Academic literature on the topic 'Conceptual Solutions'

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Rolla, 2007.<br>Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 15, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-249).

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1998.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-111).<br>The thesis represents a design investigation that seeks to reconsider the high-rise building. With changing uses and technologies, high-rise office towers may have become obsolete. Given the recent capabilities for communications networking, the need for businesses to occupy exclusive-use buildings in central city locations may be questioned. Instead the mixed use building type, often encountered in Southeast Asia, may point at a way of rethinking the typology of tall buildings as such. When taken to an extreme, mixed-use buildings could include use and occupation patterns as comprehensive as cities themselves. These would need to be supported by a skeletal structure of building systems that would include structural, transportation, service, climate control and inhabitation systems. Amongst designers and engineers there exists much discussion about building 'super tall buildings'. Yet there may be a need for departing from the current type of central-core high-rise buildings. In this light the thesis proposes conceptual solutions for building systems that may provide for sustaining more than 122,000 people. The idea is based on the concept of a triangulated mega-frame structure of roughly 49,700 sqm footprint that rises at a 1:5 aspect ratio to 1560m of height. The building is organized hierarchically in components of varying sizes. Interspersed between habitable modules are lobbies and spaces that act much like public places of a city. The basic module is an adaptable and suspended eight-story unit (pod). Clusters of 30 such pods, connected in pairs by common atria, form one planning unit of 242 m height. This unit is serviced by a centrally suspended structure which acts much as a public plaza/square. Five + of these planning units rise to make up the building. Woven into this assembly of modules, lobbies and plazas are vertical and horizontal connections, like streets. These again are hierarchically organized to provide for movement at different speeds and distances, much like horizontal streets or rail networks. The result is a building that provides an intense concentration of resources and delivers a degree of control, connectivity and adaptability that could suggest an alternative form of thinking about growing cities under such dense urban conditions as are prevalent in Hong Kong.<br>by Frank Wolfgang Ungerer.<br>M.Arch.

This thesis suggests the use of tools from the disciplines of Computational Linguistics and Knowledge Representation with the idea that such tools would enable the partial automation of two processes of Conceptual Design: the analysis of Requirements and the synthesis of concepts of solution. The viewpoint on Conceptual Design developed in this research is based on the systematic methodologies developed in the literature. The evolution of these methodologies provided precise description of the tasks to be achieved by the designing team in order to achieve successful design. Therefore, the argument of this thesis is that it is possible to create computer models of some of these tasks in order to partially automate the refinement of the design problem and the exploration of the design space. In Requirements Engineering, the definition of requirements consists in identifying the needs of various stakeholders and formalizing it into design speciႡcations. During this task, designers face the problem of having to deal with individuals from different expertise, expressing their needs with different levels of clarity. This research tackles this issue with requirements expressed in natural language (in this case in English). The analysis of needs is realised from different linguistic levels: lexical, syntactic and semantic. The lexical level deals with the meaning of words of a language. Syntactic analysis provides the construction of the sentence in language, i.e. the grammar of a language. The semantic level aims at Ⴁnding about the specific meaning of words in the context of a sentence. This research makes extensive use of a semantic atlas based on the concept of clique from graph theory. Such concept enables the computation of distances between a word and its synonyms. Additionally, a methodology and a metric of similarity was defined for clarifying requirements at syntactic, lexical and semantic levels. This methodology integrates tools from research collaborators. In the synthesis process, a Knowledge Representation of the necessary concepts for enabling computers to create concepts of solution was developed. Such, concepts are: function, input/output Ⴂow, generic organs, behaviour, components. The semantic atlas is also used at that stage to enable a mapping between functions and their solutions. It works as the interface between the concepts of this Knowledge Representation.

Despite the progress that has been made with regard to construction cost management, many drawbacks including the unpredictability of construction costs continue to raise concerns. This research study aimed to contribute to improving construction cost management by identifying the key issues which contribute to such drawbacks, and developing conceptual solutions to mitigate them. The design science approach has been selected as the overall research method. Design science approach has been augmented through an analysis to the root cause of each identified key issue, an inference of countermeasure to the each root cause (conceptual solution), and synthesis of the (practical) solutions. This research has identified failure to forecast, failure to support improvement opportunities, costs being considered as resulting from action, neglect of value consideration, poor support for inter-organizational cost management, negative influence on behaviour, and constraints created by budgeting, as key issues contributing to the current drawback of construction cost management. This study proposes the recognition of waste through flow theory, integrating costs to design, value generation theory, seeing construction as production, incentives aligned to improvement, separating the different functions of budgeting and the dynamic approach to managing costs as solutions to the identified drawbacks. The outcomes of this study contribute to developing practical solutions for constriction cost management, and also represent conceptual gains in the field.

Magister Educationis - MEd (Mathematics and Science Education)<br>The purpose of this study was to investigate how the use of a conceptual change approach could contribute to enhancing the teaching and learning of ions in aqueous solutions in Grade 10 Physical Science. More specifically, the study attempted to answer the main research question, namely, How can the conceptual change approach be used to teach ions in aqueous solutions in Physical Sciences? This study was underpinned by the theories of constructivism and conceptual change. The concept of effective teaching practice is based on approaches that promote conceptual change and provides learners with skills on learning how to learn and making meaning out of their learning - which is part of the constructivist view of learning. The sample of this research consisted of a single class in a school where the researcher is teaching. The class has 26 learners of mixed gender. The study adopted a single case study approach and was designed to allow for the use of multiple data collection methods. Data was collected through a pre- and post-tests, intervention lessons, classroom observation as well as semi-structured focused group interviews. The use of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection proved useful and provided in-depth data and allowed for triangulation. The data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of the research showed that learners performed better in the post-test than in the pre-test. The learners mentioned the fact that the intervention lesson played an important role in making them understand the concept better. The results also showed that, while the majority of the learners seemed to have made some progress in their conceptual development as a result of their exposure to the conceptual change method of teaching, others struggled with the approach.

This study covers several areas of long held interest and urgent relevance: the development of lasting and meaningful community identity, the design of dynamic communities well aware of their current and future potential, the preservation of rural lands, and the control of unplanned growth.Working on two tracks, the study researches through focused interviews the conceptual image of the community held by representative members and then seeks to apply principles derived from the work of Randall Arendt, Robert Yaro and others to the articulation of land planning and site design measures that can be implemented in the Northwest sector of Muncie.Based on both the research and the derivation of principles, the study offers a large number of ideas supported with illustrations toward the improvement of the conditions and the creation of a long range strategy for land development and conservation.<br>Department of Landscape Architecture

The risks of soft errors increase with system complexity, reduction in operational voltages, exponential growth in transistors per chip, increases in clock frequencies and device shrinking. Research into techniques to cope with soft errors has mostly focused on post-design phases such as circuit level solutions, logic level solutions, spatial redundancy, temporal redundancy, and/or error correction codes. Clearly, though, it would be better to tackle the issue early in the design process. A novel method is outlined in this research for assigning a criticality ranking to the components in a design at the conceptual phase. The ranking is easily derived with little computational effort. Further, the research flags why the component is critical. The model is then examined by refactoring to lower each component’s criticality until the goal of minimising the risks of soft errors is satisfied and constraints are maintained. The methodology is then tested against real-life systems that must have high reliability.

This thesis examines students’ understanding of economic aspects of global environmental problems. The first aim is to identify and characterise changes in business and economics students’ conceptions of negative environmental effects and pricing goods and services. The second aim is to identify and characterise changes in students’ values, beliefs and personal norms regarding effective solutions to climate change problems. Three studies were carried out with students in Swedish upper secondary schools. The first study used an open-ended questionnaire and is presented in Article I. The second and third studies drew on a longitudinal study, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods and results are presented in Article II and Article III. Article I shows that students’ awareness of environmental issues varies in relation to the type of good. Some goods are seen as more harmful to nature than others, for example, jeans were not perceived as environmentally negative while beef burgers and travel services were to some extent. This indicates that environmental references are often characterised through perceptible aspects of goods’ production i.e. being more expensive because of environmentally friendly production. Furthermore, some understanding of negative externalities was revealed. Interestingly, when value aspects of how prices should be set students more frequently refer to environmental impact. Article II describes changes in students’ price and environmental conceptions over the course of a year. It identifies the fragmentary nature of students’ every-day thinking in relation to productivity, consumer preference and negative externalities. Differences in conceptions of how prices are linked to negative impact is characterised in terms of basic, partial and complex understandings of productivity as well as basic and partial understandings of consumers’ influences. Partial conceptions are seen as students’ conceptions in a process of change towards a more scientific understanding of price and negative environmental impact. Most interestingly, the results show that more than one aspect of environmental impact and pricing are simultaneously relevant. This is highlighted by a change from views putting productivity at the centre for how prices are set to include consumers’ preferences when judgmentally describing how prices should be set. The results conclude that students show a broader content knowledge regarding pricing and the environment when including normative preferences. Article III explores changes in students’ value orientations, beliefs regarding efficient solutions to climate change and norms for pro-environmental actions. Small changes are observed regarding the three constructs. Value changes are reported in terms of a small average increase in importance of altruistic, biospheric and egoistic orientations while common individual changes are shown in shifts between weak and strong values. Beliefs regarding efficient climate change solutions are taxes and legislations while changes in market prices are perceived as being least effective. The findings show no direct relations between values and norms hence change in norms is associated with values through changes in beliefs.<br><p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>