Corrosion morphologies on magnesium alloy AZ 91

Initiation and early propagation of pitting and filiform corrosion on bare alloy AZ91 (9% Al, 1% Zn) are investigated by natural immersion corrosion tests, electrochemical measurements and microanalytical studies. Initiation sites are few. Corrosion spreads from these sites first in the form of filiform corrosion for a limited period of time and pitting which later develops into a cellular type of etching. The important factors affecting filiform corrosion are temperature, material structure and degree of polarization at the anodic sites. Filiform attack on AZ91, unlike the classical mechanisms of filiform corrosion on coated metals, is driven by hydrogen evolution reaction on the cathodic sites of the surface, occurs under significant anodic control, propagates at a high, constant speed independent of degree of polarization along preferential paths determined by compositional and crystallographic factors, and is a temporary phenomenon under open circuit conditions. Pitting corrosion is more predominant with decreasing anodic polarization.     

Salvage therapy of advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth cavity and oropharynx. Results of interstitial high-dose-rate brachytherapy combined with ablative tumor surgery

PURPOSE: The clinical effect of high-dose-rate (HDR) interstitial brachytherapy combined with tumor resection was investigated in this retrospective study on patients with recurrent oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma in 38 patients were treated over a period of 7 years (1988-1994) by HDR interstitial brachytherapy using Gammamed 12i equipment. Pretreatment of patients in terms of irradiation and surgery differed (33 irradiated with a total dose between 60.0 and 75.6 Gy, including 8 patients with additional surgery; 1 patient with surgery alone, and 4 patients without any pretreatment). Indications for interstitial brachytherapy differed according to individual responses to treatment and medical histories. RESULTS: Interstitial brachytherapy was successful in the majority of patients, i.e. complete remission: 12, partial remission: 19, no change: 2, progression: 5. Local control and overall survival including patients with surgical treatment was 59% and 81% at 6 months and 47% and 49% after 12 months, respectively. CONCLUSION: Interstitial HDR brachytherapy with Iridium 192 is recommended in patients with local recurrences or second primary carcinomas after previous external radiotherapy in the head and neck region. Combination of interstitial brachytherapy and surgery is preferable for these patients.     

Form- und Preßstraßen für Holzwerkstoffplatten

The development of plants and processes for the manufacture of wood based board products is reported in several papers. Within the belt-matforming system the pre-presses, the driving systems, the press controll system withouth, distance bars and the belt materials have been developed. The continuously working hotpress Contiroll may be seen as a completely new construction, which has now passed its proofing period and has gone into production. A new vaporpress-process and its possibilities is discribed and some innovations at the matforming machines and the pressing lines for the OSB-production are discussed.     

Examination of veins with magnetic resonance imaging and it's place in the diagnostic algorithm of patients with deep venous thrombophlebitis]

The aim of our study was to show the results of the Magnetic Resonance Angiography of pelvis and lower extremities. 21 patients with clinical signs of venous thrombosis were examined. The obtained results show the MRA is very useful in evaluation of venous flow.     

Consensus-based data replication protocol for distributed cloud

The Journal of Supercomputing - Data availability ensures efficient data accessibility by the readers anytime and from anywhere. It can be addressed by creating multiple copies of each data file...     

The influence of different centralised pre-packaging systems on the shelf-life of fresh pork

The influence of different centralised pre-packaging systems (PVC, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP), 25% CO(2) and 75% O(2), vacuum skin packaging (VSP) and the mother bag concept, 100% CO(2)) on the shelf-life (0, 7, 14 and 21 days at 0°C) of fresh pork was determined using microbiological, colour, odour and acceptability characteristics. All the packaging treatments were equally efficient for the first 4 days of retail display. In the extended shelf-life study (7, 14 and 21 days) the mother bag centralised packaging system gave the most promising shelf-life results (21 days) and was also judged superior in terms of odour. Modified atmosphere packaging (14 days) and VSP (7 days) may be considered as other possible options.     

High-temperature creep and structure investigation of nearly stoichiometric Fe3Si

Single crystals of nearly stoichiometric Fe₃Si were creep-deformed at temperatureT = 450 to 850° C and applied stress=40 to 250 MPa. While the temperature dependence of the steady-state creep rate of crystals with less than 25 at% Si can be described by an exponential function exp (–H _exp/kT), the Fe-26 at% Si samples show an exponential dependence only below 500° C and above 600° C. At intermediate temperatures the dependence is weak. It is suggested that in this intermediate range two phases exist. The experimental results are consistent with the assumption that the phase boundaries do not hinder dislocation movement, and that the disocation velocity in the two phases is different.     

Nature-Inspired Meta-Heuristics on Modern GPUs: State of the Art and Brief Survey of Selected Algorithms

Graphic processing units (GPUs) emerged recently as an exciting new hardware environment for a truly parallel implementation and execution of Nature and Bio-inspired Algorithms with excellent price-to-power ratio. In contrast to common multicore CPUs that contain up to tens of independent cores, the GPUs represent a massively parallel single-instruction multiple-data devices that can nowadays reach peak performance of hundreds and thousands of giga floating-point operations per second. Nature and Bio-inspired Algorithms implement parallel optimization strategies in which a single candidate solution, a group of candidate solutions (population), or multiple populations seek for optimal solution or set of solutions of given problem. Genetic algorithms (GA) constitute a family of traditional and very well-known nature-inspired populational meta-heuristic algorithms that have proved its usefulness on a plethora of tasks through the years. Differential evolution (DE) is another efficient populational meta-heuristic algorithm for real-parameter optimization. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) can be seen as nature-inspired multiagent method in which the interaction of simple independent agents yields intelligent collective behavior. Simulated annealing (SA) is global optimization algorithm which combines statistical mechanics and combinatorial optimization with inspiration in metallurgy. This survey provides a brief overview of the latest state-of-the-art research on the design, implementation, and applications of parallel GA, DE, PSO, and SA-based methods on the GPUs.