Membranas híbridas de polieterimida-sílice. Caracterización por espectroscopia de IR y MEB.

Se prepararon membranas híbridas de polieterimida-sílice por incorporación de nanopartículas de sílice a la solución polimérica y a través de la generación del relleno inorgánico empleando la técnica sol-gel. Las membranas híbridas obtenidas fueron caracterizadas por FTIR, MEB y MEB-EDS. Los estudios de FTIR permitieron realizar un seguimiento del grado de hidrólisis del alcóxido metálico precursor (TEOS) y analizar la interacción existente entre la sílice generada y el polímero. Las imágenes de MEB reflejaron la evolución de la morfología de las membranas frente a modificaciones producidas durante la síntesis tales como la incorporación de un agente de acoplamiento, la polimerización de TEOS in situ, el incremento del contenido de sílice y el efecto de la redisolución de las membranas sintetizadas. El análisis químico elemental de las membranas híbridas usando EDS, permitió corroborar la presencia de partículas de sílice en las membranas, a través de la observación de la intensidad del pico correspondiente al silicio

Microsystem Technology for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)

AbstractAAL is certainly an application area with sensor as well as actuator needs. Some of the requirements can be fulfilled by state of the art technology; some areas however still need a lot of R&D efforts for potential applications in homes. The contribution describes two areas of interest and actual development: One is the topic of robust fire detection; the other domain is fall detection. For both application areas one has to understand both the state of the art and the drawbacks of the current solutions. One can state clearly that there is a huge potential for the development of new microsystems. Still one has to keep in mind that usage in elderly homes also requires consent and cooperation of the users which is the focus of the user centered design principle

Economic consequences of investing in anti-HCV antiviral treatment from the Italian NHS perspective : a real-world-based analysis of PITER data

OBJECTIVE: We estimated the cost consequence of Italian National Health System (NHS) investment in direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy according to hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment access policies in Italy. METHODS: A multistate, 20-year time horizon Markov model of HCV liver disease progression was developed. Fibrosis stage, age and genotype distributions were derived from the Italian Platform for the Study of Viral Hepatitis Therapies (PITER) cohort. The treatment efficacy, disease progression probabilities and direct costs in each health state were obtained from the literature. The break-even point in time (BPT) was defined as the period of time required for the cumulative costs saved to recover the Italian NHS investment in DAA treatment. Three different PITER enrolment periods, which covered the full DAA access evolution in Italy, were considered. RESULTS: The disease stages of 2657 patients who consecutively underwent DAA therapy from January 2015 to December 2017 at 30 PITER clinical centres were standardized for 1000 patients. The investment in DAAs was considered to equal €25 million, €15 million, and €9 million in 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively. For patients treated in 2015, the BPT was not achieved, because of the disease severity of the treated patients and high DAA prices. For 2016 and 2017, the estimated BPTs were 6.6 and 6.2 years, respectively. The total cost savings after 20 years were €50.13 and €55.50 million for 1000 patients treated in 2016 and 2017, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study may be a useful tool for public decision makers to understand how HCV clinical and epidemiological profiles influence the economic burden of HCV

L'Italia come modello per l'Europa e per il mondo nelle politiche sanitarie per il trattamento dell'epatite cronica da HCV

The World Health Organization foresees the elimination of HCV infection by 2030. In light of this and the curre nt, nearly worldwide, restriction in direct-acting agents (DAA) accessibility due to their high price, we aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two alternative DAA treatment policies: Policy 1 (universal): treat all patients, regardless of the fibrosis stage; Policy 2 (prioritized): treat only priori tized patients and delay treatment of the remaining patients until reaching stage F3. T he model was based on patient’s data from the PITER cohort. We demonstrated that extending HC V treatment of patients in any fibrosis stage improves health outcomes and is cost-effective

Solar-powered CMOS Image Sensor

A first prototype of a solar-powered CMOS image sensor is presented. Extremely low power consumption is obtained with sub-threshold digital design and event-driven architecture. The general architecture is described together with simulations and preliminary test results of a 4x4-pixel array are presented. Future directions are given

Scanning-tunneling-microscopy Investigation of Phosphorus-doped Polycrystalline Silicon Films

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) in air has been used to investigate the surface of highly phosphorus-doped polysilicon films produced by low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD). It has been found that, even when working in air, the technique gives detailed information about microroughness and mean grain size. Distinguishing between two different length scales, values for inter- and intra-grain roughness as a function of phosphorus doses are reported

A Column Readout Channel for Infrared and Terahertz Bolometers with Direct Analog to Digital Conversion

This paper describes a readout channel suitable for infrared and terahertz bolometric sensors arrays where the signal integration is performed simultaneously with the analog-to-digital conversion in a columnwise architecture. By exploiting the need of an integrator both in conventional IR readout channels and incremental converters, the proposed circuit implements a 5-bit continuous-time incremental conversion during signal integration, then the same electronics is used to perform an additional 6-bit algorithmic conversion on the integrator residual voltage. A prototype of the channel has been fabricated in standard CMOS technology (0.35μm 2P4M) featuring 11-bit digital output at 7.12ksamples/s and occupying an area of 0.0301mm2 with a power consumption of only 90μW from a supply of 3.3V