Powder metallurgy processing of steels typically results in a material characterized by residual porosity, whose dimension and morphology, together with the microstructure, strongly affect the fatigue crack growth behaviour of the material. Prismatic specimens were pressed at 7.0 g/cm3 density from Astaloy CrM powder and sintered in different conditions, varying the sintering temperature and the cooling rate after sintering. Optical observations allowed to evaluate the dimensions and the morphology of the porosity and the microstructural characteristics for all the investigated conditions. Fatigue tests were performed at R-ratio equal to 0.1 to investigate the threshold zone and to calculate the Paris law coefficients. All the tests were carried out according with the compliance method, and the crack length has been evaluated during whole the test. Moreover KIc tests were performed in order to complete the investigation. Both on fatigue and KIc samples a fractographic analysis was carried out to investigate the crack path and the fracture surface features. The results show that the Paris law crack growth exponent is around 6.0 for 1120°C sintered and around 4.7 for 1250°C sintered materials. The same dependence to process parameters is not found for KIth. Values close to 6 MPa√m are here found for all variants.

Strategies for prevention of alcohol problems have moved on from a preoccupation with quantities consumed per week or per annum. We are now also looking in more detail at the shea-term effects of intoxication ("drunkenness"). Whilst it is relatively easy to compare rates of consumption across European countries, it is more difficult to compare rates of drunkenness because the words used to describe the state do not readily translate from one language to another, and may have very different cultural connotations.This paper describes a pilot study of a novel method of defining and quantifying the state of drunkenness in five different cities in Europe. Groups of five clinical or research workers in alcohol problems in Edinburgh, Leicester, Stockholm, Rotterdam and Athens got together and wrote down all the words they could think of in their own language which meant "drunk". They then arranged these words on a spectrum from most positive to most negative and quantified the "top ten" words in terms of intensity of intoxication. All words were then sorted into five categories, psychological (any amount of alcohol and extreme amounts of alcohol) and behavioural (any and extreme) and post hoc: "I must have been drunk because...(I do not know how I got home last night, cannot remember... etc)"The results show the technique to be reliable and already to have produced interesting findings. All these drinking cultures have a rich language to describe states of intoxication and it was possible to quantify and compare them. Three groups (English, Dutch and Swedish) define the most severe states of intoxication predominantly in behavioural terms. The Swedish group had the largest number of words describing drunkenness as the behaviour induced by any level of ingested alcohol. The Scots and the Greeks use psychological definitions but the Scots also acknowledge that becoming severely intoxicated can be the consequence of attempting to get into a new psychological state, but overdoing it. A quarter of the Greek words describe becoming transformed into another being. The other cultures do not describe that, although the concept is known to exist in Scottish culture. Only the English, Dutch and Greek words can readily be sorted onto a positive-negative dimension, with the Dutch viewing drunkenness more negatively than the other two.

To determine reproducibility of a battery of clinical tests for evaluating lumbopelvic motor control (LMC).Test-retest design.Fifty healthy subjects.Two raters independently examined performance on 12 clinical tests for evaluating LMC. All tests were scored on a seven-point scale, based on qualitative and quantitative performance. Subjects were measured twice, with a two week interval between examinations. Intra- and inter-rater reproducibility of each test were determined using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), standard error of measurement, smallest detectable change (SDC) and limits of agreement.Reliability of the tests ranged from poor to excellent. Intra-rater ICCs ranged from 0.00 to 0.82, whereas inter-rater ICCs varied from 0.00 to 0.96. SDC values were smallest for supine leg raising, bent knee fall out, prone bridge and unilateral prone bridge (<2 points).This study shows limited reproducibility of a battery of 12 clinical tests for the evaluation of LMC in a healthy population. Supine leg raising, bent knee fall out, prone bridge, and unilateral prone bridge showed the smallest measurement errors. The other 8 tests were found to have large measurement errors. Based on these results, dichotomization of the rating method might be considered in order to improve reproducibility values.