The rapid growth of e-commerce has intensified the need for efficient and sustainable last-mile delivery solutions. UAVs offer significant potential, promising enhanced performance, cost savings, and improved delivery efficiency. This thesis investigates the feasibility of UAVs for last-mile delivery applications through a comprehensive literature review and practical feasibility assessment. The theoretical review synthesizes research across seven research domains: environmental performance, economic impacts, social impacts, policy and regulations, routing and scheduling, charging infrastructure, and energy consumption. This includes in-depth review of 98 relevant articles published during the last 10 years. The analysis highlights that despite UAVs potential benefits, widespread adoption poses challenges, particularly due to regulatory frameworks and technological limitations. To address this, the thesis develops a simulation framework to assess UAV performance under diverse operational conditions. Using 192 simulated delivery missions, the proposed framework evaluates the influence of factors, including wind conditions, payload, and route length on mission feasibility, energy consumption, and GHG emissions. The results showed the prominent effect of wind direction coupled with route direction on mission status and energy consumption. Moreover, the results show that longer routes were more energy efficient despite their higher total energy consumption. Overall, this study contributes to the ongoing UAV research by providing a holistic evaluation of UAVs in last-mile delivery, identifying knowledge gaps, and proposing future research interventions. The integration of theoretical insights with practical simulations highlights the necessity of conducting experimental validation to support UAV adoption in last-mile delivery. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / This thesis examines the potential of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for parcel delivery to satisfy the surging demand for faster and more sustainable logistics. The thesis provides a theoretical in-depth review of UAV research for last-mile delivery across seven domains: environmental performance, economic impacts, social impacts, policy and regulations, routing and scheduling, charging infrastructure, and energy consumption. The review identifies UAV benefits (e.g., reduced emissions, faster delivery, and cost savings) and challenges (e.g., policy constraints and public acceptance). It also identifies the saturated knowledge, research gaps, and proposes future research directions to advance UAV adoption. Practically, an integrated simulation framework is developed to assess how different factors, including wind (speed and direction), distance, flight altitude, and parcel weight, influence UAV feasibility of implementation. The findings indicate that wind conditions have a significant impact on feasibility, and that longer delivery distances, while consuming more power, can improve energy efficiency. Overall, UAV is a promising technology for sustainable last-mile delivery with potential to eliminate GHG emissions.

This thesis examines whether the theological method currently known as inculturation was used in the Supper Narratives of the New Testament. A methodology is set up in which texts are examined against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman, Judaic and early Christian cultures. This methodology focusses on family resemblances and analogies, rather than genealogy or causal dependence to examine the links between text and context. It also avoids claims for orthodoxy dependent on claims about origins. Engaging with the claims of writers from Schweitzer, through Jeremias and up to the present, three themes are identified: meals, sacrifice and eschatology. The manifestations of each are examined against the three cultural groups:Judaic, Graeco-Roman and early Christian. The Supper Narratives (Mk 14:12-26, Matt. 26:17-30 and Luke 22:7-23 and 1 Cor 11:17-34) are then mapped against these themes. Analogies to the cultural groups are then traced. This process leads to conclusions that the New Testament writers did use a methodology which can be identified as inculturation. It manifests itself particularly through patterns identified by anthropologists as bricolage and re-accentuation. A notable example is "sacrificialisation", in which events and items are invested with a fresh sacrificial significance. Judaic concepts (e.g., covenant and Atonement) and rituals (e.g., sacramentals and Passover) dominate the interpretations of Jesus' last meal with his disciples. This does not mean that inculturation only took place in relation to Jewish culture. Many of the concepts used (e.g., sacrifice and sacrament) share commonalities with Graeco-Roman thought which allows them to engage with such world-views. This process sees Judaic understandings used as correctives to Graeco-Roman thinking about sacraments. It also sees Jewish concepts used to address Graeco-Roman values, and give an added historical depth (antiquitas) to a comparatively recent event. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / D.Th. (New Testament)

Purpose: The increasing importance given to sustainability issues by governments, companies, consumers, suppliers, researchers, students and the authors of this paper in addition to the scarce empirical studies on the topic of sustainable last mile logistics operations in the food retail industry in Sweden provides relevance to the choice of topic. This paper presents an exploratory single-case study on a Swedish food retailer with a strong sustainability-oriented decision-making body, and will seek to understand how they manage to adopt best sustainable practices and which drivers and most responsible for it. Objective: The aim of this study is to present through an empirical study, how food retailers operate their last mile logistics operations according to the triple bottom line approach, contributing to this young field where a profusion of data to confirm the existing theory remains deficient. Furthermore, the focus is placed on the different drivers for food retailers to adopt sustainable practices in their transportation operations from the distribution warehouse to their stores located in urban areas. Approach: A Swedish food retailer that strives for best practices will be studied in order to obtain key empirical data, which will allow the authors to compare theory and empirical data.  The study will focus on the sustainability-oriented operations approach in the Last Mile Logistics of the chosen retailer and observe the different drivers regarding their operations following all aspects of the triple bottom line. A single-case study analysis of a leading company in terms of sustainability-driven operations will provide more insight on how this “category” of food retailers manages to operationalize their environmental-friendly culture and strategy for inbound Last Mile Logistics successfully, without losing their competitive edge and remaining economically sustainable. Findings: After juxtaposing the secondary data issued from the existing theories on sustainable LML in the food retail industry to the primary data obtained from Axfood, a Swedish food retailer, the results have demonstrated that a business cannot neglect economic drivers to be financially sustainable, (cost optimization, enhanced efficiency, etc.) it remains important and cannot be overridden to enable a shift towards optimal sustainability practices in LML operations. However, the drivers that have proven to make the cut in order to succeed in achieving best sustainable practices are; a highly proactive management, stakeholder pressure (particularly consumers and NGOs amongst others) and innovative technology (including those that imply a short-term economic trade-off for long-term greater good to the TBL dimensions). Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainable practices; Last Mile Logistics; Sustainable Last Mile Logistics; Triple Bottom Line; Food Retailers; Food Retail Industry; Drivers.

This thesis examines whether the theological method currently known as inculturation was used in the Supper Narratives of the New Testament. A methodology is set up in which texts are examined against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman, Judaic and early Christian cultures. This methodology focusses on family resemblances and analogies, rather than genealogy or causal dependence to examine the links between text and context. It also avoids claims for orthodoxy dependent on claims about origins. Engaging with the claims of writers from Schweitzer, through Jeremias and up to the present, three themes are identified: meals, sacrifice and eschatology. The manifestations of each are examined against the three cultural groups:Judaic, Graeco-Roman and early Christian. The Supper Narratives (Mk 14:12-26, Matt. 26:17-30 and Luke 22:7-23 and 1 Cor 11:17-34) are then mapped against these themes. Analogies to the cultural groups are then traced. This process leads to conclusions that the New Testament writers did use a methodology which can be identified as inculturation. It manifests itself particularly through patterns identified by anthropologists as bricolage and re-accentuation. A notable example is "sacrificialisation", in which events and items are invested with a fresh sacrificial significance. Judaic concepts (e.g., covenant and Atonement) and rituals (e.g., sacramentals and Passover) dominate the interpretations of Jesus' last meal with his disciples. This does not mean that inculturation only took place in relation to Jewish culture. Many of the concepts used (e.g., sacrifice and sacrament) share commonalities with Graeco-Roman thought which allows them to engage with such world-views. This process sees Judaic understandings used as correctives to Graeco-Roman thinking about sacraments. It also sees Jewish concepts used to address Graeco-Roman values, and give an added historical depth (antiquitas) to a comparatively recent event. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / D.Th. (New Testament)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:23:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5081.pdf: 5248422 bytes, checksum: dcbec39bdc1f1a1766bcfd2c71f4c065 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-29 / This research is an analysis of Gus Van Sant s Last Days (2005) soundtrack. From the concept of mis-en-bande, that emphasizes the interactions between the different sounds of the film narrative, we propose to consider the details of the Last Days s sound organization and its crucial contribution to the proposed narrative discourse. / Esta pesquisa consiste em uma análise da banda sonora do filme Last Days (2005), de Gus Van Sant. A partir do conceito de mis-en-bande, noção que valoriza as interações entre os diversos sons que compõem a narrativa cinematográfica, propomos pensar as nuances da organização sonora do filme e sua decisiva contribuição para os discursos narrativos propostos.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T18:55:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rodrigo_ Smaha.pdf: 2405444 bytes, checksum: ad2d42c8f1bc791be757498717913f5a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-13 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Several images enshrined in American History written by Europeans that not always corroborated with the reality of the time and much less with the contemporaneity were also immortalized into the romantic literature. However, the literary art sought, in many of its expressions, bring to society other images of natives not only those stereotyped ones presented in historical documents produced by the conquerors, such as those reported in the Journal of Columbus (1492) and in Caminha s Letter (1500). Within a vast number of historical novels that address the issue of characterization of the native, we decided to examine the following works: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), by James Fenimore Cooper, Xicoténcatl (1826), written anonymously and O Guarani (1857), by José de Alencar. This corpus includes settings of Amerindians from the realities of Northern Anglo-Saxon, the Spanish-American universe and also Brazil and all of them are designed within the period of American Romanticism. These works depict the figure the native and thus indicate a desire to build up American identities. Thus, we asked ourselves about what are the literary devices employed in their settings; how these settings conducted in different geocultural spaces of the continent move toward or away from each other; among others, in order to understand how romantic writers portrayed the natives during the formation of a national identity, confirming, or not, the integration of this group as part of the society. To support this work, we will use concepts of Alexis Márquez Rodríguez (1991), García Gual (2002), Mata Indurain (1995), Fernández Prieto (2003), Aínsa (1991, 2003, 2008), Trouche (2006), Fleck (2005, 2007, 2008, 2013), Lukács (1977), Milton (1992), Leenhardt (1998), Hutcheon (1991) Bernd (1998), among others that may be helpful. We hope thus enable literary scholars, specifically those who are dedicated to the reading of historical novel, by analyzing the works, a significant characterization of the natives in the romantic era, as well as strengthen the studies on the historical novel area and on comparative studies / Várias imagens consagradas na história das Américas escrita pelos europeus que nem sempre corroboravam com a realidade da época e muito menos com a da contemporaneidade , foram, também, imortalizadas pela literatura romântica. Contudo, a arte literária buscou, em várias de suas expressões, trazer à sociedade outras imagens dos nativos que não apenas aquelas estereotipadas nos documentos históricos produzidos pelos conquistadores, como aquelas relatadas no Diário de Colombo (1492) e n A Carta de Caminha (1500). Em um vasto número de romances históricos que abordam a questão da representação do nativo, decidimos examinar as seguintes obras: The last of the Mohicans (1826), de James Fenimore Cooper, Xicoténcatl (1826), de autoria anônima, e O Guarani (1857), de José de Alencar. Esse corpus engloba configurações dos ameríndios nas realidades do norte anglo-saxônico, no universo hispano-americano e também no Brasil, todas elas concebidas dentro do período do Romantismo. Tais obras retratam a figura do nativo e apontam para um desejo de construção de identidades americanas. Frente a elas, indagamo-nos sobre quais são os recursos literários empregados em suas configurações; como estas configurações, realizadas em diferentes espaços geoculturais do continente, aproximam-se ou se distanciam; entre outros, a fim de entender como os escritores românticos retrataram os nativos no período da formação de uma identidade nacional, corroborando, ou não, para a integração desse grupo na sociedade. Para respaldar o trabalho, utilizaremos conceitos de Márquez Rodríguez (1991), García Gual (2002), Mata Induráin (1995), Fernández Prieto (2003), Aínsa (1991, 2003, 2008), Trouche (2006), Fleck (2005, 2007, 2008, 2013), Lukács (1977), Milton (1992), Leenhardt (1998), Hutcheon (1991), Bernd (1998), entre outros que se façam necessários. Esperamos, dessa forma, possibilitar aos estudiosos de literatura, mais especificamente àqueles que se dedicam à leitura do romance histórico, por meio da análise das obras, uma caracterização significativa dos nativos na época romântica, bem como fortalecer as pesquisas na área do romance histórico e dos estudos comparados

With off-chip memory access taking 100's of processor cycles, getting data to the processor in a timely fashion remains one of the key performance bottlenecks in current systems. With increasing core counts, this problem aggravates and the memory access latency becomes even more critical in multi-core systems. Thus the Last Level Cache (LLC) is of particular importance as any miss experienced at the LLC translates into a costly off-chip memory access. A combination of on-chip caches and prefacers is used to hide the off-chip memory access latency. While a hierarchy of caches focus on exploiting locality by retaining useful data, prefacers complement them by initating data accesses early for blocks that are likely to be accessed in future. In the first half of this thesis, we focus on improving the performance of LLC in single-core processors by focusing on prefetchers. In the case of multi-cores, the LLC is shared across many cores and therefore by many programs running on them. Thus, in the second half of this thesis, we focus on novel and efficient management mechanisms for shared LLC to improve the performance of programs running on the various cores. Prefetchers observe a training stream of primary misses in the cache and rely on the regularity present in them to predict and avoid future misses. We quantify the regularity present in the training stream using the information theoretic measure of entropy and study the impact on regularity by extending the training stream to include secondary misses and accesses. We also consider triggering prefetches on secondary misses. We _nd that the extended histories are more regular in general and it is beneficial to trigger prefetches on secondary misses also. However, the best design choice varies on a per-benchmark and prefetcher basis, necessitating a dynamic approach to identify the best prefetcher configuration. We propose an inexpensive bloom filter based dynamic mechanism to identify the best performing prefetch design point at run time. The adaptive scheme improves the performance in terms of Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) by 4.6% on average over a baseline prefetcher. This performance improvement is achieved along with a reduction in memory traffic requirements. It is well known that aggressive prefetching can harm performance due to increased contention for memory bandwidth and cache pollution. Prefetchers treat all loads as equal and try to eliminate as many misses as possible while certain (static) load instructions are known to be more performance critical. As our second contribution, we propose Focused Prefetching, a generic mechanism to introduce performance awareness in prefetching. We identify that a small number of static loads, referred to as Loads Incurring Majority of Commit Stalls (LIMCOS), account for a majority of the commit stalls in processors. We propose simple history-based classifier to identify LIMCOS with high accuracy. We use the classifier to focus the prefetching efforts on LIMCOS. This is achieved in a generic prefetcher-agnostic fashion by filtering the history used by the prefetchers. Focused Prefetching improves performance in terms of IPC by 9.8% for a set of memory intensive SPEC2000 workloads. This performance gain is achieved along with a reduction in memory traffic and an improvement in prefetch accuracy. In the second part of the thesis, we focus on improving the performance of shared caches in multi-core systems. Last level caches are affected by a lack of temporal locality in the access stream as the locality gets filtered out by caches above it. In the case of multi-cores, the interleaving of accesses from the various cores further adds to the problem. To overcome this, we propose a PC-Centric Next-Use Aware Cache Organization (NUcache) for shared caches in multi-cores, with an ability to retain a subset of cache blocks longer. This is achieved by a logical partitioning of the associative ways of a cache set into Main Ways and Deli Ways. While all the blocks have access to the Main Ways, blocks that are likely to be accessed in the near future (with shorter Next-Use distance) are candidates to be retained longer in the Deli Ways to eliminate future misses. We make use of the fact that a small number of PCs, referred to as delinquent PCs, bring in a majority of the cache blocks and learn the Next-Use characteristic of blocks brought in by them. We propose an intelligent cost-benefit based PC-selection mechanism to identify the best set of delinquent PCs that should have access to the Deli Ways to maximize the cache hits. Performance evaluation reveals that NUcache improves the performance (in terms of Average Normalized Turnaround Time, ANTT) of multi-programmed workloads by 6.2%, 13.9%, 15.8% and 19.6% in dual, quad, eight and sixteen core machines respectively. NUcache also performs better than some of the state-of-the-art cache partitioning mechanisms. The last part of the thesis deals with effective shared cache management in multi-core systems to achieve various performance objectives. Explicitly controlling the shared cache occupancy of competing applications is a flexible and practical way to achieve a variety of high level performance goals. Existing solutions control cache occupancy at a coarser granularity, do not scale well to large core counts and, in some cases, lack the flexibility to support a variety of performance goals. To overcome this, we propose Probabilistic Shared Cache Management (PriSM), a framework to manage the cache occupancy of different cores at cache block granularity by controlling their eviction probabilities. The proposed framework requires only simple hardware changes to implement, can scale to larger core count and is flexible enough to support a variety of performance goals like hit-maximization, fairness and QoS. PriSM with Hit-Maximization improves the performance (of multi-programmed workloads) in terms of ANTT by 16.5%, 18.7% and 12.7% over baseline LRU in eight, sixteen and thirty two core machines respectively.

Title: Modelling Dependent Lives Author: Eva Pavčová Department: Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics Supervisor: RNDr. Lucie Mazurová, Ph.D., Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics Abstract: In this thesis, we model the dependence between the remaining lifetimes of a husband and wife using a specific Markov model. We examined the impact of the dependence on the net single premium using the specific Markov model that captures the long-term dependence between lifetimes of the two considered lives. Using this model we have calculated 10-year joint-life annuity due and 10-year last-survivor annuity due considering the age rage (37, 80) in case of dependence and also independence of the two considered lives. The calculations were based on the dataset related to the Czech population in 2015. The impact of the dependence between the remaining lifetimes of the husband and wife was found to be not significant. Keywords: positive quadrant depedence, multiple life insurance premiums, depen- dent lifetimes, joint-life annuity, last-survivor annuity, joint-life and last-survivor models

In this essay, I examined the significance of graphic novels as polyvalent texts that hold the potential for creating an aesthetic sense of flow for readers and consumers. In building a justification for the rhetorical examination of comic book culture, I looked at Kenneth Burke's critique of art under capitalism in order to explore the dimensions between comic book creation, distribution, consumption, and reaction from fandom. I also examined Victor Turner's theoretical scope of flow, as an aesthetic related to ritual, communitas, and the liminoid. I analyzed the graphic novels Green Lantern: Rebirth and Y: The Last Man as case studies toward the rhetorical significance of retroactive continuity and the somatic potential of comic books to serve as equipment for living. These conclusions lay groundwork for multiple directions of future research.

We have conducted a study that is intended to investigate and understand how logistics companies in city logistics handle increased e-commerce challenges and describe what actions they take. To be able to do that, two question formulations have been formulated that goes: “What challenges, caused by an increased e-commerce, exist for logistics companies within city logistics?” and “What are logistics companies doing to address the challenges that exist and that are caused by increased e-commerce?”. Further is the theoretical frame of references presented where challenges and innovations for logistics companies in city logistics is a central point. We have used a qualitative approach, where semi-structured interviews have been used to get the essential information to be able to analyze towards our theoretical frame of references. Headliners that are found in the theoretical frame of references reappear in both the empirical material and the analysis to get a common thread throughout the study. In the analysis, we have our question formulations as headliners to really analyze challenges and innovations. Our study has contributed to an increased understanding of how logistics companies handle an increased e-commerce challenge and describe what actions they take. We have noted that the increased e-commerce has led to challenges for logistics companies in city logistics. We concluded that e-commerce has become more complex with shorter lead time, more but smaller packages and higher demands from consumers have been added, which is considered a challenge for logistics companies. The study shows the main challenges that increased e-commerce brought. The study also shows various innovations and actions by logistics companies within city logistics. / Vi har gjort en studie som är ämnad att undersöka och förstå hur logistikföretag inom citylogistik hanterar ökade e-handelsutmaningar samt beskriva åtgärder de vidtar. För att kunna göra det har vi utgått från två frågeställningar som lyder: “Vilka utmaningar, orsakade av ökad e-handel, finns för logistikföretag inom citylogistik?” och “Vad görlogistikföretag inom citylogistik för att hantera de utmaningar som finns och som är orsakade av ökad e-handel?” Vidare presenteras det teoretiska referensram där utmaningar och innovationer för logistikföretag inom citylogistik är en central del. Vi har använt oss utav ett kvalitativt angreppssätt där vi har genomfört semistrukturerade intervjuer för att få den väsentliga informationen för att kunna analysera gentemot vår teoretiska referensram. Rubriker som finns i den teoretiska referensramen återkommer i både det empiriska materialet och analysen för att få en röd tråd genom hela studien. I analysen har vi däremot våra frågeställningar som huvudrubriker för att verkligen analysera utmaningarna och innovationerna. Vår studie har bidragit med en ökad förståelse hur logistikföretag inom citylogistik hanterar ökad e-handelsutmaningar samt vilka åtgärder de vidtar. Vi har konstaterat att den ökade e-handeln har medfört utmaningar för logistikföretag inom citylogistik. E-handelslogiken har blivit mer komplex på senaste tiden där korta ledtider, fler men mindre paket och högre krav från konsumenterna har tillkommit vilket anses som utmaningar för logistikföretagen. Studien visar på de huvudsakliga utmaningarna som ökad e-handel medfört. Studien visar även på olika innovationer och åtgärder som används av logistikföretag inom citylogistik.