Checkout Counter Research Articles

Ambiguity in sentence processing

As listeners and readers, we rarely notice the ambiguities that pervade our everyday language. When we hear the proverb `Time flies like an arrow' we might ponder its meaning, but not the fact that there are almost 100 grammatically permissible interpretations of this short sentence. On occasion, however, we do notice sentential ambiguity: headlines, such as `Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years in Checkout Counter', are amusing because they so consistently lead to the unintended interpretation (presumably, the sisters did not spend 18 years at the checkout). It is this consistent preference for one interpretation-and one grammatical structure-rather than another that has fuelled research into sentence processing for more than 20 years. Until relatively recently, the dominant belief had been that these preferences arise from general principles that underlie our use of grammar, with certain grammatical constructions being preferred over others. There has now accrued, however, a considerable body of evidence demonstrating that these preferences are not absolute, but can change in particular circumstances. With this evidence have come new theories of sentence processing, some of which, at first glance, radically question the standard notions of linguistic representation, grammar and understanding.

Delays in Clearing the Self-Service Store Check-out Counter: An Informal Look

Swiftness of service, one of the advantages which one normally associates with self-service stores, is something which may well be more fiction than fact. 328 observations at 3 large suburban hardware stores showed that about 4 out of 10 transactions at the checkout counter involved delaying problems which increased the 1 1/2- to 2 1/2-min. time required to clear the counter by an average of 2 min. Of the 143 delaying incidents noted, 118 (82%) were customer-driven, 14 (10%) store-driven, and 11 (8%) customer- or store-driven.

The Rest of Her Life

THE REST OF HER LIFE/Steve Yarbrough THE DOG was a mixture of god-knows-how-many breeds, but the vet had told them he had at least some rottweiler blood. You could see it in his shoulders, and you could hear it when he barked, which he was doing that night when they pulled up beside the gate and Chuckie cut the engine. "Butch is out," Dee Ann said. "That's kind of strange." Chuckie didn't say anything. He'd looked across the yard and seen her momma's car standing in the carport, and he was disappointed. Dee Ann's momma had told her earlier that she was going to buy some garden supplies at Western Auto and then eat something at the Sonic, and she'd said if she got back home and unloaded her purchases in time, she might run over to Greenville with one of the other teachers and watch a movie. Dee Ann had relayed the news to Chuckie tonight when he picked her up from work. That had gotten his hopes up. The last two Saturday nights her momma had gone to Greenville, and they'd made love on the couch. They'd done it before in the car, but Chuckie said it was a lot nicer when you did it in the house. As far as she was concerned, the major difference was that they stood a much greater chance of getting caught. If her momma had walked in on them, she would not have gone crazy and ordered Chuckie away, she would have stayed calm and sat down and warned them not to do something that could hurt them later on. "There're things y'all can do now," she would have said, "that can mess fall's lives up bad." Dee Ann leaned across the seat and kissed Chuckie. "You don't smell too much like a Budweiser brewery," she said. "Want to come in with me?" "Sure." Butch was waiting at the gate, whimpering, his front paws up on the railing. Dee Ann released the latch, and they went in and walked across the yard, the dog trotting along behind them. The front door was locked—a fact that Chuckie corroborated the next day. She knocked, but even though both the living room and the kitchen were lit up, her momma didn't come. Dee Ann waited for a few seconds, then rummaged through her purse and found the key. It didn't occur to her that somebody might have come home with her momma, that they might be back in the bedroom together, doing what she and Chuckie had done. Her momma still believed that if she could The Missouri Review · 284 tough it out a few more months, Dee Ann's daddy would recover his senses and come back. Most of his belongings were still here. Dee Ann unlocked the door and pushed it open. Crossing the threshold, she looked back over her shoulder at Chuckie. His eyes were shut. They didn't stay shut for long, he was probably just blinking , but that instant in which she saw them closed was enough to frighten her. She quickly looked into the living room. Everything was as it should be: the black leather couch stood against the far wall, the glass coffee table in front of it, two armchairs pulled up to the table at forty-five degree angles. The paper lay on the mantelpiece, right where her momma always left it. "Momma?" she called. "It's me and Chuckie." As she waited for a reply, the dog rushed past her. He darted into the kitchen. Again they heard him whimper. She made an effort to follow the dog, but Chuckie laid his hand on her shoulder. "Wait a minute," he said. Afterwards he could never explain to anyone's satisfaction, least of all his own, why he had restrained her. Earlier that evening, as she stood behind the checkout counter at the grocery store where she was working that summer, she had seen her daddy. He was standing on the sidewalk, looking in through the thick plate glass window, grinning at her. It was late, and...

Educating for Life as It Is Lived

This arrangement, of course, is intentional. The store isn’t in business to serve my needs conveniently. It’s in business to make money, and the management’s assumption is that the longer I stay, and the more merchandise I see and smell and have the opportunity to touch, the more money I’ll spend. The traffic pattern, the width of the aisles, the placement of goods on the shelves, the colors, the music, the special displays, the small items at the checkout counter— everything about the environment has been engineered in an attempt to separate me from the maximum amount of my money.

T. Keith Glennan (1905–1995)

Memorial T. KEITH GLENNAN (1905-1995) MELVIN KRANZBERG Editor’s Note.—Tales ofMel Kranzberg’s unselfish enthusiasm for the achievements of others, and his care that they be suitably recog­ nized, are legion. It is more than fitting that this, his final publication in Technology and Culture, presents Mel in this familiar role again. He wrote me in April 1995, shortly after the death of T. Keith Glennan, to suggest that Technology and Culturepublish a memorial to this early and important patron of the Society. In his letter Mel named several people he thought would be able to write something appropriate, but it occurred to me that his own graceful and spontaneous reminis­ cences might prove at least as fitting a tribute to his old colleague. Here, then, is a slightly edited version of Mel’s letter. Enclosed are an obituary from the April 12 New York Times telling of the death of Dr. T. Keith Glennan and a copy of my letter to his widow, Ruth Glennan. Glennan was president of Case Institute ofTechnology (now part of Case Western Reserve University) when we founded SHOT, and he played an important part in that. For he was so impressed with SHOT’s potential that he provided me with the time and material assistance that allowed me to serve as secretary of SHOT and editor of Technology and Culturefrom their beginnings. He thus had a direct influence on my career and also, indirecdy through SHOT and TC5C, on all historians of technology. Ifyou look at footnote 1 ofMelvin Kranzberg, “At the Start” (Tech­ nology and Culture 1 [1959] :1-10), you will see that on January SO31 , 1958, there was a meeting at Case of an Advisory Committee for Technology and Society, which led directly to the formation of SHOT and the creation of T&C. Glennan had provided funding (from Case) for the meeting, but I think what really impressed him was when he joined us at lunch and met Lynn White, jr., the great medieval historian who was so valuable in providing SHOT with a scholarly reputation from our very beginnings. In 1958 the Case Faculty Dining Room, in the basement of Tom­ 659 660 Mel Kranzberg linson Hall, had only eight tables, seating eight people each. Since the president did not have a private dining room at his office, he ate with the faculty; and when he came to eat at Tomlinson, he had no private table, but had to sit with members of the faculty. Those eight-seat tables also meant that since faculty could rarely get seven colleagues from their own department to go to lunch at exactly the same time, they had to sit with colleagues from several other depart­ ments. Those of us from the Humanities and Social Sciences were thus brought into daily and close contact with our science and engi­ neering colleagues—a real blessing for all concerned.1 When Glennan came to the dining room on that momentous day of our Advisory Committee meeting, he found a seat at our table right next to Lynn White, who was then president of Mills College, a prominent women’s college in northern California. Glennan was very impressed that the president of Mills should come to Case for a meeting, and Lynn’s presence helped sell Glennan on the idea of creating a home for the history of technology at Case. That got us started, of course, but it was certainly not the end of Glennan’s be­ neficence to the history of technology. Whoever writes Glennan’s memorial article should note the many and major scholarly works which have derived from NASA’s com­ mitment to history. When Glennan took a leave of absence from Case to be the first head of NASA, he still returned to Cleveland from time to time on weekends to see his family and keep in touch with doings at Case (for he was still president, even though on leave). By a stroke of luck, I happened to meet him while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout counter one day in mid-October, when ’These get-togethers of humanists/social scientists with scientists/engineers at technical institutes were a...

A large-scale test of the biorhythm-shoplifting connection hypothesis

The impact of shoplifting on retailers and on the public in general is significant. Stores lose revenue, local governments lose tax monies, and the public pays higher prices at the checkout counter, all because of the actions of individuals who shoplift. Because a large percentage of shoplifting is due to the actions of retail employees, an effort that would reduce losses due to employee theft could have a significant impact on the problem. Biorhythmic charting was hypothesized as providing a potential avenue through which the problem could be addressed. This study provides a large-scale test of the relationship between biorhythm criticality and shoplifting. A managerially useful relationship was not discerned. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A bar-code recognition system using backpropagation neural networks

In this paper, a bar-code recognition system using neural networks is proposed. It is well known that in many stores laser bar-code readers are used at check-out counters. However, there is a major constraint when this tool is used. That is, unlike traditional camera-based picturing, the distance between the laser reader (sensor) and the target object is close to zero when the reader is applied. This may result in inconvenience in store automation because the human operator has to manipulate either the sensor or the objects, or both. For the purpose of in-store automation, the human operator needs to be removed from the process, i.e. a robot with visual capability is required to play an important role in such a system. This paper proposes a camera-based bar-code recognition system using backpropagation neural networks. The ultimate goal of this approach is to use a camera instead of a laser reader so that in-store automation can be achieved. There are a number of steps involved in the proposed system. The first step the system has to perform is to locate the position and orientation of the bar code in the acquired image. Secondly, the proposed system has to segment the bar code. Finally, a trained backpropagation neural network is used to perform the bar-code recognition task. Experiments have been conducted to corroborate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Some Pitfalls of Black Box Queue Inference: The Case of State-Dependent Server Queues

In several queueing systems the service rate of a server is affected by the work load present in the system. For example, a teller at a bank or a checker at a check-out counter in a supermarket may change the service rate depending on the number of customers present in the system. But the service rate as a function of the number in the system can rarely be measured. Consequently, in a typical model of such a system it is assumed that the service rate is constant. Hence, such systems with a single stage are often modeled by GI/GI/c queueing systems with mutually independent arrival and service processes. Then the observed service times are used to find a sample distribution that will represent the distribution of the assumed i.i.d. service times. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of this black box queue inference (BBQI) in its ability to predict the performance of the actual system. In this regard, we have shown that when the arrival process is Poisson, if the servers react favorably [unfavorably] to higher work loads (i.e., if the server increases [decreases] the service rate as the number of customers in the system increases) then the BBQI predictions will be pessimistic [optimistic]. This result can be used to identify the server's attitude toward higher work load.

Making History Whole: Public Service, Public History, and the Profession

Research Article| July 01 1990 Making History Whole: Public Service, Public History, and the Profession Theodore J. Karamanski Theodore J. Karamanski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (1990) 12 (3): 91–101. https://doi.org/10.2307/3378201 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Theodore J. Karamanski; Making History Whole: Public Service, Public History, and the Profession. The Public Historian 1 July 1990; 12 (3): 91–101. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3378201 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1990 Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Recruiting and Retaining Minority Teachers

There is a serious disjunction between the national educational reform movement and the objectives of the Holmes Group. The public outcry for educational reform began in the late 1970s. It was accelerated by the publication of A Nation at Risk1 in 1983, but was well begun around the country by that time. The movement seemed to have three principal foci: (1) the rising tide of mediocrity discerned in public school education; (2) the decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores over a period of about fifteen years; and (3) the perceived educational permissiveness of the 1960s and 1970s in which students received a supermarket education-that is, picking and choosing those courses they thought were relevant-and receiving a diploma at the checkout counter. Some of the focus of concern were spurious. Test scores had declined, partly due to more democratically opening up the SAT to more minorities and women who typically score lower than white males on standardized tests. Moreover, the educational experiments of the 1960s-e.g., open classrooms and concern with student learning styles-contributed significantly to making classrooms more individually centered and flexible despite whatever excesses were committed during those years. Nevertheless, despite these misperceptions, the educational reform movement was genuinely student-centered. It was based on a public concern for improvement in student performance, raising academic achievement levels, decreasing the drop-out rate, and im-

Using Bar Code Technology for Horticultural Research and Plant Inventory Activities

Abstract The development and use of bar codes for automatic identification and systematic data collection is one of the most significant technological changes in American business and industry today. Most people become familiar with bar codes at the grocery store. The bar code symbol (Fig. 1) is that portion of the merchandise label with black bars and white spaces that is scanned by machines at the check-out counter. Bar codes are achieving widespread popularity because they can be incorporated into the primary-source marking of products from production to consumption (23). Bar codes are having tremendous impact on manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution activities. Bar code symbols are used for automatic identification of items as varied as hospital supplies, library books, and marathon runners; and are used to keep track of the manufacture of items as diverse as automobiles, hot steel ingots, and integrated circuits.

The male queue at the checkout counter

The male queue at the checkout counter

Meat-buying practices of Caucasians, Mexican–Americans, and Negroes

Meat purchases were observed at supermarket checkout counters, socioeconomic data were obtained by questioning shoppers, and card questionnaires were given to 600 shoppers. Two supermarket chains in each of the three ethnic areas of Lubbock, Texas, were used on two days. Ethnic group was significantly related to the choice of half of the twelve meat cuts bought by the greastest number of shoppers and accounted for more significant effects on meat-buying variables than did chain, area, and day. Returned card questionnaires were 77 per cent accurate concerning meat-buying data.

Hemoglobin Munchausen

<h3>To the Editor.—</h3> The recent article by Lindenbaum (228:498, 1974) concerning factitious symptoms of sickle cell crisis in persons trying to obtain medical attention or drugs should bring forth many anecdotal comments. During the present increased interest in sickle cell diseases, symptoms have been described well on television, in paperbound books with cover pictures of black family groups, and in "family" magazines sold at check-out counters of supermarkets. One of our patients changed his requests for medical attention to this "new diagnosis." A 20-year-old black man was hospitalized for investigation of jaundice and upper abdominal pains. He was found to have a compensated spherocytic hemolytic disorder of extracorpuscular type with negative antibody tests. No hemoglobinopathy was present. Conflicting medical histories were given to us about his jaundice and previous illnesses. It became apparent that he had a psychopathic personality and used considerable amounts of alcohol, narcotics, and other drugs. Spleen

Some Experiences with Slow Learners

AT THE check-out counter of a college cafeteria, one girl runs a keyboard machine and passes the slip of adding-machine tape on to another girl who collects the money. On a particular day, two friends and I decided that the “special” was to our liking. We ordered three, and I informed the first checker that I would pay for three specials. Specials, it turned out, were 95ȼ apiece, plus tax. The girl rang up 95ȼ plus tax (4ȼ) for my special, a 99ȼ total. She then rang the other two specials on the same ticket and came up with a figure of $1.97 for the two. I presumed the adjustment was in the tax. She had cleverly avoided having to multiply 95ȼ plus tax by three. The tapes were passed on to the second girl, who looked at me rather helplessly and asked, “Are you paying for all three?”

Outpatient Pharmacy—New Design Encourages Comprehensive Pharmaceutical Service

The design and operation of a new outpatient pharmacy which offers comprehensive pharmacy service is described. Services offered by the pharmacy are individual patient drug profiles and consultation on the proper use of drugs. A drug profile card is described which uses a duplicate copy of the prescription label thereby reducing the amount of handwriting. The use of a conveyor system and individual work stations were incorporated in the design to maximize efficiency in the dispensing of prescriptions. The conveyor system automatically delivers the prescription to the appropriate filling station and then to the checkout counter prior to issuing to the patient by the pharmacist.

BEFORE THE INDUCTIVE LEAP: EIGHT STEPS TO SYSTEM SIMULATION

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to critically describe when and how one applies simulation to business systems.Throughout, the discussion is based on a realistic example of a grocery checkout counter. The construction of both a deterministic and a stochastic simulation are explained and illustrated. Important topics covered include: the advantages and disadvantages of simulation, the formulation of system simulations, the methods of moving time, the concept and use of random numbers, tests of validity, and the analysis of results.