The modern world has forgotten a crucial part of what historically has been a beautiful experience in our homes: its connection to the planet. This thesis proposes a mix-use building that acts as an instrument to connect the users with the planet while maintaining contemporary standards of living. I believe that human beings have an innate tendency to connect with nature. The building design will have a passive aspect that is experiential and the active aspect that is functional. The spaces come alive through design by translating the planets four elements as a part of the daily lives of the users, activating the Fifth element, the Spirit. Connecting with nature on a fundamental level will enhance the inhabitants experience and create a connection with the planet through the spaces we inhabit. / Master of Architecture

The objective of the proposed research is to devise a methodology for sensing and tracking environmental variables using a passive wireless sensor based on reflected electro-material signatures. Viability of item level tracking demands the sensor to be extraordinary low cost, thus eliminating the use of any active sensor or memory circuitry. Recent developments of materials whose electrical properties can change significantly with the environmental conditions suggest the possibility of developing a passive sensor that can be interrogated remotely to extract data about the time tracked environmental changes at the sensor. A simple passive sensor, based on the concept of reflected electro-material signatures (REMS), consists of an antenna attached to a microstrip transmission line, which in turn is routed over one or more sections of variable permittivity material before being terminated in a load. The basic idea revolves around sensing the electrical properties of thermotropic liquid crystal (LCs) trapped in a polymer substrate to record the temperature data. As the temperature changes with time, the polymerization process through the material line records the historical temperature profile in the spatial distribution of the electrical properties, thus enabling the system to extract the historical profile of temperature without using any active memory circuitry. This concept can possibly be used to track a variety of variables of interest; however, the proposed research is focused on sensing and extracting the time profile of temperature. The problem of identifying medium properties from waves reflected from a device of this type is a form of the classical one dimensional inverse scattering problem. For profile inversion in a lossy inhomogeneous media, analytical techniques are difficult to implement in most practical situations. In the proposed research, neural networks with a back-propagation algorithm are used to reconstruct the historical temperature profile of the material by extracting the spatially distributed material properties of the electro-material line. After the initial proof of concept for a lossless medium, the methodology is extended to extract spatially distributed properties for a dissipative medium. Finally, for the implementation of REMS sensor concept, a neural network based methodology is developed to reconstruct the spatially distributed permittivity profile of a lossy electro-material line.

This thesis brings together two different lines of research, the nature of passive voice, the nature of readability. Commonly, languages have a range of tools for detransitivisation, topicalisation, and impersonalisation, of which passivisation is one (Givón, 1981). Passives have important roles in our language, and prescribing against their use lacks a full understanding of these roles. Much of the concern around passives from writers, editors, and teachers is no more than folklore that has not clearly analysed various writing and reading problems. Many awkward sentences are not awkward because they use passives but because they are wordy, clumsy, or pretentious. Most criticisms have little basis in linguistic theory, and rarely is there more than passing mention of the important role that passives play in communication. Some uses of passives are inappropriate, being vague, ambiguous, or even deceitful. These inappropriate uses of passive voice give the construction a bad name. They have become ammunition for prescriptive grammarians to fire at all uses of passives, often with weak analysis and minimal reference to linguistic theory. ‘Avoid passives’ has become a mantra. I tentatively suggest that there is unlikely to be a cost to processing passives. Given the speed at which the brain processes clauses, any differences in readability (if they exist) must be miniscule. Consequently, I suggest that any differences are unimportant relative to the benefits that appropriately used passives bring to readability. Furthermore, appropriately used passives may actually improve readability, especially when there is greater interest in the passive subject than the active subject, and when the passive serves to connect clauses or sentences.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of English

This dissertation has two main purposes: (a) to provide a contrastive analysis and theoretical background of the passive in English and Korean; (b) to investigate how Korean learners of English use the English passive in terms of forms, meanings, and functions.One major claim in this dissertation is that the passive is best accounted for by the notion of role prominence in both English and Korean. In addition, a significant difference is revealed in emotional (affective) functions of the passive in English and Korean, showing that the emotional function prevails in Korean far more than in English.After the discussion of theoretical background, Korean learners' actual use of the English passive is analyzed. The specific analysis of grammatical errors shows that Korean learners make local errors (errors significantly inhibiting communication) more than global errors (errors not significantly inhibiting communication). Pragmatic errors are divided largely into discourse functional errors (violation of role prominence, abrupt topic shift, and violation of defocusing) and affective functional errors. The results show that affective functional errors outnumber discourse functional errors. These results are accounted for in terms of not only language transfer and but also a socio-cultural factor, prestige of a passive sentence with respect to an active sentence. Of particular interest is the existence of a hierarchy of acceptability in pragmatic errors. Analysis of medio-passive errors suggests that the native language forms greatly affect the learners' target language forms.This dissertation plays particular attention to the pragmatic aspects of the passive, both theoretical and practical. It is argued that the learners' use of the passive in accordance with pragmatic principles will enhance cohesive writing, facilitating communication.Generally speaking, this dissertation contributes to several important areas of study in second language acquisition, including error analysis and contrastive analysis in terms of grammar and pragmatics. A major significance of this dissertation is its demonstration of the importance of pragmatics in understanding the acqusition of grammar. / Department of English

Thesis (M.A.)--Duquesne University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-80) and index.

Using computational deterministic and Monte Carlo methods, I present an analysis of the gamma and neutron signatures emitted from special nuclear material (SNM) in weapons stockpile storage scenarios. My efforts are focused on 1 year old, 25 year old, 50 year old, and 75 year old highly enriched uranium (HEU), and 1 year old, 22.5 year old, and 50 year old weapons grade plutonium (WGPu). HEU gammas are easily shielded, and when reasonably shielded, do not produce a definable signature at low energies; however, using new methods applied in this work that involve analyzing the higher energy, penetrating gammas from HEU, it can be shown that not only the presence of the HEU can be verified, but also the age since separation of the material can be discerned. Through computational modeling, I am able to verify that the novel methods investigated are both unique and effective for HEU detection. In addition, I also present my investigation of similar methods applied to the detection of WGPu. From this work I determined that WGPu age discrimination is more challenging compared to that of HEU (in spite of more radiation per unit mass) due to the high rate of induced gammas from n-gamma interactions taking place within the Pu metal and container; however, I believe that by combining neutron detection with gamma signature verification of WGPu, the approach identified can be successful. I present the neutron signature of the WGPu and how it would be observed in the detector used for material verification. I calculated the detector response for a pre-determined neutron detector design using adjoint calculations in order to determine whether the detector will perform as designed. In addition to developing a new protocol for WGPu detection, I present in this work, a comprehensive source book as a product of this research, detailing the gamma and neutron signatures for both solid and shell configurations of HEU and WGPu. This can serve as a very beneficial guide for anyone interested in modeling SNM, since the many steps needed to obtain this radiation leakage data will save a significant amount of researcher time. The results from my work have contributed to a collaborative effort supporting funded US department of State research towards designing a mobile detection system that can rapidly validate and verify the presence of SNM in weapons pit containers.

published_or_final_version / Pharmacology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Ozone is a known pollutant harmful to human health and a strong oxidizer. The use of Zero Energy Air Purification (ZEAP) materials has proven to be a viable option to reduce indoor ozone concentrations during short-term experiments. The current study focuses on activated carbon mats, and three green building materials (perlite-based ceiling tile, recycled carpet, and painted gypsum wallboard. The effects of long-term exposure of these materials to real environments on ozone removal capability, primary emissions (in absence of ozone) of carbonyls and secondary emissions of carbonyls following the use of ozone were studied. A field study was completed over a six-month period and laboratory testing was intermittently conducted on material samples. The results show sustained ozone removal capability for all materials except carpet. Carbonyl emissions are low for activated carbon in all field locations. Painted gypsum wallboard and perlite-based ceiling tile have similar overall emissions over the six-month period, but distributed differently in time, while carpet has large initial emission rates that decline rapidly but remain high compared to the other materials. This study confirms that activated carbon mats are a viable ZEAP material and that perlite-based ceiling tile could also be considered as such as it balances good ozone removal capability and low by- product emissions. / text

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