by Daisuke Oka., Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2001., Includes bibliographical references (leaf 78).

This paper describes progress to date in the development of a system for representing various forms of real-world knowledge. The knowledge is stored in the form of a net of simple parallel processing elements, which allow certain types of deduction…

Policies to avert the threat of dangerous climate change focus on stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by drastically reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon. Such reductions require limiting the use of fossil fuels-which supply the bulk of energy to economic activity,…

The objective of this thesis is to clarify the ways that organizational factors influence nuclear power plant performance in order to improve performance. Therefore, this thesis studied the nuclear power plant organizational environment by identifying and detailing its important work…

The thesis comprises three essays on various aspects of the development and diffusion of pharmaceutical innovations, woven together by the idea that the production of clinical knowl- edge influences organizational design, pricing, and advertising decisions in the pharmaceutical industry -…

Integration of daylight availability in time and architectural space is a critical element in achieving optimal comfort and productivity, as well as in minimizing energy consumption. In recent years, there has been an increase in the demand of the better…

If we are to understand how we can build machines capable of broad purpose learning and reasoning, we must first aim to build systems that can represent, acquire, and reason about the kinds of commonsense knowledge that we humans have…

This thesis is concerned with the systematic investigation and application of knowledge within the architectural design studio. The thesis takes, as a point of departure in the development of architectural epistemology, a model of knowledge developed by Yehuda Elkana, in…

Trying to capture intuitive knowledge is a little like trying to capture the moment between what just happened and what is about to happen. Or to quote a famous philosopher, "You can't put your foot in the same river once."…

Reasoning about motion is an important part of our commonsense knowledge, involving fluent spatial reasoning. This work studies the qualitative and geometric knowledge required to reason in a world that consists of balls moving through space constrained by collisions with…