APHRODITE: Design and Preliminary Tests of an Autonomous and Reusable Photo-sensing Device for Immunological Test aboard the International Space Station

Preliminary results of the design and manufacturing of APHRODITE, a compact and versatile device for carrying out analyses of biological fluids during space missions that will be used as a technological demonstrator on board the International Space Station (ISS) for the quantitative determination of salivary biomarkers indicators of alterations of functionality of the immune system. The paper addresses the design of the main subsystems of the analytical device and the preliminary results obtained during the first implementations of the device subsystems and testing measurements. In particular, the system design and the experiment data output of the lab-on-chip photosensors and of the front-end readout electronics are reported in detail

Solubility of inert gases and liquid hydrocarbons in water

The thermodn. statistical model based on the distribution of mol. populations among energy levels has been employed for the anal. of the soly. of hydrocarbons and other inert gases or liqs. in water at different temps. The statistical distribution is described by a convoluted partition function ZG•ζs. The product of a grand canonical partition function ZG represents the distribution of the species in the reaction while the canonical partition function ζs represents the properties of the solvent. The first deriv. of the logarithm of the partition function with respect to 1/T is the apparent enthalpy which is the result of the contributions of the sep. partition functions, {ΔHapp}T = ΔH0 + nwCp,wT, where {ΔHapp}T refers to ZG, nwCp,wT = -ΔHw to ζs and ΔH0 is the change in enthalpy of hydrocarbon-water reaction. The plot {ΔHapp}T vs. T results in a straight line with slope nw at const. Cp,w. The apparent enthalpy is obtained from the coeffs. of the polynomial fitting of the soly. data, as a function of l/T. Alternatively, the apparent enthalpy can be detd. calorimetrically. The enthalpy thus obtained is a linear function of the Kelvin temp. The values of nw range from 1.6, 1.9, 5.6 to 5.8 for helium, hydrogen, butane and hexane, resp. For fluoro compds. the range of nw is 10.1 to 11.1 indicating that nw is a function of the no. of water mols. expelled from the cage of solvent to form a cavity to host the solute mol. The anal. of several sets of calorimetric or soly. data with the present mol. thermodn. model yields values of ΔH0 and nw consistent with the size of the dissolved mols

EXPLANATORY NOTES OF THE LITHO-PALAEOENVIRONMENTAL MAPS OF ITALY DURING THE LAST TWO CLIMATIC EXTREMES.

Vengono presentate le carte paleoambientali dell'Italia durante i due ultimi eventi estremi paleoclimatici (l'ultimo massimo glaciale e l'optimum climatico olocenico