Shrink Wrap Research Articles

INDIVIDUAL SHRINK WRAPPING OF SWEETPOTATOES: A VALUE-ADDED MARKETING TREND

The use of heat shrinkable plastic film for wrapping individual sweetpotato roots was evaluated as a form of value-added packaging. Individual shrink wrapping of sweetpotatoes is a recently adopted but increasingly used retail marketing technique. The shrink wrapping process involves enclosing individual roots in shrink film which is cut and heat sealed followed by transfer through a heat tunnel to create a tightly sealed package. Film thickness ranges from 40 to 100 microns (gauge). Manual, semi-automatic, and automatic application methods are available. Fully automated commercial methods approach a speed of 1 wrapped root per second. Shrink wrapping adds value to fresh market sweetpotatoes by enhancing appearance, reducing weight loss, and allowing for individual root labeling. Various film types and thicknesses were tested under simulated retail conditions. Root weight loss from shrink wrapped roots was significantlyreduced during storage, ranging from a total of 0.5% in wrapped roots to 2.5% in unwrapped roots after 3 weeks of ambient storage. There was an inverse relationship between film thickness and root weight loss, with the thicker gauge films showing the least amount of weight loss. Film type and thickness did not influence overall root flavor and sweetness perception. In order to reduce the incidence of surface mold, the root must be completely dry before wrapping. This form of packaging offers significant potential for enhancing retail consumer demand.

POSTHARVEST TREATMENTS FOR EXTENDING MARKET LIFE OF FRESH HORSERADISH

Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) has one of the highest rates of postharvest weight loss among all vegetable crops. Postharvest studies were conducted to identify improved methods of extending the market life of fresh horseradish roots. Postharvest treatments included submerging or coating thoroughly washed and dried roots in chlorine (150 ppm), hydrogen dioxide (Storox), 2,6-dichloro-4-nitroaniline (Botran), carnauba-based wax, shellac-based wax, paraffin wax, and polyolefin shrink film (75–100 micron thickness). Two treatments, shrink wrapping and paraffin waxing, were superior in reducing postharvest weight loss and extending horseradish root market life. Roots from the non-paraffin waxed and nonshrink-wrapped treatments lost an average of 20% weight after only 4 days of ambient temperature storage. This resulted in significant root shriveling and unacceptable market appearance. Roots from the shrink wrapped treatments lost an average of 1% weight after 4 days of ambient temperature storage, while paraffin waxed roots lost about 3% weight. It is important to thoroughly dry the roots before shrink wrapping, to avoid moisture condensation on the inner surface of the film and subsequent microbial growth. All of the shrink-wrapped roots and paraffin waxed roots were marketable after 14 days of ambient storage, and no surface mold was detected. Less than 3% weight loss occurred after 14 days of ambient storage in all shrink-wrapped roots, while paraffin-waxed roots lost about 9% weight. Weight loss in the unwrapped roots from the other postharvest treatments ranged from an unacceptably high 44% to 48% after 14 days.

“Shrink Wrapping” Lectures: Teaching Cell and Molecular Biology within the Context of Human Pathologies

Students are most motivated and learn best when they are immersed in an environment that causes them to realize why they should learn. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than when teaching the biological sciences to engineers. Transitioning from a traditionally mathematics-based to a traditionally knowledge-based pedagogical style can challenge student learning and engagement. To address this, human pathologies were used as a problem-based context for teaching knowledge-based cell biological mechanisms. Lectures were divided into four modules. First, a disease was presented from clinical, economic, and etiological standpoints. Second, fundamental concepts of cell and molecular biology were taught that were directly relevant to that disease. Finally, we discussed the cellular and molecular basis of the disease based on these fundamental concepts, together with current clinical approaches to the disease. The basic science is thus presented within a "shrink wrap" of disease application. Evaluation of this contextual technique suggests that it is very useful in improving undergraduate student focus and motivation, and offers many advantages to the instructor as well.

The Shrink?Wrap algorithm for the construction of the attainable region: an application of the IDEAS framework

For a specified feed and a specified set of reactions, the attainable region is the set of all reactor network outlet concentrations that can be attained by means of all feasible reactor networks. This work presents a number of novel properties of the reactor network synthesis problem and subsequently of the attainable region. These properties are employed in the development of a so called Shrink–Wrap algorithm that can be used to approximate the true attainable region to any desired level of accuracy. Examples from the literature are used to illustrate the proposed algorithm.

The Shrink–Wrap algorithm for the construction of the attainable region: an application of the IDEAS framework

For a specified feed and a specified set of reactions, the attainable region is the set of all reactor network outlet concentrations that can be attained by means of all feasible reactor networks. This work presents a number of novel properties of the reactor network synthesis problem and subsequently of the attainable region. These properties are employed in the development of a so called Shrink–Wrap algorithm that can be used to approximate the true attainable region to any desired level of accuracy. Examples from the literature are used to illustrate the proposed algorithm.

A standard test protocol for evaluation of radio frequency identification systems for supply chain applications

In this research, a test protocol was developed and validated with eight different radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. These systems were evaluated with respect to basic performance parameters in their abilities to carry out shipping and receiving operations in the warehouse receiving process. Two major categories of tests were administered: laboratory baseline performance tests and warehouse passive interference tests. The protocol evaluated RFID systems on such performance characteristics as the effective capture zone, tag orientation requirements, tag separation requirements, performance on conveyors and forklifts, performance when covered by stretch wrap or shrink wrap, performance when attached to different types of containers containing different types of solid materials or liquids, and so forth. Results of this research showed that one of the systems was able to meet several of the requirements for shipping and receiving in a warehouse environment, but none of the systems was able to meet all of the requirements for performance in this application. Additionally, the test protocol and results led to the adoption of a UHF frequency (915 MHz) as the American National Standard for passive RFID systems.

America's meltdown: the lowest-common-denominator society

The Lowest Common Denominator Cyber Spaced Vicarious Living Infotainment Retail Government Lock and Load The Bottom of the Barrel Shopping and Dropping Men and Women Are from Earth Hyped Sports Waging the Soul Punching the Clock McMedicine Shrink Wrap Dumbsizing the Schools Mall Art The Spiritual Supermarket Transcending the Meltdown Rebuilding the Future Notes Further Reading

Influence of Storage Environment, Surface Coating, and Individual Shrink Wrapping on Quality Assurance of Guava (Psidium guajava) Fruits

Guava (Psidium guajava) fruits of cv. L-49 with individual shrink wrapping using 9 micro LLDPE film could be successfully stored up to 12 days at ambient and 18 days in evaporative cool chamber with negligible loss in vitamin C content. The untreated fruits lose 25-30% of ascorbic acid within 1 week after harvest. Delay in senescence and metabolic activities as supported by less changes in soluble solids, sugars, acidity, respiration, and ethylene evaluation rate was also observed in individual shrink wrapped fruits in cool chamber. The spoilage of fruits by Fusarium rots was significantly less in cool chamber in individually shrink wrapped fruits followed by Sta-fresh treatment. Sta-fresh was more effective in cool chamber than ambient. Individually stored wrapped fruits scored a better value of sensory score than Sta-fresh under both the storage condition.

Shrink wrap gift bag and method of manufacturing the same

Shrink wrap gift bag and method of manufacturing the same

Licensing Electronic Resources

The presenter covered the licensing process and the wide range of tasks and issues it comprises: pre-negotiations, team approaches to license negotiation, users and uses, negotiating strategies, online resources, understanding the license, and specialized topics such as copyright, shrink wrap licenses, and UCITA.

Comparison of Three Nondestructive Methods for Determination of Vegetable Surface Area

Surface areas of differently shaped vegetables, namely beet (Beta vulgaris L.), cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), carrot (Daucus carota L.), and parsnip (Pastinaca sativa L.) were determined by Baugerod's (a linear) method, a shrink-wrap replica method, and image analysis. Values obtained using these methods did not differ significantly for carrots and beets. Surface area values obtained using image analysis were higher than those obtained by Baugerod's method for parsnips (by 23.5%), and higher than Baugerod's and shrink-wrap replica methods for cucumbers (by 11.3% and 12.6%, respectively). A method was considered reproducible if surface area values from five measurements on the same product did not differ significantly (P ≤ 0.05). Surface area values for an individual product varied in the range of 4.7% for Baugerod's method for parsnips, and 6.6% for the shrink wrap replica method for carrots. No significant variation was observed for any of the vegetables when repeated measurements were made using the image analysis method. Image analysis offers rapidity, lack of adverse effect on produce, and the ability to collect and analyze data simultaneously. However, in absence of the necessary equipment for image analysis, Baugerod's method may be used for a product symmetrical around its central axis, after comparing it with a more direct procedure (e.g., shrink-wrap replica method).

Controlled-release P fertilizer concept evaluation using growth and P uptake of barley from three soils in greenhouse

Use of controlled-release P fertilizers to match the fertilizer P availability to crop requirement has potential for improvement of P uptake and crop production. Greenhouse experiments were conducted to evaluate the concept of controlled-release P fertilizer by using different coatings to regulate the release of P and to compare the growth and P uptake of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) in three Alberta soils. Testing of different coatings in one experiment was followed by further evaluation of the promising treatments in two experiments. Commercial monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and diammonium phosphate (DAP) were coated with a polymer (thin-coated, 1.8% by weight or thick-coated, 2.2%) or enveloped in commercial packaging polyethylene film (shrink wrap, SW) with two, four or six pin-holes to control P release. Thin-coated treatment showed greater dry matter yield (DMY), P uptake (PU), net fertilizer P efficiency (NFPE) and net fertilizer releases efficiency of MAP compared to the uncoated, thick-coated or SW treatments in many cases. Coating of DAP did not consistently improve any of the above-mentioned parameters. In some cases, uncoated fertilizer had greater DMY, PU and NFPE than the polymer-coated treatments in early stages of crop growth (at the 13th, 26th, and 30th days), but coated treatments generally performed better during later stages of crop (at the 39th, 45th, 60th and 90th days). At 31.4 mg P pot-1 for example, thick-coated treatment had about 25% of its total PU during the 60th to 90th day, which resulted in greater spike yield accumulation in this treatment (8.4 g pot-1) compared to uncoated fertilizer (5.0 g pot-1). The P release rate was greater with thin-coated fertilizer than with thick-coated fertilizer during the 0 to 13th days (by 0.199 mg P kg-1d-1) and the 13th to 26th days (by 0.084 mg P kg-1d-1), but the opposite was true during the 26th to 39th days (by 0.112 mg P kg-1d-1) and the 39th to 52th days (by 0.064 mg P kg-1d-1). The polymer-coated, in particular the thin-coated, fertilizers delivered P in a manner that allowed the plants to use it more effectively than the uncoated MAP in several cases, which indicated a potential for improvement of fertilizer P efficiency and crop production. Key words: Barley growth, controlled-release P fertilizer, P uptake, yield

振動によるパレットロードの荷動き挙動

A variety of pallet-load stabilizers can be available. The stretch and shrink wrapping are the most commonly used as the stabilizing materials, but the reusable strapping stabilizers should be ofthen used gradually by an ecological demand. Although no confirming test protocols of the load stabilizing efficiency have been existed. In this paper, the new evaluation method of the pallet-load slipping down vibration tests is proposed. The indoor falling down vibration tests of the pallet load are carried out. As the results, it is observed that even if one dimensional vertical vibration in the natural frequency are induced complex movements. The chaotic motions of the palletized corrugated boxes in response to the virtical vibrating force can be indicated by the three proposed parameters.

Joining polyhedral objects using implicitly defined surfaces

Complex polyhedral objects are often constructed from simpler polyhedral objects using CSG, booleans and various blend operations that produce fillets and chamfers. Skinning and shrink wrapping techniques provide alternatives to generating a smooth composite object from individual object parts. This paper presents an effective and general technique for incrementally building complex polyhedral objects from simpler parts. We provide a procedural implicit function definition for a region of a polyhedral object that is star-shaped with respect to a skeletal point, called a blend center. We extend this definition to provide a single implicit function definition for an arbitrary polyhedral object, where every region is star-shaped with respect to a proximal blend center, chosen from an arbitrary set of blend centers. This allows the application of implicit function based modeling techniques in constructing transition surfaces between arbitrary polyhedral object parts. Generalizations of our approach allow the algebraic combination of arbitrarily shaped and positioned, disjoint object parts, and is thus a significant superset of CSG, booleans, and other blending techniques. At the same time original detail and character of object parts are preserved in regions where they are not involved in constructing transition surfaces or do not interact with other object parts. A complete implemetation of the presented concepts show polyhedral implicit primitives to be a general and efficient technique for building complex polyhedral objects from a modular set of polyhedral object parts.

The sorrows of young ED

Critics of the medical profession fret that doctors are getting too cozy with pharmaceutical companies and their representatives, but I disagree. Going through my mail this morning the first thing to grab my attention was a shrink wrap covered box with a picture of a young man jogging and the bold slogan: “a free gift” for you.

Effects of shrink film wrapping and storage temperature on the shelf life and quality of pomegranate fruits cv. Ganesh

Abstract The effects of individual shrink film wrapping with two polyolefin films (BDF-2001 and D-955) and skin coating with a sucrose polyester (SPE) Semperfresh™ on the shelf life and quality of soft-seeded ‘Ganesh’ pomegranates ( Punica granatum L.) stored at 8, 15 and 25°C were studied. The shrink-wrapped pomegranates could be stored for 12, 9 and 4 weeks as compared to 8, 6 and 2 weeks by SPE coating at 8, 15 and 25°C respectively, whereas non-wrapped fruits could be kept for 7, 5 and 1 week under similar storage conditions. Peel thickness and freshness and firmness of the fruit were retained and weight loss greatly reduced by shrink wrapping. The weight loss in shrink-wrapped fruits was 1.2–1.3% after 12 weeks of storage at 8°C and 2.2–3.7% after 10 weeks at 15°C. During the same period non-wrapped fruits lost 20.4 and 30.7% at 8 and 15°C, respectively. Changes in acidity, sugars and vitamin C of the shrink-wrapped fruits were lower than that of non-wrapped fruits during 12 weeks of storage at 8°C. Shrink wrapping also reduced the respiration rate of the fruit. No detectable levels of ethylene were produced during storage of pomegranates.

A Shrink Wrapping Approach to Remeshing Polygonal Surfaces

Due to their simplicity and flexibility, polygonal meshes are about to become the standard representation for surface geometry in computer graphics applications. Some algorithms in the context of multiresolution representation and modeling can be performed much more efficiently and robustly if the underlying surface tesselations have the special subdivision connectivity. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for converting a given unstructured triangle mesh into one having subdivision connectivity. The basic idea is to simulate the shrink wrapping process by adapting the deformable surface technique known from image processing. The resulting algorithm generates subdivision connectivity meshes whose base meshes only have a very small number of triangles. The iterative optimization process that distributes the mesh vertices over the given surface geometry guarantees low local distortion of the triangular faces. We show several examples and applications including the progressive transmission of subdivision surfaces.

Computers and Internet: Shrink Wrap, Click Wrap, Power - on Wrap - What's Next?

Computers and Internet: Shrink Wrap, Click Wrap, Power - on Wrap - What's Next?

Reducing the Risk of Superficial Injury in `Golden Delicious' Apples Caused by Postharvest Application of CaCl2 Solutions

`Golden Delicious' apples were pressure-infiltrated (34 kPa) at harvest with 0, 20, 35, or 50 g·L–1 solutions of CaCl2 followed without and with a water rinse, a wax or shellac emulsion treatment, or a shrink-wrap packaging, and stored at 0°C. The CaCl2 treatments delayed senescent breakdown, but also caused superficial injury to the fruit. A water rinse in combination with a wax- or shellac-based coating or shrink wrap packaging reduced the appearance of superficial injury in fruit treated with 35 or 50 g·L–1 solutions of CaCl2 and eliminated it in fruit treated with a 20 g·L–1 solution of CaCl2. While reducing the risk of calcium-related injury to the fruit, the coating and film treatments maintained the beneficial effects of calcium on apples and reduced weight loss of the fruit during cold storage.

Obstruction Due to Retained Carbon Dioxide Absorber Canister Wrapping

To the Editor: We read with interest the article by Normal et al. [1]. A similar scenario involving two subsequent patients occurred at our institution. Fortunately, neither was harmed as a result of the mishap. We also used a North American Drager (NAD) 2B anesthesia machine (Telford, PA). However, our disposable CO2 absorber canisters were supplied by WR Grace & Co. (Boca Raton, FL). At that time, the canisters had clear wrapping with blue labeling. Subsequent investigations revealed several interesting findings. First, there are significant differences among plastic-wrapped Sodalime[R] canisters regarding the degree of obstruction they produced, whether by spontaneous or controlled ventilation. This was true of both Ohmeda (Madison, WI) and NAD machines. This was in part related to the chance alignment of small holes in each wrapper to accommodate the manufacturer's shrink wrapping process. The holes allowed some gas to flow through the canister even though the wrapper had not been removed. Second, obstruction as assessed by spontaneous respiration was not always readily detected in the Ohmeda machine. Investigation of the Ohmeda molded cylinders that hold the Sodalime[R] canisters revealed three small peripheral circumferential holes in the bottom that allowed gas flow to continue despite the use of plastic-wrapped canisters; gas flowed around, rather than through, the obstructing Sodalime[R] canisters with relative ease. These holes were not present on the NAD cylinders. They are an old design feature that allow drainage of water condensation. Neither Ohmeda nor NAD had any safety features specifically designed for the problem we encountered. We contacted WR Grace & Co. and suggested that they make the plastic wrapper a different color (preferably red) and more bulky so as to impede insertion of the canister into the absorber. These same ideas are suggested in the article by Norman et al. Over the ensuing 6 months, WR Grace & Co. made several changes to their Sodalime[R] canister packaging to enhance safety. The first commercial use of this new film and wrap setup was initiated in late August 1995. We agree wholeheartedly with the suggestions of Norman et al. and recommend to all manufacturers that uniform standards be adopted for packaging and labeling. To facilitate patient safety, we plan to send this letter and Norman et al.'s article to alert other manufacturers of sodalime canisters of this potentially life-threatening problem. Lastly, we publicly thank WR Grace & Co. for their spirit of cooperation, professionalism, and promptness in responding to our suggestions. Earl S. Ransom, MD Edward A. Norfleet, MD University of North Carolina Hospitals; University of North Carolina; Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7010