A comprehensive three‐dimensional fully coupled thermo‐electro‐mechanical finite element framework is developed for modeling spark plasma sintering (SPS). The finite element model is applied to the simulation of spark plasma processing with four different tooling sizes and various temperature regimes. The comparison of modeling and experimental results shows that the model is reliable for qualitative predictions of the densification behavior and of the grain growth in powder specimens subjected to SPS with a given temperature regime. The conducted modeling indicates the possibility of changing the heating pattern of the specimen (warmer central areas of the specimen's volume and cooler outside areas or vice versa) depending on the size of the tooling. High heating rates and large specimen sizes elevate the temperature and, in turn, material structure gradients during SPS processing. The obtained results suggest that the industrial implementation of SPS techniques should be based on the predictive capability of reliable modeling approaches.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in men and women worldwide. According to the WHO, by 2015, almost 20 million people will die from CVD each year. It is well established that men and women differ not only in baseline cardiac parameters, but also in the clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment outcomes of CVD. Women tend to develop heart disease later in life than men. This difference has been attributed to the loss of estrogen during the menopausal transition; however, the biological explanations for the sexual dimorphism in CVD are more complex and seem unlikely to be due to estrogen alone. The current controversy that has arisen regarding the effects of HRT on CVD in women is a case in point. In this review, the sex-based differences in cardiac (patho-) physiology are discussed with emphasis on the impact of sex hormones, hormone receptors and diet on heart disease.

Scalability experiments on the spark plasma sintering (SPS) of similarly shaped alumina specimens of the four different sizes are conducted. The utilized experimental methodology, based on the principle of rigorous proportionality of all the specimen and tooling dimensions, employs two different SPS devices of different scales. The processed specimens are characterized in terms of relative density and grain‐pore structure. Overall, SPS shows good scalability potential within a single SPS device, but indicates substantial structure changes when switching between different SPS devices. Despite deviations in some cases, by and large, the experimental results obtained for different tooling sizes and temperature regimes are rather similar for specimens processed by the same SPS device. The obtained density and grain size spatial distributions are relatively uniform. High final densities with moderate grain growth are common. At the same time, due to the demonstrated possibility of a significant size impact in case of high heating rates and large specimen sizes, as well as the demonstrated differences of the processing outcomes based on different SPS devices, the predictive capability of reliable modeling approaches is of great importance for the industrial implementation of SPS techniques.

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