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Resistance Element Welding (REW) is a novel processing technology developed to join dissimilar materials such as aluminum and steel. It uses an auxiliary steel rivet (element) inserted into an aluminum sheet that forms a resistance spot weld with the steel sheet, and the aluminum work piece is mechanically joined by the interlocking rivet. The versatility and agility of REW is advantageous, especially in the automotive industry. However, the head of the rivet often extends out externally over the work piece, and the misalignment of the electrode with the head can be problematic since inserting the head and the weld are performed in separate stages. In the present paper, we performed REW using a headless rivet which has minimal to no overhanging part above the aluminum surface. The lap-shear strength of REW is higher than self-piercing rivets, which makes REW a promising solution for extending applications of multi-material structures. The microstructure of the joint involves a fusion zone which mainly consists of martensite, and the failure occurs near the heat affected zone. This study finds that the electrode-rivet alignment needs to be optimized to manage the optimal nugget size and to avoid current arcing through the aluminum work piece. (Received August 12, 2019; Accepted September 30, 2019)

The growth of the mouse eye and retina after birth is a dynamic, highly regulated process. In this study, we applied visible-light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT), a non-invasive imaging technique, to examine developing retinal layer structures after eye-opening. We introduced a resampled circumpapillary B-scan averaging technique to improve the inter-layer contrast, enabling retinal layer thickness measurements as early as postnatal day 13 (P13) – right after eye-opening. We confirmed vis-OCT measurements using ex vivo confocal microscopy of retinal sections at different ages. Our results demonstrate that vis-OCT can visualize the developmental murine retinal layer structure in vivo, which offers us new opportunities to better characterize the pathological alterations in mouse models of developmental eye diseases.

In growing children it is frequently found that dental maturation is strongly influenced by the growth rate of maxilla or mandible. If there is evidence to prove this, it might be utilized as a criterion in the early diagnosis of skeletal malocclusion, even before the object`s real skeletal features are yet revealed. The purpose of this study was to find out if the difference of dental maturation in over-grown mandible in children with skeletal Class III has any relationship with some skeletal features of mandible. 50 patients in Hellman dental age IIIA with normal occlusion and Class III malocclusion of mandibular over-growth type respectively were selected as study objects. The age estimation was performed on maxillary and mandibular teeth, eruption rate of the 2nd molars of each group have been measured on panoramic radiography, and the differences in dental age of the upper and lower jaw were analyzed under Demirijian`s method. The results were as follows: The difference of dental age of maxillary and mandibular teeth between the two groups was 0.66 and 1.20 years respectively, with a higher difference in the experimental group (p 0.05).

This paper proposes an expert system as a solution to the empirical, heuristic and subjective nature of current art psychotherapy methods. We introduce the framework of the expert system, including its design, knowledge acquisition, representation methods, and modeling of human reasoning process of diagnosis. We discuss the software development environment, menu, and functions of the system, and provide the steps of its application. The user interface makes it possible for non-experts such as parents and teachers to utilize this system in ascertaining signs of their children's psychological problems at an early stage. In addition, this system makes use of many kinds of advantages computers can offer, with the result that diagnosing is done with explicit standards in a more effective way. In the process of unifying existing theories in a systematic manner, this system can foster art psychotherapy research. Finally, this paper attempts to prove the expert system's suitability and usefulness in art psychotherapy through a case study.