The wise avenue

My dissertation's creative portion is a short story cycle constructed around two organizing principles: a place and a protagonist group. The cycle's setting is Dundalk, Maryland, a predominately white, working-class suburb. My protagonist group is a matriarchal triad of grandmother, mother, and daughter. How these characters define and reflect both the institution of motherhood and the experience of mothering is of particular importance; therefore, my dissertation's critical introduction also focuses on maternal theory. This essay begins as a conversation with Jo Malin's text, The Voice of the Mother. Malin argues that -- via autobiography -- a dialogic conversation occurs between a daughter-writer and her biological mother. Disagreeing with Malin's thesis, I propose my own theoretical conceit, one inspired by work of Carolyn Heilbrun: what if, instead of a mother-daughter dyad, we look at nonfiction works via the lens of a triad, one composed of Daughter-Writer + Biological Mother + Literary Mother? By examining the potential dialogic triads found within three nonfiction works -- Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Louise DeSalvo's "The Portrait of the Puttana as a Middle-Aged Woolf Scholar," and Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby -- I conclude that when daughter-writers pair the ideologies learned from their mothers (ones often steeped in patriarchal motherhood) with those communicated by their "lit moms," the result seems to be not only a re-seeing of the biological mother but also a re-evaluation of who can mother and how this mothering can empower. In this way, my essay provides an example of how scholarship on motherhood can circumvent the gender essentialism that so often haunts writing about mothers.Includes bibliographical references

Towards a Conceptual Design of an Intelligent Material Transport Based on Machine Learning and Axiomatic Design Theory

Reliable and efficient material transport is one of the basic requirements that affect productivity in sheet metal industry. This paper presents a methodology for conceptual design of intelligent material transport using mobile robot, based on axiomatic design theory, graph theory and artificial intelligence. Developed control algorithm was implemented and tested on the mobile robot system Khepera II within the laboratory model of manufacturing environment. Matlab© software package was used for manufacturing process simulation, implementation of search algorithms and neural network training. Experimental results clearly show that intelligent mobile robot can learn and predict optimal material transport flows thanks to the use of artificial neural networks. Achieved positioning error of mobile robot indicates that conceptual design approach can be used for material transport and handling tasks in intelligent manufacturing systems

Friction Force Microscopy of Deep Drawing Made Surfaces

Aim of this paper is to contribute to micro-tribology understanding and friction in micro-scale interpretation in case of metal beverage production, particularly the deep drawing process of cans. In order to bridging the gap between engineering and trial-and-error principles, an experimental AFM-based micro-tribological approach is adopted. For that purpose, the can’s surfaces are imaged with atomic force microscopy (AFM) and the frictional force signal is measured with frictional force microscopy (FFM). In both techniques, the sample surface is scanned with a stylus attached to a cantilever. Vertical motion of the cantilever is recorded in AFM and horizontal motion is recorded in FFM. The presented work evaluates friction over a micro-scale on various samples gathered from cylindrical, bottom and round parts of cans, made of same the material but with different deep drawing process parameters. The main idea is to link the experimental observation with the manufacturing process. Results presented here can advance the knowledge in order to comprehend the tribological phenomena at the contact scales, too small for conventional tribology

Towards a Conceptual Design of an Intelligent Material Transport Based on Machine Learning and Axiomatic Design Theory

Reliable and efficient material transport is one of the basic requirements that affect productivity in sheet metal industry. This paper presents a methodology for conceptual design of intelligent material transport using mobile robot, based on axiomatic design theory, graph theory and artificial intelligence. Developed control algorithm was implemented and tested on the mobile robot system Khepera II within the laboratory model of manufacturing environment. Matlab© software package was used for manufacturing process simulation, implementation of search algorithms and neural network training. Experimental results clearly show that intelligent mobile robot can learn and predict optimal material transport flows thanks to the use of artificial neural networks. Achieved positioning error of mobile robot indicates that conceptual design approach can be used for material transport and handling tasks in intelligent manufacturing systems

Impulse-Based Manufacturing Technologies

In impulse-based manufacturing technologies, the energy required to form, join or cut components acts on the workpiece in a very short time and suddenly accelerates workpiece areas to very high velocities. The correspondingly high strain rates, together with inertia effects, affect the behavior of many materials, resulting in technological benefits such as improved formability, reduced localizing and springback, extended possibilities to produce high-quality multi material joints and burr-free cutting. This Special Issue of JMMP presents the current research findings, which focus on exploiting the full potential of these processes by providing a deeper understanding of the technology and the material behavior and detailed knowledge about the sophisticated process and equipment design. The range of processes that are considered covers electromagnetic forming, electrohydraulic forming, adiabatic cutting, forming by vaporizing foil actuators and other impulse-based manufacturing technologies. Papers show significant improvements in the aforementioned processes with regard to: Processes analysis; Measurement technique; Technology development; Materials and modelling; Tools and equipment; Industrial implementation

A Projector-Camera System for Ironing Support with Wrinkle Enhancement

Ironing is one of troublesome houseworks, in which the goal of the task is to remove wrinkles caused during washing. A projector has advantages in physical world instruction over an instruction sheet, a Head Mounted Display, or a smartphone/tablet PC because of direct mapping of instructive information on the target object. In this article, we propose a method to detect wrinkles using machine-learning and a system to present detected wrinkles by enhancing the area of wrinkles through a projector. In total, 47 infrared image features are defined, from which 15 features are finally used, to classify 32 pixels squares (about 4.5 cm squares) of regions of interest into one of four classes including wrinkle, flat, sagging, and tuck. A RandomForest classifier successfully identified 93.0 % of the wrinkle class. The comparison of wrinkle enhancement methods implies that presenting all ROIs on an ironing board at a time is more effective in removing wrinkles than enhancing an area around and ahead of an iron. Also, we found that making a user realize the effect of wrinkle removal is important to reduce wrinkles efficiently and showed prospective solutions for this issue

A data-driven method to reduce excessive contact pressure of hand orthosis using a soft sensor skin

Discomfort under customised hand orthosis has been commonly reported in clinics due to excessive contact pressures, leading to low patient adherence and decreased effectiveness of orthosis. However, the current orthosis adjustment by clinicians to reduce pressures based upon subjective feedback from patients is inefficient and prone to variability. Therefore, a quantitative method to guide orthosis adjustment was proposed here by developing a data-driven method. Firstly, Verbal Protocol Analysis was employed to convert the implicit process of orthosis customisation into working models of clinicians. Relevant data to inform a new solution development to reduce excessive contact pressure were extracted from the working models in terms of time consumption and iterations of tasks. Secondly, a new soft sensor skin with strategically placed sensing units to measure static contact pressures under hand orthoses was developed. Finite element simulations were conducted to reveal the required contact pressure range (0.02 – 0.078 MPa) and the distribution of relatively high pressures in 12 key areas. A new fabrication method was proposed to produce the sensor skin, which was then characterised and tested on the subject. The results show that the sensor unit has a pressure range from 0.01 MPa to 0.1 MPa with the maximum repeatability error of 6.4% at 0.014 MPa, and the maximum measurement error of 8.26% at 0.023 MPa. Thirdly, a new method was proposed to predict contact pressures associated with the moderate level of discomfort at critical spots under hand orthoses. 40 patients were recruited to collect contact pressures under two types of orthoses using the sensor skin, and their discomfort perceptions were measured with a categorical scale. Based on these data, artificial neural networks for five identified critical spots on the hand were built to predict pressure thresholds that clinicians can use to adjust orthoses, thus reducing excessive contact pressures. The neural networks show satisfactory prediction accuracy with R2 values over 0.89 of regression between network outputs and measurements. Collectively, this thesis proposed a novel method for clinicians to adjust orthoses quantitatively and reduce the need for subjective assessment for patients. It provided a platform to further investigate the pressure for patients with other conditions.Open Acces

Comparison of the vocabularies of the Gregg shorthand dictionary and Horn-Peterson's basic vocabulary of business letters

This study is a comparative analysis of the vocabularies of Horn and Peterson's The Basic Vocabulary of Business Letters1 and the Gregg Shorthand Dictionary.2 Both books purport to present a list of words most frequently encountered by stenographers and students of shorthand. The, Basic Vocabulary of Business Letters, published "in answer to repeated requests for data on the words appearing most frequently in business letters,"3 is a frequency list specific to business writing. Although the book carries the copyright date of 1943, the vocabulary was compiled much earlier. The listings constitute a part of the data used in the preparation of the 10,000 words making up the ranked frequency list compiled by Ernest Horn and staff and published in 1926 under the title of A Basic Writing Vocabulary: 10,000 Words Lost Commonly Used in Writing. The introduction to that publication gives credit to Miss Cora Crowder for the contribution of her Master's study at the University of Minnesota concerning words found in business writing. With additional data from supplementary sources, the complete listing represents twenty-six classes of business, as follows 1. Miscellaneous 2. Florists 3. Automobile manufacturers and sales companie

More studies in Rio Grande Valley history

Matamoros\u27 love song to Brownsville : a poem / Milo Kearney -- Con un pie en cada lado : origins of El Rancho San Lorenzo de las Minas / Mary Jo Galindo -- The rise of banking in Matamoros and Brownsville / Louis Benavides -- The daily Brownsville ranchero / Norman C. Delaney -- Maximilian\u27s bed in Brownsville / Don Clifford -- The U.S. consulate in Matamoros and instability in Matamoros and Brownsville in 1870 / César García -- The Lightbournes of the Point Isabel lighthouse / Antonio N. Zavaleta -- Movie theaters for Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, 1910-1940 / Rogelio Agrasánchez, Jr. -- A Brownsville boy goes to war : Joe Coulter in the submarine service in World War II / Bill Young -- Women as political pioneers in the Rio Grande Valley / Gabriela Sosa Zavaleta -- Re-discovering the Rio Grande Valley : the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools Program and life-long education / Russell K. Skowronek ... [et al.] -- French immigration in the Lower Rio Grande Valley / Olivier Schouteden -- Jewish families of old Brownsville / Norman Rozeff -- John Samuel Cross : race and opportunity on the border / Anthony Keith Knopp -- Los tamales y la migración en Matamoros, Tamaulipas / Arturo Zárate Ruiz -- The life and times of Raúl E. Don Barbacoa and Consuelo Cisneros and their barrio store in Raymondville / Ruby Cisneros Casteel -- Transgenerational language loss at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College / Therese Gallegos -- The comic mode of Oscar Casares\u27 Amigoland / Mimosa Stephenson -- Three interlinked generations of native Brownsville Chicano writers / Lyon Rathbun -- Patricia Cisneros Young : one of our own / Ronny Noor -- Brownsville\u27s love song to Matamoros : a poem / Milo Kearney.https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/regionalhist/1010/thumbnail.jp

Ill. teach. home econ. (1973)

Description based on: Vol. 17, no. 2 (Nov.-Dec. 1973); title from cover.Education index 0013-1385 -1992Current index to journals in education 0011-3565Bibliography of agriculture 0006-153