Deviation of eyes and head in acute cerebral stroke

BACKGROUND: It is a well-known phenomenon that some patients with acute left or right hemisphere stroke show a deviation of the eyes (Prévost's sign) and head to one side. Here we investigated whether both right- and left-sided brain lesions may cause this deviation. Moreover, we studied the relationship between this phenomenon and spatial neglect. In contrast to previous studies, we determined not only the discrete presence or absence of eye deviation with the naked eye through clinical inspection, but actually measured the extent of horizontal eye-in-head and head-on-trunk deviation. In further contrast, measurements were performed early after stroke onset (1.5 days on average). METHODS: Eye-in-head and head-on-trunk positions were measured at the bedside in 33 patients with acute unilateral left or right cerebral stroke consecutively admitted to our stroke unit. RESULTS: Each single patient with spatial neglect and right hemisphere lesion showed a marked deviation of the eyes and the head to the ipsilesional, right side. The average spontaneous gaze position in this group was 46° right, while it was close to the saggital body midline (0°) in the groups with acute left- or right-sided stroke but no spatial neglect as well as in healthy subjects. CONCLUSION: A marked horizontal eye and head deviation observed ~1.5 days post-stroke is not a symptom associated with acute cerebral lesions per se, nor is a general symptom of right hemisphere lesions, but rather is specific for stroke patients with spatial neglect. The evaluation of the patient's horizontal eye and head position thus could serve as a brief and easy way helping to diagnose spatial neglect, in addition to the traditional paper-and-pencil tests

Near-Net-Shape Forming of Metallic Bipolar Plates for Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cells by Induction Plasma Spraying

In one of the present designs of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), metallic bipolar plates with gas channels on the surface are used, which consist of a chromium alloy and are manufactured by a time consuming and costly multistep process. To reduce the production time and costs, attempts are made to develop an alternative near-net-shape production method based on RF-induction plasma spray technology. With this process raw powders, as applied for the "conventional" sintering route as well as recycled powders from used bipolar plates, have been applied. The process parameters were adapted to both powders, and the obtained products were qualified. The near-net-shape production requires the formation of a gas channel structure already with the spray process using structured substrates. Therefore, different spray angles occur during the deposition process. The influence of the spray angle on the microstructure of the free-standing parts was investigated. The required gas tightness for grooved profiles with relatively large channel depths and widths can only be achieved using spray angles between 90° and approx. 60°. Then a tilting of the substrate and an adapted design of the gas channel profiles are needed to fulfill the structural requirements for the bipolar plates

Couches minces pour les contacts lubrifiés en slip-rolling (glissement-roulement) sous haute pression hertzienne initiale

Le secteur automobile doit faire face actuellement à de nouveaux challenges au niveau de la construction allégée, des économies de carburant et des coûts. Ces exigences motivent la mise au point de tribosystèmes pouvant résister à des pressions de contact de plus en plus élevées avec de faibles coefficients de frottement. L’optimisation de systèmes existants par l’application de revêtements de surface performants représente une alternative intéressante. Ce texte présente les performances de couches minces dans des conditions d’essais de slip-rolling (roulement à composante de glissement) en présence de lubrifiants liquides. Après une première sélection à température ambiante, les revêtements les plus performants ont été testés à 120 °C. Il s’agit de revêtements DLC en carbone hydrogéné (a-C:H) et en carbone tétraédrique (ta-C) de dernières générations ainsi qu’un nouveau système « revêtement/substrat ». Certains des revêtements DLC développés récemment sont résistants en slip-rolling au moins jusqu’à 10 millions de cycles à 120 °C dans l’huile moteur sous des pressions hertziennes de contact de P0max = 2600 / 2940 MPa. De plus, le nouveau système revêtement Zr(C,N)x/substrat peut résister au moins à 1 million de cycles sous des pressions hertziennes initiales de contact allant jusqu’à P0max = 3500 MPa et à des températures de lubrifiant d’au moins 120 °C

Toward a methodical framework for comprehensively assessing forest multifunctionality

Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has extended its scope from communities that are short‐lived or reshape their structure annually to structurally complex forest ecosystems. The establishment of tree diversity experiments poses specific methodological challenges for assessing the multiple functions provided by forest ecosystems. In particular, methodological inconsistencies and nonstandardized protocols impede the analysis of multifunctionality within, and comparability across the increasing number of tree diversity experiments. By providing an overview on key methods currently applied in one of the largest forest biodiversity experiments, we show how methods differing in scale and simplicity can be combined to retrieve consistent data allowing novel insights into forest ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, we discuss and develop recommendations for the integration and transferability of diverse methodical approaches to present and future forest biodiversity experiments. We identified four principles that should guide basic decisions concerning method selection for tree diversity experiments and forest BEF research: (1) method selection should be directed toward maximizing data density to increase the number of measured variables in each plot. (2) Methods should cover all relevant scales of the experiment to consider scale dependencies of biodiversity effects. (3) The same variable should be evaluated with the same method across space and time for adequate larger‐scale and longer‐time data analysis and to reduce errors due to changing measurement protocols. (4) Standardized, practical and rapid methods for assessing biodiversity and ecosystem functions should be promoted to increase comparability among forest BEF experiments. We demonstrate that currently available methods provide us with a sophisticated toolbox to improve a synergistic understanding of forest multifunctionality. However, these methods require further adjustment to the specific requirements of structurally complex and long‐lived forest ecosystems. By applying methods connecting relevant scales, trophic levels, and above‐ and belowground ecosystem compartments, knowledge gain from large tree diversity experiments can be optimized