Engineering Commons^™

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Impacts Of Climate Change On The Evolution Of The Electrical Grid, Melissa Ree Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

Maintaining interdependent infrastructures exposed to a changing climate requires understanding 1) the local impact on power assets; 2) how the infrastructure will evolve as the demand for infrastructure changes location and volume and; 3) what vulnerabilities are introduced by these changing infrastructure topologies. This dissertation attempts to develop a methodology that will a) downscale the climate direct effect on the infrastructure; b) allow population to redistribute in response to increasing extreme events that will increase under climate impacts; and c) project new distributions of electricity demand in the mid-21^st century.

The research was structured in three parts. The first …

Irrigation Demand In A Changing Climate: Using Disaggregate Data To Predict Future Groundwater Use, Calvin R. Shaneyfelt

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The paper estimates an irrigation water demand function using disaggregate climate and well data over a 33 year time period. Aggregating climate information over long periods, like a year, causes a loss of detail on temporal climatic variation, while aggregating climate information over space causes a loss of detail on spatial variation. This analysis uses disaggregate climate variation at a temporospatial level to determine the effects of climate on groundwater use. Results show that increased heat, measured in cooling degree-days, correlates with increased water use, while increased precipitation correlates with decreased water use. However, the effects are generally magnified for …

Reduction Of Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions To Mitigate Climate Change Impacts, Mary Snow, Richard Snow

Publications

Weather affects almost all modes of transportation in a modern society, and likewise, transportation has an enormous impact on the weather. Transportation greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) impact climate change, which impacts transportation in return. Reduction of transportation impacts on climate change can mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation. This paper examines the relationship between transportation and climate change and establishes prospective solutions to reduce transportation greenhouse gas emission impacts on climate change and mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation.

Understanding The Global Energy Crisis, Eugene D. Coyle, Richard A. Simmons

Purdue University Press Books

We are facing a global energy crisis caused by world population growth, an escalating increase in demand, and continued dependence on fossil-based fuels for generation. It is widely accepted that increases in greenhouse gas concentration levels, if not reversed, will result in major changes to world climate with consequential effects on our society and economy. This is just the kind of intractable problem that Purdue University’s Global Policy Research Institute seeks to address in the Purdue Studies in Public Policy series by promoting the engagement between policy makers and experts in fields such as engineering and technology.

Major steps forward …