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This work reports a platform based on ultrasound for mid-air particle manipulations using a 2×2 piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) array. Three achievements have been demonstrated as compared to the state-of-art: (1) high SPL (sound pressure level) of 120 dB at a distance 12 mm away by an individual lithium-niobate pMUT; (2) a numerically simulated and experimentally demonstrated 2D focal point control scheme by adjusting the phase-delay of individual pMUTs; and (3) the experimental demonstration of moving a 0.7 mg foam plastic particle of 12 mm away in the mid-air by ~1.8 mm. As such, this work shows the potential for practical applications in the broad fields of non-contact actuations, including particle manipulations in microfluidics, touchless haptic sensations, … etc. 

Microwave imaging has been a popular high resolution, non-invasive, and non-contact nondestructive testing (NDT) method for detecting defects and objects in non-metallic media with applications toward testing dielectric slabs, printed circuit board testing, biomedical diagnosis, etc. In this paper, we employ an array of microwave sensors designed based on the complementary split ring resonators (CSRR) along with nearfield holographic microwave imaging (NH-MWI) to assess the hidden features in the dielectric media. In this array, each element resonates at a different frequency in the range of 1 GHz to 10 GHz. Performance of the proposed method is demonstrated via simulation and experimental results. 

When subjected to the lap shear testing, spot welds created by brazing, resistance welding, or other techniques may fail either by a plug failure mode (also called pull-out mode) or an interfacial shear failure mode. In the past, plug failure mode was thought to be depend- ent on base metal ultimate tensile strength, spot diameter and plate thickness, while interfacial failure can be determined by interface shear strength and spot area. No fracture mechanics model or failure process is invoked in such an approach, and its predictive capability is often doubted compared to realistic experiments. This work conducts a parametric study to assess the failure behavior as a function of dominant three-dimensional geometric parameters based on the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) damage mechanics model and no-damage mod- el respectively. Different necking conditions are considered as precursors to the two failure modes in the no-damage model. It is found out that a small ratio of spot diameter to plate thickness promotes interfacial shear failure while a large ratio favors plug failure. Other geometric parameters such as the filler interlayer thickness, if used, play a secondary role. The calculated peak force Fwt is not much different between the GTN and no-damage analyses, and better agreement is shown in the small nugget region. Normalized peak force calculated from the GTN model with the porosity f0 set to 0.01 showed the best agreement with pervious tensile shear tests on spot-welded DP980 lap joints in comparison to that calculated from the GTN model with f0 at 0.02 and the no-damage model. Note that heterogeneous distribution of materi- al strength across the joint region was considered in the GTN model, which was estimated based on the hardness map measured across the joint cross section. 

In this replication study, we examined gender differences in students’ math competence-related beliefs from 9th to 12th grade and tested gender differences within four racial/ethnic groups. In order to test the potential historical changes in these patterns and to counteract the replication crisis in psychology, this study employed six U.S. datasets collected from the 1980s to 2010s. Using a total sample of 24,290 students (49.5% male students; 11% African-, 9% Asian-; 30% Latinx- and 50% European-Americans), we found gender differences in students’ math competence-related beliefs favoring boys at all grade levels. By comparing effect sizes across datasets, we found no evidence that these gender differences varied by dataset or by historical time. The results across race/ethnicity with a subsample of 23,070 students indicated meaningful gender differences in students’ math competence-related beliefs favoring boys at all grade levels among Asian-, European-, and Latinx-Americans, but not among African-Americans where differences favored girls in 12th grade. Overall, our findings provide no evidence of historical changes concerning gender differences in students’ math competence-related beliefs across datasets. Our findings illustrate the importance of replicating empirical findings across datasets and using an intersectional lens to investigate math motivation.