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Chapter 19 of Part 4 of the book "Innovations in Food Packaging" edited by Jung H. Han is presented. This chapter outlines the perspective of polymer science, starch films and coatings. These materials are multicomponent and multiphase systems. Starch films usually contain amylose, amylopectin, water, and/or other plasticizers, and are often semicrystalline.

Demand Bus System, a new public transportation system, is expected to be a convenient service for special transportation demands to solve more and more serious traffic problems concerning metropolises as Shanghai. Under this background, this paper focuses on evaluating the usability of the demand bus system rather than on the algorithms as the previous researches did. As a useful evaluation tool for achieving this objective, Multi-Agent Based Simulation is used to obtain a better understanding of such system in particular when lacking real applications for a large scale. By using the participatory solution, we propose a multiagent simulation framework to include domain experts, stakeholders, system users, as well as computer scientists to build and modify the computational model directly. The implementation of the prototype system shows that it is easy to build such system from scratch to mega by this mechanism. Initial analysis shows the demand bus system is a convenient service supplement to the fast transportation for community in Shanghai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of telecom, it becomes possible to provide people with Location Based Service (LBS) according to their spatial positions by using mobile equipments. Before using such services, people should evaluate them and make suitable strategies. Demand Bus System is attracting attention as a new public transportation system that provides convenient transportation for special services while solving traffic jams in urban areas. Previous researches focused on the algorithms to the dial-a-ride problem, and few works did on evaluating the usability of the demand bus system. In this paper we proposed a Q-based multi-agent simulation framework for this purpose and implemented a prototype system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]