurate breaching scenarios and modeling of the dam break situation to characterize the hydrodynamic risk is necessary. Among the numerous techniques of modeling dam break situation, this study focused on the use of HEC-RAS for analyzing the dam break situation. Most of the simulation of a dam break situation used one-dimensional analysis to solve flow conditions after the break of the dam. The Latest development of HEC-RAS 2D capabilities is also used in conjunction with 1D HEC-RAS dam break analysis to compare and explore both analysis capabilities of HEC-RAS. The effect of HEC-RAS simulation altering the breaching conditions is analyzed for the dam failure case of Big Bay dam located in Lamar County, Mississippi. The study area is chosen to obtain the simulation of piping dam failure, which was the real cause of the dam failure event. In addition, the overtopping failure parameters established by the different breaching regression equations were analyzed. Results obtained with both one- dimensional and two- dimensional analysis is compared along with the modeling procedure and concept of analysis. From the analysis, it is found that the time of peak water surface elevation and its magnitude is responsible in determining the extent of vulnerable areas to the dam break scenarios. The present study showed the variation in peak flow condition between different breach parameters. Breach bottom width found to be more sensitive parameters in dam failure events. HEC-RAS analysis is found to be suitable to predict the uncertain hydraulic behavior of dam break situation.

abstract: This study explores the development of negation and the Negation Phrase (NegP) in bilingual children learning both English and Spanish. I analyze the speech of four children growing up in the United States who are learning English and Spanish simultaneously in order to establish steps of parameter setting for negation. The transcripts have been taken from Pérez-Bazán’s bilingual corpus from CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System). The thorough analysis of the selected corpus data gathered from children ages 2;0 and 3;3 determines the steps children follow in order to develop mastery of negation and the NegP. This study is an addition to the body of research surrounding language acquisition and the concept of Universal Grammar’s Principles and Parameters framework. The bases for this study is Klima & Bellugi’s (1968) established three steps for acquisition of negation by children in English, as well as Zeijlstra’s (2004) analysis of languages in regards to phases of the Jespersen cycle. The data of this study suggest that there are five basic steps to parameter setting, and that as utterances become syntactically more complex, children value uninterpretable features with interpretable ones. This is seen in both languages studied. The parameters categorized based on the data available for this study are the following: 1) negative particle outside of the VP, 2) NegP creation and development with preverbal negative marker, 3) Negative Concord (NC), 4) True Imperatives (banned or not), and 5) Negative Polarity Items (NPI). Also important is the placement of the NegP, as it is above the TP in Spanish and c-commanded by the TP in English. The development of the NegP and uninterpretable negation [uNeg] valuation by interpretable negation [iNeg] is also explored in the utterances of the four children studied. This study confirms Klima & Bellugi’s account of steps and further defines child negation in English as well as in Spanish. The focus on [iNeg] and [uNeg] features is further explained using Zeijlstra’s Phases of the Jespersen cycle as a springboard. I add salient information regarding parameter setting and how negation and the NegP are developed across two languages. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2015

Orientador: Sérgio Luís de Carvalho / Banca: Alessandro Minillo / Banca: Cristiano Poleto / Resumo: A quantidade de água potável no mundo esta diminuindo em virtude de sua utilização para fins residenciais, agrícolas, industriais e comerciais, enquanto que a opulação mundial esta aumentando. O presente trabalho teve por objetivo proceder à avaliação da qualidade da água sofrendo influência de uma piscicultura em tanques rede no Rio São José dos Dourados no Município de Ilha Solteira. O rio São José dos Dourados nasce no município de Mirassol-SP a 587 metros de altitude, localizado a uma latitude de 20°49'09" sul e uma lontifude 49°21'16" oeste, desaguando no rio Paraná. Corta o município de Ilha Solteira e hoje esta ligado ao Tiete pelo canal de Pereira Barreto que incorporou os 400 Km do tramo norte à Hidrovia Tietê-Parana. Sua bacia é constituída de aproximadamente 35 afluentes e 25 municípios em toda a sua extensão. No seu curso normal, deságua no Rio Paraná, a uma longitude de 51°06'35" e latitude 20°38'44". A partir dos resultados do Índice de Qualidade de Águas será possível verificar os efeitos dessa atividade sobre a qualidade da agua, principalmente, em função da elevação dos fertilizantes (fósforo e nitrogênio). No presente trabalho propoe-se verificar a influência da piscicultura em tanques rede na qualidade da água do Rio São José dos Dourados, onde amostras de água foram colhidas em sete pontos, sendo dois pontos no meio do rio, sem a inflencia da psicultura, coletados durante os meses de janeiro a agosto de 2008, sendo confeccionado com este o Índice de Qualidade da Água da National Station Fundation dos Estados Unidos, adaptados pela CETESB / Abstract: Potable water availablein the world is being gradually reduced due to is use in households, commerce, agriculture and industry while global population is increasing. The main purpose of this work is to e valuate the water quality in an enviromental of the net-tank fishing culture in São José dos Dourados River in the city of Ilha Solteira. São José dos Dourados River borns in Mirassol - SP at 587m altitude, 20 9'09" sout h latitude and west longitude 49º31'16", flowing towards the Paraná river. It crosses the city of Ilha Solteira and actually is connected to Tietê River through the chanel of Pereira Barreto which added 400 km of the North opening to Tietê-Paraná waterway. Its basin is formed by approximately 35 tributaries and 25 cities in all its extension. In the normal running it recedes in Paraná River at 51º06'35" longitude and 20º38'44" latitude. As of the results of Water Quality Index it will be possible to check the effects of this activity over the water quality, mainly due to the increasing use of fertilizers (phosphorus and nitrogen). In this research, it is proposed to check the effects of the net-tank fishing culture over the water quality in São José dos Dourados River, where water samples were collected in seven different points, 2 of them in the middle river without the influence of fishing activity from January to August 2008. These samples were used to prepare the Water Quality Index of National Sanitation foundation of United Stares, adapted by CETESB / Mestre

Submitted master’s thesis deals with rotary draw bending of tubes as a subprocess of automobile’s stabilizer bar production. The main goal of the thesis is to clarify the influence of the process parameters of the bend on the resulting shape and properties of the product. Submitted thesis includes theoretical description of the chosen tube bending technology, description of defects and possibilities of their removal. The description of the bending machine used for stabilizer bars production is done afterwards. Practical part of the thesis includes experiments clarifying influence of parameters on the resulting shape of the stabilizer bar.

Abstract Layered composite materials consisting of thin orthotropic layers offer for a designer many possibilities to tailor the structure: the behaviour and properties of the structure can be influenced not only by varying the geometry and thicknesses of the structure but also by varying the lay-up of the laminate. As new orthotropic materials having high specific strength and stiffness are used in structures, the tailoring is essential to utilize all the benefits of these materials. In this thesis tailoring and optimization of thermomechanical properties of layered composite structures are considered. The tailoring problemis formulated and solved as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. Different types of global thermomechanical properties, such as stiffnesses, coefficients of thermal expansion and natural frequencies and buckling loads of composite plates, as well as layer-wise properties, such as stresses and strains in a certain lamina, are considered. Also, coupled thermalstructural problems are studied. When lay-up parameters, i.e. number of layers, and their orientations and thicknesses, are employed as design variables, global as well as layer-wise properties of the laminate can be considered. As relations between thermomechanical properties and lay-up parameters are highly nonlinear, optimization may suffer from various local optima. However, in tailoring the global minima or maxima are not the points of interest but rather the points of design space, where appropriate values for considered properties are achieved. In the thesis optimization of global thermomechanical properties is presented also by applying so-called lamination parameters as design variables. The lamination parameters are defined as integrals of the functions, which consist of sines and cosines of the lay-up angles of different layers multiplied by the powers of the thickness co-ordinate z, through the thickness of the laminate. Thus, information of the lay-up of the laminate can be compressed into these parameters and only twelve lamination parameters are needed to describe the behaviour of a common laminate. The use of these parameters as design variables is advantageous, because the number of parameters needed is small and often formulating a convex optimization problem is possible. After finding optimal lamination parameters, a procedure is needed to generate a lay-up corresponding to these parameters. Explicit equations are derived for generating lay-ups having optimal bending lamination parameters. For creating a laminate having both optimal in-plane and bending lamination parameters, a new optimization problem searching laminates having lamination parameters as close as possible to the optimal ones is formulated. In that problem, also layer-wise properties and restrictions of manufacturing are taken into account. Agenetic algorithmsearch is employed for solving that later problem as the value of the objective function can be computed efficiently. Also, often the thicknesses and orientations of different layers can have only discrete values, which can be handled easily in the GA search, where all design variables are discrete in character.

The three-parameter lognormal distribution is widely used in many areas of science. Some modifications have been proposed to improve the maximum likelihood estimator. In some cases, however, the modified maximum likelihood estimates do not exist or the procedure encounters multiple estimates. The purpose of this research is focused on estimating the threshold or location parameter , because when is known, then the other two estimated parameters are obtained from the first two MLE equations. In this research, a method for constructing confidence intervals, confidence limits, and point estimator for the threshold parameter is proposed. Monte-Carlo simulation, bisection method, and SAS/IML were used to accomplish this objective. The bias of the point estimator and mean square error (MSE) criteria were used throughout extensive simulation to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The result shows that the proposed method can provide quite accurate estimates.