This thesis details a simulation study of the domestic deplaning passenger and baggage subsystem at Vancouver International Airport The present and future baggage systems are described and modeled and the model is then validated. The capacity of the baggage claim area is estimated. The use of this simulation model as a tool for inexpensively investigating the effect of different flight schedules on queues in the baggage claim area is demonstrated. The simple alterations necessary to apply this model to different airports are also described. / Business, Sauder School of / Operations and Logistics (OPLOG), Division of / Graduate

Coherent scatter measurements have previously shown promise as a method for detection and identification of materials. However, the time required for measurements is rather long and the computer power required to analyse the data can be quite considerable. A multiple angle coherent scatter system has been designed and built to assess the feasibility of using this technique as an alternative to a single angle coherent scatter system. An application of detecting the presence of explosives within baggage to go on board aircraft was used to test the multiple angle system. A cadmium zinc telluride detector was found to be suitable to be used with the multiple angle system. A model of the system was used to determine the number of angles required and to determine the characteristics of the collimator that would be suitable with this detector. The objective of this work was to develop a simple method of analysing the data yielded from multiple angle coherent scatter system. This has been achieved by plotting the scatter signatures in the form of energy-angle diagrams and using these plots to determine the optimum energy windows to be used with each scatter angle. Samples of 4 mm of Semtex and 6 mm of SX2 were detected with 0% false alarm rate at 100% detection rate with a single energy window centred at a planar spacing of 3.3 Å. A detector array with collimation has been built to fit within the dimensions of an existing baggage scanner. This caused an increase in the scatter volume and hence the explosive sample constituted a smaller part of it. The results were that the false alarm rate was higher than for the initial system, at 37.5% It is concluded that the multiple angle detection of coherent scatter signatures is a promising method for the detection of explosives and that it could be used for several other applications in the future.

Travelling children is the topic of my work. Children who commute between more than one home. Society is rapidly changing and so is the concept â familyâ . The nuclear family is no longer the most common one. Children are now travelling more frequently than ever. One fifth of the Swedish population are children, they are away from home approximately ten hours per day, and for many of them commuting is part of their everyday life. Typical questions I have asked myself during this project are: How do children find travelling by themselves, and what makes one feel safe in this big world? What do these children take with them, and how do they carry their luggage? By working with these questions I have developed a product for these lone travellers. This is supposed to work as a substitute companion during the journey, and to help break monotony. To achieve this, a suitable collection of things have been put together in a bag on wheels, easy for the child to manoeuvre. The contents of the bag are put together in an attempt to meet different needs the child might have during the journey. The idea was born during a project in collaboration with The BorÃ¥s Museum of Art. This project went under the nameâ the designed childâ . Design students were invited to visualise the concept of design and children. Thoughts about what I had lacked as a child triggered my imagination. Different concepts like tweenies and kidaults, made me think about which part children play in society today, and about how they are regarded as consumers by manufacturers of producers for children. A research trip to India, gave me a chance to study the environmental aspects of the textile industry today. This together with earlier knowledge led to a product which is to be made from alternative materials. Research concerning the product market today, both environmentally friendly materials and products for children, took place at the very beginning of the project, and continued throughout the period. Thoughts about how products for children look today led to an ambition of creating a product as neutral, gender wise, as possible. A great deal of thought was put into the selecting of colours and patterns. The character of a bird was chosen as a symbol for the travelling child. Observations of children and their behaviour whilst travelling were carried out, and used for developing the product. To travel alone means to be alert and to be aware of danger. In this world of fear I would like to emphasize joyfulness and play. I wish to communicate that home is where the heart is. / <p>Program: Textildesignutbildningen</p><p>Uppsatsnivå: C</p>

The cost of sleepiness-related accidents runs into tens of billions of dollars per year in America alone (Leger, 1994), and can play a contributing role in motor vehicle accidents and large-scale industrial disasters (Reason, 1990). Likewise, the effects of an ill-timed distraction or otherwise lack of attention to a main task can be the difference between elevated risk, or simply a lack of productivity. The interaction between sleepiness and distraction is poorly researched, and little is known about the mechanisms and scale of the problems associated by this interaction. Therefore, we sought to determine the effects of sleepiness and distraction using overnight and daytime sleepiness with various levels of distraction on three tasks ranging from a simple vigilance task to a challenging luggage x-ray inspection task. The first and second studies examined overnight sleepiness (7pm to 7am) for twenty-four healthy participants (m = 23.2yrs old - same for both studies) using a psychomotor task compared to a systems monitoring task, while also manipulating peripheral distraction through a television playing a comedy series. The results showed significant effects of sleepiness on the psychomotor task and evidence for interactive effects of distraction, whereas the systems monitoring task showed no changes with either sleepiness or distraction. Subjects were far more prone to distraction when sleepy for both tasks, and EEG findings suggest that the alpha frequency (8-13Hz) power increases reflect impairments of performance. There is a decaying . exponential relationship between the probability of a subject's eyes being open as the response time increases, such that longer responses above three seconds are 95% likely to have occurred with the eyes closed. The third study used a sample of twelve young (m = 20.8yrs) and twelve older (m = 60.0yrs) participants, and examined the effects of sleep restriction (< 5hrs vs normal sleep) with three levels of distraction (no distraction, peripheral in the form of television and cognitive distraction as a simulated conversation by means of verbal fluency task). The task used was an x-ray luggage search simulator that is functionally similar to the task used for airport security screening. The practice day showed that speed and accuracy on the task improved with successive sessions, but that the older group were markedly slower and less accurate than the younger group even before the experimental manipulations. There was no effect of daytime sleep restriction for either the younger or older groups between the two experimental days. However, distraction was found to impair the performance of both young and old, with the cognitive distraction proving to be the most difficult condition. Overall, it is concluded that overnight sleepiness impairs performance in monotonous tasks, but these risks can be diminished by making tasks more engaging. Distractions can affect performance, but may be difficult to quantify as subjects create strategies that allow themselves to attend to distractions during the undemanding moments of a task. Continuous cognitive distraction does affect performance, particularly in older subjects, who are less able to manage concurrent demands effectively. Humans appear capable of coping Sleepiness and Distraction iv with a 40% loss of their usual sleep quota or 24-hours of sleep restriction on complex tasks, but performance degrades markedly on monotonous tasks. Performances for simple and complex tasks are impaired by distracters when the effect of distraction is large enough, but the magnitude of impairment depends on how challenging the task is or how well the subject is able to cope with the distractions.

Recently concern about aviation security has focused on the work of airport security screeners who detect threat items in passengers' luggage. An effective method of training and screening is required for improving screeners' detection abilities and performance to cope with the unreliable human performance of screening. The overall aim of this thesis is to understand and define the potential visual and cognitive factors in the task of inspecting airport passengers' X-ray luggage images, examine usability of perceptual feedback in this demanding task and develop a new method of salient regions which assist screeners to detect targets. The result of this work would obtain knowledge and skills of X-ray luggage images examination, provide insight into the design of training system and develop a method to significantly enhance screeners' detection ability. A questionnaire was developed for screeners to extract the expertise of the screening task and investigate the effect of image features on visual attention. A series of experiments were designed to understand the screening task and explore how knowledge and skills are developed with practice. Results indicated that training under time stressed conditions is recommended for ensuring adequate high detection ability in real life situation as screeners have to balance accuracy and speed in time pressure. The advantages of screeners are better detection ability and search skills which were gained by experience of the search task. Hit rate of naive people was improved with the perceptual exposure of images of threat items. However, scanning did not become efficient. It has demonstrated that detection performance and search skills are improved by the practice of frequency exposure targets in the search task and such ability partly transfer to novel targets. Learning in visual search of threat items is stimuli specific such that familiarity with stimulus and task is the source of performance enhancement. Threat items should be updated constantly and massive amount of X-ray threat objects should be employed for airport security screeners training so as to enlarge object knowledge and enhance recognition ability. Perceptual feedback of circling areas with dwell duration longer than 1000ms does not Significantly improve observers' detection ability in the airport screening task. Features of bags and threat items influence initial attention and attention allocation in the search process. Salient regions, based on the pure stimulus properties, not only contain most of targets in X-ray images but also improve observers' detection performance of high hit rate by forcing observers to scrutinize these areas carefully.

The electric car market is growing at a furious pace and cars are becoming increasingly advanced. When the internal combustion engine is replaced with an electric motor, a vacuum is created in the front of the car. Car manufacturers have taken advantage of this and created a luggage compartment in the front. The space is called frunk based on a combination of the words front and trunk.  Car owners currently have difficulty finding areas of use for the frunk as the limited geometry of the space makes it generally difficult to find objects that fit. Products with a view to creating added value for the funk are almost non-existent on the market. The purpose of the degree project is to provide use cases and concept work for a purposeful but rarely used frunk, as an attractive product range for a future Volvo car fleet, regardless of the car segment. shall be malleable according to Volvo's various car segments.  Together with Volvo Cars, the project group has developed a number of concepts that puts the user at the center. The project group has maximized the volume, modified the material and found new solutions, all to make full use of the space. To further optimize the space, the project team has created the concept frunk-kit. Frunk-kit as a concept is a business idea that includes selectable accessories gathered in a custom-made bag. The options vary according to the customer benefit for different target groups and global markets. This concept gives the customer the opportunity to choose the options that suit their lifestyle and the enhances the user experience. The Frunk-kit concept is based on finding the right use for the space and in order to be able to demonstrate the function of the frunk-kit, the project group has created a prototype where the active lifestyle is at the center based on the XC40 recharge target group. By combining the range of Volvo accessories with the frunk, we create new opportunities for the customer to get where they want, with everything they need.

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Occidentalism in Russian Travel Literature in the 18th Century: Example of Nikolaj Mihailovič Karamzin Summary The purpose of this research is to explore how the national and cultural identity of Russia was constructed in the eighteenth century through the vehicle of travel writing. At the heart of this research is a close analysis of the travels of the Russian author Nikolaj Karamzin to the Western Europe. Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller is a travelogue in the form of memoir in epistolary arrangement based on his travels through the states of Germany, Switzerland, France and England in 1789-1790. The era and the author chosen are justified by the graveness that the eighteenth century has for the history of the Russian literature. An era of major transformations in all social and cultural aspects of the till-then known Russian lifestyle set the ground for a move towards modernity. By travelling to the Western Europe and displaying the values and rich greatness of some aspects of the cultural, political and social lives, Karamzin proposes a set of alternative national ideals. These ideals would assist the country and the nation to get closer to the standards of the Western traditions and subsequently closer to 'paradise' and the 'perfect' life. As a contextual backup for the analysis of Karamzin's...

Security cameras installed in public spaces or in private organizations continuously record video data with the aim of detecting and preventing crime. For that reason, video content analysis applications, either for real time (i.e. analytic) or post-event (i.e. forensic) analysis, have gained high interest in recent years. In this thesis, the primary focus is on two key aspects of video analysis, reliable moving object segmentation and carried object detection & identification. A novel moving object segmentation scheme by background subtraction is presented in this thesis. The scheme relies on background modelling which is based on multi-directional gradient and phase congruency. As a post processing step, the detected foreground contours are refined by classifying the edge segments as either belonging to the foreground or background. Further contour completion technique by anisotropic diffusion is first introduced in this area. The proposed method targets cast shadow removal, gradual illumination change invariance, and closed contour extraction. A state of the art carried object detection method is employed as a benchmark algorithm. This method includes silhouette analysis by comparing human temporal templates with unencumbered human models. The implementation aspects of the algorithm are improved by automatically estimating the viewing direction of the pedestrian and are extended by a carried luggage identification module. As the temporal template is a frequency template and the information that it provides is not sufficient, a colour temporal template is introduced. The standard steps followed by the state of the art algorithm are approached from a different extended (by colour information) perspective, resulting in more accurate carried object segmentation. The experiments conducted in this research show that the proposed closed foreground segmentation technique attains all the aforementioned goals. The incremental improvements applied to the state of the art carried object detection algorithm revealed the full potential of the scheme. The experiments demonstrate the ability of the proposed carried object detection algorithm to supersede the state of the art method.

Le développement des détecteurs de rayons X en comptage à base de semiconducteurs est en plein essor depuis une dizaine d’années, et des applications aussi bien dans le domaine médical que dans le domaine du contrôle non destructif sont envisagées. Ces détecteurs permettent en effet de réaliser des mesures à des énergies multiples en une seule acquisition, et ce avec une excellente séparation énergétique. Depuis les années 2008-2009, il semble qu’une véritable course se soit lancée pour le développement de détecteur permettant des mesures multi-énergies sur un nombre toujours plus nombreux de bandes d’énergies. Cependant, à ce jour, parmi l’ensemble des travaux qui ont été réalisés, l’intérêt de réaliser des mesures sur un grand nombre d’énergies n’a pas été démontré pour l’identification de matériaux. Dans le cadre d’une étude en sécurité, nous avons évalué l’intérêt lié à l’utilisation de détecteurs de rayons X en comptage permettant la réalisation de mesures sur plusieurs bandes d’énergies. Le domaine applicatif étudié concerne l’identification de matériaux dans les bagages des voyageurs. Nous avons tout d’abord développé une méthode originale d’identification de matériaux homogènes applicable à tout type de détecteur multi-énergies. Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié, en simulation, l’évolution des performances d’identification de matériaux avec l’augmentation du nombre de bandes d’énergies de comptage. Un processus d’optimisation a été réalisé dans le but de déterminer, pour certaines configurations, une géométrie optimale des bandes d’énergies de comptage. Dans un second temps, les conséquences résultant de la prise en compte de la fonction de réponse du détecteur ont été quantifiées par la simulation de différents effets détecteurs (partage de charge, résolution en énergie). Une validation expérimentale a enfin pu être effectuée en utilisant un détecteur spectrométrique en comptage. À partir des mesures réalisées avec un tel détecteur, un regroupement des données nous a permis d’évaluer les performances d’identification de détecteurs possédant un nombre de bandes d’énergies de comptage différent. Enfin, nous avons mené une étude préliminaire sur la transposition à la tomographie multi-énergies de la méthode d’identification de matériaux homogènes développée initialement en radiographie. Cette modalité d’imagerie permet alors l’identification de matériaux superposés. / The development of X-ray photon counting detectors based on semiconductors has grown up over the last ten years, and applications in medicine, in security and in nondestructive testing are under study. These detectors make it possible to perform measurements at multiple energies in a single acquisition, with an excellent energetic separation. Since the years 2008-2009, it seems that a real race started for the development of detectors performing multi-energetic measurements on an increasing number of energy bands. However, today, within the works already done, the interest of performing measurements on a large number of energies has not been demonstrated for material identification. As part of a study in homeland security, we assessed the interest of using Xray counting detectors that perform measurements on multiple energy bands. The considered field of interest is material identification in the luggage of travelers. We first developed an original method for identifying single materials. This method is applicable to any type of multi-energy detector. In a first time, we studied in simulation the evolution of the performance for identifying materials with the increasing number of energy bands. An optimization process was carried out to determine, for certain configurations, an optimal geometry of the energy bands.In a second step, the consequences of taking into account the detector response function were quantified by simulating different sensors effects (charge sharing, energy resolution). An experimental validation has been performed by using a counting spectrometric detector. From the measurements experimentally obtained with such a detector, combining the data allowed us to evaluate the identification performance that would have detectors possessing a different number of energy bands. Finally, we conducted a preliminary study on the transposition of the identification method initially developed for radiography to the multi-energy computed tomography. This imaging modality allows to identify superimposed materials.