Master of Architecture

This thesis presents a place for the individual within the contemporary city: Eight houses in a row that restore the solid perimeter blocks of the city while preserving the individual’s interior freedom and inalienable solitude. / Master of Architecture

Conservation tillage tobacco production has gained little producer acceptance since introduction in the late 1960's. Yield reductions, tobacco quality issues, unacceptable weed control, and inadequate planting equipment limited practice adoption and substantiated the need for continued research. The recent developments of a Subsurface Tiller-TransplanterTM and the herbicide SpartanTM renewed producer interest in conservation tillage and led to an investigation with both flue-cured and Virginia dark-fired tobacco. Flue-cured tobacco was transplanted into rye mulch on bedded rows and subsequently cultivated at various timings. Conservation tillage significantly reduced soil erosion approximately 92 percent and tobacco yield approximately 23 percent when row cultivation was not applied. Row cultivation significantly increased tobacco yield without increasing soil erosion. The yield of conservation tillage tobacco receiving a minimum of two cultivations was similar to conventional tobacco. The second study evaluated wheat, rye, crimson clover, and mixtures of crimson clover with either wheat or rye as cover crop mulches for conservation tillage production of Virginia dark-fired tobacco. Conservation tillage, regardless of cover crop, reduced dark-fired tobacco yields approximately 779 and 488 pounds per acre in 1996 and 1997, respectively. The removal of cover crop residue for hay did not lower tobacco yield compared to leaving residue on the soil surface. Row cultivation increased conservation tillage tobacco yield approximately 247 pounds in 1997 regardless of cover crop. The nitrogen contribution of crimson clover was minimal in both years of the study and did not affect tobacco performance. / Master of Science

With the ever-growing demand for power generation to support the world economy and electric transportation needs, efficient gas turbine power cycles need to be investigated to match the anticipated high demands of the future. Decarbonization efforts around the world to achieve Net Carbon Zero by 2050 have also brought many new challenges for the development of these systems due to the unique constraints imposed by less carbon-intensive fuels. In this effort to increase the efficiency and performance of such gas turbine power cycles, pressure gain combustion (PGC) has gained significant interest. The potential for an increase in the thermodynamic efficiency over the constant-pressure Brayton Cycle has made detonation combustors, a type of PGC, an attractive alternative to traditional deflagration-type combustors. Since Rotating Detonation Combustors (RDC) can provide a quasi-steady mode of operation when compared to Pulse Detonation Combustors (PDC), research has been triggered to integrate RDC with power-generating gas turbines. However, the presence of subsonic and supersonic flow fields which are generated due to the shock waves that stem from the detonation wave front and the highly non-uniform temperature and velocity profiles may cause a depreciation in the turbine performance. The current study seeks to investigate the challenges of integrating the RDC with nozzle guide vanes (NGV) of an industrial, can-annular gas turbine and attempts to understand the major contributors that impact efficiency and identify the key areas of optimization that need to be considered for maximizing performance. In order to compare the results with an F class gas turbine engine condition, a geometric model of RDC developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) was scaled using a linear mass flow to area relationship, aiming to achieve a higher flow rate. The RDC was integrated with the NGVs through a non-optimized straight duct-type geometry with a diffuser cone. 3-Dimensional Numerical analyses were performed to investigate sources of total pressure loss and to understand the unsteady effects of RDC which contribute towards the deterioration of performance. The entropy generation at different regions of interest was calculated to identify the major irreversibility's in the system. Finally, total pressure and temperature distribution along the radial direction at the exit of the transitional duct is presented to understand the various constraints imposed by the RDC when integrating with an Industrial gas turbine engine NGV. / Master of Science / In recent years, power generation has become more challenging and complex due to the ever-growing demand for running a developed or developing economy. With electric transportation becoming more accessible and affordable for the general public, an increase in the demand for power generation is expected in the future. Coupled with this is the ambition of every nation to move toward NetCarbonZero by 2050, to reduce emissions as well as move towards a more sustainable future for the next generations. One of the primary sources of power generation in modern-day industry comes from industrial gas turbine engines, due to their reliability in providing electricity to ensure grid stability as well as maintaining near-zero emission levels. But after decades of research and advancements, the constant pressure deflagration combustion process occurring in the combustors of these gas turbine engines which follow a Brayton cycle has reached to the stage where only incremental gains can now be achieved. However, detonation combustion, which is thermodynamically more efficient because of the constant volume combustion process, modifying the Brayton cycle to a Humphery cycle. Coupled with the possibility of a pressure gain type of combustion system, investigation has been triggered in recent years by many researchers and industry for matching the increase in power generation demands with detonation combustion. In this study, a Rotating Detonations Combustor (RDC), a type of continuous detonation wave propagating system is numerically investigated using a Simcenter Star CCM+ commercial CFD solver. A scaling approach, which has been pervious implemented for can-type combustor systems was modified and used to scale an RDC geometry to match the industrial gas turbine operating condition. The scaled RDC geometry was modeled with a transitional duct and a pair of Nozzle Guide Vanes (NGV) and 3D reacting numerical analysis was conducted to understand the pressure loss mechanism at various regions. These results should help future designers and researchers in conducting several design studies as well as implementing optimization methods for increasing the performance of this novel combustor technology.

Integrating water-saving technologies with optimized nutrient management strategies provides opportunities for sustainable agriculture in the Mississippi Delta. Three studies were conducted to determine the effects of irrigation systems, row patterns, and nutrient management strategies on corn and soybeans. The first study determined the effects of irrigation, row pattern, and nitrogen (N) placement methods on corn (Zea mays L.) productivity and N use efficiency. The effects of N placement methods were only evident in 2021 when the rainfall events were more pronounced than in 2020. Regardless of the row pattern, placing N with one knife increased corn grain yield and the agronomic N use efficiency by 14.1% and 16.8%, respectively, when compared to the surface dribble method. The second study investigated the effects of irrigation systems and row patterns on grain yield, grain quality parameters, and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) on soybeans (Glycine max L.) grown on Sharkey clay. When irrigation was triggered at -80 kPa, furrow-irrigated soybeans produced 3.9% more grain yield compared to sprinkler-irrigated soybeans. The total amount of water applied by the sprinkler irrigation system represented 19-52% of the total amount applied by the furrow system. Narrow-row patterns achieved greater IWUE than single-row patterns. In the third study, we evaluated the effects of N and irrigation levels on grain quantity, quality, and plant growth on corn grown across different soil electrical conductivity (EC) levels and its implications for variable rate technology. Corn grain yields increased with the increase of N and irrigation levels but decreased as soil EC decreased. Overall, maintaining a sprinkler irrigation threshold between -40 and -70 kPa optimized corn yield. In addition, these results did not provide enough evidence to use variable rate irrigation or variable rate N application in the Mississippi Delta.

The epistemological framework, 'constructivism', posits the notion that we can only know our own construction of others and the world and not the objective truth about others and the world. Constructivism has been used in this study to describe the psychological experiences of death row inmates. The research design focused on the experiences of three prisoners currently serving their sentences at Pretoria's Maximum Prison. The use of narrative and its concomitant interpretation was used as a method of co-research as it was viewed to be coterminous with the idea of co-construction, where the experience between this co­ researcher and the prisoners could be linked up in a systemic, temporal and thematically consistent way. Despite the content of the material being subjective and nongeneralisable, it has been attuned to bring forth distinctions that are liable to be heuristic-- this generated an enticing novelty that stimulated this co-researcher. Readers are wished a similar outcome. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

Thesis. 1976. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Kevin Cavanaugh. / M.Arch.

The epistemological framework, 'constructivism', posits the notion that we can only know our own construction of others and the world and not the objective truth about others and the world. Constructivism has been used in this study to describe the psychological experiences of death row inmates. The research design focused on the experiences of three prisoners currently serving their sentences at Pretoria's Maximum Prison. The use of narrative and its concomitant interpretation was used as a method of co-research as it was viewed to be coterminous with the idea of co-construction, where the experience between this co­ researcher and the prisoners could be linked up in a systemic, temporal and thematically consistent way. Despite the content of the material being subjective and nongeneralisable, it has been attuned to bring forth distinctions that are liable to be heuristic-- this generated an enticing novelty that stimulated this co-researcher. Readers are wished a similar outcome. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

Condemned prisoners in Texas and most other states are given an opportunity to make a final statement in the last moments before death. An anecdotal review by the author of this study over the last 15 years indicates that condemned prisoners use the opportunity for a variety of purposes. They ask forgiveness, explain themselves, lash out at accusers, rail at the system, read poems, say goodbyes to friends and family, praise God, curse fate - and assert their innocence with their last breaths. The final words also are typically heard by a select group of witnesses, which may include a prisoner's family and friends, victim's relatives, and one or more journalists. What the public knows about a particular condemned person's statement largely depends on what the journalists who witness the executions chose to include in their accounts of executions, the accuracy of their notes, and the completeness of the statements that are recorded on departments of correction websites or records. This paper will examine, through rhetorical and content analyses, the final words of the 355 prisoners who were executed in Texas between 1976 and 2005, identify those who made unequivocal claims of innocence in their final statements, and analyze news coverage of their executions by the Associated Press.

The single row layout problem (SRLP) is a specially structured instance of the classical facility layout problem, especially used in flexible manufacturing systems. The SRLP consists of finding the most efficient arrangement of a given number of machines along one side of the material handling path with the purpose of minimising the total weighted sum of distances among all machine pairs. To reflect real manufacturing situations, a minimum space (so-called clearances) between machines may be required by observing technological constraints, safety considerations and regulations. This thesis intends to outline the different concepts of clearances used in literature and analyse their effects on modelling and solution approaches for the SRLP. In particular the special characteristics of sequence-dependent, asymmetric clearances are discussed and finally extended to large size clearances (machine-spanning clearances). For this, adjusted and novel model formulations and solution approaches are presented. Furthermore, a comprehensive survey of articles published in this research area since 2000 is provided which identify recent developments and emerging trends in SRLP.