Cold start behaviour of regenerative gasoline fuel blends down to -15 °C

Im Rahmen des Projekts „reFuels- Kraftstoffe neu denken“ lag der Fokus auf Drop-in fähige Kraftstoffe, die die aktuelle Kraftstoffnorm EN228 erfüllt. Durch die Einhaltung der Kraftstoffnorm kann durch einen hohen regenerativen Anteil die CO2-Emissionen der Bestandsflotte gesenkt werden. In dieser Arbeit liegt der Fokus auf zwei Benzinkraftstoffe, die zu einem einen 40 % regenerativen und zum anderen einen 85 % regenerativen Anteil besitzen. Die als G40 und G85 bezeichneten Kraftstoffe liegen innerhalt der Norm EN228 und können somit direkt vertankt werden. Grundlage des regenerativen Anteils ist bioliq®, ein Kraftstoff nach dem Biomassto- Liquid-Verfahren. G40 wird durch die Verwendung von 10 % EtOH und 30 % bioliq®-Leichtbenzin erreicht. G85 wird durch verschiedene weitere Komponenten, zum Beispiel hydriertes bioliq®- Schwerbenzin geblendet. In früheren Studien wurde der Einfluss der Kraftstoffe am Einzylindermotorenprüfstand untersucht. In den jetzt betrachteten Untersuchungen liegt der Fokus auf das Kaltstartverhalten bei sehr niedrigen Temperaturen (bis -15 °C). Dabei werden sowohl gasförmige als auch feste Abgasemissionen betrachtet und Standard E5-Benzin gilt als Referenz. Als Ergebnis kann betrachtet werden, dass sowohl G40 als auch G85 sich bei tiefen Temperaturen ähnlich oder besser hinsichtlich der Rohabgasemissionen als E5 verhalten. Das Ziel, Kraftstoffe mit hohem CO2-Minderungspotenzial einzusetzen, die gleichzeitig die Abgasemissionen nicht verschlechtern, wurde erreicht

The development of guidelines for the treatment of patients with mental disorders under particular consideration of rehabilitative aspects

Inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment is quite extensive in Germany. Three treatment systems (psychosomatic/psychotherapeutic healthcare, psychiatric/psychotherapeutic healthcare and rehabilitation of patients with mental disorders) exist relatively independently from one another. They show large areas of overlap, however, with regard to various criteria. This is due to the fact that, as opposed to many somatic illnesses, a clear distinction between acute-medical and rehabilitative elements cannot be made in the treatment of mental disorders

Cancer-Related Distress: How Often Does It Co-occur With a Mental Disorder? – Results of a Secondary Analysis

Objectives: The Distress Thermometer (DT) is a validated and widely used screening tool to identify clinically relevant distress in cancer patients. It is unclear, to which extend subjectively perceived distress measured by the DT is related to objective burden (mental disorder). We therefore examine the co-occurrence of a mental disorder for different DT thresholds and explore the diagnostic properties of the DT in detecting a mental disorder. Methods: In this multicenter cross-sectional study, we included 4,020 patients with mixed cancer diagnoses. After selection of relevant cases, weighting procedure and imputation of missing data we evaluated the data of N = 3,212 patients. We used the DT to assess perceived distress and the standardized Composite International Diagnostic Interview for Oncology (CIDI-O) to assess the 4-week prevalence of mental disorders. The association between distress and any mental disorder (MD) is calculated using Pearson correlations. Relative risks for MD in patients with/without distress and the co-occurrence of distress and MD were calculated with Poisson regression. To assess the operating characteristics between distress and MD, we present the area under the curve (AUC). Results: 22.9% of the participants had a cut-off DT level of 5 and were affected by MD. Each level of distress co-occurs with MD. The proportion of patients diagnosed with MD was not greater than the proportion of patients without MD until distress levels of DT = 6 were reached. The correlation between DT and MD was r = 0.27. The ROCanalysis shows the area under curve (AUC) = 0.67, which is classified as unsatisfactory. With increasing distress severity, patients are not more likely to have a mental disorder. Conclusion: Our results suggests viewing and treating cancer-related distress as a relatively distinct psychological entity. Cancer-related distress may be associated with an increased risk for a mental disorder and vice versa, but the overlap of both concepts is very moderate

Quantification and Classification of Cortical Perfusion during Ischemic Strokes by Intraoperative Thermal Imaging

Thermal imaging is a non-invasive and marker-free approach for intraoperative measurements of small temperature variations. In this work, we demonstrate the abilities of active dynamic thermal imaging for analysis of tissue perfusion state in case of cerebral ischemia. For this purpose, a NaCl irrigation is applied to the exposed cortex during hemicraniectomy. The cortical temperature changes are measured by a thermal imaging system and the thermal signal is recognized by a novel machine learning framework. Subsequent tissue heating is then approximated by a double exponential function to estimate tissue temperature decay constants. These constants allow us to characterize tissue with respect to its dynamic thermal properties. Using a Gaussian mixture model we show the correlation of these estimated parameters with infarct demarcations of post-operative CT. This novel scheme yields a standardized representation of cortical thermodynamic properties and might guide further research regarding specific intraoperative diagnostics