Working with Mycorrhizas in Forestry and Agriculture

Crop Production/Industries,

Grinding with patterned grinding wheels

Grinding is one of the most important manufacturing processes, especially when high surface qualities have to be realized or if hard or brittle materials have to be machined. Often the grinding performance is limited by workpiece failure due to a high thermal load in the contact zone. Therefore structured or patterned grinding wheels are frequently used to reduce the thermal load in the contact zone. In this paper a new patterning method will be introduced by using a fly-cutting kinematic for the structuring process. In face grinding experiments the patterned grinding wheels showed great potential to enhance the overall grinding performance by significantly decreasing process forces and grinding burn. The reduction of the thermal load in the contact zone can be explained by an improved coolant flow through the contact zone, which was measured with a specially designed coolant collecting bin.DFGFAPES

Material removal and chip formation mechanisms of UHC-steel during grinding

The grinding process is still an important manufacturing process for the machining of automotive components. For power train components, ultra-high carbon steel (UHC-steel) is a promising new innovative alloy because of its low specific density. Results from turning of UHC-steel showed that the texture of UHC-steel significantly differs from conventional steels. Furthermore, extremely hard carbides, which are embedded into a soft ferrite matrix, result in a UHC-steel specific machining behavior and a high tool wear rate. Therefore, UHC-steel is marked as a difficult-to-cut material. So far, there are no research results available for the grinding of UHC-steel. Therefore, fundamental investigations were conducted in order to analyze the material removal and chip formation mechanisms. Scratching tests with a geometrically defined cubic boron nitride cutting edge showed ductile material removal mechanisms for a single grain chip thickness variation from hcu = 1.5 up to 14 μm. Analysis of the contact zone by means of an innovative quick stop device confirms these results. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00170-017-0270-9BMBF/02PN205

Physical Aspects of Healthy Aging: Assessments of Three Measures of Balance for Studies in Middle-Aged and Older Adults

Objectives. To investigate the reliability and correlations with age of the balance components of the EPESE, NHANES, and the Good Balance Platform System (GBPS) in a normal population of adults. Design. Cross-sectional. Setting. Urban Medical Center in the Pacific. Participants. A random sample of 203 healthy offspring of Honolulu Heart Program participants, ages 38–71. Measurements. Subjects were examined twice at visits one week apart using the balance components of the EPESE, NHANES, and the good balance system tests. Results. The EPESE and NHANES batteries of tests were not sufficiently challenging to allow successful discrimination among subjects in good health, even older subjects. The GBPS allowed objective quantitative measurements, but the test-retest correlations generally were not high. The GBPS variables correlated with age only when subjects stood on a foam pad; they also were correlated with anthropometric variables. Conclusion. Both EPESE and NHANES balance tests were too easy for healthy subjects. The GBPS had generally low reliability coefficients except for the most difficult testing condition (foam pad, eyes closed). Both height and body fat were associated with GBPS scores, necessitating adjusting for these variables if using balance as a predictor of future health

Enhanced grinding performance by means of patterned grinding wheels

In this paper, a new and innovative method for the patterning of grinding wheels is presented. The patterns are machined with a patterning tool by using fly-cutting kinematics. By changing the patterning process parameters, different pattern sizes and densities can be machined in a flexible way. Surface and cylindrical grinding experiments show that grinding with patterned grinding wheels can significantly reduce process forces, grinding burn, and grinding power. The surface roughness increases because less active cutting edges remain when grinding with patterned wheels. But especially for roughing processes, the results show great potential for increasing the overall grinding performance. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00170-014-6579-8.DFGFAPES

WormBase 2016: expanding to enable helminth genomic research

WormBase (www.wormbase.org) is a central repository for research data on the biology, genetics and genomics of Caenorhabditis elegans and other nematodes. The project has evolved from its original remit to collect and integrate all data for a single species, and now extends to numerous nematodes, ranging from evolutionary comparators of C. elegans to parasitic species that threaten plant, animal and human health. Research activity using C. elegans as a model system is as vibrant as ever, and we have created new tools for community curation in response to the ever-increasing volume and complexity of data. To better allow users to navigate their way through these data, we have made a number of improvements to our main website, including new tools for browsing genomic features and ontology annotations. Finally, we have developed a new portal for parasitic worm genomes. WormBase ParaSite (parasite.wormbase.org) contains all publicly available nematode and platyhelminth annotated genome sequences, and is designed specifically to support helminth genomic research

Mapping genomic loci implicates genes and synaptic biology in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has a heritability of 60-80%1, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles. Here, in a two-stage genome-wide association study of up to 76,755 individuals with schizophrenia and 243,649 control individuals, we report common variant associations at 287 distinct genomic loci. Associations were concentrated in genes that are expressed in excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the central nervous system, but not in other tissues or cell types. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we identify 120 genes (106 protein-coding) that are likely to underpin associations at some of these loci, including 16 genes with credible causal non-synonymous or untranslated region variation. We also implicate fundamental processes related to neuronal function, including synaptic organization, differentiation and transmission. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in neurodevelopmental disorders. We identify biological processes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology; show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders; and provide a resource of prioritized genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies.</p

The Monarch Initiative in 2019: an integrative data and analytic platform connecting phenotypes to genotypes across species.

In biology and biomedicine, relating phenotypic outcomes with genetic variation and environmental factors remains a challenge: patient phenotypes may not match known diseases, candidate variants may be in genes that haven\u27t been characterized, research organisms may not recapitulate human or veterinary diseases, environmental factors affecting disease outcomes are unknown or undocumented, and many resources must be queried to find potentially significant phenotypic associations. The Monarch Initiative (https://monarchinitiative.org) integrates information on genes, variants, genotypes, phenotypes and diseases in a variety of species, and allows powerful ontology-based search. We develop many widely adopted ontologies that together enable sophisticated computational analysis, mechanistic discovery and diagnostics of Mendelian diseases. Our algorithms and tools are widely used to identify animal models of human disease through phenotypic similarity, for differential diagnostics and to facilitate translational research. Launched in 2015, Monarch has grown with regards to data (new organisms, more sources, better modeling); new API and standards; ontologies (new Mondo unified disease ontology, improvements to ontologies such as HPO and uPheno); user interface (a redesigned website); and community development. Monarch data, algorithms and tools are being used and extended by resources such as GA4GH and NCATS Translator, among others, to aid mechanistic discovery and diagnostics