Surface Treatments of Automotive Parts – Research and Applications

Surface treatments used in daily manufacturing of parts for the automotive industry are selected to serve functional and decorative requirements achieved of mass production. Increased loads (mechanical, thermal etc.), longer life time, weight reduction, friction reduction, and corrosion resistance are demanded for modern automotive systems. Within the last decade, improved and new deposition techniques were developed in PVD, PECVD, thermochemical heat treatment and thermal spraying. These new treatments are becoming more and more common in powertrain and engine applications. Generating optimized surfaces for different types of substrate materials (e.g. Al‐ alloys, case hardened steels etc.) and geometries (e.g. bores) also impacts the running costs. Due to the new developments within these competing surface treatments, it becomes more and more common to substitute traditional treatment‐substrate‐systems with advanced treatments. Both the application potential and selected examples of different surface treatments will be shown. Aspects of the internal coating of bores inside the engine by plasma spraying, features of the corrosion protection of parts for the powertrain by the IONITOX process and piston ring treatments are discussed in more detail.     

Enclosing all solutions of two-point boundary value problems for ODEs

The two-point boundary value problem (TPBVP) occurs in a wide variety of problems in engineering and science, including the modeling of chemical reactions, heat transfer, and diffusion, and the solution of optimal control problems. A TPBVP may have no solution, a single solution, or multiple solutions. A new strategy is presented for reliably locating all solutions of a TPBVP. The method determines narrow enclosures of all solutions that occur within a specified search interval. Key features of the method are the use of a new solver for parametric ODEs, which is used to produce guaranteed bounds on the solutions of nonlinear dynamic systems with interval-valued parameters and initial states, and the use of a constraint propagation strategy on the Taylor models used to represent the solutions of the dynamic system. Numerical experiments demonstrate the use and computational efficiency of the method.     

Web-based education experiences

The World Wide Web has the potential to revolutionize instruction and increase educational opportunities across corporate, government and educational sectors. Not only will the Web enable distance learning and peer-to-peer connectivity, but it will also enhance student feedback and let instructors understand whether and how long students have studied a particular lesson. It also has the potential to reduce training costs. The authors discuss the creation of an online learning environment considering practical and pedagogical issues     

Behavioral and electrophysiological activity of (Z,E)-7,9,11-dodecatrienyl formate,a mimic of the major sex pheromone component of carob moth,Ectomyelois ceratoniae

The behavioral and electrophysiological activity of a mimic [(Z,E)7,9,11-dodecatrienyl formate] of the major sex pheromone component [(Z,E) 9,11,13-tetradecatrienal] of carob moth was assessed. Wind-tunnel bioassays demonstrated that the formate was as effective as natural gland extracts, and significantly more effective than the trienal alone or than the trienal blended with two minor pheromone components, in evoking source contact. Dispensers containing the formate were as effective as trienal-containing blend lures in attracting males when placed at the same dosage in traps in date gardens. Single-cell recordings showed that at least two olfactory neurons, differentiated by spike amplitude, are located in the long trichoid hairs on male carob moth antennae. Dose-response relationships indicated that puffs from cartridges loaded with at least 0.1 g of the formate or of the trienal were necessary to elicit spiking by either the small or the large-spiking cell within a sensillum. Cross-adaptation studies demonstrated that both compounds stimulated the same large-spiking cell. The frequencies of spikes evoked from the large cell when stimulated by emissions from 0.1-g, 1-g, or 10-g cartridges of either the formate or the trienal were not significantly different, suggesting that the formate is an effective mimic of the trienal at the antennal receptor cell level.     

Non-Coding RNAs Set a New Phenotypic Frontier in Prostate Cancer Metastasis and Resistance

Prostate cancer (PCa) mortality remains a significant public health problem, as advanced disease has poor survivability due to the development of resistance in response to both standard and novel therapeutic interventions. Therapeutic resistance is a multifaceted problem involving the interplay of a number of biological mechanisms including genetic, signaling, and phenotypic alterations, compounded by the contributions of a tumor microenvironment that supports tumor growth, invasiveness, and metastasis. The androgen receptor (AR) is a primary regulator of prostate cell growth, response and maintenance, and the target of most standard PCa therapies designed to inhibit AR from interacting with androgens, its native ligands. As such, AR remains the main driver of therapeutic response in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). While androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), in combination with microtubule-targeting taxane chemotherapy, offers survival benefits in patients with mCRPC, therapeutic resistance invariably develops, leading to lethal disease. Understanding the mechanisms underlying resistance is critical to improving therapeutic outcomes and also to the development of biomarker signatures of predictive value. The interconversions between epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) navigate the prostate tumor therapeutic response, and provide a novel targeting platform in overcoming therapeutic resistance. Both microRNA (miRNA)- and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)-mediated mechanisms have been associated with epigenetic changes in prostate cancer. This review discusses the current evidence-based knowledge of the role of the phenotypic transitions and novel molecular determinants (non-coding RNAs) as contributors to the emergence of therapeutic resistance and metastasis and their integrated predictive value in prostate cancer progression to advanced disease.     

Young's modulus of cement paste at elevated temperatures

Calcium silicate hydrate is a porous hydrate that is sensitive to temperature and readily loses strength at elevated temperatures. Mechanical and chemical changes in the microstructure, due to escaping water, can significantly affect the mechanical properties, but these changes occur over different temperature ranges. By measuring Young's modulus as a function of temperature using the dynamic mechanical analyzer, the temperature range in which the greatest change in stiffness occurs can be identified. Additional mineralogy, pore size distribution, and composition analysis from high temperature X-ray diffraction, nitrogen sorption, and thermogravimetric analysis will demonstrate the changes in the microstructure. The results demonstrate that over 90% of the loss in stiffness occurs below 120 °C. Therefore, the damage is due to microcracking caused by pore water expansion and evaporation and not the change in mineralogy or composition. More damage, as indicated by greater loss in stiffness, occurs in stiffer and less permeable samples where higher stresses can develop.