High-quality Performance Research Articles

A Machine Vision-Based Method for Detecting Surface Hollow Defect of Hot-State Shaft in Cross Wedge Rolling

In order to solve the problems of low detection efficiency and safety of artificial surface defects in hot-state cross wedge rolling shaft production line, a machine vision-based method for detecting surface hollow defect of hot-state shafts is proposed. Firstly, by analyzing the high reflective properties of the metal shaft surface, the best lighting method was obtained. And by analyzing the image contrast between image foreground and image background, the most suitable optical filter type in image acquisition was determined. Then, Fourier Gaussian low-pass filtering method is used to remove the interference noise of rolled shafts surface in frequency domain, such as high-light, oxide skin and surface texture. Finally, by analyzing the characteristics of the surface hollow defect area, a defect identification method combining the Otsu threshold method and the adaptive threshold method is proposed to realize the effective extraction of surface hollow defect of rolled shafts. The test results show that the average recognition rate of the method based on machine vision is 95.7%. The results of this paper provide technical support to meet the production requirements of high quality and high performance of cross wedge rolling.

Experimental research of technological properties of concrete mixing compression process under reconstruction conditions

The article is devoted to the experimental determination of technological properties of concrete mixtures in the conditions of reconstruction of buildings and structures. The technology of construction works under erection and reconstruction largely depends on the properties of the main building materials, the peculiarities of the environment and also on the technological processes. Today, monolithic–frame construction technology is quite common, so the condition of high–quality performance of works is to determine and effectively use the properties of the concrete mixture, taking into account the methods and modes of technological processes. The relevance of doing inspections of buildings and structures in order to assess their technical condition, both in terms of operation and in terms of reconstruction or modernization was also emphasized. The purpose of work was development of a method of definition of properties of building structure during reconstruction of buildings and constructions and also algorithm of selection of a set of the experimental equipment was established. The analysis of modern methods for determining the properties of building materials and structures and analog–digital information processing devices to establish a real physical picture of changes in the stress–strain state of building structures in terms of reconstruction has been done. The method of determining the main properties of building structures using the theory of planning experiments was given. The scheme of installation of sensors and algorithm of data recording and processing of research results were given. Recommendations of using the main types of sensors and recording equipment to determine the stresses and strains that occur in building structures under operating conditions were given. Recommendations for the creation of research complexes in accordance to objectives and technological requirements were given. The main characteristics of monitoring the technical condition of building structures for the assessment and prediction of deformation processes in real time in order to minimize deviations of system parameters from operational values have been determined.

A two-stage histogram equalization enhancement scheme for feature preservation in retinal fundus images

Early detection of ophthalmologic complications in the retinal fundus images is crucial and requires a quality image for accurate analysis and diagnosis. This often proves tricky due to the visual complexities of some retinal fundus images resulting in over-enhancement, non-uniform contrast, artificial boundaries, abrupt colour change, and other undesirable limitations in the performance of the existing image enhancement methods. In this paper, the uneven illumination and colour balance are globally adjusted using a histogram match. At the same time, the luminance component (V) of the HSV colour space is equalized with CLAHE for local contrast enhancement. Eight control parameter values are investigated to choose the most suitable values to restrict excessive enhancement and control the quality of the enhanced image. The performance of the proposed enhancement algorithm on the STARE, DRIVE, HRF, and DIARETDB1 databases shows that the method can prominently enhance colour retinal fundus images. The visual and quantitative comparisons of the proposed method with state-of-the-art techniques are remarkably outstanding. The statistical analysis test achieves a ρ-value far<0.05 justifying the statistical significance of the quantitative metrics and the high-quality performance of our enhancement framework.

An analysis of physician reviews in relation to quality and social media presence

Press Ganey patient engagement survey scores are used among health care facilities throughout the US to evaluate patients’ perception of the quality of care provided. The relation of Press Ganey score to primary quality metrics has not been reported before; thus, we studied it in a cohort of Baylor Scott and White Health primary care physicians. Using simple linear regression, we evaluated Press Ganey scores and compared them with primary care quality metrics associated with improved patient outcomes, including cancer screening, depression screening, blood pressure, and glucose control, in addition to well-child visits. We found that overall quality had a very low linear correlation with Press Ganey survey items, and high-quality performance and increased number of practice years had an overall positive correlation with high survey ratings. We also found that social media presence or total website activity was not an important feature in predicting the top 25 quality performers within the health care system.

Does the Belt and Road Initiative increase the green technology spillover of China’s OFDI? An empirical analysis based on the DID method

The pollution caused by foreign investment has become a serious concern of the host government and academia. Many studies have discussed much about the environmental impact of China’s OFDI in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) region, but ignored the impact of the BRI itself on China’s OFDI. This study uses the Global Malmquist–Luenberger index to measure the green technology spillover of China’s OFDI from 2005 to 2018 and studies the impact of BRI on this spillover effect with the DID (difference-in-difference) method. The results show that (1) the BRI has significantly increased the green technology spillover of China’s OFDI in countries along the routes. The heterogeneity study shows that such an effect is significant in middle- or low-income countries with high institutional quality or poor environmental performance, but not obvious in other countries. (2) The BRI promotes green technology spillover through the mechanism of increasing R&amp;amp;D investment, improving the environmental system, and accelerating the flow of production factors. This study provides a useful reference for developing a greener OFDI and promoting the sustainable development of regional cooperation.

Imbalanced regression for intensity series of pain expression from videos by regularizing spatio-temporal face nets

• Addressing limited data with expression intensity labels. • Pushing the pain assessment performance by a large margin. • Proposing to add a center-loss-based regularizer. • Proposing a more sensible evaluation metric . Obtaining accurate patient-reported pain intensity is essential for effective pain management. An automatic pain recognition system can simplify the pain reporting process and reduce the strain on manual efforts. Limited and imbalanced labeled data are available for the research of estimating the intensity of pain based on facial expressions. However, the ability to train deep networks for automated pain assessment is limited by small datasets with imbalanced labels of patient-reported pain levels. Fortunately, fine-tuning from a data-extensive pre-trained domain, such as face verification or recognition, can alleviate this problem to some extent. In this paper, we propose a network which fine-tunes a face verification or recognition network using a regularized regression loss and additional data with pain-intensity labels. The expression intensity regression task can benefit from the rich feature representations trained on a large number of data for face analysis tasks. In order to explore the temporal information between frames, we combine CNN with LSTM to obtain a better prediction result of each frame in videos. A weighted evaluation metric and re-sampling technique are also proposed to address the imbalance issue of different pain levels. The proposed regularized deep regressor is applied to estimate the pain expression intensity and verified on the widely-used UNBC-McMaster Shoulder-Pain dataset and BioVid Heat Pain dataset, achieving the state-of-the-art performance. As pain detection is a form of micro facial expression recognition, we also apply the transferred deep regressor to estimate the intensity of facial action units, obtaining high quality performance.

Integrated approach of remote sensing and machine learning to simulate and predict petroleum pollution and algal blooms along Aqaba Gulf

To simulate and predict the appropriate indices for algal blooms and petroleum pollution, this study combined remote sensing data and models of Machine Learning ML for the Aqaba Gulf’s condition. For algal blooms indication; floating algal index (FAI) was selected as the best index with 0.937 and for petroleum indices; ratio index (RI) was selected with 0.984. The collected data within the number of samples were separated into two parts: 80% for calibration to train and adjust the back propagation in neural network BPNN and partial least squares regression PLSR, and 20% for the external validation. Therefore, and based on the RI data, FAI was predicted using MLP, the obtained results showed that the ML algorithms gave models with high quality performance with R2= 0.955 and RMSE = 10.90. The PLSR and multilayer perceptron (MLP) were used to predict petroleum pollution using the extracted values to bands. The results showed that both models were obtained excellent models for predicting petroleum pollution. In general, MLP outperforms PLSR; within R²=0.941. Accordingly, the ML model was able to estimate the algal blooms and petroleum contamination with good accuracy. In the validation process, the determination coefficient R2 was 0.84 with an average square error equal to 0.076. As demonstrated, MLP could be a powerful mathematical tool for environmental analysis and prediction. The integration of remote sensing indices and data-driven statistical modeling were highly recommended for further similar studies.

Performance Study of Virtual Frisch Grid CdZnTeSe Detectors

Nuclear detectors for x-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy and imaging are a vital tool in many homeland security, medical imaging, astrophysics and other applications. Most of these applications require room-temperature operation due to the operational constraints imposed by a cryogenic cooling system. CdZnTe (CZT) has been the main material with the desired detection properties, and CZT crystals have been used commercially for three decades. However, CdZnTe still suffers from long-standing issues of high densities of performance-limiting intrinsic defects such as Te inclusions and networks of dislocation walls (sub-grain boundaries). A recently invented new quaternary material CdZnTeSe showed excellent material properties for radiation detection. The material was found to be free from dislocation networks, possess reduced Te inclusions, and have better compositional homogeneity. Virtual Frisch grid detectors were fabricated from crystals taken from a CdZnTeSe ingot that was grown by the traveling heater method. The detectors were fabricated from an as-grown ingot, bypassing the post-growth annealing process commonly practiced for industrial-grade CZT. The performances of the detectors were studied with different Frisch grid lengths using an amplifier shaping time ranging from 1–6 µs. The detectors showed high-quality spectroscopic performance with an as-measured energy resolution of ~1.1% at 662 keV for an optimum Frisch grid length of 3 mm. The charge collection was observed to enhance for longer Frisch grids.

Bus Rapid Transit: An Overview

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is growing in popularity throughout the world. The reasons for this phenomenon include its passenger and developer attractiveness, its high performance and quality, and its ability to be built quickly, incrementally, and economically. BRT also provides sufficient transport capacity to meet demands in many corridors, even in the largest metropolitan regions. In the United States, the development of BRT projects has been spurred by the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) BRT initiative. These projects have been undertaken, in part, because of the imbalance between the demand for “New Starts” funds and available resources.Decisions to make BRT investments should be the result of a planning process that stresses problem solving, addressing needs, and the objective examination of a full range of potential solutions, of which BRT is only one. Good planning practice means matching potential market characteristics with available rights-of-way. BRT involves an integrated system of facilities, services, amenities, operations, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) improvements that are designed to improve performance, attractiveness to passengers, image, and identity. Because they can be steered as well as guided, BRT vehicles can operate in a wide range of environments without forcing transfers or requiring expensive running way construction over the entire range of their operation. Through this flexibility, BRT can provide one-seat, high-quality transit performance over a geographic range beyond that of dedicated guideways. To the maximum extent practical, the system should transfer the service attributes of rail transit to BRT.Even where implementation of a comprehensive, integrated BRT system is not possible, many of its components can be adapted for use in conventional bus systems with attendant benefits in speed, reliability, and transit image/attractiveness.In summary, BRT is growing in popularity because it can be cost-effective and it works. This article describes BRT concepts and components, traces BRT’s evolution, gives its current status, and outlines some of the findings to date of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) A-23 project, “Implementation Guidelines for Bus Rapid Transit.”

Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) 3D printing thin overhang walls of permalloy for a modified honeycomb magnetic-shield structure

Modified honeycomb parts of Ni-15Fe-5Mo permalloy for magnetic shielding applications were designed and fabricated via laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) 3D printing. We focused on the L-PBF process and performances of the thin-walled samples with different overhangs. After temperature-field numerical simulations and mechanism analyses on the L-BPF molten pools, the process optimizations were conducted to achieve a high bulk relative density. The thin walls with different wall thicknesses (0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8 mm) and overhanging angles (10°, 20°, 30°, 40°, 50°, 60°, 70°, 80°, and 90°) were printed without any supporting struts. The structures, mechanical properties, and formation mechanisms of the thin-walled overhangs were studied. We roughly gained some such trends or inferences about the tensile properties of the thin-walled overhangs. The microstructural anisotropies and surface “step effects” were the primary factors affecting the tensile properties. The numerical simulation and experiment of compression on the modified honeycomb parts with several sidewall inclination angles were performed. The modified honeycomb structures transferred stress and premature failure to other local structures far away from the compression face. The preferential plastic deformation of the modified honeycomb structures occurred at the inclined corners, exhibiting good plastic deformation buffering effect and thus avoiding instantaneous cracking. This work presented some reference significance for high-quality formation and performance evaluation of thin-walled overhanging structures via L-PBF.

The silicon vertex detector of the Belle II experiment

The Belle II experiment is taking data at the asymmetric SuperKEKB collider (KEK, Japan), which operates at the Υ(4S) resonance. The vertex detector is composed of an inner two-layer pixel detector (PXD) and the silicon vertex detector (SVD), made of four layers of double-sided silicon strip detectors. A deep knowledge of the system has been gained since the start of operations in 2019 by assessing the high-quality and stable reconstruction performance of the detector. The very high hit efficiency and large signal-to-noise ratio are monitored via online data-quality plots. The good cluster-position resolution is estimated using the unbiased residual with respect to the track, and it is in reasonable agreement with the expectations. The SVD dose is estimated by the correlation of the SVD occupancy with the dose measured by the diamond sensors of the radiation-monitoring and beam-abort system. First radiation damage effects are measured on the sensor current and strip noise are shown not to affect the performance. Six samples of the shaped particle signal are recorded utilizing the multi-peak mode of the APV25 front-end chip and used to determine the hit timing with a precision of 2 to 3 ns. Recently a method to compute the time of collision from SVD hit time information has been implemented and verified with simulations and on data.

(Invited) How Does One Enable High Energy Li Metal Batteries a Case Study with Lipon

The next generation of high energy batteries using Li metal as an anode and utilizing a solid electrolyte requires good interfacial stability, reasonable ionic conductivity, and most importantly the ability to eliminate dendrites.i While most solid-state electrolytes suffer from both interfacial instability and Li penetration resulting in cell shorting,ii,iii The solid electrolyte Lipon has a remarkable ability to suppress dendrites, and enable solid state batteries that can cycle for more than 1000 cycles and support current densities as high as 10 mA/cm2.iii,iv Recent efforts have started to illuminate the origin of Lipon’s ability to enable high-energy solid-state Li metal batteries. This presentation will highlight the unique structure of Lipon and Lipon like materials, the interfacial structure of Lipon with Li metal, and the mechanics that enable high quality performance in Lipon based solid-state batteries.v,vi,vii Finally, the presentation will connect these findings from Lipon to outline key underlying principles that answer the question, how do we enable high energy Li metal batteries? Acknowledgements: Work for this presentation was funded by ARPA-E under contract #DE-AR0000775, and the US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for the Vehicle Technologies Office’s US-German Cooperation on Energy Storage: Interfaces and Interphases In Rechargeable Li-metal based Batteries Program and the Battery Materials Research Program under program managers Tien Duong and Simon Thompson. P. Albertus et al., “Challenges for and pathways toward Li-metal-based all-solid-state batteries”, ACS Energy Letters, 6, 4, 1399-1404, Mar. 2021.Fudong Han, Andrew S Westover, Jie Yue, Xiulin Fan, Fei Wang, Miaofang Chi, Donovan N Leonard, Nancy J Dudney, Howard Wang, Chunsheng Wang, “High electronic conductivity as the origin of lithium dendrite formation within solid electrolytes”, Nature Energy, 1, Jan. 2019. Andrew S Westover, Nancy J Dudney, Robert L Sacci, Sergiy Kalnaus, “Deposition and Confinement of Li Metal along an Artificial Lipon–Lipon Interface”, ACS Energy Letters, 4, 651-655, Feb. 2019.Juchuan Li, Cheng Ma, Miaofang Chi, Chengdu Liang, and Nancy J. Dudney. "Solid electrolyte: the key for high‐voltage lithium batteries." Advanced Energy Materials5, 4, 1401408, 2015. Andrew S Westover* Valentina Lacivita,* , Andrew Kercher, Nathan D Phillip, Guang Yang, Gabriel Veith, Gerbrand Ceder, Nancy J Dudney, “Resolving the amorphous structure of lithium phosphorus oxynitride (Lipon)”, Journal of the American Chemical Society 140 (35), 11029-11038, July 2018. Andrew S Westover, Robert L Sacci, Nancy Dudney, “Electroanalytical measurement of interphase formation at a Li metal–solid electrolyte interface”, ACS Energy Letters, 5, 12, 3860-3867, Nov. 2020.Sergiy Kalnaus, Andrew S Westover, Mordechai Kornbluth, Erik Herbert, Nancy J Dudney, “Resistance to fracture in the glassy solid electrolyte Lipon”, Journal of Materials Research, 36, 4, 787-796, Feb. 2021.

Sensor Effects in LCL-Type Grid-Connected Shunt Active Filters Control Using Higher-Order Sliding Mode Control Techniques.

The effects of measuring devices/sensors on improving the power quality (PQ) of electric networks are studied in this paper. In this context, improving the performance of an LCL-type grid connected to a three-phase three-wire shunt active filter (SAF) in the presence of voltage perturbations is studied. In order to ensure the high-quality performance of LCL-SAF in the presence of voltage perturbations, the robust continuous second-order sliding mode controller (2-SMC), including twisting and super-twisting controllers, and continuous higher-order sliding mode controller (C-HOSMC)-based approaches are employed. These controllers, whose outputs are processed by pulse-width modulation (PWM), allow minimization of the phase shift and prevent the generation of discontinuous chattering commands, which can severely damage the VSI components. Moreover, an integration of a generalized instantaneous power identification algorithm with an advanced phase locked loop (PLL) was proposed and experimentally tested to validate the effective performances of SAF under severe perturbations. Additionally, the studied approaches were tested via simulations taking into account a conventional nonlinear industrial load in a real textile factory environment, using measurements provided by power quality analyzers. Finally, the effects of the measuring devices, including the current and voltage sensors, on the accuracy and reliability of the SAF and, consequently, on the PQ of the electric power grid were studied via simulations and experimentally. The results of this study support the validity of the recently published patent.

Low pressure assisted thin film growth for high performance perovskite solar cells

• Simple thin film manufacturing process. • Improved the perovskite film quality. • Enhanced PCE and environment stability. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been the most promising candidate for next generation commercial solar cells after silicon cells. However, the original perovskite films always present defects showing pinholes and uneven particles causing low performance and stability during operation. Here, we prepared high quality and outstanding performance perovskite films through low pressure assisted (LPA, −1 bar) thin film growth strategy to control morphology and crystallinity form precursor perovskite solution. Consequently, the PSCs (target) showed a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 20.33% based on LPA growth perovskite films, while the PCE for normal annealing devices (control) was only 19.47%. The target devices also showed superior stability at a humidity range of 20%-30% compared with control devices. After 1000 h, 66.50% initial PCE was remained for target devices (20.33% to 13.52%), only 45.45% for control devices (19.47% to 8.85%).

Trajectory Planning for an Autonomous Vehicle in Spatially Constrained Environments

Road shoulders and slopes often appear in unstructured environments. They make 2.5D vehicle trajectory planning commonly seen in our daily life, which lies on a 2D manifold embedded in a 3D space. The height difference of these terrains brings spatially dependent constraints on vehicle maneuvers, such as the limit on vehicle steering for vehicle tire protection when a vehicle approaches a road shoulder edge. These constraints have an “if-else” structure since they are activated only when the vehicle passes through the local area with a height difference, making the restriction on variables coupled with the judgment of variables. This makes the application of state-of-art optimization-based planners challenging. To solve this problem, we devise an approximation formulation for these constraints in the trajectory planning optimization problem, whose solution depends on a proper initial guess for the optimizer. We propose a two-stage trajectory planning framework, where the first stage improves the hybrid A* algorithm by adding spatially dependent constraints into node expansion to provide the initial guess. Then, the optimization problem with the formulated spatially dependent constraints is solved for further trajectory smoothness and quality. Finally, the simulation results validate the fast and high-quality planning performance of our proposed framework.

Fuzzy-Based Controller Synthesis and Optimization for Underactuated Mechanical Systems With Nonholonomic Servo Constraints

This article investigates the trajectory tracking problem of underactuated mechanical systems (UMSs) with companion nonholonomic servo constraints and uncertainties. For such motion tasks, the existing approaches in the literature attempt unrealistically to furnish a reliable closed-form solution, rendering it difficult to have high-quality tracking performance with theoretical support. In addition, the uncertainties typically pose substantial difficulty in the controller synthesis. Here, by invoking the methodology of fuzzy sets, the uncertainties in the UMSs are elegantly represented; and with this, the formulation becomes such that a closer link between the uncertain dynamical model of the UMSs and the real world is established. The reference trajectories are regarded appropriately as servo constraints, and subsequently an adaptive robust controller is designed to accomplish the trajectory tracking task from a specific viewpoint of servo constraint tracking. As supported by rigorous proofs, the closed-form solution to the proposed controller is obtained with guaranteed Lyapunov stability. Leveraging on the closed-form solution, the global optimizer to the controller gain parameter can be determined, which is shown to exhibit several important properties including existence and uniqueness. Finally, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed method.

From whose perspective? Differences between actors and observers in determining the voluntariness of guilty pleas.

Valid guilty pleas must be made voluntarily, yet most defendants report that they did not feel part of the decision-making process or responsible for the decision. Defendants and judges both play a role in determining whether guilty pleas are voluntary. The actor-observer bias suggests that defendants and judges perceive the decision-making process differently given the nature of their roles. The present studies applied this framework to assess the complexity of voluntary plea decision-making. We expected observers would rate pleas as more voluntary than would actors. We also expected participants to rate pleas made by guilty defendants as more voluntary than those made by innocent defendants and to view pleas made with voice as more voluntary than those made without voice. Finally, we expected the effect of guilt and voice on voluntariness to differ for actors and observers. Participants were Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers (Study 1: N = 202, Study 2: N = 626) who had a history of high-quality performance on past tasks, were roughly evenly split between men (Study 1: 52%, Study 2: 53%) and women (Study 1: 48%, Study 2: 47%), and were primarily White/non-Hispanic (Study 1: 84%, Study 2: 75%). They watched video-recorded materials about a criminal case in which a defendant decided how to plead. The materials varied the participant's role (actor, observer), the defendant's guilt (innocent, guilty), and whether the defendant had a voice in the decision-making process (no voice, voice). Participants then rated the voluntariness of the decision-making process. In both studies, actors rated pleas as more voluntary than did observers. Participants rated guilty pleas as more voluntary when the defendant was guilty compared with innocent. Participants also rated pleas as more voluntary when the defendant had a voice in the decision-making process compared with when the defendant did not have a voice, but the difference was bigger for observers than for actors. Defendants and judges both determine whether a guilty plea is made voluntarily. These decision-makers are likely to perceive the plea decision-making process differently given their differing perspectives. There was also a large effect of voice on whether decisions were perceived to be voluntary. Individuals who play a role in the plea decision-making process should ensure that defendants have a proper opportunity to express their opinions and preferences about the decision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PC032 / #660 NON-INVASIVE NEUROMODULATION PROBLEMS FOR MUSICAL PEAK PERFORMANCE USING NEUROFEEDBACK TECHNOLOGY: TRACK 2: BRAIN STIMULATION FOR TREATMENT RESISTANT DEPRESSION, PAIN, AND PARKINSON'S DISEASE

The ineffective sensorimotor integration caused by several psychological, educational, biomechanical, and neurophysiological reasons prevents the high-quality performance of music, cognitive, and emotional activity. It is why non-invasive neuromodulation by using the neurofeedback training (NFT) to voluntary modification of the sensorimotor integration in musicians to achieve peak performance and overcome clinical problems is so actual. Meanwhile, the NFT does not constantly improve musical performance, and its efficiency depends on neurophysiological, ecological, and technical factors.

Strategies to Develop Resilience: Lessons from a Civil Rights Activist, a Scientist, and an Astronaut.

Strategies to Develop Resilience: Lessons from a Civil Rights Activist, a Scientist, and an Astronaut.

Singing professionalization peculiarities at secondary general education institutions of Kharkiv till the middle of XIX century

The purpose of the article is to determine the specifics of the professionalization of singing until the middle of the XIX century in Kharkiv general secondary education institutions.&#x0D; The methodology. Since the phenomenon of Kharkiv vocal art was not considered in the scientific discourse, the methodological basis of the article is the method of comparative analysis, the application of which made it possible to determine the specific features of professional singing in the educational environment of the city. Determining the characteristics of professional singing (methodology of voice processing, repertoire, etc.) was carried out within the framework of applying the principle of systematicity.&#x0D; The results. The specificity of the understanding of singing as a sphere of professional creativity within the limits of church choral practice is traced. The principles of processing of the singing voice in Kharkiv institutions of general secondary education from the middle of the XVIII century are considered. In the context of preparing a singer for collective music making, the music teacher — bandmaster used methods of working with the singing voice, which were formed within the church choir practice and were aimed at mastering vocal technique. For Ukrainian educational institutions of the last quarter of the XVIII century we can highlight common specifics of the activity of music classes, which consisted, in addition to the music teacher, of minor students and adult already trained musicians.&#x0D; It is noted that since the 1840s, the aspiration to professional mastery of solo singing has become popular among Kharkiv youth, which is due to the invitation of European vocalists to become a music teachers at Kharkiv educational institutions.&#x0D; The scientific novelty. It was determined that by the middle of the XIX century. vocal art was cultivated in general educational institutions of Kharkiv by bandmasters, whose multi-functional specifics of activity is determined by the mutual influence of high-quality performance of organizational, pedagogical and other functions within the framework of leadership of musical collectives. In the process of preparing the singer for collective music making, the bandmaster, firstly, used the methods of setting the voice as a means of reproducing the musical text, developed and elaborated in European musical practice; secondly, ensured learning the basic standards for vocals as a level of mastery of the vocal apparatus: voice setting, cantilena singing, purity of intonation, sense of metrorhythm, etc.&#x0D; The performing and teaching activities of European singers since the 1840s stimulated the professionalization of vocal training in general educational institutions of Kharkiv in the context of reorientation from collective to solo singing. Thanks to the pedagogical activity of the Frenchman G. Briss, the Italians Conti, L. Gervasi, and others, the vocal repertoire begins to be dominated by opera music, the reproduction of which requires professional training of the voice.&#x0D; The practical significance. Determining the logic of the formation and functioning of certain signs of professional voice reproduction of a musical text within certain chronological and cultural boundaries will contribute to the improvement of the process of understanding the phenomena of, on the one hand, the musical culture of Kharkiv, and on the other hand, the vocal art of Ukraine.