2020, Krautz, M., Beyer, L., Funk, A., Waske, A., Weise, B., Freudenberger, J., Gottschall, T.

Magnetocaloric composite wires have been studied by pulsed-field measurements up to μ0ΔH = 10 T with a typical rise time of 13 ms in order to evaluate the evolution of the adiabatic temperature change of the core, ΔTad, and to determine the effective temperature change at the surrounding steel jacket, ΔTeff, during the field pulse. An inverse thermal hysteresis is observed for ΔTad due to the delayed thermal transfer. By numerical simulations of application-relevant sinusoidal magnetic field profiles, it can be stated that for field-frequencies of up to two field cycles per second heat can be efficiently transferred from the core to the outside of the jacket. In addition, intense numerical simulations of the temperature change of the core and jacket were performed by varying different parameters, such as frequency, heat capacity, thermal conductivity and interface resistance in order to shed light on their impact on ΔTeff at the outside of the jacket in comparison to ΔTad provided by the core.

2019, Pavithra, C., Madhuri, W.

In this paper, we focused on microwave sintered NiTiO3 nanoparticles synthesized via sol-gel method. The crystal structure was determined by the X-ray diffraction. Vibrational bands related to Ni-O and Ti-O bands were confirmed using the Fourier transform infrared spectrum. These NiTiO3 ceramics obeyed semiconductor behavior of Arrhenius type. The activation energy was found to be 0.04 μeV. The M-H curve exhibited superparamagnetic behavior at room temperature.

2020, Guns, P.-J.D., Guth, B.D., Braam, S., Kosmidis, G., Matsa, E., Delaunois, A., Gryshkova, V., Bernasconi, S., Knot, H.J., Shemesh, Y., Chen, A., Markert, M., Fernández, M.A., Lombardi, D., Grandmont, C., Cillero-Pastor, B., Heeren, R.M.A., Martinet, W., Woolard, J., Skinner, M., Segers, V.F.M., Franssen, C., Van Craenenbroeck, E.M., Volders, P.G.A., Pauwelyn, T., Braeken, D., Yanez, P., Correll, K., Yang, X., Prior, H., Kismihók, G., De Meyer, G.R.Y., Valentin, J.-P.

Safety pharmacology is an essential part of drug development aiming to identify, evaluate and investigate undesirable pharmacodynamic properties of a drug primarily prior to clinical trials. In particular, cardiovascular adverse drug reactions (ADR) have halted many drug development programs. Safety pharmacology has successfully implemented a screening strategy to detect cardiovascular liabilities, but there is room for further refinement. In this setting, we present the INSPIRE project, a European Training Network in safety pharmacology for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), funded by the European Commission's H2020-MSCA-ITN programme. INSPIRE has recruited 15 ESR fellows that will conduct an individual PhD-research project for a period of 36 months. INSPIRE aims to be complementary to ongoing research initiatives. With this as a goal, an inventory of collaborative research initiatives in safety pharmacology was created and the ESR projects have been designed to be complementary to this roadmap. Overall, INSPIRE aims to improve cardiovascular safety evaluation, either by investigating technological innovations or by adding mechanistic insight in emerging safety concerns, as observed in the field of cardio-oncology. Finally, in addition to its hands-on research pillar, INSPIRE will organize a number of summer schools and workshops that will be open to the wider community as well. In summary, INSPIRE aims to foster both research and training in safety pharmacology and hopes to inspire the future generation of safety scientists.

2011, Reusser, D.E., Wrobel, M., Nocke, T., Sterzel, T., Förster, H., Kropp, J.P.

Adaptation to climate change is gaining attention and is very challenging because it requires action at a local scale in response to global problems. At the same time, spatial and temporal uncertainty about climate impacts and effects of adaptation projects is large. Data on climate impacts and adaptation is collected and presented in web-based platforms such as ci:grasp, which is unique in its structuredness and by explicitly linking adaptation projects to the addressed climate impacts. The challenge to find an adequate and readable representation of uncertainty in this context is large and research is just in the initial phase to provide solutions to the problem. Our goal is to present the structure required to address spatial and temporal uncertainty within ci:grasp. We compare existing concepts and representations for uncertainty communication with current practices on web-based platforms. From our review we derive an uncertainty framework for climate information going beyond what is currently present in the web. We make use of a multi-step approach in communicating the uncertainty and a typology of uncertainty distinguishing between epistemic, natural stochastic, and human reflexive uncertainty. While our suggestions are a step forward, much remains to be done.

2020, Deng, L., Gebert, A., Zhang, L., Chen, H.Y., Gu, D.D., Kühn, U., Zimmermann, M., Kosiba, K., Pauly, S.

Nearly fully dense, glassy Zr52.5Cu17.9Ni14.6Al10Ti5 bulk specimens were fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) and their behaviour during compressive loading, during wear testing and in a corrosive medium was investigated. Their performance was compared with as-cast material of the same composition. The additively manufactured samples exhibit a yield strength around 1700 MPa combined with a plastic strain of about 0.5% after yielding despite the residual porosity of 1.3%, which is distributed uniformly in the samples. The propagation of shear bands in the bulk metallic glass prepared by SLM was studied. The specific wear rate and the worn surfaces demonstrated that similar wear mechanisms are active in the SLM and the as-cast samples. Hence, manufacturing the glass in layers does not adversely affect the wear properties. The same holds for the corrosion tests, which were carried out in 0.01 M Na2SO4 and 0.1 M NaCl electrolyte. The anodic polarization curves of SLM samples and as-cast samples revealed a similar corrosion behaviour. However, the SLM samples have a slightly reduced susceptibility to pitting corrosion and exhibit an improved surface healing ability, which might be attributed to an improved homogeneity of the additively manufactured glass.

2019, Plaine, A.H., Silva, M.R.D., Bolfarini, C.

In this paper, an attempt was made to combine theoretical composition design and thermo-mechanical treatments to produce a metastable β-type titanium alloy with mechanical compatibility for self-expandable stent applications. Metastable β-type Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6â»Zr (wt.%) thin-wires with an elastic modulus of 46â»GPa and a yield strength of 920â»MPa were successfully fabricated by cold rolling and low temperature aging. This combination of high yield strength and comparatively low elastic modulus resulted in enhanced elastic recoverable strain of 1.9%, which is much higher than that of the conventional metallic stent materials. The microstructure responsible for the much sought-after mechanical properties was observed to be mainly consisted of a homogeneous distribution of nanometer-sized α-precipitates in a β-phase matrix obtained via a spinodal decomposition of the pre-existed α″-martensite phase through α″â»→â»α″ leanâ»+â»α″ richâ»→â»αâ»+â»β. The α-precipitates increase the strength of the material by hindering the motion of dislocations (spinodal hardening) while the β-matrix with relatively low content of β-stabilizers gives rise to the observed low elastic modulus. More broadly, these findings could be extended to developing advanced metastable β-type titanium alloys for implant and other engineering applications.

2018, Lobanova, A., Liersch, S., Nunes, J.P., Didovets, I., Stagl, J., Huang, S., Koch, H., Rivas López, M.D.R., Maule, C.F., Hattermann, F., Krysanova, V.

Study region: To provide a picture of hydrological impact of climate change across different climatic zones in Europe, this study considers eight river basins: Tagus in Iberian Peninsula; Emån and Lule in Scandinavia; Rhine, Danube and Teteriv in Central and Eastern Europe; Tay on the island of Great Britain and Northern Dvina in North-Eastern Europe. Study focus: In this study the assessment of the impacts of moderate and high-end climate change scenarios on the hydrological patterns in European basins was conducted. To assess the projected changes, the process-based eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) was set up, calibrated and validated for the basins. The SWIM was driven by the bias-corrected climate projections obtained from the coupled simulations of the Global Circulation Models and Regional Climate Models. New hydrological insights for the region: The results show robust decreasing trends in water availability in the most southern river basin (Tagus), an overall increase in discharge in the most northern river basin (Lule), increase in the winter discharge and shift in seasonality in Northern and Central European catchments. The impacts of the high-end climate change scenario RCP 8.5 continue to develop until the end of the century, while those of the moderate climate change scenario RCP 4.5 level-off after the mid-century. The results of this study also confirm trends, found previously with mostly global scale models.

2020, Hu, X., Dai, G., Sievers, S., Fernández-Scarioni, A., Corte-León, H., Puttock, R., Barton, C., Kazakova, O., Ulvr, M., Klapetek, P., Havlíček, M., Nečas, D., Tang, Y., Neu, V., Schumacher, H.W.

Magnetic force microscopy (MFM) can be considered as a standard tool for nano-scale investigation of magnetic domain structures by probing the local stray magnetic field landscape of the measured sample. However, this generally provides only qualitative data. To quantify the stray magnetic fields, the MFM system must be calibrated. To that end, a transfer function (TF) approach was proposed, that, unlike point probe models, fully considers the finite extent of the MFM tip. However, albeit being comprehensive, the TF approach is not yet well established, mainly due to the ambiguities concerning the input parameters and the measurement procedure. Additionally, the calibration process represents an ill-posed problem which requires a regularization that introduces further parameters. In this paper we propose a guideline for quantitative stray field measurements by standard MFM tools in ambient conditions. All steps of the measurement and calibration procedure are detailed, including reference sample and sample under test (SUT) measurements and the data analysis. The suitability of the reference sample used in the present work for calibrated measurements on a sub-micron scale is discussed. A specific regularization approach based on a Pseudo-Wiener Filter is applied and combined with criteria for the numerical determination of a unique regularization parameter. To demonstrate the robustness of such a defined approach, a round robin comparison of magnetic field measurements was conducted by four laboratories. The guideline, the reference sample and the results of the round robin are discussed.

2020, Meylan, C.M., Orava, J., Greer, A.L.

We explore the glassy states achievable after a metallic glass is formed on liquid quenching. Samples of La55Al25Ni20 (at.%) metallic glass (rod and ribbon) are studied. The extent of structural relaxation at room temperature is characterized for this low-glass-transition temperature glass. Plastic deformation (uniaxial compression) rejuvenates the glass to states of higher enthalpy characteristic of glass formation at high cooling rate. Deformation increases the heterogeneity of the glass, widening the spectrum of relaxation times. The extent of rejuvenation in samples of low aspect ratio is compared with that under conditions of high constraint in notched samples. The deformation-induced rejuvenation is particularly susceptible to reduction on subsequent ageing. Fast-scanning calorimetry is useful in characterizing the dynamics of structural relaxation. The shadow glass transition is more evident on fast heating, and is observed in this glass for the first time. A new excess exothermic effect is observed before the glass transition.

2018, Peng, J.-B., Wu, F.-P., Xu, C., Qi, X., Ying, J., Wu, X.-F.

Chemistry; Catalysis; Organic Synthesis © 2018 The Author(s)Functionalized alkyl iodides are important compounds in organic chemistry and biology. In this communication, we developed an interesting nickel-catalyzed carbonylative synthesis of functionalized alkyl iodides from aryl iodides and ethers. With Mo(CO)6 as the solid CO source, both cyclic and acyclic ethers were activated, which is also a challenging topic in organic synthesis. Functionalized alkyl iodides were prepared in moderate to excellent yields with outstanding functional group tolerance. Besides the high value of the obtained products, all the atoms from the starting materials were incorporated in the final products and the reaction had high atom efficiency as well.