Chemical hydrogels based on a hyaluronic acid-graft-α-elastin derivative as potential scaffolds for tissue engineering

In this work hyaluronic acid (HA) functionalized with ethylenediamine (EDA) has been employed to graft α-elastin. In particular a HA-EDA derivative bearing 50 mol% of pendant amino groups has been successfully employed to produce the copolymer HA-EDA-g-α-elastin containing 32% w/w of protein. After grafting with α-elastin, remaining free amino groups reacted with ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDGE) for producing chemical hydrogels, proposed as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Swelling degree, resistance to chemical and enzymatic hydrolysis, as well as preliminary biological properties of HA-EDA-g-α-elastin/EGDGE scaffold have been evaluated and compared with a HA-EDA/EGDGE scaffold. The presence of α-elastin grafted to HA-EDA improves attachment, viability and proliferation of primary rat dermal fibroblasts and human umbilical artery smooth muscle cells. Biological performance of HA-EDA-g-α-elastin/EGDGE scaffold resulted comparable to that of a commercial collagen type I sponge (Antema®), chosen as a positive control.     

Nanopatterned platinum electrodes by focused ion beam in single palladium nanowire based devices

In this paper we present different devices, working as hydrogen sensors, based on single palladium nanowire and realized combining focused ion beam and dielectrophoresis techniques. The combination of these two techniques consists in the employ of focused ion beam for electrode patterning onto silicon/silicon dioxide substrates, followed by the assembly of a single palladium nanowire applying between electrodes an electric field at fixed frequency (dielectrophoresis) to a palladium nanoparticles solution. The nanowire morphology can be branched or not, depending on the applied frequency value. The devices are characterized in hydrogen environment at room temperature and their responses are compared.     

A novel tool for estimation of magnetic resonance occupational exposure to spatially varying magnetic fields

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Staff operating in the environment of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners are exposed daily to static magnetic fields (MFs). To protect workers several guidelines are present in literature reporting exposure limits values expressed in terms of magnetic flux density or induced current density. We present here a novel tool for estimating the induced current density due to worker movement in the MR environment.     

Potential Antibacterial Activity of Carvacrol-Loaded Poly(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) Nanoparticles against Microbial Biofilm

The ability to form biofilms contributes significantly to the pathogenesis of many microbial infections, including a variety of ocular diseases often associated with the biofilm formation on foreign materials. Carvacrol (Car.) is an important component of essential oils and recently has attracted much attention pursuant to its ability to promote microbial biofilm disruption. In the present study Car. has been encapsulated in poly(dl-lactide-co-glycolide (PLGA) nanocapsules in order to obtain a suitable drug delivery system that could represent a starting point for developing new therapeutic strategies against biofilm-associated infections, such as improving the drug effect by associating an antimicrobial agent with a biofilm viscoelasticity modifier.     

AI Based Network and Radio Resource Management in 5G HetNets

The demand for pervasive wireless access and high data rate services are expected to grow significantly in the near future. In this context, the deployment of Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) will enable important capabilities, such as high data rates and traffic offloading, providing dedicated capacity to homes, enterprises, and urban hotspots. Despite HetNet technology will be beneficial for future wireless systems in many ways, the massive cells diffusion has as a consequence an exponential increase of the backhaul traffic that can create congestion and collapse the backhaul network. Virtualization of networks and radio access allows the implementation of complex and efficient decisional processes for radio and network resource optimization, but the interaction between lower and upper layers during resource allocation decisions is still mostly unexplored. In this paper we propose an artificial intelligence based approach, with two interdependent decisional cores exchanging information, one aware of physical layer aspects and the other controlling pure network resources. The two iterative procedures aim at jointly optimizing the distribution of the traffic in the backhaul network and the users cell association, with the goals of minimizing the unsatisfied users data rate requests and minimizing the energy consumption reducing the number of activated cells, respectively.     

Combining implicit and explicit techniques to reveal social desirability bias in electricity conservation self-reports

While questionnaires are still the most common way to survey consumers’ behaviors, it is known that respondents’ answers can be affected by the social desirability attributed to the behavior under investigation. To check whether a social desirability bias also affects electricity consumption self-reports, a study was carried out adopting an explicit (questionnaire) and implicit measurement technique (the autobiographical Implicit Association Test). Three behaviors were probed in this way, with a sample of 180 participants (60 for each behavior). The analysis of the congruence between explicit and implicit answers confirms that desirability bias is at stake in self-reported measures of electricity conservation; it also shows that different behaviors—in this same domain—can be subject to this bias to a different extent and that a considerable amount of participants need to be considered as ambivalent. The methodological and conceptual implications of these findings and of the method are discussed with respect to pro-environmental studies and interventions.     

Improving the spectral efficiency of FDM‐CPM systems through packing and multiuser processing

In frequency division multiplexed (FDM) systems, spectral efficiency (SE) can be increased by reducing the spacing between two adjacent channels, thus increasing the relevant interference and possibly accounting for it at the receiver. In this paper, we consider a FDM system where each user employs a continuous phase modulation, serially concatenated with an outer code through an interleaver, and iterative detection/decoding. We show that, by taking into account the increased interference using properly designed multiuser detection and synchronization schemes, it is possible to implement transmission schemes with unprecedented SE at a price of a limited complexity increase with respect to a classical single‐user receiver which neglects the interference. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.