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This chapter provides an overview of the Department of Defense (DoD) laboratory structure to help equipment designers, modelers, and manufacturers determine where research, testing programs, or relevant findings can be found. The chapter includes a discussion of the performance measures and metrics typically used in DoD laboratories and concludes by considering the current state-of-the-art as well as the state-of-the-possible for human performance measurement.

Globalization has increased the consumer's demand for safe and quality foods. To make food available to consumers from farm to fork, packaging plays a crucial role. The objective of packaging is to shield the foodstuff from degrading and to serve as the medium of communication between the processing industry and the consumers. Conventionally, several materials are used in the packaging such as laminates, plastics, glass, metal, etc., but with the advent of technology, newer and novel smart packaging technologies have entered this field. Smart packaging in the form of active and intelligent packaging not only acts as a barrier to external influences but also prevents internal deterioration. Oxygen scavengers, moisture controllers, antioxidants, CO₂ absorber/emitter, antimicrobial agents, etc., are some of the vital active packaging systems. On the other hand, an intelligent packaging system contains internal or external indicators and sensors that monitor the condition of packed food and gives information about its quality during storage and transportation. It seems that these interventions in packaging have very positive effects on the whole industry, but it is observed that this advancement in the packaging has also raised questions about its disposal. To overcome this issue, industries have started using smart packaging design along with the sustainable packaging trend. Communication with the recycling bodies at the time of development will ensure the smart packaging fit to be recycled. Considering such standards for smart packaging will not only create a healthy bond between industries and consumers but will also help in sustainable development. This chapter mainly focuses on the advancement of the packaging system associated with the agri-food sector. It also discusses how the implementation of these technological advancements will help the industries toward sustainable development.

In this chapter, we present our ongoing efforts in developing and sustaining interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate programs at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T) – a state-supported HBCU and National Science Foundation (NSF) Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) Institutional Implementation Project grantee. Through three rounds of NSF HBCU-UP implementation grants, a concerted effort has been made in developing interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs in geophysical and environmental science (in round 1), geospatial, computational, and information science (in round 2), and mathematical and computational biology (in round 3) on NCA&T campus. We first present a brief history and background information about the interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs developed and sustained at NCA&T, giving rationales on how these programs had been conceived, and summarizing what have been achieved. Next we give a detailed description on the development of undergraduate research infrastructure including building research facilities through multiple and leveraged funding sources, and engaging a core of committed faculty mentors and research collaborators. We then present, as case studies, some sample interdisciplinary research projects in which STEM undergraduate students were engaged and project outcomes. Successes associated to our endeavor in developing undergraduate research programs as well as challenges and opportunities on implementing and sustaining these efforts are discussed. Finally, we discuss the impact of well-structured undergraduate research training on student success in terms of academic performance, graduation rate and continuing graduate study, and summarize many of the learnings we have gained from implementation and delivery of undergraduate research experiences at HBCUs.

We investigate the effects of technological capabilities on firms’ survival chances during market-fusing technological change. Our context is the matured U.S. machine tool industry. During the period of our study, 1975 through 1995, a drastic shift in demand conditions prompted the buyers of machine tools to demand more versatile products to improve their productivity. The advent of microprocessors enabled manufacturers to meet these demands by combining the functions of previously distinctive products. As a result, market segments fused and machine tool manufacturers in once disparate product categories came into direct competition with one another. We propose that incumbents with broader component and architectural capabilities will be better able to adapt to and hence survive market-fusing technological change. Our results, based on a panel data set of U.S. machine tool incumbents, support the value of broad component capabilities but reveal no adaptive advantage of architectural capabilities.

After a vigorous debate in the late 1970s, the sociology of emotion put aside most discussion of whether or not the physiological arousal associated with emotion labels is differentiated. Since this early period, scholars have made great progress on two fronts. First, theories about the interrelationship of identity, action and emotion have specified a family of new concepts related to emotion. Second, a large corpus of research on the physiological correlates of emotional experience emerged. In this chapter, we review the well-developed control theories of identity and emotion, and focus on the key concepts that might relate to different physiological states. We then review the general classes of physiological measures, discussing their reliability, intrusiveness and other features that might determine their usefulness for tracking responses to social interaction. We then offer a highly provisional mapping of physiological measures onto the concepts that they might potentially measure, given past research about how these physiological processes relate to environmental stimuli. While any linkage between concepts and measures must be speculative at this point, we hope that this review will serve as a stimulus to theoretically guided research that begins to assess the validity of these new measures for sociological use.

Purpose – This paper proposes a new procedure for measuring affective responses during social interaction using facial thermographic imaging.

Methodology – We first describe the results of several small pilot experiments designed to develop and refine this new measure that reveal some of the methodological advantages and challenges offered by this measurement approach. We then demonstrate the potential utility of this measure using data from a laboratory experiment (N=114) in which we used performance feedback to manipulate identity deflection and measured several types of affective responses – including self-impressions and emotions.

Findings – We find warming of the brow (near the corrugator muscle) and cheek (near the zygomatic major muscle) related most strongly to emotion valence and self-potency, with those whose brows and cheeks warmed the most feeling less positive emotion and less potent self-impressions. Warming in the eye area (near the orbicularis oculi) related most closely to undirected identity deflection and to positive self-sentiments. Positive self-views and strong identity disruptions both contributed to warming of the eyes.

Implications – The rigor of contemporary sociological theories of emotion exceeds our current ability to empirically test these theories. Facial thermographic imaging may offer sociologists new assessments of affect and emotion that are ecologically valid, socially unreactive, temporally sensitive, and accurate. This could dramatically improve our ability to test and develop affect based theories of social interaction.

Composite slabs are gaining wide acceptance in many countries as they lend themselves to faster, lighter and more economic in construction buildings. The strength of composite slabs system relies on the bonding action between the concrete and the steel deck, the shear connections and the cross-sectional resistance of steel beam. However, structural behaviour of composite slab is a complex phenomenon and therefore experimental study is often conducted to establish the actual strength of the structure under ultimate load capacity. The main objective of this study is to determine the structural behaviour of composite slab system until ultimate limit state. Total of two specimens are examined in order to obtain failure mechanism of the composite structure under full load capacity. A new design approach of composite slab for roofing system are proposed in this study to construct a composite slab system that can float in the water but not wash away by flood. The lightweight materials in this composite construction are cold-formed steel and foam concrete. The system focuses on the concept of Industrialised building system (IBS) to reduce the cost and construction time.