Everyone\u27s a Waiter: A Data-Driven Queuing Simulation Model of Mike\u27s Clam Shack

This thesis seeks to understand the mathematical foundation of several prominent concepts in queuing theory and apply them to gain a better understanding of nightly business levels and dining room queue behavior during the summer tourist season at Mike’s Clam Shack, which is a restaurant located in Wells, Maine. To do so, a variety of queue and server section data has been collected from Mike’s and analyzed to determine probability distributions for interarrival and service times. In addition, a queuing simulation model has been constructed in the R Programming Language, which uses this data to generate dining room and queue activity on a given month and week day. Suggestions for improving the model’s authenticity are also provided

CAPTURING PANORAMA IMAGES

A panorama imaging system can be used to reduce parallax errors when capturing high quality panoramas. The panorama imaging system includes a panorama guidance apparatus and an image capturing device. A user of the system attaches the panorama guidance apparatus to the image capturing device and captures a panorama image with the image capturing device while maintaining a stable position of the panorama guidance apparatus

Preface

Preface to Volume 7 Issue 1 of the UCL Journal of Law and Jurisprudenc

K131 Antarctic sea ice science: A case study of infrastructure, strategies, and skills

​ If you are fortunate enough to have access to a port-side win-dow when flying into McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, you’ll see a long, slender glacier that spills off the south-western flank of Mount Erebus and then floats out into the waters of the Sound. This is the Erebus Glacier tongue, as big as any glacier in New Zealand,  but  tiny  in  Antarctic  terms.  It  is  also  uncommonly  narrow  relative  to  its  length,  and  edged  by  substantial  undulations.  It  has  been  the  focus  of  research  ever  since  Scott’s  last expedition, with geologist Griffith Taylor documenting its structure (Taylor 1922). Remarkably, given the decades-long interval  between  occurrences,  the  last  few  kilometres  of  the  glacier broke off during their time there (Stevens et al. 2013). The abnormal structure, history of research, and ease of access mean it has been scientifically pored over for decades. It was also the starting point for the development of some Antarctic infrastructure that has been a mainstay of New Zealand sea ice research for more than thirty years. Ernest Rutherford is supposed to have said ‘we don’t have much  money  so  we  have  to  think’  (da  C.  Andrade  1964).  In  the  era  of  ~10%  success  rates  for  funding  applications,  this  could be augmented to additionally say ‘and be flexible and be prepared to take one’s time’. Big science is about big missions, large  teams  focused  on  a  fundable  goal,  with  its  end-points  well defined. Certainly, within this envelope, research takes its meanders and, science being science, advances are often found in the side-meanders. What about a different kind of mission? What if the mission is built upon meanders? What if we could go from listening to a glacier through to predicting the impacts of a changing climate

Optimal Science Lab Design: Impacts of Various Components of Lab Design on Students’ Attitudes Toward Lab

Variations in science lab design can differentially impact student learning. Quantification of these differential impacts can be used in modeling – an approach we term “optimal lab design.” In this study we estimated relative influences of six characteristics of lab design on students’ attitudes toward science labs in three different first-year college biology lab courses (USA). We used two end-of-semester surveys. The first had students choose their favorite and least favorite lab and answer questions associated with the six characteristics and their choices. The second had students provide an overall rating of each lab and a rating based on their perception of the degree to which the six characteristics impacted the lab. Results of the two assessments were similar and indicated the following: Total Student Attitude = 0.39 Exciting + 0.25 Time Efficient + 0.15 Not Difficult + 0.10 Lecture Help + 0.08 Experimental + 0.03 Open-Ended

Built Environment and Well-Being of STEM Women Employed in the Petroleum Sector

Male-dominated occupations have received increased attention concerning the environmental health and retention of its specialized workforce. Research studies on the impact of the environment suggest that ecological and infrastructure conditions of the workplace affect the psychological health and physical well-being of employees across both public and private industries. Presently, in the context of the oil and gas and engineering field, there is a literature gap in exploring whether workplace conditions or adverse circumstances in male-dominated built environments negatively affect the psychological well-being and retention of women employed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) occupations. For the current qualitative study, an Interpretive Phenomenological Approach (IPA) was used to investigate the lived experiences and mental health outcomes of 16 STEM women. The subjective feedback collected from the semi-structured interviews indicated that the environmental conditions impacted the psychological well-being of STEM women. Working from the person-environment fit (P-E fit) theoretical perspective, the study findings revealed that the support-oriented services and self-help mechanism moderated the gendered biases and aesthetics of the masculine-built environment, which helped the participants persist in the STEM fields. Given the gender inequalities and occupational stressors associated with the STEM sector, the positive social change implications of this study are the understanding of how numerical representation and organizational support can improve the psychological wellness and human capital retention of talented STEM women working in male-dominated built environments

Telling stories about post-war Britain: popular individualism and the ‘crisis’ of the 1970s

This article argues that, by the 1970s, people in Britain were increasingly insistent about defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives. Using individual narratives and testimonies, we show that many were expressing desires for greater personal autonomy and self-determination. We suggest that this was an important trend across the post-war decades, and of particular importance to understanding the 1970s. This popular individualism was not the result of Thatcher; if anything, it was a cause of Thatcherism. But this individualism had multiple political and cultural valences; desires for greater individual self-determination, and anger with the ‘establishment’ for withholding it, did not lead inexorably to Thatcherism. There were, in fact, some sources for, and potential outlets for, popular individualism on the left—outlets that explicitly challenged class, gender and racial inequalities. With this, we suggest the possibility of a new meta-narrative of post-war Britain, cutting across the political narrative that organizes post-war British history into three periods: social democracy, ‘crisis’ and the triumph of ‘neoliberalism’. The 1970s was a key moment in the spread of a popular, aspirational form of individualism in post-war Britain, and this development is critical to our understanding of the history of the post-war years

An Oceanographic Study of the Cavity Beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica

This thesis reports the first observations of currents, temperature and salinity beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica. They are reviewed and discussed here in conjunction with results of a numerical modelling study used to simulate current flow and to investigate local sediment deposition. The McMurdo Ice Shelf lies behind Ross Island off the Victoria Land coast of Antarctica, and represents the northwest corner of the much larger Ross Ice Shelf. The site will be drilled by the ANDRILL consortium in 2006, passing through the ice shelf, the water column, and 1000 m into the sea floor, to obtain a record of ice shelf and climate history in this area. This study stems from a site survey carried out in early 2003, for which access holes were melted at two locations on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Current meters surveyed multiple depths simultaneously during spring tides, and profiles of temperature and salinity were collected through a diurnal tidal cycle at each site. Maximum currents were recorded in the boundary layer at the base of the ice shelf, reaching 0.22 m s−1 during the flood tide. The salinity and temperature profiles were similar at the two sites, with greater temporal variability observed at the site closer to the open water of McMurdo Sound. Supercooling, due to the pressure-dependence of the in-situ freezing temperature, was observed at one of the sites. At the second site, where the draft of the ice shelf was deeper, temperatures corresponding to basal melting were observed. At a third site on the sea ice at the northwestern edge of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, a current meter surveyed the water column to 320 metres below sea level for 23 days. This allowed comparison of current behaviour through spring and neap tides, and between subsea ice and sub-ice shelf environments in the same season. Net throughflow over spring tides at each of the three sites was consistent with transport eastwards from McMurdo Sound along the channel defined by local bathymetry. Profiles of temperature and salinity from beneath the ice shelf were likewise consistent with McMurdo Sound being the source of the observed water masses. Flow along the sub-ice shelf channel was further investigated using an adaptation of a two-dimensional thermohaline ocean model. Year-long profiles of temperature and salinity from southern McMurdo Sound were used to seasonally force the model, resulting in annual variation in all parameters. The rate of melting decreased monotonically from ∼0.6 m yr−1 at the deep end of the ice shelf, into a region of freezing associated with supercooling closer to the McMurdo Sound end of the domain. This change in regime mirrored the observations from the boundary layer beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Sediment transport and deposition were investigated, with settling velocities used to represent sediment sizes ranging from biogenic pellets and fine sand through algal flocs to fine mud, particle types known and described from the present day environment. This method of incorporating sedimentation processes gave results similar to observations from surface sediment cores collected beneath the ice shelf. The larger grains were preferentially deposited close to the open water McMurdo Sound source, whereas fine-grained material was entrained into the general circulation and deposited by regions of down-welling. A settling velocity of ∼1x10−4 m s−1, corresponding to a grain size of ∼5 μm, defined the boundary between these depositional behaviours. Characteristics of the water beneath the ice shelf suggest that it had been transported from McMurdo Sound, being modified through interaction with the base of the ice shelf. This pattern of throughflow was also seen in the current meter data, with a strong tidal signal throughout the water column superimposed on the net transport eastward from McMurdo Sound and under the ice shelf. This net flow pattern was supported by the results of the longer-term simulation experiments

Use of sentinel practices to obtain data regarding common clinical conditions and presentations in small animal consultations

Gathering data on the veterinary caseload will be useful in directing both future research and the veterinary curriculum. Previous studies have used clinical records to gather this data, but the validity of these methods remains unclear. Direct observation has been used to collect similar data in medicine and may be better able to capture the complexities of the consultation. The aim of the study was to determine the common patients, presentations, diagnoses and interventions during small animal veterinary consultations using direct observation. A network of 8 sentinel practices in England and Scotland was recruited. A tool allowing collection of data during direct observation of consultations was developed and piloted. The tool was used to gather data on patient characteristics, problems discussed, diagnoses made and outcomes selected. Practice visits were conducted to feedback results and stimulate discussion. Consultations were highly complex, with discussion of multiple problems, leading to a wide range of diagnoses and outcomes. Discussion of several problems appeared to be associated with increased consultation length. Preventive medicine was a common reason for presentation, and these consultations were amongst the most complex. A definitive diagnosis was not reached for most problems, yet actions were frequently taken. Feedback from the practices involved was positive, and discussions surrounding priorities for future research echoed the findings of the study. Direct observation of consultations allows caseload to be recorded in great detail, which may not be possible with other collection methods. The results are the first step in directing future research towards areas relevant to practitioners and will also be useful in guiding the veterinary curriculum. The way in which future research is conducted should take into account the realities of first opinion practice, such as the high frequency of comorbidity and polypharmacy, and low frequency of definitive diagnosis

Veterinarian nominated common conditions of rabbits and guinea pigs compared with published literature

Rabbits and guinea pigs are increasingly popular pets in the UK, yet little is known about their common ailments, or how these relate to what appears in the published literature. The aim of this study was to characterise the common conditions of rabbits and guinea pigs, and to compare these with the topics found in the published literature. Information about the common conditions seen in rabbits and guinea pigs in clinical practice was obtained from a survey of UK veterinarians. The common conditions seen were compared with results from a structured literature search. Conditions relating to the dental (29.9%), and skin (37.6%) body systems were commonly nominated by veterinarians for rabbits and guinea pigs, respectively. A total of 655 rabbit and 1086 guinea pig citations were examined and there appeared to be a mismatch between the conditions nominated in the veterinary questionnaire, and those found in the literature. This is the first time that the published literature has been compared to the nominated caseload of veterinarians in practice, and there is concern that the literature about rabbits and guinea pigs may not be representative of, or relevant to the caseload seen in clinical practice. This is of importance for clinicians being able to apply an objective, evidence-based approach. The publishing of clinically-relevant, research-based evidence should be prioritised