Territorial innovation models: to be or not to be,that’s the question

Scientometrics - In a recent paper, Hirsch (hα: an index to quantify an individual’s scientific leadership, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2994-1 )  proposes to...     

Laser sintered ceramic coatings of PZT nanoparticles deposited by Inkjet Printing on metallic and ceramic substrates

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O₃ is one of the most studied perovskite type ferroelectric materials due to its excellent dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. PZT particles and a PZT precursor were synthesized using a chemical method. A vehicle was added to the synthesized particles and precursor for obtaining two inks with appropriate rheological properties to be printed by Inkjet Printing. The use of an 80?µm diameter nozzle made necessary the utilization of an energetic ball milling for assuring the dispersion of small PZT particles in the ink. After ball milling nanoparticles of 150?nm diameter were obtained. These inks were deposited on alumina and steel substrates followed by sintering using a pulsed laser of 1064?nm wavelength. The work shows the effect laser sintering has on, both inks, the one containing PZT nanoparticles and that one based on the PZT precursor. Laser processing was optimized in order to generate suitable films to be subsequently poled. The effect of poling on these films was also studied and their piezoelectric properties were measured by a compression test. The microstructural characteristics of these films were obtained by SEM and X ray diffractometry.     

A CMOS A/D Converter with Piecewise Linear Characteristic and Its Application to Sensor Linearization

A novel 8-bit CMOS A/D converter with piecewise linear characteristic is designed, implemented and tested. It can be regarded as a two-stage flash A/D converter. The resulting architecture can be applied to the linearization of nonlinear characteristics of a wide variety of sensors, just adapting the break points of the piecewise linear characteristic to get the best-fit approach to the inverse of the sensor characteristic under consideration. A very compact implementation is obtained, since two-stage A/D conversion and linearization are both performed simultaneously by the same circuit and because both A/D conversion stages share most of the required hardware. As a particular example, a sinusoidal nonlinearity, typical of several types of solid-state sensors, is compensated in this paper. Measurement results for a 2 m CMOS prototype demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach.     

Influence of stressors on breast cancer incidence in the Women's Health Initiative.

Objective: To examine associations among life events stress, social support, and breast cancer incidence in a cohort of postmenopausal women. Design and main outcome measure: Women's Health Initiative observational study participants, breast cancer free at entry, who provided assessment of stressful life events, social support, and breast cancer risk factors, were prospectively followed for breast cancer incidence (n = 84,334). Results: During an average of 7.6 years of follow-up, 2,481 invasive breast cancers were diagnosed. In age-adjusted proportional hazards models, 1 stressful life event was associated with increased risk, but risk decreased with each additional stressful life event. After adjustment for confounders the decreasing risk was not significant. Stressful life events and social support appeared to interact in relation to breast cancer risk such that women who had greater number of stressful life events and low social support had a decreased risk of breast cancer. Conclusions: This study found no independent association between stressful life events and breast cancer risk. The results are compatible with a more complex model of psychosocial factors interacting in relation to breast cancer risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nanosecond pulsed laser deposition of TiO2: nanostructure and morphology of deposits and plasma diagnosis

Nanostructured TiO₂ films on Si (100) substrates have been grown by nanosecond pulsed laser deposition at the wavelengths of 266, 355 and 532 nm using a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser and TiO₂ sintered rutile targets. The effect of laser irradiation wavelength, the temperature of the substrate and the presence of O₂ as background gas on the crystallinity and surface structure of deposits were determined, together with the composition, expansion dynamics and thermodynamic parameters of the ablation plume. Deposits were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, environmental scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, while in situ monitoring of the plume was carried out and characterized with spectral, temporal and spatial resolution by optical emission spectroscopy. Stoichiometric, crystalline deposits, with nanostructured morphology were obtained at substrate temperatures above 600 °C. Microscopic particulates were found overimposed on the nanostructured films but their size and density were significantly reduced by operating at short wavelength (266 nm) and upon addition of a low pressure of oxygen (0.05 Pa). The dominant crystalline phase is rutile at 355 and 532 nm. At the short irradiation wavelength, 266 nm, the preferred phase in the presence of oxygen is rutile, while anatase is preferably observed under vacuum. The narrowest size distribution and smallest nanoparticle diameters, of around 25 nm, were found by deposition at 266 nm under 0.05 Pa of oxygen.     

Human Serum Extracellular Vesicle Proteomic Profile Depends on the Enrichment Method Employed

The proteomic profiling of serum samples supposes a challenge due to the large abundance of a few blood proteins in comparison with other circulating proteins coming from different tissues and cells. Although the sensitivity of protein detection has increased enormously in the last years, specific strategies are still required to enrich less abundant proteins and get rid of abundant proteins such as albumin, lipoproteins, and immunoglobulins. One of the alternatives that has become more promising is to characterize circulating extracellular vesicles from serum samples that have great interest in biomedicine. In the present work, we enriched the extracellular vesicles fraction from human serum by applying different techniques, including ultracentrifugation, size-exclusion chromatography, and two commercial precipitation methods based on different mechanisms of action. To improve the performance and efficacy of the techniques to promote purity of the preparations, we have employed a small volume of serum samples (<100 mL). The comparative proteomic profiling of the enriched preparations shows that ultracentrifugation procedure yielded a larger and completely different set of proteins than other techniques, including mitochondrial and ribosome related proteins. The results showed that size exclusion chromatography carries over lipoprotein associated proteins, while a polymer-based precipitation kit has more affinity for proteins associated with granules of platelets. The precipitation kit that targets glycosylation molecules enriches differentially protein harboring glycosylation sites, including immunoglobulins and proteins of the membrane attack complex.