The Marvin Project: an Omni-Directional Robot for Home Assistance

In the last decades, many researchers are investigating how robotic solutions may be adopted to address the increasing need for home and personal assistance aggravated by current global challenges, e.g. population ageing and pandemic emergency. In this direction, the researchers at Politecnico di Torino, together with the colleagues from Edison S.p.A., developed the Marvin project which aims at designing a useful mobile robot for the domestic environment. In this work, the main features of the Marvin prototype and a first qualitative experimental validation are presented

Field tests of a novel solar-assisted dual source multifunctional heat pump

In this paper, we present the results of field study concerning a novel solar-assisted dual-source multifunctional heat pump, installed in a detached house in Milan. The system couples hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PVT) panels with multifunctional and reversible heat pump. The proposed system is equipped with an “air source” evaporator and a “water source” evaporator, connected in series and operated alternatively, based on the ambient conditions and system parameters. The “air source” evaporator is an external unit; conversely, the “water source” evaporator is connected with a storage tank, fed by the PVT system. The PVT system is connected with the heat pump by two storage tanks to be used to produce domestic hot water and to be used in “water source” evaporator. Based on the operating conditions, the hot water is sent to one of the storage tank. The proposed system has been tested experimentally; the results show that the system was able to maintain high efficiency in the different seasons and was able to produce domestic hot water. It was found that the use of the “water source” evaporator was able to compensate the performance degradation of the “air source” source evaporator caused by the low ambient temperature

Functional dosing of mesenchymal stromal cell-derived extracellular vesicles for the prevention of acute graft-versus-host-disease

Graft-vs-host-disease (GvHD) is currently the main complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Mortality and morbidity rates are particularly high, especially in steroid-refractory acute GvHD (aGvHD). Immune regulatory human bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (hMB-MSCs) represent a therapeutic approach to address this issue. Unfortunately, their effect is hardly predictable in vivo due to several variables, that is, MSC tissue origin, concentration, dose number, administration route and timing, and inflammatory status of the recipient. Interestingly, human bone marrow MSC-derived extracellular vesicles (hBM-MSC-EVs) display many of the hBM-MSC immunoregulatory properties due to their content in paracrine factors that greatly varies according to the collection method. In this study, we focused on the immunological characterization of hBM-MSC-EVs on their capability of inducing regulatory T-cells (T-regs) both in vitro and in a xenograft mouse model of aGvHD. We correlated these data with the aGvHD incidence and degree following hBM-MSC-EV intravenous administration. Thus, we first quantified the EV immunomodulation in vitro in terms of EV immunomodulatory functional unit (EV-IFU), that is, the lowest concentration of EVs leading in vitro to at least threefold increase of the T-regs compared with controls. Second, we established the EV therapeutic dose in vivo (EV-TD) corresponding to 10-fold the in vitro EV-IFU. According to this approach, we observed a significant improvement of both mouse survival and control of aGvHD onset and progression. This study confirms that EVs may represent an alternative to whole MSCs for aGvHD prevention, once the effective dose is reproducibly identified according to EV-IFU and EV-TD definition

Cancer survival in the elderly: Effects of socio-economic factors and health care system features (ELDCARE project)

The purpose of the ELDCARE project is to study differences in cancer survival for elderly patients by country, taking into account the socio-economic conditions and the characteristics of health care systems at the ecological level. Fifty-three European cancer registries, from 19 countries, participating in the EUROCARE 3 programme, collected information to compute relative survival on patients aged 65-84 years, diagnosed over the period 1990-1994. National statistics offices provided the macro-economic and labour force indicators (gross domestic product, total health expenditure, and proportion of people employed in the agriculture sector) as well as the features of national health care systems. Survival for several of the cancer sites had high positive Pearson's correlations (r) with the affluence indicators (usually r > 0.7), but survival for the poor prognosis cancers (lung, ovary, stomach) and for cervix uteri was not so well correlated. Among the medical resources considered, the number of computed tomography scanners was the variable most related to survival in the elderly; the number of total health practitioners in the country did not show any relationship. Survival was related to the marital status of elderly women more strongly than for men and younger people. The highest correlations of survival with the percentage of married elderly women in the population were for cancers of the rectum (r = 0.79) and breast (r = 0.66), while survival correlated negatively with the proportion of widows for most cancers. Being married or widowed is for elderly people, in particular elderly women, an important factor influencing psychological status, life habits and social relationships. Social conditions could play a major role in determining health outcomes, particularly in the elderly, by affecting access to health care and delay in diagnosis