(cont.) In this blurred area, a project/group-based curriculum can be developed to involve casual work areas that can fluctuate in size, based on the specifications of the project. Through the cultivation of this type of environment, the social energies of…

by Shawn W. Ritchie., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 1999., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-81).

his dissertation analyzes how local knowledge improves environmental decisions. The premise is that controlling pollution and addressing public health disparities are not problems that professionals alone can solve. Concerned lay publics, especially low-income populations and people of color that experience…

In the search for meaning, the architectural profession legitimately seeks culture to sanction its products. However, in business organizations, culture is complex and tacit- richer and deeper than any of its external manifestations, including architecture. To compensate for culture's incoherence,…

"The discrepancy between [our personal experiences] and our idealizations of knowledge leads us into counterproductive strategies for learning and thinking" (Papert 1993). This discrepancy has driven most research towards understanding how people fail to accomplish a task, while few researchers…

(cont.) in the ECS signal, no definitive method for sensing blade vibration using an ECS has yet been developed., High cycle fatigue (HCF) cracks generated by compressor blade vibrations are a common source of failure in gas turbine engines. Current…

(cont.) to variations in the way functional elements interact with verbal roots. Overall, my work not only contributes to our understanding of how events are syntactically represented, but also explicates interactions at the syntax-semantics interface, clarifying the relationship between surface…

by Kimberly G. Waters., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002., Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46).

Conversational interfaces have received much attention as a promising natural communication channel between humans and computers. A typical conversational interface consists of three major systems: speech understanding, dialog management and spoken language generation. In such a conversational interface, speech recognition…

The activity of designing and developing large, complex, discrete, physical, and engineered products faces the challenges in the physical product system, the organization of people, and the larger systems in which the product resides-the natural and societal systems. This thesis…