Influence of aluminium sheet surface modification on the self-piercing riveting process and the joint static lap shear strength

Self-piercing riveting (SPR) has been widely used in automotive as one of the major joining technologies for aluminium structures due to its advantages over some of the more traditional joining technologies. Research has shown that friction is a very important factor that influences both the riveting process and the joint strength for SPR, but these influences have not been fully understood. In this paper, AA5754 sheets with different surface textures, such as original with solid wax, hot water washed, sandpaper ground and grit blasted, were used to study the influence of friction on therivet inserting process, joint features and static lap shear strength. The results of joint features and rivet setting displacement-force curve showed that hot water wash and sandpaper grinding on aluminium sheet did not have significant influence on the rivet inserting process and joint features; however, for joints with grit-blasted substrates, the rivet -setting forces were higher at the beginning, and a middle section of the curve and the joint features, such as interlocks and minimum remaining bottom material thickness (Tmin), were clearly altered. The lap shear tests showed that hot water washing can slightly increase the lap shear strength, sandpaper grinding increased the static lap shear strength further and grit blasting increased the static lap shear strength the most

What Makes a Good Passenger? From Teen Drivers’ Perspectives

An exploratory study was designed to examine male and female teenage drivers’ perceptions and expectations of peer passengers. Qualitative methods were used to interview and survey 16- and 17-year-old licensed drivers. 10 interviewees and 96 survey respondents were included in the analysis. Consistent with previous studies, teenage drivers were concerned about passenger-related distractions. There were noticeable differences between males and females in their perceptions of peer behaviors: females most expected passengers to be non-distracting and polite and males most expected passengers to behave maturely. Future studies should focus on social factors and the psychosocial function of driving for better understanding of the peer passenger interactions, and ultimately the development of passenger-related crash prevention efforts

Real-Name Registration Rules and the Fading Digital Anonymity in China

China has implemented comprehensive online real-name registration rules, which require Internet users to disclose their identities. Chinese national law has required most online service providers to implement real-name registration since 2012. This article uses the real-name registration rules to illustrate the supremacy and limitations of the Network Authoritarian Model (NAM), an approach leveraging corporate resources for political surveillance and occasionally adopted by the Chinese party-state. By addressing the evolution of real-name registration rules in China, this article illustrates the party-state’s gradual efforts in both eliminating cyberspace anonymity and etching Chinese characteristics on the architecture of the Internet. Although the Chinese government has faced serious challenges in enforcing the real-name registration policy and current enforcement is far from satisfactory, China is not alone in promoting such a policy. Major Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, have expressed similar interests in requiring users to register their real names. Moreover, policymakers in developed and developing countries are exploring similarly themed regulations and China, therefore, may well be in the vanguard of the global movement for online real-name registration. Nonetheless, requiring real-name registration in China has not only created huge costs for Internet companies, but also given rise to fierce controversy associated with free speech, privacy, and law enforcement. In this article, we identify several important legal and policy implications of the Chinese real-name registration policy. We also illustrate the foremost predicament currently faced by the Chinese party-state in enforcing the policy. This analysis argues that China may create a “spillover effect” in jurisdictions outside China as well as in the global Internet architecture

Supporting Document-Category Management: An Ontology-based Document Clustering Approach

Automated document-category management, particularly the document clustering, represents an appealing alternative of supporting a user\u27s search, access, and utilization of the ever-increasing corpora of textual. Traditional document clustering techniques generally emphasize on the analysis of document contents and measure document similarity on the basis of the overlap between or among the feature vectors representing individual document. However, it can be problematic and cannot address word mismatch or ambiguity effectively to cluster document at the lexical level. To address problems inherent to the traditional lexicon-based approach, we propose an Ontology-based Document Clustering (ODC) technique, which employs a domain-specific ontology to support the proceeding of document clustering at the conceptual level. We empirically evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed ODC technique, using the lexicon-based and LSI-based document clustering techniques (i.e., HAC and LSI-based HAC) for evaluation purpose. Our comparative analysis results show ODC to be partially effective than HAC and LSI-based HAC, showing higher cluster precision across all levels of cluster recall and statistically significant in F1 measure. In addition, our preliminary analysis on the effect of granularity of concept hierarchy suggests the usage of fine-grained concept hierarchy can make ODC reach to a better performance. Our findings have interesting implications to research and practice, which are discussed together with our future research directions

Change Detection Performance Under Divided Attention with Dynamic Driving Scenarios

This study investigated the effect of cognitive load on the relationshipbetween confidence in detecting changes and actual change detectionperformance. Two experiments simulated glancing away from the roadway byperiodically blanking the driver’s view for one second. Experiments wereconducted in a driving simulator where participants were asked to detect changesin the location and appearance of other vehicles while driving on a multi-lanesuburban roadway. In addition, cognitive load was imposed using messages thatparticipants were asked to listen to and answer questions about. Participants’sensitivity (d’) to vehicle changes was calculated and compared with subjectiveratings of confidence in detecting those changes. Results indicated a positiverelationship between d’ and confidence, suggesting that participants were aware ofthe factors that influenced their change-detection performance. However, thestrength of the relationship was situation-dependent. The strength of therelationship decreased when the detection task was more difficult and in thepresence of cognitive load

The Effect of Voice Interactions on Drivers’ Guidance of Attention

The objective of the current study was to assess the effect of voice interactions with an in-vehicle system on drivers’ guidance of attention. Our approach was to examine the effect of voice interactions on endogenous control of attention using a modified Posner cue-target paradigm. Consistent with the bottleneck hypothesis, dual-task slowing was observed when drivers responded to an auditory task and to a pedestrian detection task concurrently. This interference contributed to disrupted attention allocation, especially when drivers could not rely on their endogenous control of attention

Physical Map between Marker 8O7 and 146O17 on the Medicago truncatula Linkage Group 1 that Contains the NIP Gene

The Medicago truncatula NIP gene is located on M. truncatula Linkage Group 1. Informative recombinants showed crossovers that localize the NIP gene between markers 146O17 and 23C16D. Marker 164N9 co-segregates with the NIP gene, and the location of marker 164N9 is between markers 146O17 and 23C16D. Based upon data from the Medicago genome sequencing project, a subset of the model legume Medicago truncatula bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) were used to create a physical map on the DNA in this genetic internal. BACs near the potential NIP gene location near marker 164N9 were identified, and used in experiments to predict the physical map by a BAC-by-BAC strategy. Using marker 164N9 as a center point, and chromosome walking outward, the physical map toward markers 146O17 and 23C16D was built. The chromosome walk consisted of a virtual walk, made with existing sequence of BACs from the Medicago genome project, hybridizations to filters containing BAC DNA, and PCR reactions to confirm that predicted overlapping BACs contained DNA that yielded similar PCR products. In addition, the primers which are made for physical mapping via PCR could be good genetic markers helpful in discovering the location of the NIP gene. As a result of efforts repotted here, gap in physical map between marker 164N9 and 146O17 was closed

Parenting in the Digital Contexts: Are Parents Ready to Use Automated Vehicles to Transport Children?

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) or automated driving systems (ADSs) are projected to be widely available in the coming years. Prior research has documented the reasoned benefits and concerns about this prospect, especially from the perspectives of mobility and safety. However, little work has focused on the prospect of using AVs to enhance children’s mobility as well as the AV features that are needed for safety. An online survey was used to collect the opinions of parents within the United States on their willingness to use AVs to transport children. Results showed that parents’ concerns, assurance-related car features, parents’ technology readiness, child restraint system use (as a proxy for child age), and parent sex were important variables for modeling parents’ willingness. These findings highlight potential users’ needs and requirements as they consider AV ridership and use scenarios in the context of children’s mobility. More research is critically needed to guide the development of AV features, safety evaluations, and regulatory policies, as child passengers are likely part of AV ridership scenarios in the perceivable future