Facetting value of helical thread surface received by enveloping

В морской технике применяются различные резьбовые соединения. Детали судовых механизмов подвергаются в процессе работы вибрациям и переменным нагрузкам, которые приводят их к разрушениям, потере герметичности и к внеплановым остановкам судовых машин.. Для повышения эксплуатационных свойств и увеличения срока службы резьбовых соединений проводят анализ качества сопрягаемых поверхностей, в частности, параметров шероховатости. В предлагаемой статье исследуется величина огранки винтовой поверхности резьбы образующаяся при осуществлении нового метода изготовления резьбы огибанием. Процесс обработки металла, к которому относится новый метод нарезания, заключается в касании лезвия инструмента и обрабатываемого материала прерывистым касанием. Нарезание резьбы осуществляется, специальной червячной фрезой. При прерывистом резании обрабатываемая поверхность оказывается, как бы составленной из отдельных криволинейных площадок (граней), Линия стыка граней имеет определенную высоту по нормали к поверхности, при нарезании резьбы - к винтовой поверхности. Высота стыка граней определяет качественный показатель шероховатости поверхности, называемый волнистостью. При нарезании резьбы червячной фрезой высота стыка граней (волнистость винтовой поверхности) зависит от числа зубьев фрезы. Задача исследования состоит в том, чтобы выяснить, каким должно быть число зубьев фрезы для получение заданной шероховатости винтовой поверхности резьбы и как это влияет на качество поверхности резьбы. Так же в статье рассмотрено графическое описание процесса получения огранки резьбы и пример расчета числа гребенок фрезы. There are many different thread joints used on marine facilities. While in operation, components of the mechanisms undergo vibrations with repeated stresses that leads to their failures, loss of tightness, and unscheduled shutdowns of the equipment. The analyses of joint surfaces quality, e.g. roughness parameters, are conducted to enhance serviceability of the thread joints and to prolong their lifespan. The article studies facetting value of a helical thread surface while applying a new method of thread production – enveloping. The new method of cutting that is a process of metal treatment involves non-continuous contacting an instrument blade and the material being cut. The cutting of the thread is done with a special hob cutter. Due to the non-continuous cutting, a treated surface becomes as if consisting of curved pads or faces. The faces junction line has a specific normal line level towards the surface and towards the helical surface during the cutting. The height of the junction defines qualitative indicator of the surface roughness known as undulation. When cutting the thread with a hob cutter the height of the faces junction - undulation of a helical surface – depends on a cutter teeth number. The research objective is to specify the cutter teeth number needed to achieve the required roughness of a thread helical surface as well as to determine how it influences on the quality of the thread surface. The paper also provides several drawings illustrating the process of obtaining the thread facetting and the example of calculation of a cutter chaser number.

Equitable Vessel Traffic Scheduling in a Seaport

In the global maritime transportation network, the on-time performance of cargo transportation depends largely on the service capacity and accessibility of seaports. When opportunities for infrastructure expansions are not available, seaport congestion mitigation may require effective scheduling of the vessel traffic in the port waters. Although existing works on vessel traffic scheduling focus on minimizing vessel delays, this paper studies a novel vessel traffic scheduling problem that aims to address the inter-shipping line equity issue. We develop a lexicographic optimization model that accounts for two conflicting performance measures: efficiency, which favors minimizing total vessel delay; and equity, which favors balancing the impacts of delays fairly among shipping lines. Our model allows the port operator to quantify the efficiency-equity tradeoff and make the best vessel traffic scheduling decisions. For solving the model, we develop an effective two-stage solution method in which the first stage solves two single-objective models to obtain the maximum system efficiency and equity, whereas the second stage trades between efficiency and equity and seeks the best compromise between the two conflicting objectives. We apply our model and solution method on instances generated from the operational data of the Port of Shanghai. Our computational results show that an efficiency-oriented model can lead to highly inequitable traffic plans, whereas inter-shipping line equity can be achieved at only mild losses in efficiency, indicating that the consideration of inter-shipping line equity can lead to satisfactory service at both the vessel level and the shipping line level.

Electrophysiological and Transcriptomic Features Reveal a Circular Taxonomy of Cortical Neurons

The complete understanding of the mammalian brain requires exact knowledge of the function of each neuron subpopulation composing its parts. To achieve this goal, an exhaustive, precise, reproducible, and robust neuronal taxonomy should be defined. In this paper, a new circular taxonomy based on transcriptomic features and novel electrophysiological features is proposed. The approach is validated by analysing more than 1850 electrophysiological signals of different mouse visual cortex neurons proceeding from the Allen Cell Types database. The study is conducted on two different levels: neurons and their cell-type aggregation into Cre lines. At the neuronal level, electrophysiological features have been extracted with a promising model that has already proved its worth in neuronal dynamics. At the Cre line level, electrophysiological and transcriptomic features are joined on cell types with available genetic information. A taxonomy with a circular order is revealed by a simple transformation of the first two principal components that allow the characterization of the different Cre lines. Moreover, the proposed methodology locates other Cre lines in the taxonomy that do not have transcriptomic features available. Finally, the taxonomy is validated by Machine Learning methods which are able to discriminate the different neuron types with the proposed electrophysiological features.

Digital Twin for Designing and Reconfiguring Human–Robot Collaborative Assembly Lines

This paper discusses a digital twin-based approach for designing and redesigning flexible assembly systems. The digital twin allows modeling the parameters of the production system at different levels including assembly process, production station, and line level. The approach allows dynamically updating the digital twin in runtime, synthesizing data from multiple 2D–3D sensors in order to have up-to-date information about the actual production process. The model integrates both geometrical information and semantics. The model is used in combination with an artificial intelligence logic in order to derive alternative configurations of the production system. The overall approach is discussed with the help of a case study coming from the automotive industry. The case study introduces a production system integrating humans and autonomous mobile dual arm workers.

Exploiting the Two-Dimensional Nature of Agnostic Music Notation for Neural Optical Music Recognition

State-of-the-art Optical Music Recognition (OMR) techniques follow an end-to-end or holistic approach, i.e., a sole stage for completely processing a single-staff section image and for retrieving the symbols that appear therein. Such recognition systems are characterized by not requiring an exact alignment between each staff and their corresponding labels, hence facilitating the creation and retrieval of labeled corpora. Most commonly, these approaches consider an agnostic music representation, which characterizes music symbols by their shape and height (vertical position in the staff). However, this double nature is ignored since, in the learning process, these two features are treated as a single symbol. This work aims to exploit this trademark that differentiates music notation from other similar domains, such as text, by introducing a novel end-to-end approach to solve the OMR task at a staff-line level. We consider two Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) schemes trained to simultaneously extract the shape and height information and to propose different policies for eventually merging them at the actual neural level. The results obtained for two corpora of monophonic early music manuscripts prove that our proposal significantly decreases the recognition error in figures ranging between 14.4% and 25.6% in the best-case scenarios when compared to the baseline considered.

Electrophysiological and Transcriptomic Features Reveal a Circular Taxonomy of Cortical Neurons

The complete understanding of the mammalian brain requires exact knowledge of the function of each of the neurons composing its parts. To achieve this goal, an exhaustive, precise, reproducible, and robust neuronal taxonomy should be defined. In this paper, a new circular taxonomy based on transcriptomic features and novel electrophysiological features is proposed. The approach is validated by analysing more than 1850 electrophysiological signals of different mouse visual cortex neurons proceeding from the Allen Cell Types Database. The study is conducted on two different levels: neurons and their cell-type aggregation into Cre Lines. At the neuronal level, electrophysiological features have been extracted with a promising model that has already proved its worth in neuronal dynamics. At the Cre Line level, electrophysiological and transcriptomic features are joined on cell types with available genetic information. A taxonomy with a circular order is revealed by a simple transformation of the first two principal components that allow the characterization of the different Cre Lines. Moreover, the proposed methodology locates other Cre Lines in the taxonomy that do not have transcriptomic features available. Finally, the taxonomy is validated by Machine Learning methods which are able to discriminate the different neuron types with the proposed electrophysiological features.

Managers from heaven: how do hospitality employees describe good managers?

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the characteristics of good hospitality managers and the core causes that lead to developing such characteristics.Design/methodology/approachUsing a qualitative inquiry approach, 93 line-level hospitality employees were surveyed online regarding their experiences about the characteristics of good managers.FindingsThe research findings revealed five key themes of good managerial characteristics, including interpersonal skills, communication skills, supervisory skills, leadership skills, and positive personality and professionalism. Additionally, the root causes of these managerial characteristics were also analyzed. The good managerial characteristics were perceived to have developed from having worked under either a great manager or a terrible manager.Research limitations/implicationsThis study advanced the literature on managerial characteristics by confirming several existing categories from the viewpoint of hospitality industry employees.Practical implicationsHuman resource managers should be considerate of these findings in terms of recruitment, hiring, and training, development, and promotion of employees in their companies.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to analyze the perceived reasons behind the development of these characteristics.

How effective are national quality strategies for business – empirical evidence from Switzerland

PurposeOver the last decades, Swiss core actors in the administration, the parliament and the food chain, have developed a national quality strategy for the agri-food sector. The effectiveness of such symbolic actions is unclear.Design/methodology/approachBy dividing the average export prices by the average import prices of commodities on a four-digit tariff-line level, the study tests how price ratios have evolved between 1997 and 2017.FindingsBased on examples where these ratios turn systematically upward or downward, the study shows that the export–import price ratio generally follows a decreasing trend over time. The author concludes that the national quality strategy for business suffers from a weak level of operationalisation.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, the indicator used in the study is new.