by Glenn D. Bartkowski., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).

The bulk of research on teacher knowledge has taken place in elementary and secondary school settings. The goal of this study was to examine teacher knowledge in higher education by asking: (1) what types of knowledge are drawn upon in…

A major contribution of research in workplace literacy has been to explore the part that writing plays in the knowledge-making practices of various professional groups. While such enquiry has revealed that writing is essential to the creation and use of…

This study examined the efficacy of conjoint behavioural consultation (CBC) with children evidencing conduct problems, the impact of CBC in enhancing parental knowledge of behavioural principles, and whether knowledge of behavioural principles is related to improved parenting skills. An A/B…

Humans recognize optical reflectance properties of surfaces such as metal, plastic, or paper from a single image without knowledge of illumination. We develop a machine vision system to perform similar recognition tasks automatically. Reflectance estimation under unknown, arbitrary illumination proves…

The structural design of power transmission lines requires knowledge from a variety of widely-dispersed expert sources. This thesis demonstrates how an expert system can be efficiently used to assemble and organize this knowledge in order to design a wide range…

Over the past few years, the amount of electronic information available from the Internet has increased dramatically. Unfortunately, the search tools currently available for retrieving and filtering such information remain inadequate in balancing relevance and comprehensiveness. This work proposes a…

Flow Accelerated Corrosion (FAC) is the most prevalent material degradation mechanism for low carbon steel in steam-water flow systems. The band of uncertainty in predictions of wear rate due to FAC spans one to two orders of magnitude. Such a…

This thesis argues that women's bodies are constituted by discourses about them. It explores the operations of power over women's bodies by analyzing the way in which the maternal body is constructed in the discourses of law, medicine and culture.…

In order to investigate the use of fuzzy logic in decision-support systems (DSS) for dairy cattle breeding, a first-generation prototype software system was developed. The objectives were to determine the advantages and limitations of fuzzy logic for this type of…