Production Tasks Research Articles

To the question of improving the wear resistance of high manganese steel castings

Nowadays, one of the most significant tasks in production of equipment for mining industry is import substitution. In this regard, investigations aimed at improving the technologies of manufacturing high quality castings from wear resistance manganese austenitic steels seems to be relevant. The results of metallographic research of high manganese steel samples from foundries producing crushing plates and crushing cones, track links, hammers, shovel teeth, tooth caps etc. are given. Analysis of the microstructure of the presented castings showed that they are characterized by a coarse-grained structure with an austenite grain size of 1–2 points. In most cases, a thickened grain boundary, presence of manganese carbides along the grain boundaries and non-metallic inclusions are observed. The revealed mi-crostructure features of castings are one of the main indicators of low wear resistance of high manganese steel parts. The operational and technological factors affecting the wear resistance of castings are listed. Recommendations for improving the quality of steel products made from manganese steels are proposed, and the results of using original complex modifiers developed at NPP Technology Company in real manufacturing conditions are presented.

The Distribution of Manner and Frequency Adverbs in Child Heritage Speakers of Spanish

We investigate the acquisition of adverb placement in Spanish among school-age child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US by Mexican parents. We examine frequency and manner adverbs with negative and positive polarity and the potential role of cross-linguistic influence, dominance, and experience in the path and rate of development. Fourteen child heritage speakers of Spanish born and raised in the US and twenty-five Spanish monolingual children from Mexico completed an elicited production task. Results showed that the heritage children produced significantly fewer verb-raising structures compared to the monolingual children, leading to a higher proportion of pre-verbal adverb use and adverb-final use. The heritage children treated manner and frequency adverbs with negative and positive polarity significantly differently. We also found a strong correlation between dominance and experience in the probability of producing specific adverbial positions. In other words, common adverbial positions in English were more likely to be produced with higher dominance and experience in English; likewise, Spanish adverbial positions were more likely to be used with higher dominance and experience in Spanish. We argue for differential outcomes in child heritage grammar due to differences in the path and rate of language development as well as the role of dominance and experience in child heritage language acquisition.

Applied Research on Electronic Documentation and 3D Product Model Deployment in Production and Assembly Processes

The three-dimensional (3D) product model has become a tool that has transitioned from a legacy instrument, used in design, to an emerging technology applied to production and assembly processes. As this evolution has occurred, the need has developed to understand the value of deploying the 3D product model beyond the design phase. This research answers the question and solves the problem, does electronic documentation inclusive of the 3D product model add to the production workers’ ability to complete the production task? To answer this question, the methods used were that the research team tested how accurately and quickly a production and assembly team could build the product using interactive, electronic documentation, including the 3D product model, as a means to understand the design intent as opposed to printed bills of materials (BOMs) and two-dimensional (2D) paper drawings. The conclusions that can be drawn from this research are that the research found statistically significant improvements in the production throughput time (~10%), reductions in the direct labor hours per unit (~14%), and retained quality levels, when deploying electronic documentation, including the 3D product model, into the production and assembly processes. Through the deployment of the interactive 3D product model electronic documentation to the production floor, the organization also took a step towards creating a digital twin of the produced product and laid a foundation for the further adoption of Industry 4.0 practices. The novelty of the work and the areas where it goes beyond previous efforts in the literature concerns the current body of knowledge that does not demonstrate a repeatable methodology through which industry and other researchers can replicate the experiment on demonstrating economic value when deploying the 3D product model to production and assembly processes. In this paper, the authors aim to build on prior work to demonstrate a repeatable methodology for determining the economic value of 3D product model deployment in production and assembly processes through applied research.

Coordinating Words and Sentences: Detecting Age-Related Changes in Language Production.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether older adults exhibit reduced abilities in coordinating lexical retrieval and syntactic formulation during sentence production and whether an individual's working memory capacity predicts age-related changes in sentence production. A total of 124 Korean-speaking individuals (79 young and 45 older adults) completed a lexical priming sentence production task. The participants described a target picture (a dog biting a monkey) after reading either an agent (dog) or a theme (monkey) prime word. The proportion of passive sentences was used as the dependent variable. When the theme noun was primed, older adults produced fewer passive sentences than young adults. Working memory tasks significantly predicted individual differences in the sentence production of older adults. With aging, the ability to efficiently formulate syntactic structures in coordination with varying lexical information declines. Among older adults, age-related changes in these sentence production processes are associated with reduced working memory. Our constrained language production task is sensitive to detecting aging effects.

Putting language switching in context: Effects of sentence context and interlocutors on bilingual switching.

Many bilinguals switch languages in daily-life conversations. Although this usually happens within sentence context and with another speaker, most research on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the production of language switches has studied individual words. Here, we examined how context influences both switching frequency and the temporal cost associated with it. Sixty Bulgarian-English bilinguals named pictures in their language of choice without any context, in a sentence context, and in interaction with another (recorded) bilingual. Switching frequency was lower, and costs higher, when bilinguals switched languages with context than without context. This suggests switching costs were not an artifact of tasks without context. Furthermore, both switching frequency and costs correlated across the tasks. In addition, we examined the potential influence of sentence context and the conversation partner. Predictability in sentence context has previously been argued to reduce language competition, which in turn could influence switching. We therefore compared sentences with a predictable or unpredictable target word. As hypothesized, bilinguals were less likely to switch languages when a word was predictable in its sentence context, potentially because words in the other language were less active. The conversation partner's overall switching behaviour had little impact on a bilingual's general switching rate, showing relatively low global alignment. However, local alignment was observed as switching was influenced by the partner's switching in the immediately preceding utterance. Together, these findings show that while production tasks without context can reliably measure switching costs, studying effects of context is necessary to better capture a bilingual's language-switching behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

ESTIMATING DRY MATTER AND TOTAL SOLUBLE CONTENT IN APPLES USING A COMMERCIAL PORTABLE HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING SYSTEM

Abstract. The quest for rapid, non-destructive, and precise technologies for fruit quality estimation is motivated by the needs across the whole food production chain. One of the emerging technologies fulfilling these requirements is spectral imaging. However, despite documented successes, the technology is yet to become established in commercial applications. The best results reported in the literature rely on fixed, non-portable dedicated setups, and controlled light conditions, which limits the potential use cases along the food production chain. In our study, we investigate the possibility of estimating dry matter content (DMC) and total soluble content (TSC) of store-bought apples in non-regulated indoor conditions using a commercial, portable, hand-held imaging system featuring a hyperspectral camera. The acquired images are transformed into per-fruit representative spectral profiles, pre-processed, and analyzed using partial least squares (PLS), the established method in the chemometrics community. We achieved the R2 of 0.93 for TSC and 0.91 for DMC on the test dataset, with a mean absolute error of 0.71 °Brix for TSC and 0.7% for DMC, which is comparable to the state-of-the-art results presented in the literature. These results indicate that recent instrumental developments enable the deployment of spectral imaging systems in a wider range of tasks in food production, requiring portability and allowing for less stringent control of environmental conditions.

ФОРМУВАННЯ ТЕХНІЧНОГО МИСЛЕННЯ ЗАСОБАМИ STEM-ОСВІТИ МАЙБУТНЬОГО ВЧИТЕЛЯ ФІЗИКИ

The article substantiates the significance of the development of the technical thinking of the physics teacher in the conditions of his professional training. The peculiarities of the teacher’s professional mentality have been revealed. The need for the development of pedagogical thinking, as well as technical thinking, as a special one for the subject field, is substantiated. It is shown that technical thinking is the process of reflecting objects and processes of technical activity in the human mind. This type of thinking is associated with mental activity aimed at operating technical images in their static and dynamic state. Qualitative analysis of the structure and process of technical thinking allows to substantiate the concept of “technical thinking”. Technical thinking is a practicalactive thinking aimed at operating technical images during the production and creative activity of a person. It is able to solve complex production tasks in any standard or critical situation. STEM education is a specialization directions of education, the main emphasis of which is on the education of exact and natural sciences, from the addition of continuous innovative and technological components. It is absolutely fair to say that STEM is the best solution for the future professionals in the engineering and technology. The basis for STEM education is scientific methods, mathematical modelling, engineering design and innovative thinking. From this description, it may seem that we are talking about an education designed exclusively for the training of future IT professionals, and this will be partially true. However, STEM education is broader, because it combines sciences with a creative approach and develops of different sides in the personality of the future physics teacher.

Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks

Abstract We investigated the predictive capacity of second language (L2) sentence processing speed measured using reaction time (RT) and automaticity captured using the coefficient of variation (CV) on the accuracy of L2 use in receptive and productive tasks. A total of 74 Chinese English-L2 learners completed a maze task, an elicited imitation task (EIT), and a timed grammaticality judgment task (TGJT) using comparable sentences. RT and CV from the maze task were used to predict the use of L2 morphological markers in the EIT and TGJT. The findings revealed that there were no significant effects of RT and CV in the EIT. However, in the TGJT, the effect of CV was significant. These results highlight the predictive power of L2 processing automaticity in the receptive task involving L2 morphological use.

The Effectiveness of OpenAI GPT-Generated Definitions Versus Definitions from an English Learners’ Dictionary in a Lexically Orientated Reading Task

Abstract In metalexicographical research, experts have judged the performance of technologies such as OpenAI Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) in lexicographic production tasks as promising yet inferior to human lexicographers. It remains unclear whether this perceived inferiority limits the effectiveness of AI-generated lexicography in resolving practical language doubts. Accordingly, this study compares the effectiveness of AI-generated definitions to those from the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED) in resolving vocabulary doubts in a multiple-choice reading task designed to test lexical knowledge. It involves 43 L2 English users in the third year of an English studies degree at a Spanish university. Students provided with MED definitions performed better on the reading task than those without access to definitions. However, there was no significant difference between the performance of students with either MED definitions or without definitions altogether, and those provided with AI-definitions. The implications of these findings are discussed along with avenues for further research.

Motor Signature Differences Between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Coordination Disorder, and Their Neural Mechanisms

AbstractAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) are distinct clinical groups with overlapping motor features. We attempted to (1) differentiate children with ASD from those with DCD, and from those typically developing (TD) (ages 8–17; 18 ASD, 16 DCD, 20 TD) using a 5-min coloring game on a smart tablet and (2) identify neural correlates of these differences. We utilized standardized behavioral motor assessments (e.g. fine motor, gross motor, and balance skills) and video recordings of a smart tablet task to capture any visible motor, behavioral, posture, or engagement differences. We employed machine learning analytics of motor kinematics during a 5-min coloring game on a smart tablet. Imaging data was captured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during action production tasks. While subject-rated motor assessments could not differentiate the two clinical groups, machine learning computational analysis provided good predictive discrimination: between TD and ASD (76% accuracy), TD and DCD (78% accuracy), and ASD and DCD (71% accuracy). Two kinematic markers which strongly drove categorization were significantly correlated with cerebellar activity. Findings demonstrate unique neuromotor patterns between ASD and DCD relate to cerebellar function and present a promising route for computational techniques in early identification. These are promising preliminary results that warrant replication with larger samples.

Gender Agreement Given Correct Assignment: The Case of L2 Spanish Learners

Abstract: The current study contributes to the argument regarding whether L2 learners up to advanced levels make agreement errors on grammatical gender. It reports gender agreement accuracy on a written Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and an Elicited Oral Production Task (PDT) on known nouns assigned the correct gender by participants on a vocabulary test. Participants were 15 intermediate and 15 advanced second language Spanish learners (first language English), and 15 native Spanish speakers. Overall results found that intermediate learner agreement scores differed significantly from those of native speakers on the GJT and PDT, but advanced learner scores did not differ from those of native Spanish speakers on either task. Findings for advanced learners demonstrate that once these learners know the meaning of a noun and can correctly assign its gender, gender agreement is relatively unproblematic. Results of the present study reinforce the importance of focusing learner attention on gender assignment while teaching noun meanings at least through intermediate levels, to aid in gender agreement accuracy by strengthening co-occurrence relations between nouns and their modifiers. Findings are discussed in terms of the lexical gender learning hypothesis (Grüter et al. 2012), which focuses on the relationship of input and experience to gender acquisition.

Pengukuran Efektivitas Mesin HLP (Hinge Lid Packer) Dengan Metode Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Dan Overall Resource Effectiveness (ORE) Di PT. XYZ

PT XYZ is a company operating in the cigarette industry. However, with increasing demand for products every year, companies are faced with pressure to fulfill orders in a shorter time and in larger quantities. This often results in intensive use of machines, thereby increasing the risk of occurrencedowntime on the machine. One of the machines that experiences the most damage is the HLP (Hinge Lid Packer), where this can harm the company in various ways. In order to find out how productive and efficient machines are for carrying out production tasks, this study will use the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and overall resource effectiveness (ORE) methods to evaluate the HLP machine, which stands for hinge lid packer. Estimated average value of OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of 75.46% and ORE (Overall Resource Effectiveness) of 65.64%, which is not sufficient for the standard value of 85% set by Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM).

AgroCableBot: Reconfigurable Cable-Driven Parallel Robot for Greenhouse or Urban Farming Automation

In this paper, a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot developed to automate repetitive and essential tasks in crop production in greenhouse and urban garden environments is introduced. The robot has a suspended configuration with five degrees-of-freedom, composed of a fixed platform (frame) and a moving platform known as the end-effector. To generate its movements and operations, eight cables are used, which move through eight pulley systems and are controlled by four winches. In addition, the robot is equipped with a seedbed that houses potted plants. Unlike conventional suspended cable robots, this robot incorporates four moving pulley systems in the frame, which significantly increases its workspace. The development of this type of robot requires precise control of the end-effector pose, which includes both the position and orientation of the robot extremity. To achieve this control, analysis is performed in two fundamental aspects: kinematic analysis and dynamic analysis. In addition, an analysis of the effective workspace of the robot is carried out, taking into account the distribution of tensions in the cables. The aim of this analysis is to verify the increase of the working area, which is useful to cover a larger crop area. The robot has been validated through simulations, where possible trajectories that the robot could follow depending on the tasks to be performed in the crop are presented. This work supports the feasibility of using this type of robotic systems to automate specific agricultural processes, such as sowing, irrigation, and crop inspection. This contribution aims to improve crop quality, reduce the consumption of critical resources such as water and fertilizers, and establish them as technological tools in the field of modern agriculture.

Learning From Human Demonstrations for Wheel Mobile Manipulator: An Unscented Model Predictive Control Approach.

Industry 4.0 requires new production models to be more flexible and efficient, which means that robots should be capable of flexible skills to adapt to different production and processing tasks. Learning from demonstration (LfD) is considered as one of the promising ways for robots to obtain motion and manipulation skills from humans. In this article, a framework that enables a wheel mobile manipulator to learn skills from humans and complete the specified tasks in an unstructured environment is developed, including a high-level trajectory learning and a low-level trajectory tracking control. First, a modified dynamic movement primitives (DMPs) model is utilized to simultaneously learn the movement trajectories of a human operator's hand and body as reference trajectories for the mobile manipulator. Considering that the auxiliary model obtained by the nonlinear feedback is hard to accurately describe the behavior of mobile manipulator with the presence of uncertain parameters and disturbances, a novel model is established, and an unscented model predictive control (UMPC) strategy is then presented to solve the trajectory tracking control problem without violating the system constraints. Moreover, a sufficient condition guaranteeing the input to state practical stability (ISpS) of the system is obtained, and the upper bound of estimated error is also defined. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed strategy is validated by three simulation experiments.

Overcoming the Nursery Industry Labor Shortage: A Survey of Strategies to Adapt to a Reduced Workforce and Automation and Mechanization Technology Adoption Levels

US nurseries are experiencing a workforce shortage that is expected to intensify. A mixed-mode survey of decision-makers representing the US nursery industry was conducted in 2021. The survey assessed practices used in 2020 to elicit a better understanding of nursery approaches to the challenges presented by persistent labor scarcity. We compare our results with survey data collected ∼15 years earlier at container nurseries. Survey responses revealed that nurseries were undertaking strategies that aimed to improve production efficiency, better recruit and retain employees, and secure other sources of labor to overcome this shortage. Specifically, more than 65% of surveyed US nurseries increased worker wages, and more than 55% of respondents adopted automation to address the labor shortage. Strategies in use by ≥23% of respondents may limit future growth or jeopardize long-term nursery survival. These include diversifying tasks of current employees, reducing production of labor-intensive plants, or delaying expansion plans. Survey results suggested that production tasks excluding irrigation were on average 31% automated or mechanized at container nurseries, an increase from 16% during the prior survey. Field nurseries were 35% automated or mechanized in 2020. Newly developed or yet-to-be developed automated and mechanized technology (AMT) that decision-makers perceive as being helpful were reported. This article explores linkages between nursery characteristics and AMT adoption and highlights research and extension programming initiatives that are needed to help growers make informed decisions regarding adopting automation.

Investigating local and global control mechanisms in bilingual grammatical processing.

Bilinguals employ both global and local control mechanisms to manage coactivated languages that compete for selection, yet little is known about how they operate on morphosyntactic information. The current study investigated bilingual language control mechanisms for a morphosyntactic production task. Across two experiments, 48 early Spanish-English bilinguals completed rapid instructed task learning paradigms with priming-in-item-recognition manipulations that investigated the extent to which parallel activation was observed across languages and across rules of the same type within a language. The results from the current experiments showed that it was more difficult to reject incorrect responses in the correct target language than to reject incorrect responses that contained the correct grammatical manipulation executed in the nondesired language. These results suggest that global control at the level of target language selection is more effective than local control processes during a bilingual morphosyntactic manipulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Integration of deep reinforcement learning and multi-agent system for dynamic scheduling of re-entrant hybrid flow shop considering worker fatigue and skill levels

In real-life manufacturing systems, production management is often affected by urgent demands and unexpected interruptions, such as new job insertions, machine breakdowns and operator unavailability. In this context, agent-based techniques are useful and able to respond quickly to dynamic disturbances. The ability of agents to recognize their environment and make decisions can be further enhanced by deep reinforcement learning (DRL). This paper investigates a novel dynamic re-entrant hybrid flow shop scheduling problem (DRHFSP) considering worker fatigue and skill levels to minimize the total tardiness of all production tasks. An integrated architecture of DRL and MAS (DRL-MAS) is proposed for real-time scheduling in dynamic environments. Two DRL models are proposed for different sub-decisions, where a reward-shaping technique combining long-term and short-term returns is proposed for the job sequence and machine selection sub-decisions, and an attention-based network is proposed for the worker assignment sub-decision for efficient feature extraction and decision making. Numerical experiments and case studies demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed DRL models compared with existing scheduling strategies.

The Impact of Corrective Feedback on L2 Pragmatics Production in Face-to-face and Technology-mediated Settings

This paper presents findings from a quasi-experimental study that examined the effect of corrective feedback (CF) on L2 pragmatics, specifically comparing Face-to-Face (FF) and Technology-Mediated (TM) modes. The study involved a total of forty-four ESL students from three parallel intact classes. The primary focus of this paper is to report the results obtained from data collected through production tasks employing Role-play scenarios. To analyze the data, a mixed-model Analysis of Variance was conducted, examining the main and interaction effects of CF, delivery mode (FF and TM), speech act type (request and refusal), and time (pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test). The results demonstrated that CF had a substantial positive effect on L2 pragmatic production, resulting in significant overall improvement. Furthermore, the results showed that both FF and TM modes of CF were similarly effective for enhancing pragmatic production. Additionally, the study demonstrated that the effects of CF on pragmatic production were durable and long-lasting. Altogether, these findings support the utilization of corrective feedback in technology-mediated language instruction within L2 classrooms.

Development of composite boron-containing SHS antioxidants for carbon-oxide refractories

Increasing the service life and reducing the cost of refractories remains an actual task for metallurgical production. One of the ways to solve it is the use of new composite materials in the production of modern refractories. The paper presents the test results of the alloying of ladle products PUPK-SH by composite boron-containing antioxidants, obtained by the SHS method. As a result of laboratory tests, it was established that PU-products contained SHS-antioxidants NITRO-BORAL NB-1 (BN·Al2O3) and BorTiX® MM (2TiB2·TiC) grades, instead or together with current antioxidant additive (aluminum powder APV-P grade), has the better characteristics of slag resistance, oxidation and physical and mechanical properties after firing. Based on the results of laboratory tests the products PUPK-SH grade, containing boron-containing SHS-antioxidants, were recommended for pilot industrial testing.

Two Languages in One Mind: Biliteracy, Speech Connectedness and Reading in 5th Grade Bilingual Children

This study examined the effects of bilingual education and simultaneous biliteracy on children’s levels of speech connectedness and reading in Portuguese and English. Thirty-two 5th graders completed oral production tasks and took reading fluency and comprehension tests in L1 and L2. Our results show that, in general, children show connectedness and reading scores which are correlated in the two languages, that is, the languages follow different, but related paths in the time point they were assessed. We conclude that simultaneous biliteracy, in the case of the participants of this research, is not detrimental to the outcomes of either language. On the contrary, it promotes the concomitant use of languages, which, in turn, seems to guarantee support for both languages, L1 and L2, in a bidirectional fashion.