| 1. |
- Schulte-Oehlmann, U, et al.
(författare)
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COMPRENDO: Focus and approach.
- 2006
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Ingår i: Environmental Health Perspectives. - : Environmental Health Perspectives. - 1552-9924 .- 0091-6765. ; 114:Supplement 1, s. 98-100
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tens of thousands of man-made chemicals are in regular use and discharged into the environment. Many of them are known to interfere with the hormonal systems in humans and wildlife. Given the complexity of endocrine systems, there are many ways in which endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can affect the body's signaling system, and this makes unraveling the mechanisms of action of these chemicals difficult. A major concern is that some of these EDCs appear to be biologically active at extremely low concentrations. There is growing evidence to indicate that the guiding principle of traditional toxicology that "the dose makes the poison" may not always be the case because some EDCs do not induce the classical dose-response relationships. The European Union project COMPRENDO (Comparative Research on Endocrine Disrupters--Phylogenetic Approach and Common Principles focussing on Androgenic/Antiandrogenic Compounds) therefore aims to develop an understanding of potential health problems posed by androgenic and antiandrogenic compounds (AACs) to wildlife and humans by focusing on the commonalities and differences in responses to AACs across the animal kingdom (from invertebrates to vertebrates) .
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| 2. |
- Buscaglia, M. T., et al.
(författare)
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High dielectric constant and frozen macroscopic polarization in dense nanocrystalline BaTiO3 ceramics
- 2006
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Ingår i: Physical Review B. Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 1098-0121 .- 1550-235X. ; 73:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Theoretical models for small ferroelectric particles predict a progressive decrease of the Curie temperature, spontaneous lattice strain, and polarization until the critical size corresponding to transition to the cubic phase and disappearance of ferroelectricity is reached. In contrast, the behavior of nanocrystalline BaTiO3 ceramics with a grain size of approximate to 30 nm is dominated by extrinsic effects related to the grain boundaries which mask the expected downscaling of properties. While the noncubic crystal structure, the high dielectric constant (approximate to 1600) and the variation of permittivity with temperature suggest a ferroelectric behavior, very slim, and nearly linear polarization hysteresis loops are observed. Evidence for the existence of a ferroelectric domain structure with domains extending over several grains and of polarization switching at local scale is given by piezoresponse force microscopy. The suppression of macroscopic ferroelectric hysteresis and switching originates from a frozen domain structure stable under an external field owing to the effects exerted by the grain boundaries, such as the clamping of the domain walls and the hindrance of polarization switching. Furthermore, the depolarization field originated by the low-permittivity nonferroelectric grain boundaries can cause a significant reduction of polarization. If the grain size is small enough, the ceramic is expected to undergo a "phase transition" to a polar phase with nonswitchable polarization. The BaTiO3 ceramics with grain size of 30 nm investigated in the present study are deemed to be close to this transition.
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| 3. |
- Bestion, Dominique, et al.
(författare)
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Review of Available Data for Validation of Nuresim Two-Phase CFD Software Applied to CHF Investigations
- 2009
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Ingår i: Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations. - : Hindawi Limited. - 1687-6075 .- 1687-6083.
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The NURESIM Project of the 6th European Framework Program initiated the development of a new-generation common European Standard Software Platform for nuclear reactor simulation. The thermal-hydraulic subproject aims at improving the understanding and the predictive capabilities of the simulation tools for key two-phase flow thermal-hydraulic processes such as the critical heat flux (CHF). As part of a multi-scale analysis of reactor thermal-hydraulics, a two-phase CFD tool is developed to allow zooming on local processes. Current industrial methods for CHF mainly use the sub-channel analysis and empirical CHF correlations based on large scale experiments having the real geometry of a reactor assembly. Two-phase CFD is used here for understanding some boiling flow processes, for helping new fuel assembly design, and for developing better CHF predictions in both PWR and BWR. This paper presents a review of experimental data which can be used for validation of the two-phase CFD application to CHF investigations. The phenomenology of DNB and Dry-Out are detailed identifying all basic flow processes which require a specific modeling in CFD tool. The resulting modeling program of work is given and the current state-of-the-art of the modeling within the NURESIM project is presented.
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