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Restoration of the degraded rangelands in Jordan using mechanized water harvesting and native species planting has become key to enhancing and maintaining the productivity and resilience of fragile ecosystems. A balanced interaction between the rangeland's hydrology and vegetation states is vital for achieving long-term sustainability. To gain a better insight into the impact of restoration on surface runoff and erosion and its role in recovering the ecosystem functions, we used the Rangeland Hydrological and Erosion Model (RHEM) to simulate various vegetation scenarios. Our research aims to understand the rangelands' water and sediment dynamics and the vegetation transition states of the ecosystem through evaluating the current (degraded) situation, assess the restoration approach on improving the degraded status (restored), and investigate the long-term sustainability of the restoration approach compared with historical rangeland conditions (baseline). Several scenarios were developed with rangeland experts, local community representatives, and measurements at protected and restored areas to represent the rangeland conditions. We found that restoration of the degraded Badia areas will decrease annual surface runoff from an average of 23.5 to 19.1 mm/year and soil erosion rate from 3.3 to 1.3 tons/ha. With time, restoration can bring back rangeland water and sediment dynamics closer towards the baseline conditions, which were 16.9 mm/year runoff rates and 0.85 ton/ha/year soil loss. The results indicate that restoration is a promising methodology to restore the degraded ecosystem and approximate the environment's historical hydrological regime.

Background and Objectives: Abdominal trauma among severely injured patients with an injury severity score (ISS) of 16 and above can lead to potentially life-threatening injuries that might need immediate surgical intervention. Traumatic injuries to the diaphragm (TID) are a challenging condition often accompanied by other injuries in the thoracoabdominal region. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the occurrence and clinical course of TID among severely injured patients treated at our center between 2008 and 2019 and compared them to other groups of severely injured patients without TID. Results: Thirty-five patients with TID and a median ISS of 41 were treated in the period mentioned above. They were predominantly middle-aged men and mostly victims of blunt trauma as a consequence of motor vehicle accidents. A total of 70.6% had left-sided TID, and in 69.6%, the size of defect was larger than 10 cm. The diagnosis was made with computed tomography (CT) in 68.6% of the cases, while in 25.8%, it was made intraoperatively or delayed by a false-negative initial CT scan, and in 5.7%, an intraoperative diagnosis was made without preoperative CT imaging. Surgical repair was mostly conducted via laparotomy, performing a direct closure with continuous suture. A comparison to 191 patients that required laparotomy for abdominal injuries other than TID revealed significantly higher rates of concomitant injuries to several abdominal organs among patients suffering from TID. Compared to all other severely injured patients treated in the same period (n = 1377), patients suffering from TID had a significantly higher median ISS and a longer mean duration of hospital stay. Conclusions: Our findings show that TID can be seen as an indicator of particularly severe thoracoabdominal trauma that requires increased attention from the treatment team so as not to miss relevant concomitant injuries that require immediate intervention.

Nitriding of Fe-1 wt.% Cu and Fe-5 wt.% Cu alloys at 813 K leads to the formation of predominantly the γ′-iron nitride phase (γ′-Fe4N) when using nitriding conditions, which lead to pronounced formation of ε-iron nitride phase (ε-Fe3N1+x) upon nitriding of pure α-Fe. Energy dispersive X-ray analysis reveals that the developing γ′ can attain a Cu content corresponding to that of the base material. In contrast, tiny amounts of ε-nitride that eventually develop contain considerably less Cu. The microstructure implies that the formation of the ε-nitride requires long-range substitutional interdiffusion to achieve the Cu partitioning. These observations were interpreted in terms of a significantly higher solubility of Cu in the γ′ phase than in the ε phase, which is explainable by the phases’ crystal structures. The observations were rationalized in terms of schematic Fe–Cu–N phase diagrams valid for 813 K.

The diagnosis and prognosis of patients with severe chronic disorders of consciousness are still challenging issues and a high rate of misdiagnosis is evident. Hence, new tools are needed for an accurate diagnosis, which will also have an impact on the prognosis. In recent years, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has been gaining more and more importance when diagnosing this patient group. Especially resting state scans, i.e., an examination when the patient does not perform any task in particular, seems to be promising for these patient groups. After preprocessing the resting state fMRI data with a standard pipeline, we extracted the correlation matrices of 132 regions of interest. The aim was to find the regions of interest which contributed most to the distinction between the different patient groups and healthy controls. We performed feature selection using a genetic algorithm and a support vector machine. Moreover, we show by using only those regions of interest for classification that are most often selected by our algorithm, we get a much better performance of the classifier.

The ability to fabricate complex graded structures would be a significant step towards the manufacturing of material systems with properties tailored to individual applications. While powder metallurgy has had some success in this regard, it requires that the semi-finished products be exactly similar to the final component. However, it is significantly cheaper to produce simple, semi-finished products and then join them to form complex components with the desired graded structure through powder forging and simultaneous compaction. It is also essential that the graded structure of the semi-finished products is retained during the forming process. In this study, pre-sintered cylindrical semi-finished products consisting of identical homogeneous layers as well as graded components consisting of non-identical homogeneous layers were joined using powder forging at 1100 °C. The microstructures and densities as well as the mechanical properties of the final components were investigated. It was observed that, upon compaction, the components formed solid structures, in which the reinforcing ZrO2 particles were completely integrated within the transformation-induced plasticity steel matrix. Finally, it was confirmed that the graded structure of the semi-finished products was retained in the final components.

Lightweight linear cellular composite materials on basis of austenite stainless TRIP- (TRansformation Induced Plasticity-) steel as matrix with reinforcements of MgO partially stabilized zirconia (Mg-PSZ) are described. Two-dimensional cellular materials for structural applications are conventionally produced by sheet expansion or corrugation processes. The presented composites are fabricated by a modified ceramic extrusion powder technology. Characterization of the microstructure in as-received and deformed conditions was carried out by optical and scanning electron microscopy. Magnetic balance measurements and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) were used to identify the deformation-induced martensite evolution in the cell wall material. The honeycomb composite samples exhibit an increased strain hardening up to a certain engineering compressive strain and an extraordinary high specific energy absorption per unit mass and unit volume, respectively. Based on improved property-to-weight ratio such linear cellular structures will be of interest as crash absorbers or stiffened core materials for aerospace, railway, or automotive applications.

Purpose: This study analyzed the physiological response during Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Level 1 (YYIR1) test and re-test by in-field ergospirometry and time-series analyses of respiratory parameters. Methods: Ten moderately trained males (23.4 ± 2.01 years, VO[subscript 2peak]= 56.81 ± 10.75 mL·kg[superscript -1]·min[superscript -1]) completed three running trials including two separate YYIR1 tests and an independent maximal performance running test with time-series analyses of gas exchange parameters. Physiological response was assessed during all tests by determination of blood lactate levels (including calculation of individual lactate threshold), heart rate, oxygen consumption and respiratory exchange ratio (RER). Results: Modeling of YYIR1 test mean VO[subscript 2] uptake kinetics over all participants revealed that VO[subscript 2] increased rapidly after the individual lactate threshold (11.49 ± 0.66 km·h[superscript -1] at 3.83 ± 0.42 mmol·L[superscript -1]) was reached with ~95% VO[subscript 2peak] at ~50% of the test duration (test, VO[subscript 2][superscript 50%]= 95.17 ± 8.74% of VO[subscript 2peak]; re-test, VO[subscript 2][superscript 50%]= 96.78 ± 7.04% of VO[subscript 2peak]). However, and despite identical YYIR1 test performance (1568 ± 364.6 m vs. 1568 ± 449.7 m, CV = 4.59%), mean VO[subscript 2peak] during YYIR1 test was 8.81 ± 5.6% higher than YYIR1 re-test (p = 0.027). Importantly, correlation of VO[subscript 2peak] with YYIR1 test performance was weak (R[superscript 2] = 0.28, p = 0.115). Conclusions: We conclude that the YYIR1 test should not be used to estimate VO[subscript 2peak]. Further studies on direct determination of gas exchange parameters during different YYI test variants are warranted.