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The passage of the 2002 Farm Bill and the removal of the peanut quota system revealed underlying fundamental problems in the Virginia peanut industry. Lower yields and high costs plague producers at the farm level, acreage levels continue to decline and it is doubtful that peanut production in Virginia will continue at levels seen in the past. The structured market due to the quota system has provided little incentive in the past for technological investment. Investment in technology such as high oleic peanuts and capturing value at the consumer level are seen as ways to improve the situation in Virginia. In particular increased coordination at all levels of the supply chain would be needed to ensure that the consumer is brought a product with characteristics they desire. The literature provides ample information regarding the formation of alliances and coordination in general. According to Cozzarin and Barry (1998), vertical integration, similar to vertical alliances are set up for the following reasons: mitigating transactions costs, taking advantage of output or input price differentials of a competitor, and reducing uncertainties in costs and/or prices. Cozzarin and Barry (1998) also note that there is an increasing move toward vertical coordination in many agriculture sectors, the reasons cited for the current trend include: a) the growing influence of consumers in controlling the agri-food agenda; b) the increasing marketing power of large food companies; and (c) technological changes that necessitate coordination. Of these three reasons, the peanut industry falls under the first two. Vertical coordination is seen to be a solution when two or more entities are able to accomplish more efficiently their objectives than they are able to on their own. For the peanut industry, the agency theory and in particular principal-agent theory is the most applicable to the peanut industry. A linear model is used to examine the effects of increased coordination along the supply chain. The linear model also provides a snapshot of how decisions made at the farm level reverberate through the entire supply chain. The linear model includes the comparison of increased profits due to premiums at the consumer level. Results of the linear model indicate that the Virginia peanut industry will have difficulty maintaining current production levels without investment in the sector, without changing the way the supply chain operates. Principal-agent theory and specifically the work done on contracts in the pork and poultry industries provide a framework within which the peanut industry could avoid asymmetric information and moral hazard. This study attempts to identify underlying problems along with possible solutions or the Virginia peanut industry. / Master of Science

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<p> Ligand backbones based on xanthene, thioxanthene and acridine (XPB, TXPB and APB) have been targeted as scaffolds for the formation of rare compounds containing Lewis basic phosphine and Lewis acidic borane moieties. The resulting complexes with Pt(O) and Pt(II) reagents are expected to possess diverse reactivity compared to traditional platinum phosphine adducts owing to the strategically appended borane Lewis acid. </p> <p> Two ligands, 2,7-di-(tert-butyl)-4-diphenylboryl-5-diphenylphosphino-9,9dimethylthioxanthene (TXPB) and 2,7-di-(tert-butyl)-4-diphenylboryl-5diphenylphosphino-9,9-dimethylxanthene (XPB), have been synthesized and reacted with the platinum reagents [PtCl2(COD)], [PtMe2(COD)] and [Pt(nbe)3]. In the case of TXPB, two new Pt(II) compounds [PtCl(μ-Cl)(TXPB)] and [PtMePh(TXPB^(Ph,Me))] have been formed, isolated and characterized. In both compounds, X-Ray analysis shows that the S and the P atoms bind to the Pt center drawing the metal into the vicinity of the B group. In [PtCl( μ-Cl)(TXPB)], a chloride is seen to bridge between the Pt and B, whereas [PtMePh(TXPB^(Pb,Me))] shows that a methyl groups has been transferred to the boron with concomitant transfer of a phenyl group to Pt. Reaction with the platinum(O) precursor [Pt(nbe)3] led to formation of an unstable complex, tentatively assigned as [Pt(nbe)TXPB]. Analogous studies with the new xanthene-derived ligand, XPB, led to starkly different results. In the reaction with [PtCl2(COD)], an insoluble product, perhaps a dinuclear complex with bridging chlorides, was formed. No reaction occurred with [PtMe2(COD)], presumably because of non-participation of the 0 ligand. However, with [Pt(nbe)3], a stable complex, [Pt(nbe)2XPB], was observed. </p> <p> Synthesis of a third ligand scaffold APB has been initiated where the pyridine moiety is expected to allow strong chelation of Pt as observed with TXPB. An advanced intermediate AFBr has been synthesised where the backbone has been created through a ring closure reaction positioning two different halides as required for sequential addition of the phosphine and borane groups of the target compound. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

no abstract provided / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

<p> This study was designed to examine three issues concerning the learning of a new coordination pattern. The first issue examined was the root of the conflicting findings of previous work concerning the effect of learning a novel coordination pattern on the performance an intrinsically stable antiphase pattern (Fontaine, Lee, & Swinnen, 1997; Lee, Verschueren & Swinnen, 1995; Zanone & Kelso, 1992). Consideration of these experiments revealed that different metronomes were used, and that this metronome difference is critical because it may have influenced the learners' attentional focus during learning. Therefore, the present experiment sought to examine whether a difference of attentional focus was the cause of this conflict. The second issue was whether the superiority of an external focus over internal focus of attention during learning would be evident in the learning of a new coordination pattern. And last, this study set out to examine the issue of prior learning of a bimanual coordination pattern on the learning of a new coordination pattern. Two groups of participants (one with an. internal focus of attention, and the other with an external focus of attention) learned to perform a 90° relative phase (RP) coordination pattern over two practice sessions, and were then asked to perform a 135° RP pattern in a third session. An additional two groups of participants (one with an internal focus of attention, and the other with an external focus of attention), served as controls, and learned to perform the 135° RP pattern over all three sessions. Results of this experiment did not support the hypothesis that a difference in attentional focus during learning is responsible for the conflicting findings concerning the effect of learning on intrinsic pattern performance. Although the results seem to indicate that an external focus of attention is more beneficial than an internal focus of attention during learning of a new coordination pattern, further work without feedback as a confounding factor is required. Finally, results show that prior learning does influence the learning of a new coordination pattern in that positive transfer of learning was evident (prior learning of the 90° pattern facilitated performance of the 135° pattern), and findings provide evidence for the creation of a new attractor with learning. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

A dynamic real-time optimization (DRTO) formulation with closed-loop prediction is used to coordinate distributed model predictive controllers (MPCs) by rigorously predicting the interaction between the distributed MPCs and full plant response in the DRTO formulation. This results a multi-level optimization problem and that is solved by replacing the MPC quadratic programming subproblems by their equivalent Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) first-order optimality conditions to yield a single-level mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC). The proposed formulation is able to perform both target tracking and economic optimization with significant performance improvement over decentralized control, and similar performance to centralized MPC. A linear dynamic case study illustrates the performance of the proposed strategy for coordination of distributed MPCs for different levels of plant interaction,. The method is thereafter applied to a nonlinear integrated plant with recycle, where its performance in both set-point target tracking and economic optimization is demonstrated. Subsequently, this study presents two techniques for approximation of the closed-loop prediction within the DRTO formulation - a hybrid closed-loop formulation and an input clipping formulation. The hybrid formulation generates closed-loop predictions for a limited number of time intervals along the DRTO prediction horizon, followed by an open-loop optimal control formulation extended to rest of the horizon. The input clipping formulation utilizes an unconstrained MPC optimization formulation for each distributed MPC, coupled with the application of an input saturation mechanism. The performance of the approximation techniques is evaluated through application to case studies based on linear and nonlinear dynamic plant models respectively. The approximation techniques are demonstrated to be more computationally efficient than than the rigorous counterpart without significant loss in performance. The performance of the proposed DRTO formulation can be further improved by the introduction of nonlinearity. The nonlinear dynamic plant model is firstly introduced in the DRTO formulation while maintaining the linear formulation for the distributed MPCs. The performance of resulting formulation is demonstrated and compared against the linear counterpart. The nonlinear MPC formulation is then included in both lower-level control implementation and DRTO formulation. By reformulating the Lagrangian of the nonlinear MPC optimization subproblems, the nonlinear MPC formulation is successfully implemented in the DRTO formulation. The performance of such DRTO formulation is further improved and shown using a nonlinear case study. The conclusion of this study is summarized and the potential directions of this research such as large-scale applications, variation of MPC implementations, and robust model-based control are outlined and explained in the end. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)