Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-42).

Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-42).

There are three main factors affecting the stability of a palletized load that is unitized by a stretch wrapping mechanism. These factors include the type of unitized load, wrapping configuration and shipping method. The wrapping configuration is determined on the basis of the type of unitized load and shipping method. For this study, the aforementioned components were referred to as the package, the product, and the distribution environment. These components come together to make up a stretch wrapping system. The package corresponds to the stretch wrap film that is packaging the unitized load and pallet. The product corresponds to the goods placed on the pallet to be packaged by the stretch wrapper. The distribution environment corresponds to the hazards that the packaged product will encounter in transit. This study was designed to observe and understand the interactions between each of the components of the stretch wrap system. Prior to stretch wrapping a pallet of product, the film is elongated or pre-stretched. The elastic nature of the stretch wrap forces the film to conform around the palletized load. It is hypothesized that the film force that the stretch wrap applies to the palletized load contributes to improved load containment. Hence, the objective of this study was to determine the existence of a correlation between percentage pre-stretch to change in film force and load containment. For the study, a range of pre-stretched unitized loads were subjected to ISTA 3E distribution testing. Simultaneously the film force was monitored during the period of distribution testing. Subsequent to distribution testing, the load dispersion was quantified. The data obtained from this test suggested that there is no correlation between percentage pre-stretch and change in film force or load containment. The study also compared three methods of calculating pre-stretch: the marking wheel procedure, tapeless measure, and film cut and weigh. It was found that the most consistent method was the marking wheel procedure, followed by the cut and weigh procedure, and the tapeless measure procedure.

An essential area within every store's environment is the cash wrap area. This study was conducted to identify user needs and expectations of the cash wrap area in retail stores and to develop design recommendations. Women's apparel specialty stores in vicinity of Virginia Tech, and two women's groups at Virginia Tech were selected for the study. The study consisted of (1) a survey to assess employee perceptions of the cash wrap area; (2) a survey to assess the customer perceptions of the cash wrap area; and (3) field measurements of cash wrap areas in participating stores. The surveys were divided into the following four sections: (1) environmental dimensions, (2) ideal conditions for the cash wrap area, (3) open ended questions on the cash wrap area design, and (4) demographic information. Respondents were asked to divide 100 points among the environmental dimensions (ambient conditions, space and function, and signs, symbols and artifacts) to indicate their relative importance; and to agree or disagree on a six - point Likert scale. Mean values for the variables were calculated separately for both employees and customers. Field measurements of the cash wrap areas were documented in seven of the participating women's apparel specialty stores. The data were analyzed descriptively and statistically. A significant finding was that customers regard the environmental dimension of space and function to be most important. Ideal conditions identified by customers and employees were itemized. The results indicated that employees have high expectations about their work environment and what they hope to accomplish within it. Responses to the open-ended questions were categorized and prioritized. Design recommendations were developed and categorized into: general recommendations, cash wrap area size recommendations, design feature recommendations, design recommendations specific to employee needs, and ADA design recommendations. / Master of Science

Pain perception can be drastically affected by external factors in the surrounding environment. Previous studies relying on subjective ratings of pain have shown that guided meditations supplemented by virtual reality (VR) can reduce the perception of pain more successfully than the audio alone. The research question for this study was: How does the efficacy of meditation as a means of pain mitigation differ with and without the application of VR? To answer this question, we used fNIRS to visualize changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which has been shown to play a role in the larger pain matrix in the brain. To induce discomfort, we used a Cold Pressor Arm Wrap (CPAW), which is a variation of the more common Cold Pressor Task (CPT). This study was a within-subjects design where in each of the three conditions participants experienced CPAW. The three conditions were: (1) control (no VR & no audio), (2) audio (audio only), and (3) VR (audio + VR). We hypothesized that there would be a decrease in cortical activity in the DLPFC during CPAW when supplemented by VR meditation compared to audio-led meditation and no meditation, due to a decrease in perceived pain in the VR condition. Our results showed that VR meditation did significantly reduce perceived pain, according to the subjective pain ratings. Participants rated their discomfort the lowest in the VR condition, slightly higher in the audio condition, and highest for the control condition (in the absence of meditation). However, there were no significant differences in activity in the DLPFC between the conditions. The lack of any significant findings with the fNIRS data could be the result of many issues, including not having a large enough sample, physiological noise, improper localization of the pain ROIs, and not having a strong enough discomfort stimulus. The future directions for this study would seek to remedy these issues in order to obtain more informative fNIRS results. Overall, this study did show that VR meditation does effectively reduce pain perception and is therefore a promising tool for nonpharmacological pain management.

In recent years, GraphQL has become a popular Web API language. Due to GraphQL’spopularity, third-party libraries have also grown steadily alongside it. One such library isGraphQL Tools, which provides tools such as query delegation and schema wrapping. Onecore element of GraphQL is its schema. In part, the schema describes the relations betweendata in a data source. Every GraphQL server needs a schema, which in turn utilizes resolverfunctions that retrieve the data from the data source. Schema wrapping allows developers to create GraphQL schemas that delegate queriesto another remote server. This allows the user to modify the behavior of the remote schema,without modifying its contents. However, some JavaScript knowledge is required to im-plement the schema wrapping. This thesis proposes a declarative approach to wrappingschemas with the help of custom GraphQL directives. The main objective of the approach isto enable less knowledgeable developers to wrap schemas with less effort. The declarative approach was tested by implementing a prototype. The effects on per-formance was tested with a benchmarking tool called Linköping GraphQL Benchmark(LinGBM). The prototype delegated queries to a remote server also created by LinGBM.The benchmarking tool was run against both the wrapper server and the remote server.The results indicated that the overhead of the wrapper server was mostly due to internalfunctions of GraphQL Tools. Therefore, automatically generating a server with the pro-posed declarative approach did not seem to impose significant performance losses. Con-sidering the decreased programming effort by using the declarative approach, the slightperformance loss can be seen as manageable.

The effects of packaging treatments, post harvest cooling delay and storage duration on color, texture, ascorbic acid content, weight loss and glucosinolate retention in crown-cut heads of broccoli were studied. Oxygen and CO2 levels inside shrink wrap packages were also monitored. Shrink wrap packaging had a significant positive effect on hue angle (p<0.05). Packaging and post harvest cooling delay had no effect on hue difference and total color difference. While post harvest cooling delay had no effect on texture, crown-cut heads of broccoli stored in shrink wrap packaging retained firmness significantly better than ice packaged heads of broccoli (p<0.05). Ascorbic acid was retained better in broccoli held in shrink wrap packages and cooling delay had a significant negative influence on ascorbic acid content (p<0.05). Packaging and post harvest cooling delay had a significant positive effect on weight loss (p<0.05). Broccoli stored in shrink wrap film lost about 3.7% of original weight while ice packaging resulted in about 17.4% weight loss (p<0.05). No consistent trends were observed in the levels of O2 and CO2 inside shrink wrap packages. An important glucosinolate, glucoraphanin was retained significantly better in shrink wrapped heads (p<0.05). Between two cultivars, shelf life of cv.Gypsy was better than cv.Everest with respect to color, ascorbic acid retention and weight loss. But cv.Everest retained texture (firmness) better after 35 days of storage. Overall results indicate that shrink wrap packaging and shorter post harvest cooling delays protect quality of broccoli. / Master of Science

For receivers using the Global Positioning System (GPS), it is standard procedure to treat the receiver clock bias from GPS time as an unknown. This requires four range measurements to the satellites in order to solve for three dimensional position and clock offset. If the receiver clock could be synchronized with GPS time, the extra range measurement would not be necessary. To achieve this synchronization, a stable frequency reference must be incorporated into the GPS user set. This concept is known as clock aiding or clock augmentation of GPS receivers. Clock augmentation increases the availability of the navigation function because only three GPS satellites are required. Also, it is shown that clock augmentation improves vertical accuracy by reducing the vertical dilution of precision (VDOP), which is a unitless multiplier that translates range measurement error into vertical position error. This improvement in vertical accuracy is particularly beneficial for applications involving final approach and landing of aircraft using GPS, because GPS typically provides better horizontal accuracy than vertical accuracy. The benefits of atomic clock augmentation are limited by factors that cause a loss of synchronization either between the receiver and GPS time, or between ground station and airborne receivers processing GPS data in differential mode (DGPS). Among the error sources that cause a clock offset are antenna rotation, hardware drifts due to temperature variations, and relativistic effects for GPS receivers on moving platforms. Antenna rotation and temperature effects are addressed and supported by experimental data. It is shown that two particular relativity terms thought to be missing from GPS receiver algorithms are not evident in data collected during a flight test experiment. Upon addressing the error sources, the dissertation concludes with analysis of DGPS data collected during a flight test at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Tech Center in Atlantic City, during which external rubidium oscillators were used by airborne (Boeing 757-B) and ground station GPS receivers. A new method of clock modeling is introduced, and this clock model is used to demonstrate the improvement in vertical accuracy, as well as three-satellite navigation. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-12T20:17:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 118436.pdf: 2819178 bytes, checksum: a3bc9e10a2c0a87089122aa8b9f6c959 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The habit of carrying babies in baby carriers is in a significant expansion in modern culture, however there are gaps in knowledge about these new artifacts available in the market. This study aimed to evaluate and compare the feeling of weight carried and muscle fatigue perceived by adults after carry a baby with and without the aid of baby carriers. For this research we used the Soft Structured Carrier and Wrap Sling, which are considered contemporary baby carriers. A systematic literature review presented here covers concepts of ergonomics with a focus on transporting babies, as well as cultural, physical and emotional issues associated with the artifact. The results intended to add to the existing literature, new data, contributing to the construction of scientific knowledge and identifying the need for standardization of manufacturing standards and use as well as the elaboration of a recommendation of acceptable weight limits and other relevant issues order to benefit the population that chooses this type of resource. / O hábito de transportar bebês em carregadores está em significativa expansão na cultura moderna, entretanto existem lacunas no conhecimento acerca destes novos artefatos disponíveis no mercado. A presente pesquisa teve como propósito avaliar e comparar a sensação de peso transportado e a fadiga muscular percebida pelos adultos após o transporte de um bebê com e sem o auxílio de carregadores. Para a realização desta pesquisa foram utilizados o Soft Structured Carrier e o Wrap Sling, sendo estes considerados carregadores contemporâneos. A pesquisa bibliográfica sistemática apresentada neste trabalho contempla conceitos de Ergonomia com foco no transporte de bebês, além de questões culturais, físicas e emocionais associadas ao artefato. Os resultados obtidos pretendem acrescentar a bibliografia já existente, novos dados, contribuindo para a construção do conhecimento científico e identificando a necessidade de normalização dos padrões de fabricação e uso, bem como a elaboração de uma recomendação de limites aceitáveis de peso e outras questões relevantes a fim de beneficiar a população que opta por este tipo de recurso.

p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } Evoluce v přírodě slouží jako zdroj inspirace pro tuto práci . Základní myšlenkou je využití generativní síly gramatik v kombinaci s evolučním přístupem . Nabyté znalosti jsou aplikovány na hledání strategií chování v rozmanitých prostředích . Stromy chování jsou modelem , který bývá běžně použit na řízení rozhodování různých umělých inteligencí . Tato práce se zabývá hledáním stromů chování , které budou řídit jedince řešící nasledující dva problémy : upravenou verzi problému cesty koněm šachovnicí a hraní hry Pirátské kostky . Při hledání strategie hráče kostek , byla použita konkurenční koevoluce . Důvodem je obtížnost návrhu spravedlivé fitness funkce hodnotící výkony hráčů .