Carlex Glass Laminated Side Glass Process Optimization

The intent of this project is to determine how many racks of glass should be inserted into the autoclave at a given time in order to maximize productivity of the Laminated Side Glass line. Based on this value, the total number of workers necessary at finishing and the cycle time of the bag furnace were determined. This was achieved by building a model of the line in Arena and analyzing it. The model demonstrated that twelve is the optimal number of racks to insert at a given time, only one team of two workers is necessary per shift, and that the optimal bag furnace cycle time is 18 seconds. This optimization allows for an increase in profitability of over $16,000 per month and also increases utilization of human workers at finishing by more than 10%

An Examination of Geographic and Socio- Demographic Impacts on Private Industry Job Change in the Dakotas, 2002 – 2008

This study examines geographic and socio-demographic factors associated with private industry job change in North and South Dakota from 2002 to 2008. We conceptualize private industries as enterprises or businesses that are individually or corporately owned and operated outside the public sector. County-level occupational data were captured using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). Results indicate that percentage of workers commuting to another county for work, median household income, the percentage of residents identifying as American Indian and Alaska Native, and population change were significant predictors of county-level private industry job change

Scientific research on animal biodiversity is systematically biased towards vertebrates and temperate regions.

Over the last 25 years, research on biodiversity has expanded dramatically, fuelled by increasing threats to the natural world. However, the number of published studies is heavily weighted towards certain taxa, perhaps influencing conservation awareness of and funding for less-popular groups. Few studies have systematically quantified these biases, although information on this topic is important for informing future research and conservation priorities. We investigated: i) which animal taxa are being studied; ii) if any taxonomic biases are the same in temperate and tropical regions; iii) whether the taxon studied is named in the title of papers on biodiversity, perhaps reflecting a perception of what biodiversity is; iv) the geographical distribution of biodiversity research, compared with the distribution of biodiversity and threatened species; and v) the geographical distribution of authors' countries of origin. To do this, we used the search engine Web of Science to systematically sample a subset of the published literature with 'biodiversity' in the title. In total 526 research papers were screened-5% of all papers in Web of Science with biodiversity in the title. For each paper, details on taxonomic group, title phrasing, number of citations, study location, and author locations were recorded. Compared to the proportions of described species, we identified a considerable taxonomic weighting towards vertebrates and an under-representation of invertebrates (particularly arachnids and insects) in the published literature. This discrepancy is more pronounced in highly cited papers, and in tropical regions, with only 43% of biodiversity research in the tropics including invertebrates. Furthermore, while papers on vertebrate taxa typically did not specify the taxonomic group in the title, the converse was true for invertebrate papers. Biodiversity research is also biased geographically: studies are more frequently carried out in developed countries with larger economies, and for a given level of species or threatened species, tropical countries were understudied relative to temperate countries. Finally, biodiversity research is disproportionately authored by researchers from wealthier countries, with studies less likely to be carried out by scientists in lower-GDP nations. Our results highlight the need for a more systematic and directed evaluation of biodiversity studies, perhaps informing more targeted research towards those areas and taxa most depauperate in research. Only by doing so can we ensure that biodiversity research yields results that are relevant and applicable to all regions and that the information necessary for the conservation of threatened species is available to conservation practitioners