This current study analyzed the long-term holistic development of intercultural competency in undergraduates who participated in a short-term service-learning missions trip (SLMT). We compared alumni who had participated in the program against a control group who did not. As expected, the SLMT group had significantly higher perceived intercultural competency in the scales of Knowledge, Awareness, Behavior, Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Growth, Intellect, and Spirituality. It was also found that alumni who participated in the SLMT in conjunction with a study abroad trip experienced significantly higher gains in all eight of the competency scales when compared to those who only participated in the SLMT and the control group. Furthermore, there were no significant differences found between the SLMT time cohorts (2–7, 8–13 post-experience) for six of the eight competencies. We conclude by discussing how the intentional use of preparation, reflection, and debriefing are critical for perceived changes in short-term missions’ experiences.
Titanium aircraft engine forgings are inspected at all material depths using the ultrasonic testing (UT) process called multizone inspection. This process creates a raster array of 1D A-Scan signals that image the material's underlying characteristics, which in the case of forged titanium, result in highly variable noise. The 3D volume is analyzed as a stack of 2D depth slices that are gated into C-Scans. The intention is to accept or reject the part by examining for the presence of small anomalies in these images in terms of their signal to noise ratio (SNR). Ultrasonic testing inspectors determine that rejection decision by using specialized image software and a 2D assisted defect recognition (ADR) algorithm. This approach for calculating SNR greatly reduces inspector subjectivity compared to a manual approach, but in 2D, not all available information is used to determine a true detection. Enabling ADR to use the 3D volume for the forging inspection, an automated SNR calculation has been extended to address these issues. The 3D ADR algorithm's life cycle from design to validation will be discussed. Validation testing results have shown that 3D ADR significantly increases probability of detection compared to 2D ADR while also reducing its false positive rate.
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