Dry and clean age hardening of aluminum alloys by high-pressure gas quenching

When precipitation-hardenable aluminum parts are water quenched, distortion occurs due to thermal stresses. Thereby, a costly reworking is necessary, and for this reason polymer quenchants are often used to reduce distortion, with the disadvantage that the quenched parts have to be cleaned after quenching. In opposition to liquid quenchants, gas quenching may decrease distortion due to the better temperature uniformity during quenching. Furthermore, cleaning of the quenched parts can be avoided because it is a dry process. For this purpose, a heat-treating process was evaluated that included a high-pressure gasquenching step. Gas quenching was applied to different aluminum alloys (i.e., 2024, 6013, 7075, and A357.0), and tensile tests have been carried out to determine the mechanical properties after solution annealing, gas quenching, and aging. Besides high-pressure gas quenching, alloy 2024 was quenched at ambient pressure in a gas nozzle field. The high velocity at the gas outlet leads to an accelerated cooling of the aluminum alloy in this case. Aluminum castings and forgings can be classified as an interesting field of application of these quenching methods due to their near-net shape before the heat treatment. Cost savings would be possible due to the reduced distortion, and therefore, less reworking after the precipitation hardening.     

Spin Extrusion - A New Partial Forming Technology based on 7 NC-Axes Machining

Hollow shape component approaches, applied to shafts and similar workpieces, represent a major potential for ground-breaking innovations in lightweight engineering and safety designs. Among suitable forming technologies, spin extrusion is a pioneering and particularly flexible hollow-shaping technique. All outside form elements, straight or stepped cylinders, cones or spherical rotation elements emerge just from the kinematics of tools. The inside hollow shapes, as e.g. circular cross-sections, shaft to collar connections such as spherical triangles, polygons, splines or dovetail forms are manufactured with a shaping mandrel. Spin extrusion can be applied first and foremost at dimensions that are unattainable with other techniques. The application includes hollow shafts, thick-walled cups and semi-finished tubular products that are not to be found in off-the-shelf cross-sections. In these cases the possibility for using of massive bars is connected with very high price advantages. Furthermore material-saving machining is attracting special attention for high-grade materials.The paper characterizes substantial steps of process analysis and the appliance of a new, derived from the bound method, numerical simulation method for spin extrusion process. Holistic process analysis is the prime factor for process capability. The specific application of the developed special methods of simulation, the accumulation of process data and the integrating into the Computer numerical control of spin extrusion machine is a precondition guaranteeing high-quality assurance.     

Processing and interactive editing of huge point clouds from 3D scanners

This paper describes a new out-of-core multi-resolution data structure for real-time visualization, interactive editing and externally efficient processing of large point clouds. We describe an editing system that makes use of the novel data structure to provide interactive editing and preprocessing tools for large scanner data sets. Using the new data structure, we provide a complete tool chain for 3D scanner data processing, from data preprocessing and filtering to manual touch-up and real-time visualization. In particular, we describe an out-of-core outlier removal and bilateral geometry filtering algorithm, a toolset for interactive selection, painting, transformation, and filtering of huge out-of-core point-cloud data sets and a real-time rendering algorithm, which all use the same data structure as storage backend. The interactive tools work in real-time for small model modifications. For large scale editing operations, we employ a two-resolution approach where editing is planned in real-time and executed in an externally efficient offline computation afterwards. We evaluate our implementation on example data sets of sizes up to 63 GB, demonstrating that the proposed technique can be used effectively in real-world applications.     

Axonal regeneration and physiological activity following transection and immunological disruption of myelin within the hatchling chick spinal cord

Transections of the chicken spinal cord after the developmental onset of myelination at embryonic day (E) 13 results in little or no functional regeneration. However, intraspinal injection of serum complement proteins with complement-binding GalC or 04 antibodies between E9-E12 results in a delay of the onset of myelination until E17. A subsequent transection of the spinal cord as late as E15 (i.e., during the normal restrictive period for repair) results in neuroanatomical regeneration and functional recovery. Utilizing a similar immunological protocol, we evoked a transient alteration of myelin structure in the posthatching (P) chicken spinal cord, characterized by widespread "unravelling" of myelin sheaths and a loss of MBP immunoreactivity (myelin disruption). Myelin repair began within 7 d of cessation of the myelin disruption protocol. Long term disruption of thoracic spinal cord myelin was initiated after a P2-P10 thoracic transection and maintained for > 14 d by intra-spinal infusion of serum complement proteins plus complement-binding GalC or 04 antibodies. Fourteen to 28 d later, retrograde tract tracing experiments, including double-labeling protocols, indicated that approximately 6-19% of the brainstem-spinal projections had regenerated across the transection site to lumbar levels. Even though voluntary locomotion was not observed after recovery, focal electrical stimulation of identified brainstem locomotor regions evoked peripheral nerve activity in paralyzed preparations, as well as leg muscle activity patterns typical of stepping in unparalyzed animals. This indicated that a transient alteration of myelin structure in the injured adult avian spinal cord facilitated brainstem-spinal axonal regrowth resulting in functional synaptogenesis with target neurons.     

The Formation of Calcified Nanospherites during Micropetrosis Represents a Unique Mineralization Mechanism in Aged Human Bone

Osteocytes—the central regulators of bone remodeling—are enclosed in a network of microcavities (lacunae) and nanocanals (canaliculi) pervading the mineralized bone. In a hitherto obscure process related to aging and disease, local plugs in the lacuno‐canalicular network disrupt cellular communication and impede bone homeostasis. By utilizing a suite of high‐resolution imaging and physics‐based techniques, it is shown here that the local plugs develop by accumulation and fusion of calcified nanospherites in lacunae and canaliculi (micropetrosis). Two distinctive nanospherites phenotypes are found to originate from different osteocytic elements. A substantial deviation in the spherites' composition in comparison to mineralized bone further suggests a mineralization process unlike regular bone mineralization. Clearly, mineralization of osteocyte lacunae qualifies as a strong marker for degrading bone material quality in skeletal aging. The understanding of micropetrosis may guide future therapeutics toward preserving osteocyte viability to maintain mechanical competence and fracture resistance of bone in elderly individuals.     

Protecting and preserving clear barrier layers for flexible packaging materials In‐line thermal evaporation of organic topcoat layer

The end market for transparent flexible barrier films is larger than for metallized films. Presently, the market is still dominated by polymeric barrier layers but the used chemicals may be harmful for the environment. An alternative would be transparent thin layers deposited by vacuum deposition techniques using reactive processes. Ceramic materials like silicon oxide or aluminum oxide are used having a film thickness of just ～10 nm, a coating uniformity of +/?5% across and along the film at a barrier performance below 2.0 sccm/m²d for oxygen transmission rate (OTR) and below 1.0 g/m²d for water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) on PET substrates. In this paper, details will be provided about the deposition processes for these barrier layers using thermal evaporation, plasma‐assisted thermal evaporation as well as deposition by electron beam evaporation. An important factor for these high barrier transparent coatings is also to withstand the downstream processes in the whole packaging stream like slitting, lamination, printing etc. One solution is to protect the barrier layers by a Topcoat. For example, off‐line deposition of lacquers is used in field but the market penetration is low due to high process and material costs. An in‐situ Topcoat deposition is a smart solution to overcome this issue saving time and costs. Such an approach will be also described in the presentation and the impact on the performance of the final package will be discussed.     

Biochemical and pharmacological properties of SANORG 34006, a potent and long-acting synthetic pentasaccharide

SANORG 34006 is a new sulfated pentasaccharide obtained by chemical synthesis. It is an analog of the "synthetic pentasaccharide" (SR 90107/ ORG 31540) which represents the antithrombin (AT) binding site of heparin. SANORG 34006 showed a higher affinity to human AT than SR 90107/ORG 31540 (kd = 1.4 +/- 0.3 v 48 +/- 11 nmol/L), and it is a potent and selective catalyst of the inhibitory effect of AT on factor Xa (1,240 +/- 15 anti-factor Xa U/mg v 850 +/- 27 anti-factor Xa U/mg for SR 90107/ORG 31540). In vitro, SANORG 34006 inhibited thrombin generation occurring via both the extrinsic and intrinsic pathway. After intravenous (IV) or subcutaneous (SC) administration to rabbits, SANORG 34006 displayed a long-lasting anti-factor Xa activity and inhibition of thrombin generation (TG) ex vivo. SANORG 34006 was slowly eliminated after IV or SC administration to rats, rabbits, and baboons, showed exceptionally long half-lives (between 9.2 hours in rats and 61.9 hours in baboons), and revealed an SC bioavailability near 100%. SANORG 34006 displayed antithrombotic activity by virtue of its potentiation of the anti-factor Xa activity of AT. It strongly inhibited thrombus formation in experimental models of thromboplastin/stasis-induced venous thrombosis in rats (IV) and rabbits (SC) (ED50 values = 40.0 +/- 3.4 and 105.0 +/- 9.4 nmol/kg, respectively). The duration of its antithrombotic effects closely paralleled the ex vivo anti-factor Xa activity. SANORG 34006 enhanced rt-PA-induced thrombolysis and inhibited accretion of 125I-fibrinogen onto a preformed thrombus in the rabbit jugular vein suggesting that concomitant use of SANORG 34006 during rt-PA therapy might be helpful in facilitating thrombolysis and preventing fibrin accretion onto the thrombus under lysis. Contrary to standard heparin, SANORG 34006 did not enhance bleeding in a rabbit ear incision model at a dose that equals 10 times the antithrombotic ED50 in this species and, therefore, exhibited a favorable therapeutic index. We suggest that SANORG 34006 is a promising compound in the treatment and prevention of various thrombotic diseases.     

Changing patterns of localization of the tobacco mosaic virus movement protein and replicase to the endoplasmic reticulum and microtubules during infection

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) derivatives that encode movement protein (MP) as a fusion to the green fluorescent protein (MP:GFP) were used in combination with antibody staining to identify host cell components to which MP and replicase accumulate in cells of infected Nicotiana benthamiana leaves and in infected BY-2 protoplasts. MP:GFP and replicase colocalized to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER; especially the cortical ER) and were present in large, irregularly shaped, ER-derived structures that may represent "viral factories." The ER-derived structures required an intact cytoskeleton, and microtubules appeared to redistribute MP:GFP from these sites during late stages of infection. In leaves, MP:GFP accumulated in plasmodesmata, whereas in protoplasts, the MP:GFP was targeted to distinct, punctate sites near the plasma membrane. Treating protoplasts with cytochalasin D and brefeldin A at the time of inoculation prevented the accumulation of MP:GFP at these sites. It is proposed that the punctate sites anchor the cortical ER to plasma membrane and are related to sites at which plasmodesmata form in walled cells. Hairlike structures containing MP:GFP appeared on the surface of some of the infected protoplasts and are reminiscent of similar structures induced by other plant viruses. We present a model that postulates the role of the ER and cytoskeleton in targeting the MP and viral ribonucleoprotein from sites of virus synthesis to the plasmodesmata through which infection is spread.